Did We Really Leave Egypt (Ohel Rachel Los Angeles)

0:15First of all, thank you for having me. Baruch Hashem. It's been an interesting trip here to California. Some familiar faces, some new faces, Baruch Hashem. So, the topic was just some random name that I came up with. In reality, I always tell people that you can interrupt the lecture and ask whatever question you want because in reality it has nothing to do with me. Whatever Hashem wants to say, I'm going to say anyway. Things that come out of the heart reach the heart. So how did we get here? Now, we just completed the Chag of Pesach, Baruch Hashem, another wonderful Chag. We celebrated Yetziat Mitzrayim. We celebrated Kriyat Yam Suf. We left Egypt, we left slavery. We saw all the miracles. We celebrated that we saw all the miracles. And somehow, we're still in Egypt. Somehow, in reality, we're still all in Egypt. All back to work. And some people are working so hard, they forgot that slavery stopped about 3,000 years ago for Am Yisrael. This was me for most of my life.

1:31So for anyone who doesn't know my story, I'm not going to go into all of the details I usually go into simply because it's very long and it'll take up the entire lecture. But I brought you some free CDs with my personal story and many, many other lectures. There's maybe about 80 hours' worth of Torah on there, including my personal story. And both of those CDs, they're free. I also want to show you our cards that our organization, Be'ezrat Hashem, made in English, Hebrew, and transliteration. that our organization, Be'ezrat Hashem, made in English, Hebrew, and transliteration. You could put it next to your bathrooms, at the office, at work, in the house. They're nice, plastic, and durable. Anyone that wants to see any of our lectures can go to our website, bezratHashem.org. And as Baruch Hashem, many, many lectures that I've done in English, maybe close to a thousand hours, my Rav, Rabbi Efraim, is on there also somewhere in the neighborhood of maybe about 1,500 hours or so. And of course, we work with Rav Mizrachi, shlita, and only Hashem knows how many hours he's done. Baruch Hashem. But the reality is, what motivates somebody to leave Egypt, even though everyone around them wants to stay in...

2:47Torah, it says that Am Yisrael left Egypt after we got all the miracles. We had a horrendous adventure over there. They turned us from being millionaires to being slaves after Yosef HaTzaddik put Egypt on the map and made them very wealthy. Eventually, Paro got sick of him after he died. He didn't have to deal with him anymore. And he said, let's fool them. Fool them into what? Fool them into thinking they're actually making any money, and in reality, they're just going to become our slaves. Fool them into thinking they actually have any freedom, but in reality, they're just fulfilling our purpose and not theirs. And he fooled Am Yisrael, who at that time were called Bnei Yisrael, into becoming slaves. Now you ask yourself, how do you fool somebody into becoming a slave? The first thing is, you show them patriotism. You make them believe that what they're doing is for the better cause of the country, for the better cause of the people, for the better cause for them and for everyone around them. You convince them that what they're doing actually has a purpose because a human being cannot survive mentally and emotionally even physically without having a purpose. A human being must have a purpose. There's no such thing as a creation without a purpose. No one ever made anything without having a purpose. The guy that made the tables, he may not have known who's going to use the table, but he knew that someone at some point is going to buy the table and put stuff on it. Maybe it's going to be a sefer Torah, maybe it's going to be potato chips.

4:09...even physically without having a purpose. A human being must have a purpose. There's no such thing as a creation without a purpose. No one ever made anything without having a purpose. The guy that made the tables, he may not have known who's going to use the table, but he knew that someone at some point is going to buy the table and put stuff on it. Maybe it's going to be a Sefer Torah, maybe it's going to be potato chips... Maybe it's going to be dinner. Maybe it's going to be something else. The point is, the table has a purpose. The chair has a purpose. The chandelier has a purpose. The building has a purpose. Everything must have a purpose. Pharaoh knew this, and he says let's give them a purpose. What's the purpose? Let's tell them we're building Egypt. We're building America. We're building Germany. We're building wherever. He actually started digging first. Everyone saw, "Wow, look, Pharaoh is digging with us. Let's dig. Let's leave our businesses and start digging with him." Little by little, Am Yisrael became slaves. Eventually, they were so connected to the slavery that it became part of them. Even after Moshe Rabbeinu, who was the Mashiach of his generation and all generations, they didn't really want to leave.

5:30Reality is they didn't really want to leave. Why didn't they want to leave? They said, "Listen, it was really hard for the last 86 years, but now after all the makot (plagues), everything that happened, it's not hard anymore. We're not really slaves anymore. This guy opened a business, the other guy extended his house, he just started a partnership, he just bought a car, he just bought a hotel. Everybody's doing good." We're not slaves anymore. So what are we gonna leave for? Moshe said, listen, the whole reason why Hashem put all the makot is for you to leave Egypt to go get the Torah. No, we're not interested. And that's why Rabotai Yekarim, after we left Egypt, the very next parasha starts with the word Vayehi. Vayehi means like oy vey, oh no. Am Yisrael was very sad because every single one of them knew somebody that died. How is that possible? The sages explained to us that unfortunately our sleepiness, our spiritual sleepiness, caused us to not want to leave Egypt and not want to do teshuva, so Hashem killed us. In the best-case scenario, He killed 80% of Am Yisrael. In the worst-case scenario, it was 99%. Some say

6:50Alvaiyah was one out of five that survived Egypt, but everybody knows, not even one out of 500,000 survived. According to the Midrash Me'am Lo'ez, only two people out of every million of Bnei Yisrael actually left Egypt. So now, rabotai, this was a problem for Am Yisrael, and it's still a problem that we have today. And the reason why is because, as I said in the shiur last week, most people like to sing the song "Mashiach, Mashiach, Mashiach." Let's have the Mashiach come now. We say it as part of our 13 principles of faith. We say once in a while something happens, "Oh, Mashiach is gonna come this year, Gematria of Mashiach is Donald Trump, Gematria of this, Gematria of that, Mashiach here, Mashiach there," everybody says Mashiach. But anybody ever really asked themselves, mamash, like be'emet, between us, don't tell anybody. Be'emet, though. Anybody really asked themselves, Mashiach comes tomorrow. Al tziyon. You have Eliyahu HaNavi says, oh, Mashiach's here in three days. Let's go, pack your bags. Don't even pack your bags, not enough time. The airlines don't have room. Everybody has to fit. You going? Mashiach comes. Are you going?

8:13Leave your house. They just extended that. You just built that. You just like the new car, the new job. You just got a raise. You're really leaving? You're leaving Egypt? The reality is most people, no, most people are going to say, "Can you come next year? Can you come after I take the vacation? I'm busy now. I just signed a contract with such-and-such company." Most people don't really want Mashiach to come. Theoretically, it's nice because we think that Mashiach is going to solve all of our problems. So most people that have problems, which is pretty much everyone, think that Mashiach is going to solve our problems. But the reality is quite different. Mashiach is not here to solve our problems. He's not a psychiatrist. He's not a therapist. He's also not a lottery. He's quite different. The Mashiach is here to save those who have done teshuva. Now, for the most part, most of us don't think that we need to do teshuva. How do I know? You see in the shiurim, you travel to different places, and Baruch Hashem...

9:41Everybody that comes to shiurim gets motivated, gets excited, but for the most part, it's like, ah, I knew all this. I knew a lot of the things you said. It's good. I'm good. Not everybody wants to change. You have a room of 100 people, maybe 5, 6, 10 want to change. The other 90, good. Good chizuk. Thank you very much, but nothing changed. The next day we go back to normal. So the same thing I ask with Egypt. Why did they not say, "I want to do teshuva"? You saw the miracles. You saw that Hashem just destroyed the biggest civilization in the world. Every single country in the world was paying Egypt taxes, and You saw nature change. The water became blood. There was a frog the size of a dinosaur, with little frogs coming out of it. There was lava inside ice. It defied nature. Animals from the Arctic were showing up in Egypt, just killing Egyptians and leaving all the Jews alone. I mean, you saw things happen. It's not enough to motivate you to do teshuva? I mean, you saw a polar bear show up to the lecture and say, "Okay, I want to hear teshuva." You wouldn't do teshuva because of that polar bear? No, I

10:58Am Yisrael didn't want to do teshuva. Why didn't they want to do teshuva? So one time I said this chiddush, and I think it's true. Everyone thought they were okay. Why did they think they were okay? Because they used the same exact excuse we're still using to this day: "We suffered so much. My grandfather was a rabbi and..." Avraham Avinu, Yitzchak Avinu, Yaakov Avinu, everybody's grandfather was a rabbi. Everybody's grandfather wrote a book. Everybody's grandfather was a big tzaddik, and because of him, we figured we're okay. "Don't you know I'm related to such-and-such? I'm related to such-and-such, and I know this one, and I know that one, and my father's a tzaddik, and my mom's a tzadeket." Okay, great, but you're still going to clubs. That tzaddik is in Gan Eden, what about you? Am Yisrael was convinced that because they went through the suffering in Egypt, seeing their children die, seeing a Holocaust times a hundred happen in front of their eyes, they figured, "We suffered enough. We don't need to do teshuva. We've already gone through enough kapara. We don't need to do teshuva. We went through what we did. They killed our kids. They killed our fathers. They killed our mothers."

12:22We don't have to do teshuva. We suffered enough. We don't have to do teshuva. This epidemic is a reality that I lived for most of my life. How so? When I was 10 years old, we came to the United States. In Israel, we went through what you call a Masorti school. Half religious, half not religious. Every, you know, Masorti, Masor means I saw. Rav Nissim Yagen, zt"l, used to say Masorti is like every day you cut off a mitzvah. Masorti. Every day you use the saw to cut a mitzvah. Every day it's one less mitzvah, one less mitzvah, one less mitzvah. America, we call modern "Modern Orthodox," all types of modern stuff. We modernize everything. What does it mean, modern? Modern means we apply it to our life if it applies good. If it doesn't, we leave it. In Israel, the same thing with Masorti. Here we have Modern Orthodox, different things. So in Israel, we were Masorti. We went to school; we had the kippah in school, with tzitzit in school. At home, we took off everything.

13:41We thought that this was going to hold us up. We came to the United States, not realizing that unless you are a hundred percent with Hashem, you're bound to become a goy even without realizing it. The reason is, if you don't know what it means to be a Jew, you can't be one. If you don't know what it means... To be one with Hashem, to do what He wants, to do what He says. How are you going to do it? Most people today think that they love Hashem. "I love Hashem. I don't want to worship Hashem and serve Hashem through fear. I want to serve Him through love." That's what a lot of speakers will tell you: "Love Hashem. You should love Him." V'ahavta et Hashem Elokecha, it says in Kriyat Shema, you're supposed to love Hashem. ...reality, it's one of the 613 mitzvot; you are obligated to love Hashem. Most speakers are going to tell you that you are supposed to serve Hashem through love. And there's one little thing they don't tell you, one little thing that you probably haven't heard, at least not today—maybe yesterday. You cannot love Hashem without fearing Him first. According to our sages, fearing Hashem comes before love.

15:13Why is that? Because you cannot love something if you don't know what it is. You cannot love your wife without getting to know her first. You may like the way she looks, but that's lust, that's not love. Unless you start listening to what she says, you can never fall in love with her. You cannot love your husband if you just like his car. You could just marry the car if you want, but in reality, if you want to love your husband, you have to get to know him, listen to what he says, even though a lot of the stuff is nonsense. In reality, at the end, you have to listen to what he says if you want to fall in love with him. You have to get to know the person in order to love them. Likewise, with Hashem, you have to get to know Hashem in order to love Him. Now, as soon as you just start to understand that smallest concept of what Hashem is... Which is that every single leaf outside, you have trees, and both Hashem and every one of those trees have who knows how many leaves—thousands, tens of thousands of leaves. Every single one of those leaves, if it decides, "You know what, today I want to fall. I want to fall on the ground and die," before it falls, it has to ask Hashem, "Hashem, can I fall?" No, it has to stay. The next day, it asks Hashem, "Today, can I fall?" No, stay.

16:31Meaning that every single leaf cannot fall off the tree without getting the signature from Hashem. Once somebody really gets their head around this, that Hashem is really responsible for everything and anything that you see and don't see, moves and doesn't move, breathes or doesn't breathe—everything and anything—immediately, you're scared. Naturally, if you're a normal person, you have to be scared. Why? Because that also means if He's responsible for everything, He's also responsible for you. He's responsible for the cells inside your body—whether they work or don't work, whether they move or don't move. As soon as a person understands even the smallest concept, the smallest level of understanding of Hashem, immediately they're scared, and And that's why Shlomo HaMelech said, "The beginning of wisdom is fear of Hashem." So now the sages explained to us that fear of Hashem by itself as a connection to Hashem is incomplete, meaning if you're only serving Hashem out of pure fear,

17:48Fear of gain or fear of punishment in this world and so on and so forth. It's an incomplete connection. It's not enough. It's not good enough. You have to do more. Ideally, it should be fear and love. But love of Hashem without fear is no connection at all. Why no connection at all? They say it's impossible to love Hashem without fearing Him. Now, the lowest level of fear is fear of punishment. The highest level of fear is fear of His Majesty. It's like the fear of a relationship being ruined. A husband is not going to stop himself from yelling at his wife because he's afraid she's going to slap him. Maybe she will, but he's still not really afraid. He's not going to do it simply because he doesn't want to hurt the relationship. The same thing with Hashem. You're not going to commit a sin because you don't want to hurt the relationship. That's the highest level of fear. And the sages explained to us that once you got to that highest level of fear, like Avraham Avinu, now I know you fear Me. Now I know you fear Me. That's the beginning of loving Hashem. Meaning the highest level of fear is the beginning of loving Hashem, which means that most of us

19:06Unless we work on it really, really hard, we're never even going to get close to loving Hashem because we still don't know what it means. But yet, like most of you, I was saying, "I love Hashem." Whoever believes is never scared. And all the wonderful songs that I believed, I loved Hashem. I just didn't want to listen to Him. I thought I did though, in my own way, my own unique way. We went to public school as teenagers. I was a very good student in school. I played sports. I had three jobs and already got used to making money when I was young. When I was 18 years old, I got into the stock market business, initially working for other people, and realized this is a good business to be in because the guys that make it make it big and Already when I was 17 years old, I was working in the electronics business and having a few other gigs on the side. I was already making $100,000 when I was 17. So for me, I wasn't interested in just making a good living. I was interested in becoming a millionaire, very competitive, and it made a lot of sense to be in the stock market business. I saw everybody in the office—the ones that made it—had very fancy cars, fancy suits, and fancy lives. I wanted to be part of it after jumping around in the beginning through a couple of firms and

20:31Settled at a place called Raymond James, which is still a big firm public company, and decided this is gonna be the place where I'm gonna start my career. Initially, I worked—or was supposed to be working—with this one guy named Steve. He ended up lying to me and cheating me out of money, but after that was exposed... convinced the manager, the office manager, to let me be on my own, meaning be my own independent contractor within his office like everybody else, and not be forced to be partners with anybody or work for anybody. He said, "I'll think about it." He asked me, "What? Why should I give it to you? You're 21 years old. You don't really have much experience. I mean, you've already been in it for a couple of years, but you don't have any experience dealing with clients." Why should I let you do it? So, I'm the first one here, I'm the last one here, I work harder than everybody else here, I'm very committed, and what do you have to lose? And he said, "Well, listen, you know, you have to pay me about four thousand dollars a month in expenses every month, regardless of whether you make money or not." I said, "No problem."

21:47Was it for this, for the phone $1,000, for the computer X amount of money, for the secretary that you're not using, X amount of money for this, and I have a bunch of different fees? Okay, fine, because you have the money. I said, absolutely not. "How are you going to pay it?" he asked. I said, "I don't know. But I'm not going to go to another firm and start the whole thing again. I just wasted a year here. I'm already wasting three years of my life working in different places. Let me just get going." I why should I let you do it? What are your intentions here? I said to buy you out. So, I'm 21 years old with a long ponytail and a lot of courage. He found it amusing. He said, "I'll get back to you." He got back to me and said, "Okay, no problem. Go ahead, start." A few days later, September 11th happened. So, it was a very interesting time to start a business. Hashem, after about six months of suffering and not making a penny—or at least whatever penny I made went to him—I actually started making some money. The first six months were difficult. How difficult? Every day I had to borrow a dollar from this guy named Dimitri so I could buy a 50 cent coffee and a 50 cent donut. That was my food for the day. I sneaked onto a bus every day to get to work and leave. I started my day at about 5, got to the office at about 6 or 6:30, and...

23:12The Wall Street Journal and whatever else I could get for free. I made some phone calls starting at 8 o'clock in the morning and did not stop calling until midnight. Why did I stop at midnight? It wasn't because I was tired; it was because it wasn't allowed anymore. California time, 9 o'clock. When Hashem tells you that He gives the tired strength, this is one pshat. I didn't have any strength, I didn't have any energy, but I had a lot of drive. That's what you do. You fast forward six months, I start making some money. I made my first thousand dollars. To me, it's like a million. Meaning it was the first time I actually kept $1,000. Until this time, I was making some money, but all of it was going to this guy. I had to pay the $4,000 fees. Finally, I got to keep $1,000. To me, it was a million dollars. Even though I had already made a lot of money beforehand, all that money was gone. The next month, I made $5,000. The month after that, I made $5,000 again. The following month, I made $10,000. The next month, I made $17,000. In November of 2002, a little over a year after September 11th, I made $117,000 in one month.

24:34To me, I was a millionaire. To the rest of the office, too. I broke an office record. All of a sudden, I became somebody. After that, everything changed. After that, a bad month became $50,000 or $60,000. Fast forward another year, in August of 2003, I became the number three largest producing broker in the entire country for the entire company of Raymond James. They had about 5,000 brokers. Top 25 list average career was about 20 years. I was already in it for a couple of years, with them for only a year, and I was number three in the country. I made my first million dollars, at least take home whatever it was before that. I have no idea, and I'm 23 years old. I bought my parents a house finally, after 20-something years of being in America. They finally owned a house, Baruch Hashem. Decided that it's time for me to strike out on my own and start my own firm. Started Roofing Enterprises, started hiring some brokers, started hiring some trainees, started training people to be like me, and I was convinced that they're going to be just like me. Why wouldn't they want to be? That was my idea—who wouldn't want to make a lot of money? You're in a business already.

26:00you're already going to work every day. Who doesn't want to work from 5 o'clock in the morning till midnight? I didn't realize that other people actually had lives. So I hired people thinking they're all going to be just like me. But in reality, they didn't want to be just like me. They wanted the after-effect. They wanted the money part of it, but they didn't want the work part of it. So that was a big shell shock for me. Father always told me, "Look at your fingers. See all your fingers? They're all different. That's people; they're all different. Don't ever think somebody's gonna be like you." But there I was, already a few years into it. I had already wasted a ton of money on each guy. But anyway, my business continued to grow over the next couple of years. It got to a point where a bad month became $200,000, but the bills were also $200,000—$185,000 a month in bills. And... run the business, big office, big house, a lot of employees, research, and whatever else comes with it. But for my entire life, I never really cared for expensive things such as fancy cars, fancy houses, and fancy jewelry. But for the first time in my life, I could buy whatever I wanted. So this was my life.

27:19Now, when it came to Judaism, I was just like most of Am Yisrael today. 90% of American Jews today do not observe Shabbat. 90%, Rabotai. We have about 6 million Jews in the United States. A Pew Research study said that only 600,000 of them actually keep Shabbat. 5.4 million do not keep Shabbat. And I think they're being conservative. What does it mean to keep Shabbat in Judaism? Does it mean that if you don't keep Shabbat you're not considered Jewish and make you any less of a Jew? If you ask the average Jew if keeping Shabbat is a make-or-break of Judaism, most people will tell you no. He just doesn't keep Shabbat. His mom is Jewish. He's told you his dad is a Jew. He's told you he still goes to the Beit Knesset once or twice a year for Yom Kippur or Rosh Hashanah. He's still a Jew. He donates a few dollars here and there when the rabbi calls. He's still a Jew. He has a good heart. He's nice to people. He's very generous. At least it looks like it. He has a nice car, a big house. He's a Jew, no? He lives in a Jewish community. His girlfriend's not Jewish, but he's a Jew though. His kids are not Jewish, but he's a Jew. And little by little, we start adding these other things, and we start realizing maybe he really isn't a Jew.

28:44So the definition of a Jew is not only based on who your mom is. This is one of the most politically incorrect statements you'll ever hear, but the reality is that your mom being a Jew qualifies you to be a Jew. It qualifies you to be a Jew, but it doesn't make you a Jew. Why? Before Matan Torah, before we got the Torah at Mount Sinai, we were called Bnei Yisrael. Only after Matan Torah did the word Jew appear in the Torah, the first time being with Mordechai HaYehudi. Only after Matan Torah, we were called Am Yisrael. Only after Matan Torah, Judaism was born. But if it's all based on everyone's mom,

29:44None of their moms were Jews. Why? They were all Noahides, technically. Before Matan Torah, everybody was a Noahide. Everyone was a Ben Noach. So what made everybody a Jew? The Torah. The Torah, following the Torah, is what made everybody a Jew. If, chas v'shalom, Am Yisrael decided not to keep the Torah, and somebody else came along and said to Hashem, "Hashem, we'll take the Torah. They don't want it; we'll take it." Guess what? They would be the Jews. Not us. That obviously would never happen because Hashem would have destroyed the world, but that's a different story. Meaning that the only thing that actually makes a person a Jew is whether they follow the Torah or not. And that's why the Rambam in Hilchot Shabbat, Chapter 30, last halacha, says that a Jew who violates Shabbat on purpose—he drives on Shabbat, smokes cigarettes on Shabbat, plays with his phone on Shabbat on purpose—decides that Shabbat is for the religious people but not for him. considered 100% an idol worshiper. He's not considered a Jew. He's excluding himself from Judaism altogether to such an extent that if you wanted to lend money to him and make money out of it, which is strictly forbidden to do between one Jew and another, you would actually be allowed. It's still not recommended, but you're actually allowed to lend a Jew that violates Shabbat money and charge interest. And

31:15Now, what does this mean? If you lend money to another Jew that actually keeps Shabbat and charge him interest, you could lose Olam Haba. Just simply for that. Just for lending another Jew money and charging him interest, no Olam Haba. You keep Shabbat, you keep Taharat HaMishpacha, kosher, this, that. You kept everything. You're a tzaddik. You lend money with interest, lose Olam Haba. It's so simple to lose Olam Haba. But if that Jew doesn't keep Shabbat, he's not considered a Jew. You're allowed to charge him interest. But still, Rav Ovadia says it's still not recommended. It's allowed, but it's not recommended. Why? What if he does teshuva? What if he does teshuva? It's a fact. You have to return the money. You have to return the interest. The point being, rabotai, is that not keeping Shabbat It's not a debate whether it puts somebody's Judaism on suspension or not. It's a reality. But it's a reality that most of us didn't know. I didn't know. Even though I had rabbis coming to my office three times a week.

32:28Three times a week they would come and tell us something that usually had to do with the car. "Give us the car. We're building this, give us the car. We need it for this. We have a camp. We have a party. We have this, we have that. Give us the car." Baruch Hashem, we were very good at it. We had money; they needed it, Baruch Hashem. Once in a while they would convince us, "You guys do tefillin, lay tefillin, it's good." But the system didn't work. And the reason why it didn't work is because not a single person in my office, myself included, ever kept Shabbat. Except for the one guy that was actually religious before he came. No one ever knew. No one ever knew it was such a deal-breaker with Hashem. We knew Shabbat existed, obviously. We weren't donkeys. We knew that there's a seventh day in the week. We knew that Hashem rested on the seventh. We knew that some people don't drive on it. We knew!

33:28We didn't know the magnitude. What is it like? You go to a restaurant, and you know that they serve steak. But you get the menu, the guy gives you the menu, and they go, "Steak. All types of steak. You have five, six, seven different types of steak." None of them have prices next to them. You're like, "You know what? Give me all of them. Why? They're free. There's no price." Give me all of them. Any guys, I don't know, sir. Turn the menu around. Turn the menu around for a second. You turn the menu around, you almost became blind from the prices. Each steak's minimum price is 100 bucks. Oh, hold on a second. Don't give me all of them. Before you give me all of them, hold on a second. Let me call my mortgage broker. Let me see if I can afford one of these steaks. Why? What happened, sir? You wanted all five, six steaks. No, I already called. No. No. No. Hold on a second. Now I know the price and Now I know the price of what it means to order a steak. Can I have half? Can I have a bite? Can I have a bite of this guy's steak who didn't eat the whole thing? I can't afford a hundred-dollar steak. Everybody knows Shabbat exists. Even the Reformers know Shabbat exists. When they're cheering for us to send our Israeli soldiers to jail because we're killing terrorists, even they know Shabbat exists.

34:52but very few know the magnitude. So Hashem tells us certain things in our siddur, through our sages, that we just skim through every day. And while you guys were praying, I actually took the liberty of borrowing one of your siddurim. And it gave me an insight. And in Birkot HaShachar, which b'ezrat Hashem everybody does, And if you don't, you should. You say a few blessings. One of the blessings that you say is "Who opens the eyes of the blind." When was the last time you saw a blind person start seeing again? There's nice stories about it in the Gemara and different places. But in reality, you think that because one, two, three, four, five, a thousand people went from being blind to now seeing again, you think that's what we do for them? It's past. It's Har Sinai. There was a bunch of people that were blind because the evil Egyptians plucked their eyes out, ruined their eyes, did a bunch of things. So Hashem gave them the vision again. The guy was missing an arm, He gave him an arm. The guy was missing a leg, He gave him a leg. He fixed everyone. You think that's what we do?

36:19The bracha is for them? No, it's for us. So what does it have to do with us? What's pokeach ivrim have to do with us? Hashem is telling us before you start your day, just start with a nice chiddush. What's the chiddush? You're ivver. You're blind. Why? You're struggling to do ratzon Hashem. You're struggling to do what Hashem is obligating you to do anyway. You think you have a choice. You have a choice, but it's not free choice. We think we have free choice. Free choice means I do whatever I want and everything is good. That's free choice. That's not the choice we have. The choice we have, rabotai ha'karim, is we do what we want and then there's a consequence for it. There's good and there's bad. That's one of our 13 principles of faith. Hashem says He rewards the righteous and He punishes the wicked. is that He wakes us up from this slumber that we're in. We think that we could do whatever we want and nothing is going to happen. Hashem says, "I'm going to wake you up. How are we going to wake you up? It all depends on you." The Rambam says before the Mashiach comes, it's going to be 15 days of darkness, and during those 15 days

37:35Hashem is going to punish all of the wicked that did not do teshuva. Just like there were three days of darkness in Egypt, there will be 15 days of darkness in Gog and Magog. Fifteen days of darkness before Mashiach comes. Why? Hashem is closing all of the accounts. All of the ivrim, all of the blind that chose to stay blind. Okay, He's going to have to take care of them at that point. chose to be blind, no problem. I told you every day to wake up. I'm gonna wake you up. You don't want to wake up. So the Rambam, alav ha-shalom, says to do teshuva before the Mashiach comes requires zechut, requires merit. It requires mamash to have merit to do teshuva. You have to have merit to stop being blind, to realize that we're in Egypt. Some people are going to realize this through nice lectures. You hear some strange guy talk, and maybe one of the two words that he says actually hits something, and we start doing teshuva. Some people see it on the internet, some people see it at shul, some people see it through their friends. Some people see it at a seminar, some people get a phone call, and some people experience something significant in their lives. For me, it was a little different. In November of 2006...

38:59November 18th of 2006, I was perfectly healthy. I just had an annoying little problem. It was called hemorrhoids. Now don't worry, 66% of the population has it. It wasn't a rare disease. It wasn't even a disease. It's just something that people have. Pregnant women have it. Sometimes even children have it. The point is, it depends on your diet, it depends on the food, it depends on Hashem, it depends on the kaparah of avonot. Many, many things cause it. I went to a doctor, and he said to me, "It's not really such a big problem. You come to me, you have a surgery on Wednesday, and you're back to work on Monday." I said, "Okay, so I'm only missing out on a couple of days out of work. That's not so bad." To me, that was the only thing that mattered. Why? Because every hour, making $3,200, work becomes important. Okay, so I'm only missing a couple of days. Okay, I could afford that, no problem. Hashem says, "I sent you tests in different ways. You didn't pay attention. You want to stay in evil? You want to stay in evil? Okay, so I have to remind you. I had to remind you that you can't stay in evil. You can't stay in evil." So I...

40:29Anybody ever have a toothache? You guys ever have a toothache? I'm the only guy in the world that had a toothache? You can raise your hand if you had a toothache. You had a toothache before? It's terrible, right? What's the greatest thing about a toothache? When it's over. It's over, right? Now, imagine having a toothache and it's not over. And there's no hope. There are no doctors. All the doctors went on vacation. There's no chance for the toothache to end. There's no pliers to pull the tooth out. Nothing. You're just by yourself on an island. The toothache's not going away. Can you imagine such a thing? If anyone has difficulty understanding punishment in Shamayim, just imagine that permanently. For the smallest sin. A toothache that doesn't end, ever. That's punishment in Shamayim. Now, this is hard for us to imagine. So, Baruch Hashem, Hashem sent me to tell you how it feels. So, on November 18, 2006, I went to surgery. Great surgeon, great hospital, everything wonderful. The guy had experience of almost two decades. He says he performs two to three surgeries a day. He's something amazing. He's out of this world. I could have all the money in the world that I could afford a good doctor. Baruch Hashem, everything's good.

41:57I wake up out of surgery, but I'm not smiling. Instead, I'm screaming, and I can't scream because of kol isha—it's not nice. But imagine the loudest possible scream. Imagine, and it doesn't end. It doesn't end. Not for a minute, not for an hour, not for two hours... for two hours, not for three hours, not for five hours, not for a day or a week, but for 62 days. 62 days of screaming with very, very rare breaks in between, no longer than 15 minutes. And the only reason why it's 15 minutes is because I pass out from the pain. ...and 50 or 60 painkillers. They have no idea what happened; they have no idea what's wrong. But all they know is something happened during the surgery. It changed the makeup of my body; some nerve was cut, something happened. But no one has a clue, no one has a diagnosis. But all they know is I'm dying from a hemorrhoid surgery that has nothing to do with anything...

43:21All of a sudden, my eyes start bleeding, my ears start bleeding. I'm bleeding from both sides of the body, even from holes that are not there. I'm screaming and yelling. The only thing that somewhat calms it down is the lesser pain of putting my body into boiling water. Different level of fun, by the way. Have you ever been burned by tea? Imagine something a little hotter than that, and you have to put your whole body in there. That somewhat calmed me down for like two minutes. Not because it felt good. It was because it was different pain. The pain just changed. Sixty-two days, Rabotai. Sixty-two days of seeing Hashem in this world. I thought it was over. After two months, I didn't die, Baruch Hashem. Asked people to kill me, but no one wanted to listen. After those two months, I thought, you know, the pain started subsiding. I only had to take about 20 or 25 painkillers a day, meaning I still had a lot of pain, but nowhere near what I had before. Then every movement was a trifle. But still, it was something. I was able to start walking again, talking...

44:51Different body parts stopped bleeding. Well, I thought I had a second chance at life. I woke up. I thought so, but I woke up in a different way. I just started appreciating things—appreciating life, appreciating freedom, appreciating the money I had, appreciating that God gave me a chance. But I still never really got to know. I still never really asked, what's the din if I don't keep Shabbat? Still never asked, "What's the din if I don't keep Shabbat?" Still never asked a lot of questions. I figured that if it was really important, one of the rabbis coming to my office would tell me. They’re coming three times a week, still. Each time they're collecting some kind of money—sometimes a hundred, sometimes a thousand. I figured at some point, I'm paying them enough to tell me the truth. No, I... Nine months later, Rabotai, I feel a pain in the back of my leg. By the next morning, I can't walk. Within a couple of hours, I'm in an emergency room. And the doctors tell me that if I would have waited another couple of hours, the abscess that I have inside my body would have blown up. It would have gone into my blood system, and I would have died. So, lucky I was there. Lucky. Lucky.

46:19Emergency surgery was worse than the first, this time in an intensive care unit with people who are dying for the next three weeks. For the next three weeks, I'm pressing the morphine button non-stop as long as it works because the pain was unbearable. And the most interesting part of those surgeries, by the way, if anybody ever wants to try, is they cut you. they don't sew you back up; they leave it open and actually open it several times every day to make sure that all the infection comes out of the body. Now, I'm giving you this graphic detail simply because this was my life, and this is not even for one small punishment. This is not the equivalent of one small punishment for going against Hashem. Anyone that wants to know real details should watch my shiur that I did a few months ago about Gehinnom.

47:19Now, why do I tell you all this though? Do I really want anyone to have nightmares tonight? No. The reason why, Rabotai, is because without knowing the cost of going against Hashem, it's very easy to go against Him. If we don't know the price, we're gonna order the entire menu. If we don't know there's a consequence, we're just gonna do whatever we want. What does it mean? Why? You need a reminder you're not a goy? Yes. My mom is a Jew. My father is a Jew. I go to the Beit Knesset every day. I have a kippah, I have tzitzit, I do tefillin. I even learn once a week. What's the problem? No, rabotai, you could be learning every day and still be a goy. You could be learning every day and still be a goy. Why? Your mentality. Your mentality is you don't want to be like Moshe Rabbeinu. You want to be like LeBron James.

48:29I see kids in shuls all the time wearing their kippot with a basketball symbol on them. Little kids, they have kippot. Parents are like, Baruch Hashem, my kids are religious. My kids are religious. Look, they have a kippah on, they have tzitzit on. But they have the NBA symbol on the kippah. You ask the kid, what do you want to be when you grow up? Moshe Rabbeinu, Aharon HaKohen, David HaMelech, Shlomo HaMelech. He goes, no, they're old. Who do you want to be? I want to be LeBron James. He might as well want to be Papa Ho. I want to be Haman. I want to be Donald Trump. Shelo asani goy, rabotai yikarim, means that the best of them, the best of them... It's still not like you. We're reminded every single day you have no right, no right to be a goy, no right to want to be a goy, no right to even think like it. Why? You are the reason why Hashem created the world. You sitting here are the reason why Hashem created the world. If you don't realize it, that's a problem.

49:39So Hashem says, I'll remind you every day. For you, remember, for you, Hashem created the world. For you, little you that no one knows, no one heard of, no one read this book, nothing, you, Jew, Hashem created the world. If you think anything else, you're still thinking that maybe the goy is better. If you're jealous of any goy in the world, whether it's Donald Trump or Carl Icahn or any of these billionaires, millionaires, trillionaires, whatever they are, if you're jealous of any one of them for a second, you haven't fulfilled the mitzvah of shelo asani goy. Why? You think that what they have means something. That's why David HaMelech says, don't be so upset, don't be so worried about the money of a person. Why? It doesn't go with him anyway. After 120, it stays here. ...it's kids fight over it. Being in the investment business, I get to deal with a lot of millionaires and billionaires and so on. Trust me when I tell you from experience, being one of them and dealing with them, it doesn't make a single person happy. Not one person in the history of mankind was ever happy because of money, not one. Not one. You can chase money, you can have money, you can be handed all the money in the world that you wanted; it's not gonna change your state of happiness for a second. You may be able to buy stuff and...

51:01But stuff doesn't make you happy. It makes you excited. You have a phone, you have a car, you have a house, you have this, but the excitement goes away after a week, a month, two months, maximum three months. It goes away. And the more stuff you have, the less excited you get. That's why sometimes you go to millionaires' houses and they have closets full of brand new stuff they never opened. They bought it, but they never opened it. Why? They got so used to buying stuff, they forgot to use it. But what are they going to do with the money other than buy stuff? It means that each and every single one of us should be jumping for joy that Hashem chose us to be a Jew. We should be excited to do mitzvot, excited to dress like a Jew, look like a Jew, and have a name like a Jew. But none of us know this. I didn't.

52:03So, Hashem woke me up. He woke me up with a lot of pain. Nine months later, I have the surgery, and the surgery puts me back to square one. After that heals, I figure it's over now. Six months later, another pain, a different leg. I'm back in the hospital. I'm back in the ICU. More recovery, more pain, more painkillers. Okay, three surgeries—enough, right? Three months later, I'm back in the emergency room, another surgery. The doctors are asking, "How are they all related? How are they all connected? What's the diagnosis? Why is it happening? How is it connected to the original surgery?" It has nothing to do with it. Then the rest of the body starts failing. I start getting different pains all over my body. A month later, I'm back in the hospital, another surgery. It gets to a point where every single month I'm in the hospital, every single month I have to have a surgery. My body starts failing in every way, shape, or form except dying. One day, I wake up and I start feeling pain in my legs. Later on that afternoon, the legs start becoming very puffy.

53:30By the next day, they've doubled in size. I go to Cornell University Hospital in New York, which was considered a top hospital. In my opinion, they're full of morons. And I'll tell you why. I went to the best guy there. And imagine, I'm 20-something years old. I'm in a lot of pain, obviously. And my legs just happened to double in size. So you figure the guy's gonna give you some type of explanation or just say, "I don't know." It's okay. You don't know. You don't know. It's actually a mitzvah to say "I don't know." You don't know. It's good. He says, "Sir, I think maybe it's from the sun. I think your legs doubled in size because of the sun from the heat." I said, "I think the sun hit your head a little too much. What do I look like? I sat in the sun for a year?" So obviously, the guy didn't know anything.

54:30I'm sure they have other good doctors in that hospital. I just happened to fall on the genius one of them. So anyway, this obviously wasn't the right diagnosis. I went to different doctors; they laughed at the original doctor, saying it's from the sun. So it has nothing to do with the sun, but we definitely don't know what it has to do with. Continued I wasn't able to walk for a little while, and I had to start using a cane. I got used to living in pain 24 hours a day, seven days a week. No break. No Shabbat. Hashem says no Shabbat for me, no Shabbat for you. How long? Seven years. Seven years of surgery, seven years of doctors, seven years of suffering. With no end, but I don't mean seven years like, "Oh, it's nice." No, seven years, seven years of Gehinnom. During that time, the millions that I made started disappearing just like the good times did. Remember those friends that I made? They used to work for me. They also started disappearing like the good times did. It's amazing when you have money, you have a lot of friends. When you don't have any money, the friends go away for some reason. So...

55:52Realized that this wake-up call is not from something of this world because over 50 doctors that I went to from all types are trying to figure it out: regular medicine, holistic medicine, steroids. I became an experiment in a science study, really I did. They would inject me with ozone, which is purified air, to purify my blood. An experiment two or three times a week, it kind of felt like death. You know, they give it to you, and you feel like you're dying for the next hour and a half to two hours. Very interesting, very interesting treatment that never actually did anything for me. I'm sure it helps other people, just not me. I hope it helps other people. What else? The experiment was a complete waste. So I tried that, I tried steroids, I tried vitamins, I tried all types of wonderful things. Especially when you have money, you can do whatever you want. Eventually, the money started going. In the beginning, everything that I touched went from sand to gold. Now, everything that was gold was turning back to sand. If it was a miracle to make the money, it was a bigger miracle losing all of it very, very quickly.

57:12Market crashed, my business crashed, everything in between crashed. I couldn't really work to supplement the losses. The expenses continued being high and, obviously, the income continued deteriorating. Everything collapsed. Now, at some point, I realized that this is not really a good life and decided maybe I should end it. I wanted to kill myself. Now everybody's saying, "Oh, maybe you shouldn't." No, it's not. Okay, if you lived my life, trust me, you would want to kill yourself too. But it wasn't a good idea. And Hashem knew it. The one good thing I had going for me is that Hashem promised us that He would never give us a test that we can't withstand. Meaning that every single person that has ever committed suicide really had another choice.

58:13really had another choice and made a mistake, and that's why they get judged in Shamayim as a murderer—a murderer of themselves. Now, I started thinking and planning, but Hashem had a different plan. My mom, God bless her, she started calling different rabbis from all over the world, trying to get a blessing, telling them the story, but it happened to be that that day nobody answered the phone until she called the number in Israel. About two hours into our dialing rampage, she found the number in Israel, she called it, some woman answered, she asked for a certain rabbi, and the woman said, "I'm sorry," in Hebrew, It's the wrong number. My mom starts hysterically crying to a strange woman. She doesn't know this woman. Hashem made a miracle happen, and the woman happened to be my cousin. Her name is Pnina. Now, Pnina and my mom have never actually talked on the phone before. They didn't have each other's phone numbers. Meaning that my mom called the wrong phone number in a different country and got to one person that knows her.

59:25Not only knows her but could actually recognize her voice, and not only recognize her voice, but she is actually the only person who can help. "How can I help?" she asked my mom. "Why are you crying?" She tells her the whole story: "My son is dying, but there are all these different wonderful things about me." She compliments her and says, "Well, if you're looking for a rabbi, why don't you call my brother, Rav Ephraim? He happens to also live two buildings away from Rav Avraham." Maybe he can help you connect to the Kavod HaRav. So you would talk to me? Of course, you're the Doris from America. You're the Doris from America. Of course, he's going to talk to you. Call him. She calls him. He's in a kollel, of course, but he calls her back. She tells him the whole story. Now, Rabbi Ephraim and I have never met. I didn't know he actually existed. When I left Israel, he was still a baby. He's younger than I am by eight or nine years. And Ephraim Coughlin, Rabbi Ephraim Coughlin—now, he, God bless him, is a genius. But again, for me, I didn't know what a Torah genius even was. So when he spoke to my mom, the first question that, you know, she started telling him things, the first question he asked is, "Do I speak Hebrew?" because he doesn't speak English and

1:00:47She said, "Yeah, he speaks Hebrew. It's a guy, so can I call him?" "You can call him, but he's probably not going to talk to you. He barely talks to family." And just at that moment when she said, "He's not going to call you. He's not going to talk to you," I decided to call my mom. Now, the reason why I decided to call my mom was because, again, I had suicidal thoughts and I thought maybe it’s nice for me to call my mom and be nice to her before I kill myself. So I call my mom and she's hysterically crying, talking to Rabbi Ephraim on the other line. And she... I'm already in the middle of the conversation here. She says, "Talk to him, talk to him." And I have no idea what she's talking about. I said, "To who?" She said, "To Ephraim." "Who's Ephraim Bechlan? And why are you crying? Why is Ephraim making you cry?" She goes, "No, no, he's not making me cry. Just talk to him. He's your cousin. He can help you." I said, "Okay, listen, if it's going to make you stop crying, just have him call me. I'll talk to him. It's horrible to hear your mom cry." So Rabbi Ephraim calls me and immediately, you know, we hit it off. He starts asking me if I know the story of Yehudah and Tamar. The story of Yehudah and Tamar. Famous story in Sefer Bereishit of how Yehudah had two sons, Er and Onan. He's one of the twelve shevatim, twelve sons of Yaakov.

1:02:16And in the middle of the whole story of Yosef HaTzaddik, you have the story of Yehudah and Tamar. Now, the reason why this is all in the middle, Chazal tell us, is because this, just like the story itself is unusual, the whole lineage of Mashiach is unusual, and this is the beginning of the story of Mashiach. Mashiach comes from Shevet Yehudah. It came from that marriage between Yehudah and Tamar. But before Yehudah and Tamar became Yehudah and Tamar, Yehudah actually tried marrying Tamar, the tzaddeket, to one of his sons. But his son decided that he didn't want to make his wife have children. He wanted to keep her pretty, just like she was when she was young. So he continued wasting seed. Instead of making her pregnant, he would waste the seed. And we learned already from Parashat Noach that we're not allowed to waste seed. Whether we're Jews or non-Jews, we're not allowed to waste seed. such an extent that Hashem says it is considered 100% murder. A man who wastes seed is considered a murderer in the eyes of Hashem. Now if he does it on purpose, meaning he knows that he's not allowed and he still does it, according to the Shulchan Aruch, it's the biggest sin in Judaism. So now Er did not want to

1:03:43children, and he wasted seed. So what does the Torah say? Hashem killed them. So then Yehuda wanted to fulfill the mitzvah of yibum, having his second son marry Tamar because they didn't have a son yet. And if they have a son, then name the son after the first son. So Onan married Tamar. But Onan was also a rasha. He also wanted to waste seed. He also didn't want to have a kid. He also wanted to keep her pretty. He wanted to have a second wife. One wife for pregnancy, one wife for good looks. Arm candy, they call it in today's world. Hashem said, arm candy? No problem. Arm candy in the kever, in the grave. He killed him too. From here we learned that even before Matan Torah, we weren't allowed to waste seed to such an extent that Hashem says if you want to do it, you want to kill seed, I'll kill you instead. To that extent, that is how horrible the sin is. Today, unfortunately, most people don't even know it's not allowed. Such is the ignorance of the generation. So now...

1:04:54Story continues and eventually, through two different strange events, Tamar and Yehuda get together, become intimate, and have children. This was the first story that Rav Eliyahu told me. There are more details to the story, but for lack of time, I'll just summarize it that way and... I asked a friend, "Why did Hashem do all this? What's the point? If He wanted Yehuda and Tamar to be together, just have Yehuda and Tamar meet each other. That's it. What's the whole story for?" It makes it interesting though, doesn't it? But the Satan knows that every single time a Jew makes a mitzvah, he's creating angels. Angels that are going to help him make more mitzvot. The reward for one mitzvah is another mitzvah.

1:05:54A Jew performs a mitzvah, he's creating angels. Angels that are going to help him perform more mitzvot. The reward for one mitzvah is another mitzvah. Rambam says that anyone that thinks that any of their reward is going to be in this world—that if their new car, their new house, new business, or new building, or money, anything that they got material in this world is actually a reward for their mitzvot—has no idea what it means to have self-emotion, has no idea what it means to have reward from Hashem. The only reason why Hashem will give you more material is... simply in order to help you make more mitzvot, not because He wants you to have more material. It's in order to help you make more mitzvot. Because no amount of material in the world could ever be enough of a reward for a single mitzvah. So this very same yetzer hara knows that every time you make a sin, on the other hand, you create a demon, you make a bad angel, and that angel helps you make more sins.

1:07:01The reward or the punishment for a sin is another sin, and that's why every single time you see somebody falling off a little bit, they make one small mistake. The guy goes to yeshiva. He's good, whatever. Everything is good. He's a good student, but all of a sudden, he smokes a cigarette on Shabbat. Hey, peer pressure, something happened. He smoked a cigarette on Shabbat or ate a burger from, you know, Burger King or McDonald's or whatever these treif places are. Reality is, he eats something. He does something not good. Six months later, there's no Talmud Torah. There's no tefillah. There's no bnei kiddushin. There's no kollel. The guy is gone. How did he grow up frum, everything was good, and six months later, he's fallen? What happened? What happened? Every single time you sin, you give more power to the sitra achra. Every time you sin, it creates more power, more inclination to sin again and

1:08:01And sin again, and sin again, and sin again. This is why, Rabotai, in the Torah it says that when somebody made an accidental sin, let's say, for example, they accidentally violated Shabbat. Accidentally. During the times of the Beit HaMikdash, they accidentally violated Shabbat. Not on purpose. On purpose, they kill them. But if it's accidental, what do they say you do? You bring a korban. Bring a korban. What does the cow have anything to do with your sins? What did she do? Miskena, she tells you, "You sinned, you should be killed, not me. You sinned. Why are they killing me? Because you sinned. I'm the cow, I'm good, I moo all day, I moo all night. What do you want from my life? Why are they killing me for you? You sinned. You violated Shabbat, not me." So the reality is, the reason why the korban is as such is because it was created for Am Yisrael to benefit from. But the reason why you're supposed to watch the korban being killed is because Hashem is telling you, in reality, it's supposed to be you. You violated Shabbat accidentally; you're still supposed to get the death penalty. But because it was accidental, I'm having mercy on you. So now the question is, why the korban? What, Hashem eats the cows? He doesn't have enough cows in Shamayim? What does He need the korban for? What does He need the dove for? What does He need all this stuff for? What does He need all these korbanot for?

1:09:30The real secret is, or at least one of them, is that He doesn't need any of it. But the reason why we have the whole issue of korbanot is because as soon as you make an accidental sin, according to the Torah, you're supposed to be punished with what? With the inclination to sin again. Hashem says, "Go make a mitzvah really quickly. Go bring a korban really quickly and break the chain." Why? A korban is a mitzvah. Break the sin chain with a mitzvah. Once you break the sin chain with a mitzvah, you make a mitzvah, then the reward for a mitzvah is what? Another mitzvah. Stop sinning. How do you stop sinning? By making a mitzvah. You don't stop sinning by just sitting there like a donkey doing nothing. Well, you have to do something. Observing Shabbat is not just sitting there sleeping all day on Shabbat. Observing Shabbat requires action. Now, Rabbi Ephraim started explaining to me all the different things in the Torah, and he started telling me that all the questions that I ever had in my life are actually in the Torah. Now, the amazing part about it is that every time I asked him a question, he would say, "Oh wow, what a great question. Such and such rabbi asked the same question 850 years ago in this book, on this page," and I thought to myself, how do you remember this?

1:10:49How do you remember it was 850 years ago? How do you remember the rabbi's name? How do you remember the page? Who remembers page numbers? I didn't think, I didn't—this is not—even though I was considered, in the secular world, I was considered a talmid chacham. In the Torah world, amar, it's gamur, knew nothing. This guy remembers page numbers, daf, amud, the year number, the rabbi's name. I'm like, wow, it's unbelievable. It's a different level of wisdom. Started giving me answers to every question I had. Somebody had asked it before; there was no question that no one had asked. I didn't really realize how many questions I had until I noticed it had been nine months straight. We were talking every week for an average of seven hours per conversation. Not per week—one conversation, seven hours straight, every Thursday at four o'clock. We talked for seven hours and...

1:11:49Beginning the first conversation was an hour and 40 minutes. The second conversation was three hours. The third conversation was five hours. After that, seven hours every week. And I'm learning non-stop. Everything I'm learning, I'm writing down. Then I'm teaching my wife, who, by the way, was not Jewish. But I didn't know that was such a big problem yet. All I knew was that it wasn't allowed, but I thought, "Hey, listen. She's a good woman, and I'm a nice guy. I donate a lot of money." So the reality is that I wake up and I realize that I'm swimming naked. I have no mitzvot. Everything that I thought was a mitzvah, really in reality, is probably not. Now the Maharsha, alav ha-shalom, says something very scary. In the Gemara Masechet Taanit, page 67a, it says the story of Nakdimon ben Gurion.

1:12:51Nakdimon ben Gurion also says in a couple of other places in the Torah. It says that Nakdimon ben Gurion was a very, very big donor. He's one of the three financiers of Am Yisrael during the times of war, where the three of them literally gave enough money for all of Am Yisrael to survive. But one day, Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai sees his daughter looking through the waste of the donkeys of the Arabs, looking for food inside the waste of the animals. They say, "Where are you from?" She replies, "I'm such and such." He goes, "Wait a minute, isn't your father the richest man in the land?" "He used to be, he used to be. We're not talking millions here, we're talking billions, trillions, whatever it is in those days." Something unbelievable—the amount of wealth they had. And now you see his daughter looking through the waste of donkeys. "What happened to your father’s wealth?" She says, “He lost all of it. Every single penny of it.” So the Chachamim debate, "What’s the reason? What’s the reason that he lost the money?" And they say something very scary, and...

1:14:17The Maharsha, 400 years ago, says that when a person gives tzedakah, meaning he's giving something to the Beit Knesset, to a kiruv organization, to a rabbi, to whatever, but he's not giving it really... He's not giving it because he cares about the Beit Knesset. He's not giving it really because he cares about Am Yisrael, or he cares about Hashem, or he cares about Torah. He's giving it because he wants everyone to know, hey, I got money. He's giving it for his kavod. The Maharsha says this was Nakdimon ben Gurion. Even though he was a righteous person, his tzedakah came from the wrong place. It came more for his own honor than it did... And for that, that type of tzedakah not only doesn't offer protection of the wealth or of the health, but according to the Maharsha, it is actually considered a sin. And he says,

1:15:20There's no way to make a mitzvah by way of sin. Him giving tzedakah that way, where he's only looking for kavod, it's really a sin. There's no mitzvah for it, he says. There are other poskim that are more lenient about it. The point being, rabotai, is that a lot of the money that I gave away, I thought was doing good for me. In reality, maybe it gave me enough time to do teshuva. But as far as being enough, it wasn't even the beginning. Had to wake me up in a different way. I started realizing that a lot of the things that I was doing were not good enough. I spent almost 20 years on Wall Street becoming an expert in it, but I still didn't know the purpose of life. I spent 20 years on Wall Street learning the different intricate details of how to analyze a company, how to analyze an economy, how to analyze an industry, a business. You give me a business, I could tell you in five minutes how much it's worth. I

1:16:21You give me a balance sheet. I'll tell you every single hole in it, at least the ones I can see within a few minutes. One of the fun things that I did was look for red flags. I’d look for companies and find out all the problems they have: who’s stealing money, who is getting paid under the table, who has illegal deals, stuff like that—red flags. Who is being overvalued, who’s undervalued—all types of interesting things and... That was my intricate expertise, finding something that other people missed. Sometimes, because it's undervalued, a company that's really worth a lot more has not been given the right value for a certain asset. Let's say they have, I don't know, a lot of real estate that's off the balance sheet, which is owned by a different entity that they own. The balance sheet says they just own this entity, valuing it at, I don't know, a million dollars. But in reality, that entity really has a billion dollars' worth of real estate in it. So that shows us a billion dollars hidden within the company.

1:17:25So that's something I would find. On the other hand, it would be something else. Like, oh, by the way, this company is cheating on their balance sheet. They're cheating on their books. It's called cooking the books. They're reporting X amount of earnings, but in reality, it's all a lie. They're reporting that they're making money, but in reality, they're losing money. So this is what I did. Now I know a lot about this. But the red flags of my life, I never even looked into. The red flags of my life, I never really thought existed. And the Gemara tells us that the average person is never going to look for it. In fact, the average person, even if you tell him that he has red flags, will disagree with you. The first thing that a person does when you tell them that they have to change is, "No, no, you're wrong." their natural inclination, not me. If you tell somebody they need to do teshuva, immediately they look behind them. Who's he talking to that has to do teshuva? Everyone's looking at the guy next to him, the woman next to him. Yeah, he's talking, yeah, yeah, she's probably not keeping something. Everything, I'm a tzaddik. I need tzaddik, I'm good. I don't have to do teshuva. But the reality is, after doing this for the last four or five years, I'm realizing that there's no such thing as someone that's frum anymore.

1:18:52It's either you're a Baal Teshuva or you're not. Everyone has to do Teshuva. Everyone. If you go into kollel from morning to night, or you're somebody just starting to keep Shabbat over the last couple of days, or you haven't even started yet. Everyone has to do Teshuva for something. Some people for Shabbat, some people for Zera Levatala, some people for Taharat Hamishpacha, some people for their Middot. Everyone has to do Teshuva for something. And if you think that you don't have to do teshuva, we have a different shiur for you. But Hashem is saying, listen, you have these mitzvot in the morning. First thing you have to say is, Hashem wakes up the sleeping. The ones that are blind, He makes them see. He's not talking about blind people. He's talking about us. He's telling us we're not supposed to be goyim. He's telling us that we're not supposed to be sleeping. He's telling us we're not supposed to be wasting our time trying to be like the people around us. Little by little, I started realizing this, and I started doing teshuva. Now, obviously, teshuva is not easy. And the reason why is because I had a lot of excuses. First of all, even though I didn't work on Shabbat, it was my day off. It was the day that I went to the casino to play some cards.

1:20:22Relaxed, watched movies, did whatever I wanted to do. Now he's telling me that I can't do that. I have to do something else. I have to go to the synagogue. I have to pray. I have to learn. This is a very big change for me. But I said, you know what? Let's try it once. I lived on the 35th floor, so I can't really go to the synagogue because I'm not going up and down 35 stories. So, I'll just sit at home with my wife and... And we'll learn. We did it. We loved it. We've been keeping Shabbat ever since. But now, you have to start doing more stuff. Okay, so you have to start learning. How much can I learn? Is the seven hours that I'm learning with you enough? He goes, no. I said, how much do you have to learn? He goes, you have to learn every day. I said, how much every day? Seven hours every day? He goes, yeah, ideally. But no, if you're not going to do seven hours a day, do something every day. Can I do 15 minutes a day? He says if you're gonna do it every day, then yes. So, yeah, but can I just do eight hours with you instead of the 15 minutes a day technically? It's almost the same. He says no, actually, it's the opposite. Even if you have to replace the seven hours with me with 15 minutes a day, do that. No, why?

1:21:3615 minutes a day is much less than seven hours. He goes, "Yes, but just like your body needs to eat every day, your soul needs to eat every day. So if we have to make a choice, I'd rather you study 15 minutes a day than seven hours once a week." Baruch Hashem, I made the right choice and I did both the 15 minutes and the seven hours. 15 minutes a day eventually became a half-hour a day, a half-hour a day became an hour a day, and an hour a day became an obsession to a lot more. I tried studying as much as I could possibly consume. Little by little, I started realizing the world around me was changing. The pain didn't go away; the money did. But if I had some money left, we decided that we wanted to move. But again, we have this dilemma. What's the dilemma? The dilemma is that I'm still married to a non-Jewish woman. Now, I'm not leaving, and neither is she. Reason why is because she's the only one that's been there through thick and thin. When I was asking her to kill me, she said no, so that at least gives us some credit. No one else in their right mind would have stuck it out with me over the last 15 years. And I said, okay, well listen, obviously, somebody has to be right here. She was born Christian.

1:22:54She liked Judaism, so I said, "Why don't you just convert?" She said, "Yeah, but Christianity doesn't allow it." "Who cares about Christianity?" I retorted. "I kind of believed in it," she replied. So, I went on a new journey. What was the new journey? To find out what is true. If it's Christianity, I’m becoming Christian, chas v'shalom. If it's Judaism, she's becoming a Jew. So, I started learning about Christianity obsessively, just like the Torah. Every night, I wouldn't necessarily sleep very much. She'd wake up. I'd wake her up at 6 o'clock in the morning with new chiddushim. "Look, look, it's a lie here." She'd respond, "I just woke up. Let me get some coffee. Leave me alone." "Look," I insisted, "it says here, it says this," and I'd find all the different mistakes in Christianity. She realized after a little while, this is not going away. She said, "Okay, I'll start looking into it also." She started looking into it, and she started realizing there's something wrong. Still not enough. You can't just tell somebody to stop believing if they really believe. You can't just stop believing; you can't just unbelieve. The only way to make somebody either start believing or stop believing is by replacing the belief. The first replacement is that what they believe currently is fake and...

1:24:15You can't just say, "Listen, Judaism is true." Yes, I agree, Christianity is not true. Oh, not so much. I don't agree so much. Okay, so replace that one, you know for sure it's true, with the one you're not sure about. You can't do it. Why? Because I'm still not sure about this one, and I'm sure about this one. Okay, so maybe I'll just do both, like the Messianic Jews do, who are really all Christians. They mix and match. Mix-and-match, okay, we like Judaism. It's good; Torah is true. So we'll keep that, and Christianity, we're not so sure about, so we'll keep a few things here. Hashem says, "I'm a jealous God. There’s no means somebody else; you can't have Me and JC Penny, too. You can't have Me and somebody that believes that I'm three. You can't have Me and even your own ego." If you have an ego, you don't have Me. Someone that has ego, someone that has arrogance, Hashem says, "I can't be in the same room as him." Why? His ego is leading him to believe he's God. If he's God and I know I'm God, we can't be in the same room because there's only one God. Somebody's own ego can remove them from God.

1:25:30We started learning and started finding a lot of mistakes in the New Testament. In fact, there are more mistakes in the New Testament than we can count. There's a mistake on every single page. So, we realized there's a problem there. But how do you make somebody unbelieve? One day, I found a video by Rabbi Mizrachi. I had never known him before; this was called "The Debate." He had a debate with some Christian professor. Found the debate to be amazing. My wife, not so much. Initially, she thought that he's arrogant and the Christian guy's an idiot. The Jewish guy is arrogant. She didn't like either one. She didn't want to listen to very much of it. So, okay, fine, this didn't really work as planned. At least, so I found something else by Rabbi Tovia Singer. Genius knows literally the Torah, the Quran, and the New Testament all by heart. It's unbelievable how much he knows by heart. It's like a computer. I give it to her after I hear maybe 20 or 30 of his lectures. I give her the information; she says he talks too fast for me. Okay, this didn't work out as planned. And I keep finding different things.

1:26:51All the way now, I've gotten to the point where I've realized that Christianity is not only not true, it's 100% idol worship. Idol worship mamash. It's no different than praying to Buddha. No different than praying to, I don't know, the wall. It's complete nonsense. Now I'm no longer worried about how you become Jewish. I'm not worried about her saving her own life because even she doesn't want to worship an idol, but she doesn't realize it yet. So now it became a matter of pikuach nefesh. She saved my life; I have to save hers. And then I go on and continue learning, and one day Hashem has a lot of mercy on me and shows me a video called Torah and Science by the same Rabbi Mizrachi, and... I tell her, "Listen, we like science. We like Torah. Let's watch this thing. It's three parts. It's only four hours. Let's watch it together." This is all the arrogant guy again. So it's science. It's science. Okay, let's watch science. Good illusion. Most people think that science and Torah are not intermingled. In reality, science is finally catching up to the Torah. We watch part one. We're amazed.

1:28:12We think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. We want to watch part two, but part two didn't work. I skipped part two, which was very difficult for me because I'm a very precise person. I have to go in order on things. I'm a little bit obsessive about it. I'm the guy that reads the preface in the book. They wrote it for me. I'm the one that reads, like the guy says, "Thank my wife and my cousins for helping me write the book." I'm the guy that reads it. I have to read a book from beginning to end, so here, I had to skip part 2, which for me was like a part of a note. By skipping part 2, we start, you know, watching part 3. Part 3 is amazing. She tells me, "Listen, I know this Christianity is nonsense. I believe it, but I need some sign. I need something." You can't really ask Hashem for signs, though; we're not allowed. Not allowed to say, "Hashem, if you give me this car, then I'll go to the shul. If you give me this job, then I'll donate." You can't do that. We're not allowed. But she did it anyway. She prayed to such an extent that she said, "Hashem, if you don't give me a sign, then at least kill me. Because now I know for sure I can't stay married to him."

1:29:34I stay not Jewish and he's Jewish. I can't stay married to him now since I know I'm not gonna leave and he's not gonna leave. It's better off that I just simply die because at least he could live a Jewish life. Or if you want, you could just show me a sign and I'll be a Jew the next day. I find part she won't. She wakes up in a bad mood for the first time I've ever seen, first and last time both of them have seen her in a bad mood. We don't really feel like working that day. The business is not really doing that great. There's not very much left in it. I tell you, listen, you know, let's at least learn more of this stuff that we learned yesterday. And I find part two of that Torah science video. We start watching it, and one part in it talks about Torah codes. I And the Torah codes in the Book of Deuteronomy say that Hashem will punish us after we worship idols by sending us to the four corners of the world, where we will worship more idols. But even then, He will allow us to do teshuva if we look for Him with all of our heart and all of our soul. Now, in that very verse, there's a Torah code...

1:30:55says that there are these two gods, two fake gods, that Hashem yitbarach mentions. He says there's the god of wood and the god of stone, and Rav Mizrachi says this is obvious to anyone who understands religion. The god of wood represents Christianity, symbolizing the cross, and the god of stone represents Mecca for Islam, the two leading religions by number other than Judaism, and... Now, this could simply be a coincidence. The Torah codes found in there found that the name JC Penney and also Mecca, meaning the two most important names for both religions, can be found inside that very verse. It's the only verse in the entire Torah that has it. I thought this was amazing, but I've seen other Torah codes that, in my opinion, were more amazing. To her, that was the sign. For her, that was what she needed. That was the one thing. Different people get different signs. Some people get a contract. Some people get an email. Some people get a meeting. Some people get a shidduch. Different people have different signs. Hashem comes to you in different ways. To her, that was it. On the spot, she says, "Okay, how fast can I become a Jew?"

1:32:17Went through the whole conversion process, both the Hashem Orthodox conversion and went to the Beit Din. Studied this; we were already in it for a couple of years before anyway. All we really needed to do was make it official. Baruch Hashem, the first day she accepted everything. He saw her modesty, everything and anything that we weren't already doing, she accepted. Baruch Hashem, she became the most righteous person I know. Now, if you fast forward to that point, we realize that doing kiruv is very, very critical. And the reason why is because we realize that we're not the only ones who have no clue. We were considered very smart in the business world, in the secular world, but in the Jewish world, in the real purpose world, we were clueless. And we realized that most people are just like us, clueless. They don't understand the consequence of not keeping Shabbat. They don't understand the consequence of eating non-kosher pizza. understand the consequence of walking around not modestly. They don't understand the concept of anything. And one of the biggest reasons is because sometimes they look at religious people and become disappointed. Because many so-called religious people don't really want to be religious. How many religious people do you know who want to be religious? How do you know the answer? Ask yourself the question or ask them the question: if you were born not Jewish and...

1:33:42Would you convert? If you were born not Jewish, and you knew Judaism was true, but you also had an option to be a Noahide, would you convert to Judaism still? The real answer is no, for most normal people. Most normal people will answer no. But that's because most people don't know the value of being a Jew. And that's the religious population. The non-religious population is even worse. 94% according to Pew Research of American Jews believe that it's okay to work on Shabbat. It's okay to work on Shabbat. Now, if 90% are already working on Shabbat and 94% believe that it's okay to work on Shabbat, that means that 4% out of the 10% religious actually believe that you should be able to work on Shabbat anyway. 4%, which is 40% of the religious people in America, don't really want to be religious according to that statistic. These are horrible numbers, but that's the reality. I didn't make the statistic. If you have a complaint, go to Pew Research, go to Armisale. Somebody has to do something, so we decided we have to do something, and...

1:35:07What do we do? We try to start informing people. So we bought a bunch of CDs from Rabbi Mizrachi and we started giving them out. We said, okay, this is good. It's not enough though. So we had another book by Rabbi Zamir Cohen and we started giving that one out. And then we created something called a kiruv package. It had the CDs from Rabbi Mizrachi, the book from Rabbi Zamir Cohen. We added a few other intricate blessings and so on in it. And we started sending it to different people, different Jews all over the world. We didn't have much money, but we had enough money to do this. Every day I would be more excited about actually sending people packages than any business or anything else. Even though the money kept losing and everything continued going to garbage, it became meaningless to me. Because for the first time in my life, I actually had a purpose. So we started doing kiruv. Problems continued. I just stopped caring. Pain continued. I just stopped caring. For the first time in my life, I became really happy because life had a purpose. We decided that we wanted to move out of New York, so we moved to Florida. My rabbi told me, "Okay, it's time for you to start doing your own shiurim." I said, "Excuse me?"

1:36:19You start speaking, tell people what you know. I said, I don't know anything. He says, you know stuff. I said, I don't know anything. He said, no, no, you know stuff. You've been learning for a couple of years, you know something. I said, I don't know anything. I don't know. I know how to speak. I don't know Torah. You want to talk business? I'll talk business with you from here till next year. Torah? I don't know anything. He goes, okay, just whatever you learn, teach that. I said, what parasha? He goes, yes. I said, one mitzvah? Yes. Anything? Yes. Just whatever you teach, do it. He says, I do. So I asked, how am I going to start a shiur Torah? No one knows me. I just moved here. So one guy from the moving company was fixing my bed, and he liked that we had some Jewish music on. He goes, "Oh, wow, Jewish music." I said, "Oh, you're Jewish?" He goes, "Yeah, yeah, I'm Jewish." His name was Nisan. I said, "Listen, I'm going to start a shiur Torah. You want to come?" He goes, "Yeah, sure." He goes, "When?" I said, "Tuesday night." He goes, "Okay, I'll be here." I said, "Okay, I have a student." Tuesday night, it was me and Nisan. I told Nisan, "Listen, I'm going to tell you what God said. You do whatever you want. But at least now you know. So you're not dealing with the same problems I had. I didn't know. At least you're going to know. Rabbis came to my office for 15 years. They never told me. So I'm really upset at them. Why? Because at some point somebody should have told me I should keep Shabbat. At some point somebody should have told me that tzedakah is not the only mitzvah in the Torah. At some point somebody should have told me, by the way, you're intermarried. That's a serious problem."

1:37:48At some point, somebody should have told me something other than tzedakah. Now, of course, the logic is, "Listen, he should have realized on his own, or eventually you're going to do teshuva." It's all nonsense. No one eventually does teshuva. Nothing eventually happens. I Hashem put you in a world to do something, hishtadlut. You have hishtadlut in your business, you have hishtadlut in your life, in your personal life, with your marriage, with your kids, with everything else, you also have hishtadlut to get Am Yisrael to come back to Hashem. You can't just keep showing up to offices or to Beit Knesset and expect everyone's going to do teshuva by themselves, just because they showed up. Unless you tell them they're doing wrong, they're never going to do anything about it. And if you look at the math here, I'm the best subject in any experiment that shows that this study doesn't work. How? If they came to my office three times a week for 15 years, that's a lot of times. But let's just do simple math. Once a week for 10 years. Once a week for one year is 52 times. Times 10, it's 520. That means 520 tries to get me to keep one Shabbat.

1:39:00just try it once—50-50 chance if I'm going to continue, if I'm not going to try it. After 520 visits, when am I going to try it? Now obviously, it was a lot more, and I never kept Shabbat. Why? Because no one ever told me. Now, I can't tell you I would have definitely kept Shabbat; maybe I would have said no, but it's still 50-50. The point is that no one is ever going to try anything unless you let them know. So we realized that we have to go on a mission to let people know. So I told this to Nissan, and within the first 20 minutes of the show, he says, "What do you mean I can't drive on Shabbat? I've been driving to Beit Knesset on Shabbat for the last 20 years and no one ever told me anything." I said, "What do you mean you drive to Beit Knesset?" He goes, "Yeah, I go to Beit Knesset every Shabbat, like every Jew is supposed to go." I said, "Okay, so why can't you go?" He goes, "Oh, it's far." I said, "So go to a closer Beit Knesset." He goes, "No, but I like that one." I like the one that I go to. He said, yeah, but you can't drive on Shabbat. He goes, why didn't anybody tell me? I said, I don't know. Maybe you have the same rabbis I did. They just live in Florida too. And I started realizing this is an epidemic. This is an epidemic everywhere. People that know simply feel like you should know too. Or maybe you know and you don't feel like doing it. Or they don't feel right telling you. Or whatever the excuse the Yetzer Hara puts in our head to convince us not to say anything.

1:40:25Now here's the thing. Some of the things that I told you, Rabotai, maybe were hard to hear. Gehinom, punishment, sickness, all that stuff. Some of the things may be funny, but the reality is it's all true. And if somebody has a disease, Hashem yishmor, and he doesn't know. Now he feels pain inside. He says, listen, let me go to my best friend. He's a doctor. Now his best friend grew up with him. They were friends. They were boys since they were little kids. Now his best friend knows that they have a vacation planned. He has a family. He has kids. He's excited about life. And he knows that if he tells him that he's sick, he's going to cancel the vacation, become really depressed, maybe lose his mind. A lot of bad things may happen. So he decides not to tell him that he's sick. Is he still considered a friend because he didn't tell him? according to logic, he's considered a murderer and according to the law also because if he would have told him that he's sick, maybe he would have gotten depressed, maybe he would have gotten upset, maybe he would have canceled the vacation, but he definitely, definitely, would have tried to fix the problem because no one wants to stay sick. No one wants to stay sick.

1:41:55So, just not telling people is not the cure and that's why the Gemara in Masechet Shabbat, page 54a all the way to 56, says that Hashem, when He decided to destroy the Bet HaMikdash, the Midat HaDin, the Yetzer HaRa says, "How come you're only punishing the wicked and not these people?" He says, "These people are tzaddikim?" Because they're not tzaddikim. Why? They're the rabbis; they fulfilled the entire Torah from A to Z. He says, but they're not tzaddikim. Why are they not tzaddikim, he says to the Yetzer HaRa. Because they knew the truth but didn't tell the people. Hashem says, "You're right, punish them first." A person that knows the truth but doesn't tell his friend, according to our Torah, inherits the sin itself. Both people get punished for it. If you have a daughter, a son, a husband, a wife, a friend, a neighbor, a colleague, somebody that you know that's living a lie, you're obligated to tell them. If you can't speak, get somebody else to speak. If you don't have somebody else to speak, I brought you CDs. Give them the CDs. I'll speak for you. If you don't have a CD, go to the website, bezratHashem.org. Take one of the links, give it to them.

1:43:10We have WhatsApp groups. We have, you know, the website. We have YouTube channels. We're on TorahAnytime. We're on Idud. We're on SoundCloud. We're coming out with an app very soon. There are a million different ways you can deliver the truth if you can't do it yourself. The point is to stop staying quiet because people are losing Olam Haba because of it. After we realized that the truth is this, we started telling people the truth. People started listening. Nissan started keeping Shabbat. Many more Nissans came to our door. Many more Nissans started doing Teshuvah. I realized that this is what Hashem wants me to do. So I figured maybe I'll just do this and work on Wall Street a little bit, work out of my house. Hashem said, "I don't want you to work out of your house." I At least not for Wall Street. You can work out of your house for Kiruv, but not for Wall Street. So the little bit of money that I had left, about half a million dollars, He took that too. That's what Iyov told his wife when she said, "Oh, why do you keep worshiping this God that keeps taking everything from you?" He says, "He gave, He took, may His name be blessed. It's all His anyway."

1:44:26We continue doing Kiruv. We continue getting other people to do teshuva. Baruch Hashem, over the last four years we actually started an organization, Be'ezrat Hashem. We have shiurim all over the world. People are doing teshuva every single day. And rabotai yekarim, we actually have a purpose. Money? I don't have much of it, but I never worry about it either. I don't know where it comes from. All I know is that bills get paid. The kids eat better than ever, the wife is happy, I'm happy, we have a lot of Torah, Baruch Hashem, we have a lot of people that we're helping, and little by little, Am Yisrael is doing teshuva. But I can't do it alone. I need people like you. I need people like you to be motivated enough to deliver the message. Some people have money, some people have buttons. Use whatever you have. You have a button on your phone? Press share. You have money and no button? Use the money. have no money, no button? Use your mouth. Take your hand to give a CD, give it to somebody. That's how the word gets from one hand to another. That's how Danny got me to come over here. I told people I'm coming to California. He says, "Oh, come over here." So, I'm here.

1:45:36Embers and we'll do more shiurim here. The key about it is that we can't continue this statistic of 90% of American Jews not keeping Shabbat and almost 90% of Klal Yisrael not keeping Shabbat. It's a horrible statistic because that means that Am Yisrael is not considered Jewish right now. Our Judaism is on suspension. Our Judaism is on suspension. It's tough to hear, but it's the truth. No one can say, "Oh, no. No, he's wrong. Why? It's Halacha, huh? It's not my law. I didn't create it. Hashem didn't ask me permission before He wrote the Torah. This is what it says in the Torah. So when it says about Hashem that He opens the eyes of the blind, He opened my eyes this way. The good news is not everybody has to suffer in order to have their eyes opened. They could just listen to this shiur or many shiurim like it that we've done and... The good news is that we no longer need to be jealous of the goyim. We're supposed to be Or LaGoyim, we're supposed to be a light to the nations. So when you say it, be proud of it. Think of the best goy you know and say, "Ah, thank God I'm not him. Thank God I'm not her. Why? Because I'm a Jew. The world was created for me." Be a light to the nations. Show them how to be better people.

1:46:57Not better than them because you're smarter or you have more money, none of that stuff. Meaning you're fulfilling the will of Hashem. Try to help them to do it also. There are righteous among the nations. And for anyone that has the excuse, "Oh, I don't have time. I don't have strength. I don't have this. I don't have that," Hashem says, He gives strength to somebody that doesn't have strength. If you want to do it, Hashem will give you the koach. Hashem will give you the strength. If you still can't do it, it's because you never really wanted to do it. You want to do kiruv, Hashem can help you. You want to get Am Yisrael to do teshuva, Hashem can help you. You want to do teshuva, Hashem can help you. Just try. Do something. Any questions? I'm sure. Go ahead. Okay.

1:47:58It took me a few years to realize different parts of it. The Gemara in Masechet Megillah says that a student, just like Am Yisrael, took 40 years to understand the secrets of Moshe Rabbeinu, their rabbi. Someone that is close to their rabbi will take a long time to really understand the real reasons behind everything they did. Now, one of the biggest reasons for why he chose that is because of the whole issue of intermarriage. The intermarriage aspect of it connects to Yehuda and Tamar. the issue of wasting seed. It's part of it and also the magnitude of sin, meaning that Hashem is not our friend. He's our God. He doesn't joke around. So when you tell people nice stories, it's nice, but when you tell people nice stories that also have significant consequences in them, it's moving. It causes people to change. So that's why a lot of the sipurim of the tzaddikim that people hear are Many of them you'll hear, like they're full of Chochmat HaTorah, full of things that are very extreme. And the reason why is because those types of stories, those types of events really move people to do something. The whole point of every story is to move you to do something. Emunah, even, you know, people like to talk about Emunah. Emunah without Maaseh, Emunah that doesn't lead you to action, is not real Emunah, it's fake. Anything that you do

1:49:27has to lead to action. Or else it's superficial. It's nothing. It's nonsense. So if you're learning Torah for the sake of just, I don't know, you just want to know stuff, but you don't feel like doing it, it's not even a mitzvah. It's not even a mitzvah. You're actually making a sin. Why? Because you're using the Torah like it's a philosophy book. That's why the Gemara of Masechet Avodah Zarah, page 17b, says that someone that learns Torah without an intention to teach it, like someone who doesn't have a God. Why someone doesn't have a God? If you're learning Torah, that means you're learning it because God gave it. If you're learning it because God gave it, that means you know that God has good traits, and you're trying to emulate Him, trying to be like Him. His character traits are good, and you're trying to be like Him. But if you're learning His Torah but you're not emulating the number one character trait that He has, which is giving, then obviously, it's like you're learning a philosophy book. It's like somebody's learning Torah, but without God.

1:50:27Because He only gives. Now you're learning Torah. What are you supposed to do? Give. Give. What's the best thing in the world to give? Give knowledge. Give knowledge to somebody. Give them a purpose. Give them Torah. If you're learning without an intention to teach, what's the point? So now some people are going to teach the public. 50, 100, 1,000 people, whatever it is. Some people are going to teach their class, 10 people. Some people are going to teach their family, their wife, their kids. Some people are going to teach themselves, but the point is you're supposed to teach somebody. It's supposed to be used for something at some point, not necessarily from day one, but at some point, you're supposed to share that knowledge. If your Leil Seder was only full of stories about business and stories about the stock market and stories about Donald Trump and politics, The entire Torah you learned the entire year was wasted. You are supposed to learn enough to have a Leil Seder to learn and teach until you fall asleep. So, some tables had a lot of Torah, and some tables had a lot of politics. The Torah is for us to use, and that's one of the main things that a person needs to understand. But today, we're so interested in the secular world that we forget that the Torah is much better.

1:51:38And that's why we're obligated to learn every day, to get new chiddushim every day, to go over it every week, Tashat Shavua, Gemarot, Mussar, and so on. Someone that's really serious about learning knows that the Torah has no end. Next question, yeah. Well, if some have the argument saying that if you don't say anything in some way, at least this way, they're affiliated a little bit. But if you tell them you have to keep it in a certain way, they'll completely go off. So somebody came to the Satmar Rebbe, alev ha-shalom, and asked him for money for a wedding for his daughter, and the Satmar Rebbe said I He took out 50 bucks. I gave it to him. The guy needs $50,000, and I gave him $50. Thank you very much for the love, I appreciate it. The next day, the same guy comes back and says, "Rebbe, I need $5,000."

1:52:52For what? For my daughter. Unfortunately, I need a dress. He goes, why? You didn't have success with the wedding? He goes, no, Baruch Hashem, after you gave me the $50, I had so much blessing, every single person I went to gave me money, I raised the entire $50,000. But then I got home. After I paid all the things I needed to pay for the wedding, my daughter, God bless her, I don't know what yetzer hara got into her, says, "I'm not getting married unless I buy this $5,000 dress." The Rebbe goes into the Kasaf into the safe takes out $5,000 and gives it to him. "Thank you for the love. I appreciate it. Baruch Hashem. I love you." Now his student is listening to this. He's watching this. He's ripping his hair out, like you guys want to do right now. Waiting $50. The chutzpan comes back, asks for more. You give him $5,000? She gave him $5,000 slaps, no? Him and his daughter with the $5,000 dress. The guy, he had better middot than me. He says, kvod harav, lamdeni, teach me. What's going on here?

1:53:58Yesterday, a man came to me and asked for $50 for a wedding. Today, his daughter, who is spoiled, wants a $5,000 dress. She’s lucky she even has a wedding. You give him the whole thing? You know what you could have done with all that money? $5,000 could have gone to the kollel, $5,000 could have gone to the avreichim, to the yeshivot, to the yetomim. So many people could have benefited from it, and you give it to this guy? The Rebbe says... You're right, all of those people—I thought about them too. The kollel, the yeshiva, the yetomim—everybody. I thought about all of them, and all of them could have benefited from the $5,000. But then I said to myself, how come I didn't think about this before this guy came to me and gave me an opportunity to fulfill the mitzvah of making a bride happy? And... If I didn't have this thought before this, that means that now that I'm having it, it's not a mitzvah. It's a mitzvah from the Satan. The mitzvah right now that I have is to make the bride happy. That's the mitzvah I'm going to fulfill. All the other opportunities, if I really wanted to do them, I would have thought about it before he came. Since I only think about it now, that means that the other mitzvot, Satan wants me to do them, not Hashem. Same concept here.

1:55:25We want to think for Hashem. We want to think as if we're running the world. No, if I tell him, then he's not gonna come. How do you know? You're a prophet? We don't know. If somebody would have told me, would I have done teshuvah or not? I don't know. 50-50 chance. That's first of all. The second thing is, the mitzvah, we have 613 mitzvot. 613 mitzvot, one of them is The Torah tells us you must rebuke, not you should. You must rebuke your brother, but don't get to the way of sin. What does it mean? It means if you see your friend is violating Shabbat, or you just know that he violates Shabbat. You don't have to see him driving. You know he violates Shabbat. You know that he goes home, he smokes cigarettes, he watches TV, whatever it is. You know he violates Shabbat. You must rebuke him. Not that you should. You must. Why? If you don't, you take on the sin too, as if you came and violated Shabbat. So now, it's not a matter of just helping him. It's helping us.

1:56:32Because we can keep Shabbat for 70, 80, 100 years. We go up to Shamayim and say, oh, here's the Mechalel Shabbat. Here he is. He came here. We have a nice villa in Gehenom for you. Come, come, come, come, Oteh, come. Well, Mechalel Shabbat, I came to shul, I watched Shabbat, I kept Shabbat, everything was good. Oh, no, everything is good. All your friends, they didn't keep Shabbat. You never said a word. He goes, yeah, it's their problem. He goes, no, it's your problem. Kol Yisrael arevim zeh la'zeh. Everyone is obligated to each other. There's no such thing as an excuse of, "If I say this, they're not gonna do it." No, sister, we're not allowed to use such an excuse. But in the second part of the mitzvah, it says "velo tisa alav chet"—don't get to a point of sin. What does it mean? Don't get to a point of sin. Don't get to a point where the way you're rebuking him is causing you to sin. So one way that you can explain it is... That you can't embarrass him in public. Yeah, you wish about you're terrible. You're gonna go to Gehenom. Oh, you're the worst person in the world. You can't do that. You have to do it in a certain way to get him to do something good without necessarily embarrassing him in public. There are certain times that you're actually allowed to embarrass a person in public in order to rebuke them, but this is not one of them.

1:57:37you're supposed to tell people to keep Shabbat, supposed to help them keep Shabbat, and doing the accounting for Hashem as far as, "If I tell him he's not gonna listen; if I do this, he's not gonna do this." We're not allowed to do such accounting. We're just allowed to do what we're supposed to do. Now, the follow-up question should be: up to what point? I told him, he wasn't listening. Listen, I told him to stop driving on Shabbat. He doesn't want to listen. The Rambam says you're supposed to rebuke a person until the point where he hits you, meaning just telling them one time is not enough. Until he says, "Oh, I'm gonna hit you if you don't." Some say he actually has to hit you; some say he just has to raise his hand to threaten that he's gonna hit you. At that point, you have fulfilled your mitzvah of rebuking him. Now again, sometimes... rebuking the wrong people, meaning you can't just rebuke anyone. You have to rebuke specific people; you have to target it like you target clients. I don't know what you do for a living, but people that have clients, if they're in sales, for example, they can't just sell to anyone.

1:58:46So, for example, I only sold to rich people. I didn't care what you did. As long as it's legal and you're rich, you had those two qualifications. It didn't make a difference to me how you made your money. If you're an oil salesman, a manufacturer, you sold cars, or you're a doctor or a lawyer, that stuff didn't make a difference to me. You had to have two qualities: you had to be rich, and you had to be legal. So I had to target that person. If you weren't rich or if your business wasn't legal, you were officially no longer a target of mine. Same concept when it comes to rebuke. You have to understand, rebuke is not a bad word. It sounds bad. It's not a bad word. Rebuke is just helping somebody, showing them the truth, showing them something they don't see on their own. And it comes from a good place. You're not telling them, "Hey, I told you so." You're trying to tell them something that they may not be aware of. Just like you would do with anything else in life, if, let's say, for example, there was a doctor and he was using the wrong medicine, you'd say, "Hey, don't do it. Don't use it." You're not trying to make fun of him. You're trying to help him so he doesn't kill the patient. Same concept here. So the guy's gonna kill himself. So now, you can't just rebuke anyone. There are certain people that are simply never going to listen to you, not because what you're saying is wrong, but simply because it's you. You specifically. Me specifically. Why? They're related to you.

2:00:07So if, let's say, for example, you have an older brother, rebuking him, for the most part, 90% of the time is a complete waste of time. Why? You're always going to be his little brother. He's never going to listen to you. It's just not going to happen in most cases. Some cases it works. In most cases it doesn't work. Same thing with parents. Parents tend to not want to listen to their kids. Once in a while they'll take something. You have a whole tank full of fruits; they'll take one apple. Overall, you're not gonna be the Rabbi Mizrachi of their life. You're not gonna be the, you know, the Rabbi Yaron Reuven of their life. It's just not gonna happen. You can try until you turn blue in the face; it's just not gonna happen. You're always gonna be the little baby with a diaper on to them, even if you're 30 years old. So sometimes you have to target someone else, someone else—strangers, complete strangers. Because with them, they don't have the bias and...

2:01:09They don't have the bias. They don't look at you as a little kid. They don't look at you as what you did before. They look at you as you right now. To them, you are Moshe Rabbeinu. You're telling them Torah, Moshe Rabbeinu said Torah, you're Moshe Rabbeinu. They're strangers. So how do you help the other people? How do you help the people you care about, your family, your friends, the people that are not going to listen to you? You have a few ways. Number one, get somebody else to do it. Give him a CD, give him a link, bring him to a lecture. You know, share a website—things like that. Get somebody else who's speaking to share the information with them, not you. You could just send them the link; you could just be the mailman. Don't be the actual spokesperson. They'll watch it, and once they watch enough, they'll think it's their idea anyway, and they'll forget that you ever gave it to them. But don't worry about them forgetting. All you need is for Hashem to know you did it. So that's number one. The second thing is: Do kiruv with other people, and the reason why is because in the book of Jeremiah, Hashem tells the prophet, if you bring someone precious from someone that was not precious, that was a laggard, if you, in essence, make somebody do teshuva, you will be like My mouth.

2:02:33So the sages say, what does it mean? You'll be, excuse me, you'll be like My mouth. Hashem says, "I said, and it was created." He said words and the words in the world came true. Same thing with your prayers. You pray, I make it happen. Why bring people to do teshuva? Once you get people to do teshuva, your prayers have VIP treatment above any other prayer in all of Am Yisrael. To such an extent that it says that even if a person has mitzvot and Torah like Moshe Rabbeinu, he's on the level of the prophets, he's still not going to be on the level of someone that gets people to do teshuva. Even if he's on the level of Moshe Rabbeinu, he's still not on the level of someone that gets people to do teshuva. Why? It's a different deal because that person brings Hashem's little babies back home. You start bringing Hashem's babies back home, in one way or another, directly, indirectly, whatever it is, your prayers become Hashem's problem. Hashem fulfills it. Hashem fixes His problems. So that's the biggest thing that people need to know about rebuke. Who are you rebuking? Who's your target audience? Next question. Yeah. So when you do kiruv, so you have someone that's going to restart from the teenagers, right? Like 17, 18, 19 years old.

2:03:56Okay. Who says you're going to live 100 years? That's the real answer. I have a cousin. I have an uncle. He's worth probably $150 million. Made a lot of money in the 1990s, early 2000s, gas stations, all types of things. They have more money than they can count. Two years ago, they didn't keep anything. To such an extent, they didn't have mezuzot in their house, which is like one of the mitzvot that even the goyim fulfill sometimes. Very far. Sad. On the second day of Rosh Hashanah, they were vacationing in Israel and their 23- or 26-year-old son, my cousin, a cute kid with his whole life ahead of him, instead of being in Beit Knesset, decided to go on his scooter, his electric scooter, and he slipped off the scooter. No one touched him, no one hit him. He just slipped off the scooter, fell on his head, and hurt his head.

2:05:27Went to the hospital. The hospital said, "Don't worry, son, everything's okay. You hit your head, you have a little concussion. Go home, you'll be fine." What did he do? He listened to the experts. He went home thinking everything was fine. He was only 23, 26 years old, had at least another 90 years to go, no? He never woke up. He went to sleep and he never woke up. Now, do you think that he thought that he was going to die at 23 years old? Do you think that his parents, who were thinking of vacationing, thought that he was going to die at 23 years old? With a hundred million dollars, you start thinking you're God. Not that there is a God; you start thinking you're God. You can fix God; you can rebuke Him. Already at that point, people think you could fix life. You could bring life. You can make life with that kind of money. There's also another person... He had a little bit of a liver problem. It's called cancer. He had cancer in his liver. Now he had a little more money. He had six and a half billion dollars. His name was Steve Jobs. And Steve Jobs was an atheist. He believed in nothing. In reality, atheism just means that you don't want anyone telling you what to do. That's what atheism really is. It doesn't mean that you believe in nothing. Because even a monkey believes in something.

2:06:53Everybody believes in something. You just believe that you don't want anyone to tell you what to do. That's what you believe in. So Steve Jobs believed in his iPhone and his smartphone and his iPad and tablet and everything else. But one day he believed that he needed a new liver and he couldn't afford it. With six and a half billion dollars, he couldn't afford a new liver. Why? It's priceless. So Hashem says, "Oh, you didn't believe in Me? Come, we have a personal meeting." There's a personal meeting in a hot place over there. There's another person, my name is Stephen Hawking. For 60-70 years, he publicly changed his mind maybe a dozen times about whether he believed in God or not. In one book, he says he believes; in another book, he says he doesn't believe. Either way, right now, he knows for sure. Right now, he's getting to know God really, really well, and... So the reality is that most people have said, "No, no, I'm still young. I was young too when this story started. I was 26 years old. Do you think that when I went to sleep to have an elective surgery, I thought, even in my remotest dream, my biggest nightmare, that there was even a one percent chance that I was going to wake up screaming and not stop for seven years? Imagine you go to sleep..."

2:08:20You go to sleep. Everybody goes to sleep. At some point, everyone here is going to go to sleep when I stop talking. You're all going to go to sleep. Okay? You're going to go home. You're going to go to sleep. Everybody goes to sleep at some point. Okay? So imagine. Imagine this nightmare. You go to sleep. And you wake up. Oh, wow, this hurts a little bit. No, no. Not that. You wake up and immediately, like at the top of your lungs and 50 times the decibel of what I just did. And you don't stop. Forever. Imagine that. Can you imagine such a thing? That's what I had to live with. Do you think that I had even a 1% chance in my statistical mind that that's what I did for a living? I did statistics. Probabilities. That's what I did. I looked at economies, companies, earnings, and so on. The chances of anything happening, the chances of anything not happening. there was not even a one percent chance of such a thing happening, not in my life. And no one thinks anything is going to go wrong in their life until it goes wrong. So for all of those superheroes that think that nothing is going to go wrong, there's two answers: one, they're full of it; they're lying. They don't really believe it, they just don't want to be told what to do. So

2:09:45have to decide if they want to take the chance and wait and possibly have the same experience as me or worse. Or they could just delve into it and see what it's all about. What's the worst that could happen? You keep Shabbat? What's the worst that could happen? You start keeping kosher? You stop eating treif? What's so bad about it? The reason why most people don't want to do Teshuvah is because they simply don't think it's an obligation. They don't think it's an obligation; sometimes they don't believe it's true. But to prove that it's true just takes a little time. If they show them some proofs, scientific proofs, rational proofs, there are many videos we've done, Rav Mizrachi has done, and many other experts have done that can prove the Torah is real, scientifically, logically, rationally, whatever way you want to prove it. There are many videos out there that can prove the Torah is real. It's not difficult to prove that it's real. All you need is a little bit of time and attention. As far as the obligation of it, they just need to know that there's a consequence.

2:10:54...for that, once you show them that it's real, you show that this very same Torah also tells you there's a consequence for not doing it. And that's the part that's missing. Many people have done videos about proving that the Torah is real or the Torah is divine and the Torah is beautiful, but very few have discussed the consequence of not doing it. So that's the one thing that most teenagers, and actually I think most young adults in general, need to hear more of. Because we don't work based off of desire anymore when it comes to Torah. We work off of desire based on other things: desire for food, women, money, things like that. But when it comes to Torah, unless you obligate a person, they're simply not going to start. Unless you tell a person, "Listen, if you don't do this, you're going to get in trouble," they're not even going to look into it. That's the generation we're in. It just doesn't work any other way, and it's not just my opinion. You could ask anyone—you can ask anyone that actually made people do teshuva, not just gave lectures. Plenty of people give lectures. So, in this generation, if you're looking at the masses, you have... Okay, of course, you're always going to have an exception. You have a thousand people; two or three people are going to do teshuva just because.

2:12:15But if you're looking at large-scale numbers to get a room full of people to do teshuva, it's only when you remind people there's an obligation, there's a consequence for not doing it. So that's what you have to remind people. And again, you have to know already beforehand if you're the right vessel or not. Sure, sure, sure. Sure, sure, sure. So, I mean, the Arizal writes that there's a certain amount of fasts

2:13:31for specific types of sins. So, for example, for wasting seed, every time a person has wasted seed, he has to do 84 fasts, according to the Arizal. Now, obviously, this would mean that pretty much every single male in his generation has to fast for the rest of their life. So the other solution is to give the value of a meal in replacement for those fasts. So if, let's say, a meal, I don't know, is $5 or whatever it is, then you would have to give $420 for each time we've wasted seed, which would mean that we would have to give a lot of tzedakah. Now, this doesn't have to happen all in one day. It just has to happen over time. You do it once a month, once a quarter, once a year, whatever it is. The key is to start doing teshuvah for things like that, according to our Arizal, as far as that's one aspect of it. Second thing is, obviously, or actually it should be the first thing, is stop sinning. Stop repeating the sin. Third thing is, learn about it. Learn about the specific topic. If it's Shabbat, if it's Yom Tov, if it's whatever it is, learn the specific things about it that are going to help you not sin.

2:14:37So if it's wasting seed, learn about wasting seed. If it's about Shabbat, learn about Shabbat. If it's about Yom Tov, learn specifically about that mitzvah and make it yours. Make it your own so it helps you beat that yetzer hara the next time that you have the opportunity. But still, all of these different things, and there's a few more, but these specific three things help a lot, but they still don't make up for it completely. Reason why is because, okay, so let's say, for example, somebody violated Shabbat for 20 years of their life, and then they did teshuva. Now they start keeping Shabbat, that's good, so they stop sinning. They learn about Shabbat, they know all about halachot Shabbat perfectly. Good, that helps too. They gave tzedakah, that helps too. But still, when they come to Shamayim, there's still 20 years' worth of missing Shabbat. Okay, Shema. I'm good. I'm lucky that you did teshuva; everything is good, but there's still your account with, let's say, 120 years, 20 years missing Shabbat. There's still a deficit of 20 years' worth of Shabbat. What do you do with that deficit? Somebody has to pay for it. So that's where kiruv comes in. That's where helping other people do teshuva. According to the book of Ezekiel, the prophet Ezekiel says...

2:15:50Doing kiruv is literally part of teshuva. It's not something you should do; it's something we're obligated to do. The reason why is because that's the only way the sins we've made in the past are not going to get in the way of our teshuva. So, let's say, for example, we get one person to do teshuva. He's going to keep Shabbat now. So now, every Shabbat you keep Shabbat, he keeps Shabbat. So now you have two Shabbats after 120. You kept all your Shabbats, but now he also kept Shabbat for 50 years. So now, instead of having a 20-year deficit, a 20-year shortage of Shabbat, you have a surplus of 30. Plus, he had kids. Each one of his kids kept Shabbat. So that's another 100, 200, 300 years' worth of Shabbat. His wife and so on and so forth. Everybody that he's touched in his life goes into your account. Instead of showing up with a shortage of 20 years' worth of Shabbat, you now have a surplus. That's why we're doing kiruv and getting other people to do teshuva is not necessarily just something nice to do. It's a good mitzvah. It's literally what's going to save us as individuals and also as a nation. It's the biggest, most important thing when it comes to teshuva because, again, learning is good, stopping is good. All of those things are good. But the only thing that's going to close all corners is by making sure that we've completed the mitzvah all...

2:17:15Which means that we got other people to fill the part we didn't do ourselves. Yeah, no, I mean, let's say this is somebody's choice. הכל בידי שמים חוץ מיראת שמים (hakol b'yedei shamayim chutz miyirat shamayim). Everything is from Hashem except the fear of Hashem. So you could tell people whatever you want to tell them. It's their choice to listen to it or not. Just like you could tell somebody, "Listen, buy this house." You could choose to buy it or not buy it. If he doesn't buy it and somebody else buys it, it's not your problem. You know, so same thing here. You've actually done the mitzvah of telling them the truth. If he chose not to do it, that's his problem. But you still get rewarded for, number one, fulfilling the mitzvah. And for two, if he never does teshuva, you actually get his share of the world to come. all of Israel have a share in the World to Come. But then, the next eight pages discuss who doesn't have a share in the World to Come, detailing all the different sins that cause a person to lose their share in the World to Come. So now, where does that share go? All of Israel come to this world with a share...

2:18:34There's a share in the World to Come for everyone. But if someone loses their Olam HaBa, what happens to that share, Chazal asks? It goes to the person that tried to help them do teshuva. So now, either way, the person that helps them gets rewarded. This really depends, I guess, on the person. But to what extent do they involve themselves? Sure, sure. It all depends on the person itself. I mean, it's very different today than in the past. Missionizing in Judaism is almost like a bad word. The Torah today is very different than what it actually says. Today, we're very politically correct. We live in a politically correct world, so we're very afraid of what people think and what people see, what people say, and so on and so forth. We're very, very afraid of the world around us. We're very afraid of our own shadows, really. It all depends on the person themselves. I mean, it's very different today than in the past. Missionizing in Judaism is almost like a bad word. The Torah today is very different than what it actually says. Today, we're very politically correct. We live in a politically correct world, so we're very afraid of what people think, what people see, what people say, and so on and so forth. We're very, very afraid of the world around us. We're very afraid of our own shadows, really, and

2:20:03According to the sages. I mean, you see how they did and what they did. It's a very, very different world. So first and foremost, it says to such an extent in the Masechet Shabbat that Rabbi Elazar ben Azaria was almost judged to lose his entire Olam HaBa because he didn't rebuke his neighbor. His neighbor had a cow—it was a woman that had a cow—that carried on Shabbat and which is not allowed on Shabbat. You're not allowed to use your animals to work on Shabbat. And he didn't rebuke his neighbor. And they said that when he realized it, he almost lost his Olam HaBa because of it. And he fasted for the rest of his life because of this. The point is that he almost lost his Olam HaBa because of a cow. And they're judging him harshly because of that. Because that's the truth. Even though he was so holy to the extent that he could revive the dead. So there's no big, there's no small when it comes to helping people do teshuva. Moshe Rabbeinu, holy of holies, even he was told by Hashem, "You missed an opportunity to sanctify My name; you have to be punished for it." The point is that none of us should think we're too good or too insignificant for anything. That's first. Second, you see also in the Gemara that anytime somebody came with an interest to...

2:21:18Convert to Judaism or even interest in Judaism, the sages were very excited to teach him if he was interested. We wouldn't go out door-to-door and ask people, "Listen, do you want to be Jewish? Do you want to be Jewish?" Also, it was a very different world back then; they were killing us in the middle of the street. So, to get people to convert to Judaism was pretty much like a person wanting to commit suicide. So, it wasn't very common to convert anyway in those days. But the Gemara in Masechet Avodah Zarah, page 3b and 4a, says that before Mashiach comes... there's going to be a lot of converts. The point being is that if somebody comes to you and has interest in the Torah, you're actually obligated to help them, direct them in some way. You don't necessarily need to be their teacher. But you have to direct them. Okay, okay. You want to learn? Go to this website, torahanytime.com or divineinformation.com, whatever you know, asknoah.org, whatever it is to direct them. Wherever it is, it's a good thing to do. There's no reason for you not to do it, especially since it takes only two seconds today. So, as far as if somebody shows interest, if they don't show interest, you're not obligated to do it at all. I

2:22:26There is a big "but" if you only have one choice to make, meaning you have a Jew to help or you have a Noahide to help, you are obligated to help the Jew first. You are obligated to help the Jew first. So, let's say, for example, you only have one minute to spare, and you have to choose either the Noahide or the Jew; you have to help the Jew first. The reason why is because the Jew has a higher level of obligation than the Noahide. Reality is, we all have more than one minute. So, most people don't have to make that choice. But either way, we should try to do as much as we can to be a light to the nations, to be a light to ourselves, to be a light to our families, and try to become pretty much a walking light. all day where people see, oh listen, this guy, he's a normal person, he works, he lives, he has a wife, he has kids, he has this, but he's also different than everyone else at the same time. How? He lives in accordance with the biblical law. You can see it based on his behavior, you can see it based on his actions, you can see it based on how he looks and so on and so forth. So, it's not necessarily just the black and white; it's what's inside that counts.

2:23:33So that's the most important thing. And I think that when it comes to the nations around us, if you have an opportunity to help, it's definitely a good idea to help. But not everybody gets the opportunity. Also, remember that some of the most important people of all time were converts. Onkelos — all of the commentary in the Torah is based on Onkelos. Rabbi Meir Baal HaNes came from converts. Rabbi Akiva was a son of converts. Shemaya and Avtalion were converts. I mean, some of the greatest of all time were from converts. Yitro was from converts. Ruth was from converts. The Mashiach is coming from converts, which means helping people convert to Judaism is fulfilling a prophecy. Again, not everybody necessarily looks at it that way, but that's how the Torah looks at it. That's what I said in the beginning of this shiur. I said that most people like to sing the songs "Mashiach, Mashiach, Mashiach," but in reality, they don't want him to come. If Mashiach came, if you look at what the prophets say, Mashiach is no joke. Mashiach will kill people simply by smelling their sins.

2:24:51He smells their yirat Shamayim. They don't have yirat Shamayim. They made sins. He kills them with words. No weapons. No trial. No, "Hey, listen, give me your case." So people either don't know this or don't care or don't believe. I don't really know what it is. All I know is that people live in a fantasy world today where they think that Mashiach is there to fix their problems. He's the lotto. He's the social security office. He's the, you know, something else. He's going to fix their health issues. He's going to fix their diet, their marriage, their kids. It's not Mashiach. It says specifically in our tefillah... The Geula is coming to help the people that used to be criminals, used to be spiritual criminals against Hashem. He's coming to help them. He's coming to save the Baalei Teshuva. Anyone who did Teshuva will be saved; anyone who didn't do Teshuva will be punished. So right before Mashiach comes, like we said, three days before...

2:25:55And yeah, whenever he's supposed to come, yeah, that's one of the prophecies. All that matters is to live, is to live and survive until the Messiah. That's enough. Nobody should be worried about what's going to happen after the Messiah because that's assuming that we're going to survive. Why is he buying a house in Israel? According to the Rambam, worrying about anything that will happen after the Messiah is not helpful because we don't really know. Everything is a guess of what's going to happen after the Messiah comes. Realistically, all that we should worry about is surviving. All we should worry about is being righteous with Hashem. One, because if the Messiah shows up, none of the things we're worried about will really matter anymore, and two, our personal Messiah could be any day, meaning we could all go up to Shamayim anyway before the Messiah comes, and we have to give the same cheshbon anyway. So all the details of what would happen, you know, if the Messiah is going to be really nice to me, is he going to give me a nice area in Jerusalem? Am I going to have a three-bedroom or four-bedroom? All that stuff is meaningless. People that are buying houses in preparation for Mashiach literally don’t know anything about Mashiach. None of that stuff is going to matter. The land is going to be different. The housing is going to be different. The world is going to be different. People that are doing this, that they're preparing physical things...

2:27:21Like, material things in Mashiach simply don't know what it means because it's a different world. They're preparing to bring this world to the new world. The two worlds have nothing to do with each other. The two worlds, it's not, it's not gonna be exactly this world. It's not gonna be the same. Eretz Yisrael is gonna be bigger. I mean, it's just, it's just not. Put it this way: Oh, we should worry about surviving. Somebody should be righteous enough where they know. Okay, listen, there's not the ship. I have a chance to survive. Yeah, it's not the same. Mashiach can come any day. Mashiach can come any day, he can come tomorrow, he can come next week, he can come in 10 years, he can come in 20 years. There's no specific time. There's a limit of the latest day of when he can come and That's before the year 6,000, but according to the Chachamim, it's well before that. It's because he has to come before Shabbat. The year Shabbat will start in probably the next 25 or 30 years, meaning that it would have to be, according to the Chachamim, within our lifetime, not in 200 years.

2:28:42Before Mashiach comes, there's going to be a lot of Nevi'ei Sheker. There's going to be prophets and there's going to be false prophets. Okay, because Mashiach is not going to have to tell you he's Mashiach. Yes, he's going to have the Spirit of God within him. For example, he could change nature. Everything. Everything. Change nature. No, no, not now. I'm not talking about a miracle worker. I'm not talking about miracle miracle workers. You have a lot of people that could change things. You have people that can walk on water today. You have people that can put their hand through metal. There are many people that use spiritual powers to do it. That's called demons. I'm not talking about miracle work. I'm talking about someone that can change nature. Changing nature means before Mashiach comes, there is going to be a war called Gog uMagog. That's in the prophets, in the book of Zechariah, chapter 14. No, I'm not asking for anything. This is what God said. God said it. I'm just reading it. I'm not asking for anyone. I'm asking to go to Gan Eden. I don't know why, but as far as what's gonna happen before Mashiach comes, there's going to be Gog uMagog. But as far as that's concerned...

2:29:58The world will change, meaning that Gog and Magog will kill two-thirds of the world within the first few minutes. So it's not going to be the nice, you know, world that you see today where you could just go to the store and pick up some cookies before you go home and go to shul. It's not going to be the same type of world. It's going to be a very, very... Different world, you could say, a lot of turmoil, a lot of craziness before it happens. But anyway, when the Messiah comes, Hashem says in the prophet Jeremiah that the miracles that will happen will be bigger than the ones we saw in Egypt. So, all the miracles that you read about on Pesach... 10 plagues, splitting of Yam Suf into 12 pieces, Hashem showing Am Yisrael the seven heavens. Oh, sorry, seven heavens and so on, all the different things that were extraordinary. The prophet Yirmiyahu says Mashiach is going to be bigger. Change nature, I mean, not just change the weather, change nature like, for example, they could throw an atomic bomb.

2:31:09Atomic bomb is just take the atomic bomb in the middle of the air and just put it in his pocket, eat it, I don't know, just destroy it. Like something like it kind of sounds like a superhero, but it's not. A superhero is nothing. The point is, it's like nothing can touch him. The whole world will fight him together, everyone. Billions of people will want to fight him by himself. No war, no tanks. He has no tanks. He has no weapons. No, he's not like a samurai fighting with a sword. Just with words. whole world will try to fight him and they will all lose. So it's not, it's not like, uh, they could all throw atomic bombs; all of it will be stopped. No, the one thing that the Chachamim say is that everyone has to agree that he's the Mashiach and one of the ways is that certain things have to happen. There are certain signs that will have to happen. First of all, Eliyahu HaNavi has to come three days before he comes. There are certain things he has to say. There are certain things that he has to do. It's not just like a superhero with a cape coming and saying, "Guys, I'm Mashiach." By the way, as far as people saying they're Mashiach, I have at least one a week.

2:32:23Sending me an email telling me he's Mashiach at least once a week. I have somebody tell me he's Mashiach. I actually have a guy coming to my class in the last couple of months who told me he's Mashiach, but now he's not sure. No, he says he's Mashiach. Crazy people have plenty of things to say. Some people say God spoke to them. Some people say they see things. Some people say they feel things. Some people think that they know things—all types of crazy. Because if they're Mashiach, then please save us. If somebody's Mashiach, save us then. There's certain prophecies you have to fulfill. You have to make world peace. You have to make the animals no longer eat meat. There is no war. I mean, the world changes. If somebody's the Mashiach, come save us. He has to know the entire Torah. Well, first of all, how about this? First of all, he has to know the entire Torah. Find me one person who knows the entire Torah. How about this? Find me one person who knows the entire Tanach by heart.

2:33:35That's not already known. Anybody that says he's Mashiach knows the entire Tanakh by heart? In Hebrew, not English. It's Torah. No, Tanakh is not the entire Torah. No, no, this is not a requisite. This is what I'm just telling you. I'm telling you that people who think they're Mashiach are so far away from being anything; they don't even know the Torah. They don't know anything. That's not even a requirement. It's an a fortiori argument (kal va'chomer) that they would know the entire Torah by heart, they would know the entire Gemara, the entire Mishnah, the entire Sod, things that we know, things that we don't know. The point is that in order to be the Mashiach, it's not going to be a question if he's the Mashiach or not. Once the Mashiach comes, it's just like Moshe Rabbeinu. There was no question of whether Moshe Rabbeinu spoke to God or not. Everyone knew. How did I know? I should make it so. Mashiach will be almost as great as Moshe Rabbeinu. The Mashiach doesn't know he's Mashiach until he's Mashiach. It's not necessarily a random Jew. I mean, he has to be obviously at a certain righteous level. The Jew can't be just some guy that's walking the street selling hot dogs and...

2:34:59But, you know, it's a... right, it has to be somebody that's holy. It has to be somebody that's, you know, that's very, very close to Hashem already. And it has to be also from the lineage of King David. There are certain requirements that they have to have. I have several shiurim about Mashiach, if you're interested in the topic. We should just do teshuva. Where you live is irrelevant as long as it helps you do teshuva. If living in Israel is going to help you be holier, be there. If you're going to become secular, be here. Because someone who is secular living on top of the Kotel HaMa'aravi is not going to help them. Where you live is not as important as where your heart is. If your heart is with Hashem, you're good. You know, if being in Israel is going to help you do that, then be in Israel, but if it's going to create shalom bayit problems... It's gonna create financial problems. It's gonna create religious problems. All of a sudden, you want to go to the beach every weekend. Then, going to Israel is a sin. It's not a mitzvah. You know, so everybody has to use their logic. Be'ezrat Hashem, we have another shiur tomorrow night. Look at my Facebook page. What is it? I forget the address. And then, we also have another one on Thursday in another place, which I also forgot, and...

2:36:13But look at my Facebook page. It's Be'ezrat Hashem on Facebook or my name. And also on our website, BeEzratHashem.org. Like I said, there are these CDs in the back. Take some for yourself. There are extras; give them to people. There are also Shemirat HaLashon cards for your houses, offices, and so on. Use them. And anyone that wants to take on the mitzvah of Tzitzit, I brought some Tzitziot for you, and you can take them for free as well. Baruch Adonai Le'olam. Amen ve'amen.