Disaster Hit, PeSach and Connection To MaShiach

0:18In the name of G-d, we will do and succeed. We have our weekly Shiur. Usually, we do it on Sunday. We started a new series recently about Jewish ideology, but we'll make a little segue today and discuss a few things that are relevant to the times and also to... We have our weekly shiur. Usually, we do it on Sunday. We started a new series recently about Jewish ideology, but we'll make a little segue today and discuss a few things that are relevant to the times and also to Not only what's going on with the world, but also Pesach, Baruch Hashem. Pesach is coming. We're only a couple of days away from Pesach. And Be'ezrat Hashem, it's going to be a fantastic Pesach. But also discuss a hot subject, which is Mashiach. as much as I've told you guys that it's not really very fruitful to be Mashiach addicts, I figured I'd respond in the way of the Torah once again about this particular subject because it seems like today everybody has a prophet that they know.

1:36Every day, there is a new prophet: Mashiach is coming next week, Mashiach is coming on Tuesday, Mashiach is coming on Shabbat, Mashiach is coming on Shavuot, Mashiach is coming on Pesach, before Pesach, after the Seder, before the Seder. Everybody is a prophet. Gematria of Mashiach is this, Gematria of that. Everybody is a mathematician prophet. So, b'ezrat Hashem, we have to understand that there are some chachamim who know what they're talking about, but unfortunately, sometimes the crowd distorts their words, mistranslates their words, or simply doesn't understand. So, it's good to clarify some of these things. And how to connect all of these three? Now, today's shiur will be for a refuah shlema for Levana bat Sarah, for Yosef ben Levana, Sarah bat Levana. For David ben Esriah, Doris bat Jorah, Rabbi Efraim ben Shulamit, Rabbanit Nitzara bat Anat, Stefan ben Katerina, Dvora bat Mercedes, Esther bat Zipporah, Serach bat Batya, Batya bat Sarah,

2:52And all of Am Yisrael, b'ezrat Hashem, have refuah sheleimah, refuat hanefesh, refuat haguf. Also, for my dear friend Avraham ben Avraham, may he have refuah sheleimah. Him, his wife, and his children, b'ezrat Hashem, will have refuah sheleimah, refuat hanefesh, refuat haguf. So the preparation for So for Pesach, for most people, it has never been like it is right now. Because no one really ever prepared themselves for a mageifah, for a plague that we have right now that's hitting the world. Even at the time of Mitzrayim, when they saw the plague, they were surprised too. Even though the plague only hit the Egyptians. Am Yisrael was in surprise because this is the first time they ever saw it. It was the last time that the world ever saw such a thing. Where one guy could sit next to the next one. He has a plague and he's dying. He's contagious. And the other guy is standing right next to him as if it's a clear sunny day and he's on vacation. The Jew is on, the Bnei Yisrael are on vacation, having a good time. The Egyptian is suffering. Hashem Yishmor Ve'yatzil.

4:13Unfortunately, the situation is not the same right now. Because any two-minute investment, as I've told you guys, five minutes max on the news just to see what's going on is the most I would ever say is good. But honestly, I'm lowering it to two. Because nothing really changes. Nothing really changes aside from, you know, just more horrible news, more people dying, more people infected, and more lies by the news and the governments. You know, who, what, when, and how. It doesn't really make a difference, truly. It doesn't really make a difference. Last count that I saw was that over 1.2 million people have been confirmed infected by the virus, COVID-19. And the number of dead people has already hit over 50,000. There are some countries and areas that are suffering more than others percentage-wise. Like, for example, Spain, Iran, and Italy. These are countries that are suffering greatly, where literally 10% of the people they are reporting as sick are dying. 10%.

5:36Now, for anyone who says, "Oh, well, 90% are saved." No, it doesn't mean 90% are saved. It just means 10% so far died. Baruch Hashem, there are others that are okay, who get out of it, but 10% dying is atrocious. Baruch Hashem, in Eretz Yisrael and in America, the numbers are much better as far as the survival rate, at least to this extent, to this point. Baruch Hashem, Baruch Hashem, may it continue. You know, you're talking about in America, it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 1%, 1.2%, something like that. I mean, sure, they have greater numbers, but still, you see that HaKadosh Baruch Hu is simply punishing one more than the other. There's more sick here in America. They've passed over a quarter million or 300,000 or so. But the number of people that are actually dying from it is much less. I personally know many people already, unfortunately, that have this COVID-19. But Baruch Hashem, every single one that I know, with the exception of one guy, is doing fantastic. And the one guy, Baruch Hashem, is already in the last stage of recovery.

6:45Everybody else, Baruch Hashem, they have it, but Baruch Hashem, they're all okay. So, you know, you get slapped in the face, get, you know, a wake-up call to do some cheshbon hanefesh, but if you're okay, you're okay, Baruch Hashem. Unfortunately, not everybody has the same cheshbon with Hashem. There are a lot of people dying, and unfortunately, there are Jews and non-Jews. You can't say, like some people thought in the beginning, oh, this plague is only to hit the goyim. Wishful thinking. wishful thinking, but the truth is that it's not. It's hitting everybody in certain aspects. It seems like it's hurting Am Yisrael percentage-wise more than it's hurting the rest of the nations. Because statistically speaking, Am Yisrael is, what, 15, 20 million that we know about out of 8 billion people in the world, so out of let's say the one million or so that are infected out of eight billion, there really shouldn't be even one Jew sick. Statistically speaking, there shouldn't be even one Jew sick. There should be, I don't know, 500 million Chinese or something. There should be, you know, 500 million Muslims, 500 million Hindus. That, okay, you finished the whole thing. It doesn't make any sense. It shows... so out of, let's say, the one million or so that are infected out of eight billion, there really shouldn't be even one Jew sick. Statistically speaking, there shouldn't be even one Jew sick. There should be, I don't know, 500 million Chinese or something. There should be, you know, 500 million Muslims, 500 million Hindus. That, okay, you finished the whole thing. It doesn't make any sense. It shows

8:12is chas v'shalom. Chas v'shalom is almost making it seem, at least from the outside perspective, as if all bets are off. But of course, as we all know, The salvation of HaKadosh Baruch Hu comes from the turmoil, from the times where it seems like there's no hope and things that look hopeless. And that's actually part of what's going on, what we saw in Pesach. You know, where we were slaves at the worst possible level. On top of it, our forefathers were idol worshippers. And then Moshe Rabbeinu shows up. And we get to the Torah. I mean, if you actually look at it, if you didn't know the story, it comes from the Torah. Hey, Tom, listen, these are the rules. God says He's the only God. And that's pretty much the main commandment that you have in the world today. Don't eat any living animals. Don't, you know, murder anyone. You know, you have seven Noahide laws in essence. Don't steal—things that are logical.

9:19So these guys that are, you know, the so-called chosen ones, they're violating it. How are they doing the worst one? Idol worshipping. Oh, Hashem sends them the Mashiach. From a grand scheme, if you're an outsider, a bystander, it doesn't make any sense. Why would He send them the Mashiach when they're idol worshipping? if you say, "Oh, there were a bunch of tzaddikim, you know, praying Netz, praying this, praying that. Everybody knows the entire Shas by heart, everybody's giving shiurim to each other, everybody loves each other, unity, all the good things. Ah, Mashiach shows up. What fantastic news! Of course he's going to show up for all the tzaddikim. What's the news here?" But you see, it's the opposite. We were in the worst possible level, and HaKadosh Baruch Hu sent us the Mashiach. This does not mean, like the resha'im would think, "Oh, so we should get worse then." No, it doesn't mean that. It means that HaKadosh Baruch Hu will bring us sometimes the light, bring us His light when things seem the most dark.

10:23Now, because of everything that's going on in the world today, as far as this coronavirus and the even worse virus that's happening in the world, which is the economic crash that's in the makings, that's actually happening but is, in my opinion, still in the making. Everyone is being forced at some point or another to do a self-evaluation of where they stand in the grand plan of HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Is He part of your plan, or do you have your own plan that excludes Hashem? Because that's, in essence, going to determine whether you are an idol worshiper or you're not. Because if Hashem is the number one part of your plan, then you are okay. If Hashem is not part of your plan or He's only sometimes part of your plan, then you are a hundred percent an idol worshiper or, at the very least, a partial idol worshiper. You're like an unemployed idol worshiper, you know, you work sometimes when they need you.

11:27So the point is, Rabotai, that HaKadosh Baruch Hu is bringing the world to its knees right now to make sure that everyone has an opportunity. Everyone has an opportunity to do this self-evaluation once and for all. And the reason why is because anyone that read the issues that are discussed in detail in the Tanach about what will happen before Mashiach comes knows that for sure this is not the worst it's going to get before Mashiach comes. And the reason why is because we have clear prophecies in the Torah that tell us what's going to happen before Mashiach is going to come. Now, of course, some people are going to say, "Yeah, but all the bad prophecies don't have to be fulfilled." You're right. They don't have to be fulfilled, assuming we have the merit for them not to be fulfilled.

12:30Meaning, if we are a generation of all righteous, and everybody starts teaching and learning real Torah, and everybody starts, you know, observing Hashem's mitzvot like He said it, and not like we want it, then sure, none of the bad prophecies will be fulfilled. Everybody is going to be Mashiach. You're going to be Mashiach. I'm going to be Mashiach. Everybody's Mashiach. Why? You're all tzaddikim. Everybody's tzaddikim. No bad prophecies. Moshe Rabbeinu is going to come and ask us for brachot. But who are we kidding? Who are we kidding? Before coronavirus, they had gay parades on a weekly basis. It's called disgusting in the eyes of Hashem to be homosexual. Needless to say, to do it openly and publicly. And not only do they do it in different places around the world, but they do it in the Jewish capitals of the world. They do it in New York, they do it in Yerushalayim, they do it in Tel Aviv, in places where you have the most amount of Jews. i'm not talking about biblical capital, i'm talking about literally when you have the most amount of Jews. You see the biggest gay parades. The people that are kadosh, who say these people are an abomination, you're having parades for them. You think we're doing good when we all cancel out all the bad prophecies? On what basis?

13:48What world do you live in? Where does this brain of yours come from? Pluto? Reality, you see. Then you have a situation where you have, like we talked about last week, many of the so-called religious Jews today are a little weak in certain aspects. Whether it's the way we pray in minyan, whether it's the kavod that we give to the people that have a few dollars just because they have a few dollars. So we give them an aliyah, even though we know they drove to shul on Shabbat. We put their name on the building just because they donated the money, even though we know that they're mechalel Shabbat, or they're idol worshippers in some aspects. No, but Rabbi, we're not going to get the money if we don't give them the kavod, so don't take the money. What do you mean? Then we're not going to have a yeshiva. Who said? Who said you're not going to have a yeshiva if he doesn't donate? What do you mean? Rabbi, he has the million dollars. I need the yeshiva. The two are a good match. Who said it's a good match? Who said HaKadosh Baruch Hu wants your yeshiva? Why? There's going to be a lot of Torah learned there. Who said it's going to be a lot of good Torah? Who said if the money comes from a non-kosher place, you can bet your house nothing good is going to come out of it.

15:08Nothing good is going to come out of it. The Klausenberger Rebbe, alav hashalom, ish kodesh, his tefillat Mincha is better than any of our tefillat Neila for Yom Kippur. It's regular day-to-day tefilla. I heard his tefilla a couple of times. I can't handle it. I'm telling you, you hear his tefilla, regular tefilla, everyday tefilla, you just start crying. You have no idea what's happening, what he's saying, what he's not saying. All you know is that this guy, he knows what he's doing. Him and Hashem, they're best friends. They're best friends. Why? He's crying to HaKadosh Baruch Hu and we don't even know how to cry. He built an empire. The Tsanz Empire. Hospitals. Yeshivot. Places to help the poor and the sick. An empire. An empire. Different parts of the world. Whether it was in Germany or it was in America or in Netanya in Israel. All over the world. Huge. Huge. Baruch Hashem. Huge. Huge. huge congregation, huge Chassidus to this day. So, he needed millions of dollars, not like, "Oh, let's play, we have a little campaign, a hundred thousand dollars to help some poor people." Okay, we reached already thousands of people, but I'm talking about, this is what he would do on a daily basis. A guy comes to him one time, he says, "Listen, Rebbe, one of his Chassidim says, 'Listen, Rebbe, I have this guy, he's a gvir, he has money, he wants to donate...'"

16:35Okay, so let me talk to him. So he comes, sits down with him, and he sees the guy's an older man. And at the moment, the Klausenberger Rebbe says to him, so what do you do? The guy says, oh, no, you know, I have these businesses, this, that, all these types of businesses. So he says to him, oh, so you must be very busy running all your businesses. And he says to them, "No, I'm already, all my businesses, they already run themselves. They already run themselves, so I don't need to run them anymore. No, most of the time I just spend with my friends. I go play some cards at the casino, have a good time. Relax, Rabbi." He said, he didn't say, he said, "Yeah, no." And he's got a check, big check, seven-figure, eight-figure check. He says to him, "Everything's okay, I can just relax." Now everybody's excited to see the check. The Klausenberger Rebbe's face changes. He looks at the 70-year-old man, and he says to him, "Don't you have any shame? Don't you have shame? What shame? What would I do, Rabbi?"

18:00Don't you have any shame? You're already 70 years old, and all you do is waste your time. When are you going to learn Torah? You're almost going to die soon. When are you going to learn Torah? And what? You're relying on the fact that you give some money to build yeshivot. You think that's going to help you? You're going to Gehenom. Not only are you going to Gehenom for not learning Torah, you're going to Gehenom for the tzedakah you gave, he tells him, in front of people. You're going to Gehenom for the tzedakah you gave. Because that money that you made, you made it gambling. Which means that the money is not kosher. And that non-kosher money fed these holy kids, these tinokot shel beit rabban that never sinned. It fed them, and that means that when they ate your food from your money, it was not kosher money, and they couldn't understand the Torah that they learned. You're going to suffer in Gehenom for causing them to learn such Torah. Nobody in the world expected this to come from the Klausenberger Rebbe, a person who was inside the Holocaust, lost ten of his children and his wife in the Holocaust, saw death in front of his face, and loved every Jew. No one expected this. They saw it, and everyone was shocked. No one dared to say a word, including the rich guy.

19:24But the rich guy, who had never been talked to this way, picked up his stuff and left. The Chassidim were a little upset. Why? They were just about to sign a deal with this guy for a few million dollars, build a few buildings, another building, hospital, another yeshiva, more Torah in the world, more good stuff. They said, "Rebbe, what happened?" The Klausenberger Rebbe said, "I'm not delusional to think that what I just said to him is going to make this guy do real teshuva tomorrow." But at the very least, if my words of emet are going to affect him to not continue being a complete rasha, to continue his way without any pain, without any consideration that the fact that what he's doing is wrong, it's worth it. It's worth it to lose all the money in the world and the donations in the world and to get money from such a person. go show me, go show me people that are doing the same thing. Not many, not many, not many. Why? Because I would say, sometimes, even though we believe in Hashem, even though we love Hashem, the reality is sometimes we have a little bit of an emunah crisis. When it comes to money, all bets are off. We put Hashem on the side. Okay, let me close this one deal, then I'll get back to you, Hashem.

20:45Let me close this one deal, and then I'll get back to You. I'll take this job, I'll take this contract, I'll do this deal, and I'll get back to You, Hashem. No, if Hashem didn't want me to do it, why did He send me this criminal? We rationalize. Why? Because that's what the Satan wants us to do. So we have issues in the religious world also, Rabotai. Whether it's the Batei Keneset, or it's money issues, or what's happening also in the business crisis. You have a business crisis. No one really seems to talk about it. It's a business crisis. When was the last time you signed up, you did a deal with one honest contractor? In any business! In any business, when can you find somebody, find me somebody that's considered an honest business person that you actually pay him for what he says he's gonna do, and he actually does it? I'm not talking about somebody that does above and beyond. I'm saying, somebody, you say, listen, what service do you sell? Oh, I clean pools. Okay, I got you. What service do you sell? Oh, I build, I fix kitchens. Okay, I got you. What else do you do? I sell chairs. Okay, I got you. I build this. Everybody has their job. No problem. It doesn't mean it's exclusive to one industry. All industries.

21:58You tell the guy, what do you do? I do this, this, and this. How much is it going to cost? It's going to cost this, this, and this. You negotiate, you don't negotiate, whatever you want to do. I personally, throughout my whole life, don't like negotiating, and I don't negotiate, which I know is not really Jewish. But that's, I don't negotiate. Why? First of all, I don't see the purpose. I just don't see the purpose of negotiating. Unless the guy, if the guy's cheating me, I don't want to do business with him anyway. And if the guy is making a living, let him make a living. I don't know, for some reason, people think that no one has a right to make a living except them. It doesn't make any sense to me. doesn't make any sense. People don't want anyone to make a living. This also happens sometimes now where people say, "Listen, I want to donate money. Can I send it to some type of terminal without charging a fee?" And I said, "Yeah, you can send a check. I mean, you know, it's a little inconvenient. You could write a check, send a check, a donation by check." "Oh, is there any other way?" "Um, I don't know. You could do other things, but why not just send it on the website?" "No, no, they're going to charge me a fee." know, I said, “Yeah, they're a bank. They're a merchant bank. They make money.” “Well, I don't like paying fees.” “Oh, I don't like paying fees either. No one likes to pay fees. But at the end of the day, it's convenient, and you have to pay for convenience. And if anything, you should be happy. You should be happy to pay a fee. Why? If they didn't have a business, if nobody was going to pay a fee, guess what? You wouldn't have this convenience.”

23:22If PayPal and all of these other merchant banking companies did not allow you to do what you're doing, guess what? Business would go back to the way it was in the days of Antiochus. You'd have to travel with your horse with the cash in the back seat. People are always micromanaging. No, no, I want to save the $20, $30, $40, $10, $5 in fees. The reality is, my father told me something a long time ago. When it comes to business, God bless him, he's a smart man. He says, when it comes to business, don't negotiate the small stuff. Only the big stuff. Let people make money. A few hundred dollars, let them make the money. What do you care? The few hundred dollars is going to change your life. If it does, you shouldn't be doing the business in the first place. Why? You're going to save $20? It's going to change your life? No. So give him the $20. Mabrouk, let him make money. Let him be happy. What do you care? $100, $200, $50, whatever is little to you. It's small money. If you're negotiating a house, you're negotiating a castle, you're negotiating a company, you're negotiating, I don't know, a building, you're talking about a difference of hundreds of thousands of dollars or even tens of thousands of dollars. Fine, okay, now you want to negotiate. Negotiate. It means something. But a guy's going to make a few hundred dollars. Mabrouk, let him make a living.

24:44Let them make a living. Why do you always want to do business and make everybody unhappy? No one's going to want to do business with you. Why? Because you're the miser who doesn't want anybody to eat. Only you. It's a very, very bad trait that people have. Now again, I understand people want to say, "No, no, Rabbi, it's not about that. It's because I want every one of my dollars to go towards the kiruv, towards the mitzvah." It is. Even if you're paying a fee, it's going towards that. Why? Because that is a convenience of getting the money today versus getting the money in a week from now. Or not getting the money at all because you're going to forget, or the Yetzer Hara is going to attack. And by the time you wanted to write the check, it went from 500 to 50. You forgot a zero because, you know, the Yetzer Hara attacked. That's what happens. Rabotai, don't negotiate small fees. Don't waste your time. Don't waste your time. Don't try to save money on that stuff. If HaKadosh Baruch Hu did not have all these conveniences in the world,

25:47We wouldn't be able to do a lot of things that we do right now. To be honest with you, this whole campaign that we did with Eretz Yisrael, with feeding all the poor people, if it wasn't for the conveniences that HaKadosh Baruch Hu provided for us, the banking and stuff like that, it would be impossible. Because as we're getting, we're sending, and it got to a point where there was more demand than there was money. So we just sent 20,000 ahead of time. Why? He said, listen, I'm not going to wait for people to send. I have the extra 20,000. I'd say it's going. Yeah, but what about the other stuff that HaKadosh Baruch Hu is going to send? Why? HaKadosh Baruch Hu wrote, "Who did Me a favor first? And I'll pay him right away." Meaning in reality, no one does Hashem a favor first. And as you would have it, right before it, there were a few donors that felt extra generous, who gave us a small, first time in the history of Be'ezrat Hashem, we had a surplus. Right before we started the campaign. We didn't know why we had a surplus. I asked Rav Efraim, I asked Rabbanit, I said, guys, we have a meeting. Why? We have danger. Why danger? For the first time in history, since we started the organization, we have a surplus. Usually we're in a deficit. Usually we don't have money to eat. Right now we have too much money. What's going on here? Maybe HaKadosh Baruch Hu is paying us in this world to destroy us.

26:57Rav Efraim said, "No, no, don't worry, it's going to be, we're doing good, don't worry." Rabbanit says, "Oh, we'll ask Rav Efraim." Baruch Hashem, the idea came up, "Oh, we have to campaign, Pesach's coming, oh, we're going to do a campaign, last year we did 10,000, this year we'll do more. How much more? We'll do 100,000. We're going to get 100,000. I don't know, we'll get 100,000. We're almost there." We're almost there. We had no idea who, what, when, and how, but we said, let's go. How are we going to start the campaign? We'll send the money, but we didn't get the money yet. Yeah, but we'll send it anyway. Why? We have this extra money. It's Hashem's kids, not our kids. It's Hashem's kids. Send the extra money that we have. So we send the extra money. And HaKadosh Baruch Hu fulfilled the verse, "Who did Me first, and I'll pay him." But the reality is, if it wasn't for the convenience that HaKadosh Baruch Hu provided to give us the ability to send things right away, Right away from bank to bank, right to the people, right to the grocery store, right to different places. All over Eretz Yisrael, in Yavneh, in Yerushalayim, in Netanya, we're talking about thousands of people. Thousands of people are eating Pesach, are going to be eating Pesach, because of all of the generosity of people.

28:10Now, of course, all of this costs money, and there are banking fees, and there are conversion rates of currency, and you send them 10,000 and they really only get 9,000 because this one wants to make money and that one wants to get money. Who cares? He's going to eat. You know what? I'm not going to eat for Pesach. Why? It's going to cost you $100. Forget it. I'm not going to eat. We're going to fast. We're going to fast this year. Because it's going to cost you $100. It's going to cost you $1,000 to pay the fee for PayPal. It's going to cost you $100,000 for this, for that. You know what? We're all going to starve. It's okay. Just don't pay the fee. Just don't pay the banking fee, Rabbi. Rabbi, banking fee. No, we're all going to fast. We're all going to fast. No seder. We're going to eat matzah, afikoman was left. Guys, rabotai, please, don't let the yetzer hara fool you. There are tools that HaKadosh Baruch Hu provided, use them. use them if you're such an organized person that you have such a thing where you could send things and you want to save money on the stamps and on the fees and all this stuff. You want to send it to Zelle or Venmo or you want to sell a check, all that stuff, you want to do it, do it. But don't let that stuff get in the way too much. Let people make money on you. It's okay.

29:34It's not going to affect your parnassah. And it doesn't turn you into a sucker either. It doesn't. Why? HaKadosh Baruch Hu decided how much money you're going to make anyway. HaKadosh Baruch Hu decided how much money you're going to make anyway. It doesn't make a difference if you pay that extra $5 or $10 or $50 to PayPal. He decides how much money you're going to make anyway. So take that into consideration. Also, it shows that your mind is being distracted by different things. Now, moving on, we have to understand that HaKadosh Baruch Hu has us in such a situation where, on one hand, we have a lot of conveniences in the world, but on the other hand, we have a situation where all of it could collapse in a minute. Because what's happening with this COVID-19 is that right now, as I explained to you guys last week, we have a circumstance where people are not going to work to the same extent. Almost 10 million people, almost 10 million people, are out of a job right now in the last month. And that's only based on the count up to the first half of March. Really, things got bad the second half of March, which means that the news is going to get much worse when the report comes out again in the next week or two.

30:47So, the situation is not exactly good, which means that people are going to stay out of work. Now, if you stay out of work for a while, you're either going to get fired—most likely you already got fired—but if you didn't get fired, you're going to get fired. Aside from that, you're going to run out of money, and you're not going to be able to pay your bills. Then it becomes a domino effect, like we talked about last week. I personally think that my guess is that people are simply going to get sick of staying at home, and they're just all going to go outside without the government's permission. That's what I think is going to happen. People are handling it right now because they're so scared. They're scared; no one wants to get sick. The news makes it seem like every two seconds somebody dies, you know, like everyone's dying. It makes it seem like there are bodies, you know, building up; you know, they're building buildings from bodies now. You know, they're making, yeah, they're making it like it's the Holocaust on every street. Okay, a lot of people are dying, a lot of people are sick, but we have to put things in perspective. It's not like the end of the world.

32:00it's not the end of the world, but the media makes it seem like it is. Every single person that dies, there's like five news articles about them. Oh, Kevin said that, we got it. No, what's gonna happen is people right now, they're not really suffering. They're annoyed, they're bored, they're scared. They're out of work for, let's say, the last few weeks. But once it gets to the point where they start running out of money, Finished. All bets are off. Trump, Bibi Netanyahu, and any president in between in every other country is going to go in the garbage. Why? People are going to say, listen, I'm going to die one way or another. I'm either going to die from COVID-19 or I'm going to die from starvation. I have to eat. Unless you're going to start paying my bills, I have to eat. I got to go back to work. And that's what's really going to happen. People are just simply going to go back to work. Why? Because that's it. That's the way it is. You have to make money. Now, if that doesn't happen, that's only going to be because HaKadosh Baruch Hu is going to get involved with people's free choice to an extent to scare them too much, to act irrationally and stay like this for a long time. Staying closed, staying indoors, staying petrified and not wanting to leave the house for months, and completely shattering the economy to an extent like we've never seen before.

33:21And the reason why I said "never have seen before" and don't include, let's say, the Great Depression in this is because in the times of the Great Depression, we didn't have the speed of our economy like we have today. It took time to make the Great Depression what it was. And it took time to heal it. Here, the whole thing can happen in a matter of a couple of months because it's all based on certain things. I personally don't think it's going to happen. I think bad stuff may happen, but I don't necessarily think it's going to happen. But who knows? The point being, Rabotai, is that one way or another, HaKadosh Baruch Hu is putting everyone in their own private school. right now, to delve into what is the point of life? What is going on? Where am I going? Why am I here? I receive quite a few text messages every single day from people who are scared. Even after I calm them down, it only calms them down for about an hour. Then they send another five text messages and ask, "What happened?" I don't know what happened. Just listen to the same message I sent you an hour ago. Oh, okay. And it's the same thing over and over. People just can't absorb it sometimes.

34:29So, you have to understand, HaKadosh Baruch Hu, if you're scared, that means there's less Hashem in your life. There's less Hashem in your life, you have to add Hashem. The cure? Torah. You have to learn about HaKadosh Baruch Hu. That's really the point. Now, what a lot of people are doing now, is that they're connecting the disaster that's happening in the world to Mashiach. Because everyone understands that things are bad, They could get worse. They seem to be getting worse on a day-to-day basis. So, does this mean that Hashem is going to send us salvation like He did with Moshe Rabbeinu? Right? Wrong. The reason why it's wrong is because anyone that learns about the topic of Mashiach is going to understand that there is going to be a series of events that take place before Mashiach. Now, although there are some tzaddikim, some chachamim that have discussed there being a plague before Mashiach and different crises and so on and so forth, this by itself is not it.

35:42only if it gets much, much worse, where the numbers magnify to the hundreds of millions and more, Will this go into that argument? And the reason why is because, again, it says that the whole world is going to have to be in a situation, a circumstance, where there's going to be, you'll have nothing to rely on other than HaKadosh Baruch Hu. The truth is, even though that's true for perhaps you and I, and for the people that are watching, For the people that may be religious and watching in other places, that's not the majority of the world. The majority of the world is coasting. A lot of people are coasting; a lot of people are on vacation right now. They're taking a walk, strolling. "Oh, there's no work this week? Okay, good, we'll ride the bike." I see in my neighborhood, people riding their bikes, the little ducks. Father, mother, son, daughter, uncle, everybody. Everybody's riding a bike. They're on vacation, they're all tourists. But they live right there. They ride their bikes. They're riding bikes. Everybody's riding bikes. They're having a good time. They're having a barbecue. Everybody's having a good time. The vast majority of people don't like the news. Yeah, of course, there are a lot of sick people in different places, in New York and this and that. But generally speaking, most people are almost unaffected.

37:12Uncomfortable, bored maybe, but not to the extent where we could see this is on the same level as the Holocaust. Now, why do I mention the Holocaust? Because we have specific statements from the Chachamim that it's going to be worse than the Holocaust. The Chafetz Chaim said to his talmidim, Rav Wasserman being one of them, this is the first, Gog and Magog has three sections, three parts. First part is going to be World War I. World War I made every war before it that we know on record seem like it was kindergarten. And that's what happened. He said the next war that's coming, which was in the future for him at the time that he said this, is going to make World War I seem like it was kindergarten. And that's what happened. World War II made World War I seem like it was kindergarten. Tens of millions of people were dead. Tens of millions. Countries are not tens of millions; sometimes tens of millions of people in countries did horrible, horrible things. And he said the last part of Gog u'Magog is going to make World War II seem like kindergarten. Kindergarten is just making it seem like it's going to be small, not people on bicycles, to be clear.

38:39No one's on bicycles during World War III. So, the truth is, Rabotai, if this is Hashem's last hurrah before He brings Mashiach Tzidkeinu, I'm sorry, but it's going to get much worse. Not because we want it, but rather because we need it. In the commentary on the Haggadah that we're writing, Baruch Hashem, Rabbi Ephraim brings one of the Chiddushim from the Chachamim, and he says, how come in the beginning of the Haggadah, it brings us something very peculiar, where it says that, in all the Haggadot, whether Ashkenazi or Sephardi, it says that, look, from the beginning of time, your forefathers were idol worshippers?

39:43Chachamim asked, you didn't find anything else to compliment, to say about Am Yisrael at the start of the Haggadah? The author of the Haggadah, you couldn't find anything? He says, At first, our forefathers were idol worshippers. You couldn't find, oh, there were tzaddikim like Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, Moshe, Aharon, David, Shlomo, all these tzaddikim. I mean, Adam HaRishon even, you want to go back all the way to the beginning, all of them. Really, the secret behind the sin, the original sin, is that he wanted to live forever so he could serve Hashem forever. That's the reason why he made the sin. That's the real reason. Anyone who thinks that he just wanted to go against Hashem because he wanted an apple or something is sick in their head. The real reason is because he wanted to serve Hashem fully, forever, and he knew that he was going to die. So yeah, he wanted to serve Hashem forever. He wanted to find out where the Tree of Life is. But he didn't know where the Tree of Life is because the pasuk says the Tree of Life was in the middle of the garden. But where's the middle? So he had to eat from the Tree of Knowledge to find out where the middle is. See, even if you go to the beginning, Adam HaRishon, Kodesh Kodashim, the only one that HaKadosh Baruch Hu himself with His own hands made him. Go back to him, what a tzaddik he was.

41:03spoke to HaKadosh Baruch Hu like they were friends. Talk about him. Talk about Noach—saved the whole world. The only reason we're here is Noach. All you have to say is your forefathers were idol worshippers. Nothing else. So the Chachamim explain that this is specifically to highlight the chesed of Hashem. The chesed of Hashem on Am Yisrael, that despite our flaws, He still saved us, but even more so to understand why we had to become slaves. You see, Rabotai Yekarim, Am Yisrael was superior from the beginning. The Shevatim, the 12 tribes, were superior to everyone else. Anyone that reads the Midrashim, like Midrash Me'am Loez, Midrash Rabbah, and goes into the details of their lives, behind the scenes, behind the Pesukim, talks about the wars, you see that the Shevatim were superheroes. They had superhuman powers. Their intellect was beyond anything we could comprehend.

42:21If one of them would walk around in the world today, we would think of him as some type of a god. It would not be normal to be next to such people. They would defeat entire armies by themselves. So, their kids were good too, but when you are around a bunch of idol worshippers, after a while it starts affecting you. Same thing happened even before them. Avraham didn't come from a good place. He didn't have a Shomer Shabbat father. His father, Terach, was the Walmart of idolatry. But despite that, Avraham overcame it. Meaning that, Rabotai, whether you go to Avraham or you go to the Shevatim or anywhere you go, idolatry was already in the system. So HaKadosh Baruch Hu had to cleanse this filth...

43:22out of our neshamot. How? By literally breaking us down. The reason why we felt like we could do whatever we wanted is because we were, in essence, superior to everyone else. They were smarter than everybody else, they were more powerful than everybody else. You see, look, Yosef HaTzadik, the guy sitting in jail for 12 years, no one knows who, what, when, and how. the end of the whole thing, the guy goes up, and one day he makes Egypt the richest country in the world. It's like you gave the guy—he's like a hedge fund manager—you gave him five bucks, and he turned it into a billion. How? He gave you an idea that you should have had yourself, but you didn't know how to execute it. No, they not only didn't know it; they did not execute anything. They said, "Listen, you're like a man of God. You do what you want. We'll give you everything." The Midrash says that on the day that Pharaoh made him the Viceroy, made Yosef HaTzadik the Viceroy, he made him a billionaire also.

44:23Well, it's not nice to make the guy that's number two next to the king, next to the Paro, some guy that's making $100,000, $200,000 a year. No, no, we're going to put you on the same level. Make a throne for you, make a castle for you, make everything for you. That's why for all of those heroes that think that there's no proofs, archaeological proofs to the Torah, you should look at some of the museums that highlight this. There are certain places in the world that have different archaeological evidence. of what happened in Egypt, and you actually see much proof, a lot of proof, about specifically Yosef HaTzadik. Specifically Yosef HaTzadik. They called him a different name. I have a book in my house. Recently, it was published by Rabbi Zamir Cohen, that talks about these archaeological proofs of the Torah, and you see that literally from the beginning of Bereishit, from Bereishit all the way to the end, there is archaeological proof of it. Which means that if you haven't seen it, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It just means you haven't studied enough. Because there's a lot of it.

45:25And it's not just Josephus. People think Josephus is like the Torah. No, it's not just him. There are many other historians, many other proofs, many other writings, many other things. There are even writings among the goyim, for example, of people that wrote about Yehoshua bin Nun. Yehoshua bin Nun—they chased him away. They were scared of Yehoshua bin Nun. When Yehoshua bin Nun went to Eretz Yisrael, the goyim ran away. Some of them ran away. So they wrote about it in their own newspapers 3,300 years ago. So we're running away from this wicked evil Yehoshua bin Nun. They had paparazzi over there. Everybody. There were cameras and everything. The point is, rabotai, there is proof for everything. If you didn't find it, it means you didn't look hard enough. Now, the beauty is, rabotai, is that Am Yisrael was superior, was full of geniuses, powerful people. But that also builds into your ga'ava, builds into your ego. And HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, I can't stand people that are arrogant.

46:35And He had to break us down because of our superiority. We started doing things that weren't like the original agreement. We started worshipping idols because the idols in those times actually worked. Hashem made a test in that time that the idols actually had powers. Egypt was full of superpower witchcraft. That's part of the reason why Am Yisrael could not leave Egypt. Even when they tried, the statues would talk. The statues would talk and be like alarms. And as soon as someone left the camp, the statues would make a lot of noise, and the people would be caught and killed. So there were a lot of things that people don't read from the basic pesukim. The point is that HaKadosh Baruch Hu brought us to Egypt in order to break us down, in order to cleanse us of this idolatry. To remove idolatry from our system. Now, to remove idolatry from your system is not so simple. Because idolatry, unlike other things, doesn't actually make sense.

47:46If you have a desire for, let's say, the opposite sex, that makes sense. Why? It's a physical issue there. There are hormones, there are feelings, and so on. So if you are an addict to promiscuity, it does make sense. It's wrong, but it makes sense. If you are addicted to money, it makes sense. Why? Because there is something rational about it where you conclude in your mind that this money is your cure to certain problems. It may give you a certain amount of respect, it may give you a certain amount of pleasure, a certain amount of convenience, and so on and so forth. That makes sense. A lot of these things that people have addictions to make sense. It doesn't make them right, but you could explain them. Idolatry, on the other hand, It makes sense. Why? Because there is something rational about it where you conclude in your mind that this money is your cure to certain problems. It may give you a certain amount of respect, it may give you a certain amount of pleasure, a certain amount of convenience, and so on and so forth. That makes sense. A lot of these things that people have addictions to make sense. It doesn't make them right, but you could explain them. Idolatry, on the other hand, the root of it doesn't make sense. Although part of it does make sense, because certain people say, no, no, I don't believe that the idol itself is God, but I believe that the idol connects me to God. But the truth is, if you know about idolatry, and you know about HaKadosh Baruch Hu Himself, this God that you believe in, or you say you believe in, the two cannot connect. Why? Because God is everything, and you are using nothing to replace Him.

49:07He is everything, and you're replacing Him with the creation's creation. If you were, let's say, to idolize a living person, a creation, that's one thing. It's wrong, but nonetheless, it's something. It's second degree, let's say. But here, people are replacing God with nothing. It's the creation of creation, which is the lowest form of creation. But that also means that even the second level won't make sense after a short period of time because once that person dies, he can no longer be that significant anymore. The point being, Rabbi, is that HaKadosh Baruch Hu had to remove this. But in order to remove avodah zarah, it requires a person's willpower. A person needs to want to get rid of it. You can't just tell the guy, listen, look, I can prove to you certain things about the New Testament, it's fake. You could show it to them. Yeah, you're right. It doesn't make any sense, but I'm still going to church. Why? Why are you still going to church? You just agreed. It doesn't make any sense. Things contradict themselves. Yeah, it doesn't make any sense, but I don't know. I'm so used to it. My family's there. I like it. I don't know. What else am I going to do? I can't do what you're doing. It's too much. It's like you see people. They know the truth, but they stay stuck. They stay stuck. Why? You have to want it.

50:33You have to want it. I heard Rabbi Mizrahi quote Rabbeinu Lopiansky, who said about 50-60 years ago that, in order to remove Edom, the idolatry of the world, it requires destroying the world. In order to remove the idolatry of this world, HaKadosh Baruch Hu has to destroy the world. Why? It's embedded into people. not like just something Hashem is going to appear and people say, "Oh, Hashem." It doesn't work that way. It doesn't work that way. Why? He did it already. He obviously didn't work. He said, "I'm God, the only God in the world." Oh, okay. And don't, don't, don't have any idols. Okay. Forty days later, there's an idol. How? And it's not like just Am Yisrael saw and heard this. Everyone in the world knew about this. We heard from Rachav. Rachav, when she met Yehoshua bin Nun, she came over there and said, "No, no, we heard what your God did for you and everything. We know everything. Your God's real. He's the God of the heavens and the earth and everything. We heard about it." Meaning, even the goyim around the world knew about Har Sinai, but they still worship idols.

51:51Meaning that to remove idolatry is not just 1, 2, 3, prove to them A, B, C, you're finished. The person has to want to do it. He has to want to leave idolatry, which requires a certain amount of pain. The first part of the pain is admitting that your life until this point has been a complete lie. That is the pain of destroying your own ego. Why? Imagine, you're alive in this world 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 years. The more years, the more embarrassment there is. The bigger the ego. Okay, you live in this world 40, 50 years. By the way, everything you've lived, the foundation of everything you have is fake. Fake news. It's like a movie, Hashem yerachem. In the past, I saw a movie 20 years ago, whenever it was. There was an actor who himself was in a movie, and he didn't know his whole life. He grew up in a movie, and he didn't know. Then one day he found out, and he realized his whole life was a lie. Imagine that. Imagine your whole life, you're like a character in a movie, but you don't know it. And then one day you find out, which means that your relationships are fake. Why? Because they're all actors.

53:07Your parents are not your parents. They're actors too. Your brothers are not your brothers. They're actors also. Even your dog is fake. You know, everything is fake. What a disaster that is. What a disaster. Your whole life is fake. Your feelings can't be true. Why? Because it's fake. So that's number one. A person has to, when he recognizes that their whole life is fake until now, it's hard. It hurts. It's painful. Second part is, now you have to muster up the willpower to go chase the truth again, with the faith required that this time you're not going to make a mistake. You know how much willpower that requires? Everything. Whatever you have, plus more. Why? Because to chase the truth, Hashem doesn't make it easy. and that requires every day. The third part of the pain is now you have to make decisions based on these new findings. What's the decision? Forsaking your past completely. Meaning, all those relationships, whether it be with family, friends, or whoever, that are against your real truth, your new truth, you cannot maintain these relationships very much. Why? Because the more you go, even if you're not doing anything actively,

54:31The longer you go into this new world, this new truth, the more separation you have from the old falsehood. The less you have in common, the less you can discuss, the less you see on the same page. You just simply don't see alike. You start seeing this tension, even if you don't say anything about it. Some people are very vocal about it. Some people are very quiet about it. Whatever your strategy is, either way, the relationship dies. One way or the other, it's going to die. And if it's alive, it's because you haven't really forsaken it yet, which means you're not there yet. If all of your past relationships, before doing teshuva, are still exactly the same as they were before you did teshuva, there's something wrong. Why? It doesn't make sense that Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai is going to be best friends with Esav. It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense. means that you're still a little bit off, a little bit, you know, like half, 75, 80, 90. But you look at Yaakov, you look again, you're going to come to the shiur once a week, pretend, make pretend, okay, you're not pretending. No, you have to make a change. Yeah, but I heard, Rabbi, that's the point. HaKadosh Baruch Hu wants us to hurt. Why? He was hurt.

55:52He was hurt for a long time. In order for us to take HaKadosh Baruch Hu 100%, we have to make some sacrifices. And that's hard. That doesn't mean you start saying to everybody, "Listen guys, I'm religious now, I hate all of you." No, it doesn't mean that. But it means that there are certain choices you have to make. What is this like? This is what HaKadosh Baruch Hu told us to do as a people in Egypt after we've been destroyed. For a couple of hundred years, we're there in Egypt. It's hot, and we're outside with no air conditioners. And they're not feeding us. And some say they were feeding us only matzah, which might as well not feed us with the stomach problems it gives. And I actually like matzah, but it's not good for my stomach too. The point is, that people were not having a good time. Why? They were carrying a kid for nine months, then the Egyptian kills them. The guy is working non-stop without even getting paid. He has a meter's quota. He missed one stone. They take his kid, put him in front instead of the stone. What kind of a job is this? It's a nightmare. So now you're seeing your friends, your family, all types of people die. You have no purpose. You don't know what to do. You don't know what to say. They're mistreating you in every single way. They're torturing you in every single way for years.

57:19And then HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, "Okay, I'll take you out." Okay, Baruch Hashem, good, good. What do we do? You have to take their idol. Who's that? The Egyptians. Egyptians. I'm scared of the Egyptians. Okay, yeah, it's the point. You're scared of the Egyptians? Listen, I did all the plagues. You saw the plagues? Yeah, I saw the plagues. All that stuff, you saw it? Yeah, yeah, God, that was fantastic. Great show, God. Great show. I loved it. The blood was really amazing. We got really rich off of it. You know, we sold them our water. We got rich. We saw the Egyptians. They couldn't sleep at night. Like, they didn't let us sleep at night because the frog was inside them making noise all day. It was fantastic, Hashem. What a show. What a show. Then you had the polar bear and the eagle and the snake and all these things appear just in their houses, not our houses. Hashem, it was like the zoo, but it was like life. Amazing. I love the show. Okay, guys, you like the show? Good. Okay, last Torah right now. You want me to take you out? Yeah, Hashem, for sure. What are you doing? What are you waiting for? Wait for one thing. Go, the Egyptians, no Egyptians? Yeah, Egyptians. Go bring their god. Which god? Bring their goat.

58:24Bring their goat, tie it to your beds for a few days. What, after we kill it? No, no, no. Leave it alive. But the goat is going to make noise. Yeah. Hold on a second. God, if it makes noise, the Egyptians are going to come. They're going to say, what is going on? And they're going to see our houses that don't have doors. They're going to see that we tied their god to the bed. He said, yeah, exactly. What are we going to say then? Tell them, this is your god, right? Yeah, it's my god. Yeah, we're going to kill him in a few days. Hold on a second. God, are you serious? This is the conversation? This is the conversation. They told Moshe Rabbeinu. Moshe Rabbeinu, are you serious? Moshe Rabbeinu came to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. He said, HaKadosh Baruch Hu, are you serious? the Jews, already petrified from the Egyptians, are being told to take the Egyptian god, tie it to the bed, and let it make all the noise in the world for three days. Make sure the Egyptians come because of all the noise, and all the neighbors are complaining. When they come, show them the thing and say, "By the way, that's your god, right? I'm gonna cook it in a barbecue in a few days."

59:38They're going to kill all of them. HaKadosh Baruch Hu says to Moshe Rabbeinu, if they don't do it, I'm not taking them out of Egypt. He says to him, I swear on My Name, if they don't do this, I'm not taking them out of Egypt. They will die in Egypt. Now, think about it. Hold on a second. All the plagues, all the things, why don't you just kill their god already as part of the whole thing? Why do we have to kill their god? Why do we have to barbecue it? Why do we have to make a whole show out of it and we're scared of these Egyptians? HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, without abandoning idolatry, you cannot accept Me as a God. Okay, but we accept You. No, no, no, no. You can't accept Me, just say I believe. I believe in my heart, God. No, no, no. You have to go through the pain. You have to make the sacrifice in order to accept HaKadosh Baruch Hu. You cannot just say Shema Yisrael and think that you're religious. You have to make a sacrifice. Overcome a major fear. What are you scared of? I'm scared of this. Okay, overcome it. Overcome it. Their biggest fear in the world was the Egyptians. Their biggest fear in the world was the Egyptians, rabotai. And also, part of them also believed in this fake god, this goat.

1:01:04HaKadosh Baruch Hu says you're not leaving Egypt until you abandon it completely. And that requires pain. Teshuva requires pain sometimes. All the time, really. You know, sometimes people tell me, "Oh, b'ezrat Hashem, Am Yisrael does teshuva in an easy way." It doesn't exist. I laugh inside. I don't tell them, but it doesn't exist. If it's easy, it's not teshuva. If it's easy, it's not teshuva. Why? Teshuva hurts. But it's good for you. It's like medicine. And that's what the Haggadah starts with and says to us, Rabotai Yekarim, Avotenu, Avotenu were idol worshippers, but HaKadosh Baruch Hu took them out of Egypt. Why? Why is this whole process? Because the medicine hurts, but it's required. If somebody was beaten up by another person, Rabbi Efraim says, of course, the person would want to beat him up. Why are you beating me up? If he finds out that the guy who cut him and the guy who sliced him is also a doctor who saved his life, is he going to be upset at him for hurting him, or is he going to say, "Thank you, doc, you saved my life"? We start off with the part about this Haggadah that our forefathers were idol worshippers.

1:02:24To show us that HaKadosh Baruch Hu had to send us through pain in order to give us the medicine. What we have today as coronavirus is not a disease; it's a cure. The only thing is, it depends on how you take it. If it causes you to do teshuva, it is a cure. If it doesn't cause you to do teshuva, it's a virus. And that's one of the things that we have to understand at this time. We have a situation where we go and we see the Haggadah year after year, and we have no idea why it says what it says. you read it, you look at it, and we don't understand why, because we're reading the basics, and you heard about it, and it's one, two, three, and it's like... that's where we have to read some commentary. we'll have some commentary in our Haggadah, if Hashem gives us the strength to finish it before Pesach, and not before Shavuot. one of the parts is the four sons.

1:03:42You see, Rabotai, we have a famous story. Everyone knows that we have the four sons. The Torah spoke to the four sons. These four sons represent Am Yisrael. And it's not Am Yisrael of 3,000 years ago. It's Am Yisrael of today. You see, right now, with this situation that's happening in the world, everyone is treating it differently. Some people are hysterical, panicking, and don't know what to do. A few people told me they have no purpose in life anymore and want to die. A few people told me that it’s the greatest thing that ever happened to them. People are mixed. One guy last week told me that he doesn't know what to do with his life. Today I spoke to him. He said, "Wow, it's amazing." What's the difference? On Shabbat, you learn some Torah. So, Right now, there's a lot of confusion. Most likely, there's going to be even more because, like I said, I don't think it's necessarily going to get better right away. It all depends on how we treat it. If a lot of people start doing teshuva, it may end right away. If people do not do teshuva, Hashem has to continue this until everybody gets the chance. And the reason why is because before it all ends, before Hashem sends Mashiach, everyone has to get a chance.

1:05:10to do teshuva. Not just a chance where they see one YouTube video. Not just a chance where they meet one person. Not just a chance where they go to shul once or twice. But a chance where Hashem says, "Look, you had all of the chances. I sent you a plane. I sent you a helicopter. I sent you a boat. I sent you a friend. I sent you all types of things. You didn't take any of the choices. What do you want from Me? I had to destroy you." And when we see what we did, we're going to ask Hashem, "Please, man, please." Please judge us already. We're embarrassed. We're so embarrassed by our own actions. Before HaKadosh Baruch Hu brings Mashiach, there's going to be a war where two-thirds of the world is going to die in a matter of minutes. At the time that this was written, Rabotai, the most sophisticated weapon in the world was simply powder. Powder that made explosives. Barely anything. The most you could explode is maybe a room. Which means that even if you took all the powder and shot it from one side of the camp to the other, at best you killed a few hundred people. But HaKadosh Baruch Hu already told the Prophets that in a matter of minutes, the Gaon MiVilna says 8, 9, 10 minutes, something like that. I don't remember seeing it with my own eyes. Some people say 8 minutes, some people 9 minutes, some people say 12 minutes, doesn't make a difference. Point is, a few minutes.

1:06:34HaKadosh Baruch Hu already told us the world's going to be destroyed in a short period of time. Minutes, two-thirds. At the time this was written, that wasn't possible. Today, no one needs to be a genius to understand this is very possible. And even less time. The only reason it takes eight minutes is because it takes a while for the missile to arrive. So the reality is, is that that's the two-thirds. What about the last third? The last third, HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, "I'm going to test them and refine them like you refine gold and silver." Anyone ever see gold refining? It's a very pretty process if it's on gold, not on people. If it's on gold, it's fantastic. They take the bar, they put it in this lava, and everything turns into lava. You can't really tell the difference between the lava and the gold. And you have this thing, and then they make a bar out of it. It's cool, really, really cool. The only difference is it weighs a whole lot less. Why does it weigh a whole lot less? Because this whole process of melting the gold removes all of the foreign, non-gold metals.

1:07:47That's the whole point of gold refining. You take all the gold that people sell you or that you bought. Now, all this gold is not pure gold. It has other things in it. Sometimes it's for the sake of making it hard. Sometimes it's for making it seem like it's heavier. If it was all 100% gold, first of all, it wouldn't be able to be made into jewelry because it would be too flexible. It would break. But aside from that, it would be too light. So you have other metals in it. But when you refine gold and make it into that, you have to remove all of that. When you see those gold bars, those gold bars always say 99%. Why 99%? You need that extra 1% or 0.1% in order to make it as stiff as it is and so on. The point is that when it's 100% refined, it's liquid. To remove all the other stuff, what happens to all the other stuff? Do they make something else with it? No, it gets destroyed. It doesn't have the staying power like the gold to survive this lava, this heat.

1:08:49HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, you do it on gold, it looks really cool, especially on YouTube. But if you do it with people, it's not so cool. But He said He's going to do it with people. How? He's going to test us to our max. Whatever test you've had so far, kindergarten. You had a test, something happened, something didn't happen, something you thought happened, happened but didn't happen, whatever happened. You cried. You didn't cry. You were upset. You were depressed. You were in pain. In surgeries. All that stuff. Kindergarten. Why? HaKadosh Baruch Hu says I'm going to refine everybody. Unless you're ready beforehand. Unless you're already going through it now. Unless you're doing teshuva now. Unless you refine yourself now. If you're already refined, you already show up as 100% gold. HaKadosh Baruch Hu, look, I fixed my middot, I gave tzedakah, I did kiruv, I learned Torah, my kids go learn Torah, everybody's doing Torah, all my life is HaKadosh Baruch Hu, all day, all night. We're still living in this world though. But we're doing the best that we can, and we're doing good. HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, you're already refined, you're in this section. If you're not refined, I have to refine you.

1:10:04you're still angry. You're still stingy. You're still this. You're still that. You're still a little bit of an idol worshiper sometimes. You worship money. You worship the opposite gender. You worship material. I have to refine you. All of that happens with the last third. The last third. The good ones. And not all of them survive. Some of them end up just being that piece of metal that goes to nothing. So, that means, Rabotai, that... HaKadosh Baruch Hu is trying to tell us that with all the craziness that's happening today, this is part of the process to prepare us for that. Now, what is going to help us is understanding the first part of the Haggadah. It is going to help us tremendously. Understanding the story of the four sons is going to help us tremendously, and this is what it says:

1:11:07Baruch HaMakom, baruch Hu. Blessed is the ever-present One. Blessed is He, blessed is He who gave the Torah to His people, Israel. The Torah speaks of four sons: one who is wise, one who is wicked, one who is simple, and one who does not know to ask. This is a fun part. I remember growing up, reading it. We would always make fun of the one that was the Rasha. You know, you would always want to be the Chacham, and whoever got stuck with the Rasha, no, no, Gabi, Rasha, no, Yaron, Rasha, you know, make fun of the Rasha, Rasha. We didn't really know what it all meant. In reality, when you read the commentary on this, the Rasha seems like he's a dolt, already such a genius. The Chacham seems like he's like a prophet. Every one of them seems like a... All the commentary on this stuff is amazing. But the point is, is that each one is representing a different part of Am Yisrael, a different part of... of that people that HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, these are My chosen people. It also represents parts of the people in the world, the nations, the foreigners, whom they choose to be. So it says, the wise one, what does he say?

1:12:29What are the testimonies, the chukim, the statutes that Hashem, our G-d, commanded us? Now, the wise one is clearly asking a question to show that he's interested. Now, the sign of a person that's smart is when he has a question that has a purpose. The sign of a person that's not smart is when a person has a question without a purpose. He just wants to know; he's just curious. Now, curiosity is a good thing, but curiosity driven by a purpose, that's intellect, that's wisdom. Curiosity without intellect, that's a cat. The cat was curious, and he died because of it. To just ask purposeless questions is not only a fruitless endeavor, but it also is a disrespect of wisdom. Because if you believe that this rabbi, this source of information,

1:13:54is a valid source of information, at the very least, you should respect that source of information's time and not waste it with purposeless questions. But people say, "Oh no, come on, how come? What how come? Why are you asking meaningless questions?" No, it's meaningful. For what? How does it affect you? How does it affect you, this question? "No, but it's going to affect some people," so let them ask it. Why are you asking it? Now, it's not that I mind answering that question. I'm just asking why are you asking it? Why aren't you asking the question that's relevant to you? Because if you're already going to spend time asking a question, be smart and ask the question that matters to you and don't ask the question that matters to somebody else because that question is not only going to waste the rabbi's time but it's going to waste your time. You are now studying somebody else's homework. Why would you do that? Don't you see that's the Yetzer Hara?

1:15:06I have several students that do this, and they tell me this is the Yetzer Hara. One guy, he's a genius. Seriously, he's a genius. What's his Yetzer Hara? Studying other people's homework. All day he's looking at other people's stuff and trying to find all different types of things that affect everybody else, not him. But I tell him, listen, you have a regimen. I gave you a regimen of things to study. You have to do this, you have to do that. You have a whole list of things you need to do. Did you do them? No, I'm getting to it. Okay, you're getting to it, that's good. So what did you do today? Oh, no, I didn't do it today. Why didn't you do it today? No, I was on the course on this one. I was reading the book on that, but that's not part of your regimen. Yeah, I know, Rabbi, I'm sorry. What do you mean you're sorry? This is six months already. You just wasted six months looking at other people's homework, reading other people's books, watching other people's shiurim. For what purpose is it going to serve for you? Yeah, I know I shouldn't do it. It's my yetzer hara. Yeah, it's your yetzer hara. So since you know it's your yetzer hara, stop it. Stop it. Acknowledging the problem is part of the cure, but you cannot continue eating the poison. People do this a lot. It's one of the greatest tricks of the Satan.

1:16:22where he sends you different things that pique your interest but have no substantial effect on your life. Recommended videos. You watch a video, yeah, it gives you all types of this, that, and the other thing, but it's like five minutes into it, you see a recommended video with a cool picture. It's like, you know, I always wondered how they make steel garbage cans. It's only a three-minute video. I'm going to get back to this one. Click. Next thing you know, you're three hours into videos about how to make steel garbage cans. What happened to three hours? Rabbi, the shiur is too long. What do you mean the shiur is too long? What do you mean the shiur is too long? You spent three hours watching steel garbage cans from every production company in the world. No, it wasn't just garbage cans, Rabbi. What is it? Oh, it's cars too. Three hours watching how stuff is made, how stuff is not made, how the fruits travel from Indonesia to different parts of Asia, how the bananas are going bad because of a certain poison inside the crop. All that stuff you know. But how to keep Shabbat, you still don't know.

1:17:42you still don't know. So much useless information. Recommended videos. They tell you those videos are too long, but they don't realize they watch hours and hours, hours and hours of shtuyot. Another thing that is poisonous is that now there's a new trick for my personal students. What's the trick? Manis Friedman. What is it? You'd never believe this. This is mamash the Satan himself. Now, everyone that's my student for some time, or whatever they call themselves, who has followed my shiurim for some time, they know that Manis Friedman is a kofer. Not because I said it, but because we proved it. Now, what does the Satan do to them? Especially the ones that are zealous, that are 100% on board, yeah, worst, all that stuff. What does the Satan do? As soon as they watch my video online, the next recommended video that auto-plays is a Manis Friedman video.

1:18:43Every week, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10 people tell me, "Listen, he said this in this video." I said, "Why are you watching his videos?" "No, you don't understand, Rabbi. It automatically went on. I left your video on, and then when I came back, he was on. So I was just watching it. Next thing you know, I'm watching this idiot for 30 minutes telling me that there are three gods." "What do you mean he said three gods?" "He goes, yeah, God has parts according to him." I said, "That's idolatry." He goes, "Yeah, that's what I was trying to tell you." I said, "Why are you watching it? Why are you watching it?" And then another guy says, "Yeah, look over here. Every day somebody tells me, 'Manis Friedman alert.' Why are you watching it? Satan. Satan himself shows up inside your Torah feed. Don't watch him. Don't do me any favors. We already know he's a rasha. Don't watch him anymore. Don't watch anyone that's a rasha. Don't be a private investigator of resha'im. Why? It's wasting your Torah time. And it will affect you overall in general." I'll give you guys a secret. At some point, we were at war with this organization in Israel, the missionaries, and Rabbi Efraim was going back and forth against them. They were making videos; he was making videos,

1:20:09And proving that their whole thing is nonsense. Now, as part of the production for the videos and different things, I had to watch stuff to bring evidence and stuff like that. And Eventually, I started noticing that I myself, now I know about Christianity, it's all fake, it's all nonsense, but I started realizing that every single time, every single time I davened, every single time I started davening at that time, I would have images in my head of this nonsense that I read or nonsense that I watched. And I'm like, what is this doing in my head? Like, why am I thinking this? And it started bothering me. And I said, okay, let it go. A day, two days, three days. And you start noticing it in different things. It's like, what is going on here? I talked to my friend. He goes, okay, stop. Stop. Finished. I said, what? He said, no, you can't do it anymore. I said, why not? He says, no, this is a specific tumah. You went too far. It's going to affect you. Can't do it.

1:21:21Can't do it. It's going to affect you. You have two more important things to do. We're going to do it a different way. There are certain things, rabotai yekarim, that have enough power on specific neshamot that could impact them in a very negative way. Now, so you don't think I'm some type of unique case. Somebody came to, I believe it was Rabbi Yisrael Salanter. One of his talmidim. One of his talmidim was a person that was a tzaddik. a person that was a big talmid chacham, for whatever reason or another, his tikkun in the generation was idolatry. He came to Rabbi Yisrael Salanter and he says to him, "Kvod HaRav, I know if I continue to live, I'm going to fall into idolatry." I know it's fake. I know it's nonsense. But for whatever reason or another, it's affecting me. It's driving me crazy. It's this and that. If I have to, can I kill myself? Are they going to bury me in a Jewish cemetery? Am I going to have nechama? There was a psak. Psak on this specific unique case. On this specific unique case, he says you're patur.

1:22:37You're still okay. It's for you and your level and where you are. It's for you. It's like dying, not sinning. It's better that you die and not become an idol worshiper. Even though it's not the Christians coming to your door. It's just simply things that affected your neshama. Why? The Sefarim HaKedoshim say that the tum'ah of the world was not shared among everyone equally. And the Tum'ah, a big part of it, was condensed into a single source. In essence, there is a lot of bad everywhere, but the most power is condensed in a single place. Let's say out of ten stages, nine of them are in a single place, and one is shared among the rest of the world. Just like the Kedusha, the majority of it is in Am Yisrael. You have nine, let's say, in Am Yisrael, and one around the rest of the world, let's say.

1:23:47Now, many of the people that have delved into this, whether it be the Ramban or others that have delved into the Kabbalistic world and the world of Tum'a, knew how to handle it. They pretty much confirmed that the Tum'a of the world, the Satan himself, Edom—Edom is Esav. Esav is Yoshke. The Tum'a of the world is him. 90% of the tum'a in the world is in Christianity. So you're gonna say, "Wait a minute, but they're doing much worse things in India. In some places, they're eating people; in some places, they're drinking the urine of cows; in other places, they're doing all types of awful things." Yeah, that's bad too, but it's not like Christianity. One of the things that I've seen with my own eyes is how Christianity affects most people that give it any credit. When you see certain people that discuss Christianity on a regular basis, many of them get affected, and their own ideology starts becoming distorted. It affects you.

1:25:05That's why I tell people: Listen, you converted, abandon it. Don't continue becoming some type of anti-missionary. Don't be an anti-missionary. Leave it, abandon it, move on. Just increase your Kedusha, increase your Judaism. Don't waste your time being an anti-missionary. There are plenty of people who can handle it and are doing it. Rabbi Tovia Singer, Jews for Judaism, and a couple of others, Rabbi Fein does it. A few people in the world can do it and do it well. Don't play with this. Why? It's too much for you, I promise you. The tumah of the world is condensed into this single source. Hence the reason why Rabbeinu Lipon says in order to destroy, in order to bring Mashiach, in order to destroy the tumah of the world, Hashem has to destroy the world. Why? Because the vast majority of the world is based on Christianity. So now, rabotai yekarim, the chacham asked the question, He asked, what are these testimonies? What are these proofs? He's asking, why do we do all of this stuff? What is the purpose behind it? How come we are so careful with matzah now and we're not careful the rest of the year? How come we're so careful with certain blessings, Hallel? How come there are different traditions?

1:26:31He's asking questions that have a purpose. This is the mindset of a kosher Jew. If you want to know whether you are a kosher Jew or not, one of the ways to decipher it is what kind of questions you have. Do you ask questions that matter to you or that only matter to other people? If they matter to you, and it affects you, and after you hear them, you apply them, and you do what you got to do. You hear, oh, this is true, this is false, this is right, this is wrong, this is black, this is white, and so on and so forth. You ask the question, you get the answer, and then you apply it. You are in the stage of a person that can be determined as a chacham. Why? You're a person that not only asks for information, but asks for information that matters in order to take action. If you only ask questions that matter to everybody else, that's not a good sign. That's not a good sign at all. And the reason why is because that means that you are in a stage where you could be one of the other three. But definitely not a chacham.

1:27:52Definitely not a chacham. Sometimes people ask questions that are unrealistic. They just started doing teshuva. One, two, three, four, five, six years. But they're already trying to do things that the tzaddikim did. They're trying to go and, you know, write a check without having any money to clear it. They want to do things that they read in the book about Rav Elyashiv, Rav Ovadia, all the tzaddikim, Baal Shem Tov. They want to do a, no, Rabbi, from now on I'm doing Ta'anit Tzibbur every day. I'm never going to talk anymore. Okay, buddy. You're going to become religious for a week and then secular for a year. Why? It's not for you. You can't do it. You can't do it. They try to, they say, okay, yeah, from now on, Rabbi, I'm never going to say Lashon Hara anymore. Okay, b'ezrat Hashem. b'ezrat Hashem. Your commitment should be, instead of this Lashon Hara, it's good. It should be, "From now on, Rabbi, I'm going to learn Torah for half an hour a day." All the time you're going to spend saying Lashon Hara, learn Torah with that time instead. Why? Because Torah is going to give you the strength to not say Lashon Hara. But to say, "From now on, I'm not going to say Lashon Hara," big thing. How do I know? When the Chafetz Chaim wrote the foundation of all the information we know about Lashon Hara, he wrote the sefarim.

1:29:17He went to the Gadol HaDor, Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzinski, and he told Kvod HaRav, people are not buying this book because they don't understand the significance of Lashon Hara. So Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzinski said to him, he goes, you're right, Lashon Hara, it's the destruction of Beit HaMikdash, it's the worst, Hashem counts it as if it's murder also, and so on and so forth. He says, yeah, Kvod HaRav, so why don't you tell this to the people? Rav Grodzinski says, no, no, I can't say that to the people. He says, okay, so you know what Kvod HaRav meant? It's too much for them. He goes, yeah, it's too much, but they're not going to be able to handle it. He goes, okay, Kvod HaRav, why don't you say this? Tell them that saying Lashon Hara is like eating pig. All Jews know that eating pig is not allowed, even the non-religious Jews. Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzinski, the Gadol HaDor, Kodesh Kodeshim, a good part of the world's yeshivot and Talmidei Chachamim are in the world thanks to him. We're not talking about somebody that's a no big deal. We're talking about a Gadol HaDor. He says to the Chafetz Chaim, "I can't say that." He says, "Why not? It's worse than eating pig." "Because you're right, but if I tell people saying Lashon Hara is like eating pig, you know what people are gonna do? They're gonna start eating pig. They're gonna say, 'I'm already saying Lashon Hara anyway, let me eat some bacon with it also, put some ketchup on it. While I'm saying Lashon Hara, have some bacon, egg, and cheese.'"

1:30:44I'm already going this way or that way. That's the mind of a rasha. But it's also the mind of an ignorant person. So the point is, Rabotai, it's very, very important to know, you cannot take on anything that's more than the pshat, more than the basics, without permission from your rabbi, who knows you really well, who knows what you can handle more than you do. You know how he knows you more than you do? Because he's seen many like you rise and fall. And the point, Rabotai, is that a lot of people take on certain things too much. They break. Sometimes it's necessary to break in order to know what you can and can't handle. The reality is, there's sometimes a way to save yourself the pain. So a Chacham, a Chacham is a person that asks questions with a purpose and wants to apply everything, wants to apply the things that he learns. What's the Rasha? The Rasha says, the wicked one says, "What is this service to you?"

1:32:00And you notice that he says, what's the service to you? Why did he say, what's the service? Because the Rasha already is excluding himself. He says, I'm not keeping Shabbat. I'm not keeping Taharat HaMishpacha. I'm not keeping kosher. Why are you doing all this though? I'm not keeping it. But why you? Why are you keeping it? Why do you have the seder? Why are you so worried about what you can eat for the next week and a half? What do you care? We need squares, these circles, these crackers. Why are you eating that? Why are you doing all this stuff? For what? Why? You're doing it to commemorate Egypt. You commemorate Egypt every day. The Exodus. You say Shema Yisrael. Shema Yisrael commemorates the Exodus. Putting on tzitzit commemorates the Exodus. Putting on tefillin commemorates the Exodus. So, what's the difference about this? Why are you doing all this? Why? For what? Derasha, Rabotai, he asks the questions for what? Not because he wants to know an answer, but because he wants to make sure that you're confused. That's what a Rasha does.

1:33:17He doesn't ask a question because he wants the answer. Sometimes, you notice, people come to a lecture, they ask a question, I start answering, and they leave. That's a Rasha. That's a Rasha. Why? He doesn't want the answer. He wants to throw a bomb in hopes that the Rabbi doesn't have the answer, so other people are confused. That's a Rasha. That's one example of a Rasha. A Rasha is also a person that when you speak, he looks at everything. If it applies to everybody else, he supports it. If it applies to him, he rejects it. He says to them, to them and not to me. And this Rasha sometimes shows up at the seder. The question is, why does he show up at the seder? Why does the Rasha show up at the seder?

1:34:18So the Chachamim say that this Rasha is not a lost cause, though. Although he's wicked, although he's bad, although he does bad things, he's not a lost cause. Why? He still showed up at the seder. So it's our job to stick him next to some talmid chacham so he can do some kiruv. hacha knows what's the purpose of life, knows what to do, what not to do, who, what, when, and how. Knows how to deal with these things. What if you don't have such a chacham? If you don't have such a chacham, don't invite such a chacham. You have to know how to deal with these people. Why? Because what happens is these people, they do not stay quiet. They have to speak their minds. And if you start having a philosophical conversation with a rasha during your Seder, it can create a lot of problems. Maybe not for you, but perhaps for your kids, perhaps for your wife, perhaps for your husband, perhaps for somebody else there. So don't assume that everyone is on the same scale, on the same level of understanding.

1:35:32If you're going to have guests, which I'm assuming most people this year are not going to have, but if you're going to have people and you're going to have these types of conversations, make sure that the conversation is something that everyone can handle. Not just you. Don't talk about specific issues that you know are perhaps sophisticated. The other issue is that really you're not supposed to talk about these things at the Seder table. During the Seder, you're supposed to talk about Mitzrayim, the Exodus. That's really what you're supposed to talk about. That's the mitzvah. That's the whole mitzvah, which we're going to get to at the end. Now, the rasha has this mentality where he has some type of connection, but it's not very much. He still shows up to the seder. But he's not willing to take on Shabbat. He's not willing to take on all of the big mitzvot. He's simply staying connected for a reason he himself does not even understand. Many of those people exist in the world today. They're wicked, but they don't really know exactly why. The answer is ego. They have turned themselves into a small god.

1:36:56Their ego has turned them into a small god. What is the gezeira really? Gezeira is somebody who doesn't like to be told what to do. He doesn't like that you're going to tell him when to start Shabbat. And when to use his phone, and when to use his computer, and what to watch, and what to eat, and where to go, and who to marry. He doesn't like to be told that. She doesn't like to be told what clothes to wear, what clothes not to wear, what's too short, what's too long. She doesn't like to be told that. "What are you, my father?" That's what they answer you. "You're a rabbi. You shouldn't be dealing with women's modesty. Let a woman deal with women's modesty." That's the best answer. Let a woman deal with women's modesty. Yeah, well, I don't know, apparently in the Gemara there's no such thing. In the Gemara, it was all men. All men in the Gemara. The poskim are all men. There's no woman posek. Our halachot are made by men. So the point is, rabotai, that a person needs to understand that if you are rejecting the truth, that's not an act of righteousness.

1:38:07It's an act of wickedness. It's an act of negiah, that in essence is rejecting the truth despite it being true, but only because it affects you. I had somebody that from time to time communicates, send me a rebuke last week. What was the rebuke? We published a video about the witness that went to India and, again, proved everything we've been saying for the last four or five years about how all wigs are from idolatry. Now he went there, recorded everything, recorded people that are in the business, recorded people that are idol worshippers themselves, put it all on documentation, and showed everything, and then spoke English. So it's not even like something that you're relying on translations. And there's a 45-minute interview of him proving it's 100% idolatry. If you have a wig from real hair, you have...

1:39:12Testimony from not only him but also from the people that are manufacturing it, telling you it's 100% idolatry. There's no way that your hair is coming from Brazil. There's no such thing as Brazilian wigs. It's fake. It's from India. They just put Brazil on it. There's no way that your hair is coming from anywhere else; it's coming from India. We've already discussed all this, but this is another layer of evidence, more to the onion, more against it. Now, many people appreciated this video, except one guy. Who is this guy? He sends me a message: "Oh, at a time of such crisis, you think that this is right to publish such a video? What's wrong with the timing? Because people should be united now." I said, "How is this causing a lack of unity?" How is this causing a lack of unity? This is, in essence, Hakadosh Baruch Hu bringing a decree on the world because He wants us to do teshuva. This is going to help people do teshuva. No, this is creating separation. What do I find out? His wife wears a wig. His wife wears a wig. A wig longer than the exile.

1:40:21That's why he doesn't like it. All the other videos he likes. Why? Because he keeps Shabbat, and he keeps Taharat HaMishpacha, and he keeps kosher, and his kids go to yeshivot. Baruch Hashem, everything else is good. So he likes the videos until now. How come I get a rebuke at 2 o'clock in the morning from him? That I'm not good, and I'm not this, and I'm not that, and... I'm only a Kiruv guy, and I'm only this. All of a sudden, I've turned from being something special to nothing. He's consulting me galore. And Baruch Hashem, it's good for my neshama to get insulted. But the point is that he is being really nice about it. He's giving me extra treatment at 2 o'clock in the morning. And he's telling me all these wonderful compliments about me, how I'm nothing. And I tell him, wait a minute, I am nothing. But yet you're saying, I have... After they saw this information, they say that it's idolatry. Ignore that, like I didn't say it. No, it's causing this. It's not the time. It's not the time. Where's the time? I said forget about the time. It has nothing to do with the time. It has to do with the fact that it affects you. That's what it has to do. It has to do with the fact that it affects you.

1:41:24If it didn't affect you, if it didn't affect you, then you wouldn't care. But it affects you. And that's why you care. Because you don't want to do teshuva. You want your wife to continue walking around with a wig. Or you don't care if she wears a wig or doesn't wear a wig, but you don't want to deal with it. Meaning she wants to wear a wig, and you don't want to be the one telling her not to wear a wig. So what are you doing, in essence? You're endangering not only your entire house, your wife, and your marriage, but you're endangering Am Yisrael. Why? Because you don't want to deal with the truth to tell your wife, "Honey, why don't you watch this video and let me know if you still want to wear a wig? Why don't you watch this video and let me know? Because I don't know. I saw it. It doesn't look so good. It doesn't look so good. It doesn't look as good as the wig." This video doesn't look as good as the wig. Why? The wig looks good, but the video says that this good look doesn't look so good. Why? It's idolatry. It's benefiting from idolatry. You don't want to deal with it? Ah. So if you're righteous, you deal with it anyway. That's teshuva. It's painful. If you're wicked, you pretend like this is bad news. Am Yisrael, Rabotai Yekarim.

1:42:44Although they were immersed in idolatry in Egypt, they never became official resha'im to the extent of such a person that abandons the way and completely forgets God. How do we know? Because they still prayed to God. They still kept their language, still spoke Hebrew. They still used the same names, still called each other Yaakov, Yosef, Moshe, Aharon. They still dressed like Jews, didn't start walking around with tight jeans, didn't start walking around with tank tops, didn't put on tattoos. No, they didn't do that. But also, aside from those three that we all know about, they also pray to Hashem. How do we know they pray to Hashem? Well, it says in Chapter 2 of Shemot that the Am Yisrael was being tortured by the Egyptians, and they cried to Hashem. What's crying to Hashem? That's praying. That's praying to Hashem. So, somebody that prays to Hashem...

1:44:05Obviously someone that believes in Hashem. Even if that person is confused and believes in some middleman, whether it be a rabbi or a picture or whatever it is, that person still has a connection to Hashem. So even those people, HaKadosh Baruch Hu wants them at the seder. But you need to have somebody to deal with them. You need to have the information to deal with them. Because if you have somebody that's like this come to your Seder and no one knows how to deal with it, he can turn everybody away from Hashem. So you have to be very careful who you invite. Next is the Tam. The Tam is a person who is simply a simple person. Simple person. This person, Rabotai, is a Doesn't know who, what, when, and how. He's just a person that anything shakes him. He doesn't have strong belief; he doesn't have any belief. He'll say B'ezrat Hashem and do Kiddush, and then go to the movies. He's confused. He doesn't understand the real truth about HaKadosh Baruch Hu.

1:45:30He doesn't understand the significance of divine providence. There were some rabbis that came to the Chafetz Chaim years ago when there was an election. And they said to the Rav, Kvod Harav, we have a problem. Two guys are running. One guy hates Am Yisrael. The other guy, he's okay with us. What's the problem? The guy that hates Am Yisrael, he's favored. He's favored. He's leading the elections. And if we don't vote for him and he wins, if he hated Am Yisrael until now, he'll turn into Haman the day he gets voted in. The day he gets it. But if we do vote for him, then for sure he's not going to be so good for us. So what should we do? So the Chafetz Chaim says, "Vote for the person that's favored."

1:46:31So they looked at the Chafetz Chaim and said, "Wait, to vote for the anti-Semite?" He said, "No, no, you didn't understand what I said. I said, vote for the person that's favored." They said, "Yeah, the favored one is the guy that's an anti-Semite." He said, "No, I said the person that's favored. Favored by Hashem. The guy that's an anti-Semite, surely HaKadosh Baruch Hu doesn't favor him. The other guy that likes Jews, he's okay with Jews, Hashem favors him." Yeah, he doesn't have the statistics. Statistics, shmatistics. Hakadosh Baruch Hu favors him, he's going to win. And that's what happened. That's what happens. When a person has complete emunah in Hashem, he could either be tamim with Hashem in a good way, or if he doesn't have emunah in Hashem, he could be tamim with Hashem in a negative way. Tamim with Hashem, in one essence, means that you're complete with Hashem. Whatever it says, I believe. HaKadosh Baruch Hu says it's going to bring me salvation, I believe. I'm sick, HaKadosh Baruch Hu says it's going to cure me if I do X, Y, Z, I believe 100%. Yeah, but it doesn't make any sense. To who? Who does it make sense to? To you or you, Bechler? Your flesh and body is just like mine. I'm nothing, you're nothing.

1:47:50HaKadosh Baruch Hu says he's going to do it, I'm going to take His word for it. That's tamim with Hashem. A person with 100% emunah. No questions asked. But then there's a person who's tamim, but doesn't know much and just does whatever makes sense, whatever people tell him, even if it doesn't make sense. He just simply goes with the flow. It's not a good way to be. That's a person who's too flexible, like putty. One day he's with this kehillah, another day he's with a different kehillah. One day he's with this rabbi, another day he's with that rabbi. He shops for rabbis every week. This rabbi says one thing he doesn't like, he throws him out. This rabbi says something he likes, he likes him, even though there's a bunch of things that are wrong with him. He's just like putty; that's not good. A person has to be strong. How do you get strong? You have to become a chacham. You have to add more knowledge to your neshama. Add more knowledge to your neshama. That's the only way. You cannot continue staying an ignoramus and think that that's going to be good. Now, there are a lot of people like this where they're either new ba'alei teshuva who have been "new" already for 20 years, or new converts who only knew enough to convert but don't know anything else. All they know about is Mashiach. Nothing else.

1:49:14They don't know any halachot. They don't know any middot. They don't know anything else. They just know one subject. That's it. That's not good. A person has to be well-grounded. He has to know certain things from the Torah. He has to learn Chumash. He has to learn Halacha. He has to learn Mussar. He has to fix himself. He has to learn shalom bayit. He has to learn a million and a half different things. Male or female. He cannot arrive at every holiday like it's the first time he ever celebrated it. If you're learning and you haven't gotten to it yet, no problem. You'll get to it. But if you're simply learning the same subject every single day, and all you listen to are Mashiach lectures or anti-Christianity lectures, or any one particular subject, even if that subject is good, it's not good. A friend told me years ago, I told him, "Listen, I want to do a lecture about this." He said, "But you already did a lecture about that." I said, "Yeah, but people like that topic; it gets a lot of views." He responded, "Forget about views. You do things that are necessary. You learn things that are necessary, not things that are popular." You learn the things that are necessary, not to get views, not to get fans, but to deliver information to the public that's needed. Yeah, but when I do this lecture about this subject, it's five views. Okay, so that's five views, but it's going to help five people.

1:50:30So what about these other subjects that people like? Because learning too much about any one particular subject, meaning focusing all your attention on just one subject, even if it's good, turns it into bad. Meaning, it could be the best subject in the world, the most important subject in the world, but if that's your only focus, it automatically will turn to bad. Meaning, you can be, let's say Shabbat, Shabbat, Shabbat, Shabbat, right? But if every one of your lectures is only about Shabbat, not good. Wigs, wigs, terrible, no good. All these things. If every lecture is about wigs, no good. If every lecture is about wigs, no good. Why? The Torah is huge. huge to no end. If you focus on one thing, not only do you minimize the Torah for others and for yourself, but also you start distorting your own opinion to one side, no longer seeing the truth in an unbiased way. Why? Because you're already so focused on one part that if someone were to bring you new evidence, that shakes up the foundation of what you thought was true, you will not accept it anymore. Why? Because you're addicted. No good. That's not Torah. Torah is you disseminate the information that's true, that's proven, but it's not just one-sided, that's not just one subject, that's not just one facet.

1:51:46that shakes up the foundation of what you thought was true, you will not accept it anymore. Why? Because you're addicted. No good. That's not Torah. Torah is you disseminate the information that's true, that's proven, but it's not just one-sided, it's not just one subject, it's not just one facet. You have to be well-rounded when it comes to Torah. That's why it doesn't matter what Chacham it was, whether he learned Torah for 20 years or 100 years, he's always called a Talmid Chacham, a wise student. Why? Because a person that learns Torah is always a student. Now, a person that does not want to learn Torah, there's simply no hope for him. There's simply no hope for him. And that's why one of the Gedolim says, how come the Rasha came before the person that is the tam? The person that's really simple? He says, because the Rasha is spicy, he's fiery. He'll throw some curveballs at you, but he still has something in him.

1:53:04The person who is just so simple, doesn't want to ask, doesn't want to do anything, he's just there like pottery. He says he's hopeless. If he doesn't get himself off of his tuchus, to start asking some questions, to do some teshuva, to reflect, to do something about it, he's hopeless. The Rasha is better than him. If he doesn't start watching better lectures that put his neshamah on fire, the Rasha is better than him. Why? The Rasha at least has some hope. He just needs to find the right teacher. And what about the person who doesn't know how to ask? This one doesn't say much to us. He doesn't even know what to ask. This is one of the reasons why Rabbi Efraim and I both agreed that it's not time for Mashiach right this second. We need more time.

1:54:05Why? Not that Hashem takes our consideration into any account whatsoever. Although a part of a decision process, it's just an opinion. Mine's worth nothing. His is worth a penny. You finish the Shas so many times, it's worth something. Why? Because a good part of Am Yisrael is the fourth one. They don't even know what they don't know. There are so many people that are living life against the Torah, and they don't even like the Torah, but they've never actually read it for themselves. They just heard hearsay from somebody else that said, "Oh, do you believe that the Torah promotes slavery?" Can you believe that the Torah kills animals and they don't even eat all of them? Can you believe that the Torah restricts people's clothing? They don't even know what this means, but they hear this and it negates their liberal mentality that they've been fed this poison for their whole life, so automatically they reject the Torah without even knowing what's in it. They don't even know what it means, slavery. I have a friend for almost 30 years...

1:55:22And that was one of the things he told me. He goes, you agree with the fact that slavery is okay? I said, 100%. 100% slavery is okay. He says, are you serious? I said, yeah, 100%. Slavery is okay. He says, how do you justify it? I said, it depends on what kind of slavery. If you're talking about the slavery of what they did to the poor African people, then no, obviously no. No normal human being would agree to such a thing and say that's a good thing. But if you're talking about Jewish slavery, 100% fantastic. Why? It's a teshuva system. It's a teshuva system. Jewish slavery, according to the Torah, the guy stole money, he doesn't have money to pay back, so they say, okay, you're going to repay it back and do teshuva at the same time. How do I do it? You're going to become a slave to the guy you stole money from, And he's a tzaddik, so you're going to see how he acts. You're going to learn from him. He's going to pay for everything. Don't worry. And don't worry, he's not going to mistreat you. If there's only one mattress, you're the one that's going to sleep on it. If there's only one steak, you're going to be the one that eats it. You're going to get better treatment than the ba'al habayit. And that's why the Chachamim say that someone who gets himself a slave, a Jewish slave, is someone who gets himself an owner. The slavery of the Torah is not the same slavery as what people think.

1:56:46I explained this to him. He said to me, "Well, I want to be a slave! What a great system! What a great system! No wonder some of them don't want to leave and after seven years say, 'Listen, just make a hole in my ear. I don't want to stop being a slave. Such good treatment I have over here.'" So that's the thing, yeah, people reject the Torah without even knowing why. Wow, I'm not going to work on Shabbat. Are you crazy? I need to make money. But if HaKadosh Baruch Hu, you believe in HaKadosh Baruch Hu? Yeah, 100% I believe in HaKadosh Baruch Hu. So if HaKadosh Baruch Hu said, I'm going to give you money if you don't work on Shabbat, especially if you don't work on Shabbat. they don't know. They don't know. That's most people, most people just don't know. And that's why I don't like at all people that are messianic. Not personally. I don't like that whole drive, that whole system, that whole mentality of simply being messianic. uh, you know, just so fascinated and driven with Mashiach that all people think about is "Mashiach now, Mashiach now," whether it be Chabad that famously does it 24 hours a day or other organizations or other people that don't stop talking about Mashiach. I'm telling you, I can't stand it. But it's not just me who can't stand it, and I promise you, I haven't seen a single chacham...

1:58:11Not that I'm the biggest, not that I know so much, but I know a few people that are. I haven't found a single chacham that's fascinated about Mashiach. Not a single one. They're all scared of it. How come the biggest tzaddikim in the world are scared of Mashiach, but the people of this generation who don't know Yichud Shabbat are not scared of Mashiach? How come? Now, when a person is fascinated and simply addicted to Mashiach, what does it show? It shows that they are either a rasha or that they are a she'eino yodea klum—doesn't know anything. Either a rasha or an ignorant person. Most of the time, an ignorant person. Most of the time, 99% of the time I would say even. ...why? Because if you already believe in Mashiach, the real Mashiach—not some rabbi or some person or whoever it is—like you really believe in the real Mashiach, that means that you believe it's going to bring salvation to the world. So that's your belief. The problem is that's not what it says. Yes, the salvation will come, but not the way you say...

1:59:26So that means that if you are constantly addicted to Mashiach, you have to be one of two cases, a rasha or clueless. Why? Because the Mashiach coming means that, first and foremost, things will get really, really bad. Second, the opportunity to do teshuva will end. That means your cousin, your uncle, your father, your mother, your sister, your son, your nephew, your friend, your colleague that haven't done teshuva yet, finished. No more teshuva. No more. Now, what does that mean, no more teshuva? It means that they're going to be destroyed like Bnei Yisrael were at Makkat Choshech.

2:00:29That's why, when it comes to the Rasha, the response to the Rasha in the Four Sons, it says, hey, you're saying it's not for you, these mitzvot are not for you, but you still have the seder. By the way, the seder is not for you either, the response is. The response is, the seder is not for you. Why? With that kind of mentality, you would have been one of the people that Hashem would have destroyed in Makkat Choshech. So the reality is that if Teshuva ends and all of these people, they're going to be deemed Reshaim. Why do you think there's Teshuva in Gan Eden? There's Teshuva after Mashiach? There's no more Teshuva after Mashiach. There's no more Teshuva after that. It's finished. So how can you be okay with the fact that there's going to be so many millions of our brothers and sisters that are going to go to Gehinnom? Oh no, there's no Gehinnom. Who told you that? Manis Friedman? Who told you this? Give me a source, give me a book, give me a single Chacham that says so. Give me one Lamdan that knows anything, Aleph Bet bechlal, that shows me that anyone that dies mechallel Shabbat goes to Gan Eden. Give me one Chacham in the world, in history.

2:01:48You have 80% of Am Yisrael, hopefully less now, who don't keep Shabbat. Mashiach comes tomorrow. What, do you think he's going to Gan Eden? It's not that we don't want Mashiach to come. It's that we want more time so we can go and reach out to all of those people that are clueless—not resha'im, just clueless—and help them become chachamim. So all of those people that are just fascinated, "Oh, Mashiach will come now." What, do you think Mashiach is a social security office? He's going to pay your debts? What about all of the people? How can you be happy about the fact that you have a situation where so many people do not know Hashem? They pray to a rabbi, they pray to a statue, they pray to nothing, they pray to money. Instead of being so zealous about Mashiach coming, why don't you be so zealous to bring those people closer to Hashem? Because once Mashiach comes, it says that Mashiach is going to kill people with his mouth. He's going to kill the wicked with his mouth. No weapons, no swords, no tanks. Who's the Rasha? Who do you think the Rasha is?

2:03:15I'm going to tell you who the Rasha is. Sefer Yechezkel talks about Mashiach. In chapter 20, it says, following prophecy, the Am Yisrael that are assimilating with the Goyim, marrying the non-Jews, marrying the Muslims, marrying the Christians, marrying the Hindus, Marrying the atheists. Marrying a Jew that's a kofer too. Also not allowed. Marrying a mechallel Shabbat, also not allowed. Not allowed to marry a mechallel Shabbat. No, no, she's going to do teshuva. Let her do teshuva, then you marry her. No, he's going to do teshuva, Rabbi. Let him do teshuva, then marry him. Why, it's better I'm alone? Yes, it's better you're alone. Why? Because if he doesn't keep Shabbat, he's probably not going to let you do Taharat HaMishpacha. Which means that every second you're going to be together, it's Issur Karet for you and him. No, no, but he promised we'll do Teshuva. Okay, if he promised, let him start now. The Prophet says in the name of HaKadosh Baruch Hu, "Do you defile yourselves in the manner of your fathers and go astray after their abominations?"

2:04:44And by giving your gifts, by passing your children to the fire, you defile yourselves unto all idols to this day. Should I relate to your inquiries, O house of Israel? As I live, says Hashem the Lord, I swear that I will not relate to your inquiries. Meaning, He's going to stop answering our prayers. As for what enters your minds, it shall not be. Meaning, you think that you can continue doing whatever you want. HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, enough. It's not going to continue forever. These gay parades, this homosexuality, filth, a kehillah that calls themselves Orthodox, but they're all homosexuals. People think that's okay. People are marrying non-Jews, thinking that it's okay. No, I'm just going to their wedding, just a chuppah with the Reform rabbi. People are stealing in their business, dishonest in their business. No, no, I'm only dealing with goyim, as if it's allowed to cheat goyim. Lending money with obscene interest, taking advantage of people, signing contracts but not delivering. HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, eventually I'm going to put it all on hold. I'm going to shut it all down.

2:06:06As for what you say, we will be like the nations, like the families of the lands, to worship wood and stone. As I live, the word of the Lord Hashem, I swear that I will rule over you with a strong hand and an outstretched arm and with an outpoured wrath. I will take you out from the nations and gather you from the lands to which you were scattered, with a strong hand and with an outstretched arm, and with outpoured wrath. And I will bring you to the wilderness of the nations, and I will contend with you there face to face, just as I contended with your forefathers in the wilderness of the land of Egypt. So will I contend with you, the word of the Lord Hashem. I will make you pass under the rod, and bring you into the bond of the covenant. I will separate from among you those who rebel and those who transgress against Me. I will take them out of the land of their sojourning, but they will not come to the soil of Israel. Then you will know that I am Hashem." HaKadosh Baruch Hu tells us that eventually He's going to shut down the whole world.

2:07:24all of the unethical businesses, all of the illegal marriages, all of the defiled behavior, in private or in public, He's going to put an end to all of it, and He's going to shut it all down. And He's going to control all of it with a strong hand, with an outstretched arm, and outpoured wrath. Rav Elchonon Wasserman, a"h (alav ha-shalom), almost 80 years ago, said to us, we already saw World War I, That was the strong hand. We're already seeing millions of Jews being killed during World War II. He himself was killed at the end of World War II in the Holocaust. We're seeing the outstretched arm. Do you want to continue violating Hashem's Torah and see Him also do the outpoured wrath too? You're going to force Hashem to destroy everything. It's time to change. And HaKadosh Baruch Hu says one way or the other, we will be His people. It doesn't mean that everybody will be His people, but the nation as a whole will always remain. And one of those

2:08:44that simply are determined to stay resha'im. Determined to stay idol worshippers to money. Idol worshippers to a rabbi. Idol worshippers to a statue. Idol worshippers to their ego. Idol worshippers to their house. Idol worshippers to everything except Hashem. He continues in verse 39, and he says, "And you, O house of Israel, thus says the Lord Hashem..." Let every man go serve his idol, since you do not listen to Me and do not profane My Holy Name any longer with your gifts and with your idols. But on My holy mountain, on the mountain of the height of Yisrael, the word of the Lord Hashem There the entire house of Israel, all of it, will serve Me in the land. There I will accept them favorably. And there I will seek your tributes and the finest of your offerings with all of your consecrated things. So here you see, He contradicts. On one hand, He says, you stay wicked, you want to serve idols, go on, serve your idols. Just stop being chilul Hashem. But then He says later on, hold on, you just know all the people on the mountain,

2:10:05I'm going to accept your prayer. What do we learn from here? Some will make it, some will not. You do teshuva, HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, I want you. I want you back, no matter what you did in the past. You abandoned the idol worship. You abandoned the intermarriage. You abandoned the materialism. You abandoned everything. You connect to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. I want you back. If you don't, HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, you'll be destroyed. As He says in chapter 18 of Yechezkel, "V'haRasha ki yashuv mikol chata'av asher asah v'shamar et kol chukotai v'asa mishpat u'tzedakah, chayoh yichyeh lo yamut." And the wicked man, if he repents from all of his sins that he committed, and he observes all of My decrees and practices justice and righteousness, he shall surely live and he shall not die. Where we started does not matter. Where you are going matters. What you are doing matters. That's what the Haggadah is trying to teach us.

2:11:18Now we have an opportunity to use this COVID-19 as an opportunity to connect to HaKadosh Baruch Hu on the highest possible level. Learn more Torah, but not just for yourself. Also for the klal. You have to stop judging everyone. Judge yourself first, and everyone else, you give them the opportunity because each person can be one of these four people. They could be a chacham. Who are you to judge a chacham? They could be a rasha. But HaKadosh Baruch Hu says if this rasha is still open, he's still open to something, he's still coming to the seder, he still has some interest, give him a CD. Share with him a lecture. Don't give up on him automatically. Don't give up on people right away. He's a simple guy. Okay, so don't give him the genome lecture right away. Give him a simple purpose of life. Hashem took back his millions. I don't know, something that's not like Kaf HaKela on day one. Give him something just to get him to understand that there's a God that runs the world and God expects you to do stuff. He's completely clueless, like the vast majority of people.

2:12:35Perfect. You have Torah and science, Torah and science and ancient wisdom, all types of lectures about the basics of Judaism that HaKadosh Baruch Hu runs the world. Use this opportunity to do kiruv. Don't just jump to conclusions that everyone's going to die and you're the only one who's going to survive. Who says you're going to survive? The Prophet says you want to be a tzaddik, you used to be a rasha, you want to be a tzaddik now? You have to do kiruv. You have to help other people. You have to help other people. Why? Because one of them, even if he's a rasha, look, even if he's a rasha, he's still called Hashem's son. It says there are four sons. One's a rasha. Yeah, but how can he be a son if he's a rasha? He's a rasha, but he's a son anyway. Why? He's still alive. But HaKadosh Baruch Hu wants him to do teshuva. HaKadosh Baruch Hu wants him to do teshuva. The potential of Am Yisrael has no limits. We'll finish off with this. And then I'll give you guys a few things about Pesach and let you guys get some rest. Rabbi Ovadia, alav ha-shalom, before he became the famous Rabbi Ovadia that the whole world knows, even the goyim know, he used to teach an enormous amount of Torah. On Shabbat, at times, he would give seven lectures in one day, one place after another, one place after another.

2:14:02We complain about three lectures a week. He would give seven in one day. One time he gave a lecture in one of these places where the kids were outside playing, and they weren't exactly the best of kids. And Rabbi Ovadia, alav ha-shalom, was teaching a few people who were there in the Beit Knesset. The leader among these kids was like a unique rasha. What kind of rasha? He wanted to disturb everything. So what did he do? "Let's play a game. Let's kick the ball against the window to make as much noise as possible to ruin the lecture." Why? I don't know. Sounds like fun. Sounds like fun. So they're making all this noise. All right, it continues, continues, continues. But it's so much noise. So eventually he gets up, he says, one second, he goes outside, and he says, excuse me, he sees the guys all yelling, laughing, ah, we stopped the shiur, ha, ha, ha, ha, you know, one of those kids, they're having a good time on somebody else's account. So he says, excuse me, the noise is too loud, can you please be quiet, play somewhere else, or play somewhere, you know, don't make the noise. He says, rasha, what did he do? He kicked the ball straight at Rav Vosner's face.

2:15:28hit his head and his hat fell off. Nobody picked up the hat. He went back inside. After the shiur was done, he came outside and they're still playing, having a good time, you know. Now he's like a hero. Now he kicked the Rabbi in the face and nothing happened. He's even a bigger hero now. Rabbi Ovadia calls the rasha, he says, come here. Wow, what do you want? Come here for a second, come. He says, what do you want? He says, did you eat today? What? You eat food. You eat? No, I didn't eat. You want to come to my house and eat? Yeah, sure. Takes him to his house to eat. This kid looks like Yeshayahu Paruah. You guys don't know who Yeshayahu Paruah is? It's an old cartoon from 50 years ago. It looks like a mess. His hair is all over the place. He looks like he's a criminal. How much of a criminal? And that's what happens. The kids, you know, when they're not watched, when there's no education, they turn into criminals. Rabbi Ovadia takes him to the house. The Rabbanit says, when I saw this, the Rabbanit showed up with this kid. I thought it was a hold-up or something. Rabbi Ovadia takes him to the house. Rabbanit, Rabbanit, please give him something to eat.

2:16:51So she gave him something to eat. He finished. "You want more?" "Yeah." She gives him another plate. "You want more?" "Yeah." She gives him another plate. He ate the whole thing. "Okay, thank you." "No, no, what are you doing? Aren't you tired?" "No, no, I gotta go." "No, why don't you take a rest? Why don't you take a rest? It's Shabbat. Why don't you take a rest here?" "No, no, I gotta go." "How about this? You stay in my house. You take a rest. I'm going to say Shabbat." I'll give you, what do you want to do on Motzei Shabbat? He goes, I want to go to the movie. How much does the movie cost? He goes, two liras. Okay, I'll give you two liras. You know, in those days, there weren't movies like today. This is seven years ago. I'll give you the two liras to go to the movie. Yeah, yeah, okay, I'll stay home. He stayed at his house. The whole Shabbat, Motzei Shabbat, he goes, no, you're going to give it to me? No, no, no, here you go. Takes it, gives it to him. He goes, "But I promised." What was the promise? Next week, he comes to my house again. "For sure, if this is the deal we're going to do, for sure." And that's what happened. Next week, he went to the shul, and all of a sudden, it's quiet. All the kids are like, "Hi Rabbi, hi Rabbi, hi Rabbi." Why? Because the leader told them, "You say one word, I'm going to kill you." Everybody's like, "Hi Rabbi, hi Rabbi." They all became commanders and soldiers. No one is allowed, the dogs are not allowed to bark.

2:18:10No one's allowed to do anything. Why? Rabbi Ovadia is over here. After the shiur, he comes out, he comes to my house. Yeah, yeah, Rabbi, let's go to the house. He goes to his house, and they eat again. And this time the Rebbetzin was ready. She had one pot for the family, one pot for this kid. He had a nice appetite. Built it up the whole week from Shabbat to Shabbat. He was fasting apparently. Anyway, this kid would come to his house every Shabbat and eat with him. And today Rabbi Ovadia didn't say his name. Because to protect his honor of who he was, even Rav Mazuz, Rav Efraim says he heard the story also of Rav Mazuz, and many people already know who this person is, but no one wants to say the name. He's not only a religious person, he's one of the biggest dayanim in the world today. He's one of the biggest dayanim in the world today, this boy. Why? A little bit of tzemet lev. little bit of tzemet lev. They don't know what they don't know. They don't know why they reject the Torah. They don't know why they don't keep Shabbat other than the fact that it's just a day to do stuff. They don't know why they're walking around immodest. That's just, you know, that's the fashion. That's the fashion. I told somebody recently

2:19:34You know, she says, listen, I don't know. I don't know if I want to show my kids this Jewish show. I said, what's wrong with the show? It's a Jewish show, a kosher show. It's, you know, one of these programs you buy. It's a DVD or whatever it is. Oh, I don't know. There's a rebbetzin over there. I said, yeah, but you have a daughter. She said, yeah, but my daughter, I don't want her to see this rebbetzin. She has a short wig on. I said, why not? She said, because you say against wigs. I said, yeah, but she's not wearing a wig because she knows it's avodah zarah. She's not dafka wearing the wig because it's idolatry. She's wearing the wig because the rabbi that she has says the wigs are allowed. And her understanding is she's following the rabbi. She's not dafka going to India and buying the wig and saying, dafka, I want to go against Hashem. So you can't just assume all women that wear wigs are wicked people. They're clueless. That's the reality. The vast majority of people are simply clueless. You can't just judge everybody, thinking everyone's the worst person in the world because they don't know. They really don't know. That's what the Haggadah is trying to tell us.

2:20:40They simply are ignorant. Does that mean that you accept everyone as your best friend and start inviting them and go eat at their houses? No. You obviously can eat only at kosher houses, and you should befriend people that are at a certain point in a certain time of their life. But the point is that when it comes to kiruv, when it comes to Klal Yisrael, when it comes to praying about people, when it comes to helping people, put everything aside. They are still Hashem's children. They're still Hashem's children, and unless they're sinning on purpose, with intentional reasons, like he knows it's not allowed to drive on Shabbat, and you told him that a Mechalel Shabbat is considered an idol worshiper, and he still decides, no, no, I'm going to drive anyway, that's an evil person. That person, you're not even allowed to look at his face. You're not even allowed to look at his face because it will affect you in a negative way. But a person that's simply clueless, help him out. Give him a lecture, give him a CD, show him the right way, directly or indirectly, and help him go from being an am ha'aretz to being a chacham over time, just like you. Don't just abandon everybody and say, no, no, I want Mashiach right now. What do you mean Mashiach right now? You want everybody to die?

2:22:08By the way, Rabotai, just so you know, if Mashiach comes, we're the first ones to get punished. Just so you know, the religious people. Why? We knew we didn't do enough. Everybody's like, rest assured, if Mashiach comes, I'm the first one in line. Yeah, first one in line to get chopped right in the face. For not doing enough. No, I did enough. What did you do? What did you do that's enough? Oh, you know, I shared some lectures. Yeah, you shared some lectures. Did you put as much passion and effort behind your sharing lectures as you did behind your career, behind your car, behind your other hobbies? Unless kiruv is your number one priority, number one hobby, number one vocation, number one everything in your life, you're not doing enough chesed for Am Yisrael. You have to include Am Yisrael in your prayers every single day. You have to cry for Am Yisrael every day. Why? They're Hashem's kids.

2:23:11That's what people don't understand. Everybody wants their own personal Mashiach. Why? They want their problems to be solved. How selfish are we? Because we have problems, we want Mashiach to come fix them. What about everybody else? Well, Mashiach can't fix their problems. Why? It's too late. They can only fix their problems before Mashiach comes. So, instead of praying for Mashiach to come, let's pray for HaKadosh Baruch Hu to open up the eyes of our dear brothers and sisters, so they can do teshuvah. So they're ready for Mashiach to come. So then it really becomes... Where it's a generation of really righteous and really wicked. Where it's clear, these people are righteous, HaKadosh Baruch Hu is going to be okay. He's going to save them. He's going to take care of them. These people are wicked. They deserve what's coming to them. We're not going to waste a single tear on them. What? they're wicked. They chose to be wicked. They were given a chance, another chance, another chance, another chance. They decided, "Listen, I like the wickedness. I like evil. I like going against Hashem. I like wasting seed. I like pornography. I like violating Shabbat. I like it. I'm not gonna change." Okay, not gonna change? No problem. Enjoy this world, but that's it. It's gonna be finished. The rest of them, I don't know, help them out. Help them out. That's the point of what I... That's the whole four sons. Now, when you finish eating...

2:24:36After you do everything that you need to do for the Haggadah, the Haggadah is relatively self-explanatory for anyone that's confused. Don't worry, most people are confused. But that's why the Haggadot have clear instructions. Press the button on the back, please. Everybody's confused, but that's why the Haggadot today are self-explanatory. And they tell you pretty much when to do, what to do, everything that you need to do. And it's important that you read all the small print and know what to do. Know that it's not a suggestion. So in the beginning, you eat the... You read the Haggadah. You have to get to a point where you build up a nice appetite. But remember that...

2:25:36The whole purpose of the seder is not the food. It's important to eat. It's important that it's delicious too. If you're a wife, instead of reading Tehillim on the night of the seder, you should make good food. Why? Because if your Tehillim is good and your food is not good, your seder is not going to be good. So it's more important for you to make good food than to make good Tehillim. Because people can't eat Tehillim. So it's a good time to be a Tzadeket, but on the day of the seder, Cook food. Why? Because that's what the family is waiting for. They're not waiting for your Tehillim. There's a time and place for everything. Same thing with the father. Father, if you want to learn some Gemara, you want to become a real tzaddik before the seder, great. But if your wife needs help, go help her. Why? Because no one's going to care about your chiddushim if you and your wife are arguing, because she feels like you didn't help her with anything. So, you have to make sure you help each other get ready for the seder. Don't kill yourselves to the point that by the time you get to the seder, one eye is open, one eye is closed. Kids also, it's good if you have young kids to maybe take a nap in the middle of the day, so they have the strength to last the whole seder. How long is a seder? As long as you can make it. The longer, the better.

2:27:01But that doesn't mean that you just simply eat and don't stop eating like cows. It means that you're going to take the seder and use it to its full potential by talking about the Exodus from Egypt. So after you fulfill all of the obligations of the Pesach, Matzah, and Maror, you eat the Maror, the Karpas, you have the Matzah, you hide the Afikoman, and somebody finds it. If you're doing a seder by yourself, you can hide it, you can find it, and buy yourself a reward also if you want. The point is that after you do that, and after you eat a meal, then you drink the last two glasses, you say the Birkat Hamazon, you say the Hallel, the Haggadah that you're using is going to give you the exact order of everything, who, what, when, and how. But after you finish the Seder, you have to now continue the Seder. With what? Stories of the Exodus. Yetziat Mitzrayim. You must tell stories of the Exodus,

2:28:03on this night, and the amount of stories should continue until you fall asleep, until you have no energy whatsoever left. So don't be in a hurry to end the Seder. You don't know it? Bring a book, read it together, study it. If a person wants to take on a chumra (stringency) on himself and stay awake all night, As long as his body is not suffering, and he wants to learn all of the details about the Exodus of Egypt, then he should do it. But once he gets to a point where he's tired, then he should go to sleep. But if he can handle it, and wants to do it all night, and learn about the Exodus of Egypt, Good. Now, what's about the Exodus of Egypt? If you notice in the Haggadah, the stories that are shared are shared by the greatest sages in history. Rabbi Eliezer ben-Horkenos, Rabbi Akiva, all the greatest sages in history. But what stories are they sharing? They're sharing the simplest stories.

2:29:11In the Torah, they're not going into the hidden secrets, mystical, supernatural, this and that. You don't have to know the gematria of this and the gematria of that. No. Basic. Those are the stories for the Pesach Seder. Don't bring a notebook to your family with different mathematical calculations and a chalkboard with all types of diagrams of why it had to be on this day and that day, and teach them sugyot of why it's this and it's that. No, no, okay. Simple stories of the Exodus. Though everything that happened with the ten plagues and all the nice stories you heard about the ten plagues, we have shiurim about the ten plagues for anyone that wants to use them. It'll give us some merits. We need merits, b'ezrat Hashem, and you can use the stories that we learned. Each one of the plagues has a short three to five minute clip on our channel. Just type in the name of the plague and you could see it. As far as the Exodus, I have at least two or three shiurim, if not more, discussing the Exodus, different miracles that happened. B'ezrat Hashem, maybe you want to use those also. The point is, there's an endless amount of information that's basic that everyone could understand. Why do I say this specifically? Why does Rabbi Akiva, Rabbi Eliezer, why do they say the basic stuff? Because the number one most important audience

2:30:34To your seder is your children, not your guests. Meaning, even if you have Moshe Rabbeinu and Eliyahu HaNavi show up at your seder, but then you have your Yehoshua show up at the seder, he's your son, you have to teach Yehoshua and tell Eliyahu HaNavi and Moshe Rabbeinu, "I'll talk to you after the seder." Why? I got Yehoshua; we got to teach him. That's the number one obligation. That's why many people throughout our ages wouldn't bring guests. They wouldn't bring guests on Pesach. Some wouldn't bring guests because of kashrut reasons. Others wouldn't bring guests because the main focus is the kids anyway. I'm not going to have time to entertain the guests. Why? Because I have to teach my kids. So the number one most important thing is to teach the kids. If you don't have kids, it's to teach yourself. Teach your wife, teach yourself. But it's very, very important for you to teach the basics. Why? Because if you go up on top, if you're some genius, you know all the biggest chiddushim in the world, and you start talking and people don't understand what you're talking about, you're losing them. You're making the Torah look bad. You're making the Torah taste bitter to people. Why? It's too sophisticated. It's got math, science, calculus. You've got to be a mathematician, a rocket scientist. Who needs this? Let me just go back to cartoons. Mickey Mouse.

2:31:56So you have to teach simple stuff for everybody to understand. And get ready if you have young kids, especially if they're smart kids, guess what? They're going to ask you to say the same story 500 times. Say it. Or you better have a better story. But if you have to say the same story 500 times, say it. Why? That's the point. That's the point. So the amount of stories, the more stories, the more your seder is considered holy. you should do it until you pretty much can't anymore. Even if the kids go to sleep, you continue until you fall asleep. If you run out of material about the Exodus and want to start learning Torah, you can learn other parts of the Torah. Anything else is good, but it's better to link whatever you're learning to Pesach. So, learning Hilchot Pesach, learning about Pesach and things like that. But technically, you could learn anything that you want. If you're studying at night and you fall asleep and then you wake up, it's not mandatory for you to continue learning the Pesach laws or the stories of the Exodus. But if you want to take on the strategy yourself, you will be blessed for it. This is all in Rabbi Ephraim's book, Achtav L'Yisrael, the second part, in Siman number 8.

2:33:14Now, it's very, very important for you to listen to this last thing. It doesn't matter if your food is good. Even though I made a big deal out of it to make you laugh, it doesn't matter if your food is good. It doesn't even matter if your stories are good. You know what matters? If you're happy during the seder and you don't argue with each other. If you argue with your wife... If you argue with your husband, even if your food is the most delicious food in the world that Moshe Rabbeinu would want to come from Olam HaBa to taste, even if your stories are so sweet that Rabbi Akiva himself never heard them, if you argue with each other, your whole seder goes to the garbage. It's all worthless. all worthless. Do not argue during the Seder, or before the Seder, or after the Seder, or period, but especially during. Why? This, Rabotai, is the main event. This is the main event we have to understand. During Pesach, we do something unusual: we open the door for Eliyahu HaNavi. Why do we open the door for Eliyahu HaNavi? Why can't Eliyahu HaNavi open the door for himself? He's already an angel.

2:34:31Eliyahu HaNavi really needs the door. Why? He can't get into the house without you opening the door. What is he really teaching us? Eliyahu HaNavi can walk into your house with or without you opening the door. Eliyahu HaNavi can walk into your house with or without your knowledge, with or without your agreement. But Eliyahu HaNavi is saying, open the door for me. Meaning, I'm ready. I'm ready. Put me in, coach. I'm ready. I'm ready. What does it mean ready? Open your heart. Open your heart. Open your heart. Your stubborn heart. And stop being so arrogant. Stop being so stingy. Stop being this. Stop being that. Open your heart. That means it's not just that we have to expect. We have to expect also that the Yetzer Hara is going to come too. You know why it's going to come? Anywhere Eliyahu HaNavi comes, he wants to interfere. Anywhere there's Kedusha, the Yetzer Hara wants to interfere. So, the Yetzer Hara is going to want to come also and cause you and your wife to get into an argument, you and your husband to get into an argument, or you and the kids to get into an argument. You yell at the kids to calm down. Don't let them. See, listen, Yetzer Hara, you either behave, sit here like everybody else, or get out. No arguing in this house. No arguing in this house. Why? It's Leil HaSeder.

2:35:46There's no arguing. You have to do everything possible to avoid all arguments. If that means you have to simply be quiet, then be quiet. It's much more valuable to be quiet than to argue. So with all of this, hopefully, we will have a fantastic seder that brings bracha to ourselves, to our families, and to Klal Yisrael. Maybe each one of us should start thinking about what we can take on for this new year. Because, as we all know, the new year is not just Rosh Hashanah. We have four new years, and one of them is Nisan. One of them is Nisan. Rosh Chodesh Nisan is the new year. That's our new year. We have to take something on. We have all types of extraordinary things happening in the world. It's time for Am Yisrael to do Teshuva, but it requires help from us. If you've watched this lecture this far and haven't shared it, there's something wrong with you. Start sharing it. Share the lecture. Make sure other people can benefit from the Torah. Don't be selfish. Because they could be a Chacham,

2:37:00They could be a Rasha, they could be a Tam, they could be a She'eno Yode'a Lish'ol, they could be one of them. But either way, they're Hashem's kids. And Hashem wants them to do Teshuva before He brings Mashiach. Before He brings Mashiach. If we help Him get His kids back home, the Zohar HaKadosh says that when we get up to the Shamayim, no one can touch us. People always ask me, is there a way to avoid Gehenom? I did some bad stuff. Is there a way to avoid Gehenom? Yes, there is. The trick. First of all, stop sinning intentionally. Second of all, even more important, believe it or not, even more important, because you're probably going to sin anyway, but at least don't do it intentionally, make sure you invest in Kiruv. Help Am Yisrael do Teshuva. That should be your number one hobby, your number one investment, your number one focus, your number one everything. That's what HaKadosh Baruch Hu wants. If you help people do teshuva, you get up to Shamayim. The Zohar HaKadosh says, no one can touch you. Right? You're HaKadosh Baruch Hu's best friend. You brought Him thousands of people back home. He's been looking for them for thousands of years.

2:38:17This Aggadah is a commemoration of HaKadosh Baruch Hu gaining His sons, but also losing some at the same time. It's a reminder for all of us that HaKadosh Baruch Hu is waiting for us for 3,300 years. If we take advantage of Pesach, we can make this whole situation that's going on in the world the best thing that ever happened to us. Why? We can all change ourselves and also what we do for the people around us by treating everyone as an opportunity to help them come back to Hashem. B'ezrat Hashem, each one of us takes this opportunity to do it, takes this mitzvah seriously, and B'ezrat Hashem makes Hashem very, very happy before He brings Mashiach Tzidkeinu. Amen.