Don't Base Your Decisions on Other People

1:03before your decision to do teshuvah, to move, to convert, to join something, it's only a matter of time before that whole decision, the whole rationale behind your decision, collapses. Why? Because it's based on people, and people will let you down. People will let you down. Your friend from childhood is not your friend anymore. Your best friend from three years ago, all of a sudden you don't talk anymore, and... Colleague that used to smoke a cigarette with you 18 times a day when you worked on Wall Street. He doesn't even call you. I had a guy who came to me; he had a lot of problems. He came from an enormous amount of money—came from a very, very rich family. As a teenager, he would crash his Porsches and Ferraris—that kind of money—and... We were friends in the business, but he was older than me. I took him under my wing because he was a mess; a psychological mess. He was an extremely smart guy with an IQ off the charts. Very handsome, a guy who used to be a model, like a celebrity model. He had everything going for him, but the problem was drugs. Drugs would destroy this kid.

2:34So anyway, I took him under my wing and tried to help him. Every time he got into trouble, I'd bail him out. He'd get arrested, and I'd bail him out. He'd get high, and I'd bail him out too, send him to rehab, and pay for rehab, and so on and so forth. This guy became like my son for years. endless amount of problems. One of the times he got kicked out of his house, I took him into my apartment. Now, one of my apartments in New York was on the seventh floor, and two floors down, there was a community balcony on the fifth floor. So, one time, this is one of those crazy stories you can't make up, I went out and told him, "Listen..." Just do me a favor. Go to sleep. You got into some trouble or whatever. Go to sleep. Relax. Stop with the drugs. Stop with all the mess. Stop, please. I'm only going to be gone for a few hours. Can you do it? No problem, no problem, no problem. And he was such a manipulative person. All people, by the way, that have a drug addiction automatically inherit the ability to manipulate.

3:57Everyone feels bad for them. I was one of them—a sucker for people like this. So anyway, I go out, and when I come back, there are a few things, a few details, I'm trying to avoid telling you. I come back to the house, and the doorman to my apartment building tells me, "Where were you?" I'm like, "Wow, what happened?" He goes, "You didn't hear him?" No, we didn't hear what. He jumped out of your window. What do you mean, he jumped? He jumped from the seventh floor to the fifth floor because he thought that the cops were after him. He got high, he got paranoid. Somebody knocked on the door, and he thought it was the cops, so he jumped out of the window. This destroyed his leg; his leg broke into a million pieces. And then he started, like, crawling in the hallway. Mamash, a big mess. I'm thinking to myself, what is going on with this kid? A few hours, I leave you, a few hours. So anyway, I go to the hospital, take care of this guy, this, that, whatever. They have to put metal in his leg. I have stories, I can write a book just about these stories.

5:17Of course, the first time, as I told you, the story keeps going. It's a very long story. If I told you guys the story, it'd be 10 years. So anyway, this guy jumps out of my window. I take care of him, his drug habits, send him to rehab a couple of times. Every time, $18,000 coming out of my bank like nobody's business. No problem, no problem. The guy's sick. You love the guy. He's a good guy. You take care of him. As it would have it, one day I get sick. November 18, 2006, my surgery, my famous surgery, takes place. I start dying. Everyone knows. People that know me know, people that don't know me know, everyone knows. Your own Reuven is dying. Some strangers come to visit, some familiar faces come to visit, but he doesn't come to visit. He doesn't come to visit or even call for almost three years. One day, he calls me and says, "Hey, how are you? How's everything? I heard you had a thing." I'm like, "Yeah, you heard I had a thing, huh?" I ask, "Where were you when I was down?" He's like, "Nah, I don't know. I felt bad. I don't know. I didn't call right away. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know." I'm like, "Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Well, thank you for I don't know, but..."

6:46Good luck. That's it. A guy like that, for me, a guy like that doesn't call you, doesn't visit you. You nurse them much more than what I'm telling you. People will let you down. It's not just in religion. It's everywhere. So if you're basing your decisions on people, your decision has no legs. It's only a matter of time before it gets destroyed. If you converted because you like the Jewish community, you converted for the wrong reason. If you converted for a husband or a wife, you converted for the wrong reason. And shamayim, they won't accept your conversion, and here, you'll have to suffer with it. If you became religious because you like a community, you want to be part of some Beit Knesset, and... You became religious for the wrong reason. It's only a matter of time before the community will spit at you. It's only a matter of time before you're not popular anymore. It's only a matter of time before you're not invited to the community barbecue, or before people start talking about you, or before they start saying things that you don't really like. Or they don't accept your kids to school, or they don't back you on some type of plan that you have. It's only a matter of time.

8:12Before they all let you down, it's only a matter of time. They're all going to ask you for favors, but they'll never reciprocate. They all call me and ask, "Oh, can you help my son? He left; he's off the derech. Why is he off the derech? Ah, he did some drugs. Oh, he has a non-Jewish girlfriend. Oh, he has this, oh, he has that. Can you talk to him? Can you give a lecture for him? Can you invite him? Can you have a one-on-one with him? Can you do this? Can you do that?" No problem. No problem. Whatever. Your son is misken. Your wife is miskena. Your husband, you're this. No problem. You want me to help? No problem. Here's a package. Give him my number. Have him call me. He wants to meet. Whatever. Whatever it is. We work for Hashem. No problem. You would think that in three years you'd send a $10 contribution. A $10 contribution to the zikhuy harabim. I sent you a package, $95 value, for free. You would think, at the very least, you'd pay back the $95. Because you make $100,000 a year. You make $50,000 a year. You would think. You know that we work off of tzedakah. We don't get manna from Shamayim. You think, I helped your brother. I helped your sister. I helped you. I helped with something. You think somebody's going to do them. No, my friend.

9:26No, it doesn't work that way. If you're doing it for kavod (honor), you're doing it for the wrong reason. If you're doing it for all of these other things, it's only a matter of time before the whole system shuts down. So when you get in front of tzadikim (righteous individuals), you tell the story: I made money, I did this, and I left this, and I did all these things. Initially, people are impressed, but this one specific person... expecting to get the same level of respect from the Jewish world that he got in the business world, and fortunately, it doesn't always work that way. He made an error; he spoke about somebody that he shouldn't have spoken about. Whether he's right or wrong is irrelevant, and that other person emptied out the laundry on this guy. He uncovered a lot of things that no one wants to hear, and in so many words, the Jewish world is

10:29exactly very accommodating. He wasn't exactly very pleased to hear this news, so he got embarrassed. He got embarrassed, and he ran away. Now, he's so upset at the Jewish people that he wants to destroy them. This has nothing to do with the Torah. Though he's trying to use the same Torah that he learned against him, he's attempting to be an avalanche with the Torah, a degenerate with what he thinks is the permission of the Torah to be a degenerate. As the Ramban said, the reality of it is that he's not doing it because of the Torah; he's doing it because of his own ego. His ego was hurt and... He was expecting people to applaud him. He was expecting people to kiss his you-know-what. He was expecting people to praise him, and as soon as a few tomatoes were thrown in his face, he didn't like it. So now he wants revenge. Do you remember a story like that in the Gemara? We just had Tisha B'Av. You guys remember a story back then? No? What story? Kamtza and Bar Kamtza.

11:51comes the same thing. Ego is hurt. It has nothing to do with the Torah. He didn't go to the goyim and rat on the Jews because he didn't like the Torah. He used the Torah law. Use the Torah law against the Jews by saying, "Listen, if you bring the korban (sacrifice) and the korban has a blemish on it, it has some type of mum (defect) on it, they are not going to accept it. So what did he do? He created the mum by cutting off the sheep's lip, and you know, the Jews are not gonna accept the korban." What happened? The destruction of the Beit HaMikdash. Why? It wasn't the Torah that destroyed the Beit HaMikdash. It was people's ego. Their lack of morality led to their downfall. It wasn't the Torah that made this guy go off the derech. Like him, many others strayed due to ego and lack of morality. Throughout history, no one has ever left the derech because of the Torah. They left because of their own choices, their lack of morals, and their poor decisions.

13:00So here we see, if you want morals, you can only get them through Torah. If there are morals that are missing, that's because Torah is missing. In a place where there's no morality, there's also no Torah. That's what the first part of this Mishnah is teaching us.