Don't Try To Hoodwink HaShem!!

0:11The other thing that Chazal is telling us about the Shema is that it contains the main articles of Judaism in general. Your whole belief system, the foundation of your entire belief in Hashem, is found in Shema Yisrael. The first thing is the unity of G-d.

1:28Next thing is, it reminds you of your obligation to study Torah. You're not doing him a favor; you're studying Torah, as we learned last week, because Torah is not something you can inherit. Even if your father was a big talmid chacham, even if your grandfather was a rabbi—everyone tells me their grandfather was a rabbi—it means nothing. Maybe that's why you're still alive being a mechalel Shabbat, but other than that, it means nothing. He's in Gan Eden, and you’re maybe going to Gehinnom if you don’t start keeping Shabbat. The fact that he's a tzaddik doesn't help you. So, I'll finish this point and I'll answer the question. The next thing is you cannot inherit; you can't inherit the Torah; you have to study it. That's the third point. Fourth point: you can't just learn Torah; you have to fulfill it. You have to fulfill the commandments. Five: there's a reward, and there's punishment. In my opinion, my lowly, meaningless opinion, I believe this is the most important part of the entire thing. This is, I think, in my opinion also, why it's one of the 13 Principles of Faith. Even all of these things are, in one way or another, part of the 13 Principles of Faith. This reward and punishment concept is what our generation needs more than anything else. Why? Because for some reason, we've humanized G-d, Hashem, to such an extent, that we act like He's our buddy. We act like He owes us something. We act like anytime something bad happens, He should say, "I'm sorry." Anytime we don't have parnassah, we ask, "Why is Hashem doing this to me?" What? Why is Hashem doing this to you? I'm lucky He didn't just kill you right now for saying that. But anyway, if there was a king of flesh and blood...

2:53that we act like He's our buddy. We act like He owes us something. We act like anytime something bad happens, He should say, I'm sorry. Anytime we don't have parnasah, why is Hashem doing this to me? What? Why is Hashem doing this to you? I'm lucky He didn't just kill you right now for saying that. But anyway, if there was a king of flesh and blood, Just beat you up. Just got you beat up. Just took all your money. Just killed somebody. Just whatever. Just insulted you in public. You say, hey, why are you doing this to me? No, you wouldn't dare. You'd put your head back into a little turtle cave. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Your Honor. I'm sorry. I'll do it better next time. For a king of flesh and blood, you start crying, saying, I'm sorry. For Hashem, why are you doing this to me? The chutzpah that you have, you're asking, why are you doing this to me? Why don't you look in the mirror? Why is He doing this to you? Why are you doing your tikkun middot? Why are you looking at women that you're not allowed to look at? Why are you eating non-kosher? Why are you not fulfilling the Torah? Why do you have so many flaws? And you're not even trying to work on them. If you were trying, good job. Of course, you're expected to sin, but at least you're trying. If you're not trying...

4:14You dare even complain to Hashem. Why are we at such a low level? Because we don't think there's reward and punishment. We just think there's reward. We think of God as a lottery ticket. He's supposed to give us stuff. Like the idol worshippers, they created Santa Claus. The rest of us have created something else. We think that God just gives us stuff. Yes, He gives us stuff. But part of that "stuff" is punishment too. Punishment is also a reward. It wakes us up. So that's the next point. The next point after that is that we're taught in Yishmael to be cautious of the forces of desire and heresy. We have to control our middot. Our middot, we have to control our desires. One of our desires is going to be things that are outright against Hashem. Sometimes we have the zechut to desire Torah. Sometimes we have the zechut to desire to fulfill mitzvot. But most of the time, our desires are the opposite of what Hashem wants from us. They are the opposite of what even our own neshama wants from us. What do we desire? We desire things like sex. We desire things like money. We desire things like kavod.

5:34We desire a lot of things that are poison for our neshama. So now, you say, listen, if Hashem already instilled in us these desires, why is He punishing us for them? It's His fault. He put it in us that we want money. He put it in us that we want sex. He put it in us that we want kavod. He put it in us. He put the desire in you. But it's up to you to act on it. And that's the difference between you and an animal. An animal has no choice. As soon as a lion is hungry, he's going to go chase the giraffe and kill it. He's not going to ask the giraffe, "Giraffe, are you okay if I kill you today? Oh, you have a bar mitzvah you have to attend to. You're alright, it's good, it's good, your family's okay with it, you said Kaddish, everything, you arranged everything, the funeral, everything's fine, I can eat you today, I'm hungry." Oh, you want me to wait today? You know what? I'll wait till next week. Don't worry about it. Don't worry. I'll eat a couple of the other deer. They're fine with it. They're good with it. A lion's hungry. He goes and kills everyone. That's it. It's instinct. A tiger is hungry. He goes and kills anyone. The snake, the snake is the only creature that even when he's not hungry, he still eats. It's pure instinct.

6:54because everything tastes the same to him. Whether it's a rat or it's anything else, as soon as it is in front of him, as soon as he has prey in front of him, he eats it. It's pure instinct. If you're an animal, if you view yourself as an animal, as an outright animal, and you want to be judged like an animal, then why are you wearing any clothes? I have a friend, 26 years friend. We had a debate one time. He's an atheist. says he's an atheist. I don't really think anybody is a true atheist, but anyway, he says he's an atheist. And one time I read this debate and we got to a point where he says, "Listen, I told him, 'Listen, obviously we're not monkeys. You know, he believes in evolution.' I'm like, 'Oh, well, if you believe in evolution and we all came from monkeys, why is the monkey still here?'" If we all came from monkeys, then the monkeys were supposed to disappear at some point. And it's supposed to be something that's, you know, because if the monkey is the first stage and we're, let's say, the fifth stage, and there are three stages in between us, then the three stages in between us, or at least one of them, are supposed to be here. The monkey is definitely supposed to be long gone if there was really evolution like that. Why is the first stage here and the fifth stage here, but nothing in between? You don't see a half-monkey, half-man running around.

8:12I'm like, so stop acting like a monkey. And he says something really foolish, but it stuck with me. He says, no, but you know what, I don't really see much of a difference between us and monkeys. Initially, it caught me off guard, and it's the last thing I expected somebody intelligent to say, because he's a very, very brilliant person. What? That's the last thing I thought. I thought he was going to say something else. I mean, you know, you try to calculate what the other person is going to say. He throws a monkey wrench at me. He's like, "I don't think there's any difference between us and the monkeys." And, you know, the conversation ended shortly after. And I thought about this for a while after it. And then I realized, you know what? He did it purely to end the conversation. Why? Because there's no way that he can believe that he's just like a monkey. There's no way that anyone believes... Even the people who work at the zoo, those who love animals more than they love some people, even they understand the difference. I remember when I had a dog; I loved my dog more than I loved most people. He was more loyal, more honest, more loving. He never gave me an excuse. It's very easy to love a dog more than people, at least most people. But nonetheless, the reality is that you don't think you're like your dog, and you don't think you're like the monkey. Why? Because you still wear clothes.

9:29If you really thought that you were like the monkey, and there's nothing different between you, why don't you just walk around naked? Jump from trees, eat bananas. Don't work. Live in a jungle. Do you see any monkey with gray hair worrying about a mortgage? Any monkey worrying about what degree he's going to get in college or whether he's going to get into Pace University or Princeton? Do you see any monkey worrying about his degree or whether he's going to become a rabbi one day? Oh, he's going to fulfill any mitzvot? No. So why don't you go be a monkey? Go, enjoy. You can't be both. You can't be a monkey with clothes on because that's a circus act.