Drug Addiction Attacking The Jewish Community Today (Marijuana, Pain Killers, etc)

0:14In the name of God, we will succeed and succeed. Shiur Torah. Baruch Hashem. Glad to be here. Flew in from Florida this morning because, Baruch Hashem, I had the chance to come here and give a shiur. We just had a shiur in Brooklyn—a very different shiur. Tonight, I was asked to talk about something that's a very sensitive issue in the Jewish world today. It's in essence the elephant in the room that no one really wants to touch, and anyone that touches it, touches it with a 20-foot pole. So today we're going to try to touch it with our hands and really get to the bottom of it. And the issue is drug addiction—drug addiction hitting the Jewish world. In the old days, this wasn't really a part of the Jewish world, even though...

1:15Oh, before I forget, the shiur goes to Ilui Nishmat Shalom ben Istam, Baruch Chai ben Mazal Tov, David ben Emashalom, and Yaakov ben Husni. May Hashem raise their neshamot, and b'ezrat Hashem, may they protect us from up there and fight for us. So, the... Grandparents that we all have were very different from us. If you ask your grandfather or grandmother what their childhood was like and if it's similar at all to today, they will tell you there's nothing close to it. In the old days, for example, what they used to call underwear,

2:15today we call clothes. In the old days, when they used to wear a tank top and boxer shorts, today people walk around like this. Women and men walk around the street like this, feeling one hundred percent confident and comfortable that it's okay for the world to see the exact shape of their body. And, uh Hashem, there's a new style that I'm told about where it's mamash, we're one level away from being completely naked. And at this stage, we're at a point where this generation that we're living in has to be the generation of the Mashiach. Aside from the fact that we're out of time in regards to having all of the signs of the Gemara says in several other places we're going to have several different signs of what's going to happen before the Mashiach comes. We pretty much have all of the signs except the Mashiach himself. But aside from that, the one logical proof that the Mashiach is here is that if he doesn't come soon, he won't have anything to save.

3:30This is the reality we're in. Anyone that wants to think in a more optimistic, positive way is just living in a different illusion, like Harry Potter. The reality we're in is very different. The Jewish world today is very different. This is not to bring us down, chas ve'shalom. This is to explain to each other and to ourselves that we have a lot of work to do. The Zohar HaKadosh in Parashat Beshalach says that before the Mashiach comes... the Arabs are going to fight for our Beit now. They've always fought us, and they made up every type of excuse to fight us. But fighting for our Beit with extra strength rings a few bells. If anyone watches the news, this is the number one war right now. The world wants to go to war for what? For a place that no one wants or knows anything about, except the Jews.

4:32This is happening right now. And the reason why I mention Mashiach now is because if Mashiach would come today, it wouldn't be a very pretty picture for anyone. I read in the Torah, after Am Yisrael left Egypt, Hashem took us with His strong arm, destroyed the biggest civilization in history, much, much larger than America, China, and every civilization in the world combined. More power, more money, more control. He destroyed them. For whom? For the slaves. that He made them into a nation, made them a nation of tzaddikim, made them a nation of kohanim, made them a nation of kedoshim, the slaves, us. We became the masters. In a matter of one year, we went from being slaves to masters. But it says that after Am Yisrael left Egypt, we were all sad. The parasha after we left Egypt starts with the word Vayehi.

5:58And "Vayehi," Chazal say, is also a sign of crying. Why was Am Yisrael crying? Because many of them lost family members and friends, as only 20% of Am Yisrael actually left Egypt. That's the best-case scenario. 80% stayed in Egypt and died in the plague of darkness. Some, in Midrash Me'am Loez, say that it's not 80% who died; it's 99.9% who died and only 0.1% left. There used to be 300 million Jews, and only 3 million left. Either way, the numbers are bleak. The numbers are horrendous. say that it's not 80% who died; it's 99.9% who died and only 0.1% left. There used to be 300 million Jews, and only 3 million left. Either way, the numbers are bleak. The numbers are horrendous. If the Mashiach came today, we wouldn't exactly be in that much better shape because if you look at the majority of the Jewish world, we're not exactly doing everything we need to do according to Hashem's standards. According to our standards, if it's wealth, if it's power, if it's recognition, we're as best as we can possibly be. But we weren't brought to the world to be rich, to be powerful, to be recognized, to run Hollywood. We weren't brought to the world for that.

7:16So, it took me most of my life to realize that because I spent a lot of time on Wall Street chasing money, and when I found out that it's all for nothing, I realized that I have to make some changes. Now, if the Mashiach came today, we have a little bit of a problem. Every one of us has a cousin, or a brother, or a parent, or a friend who is not exactly doing what Hashem wants. Some are even davka doing the opposite. One of the main reasons, one of the main poisons in the Jewish world is political correctness. Being scared to tell people the truth, being scared to hear the truth, sugarcoating things and making people believe that they're not able to handle the truth. They almost made us into a retarded nation, like we can't handle anything.

8:18But in reality, we all know that's fake. It's an intellectual lie. When you say that everything's gonna be okay regardless of what you do, any one of us that lived past teenage years knows that that's not a realistic viewpoint. Everybody had a tough time in their life, everybody had ups and downs. You know life is tough sometimes, sometimes it's good. So if we know down here that there are ups and downs in life, of course Hashem also knows. You do good, you get good. You do bad, you don't get good. Simple. But for whatever reason or another, somehow along the way, the system changed and we stopped being taught the reality of what's happening. Baruch Hashem, the Bukharian community has an amazing knack for loving the truth. And that's helped you in an enormous way in the recent past. But there's one specific thing I haven't heard a lecture about yet. And the lecture that we're going to do today is the other poison. Political correctness is one poison. Drugs are the other one. Drugs are the physical one. Drugs are the silent killer. And one of the main reasons why drugs are affecting us is because most people, including Haredim, don't know whether it's allowed or not. Even though logically, every normal human being should say, no, of course it's not allowed. Of course it's not allowed to do any drugs. Logically,

9:47doesn't make sense. They actually had a survey; they went to Bnei Brak and asked religious people, "Are you allowed to smoke weed? Allowed to smoke grass, hashish, whatever you want to call it these days?" Some people said yes, some people said no, some people said it depends on the type. and what the cost is of doing or not doing it, but an actual real solution. A real solution of how to fix our drug problem. It's possible, it's realistic, but it's very, very difficult. So, in the Gemara Masechet Pesachim, page 113a,

10:48and what the cost is of doing or not doing it, but an actual real solution. A real solution of how to fix our drug problem. It's possible, it's realistic, but it's very, very difficult. So, in the Gemara Masechet Pesachim, page 113a, Rav says to his son Chiya, don’t drink drugs, meaning don’t do drugs. And Rashi explains, because once you start, you’ll have a need to continue, meaning you’ll become addicted, and your heart will get out of control, and you’ll even throw away money for it. And once the money runs out, It will lead you to steal and make other bad decisions. So we already see that almost 2,000 years ago, about 1,700 years ago, Chazal were already very familiar with what drugs were and drug addiction. The Rashbam, who was the grandson of Rashi, gave an additional peirush on it, which will throw us a curveball. In today's world, many people use the excuse of...

12:15marijuana having medicinal benefits. So people that have Parkinson's, bar minan, or cancer—this is one of the things that helps them deal with life, rightly so. The problem is not with them. The problem is not with someone that has Parkinson's or cancer. The problem is with the guy that has a backache because he slept the wrong way, but all of a sudden he's going to smoke weed for the next six years. The problem is with the guy that doesn't feel like doing anything, but he tells his family he's depressed, so now he's going to smoke weed to cheer himself up. The problem is with all the liars that are making excuses to smoke weed. The problem is with the guy that says, "Oh, you have a backache? Come, I'll take you to my doctor," and he gets pot for both of them. That's the problem. The problem is with the rest. The problem is not with the fact that marijuana is legal. That's not the problem. The problem is with who takes it. Who is it legal for? So the Rashbam says that when it comes to drugs, even to use them for health benefits as medicine, you're not allowed to take them if there is a different medicine available. So for anyone that has these backaches, headaches, and all these other ailments,

13:43You're not allowed to take pot, you're not allowed to take any of these drugs if there's another choice. If there's a choice that's not addictive, you're not allowed to take it. Now, the Rambam in Hilchot De'ot, Halacha 20, says something wonderful. And I read it to you directly from the book, so you know I'm not making it up or anything. That's why I bring all these books, in case somebody asks questions. And he says this, this is an actual Halacha. Halacha means from Mount Sinai. Halacha means it doesn't change. The Rambam says, whoever conducts himself in the ways which I have drawn—The Rambam before this gave an instruction set of how to be healthy—whoever conducts himself in this way, I guarantee him, this is a halakha, again, halakha, this means from Mount Sinai instructions. I guarantee that he will not become ill throughout his entire life until he reaches an advanced age and dies. He will never need a doctor. His body will remain intact and healthy throughout his entire life. One may rely on this guarantee unless his body was impaired from birth.

15:07and he was accustomed to one of the harmful habits from birth. Or should there be a plague or a drought in the world. Meaning there are certain exceptions to the rule. But anyone who follows this advice that the Rambam put in Mishneh Torah is guaranteed to be healthy his entire life. Obviously, we know a lot of sick people. We know a lot of people who have gone through hardship. And you see that most of them did one thing or another wrong. Rambam says if you follow this pattern that he has, you'll be in good shape. But the... interesting part is that he says he will not need a doctor. Now, usually when you say someone is healthy, that means that they're not going to need a doctor. Why is he repeating the same thing? So Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetzky writes that the Rambam, when he mentioned this preventative medicine, this preventative way of protecting yourself... but when he again

16:07reminded us that as a result of being healthy you won't need a doctor. He was specifically talking about this Gemara in Pesachim, where you will not need these drugs that are addictive as medicine. You will not need to use these doctors that end up giving you these drugs that cause physical or mental addiction. Now Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetzky, Zecher Tzaddik Livracha, At the end of his days, it's known that he went through major hardship. He went through a huge amount of pain, and they tried giving him all types of painkillers, and he refused to take any of them. And they asked him, why make your life more tolerable? I mean, why are you gonna suffer all this pain? And he said, because if I take any of this medicine, I'm going to be considered a shotah. I'm gonna be considered a drunk. And to be considered a drunk in Shamayim, even for a second, not tolerable. If you have an option to make yourself drunk on purpose, to make yourself high on purpose, it is mamash a hundred percent a sin. The reason why is because you can't pray to Hashem, you can't study His Torah, you can't be in front of the King of Kings when you're a shoteh. So, for all of these people that say, "No, no, I smoke right before I learn..."

17:30You should understand that in Shamayim, that Gemara is considered disgusting. It's not considered Limud Torah. There's no mitzvah. A shoteh that does a mitzvah by accident or on purpose doesn't get a mitzvah. It's considered nothing. If he's a shoteh on purpose, it's actually a sin. So, some people say that they smoke weed right before they learn Torah because it opens up their brain, and it opens up this, and it opens up that, and it opens up all these different things. This is all shtuyot; this is all garbage. This has nothing to do with Judaism. We're almost finished with the halachic part of it, and then we're going to get to the other stuff. Rav Moshe Feinstein, Zekher Tzadik Livracha, gives an elaborate explanation of why doing any type of drug is not allowed, but here he's specifically talking about marijuana. And he gives this in brief; he says, first and foremost, it ruins and disrespects the body.

18:46And even if it doesn't harm healthy people, what makes it worse than, let's say, cigarettes is that it ruins the clarity and state of mind of a person intentionally, who puts himself in a state of being a shoteh and is now dismissed from all of the mitzvot. Where even if he does a mitzvah, there's no reward. To such an extent that Rav Moshe Feinstein says, once a person smokes any type of drug recreationally, he is considered on the same level as a ben sorer u'moreh. Now, we, Baruch Hashem, this week started Sefer Devarim, the book of Deuteronomy. Parashat Devarim.

19:46Interestingly enough, Parashat Devarim and Sefer Devarim is the hardest mussar in the entire book. You want to do teshuva? Read Sefer Devarim. Read the whole Sefer Devarim once, twice, three times. By the third time, you're a tzaddik gamur. You understand what it says? You understand what Moshe Rabbeinu did in the last several weeks of his life? You understand what he says? You do teshuva 100%. Only a crazy person doesn't do teshuva after he understands what he says. If you don't understand, you don't do teshuva. A lot of people read Torah, they don't understand. They make the sounds, like I did most of my life. I know how to make the sounds of the letters, but I don't understand the holy language. So I just said, yeah, chatanu, avinu, everyone can say that. What does it mean, chatanu, avinu, pashanu? Requires Rashi, requires Rambam, requires Onkelos, requires pirushim. Once you understand what it means, at the end of every parasha, I said to myself, I have a problem. I have a problem. This is parasha. I'm not following what it says. So, Sefer Devarim starts with, אֵלֶּה הַדְּבָרִים אֲשֶׁר דִּבֵּר מֹשֶׁה אֶל כָּל יִשְׂרָאֵל בְּעֵבֶר הַיַּרְדֵּן.

21:01These are the words Moses spoke to all of Israel on the other side of the Jordan. This is right before Moshe, this is the last few weeks of his life. And each parasha gives it to them on the head. One over the other, one parasha is over the other. Moshe, very difficult to read sometimes. Now a few weeks from now, we're going to read parashat Ki Teitzei. In parashat Ki Teitzei, Chapter 10, verse 18, it says, if a man will have a rebellious son who does not hearken to the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and they discipline him, and he still doesn't listen to them, They bring him to the elders of the city, and the elders of the city see that he doesn't listen because he's a drunkard and a glutton. They kill him. With what death? Stoning. Sounds interesting, sounds similar. Rav Moshe Feinstein says, it's the same thing. Someone does drugs

22:27They always start small. Most people don't start with the hard drugs, with heroin, bar minan, with all these other garbage drugs that destroy people and civilizations. They start with small things, tiny things, things that they think are okay. Sometimes they even think it's allowed. So it says here, we learn from Gemara Masechet Shabbat, page 105. This is the way of the Yetzer Hara, this is the way of the Satan. He says the way of the Yetzer Hara, the way of the Satan, is one day he's going to tell you, just do a little bit, just one puff. One puff with the friends, come on, will you be embarrassed? Your friends are smoking, no. Can't be the only guy that doesn't smoke. Will you be a tzaddik all of a sudden? Otherwise, you have a kippah, so you are. You don't. One puff, big deal. Moshe Rabbeinu did it too. They start making excuses. I had one guy tell me, no, no, it says it, you know, in the tefillah every day. It doesn't say Moshe Rabbeinu brought samim, brought drugs. Stupidity has reached a new level in this generation. It means incense, not drugs. There's no one who smoked weed in the Torah. No one did drugs in the Torah.

23:52But people are saying, samim, samim. It says samim in the tefillah every day. We read tefillah, it says samim. So, this is the yetzer hara. This is Satan. He says, no, smoke one joint, a little bit, a little puff. What's the big deal? It's good for you. Clears you up. Calms you down. Your wife just yelled at you. Your kid just broke half the house. The customer just reneged on an order. This other guy is suing you. You have all the excuses in the world. Take one. We're not saying do cocaine, veins. No. One puff. Relax a little bit. Don't be a machmir. That's yetzer hara. Yetzer hara says a little bit. Little bit. One puff. Today he says this. Tomorrow he says something else. He says, you know, okay, one puff was not enough for you anymore. Come on, you already do one puff for a week. It's two months. It's nothing for you already. You're better than the average. You do three, four, five, six, seven puffs. A month later, he's already rolling his own joints. Six months later, he may be selling it on the side.

24:54Little by little, he got caught. The Yetzer Hara takes the guy from being a tzaddik. Hashem yerachem. It's become part of his lifestyle. He's now smoking in front of his family in the living room because it's okay. The Yetzer Hara convinced all of them it's okay. No, it's just marijuana. It's natural. It's natural. It's a plant. It's a plant. So is poison, by the way. It's also a plant. So is cocaine. So is everything. Everything comes from Earth. Where do you think it's going to come from? From Mars? It's all natural. They say Snapple, made from the best stuff on Earth. Yeah, it's chemicals from Earth. Where is it going to come from? Mars, Pluto, Venus? We haven't gotten there yet. Where is it coming from? So this is the Yetzer Hara, convinces us, mamash, to such an extent that I finally understood what the Gemara means when it says that the Yetzer Hara, Satan, Malach HaMavet, it's all the same thing. But he's smarter than all of mankind put together. I asked myself for a while, I said, what do you mean he's smarter? What, he knows the entire Shas by heart? Okay, so he learned it for a longer time. What, he knows math? Okay, so if I learn math, what does it mean he's smarter than everyone? What does it mean?

26:22And then I had a chiddush, Baruch Hashem. What makes the Satan so smart is that he convinced all of us that he doesn't even exist. If you ask most people, do you believe in God? They'll say yes. Even if they're not religious, most people will say, I believe in God because it doesn't have to be something that created everything. But if you ask people, do you believe in Yetzer Hara? You believe in a Satan. You believe in a Malach HaMavet. You believe in something that's influencing you from inside you to do something. Influencing you from inside. Most people will tell you, "I haven't thought about it" or "No, I am in control of my own feelings." Most people don't really believe in a Satan. That's what makes him so smart. He's inside you, but you don't even know it. He's controlling and trying to influence every decision, but we don't even acknowledge it. What is it like? It's like you knock on the door, and he says, "I'm not here." You're knocking on the door, and he's answering, "I'm not here, I'm not home." You know he's answering, but "I'm not home." That's what he convinced us. He convinced us that he's not there, he's not home. And we're like, "Okay, when can I come back?" "Come back later, in two hours." That's the Satan.

27:50So first, he tells us one puff, one joint, one bowl, one pill, one needle, one whatever—one, one, one, one, one, one. And then it gets to a point where he says, eventually, he tells him to go do Avodah Zarah, and he does Avodah Zarah. Now this last part I only got today. Today or yesterday, in your merit, Baruch Hashem, I had this chiddush. What does it mean? How does it go from Yetzer Hara? Okay, Yetzer Hara told me to go buy drugs, I understand. Yetzer Hara told me to go buy even more, I understand. Sell it, I even understand. All these things I understand. What does it mean, Avodah Zarah? What does doing drugs have anything to do with Avodah Zarah? And with siyata dishmaya, I had this chiddush, which puts everything into perspective. Rav Moshe Feinstein says, when someone smokes, when someone puts themselves intentionally in a state of being high or being drunk, he's on the same level as a Ben Sorer Umoreh. He's on the same level as someone who's putting their life on the line because he's become addicted. He's put himself in a place where it's out of his own control. He's officially dangerous. He's dangerous because if he doesn't have the addiction,

29:13it leads him to steal. Gemara Masechet Sanhedrin says, why is a Ben Sorer Umoreh called Ben Sorer Umoreh? Because eventually, if he doesn't get his addiction, he starts stealing. If he doesn't get it from stealing, he starts murdering. So we kill him, we kill this young boy, this teenager. Why do we kill him? He didn't murder anybody yet. We're killing him to save other people. So at least when he dies, it's before he sinned big time, before he went too far. If Moshe finds, he says, it's the same thing with somebody that starts doing drugs. So I said, how does it get? What big sin? The guy that's going to smoke weed, all of a sudden, going to become a murderer? He says, even worse. In this Gemara, he says, he's going to do idol worship. How does he do avodah zarah? How do we get to avodah zarah? Where does avodah zarah fit in? When someone does drugs, they start small. little by little, it gets bigger. It may not be every day, but that one time they take too many painkillers, that one time they take too much, that one time everyone realizes it, they get in trouble. What do you have to do? You're dangerous now. So the wife sends them to rehab. They go because they're now dangerous, not just to the people around them, they're dangerous to themselves. You go to rehab.

30:37Rehab, Baruch Hashem, we had the merit to send a few people to rehab. It's not exactly a wonderful place, but I'm telling you this from experience. Rehab is just the beginning. It's the beginning of a mental battle that is impossible to win because they convince you that once you fell for drugs, you now officially have a disease. An incurable disease, it's called a drug addiction. So the only cure to the disease is not really a cure, it's a fix. It's like a band-aid on a heart attack. You have to go to AA meetings. AA meetings. Where are they held? Church. Are Jews allowed to go to church? that once you fell for drugs, you now officially have a disease. An incurable disease, it's called a drug addiction. So the only cure to the disease is not really a cure, it's a fix. It's like a band-aid on a heart attack. You have to go to AA meetings. AA meetings. Where are they held? Church. Are Jews allowed to go to church? If a Jew is being chased by some terrorist, and he has a few options: a mosque, which is probably a terrorist house, a Reform synagogue, or a church, where can he go? Where can he hide? He can only hide in a mosque.

32:01He can't go into the Reform shul and he can't go into the church. The church is a place of To'avat Hashem. The church is a place of idolatry. And this is where they sent all of our brothers and sisters to do rehab. This is where they sent all of our brothers and sisters to do missionary work. The reason why there's an AA center on every single corner is because this is the number one playground for missionaries. Yetzer Hara told you to smoke a little weed. Then he told you to take a little pill. Then you screwed up or you took too much. So he sends you to rehab. Then the rehab told you that you have a disease. Then the disease you have to cure it. So go to church. That's where you worship idols. That's where idolatry comes. That's when we start losing our brothers and sisters to different religions. That's what the Gemara was talking about. Ma was talking about, yeah, the Yetzer Hara told you to smoke weed, but no, no, you're going to end up with idol worship. Why? Because the AA meeting is in a place of idolatry. So, these are things that Chazal already knew from 2,000 years ago. We knew this from 2,000 years ago. This is not chiddushim.

33:26The other points that Rav Moshe Feinstein brings up are that it's forbidden for a person to bring upon himself any major addiction, any major desire that's not necessary for his body. This also leads to a violation of honoring the parents. meaning you get to a point once you start becoming addicted, once you start getting used to it, even if not physically addicted, by the way, I don't mean just physical addiction, I mean also mental addiction. It says it brings the person to a state of mind of being used to it, being just nonchalant about things. And when you're nonchalant about things, you're also nonchalant about certain critical mitzvot, like honoring your parents. you're also nonchalant about honoring your parents. And when you're nonchalant about honoring your parents, you have a serious problem. It also leads to a violation of the mitzvah of being holy. In Parashat Kedoshim, Hashem says, "Be holy because I am holy." Rav Moshe Feinstein says it's impossible for you to be holy and high at the same time. The two have nothing to do with each other. You can't be drunk...

34:54...and holy at the same time. This is why also, even during Purim, you have to be careful. You can't become one of these fools who thinks that just because it's Purim, you can get to a point where you can't walk. You have to observe the appropriate place and time. You can't turn it into a Chilul Hashem. There's a place and a time for everything. You can drink during Purim, but not to the point where you start becoming a danger to the community. And last but not least, he says you... a person that starts doing drugs ends up causing suffering to other people because of their habit. And he says, it's very clear, in the end of things, it's very, very clear, that this is one of the top violations, that we have to do everything we can to remove this tumah, to remove this impurity from the children of Israel. So the question was, why does he call it tumah? It's a sin, fine. Eating non-kosher, not doing tefillin, violating Shabbat, there's a lot of sins. Why is it called this specific sin?

36:14He says, because once a person gets to a stage of being drunk or high, there's no limitation to the sin that they're going to commit. We see this from the Torah. Lot, the nephew of Avraham Avinu, got drunk. The next thing you know, he had incest with both of his daughters. Drunk. Drunk first time. Drunk second time. Once you get to that point, there's nothing controlling it. In Piskei Din of the Rabbanim of Yerushalayim, a woman came to the Beit Din of Yerushalayim recently. And they record all of the Piskei Din, what happens in the Jewish courts. So, a woman came to the Beit Din. She said, "I would like to get a hatarat nedarim. I made a neder. I used to smoke marijuana, and I don't smoke marijuana anymore. But I don't think I need to have this neder. And just in case, chas v'shalom, I fall and I smoke marijuana, I don't want to get the punishment from Shamayim for smoking marijuana."

37:44So can you please remove this neder from my life? Because someone who makes a neder and violates a neder can mamash lose their life and their children's lives. It's a very big deal. You learned that in last week's parasha. So the Beit Din reviewed it, had some mumchim, had some experts review the case. And they said, since this brings a person to a point where they are nonchalant and they're used to making a sin, and that most people, most of the major poskim consider this not only a sin, but a sin, a biblical sin, not a rabbinical sin, We know that it's impossible to cancel a neder of any biblical mitzvah. Rabbinical, you can. Rabbinical, you can have leniency. But once something is a biblical sin, there's absolutely no leniency whatsoever. There's absolutely no permission whatsoever to remove the neder, to make any leniency whatsoever. Last but not least,

39:09The Gemara Masechet Yoma, page 72b, says that the Torah is Sam Chayim. The Torah is the drug of life. And they get it from Sefer Devarim, chapter 4, verse 44. It says, so the Gemara Masechet Yoma says on page 72b that The Torah can be either your drug of life or your drug of death. If you know how to learn the Torah, it can remove all unnecessary, deadly drugs from your life. If you don't know how to use the Torah, it can end up hurting you. So these are some of the things that we know about drugs. Now, this is the basics of the halacha part. Now, How do we beat this? Now, the traditional system of fighting drugs is telling people, "Don't do it." Obviously, it doesn't work. It doesn't work. The reason why it doesn't work is because unless you tell people the cost, the price of things, they don't listen. Rabbi Yisrael Salanter said almost 200 years ago that...

40:36We have a zechut that we live in a generation that was already predicted almost 200 years ago. We live in a generation where there are just as many doctors as there are ailments, just as many medicines as there are doctors, and just as many sicknesses, except for spiritual sicknesses. He says for spiritual sickness, we have a growing amount... of sicknesses, and almost no doctors. Almost no doctors. Why? Because no one wants to be the doctor. Because there's only one medicine. What's the medicine? Yirat Shamayim and Mussar. Teaching Yirat Shamayim from the Torah, and teaching specifically Mussar—character development. He says, no one wants to teach these things. No one wants to teach people how to be a better version of themselves. And what ends up happening is that we become sick without even knowing it. Every time you see somebody committing a sin, your job is to help them, give them a cure. When you don't tell them what they're doing wrong, then that means that you're holding a cure and you're not giving it to somebody. And Rav Yonatan Eibeschutz, he says, that's the biggest sinat chinam that there is.

42:01When a person sees another person sinning, and he doesn't tell them, he is holding the cure and not giving it to somebody else. There's no one in the world that hates more than you. Right now, we're in the last nine days before Tisha B'Av. And we know that Tisha B'Av is technically a day that we should be happy. Why? Tisha B'Av, Hashem decided that He was very, very upset with Am Yisrael, and He decided that He is going to punish us. But instead of destroying Am Yisrael, He's going to put His entire wrath on rocks. So instead of us, it was rocks. So technically, we should be happy. We're still here. It was supposed to be us. Why are we not happy? Why are we still mourning more than 2,000 years later? Does anybody here actually think we're still mourning about something that happened 2,000 years ago? We're not mourning about what happened 2,000 years ago. We're mourning about what's happening now. We're mourning that if the Beit HaMikdash was here now, He would destroy it again now. Again, He would destroy it now. And the reason why is because back then, 2,000 years ago, He destroyed it because of Sinat Chinam.

43:26He destroyed it because of baseless hatred—hatred for no reason. And Rav Yonatan Eibeschitz says that when you don't rebuke somebody, when you know the truth and you don't tell somebody the truth, you're holding the medicine and you don't want to give it to them, you hate them. Hashem destroyed the Beit HaMikdash because of you. Each one of us has to look in the mirror and deal with this on Tisha B'Av. We're part of the reason. So now, the reason we have in the traditional system outside of the Torah is that they tell us we have to send our kids to rehab centers and then send them to AA centers. In the AA centers and the rehab centers, they convince the family and the victim that they're all victims of a disease. Now, this is a guarantee that the person will never, ever stop being addicted. And the reason why is because they tell them there's a disease. Now, does anybody know anything about medicine here? Didn't you take some medicine classes? Aren't you in med school? Almost. Okay, so you know a little bit about medicine. I remember. So, medicine, when it's a big blockbuster drug, people know about it. Is there any such medicine to cure drug addiction?

44:53So that means that they're telling you you have a disease with no cure. So once you become a drug addict, they're telling you, "Finished. You have a disease. It's the same thing like AIDS, same thing like cancer, same thing like all." It's not true. It's not true. Once somebody thinks and believes they have a disease, they give up. They lift up their hands. No, the only thing I could do is put a band-aid on it. I could go to an AA meeting, which is Avodah Zarah. Or I could get in trouble, smoke some weed, do some crack, do all these drugs, and then go back to the rehab center because I have a disease. I'm a miskin, a poor guy, a victim. The guy ends up falling over and over again because of this mental warfare. But the truth is, it's not a disease. The truth is, it's not a physical disease. It's a spiritual one. It's a choice. Whoever is a drug addict chooses to be a drug addict. Now, even though once you become addicted to drugs, it's a physical addiction, it stops, it ends at some point. Once you stop the drugs, eventually the physical desire ends, and it just becomes purely a mental desire. That's a spiritual sickness.

46:18that is only one cure. The cure is our Torah. We got the Torah three thousand years ago. We have the cure, but no one gives us any money for it. We don't get any blockbuster drugs for it. It's not on CNBC. There's no ticker symbol for it. The key is that we have to understand that the mentality has to change. Our mentality as a community has to change. I heard, Hashem, there were three kids in New York who died within 36 hours due to drug addiction, not too long ago. Before that, there were more. Every so often, we have our kids disappearing from the face of the earth because of this poison. It's time we did something. It's time we spoke up. It's time we did something about it. First and foremost, it starts with the person you look at in the mirror. And you have to repeat it to yourself and to anyone who asks you. There is no such thing as leniency to do any drug, even if it's medicine. If there is another choice, you have to take the other choice unless the other choice doesn't work. Then, if there is no other choice, and the only option is an addictive drug, you have to try the non-addictive drug first. You have to.

47:38If it works, great. If it doesn't work, then obviously you're left with the one that's addictive. And then you have to work on it and make sure you don't get addicted. But the point is, the first and foremost is to get us to a point where we realize there's no such thing as it's okay to smoke a little weed. There's no degrees of what's allowed or what's not allowed. Ecstasy is not allowed and pot is allowed. There's no such thing. So anyone that wants to work on their middot, anyone that wants to work on themselves before Tisha B'Av, before Yom Kippur, before Rosh Hashanah, before all of these major days, before Mashiach comes, before Yom HaDin, all of these things, you have to realize, the first thing they're going to check is if you have Yirat Shamayim. You have Yirat Shamayim, you're scared of God. Anyone who gets high is not scared of God. Because God's next to you when you're getting high. He's watching. He's right there. He's not only in Shamayim. He's next to you, he's in the Beit Knesset, he's outside of the Beit Knesset, he's in the office, he's everywhere. So that's one thing that we have to understand. First and foremost, you have to remove this thought from our minds that it's ever allowed. It's never, ever allowed. Not during your party, not during your wedding, not during anything. The second thing is that once we see other people doing it, we have to start helping them. The only way to help them is by teaching them this Mussar, teaching them how to develop themselves, teaching them how to actually improve themselves as a person.

48:59Once a person gets close to Hashem, he wants to stop this garbage. He wants to remove this tumah from his body. But the most important part is to do it as a community and not fall for the yetzer hara that's convincing us to send our kids to these rehab centers. Once you send a kid to rehab centers, and follow the system. The rehab center by itself, you may have to do. But the follow-through... The AA meetings, under no condition should you ever send a kid to them. Because you're going to ruin him forever. At best case scenario, he's going to think he has a disease. At worst case scenario, he's going to become a Christian. So this is just the basic stuff I wanted to cover about drugs. But I know you guys have a bunch of questions about different things that may or may not have to do with this. So go ahead, I'll leave you with some questions. We didn't cover the whole Torah, so I'm sure you have some other questions. Why a mosque? No, the reason why a mosque is acceptable is because they don't worship idols.

50:22Technically, they worship the same God we do. They're just heretics. Allah is the same thing as Hashem. It's just that they obviously call it in their own language. And they're heretics. They changed parts of the Torah. They added parts to it, so they're considered heretics, but they're not considered idol worshippers. Whereas the church is 100% idol worship. And Reform is even worse. Reform are considered minim. Meaning that you're not even allowed within six feet of them because they influence people to go against God. A Reform person, a Reform shul, a Reform person is someone that influences people to go against God. They change the Torah. No. They learn... their own logic, and they say outright that they don't believe that the Torah is from Shamayim. They believe that it has certain things that are relevant, but they use whatever they want. You know, like they pick and choose. So, for example, they like the concept of Bar Mitzvah, but they think that you should give a Bar Mitzvah to a dog also. So, they give Bar Mitzvah to dogs with tefillin.

51:47You go on YouTube, you see there's Bar Mitzvah for dogs with tefillin. Thousand-dollar tefillin on their head. A dog. Some other rasha. Unfortunately, there's plenty of resha'im in the world. They pick and choose different mitzvot and they put their own garbage on it, unfortunately. they say, "Oh yeah, we like the concept of a rabbi, but we like our rabbi to be non-Jewish and a woman." So one of the leading rabbis in the Reform movement is a Chinese non-Jewish woman. So... They pick and choose. So someone like that, you're not even allowed to be within six feet. According to the Rambam and according to Gemara Avodah Zarah, it says you're not allowed to be within four amot of this person. Even standing next to them. Six feet. Because they're damaging. So, as strange and as crazy as it sounds, if you have a person like that or you have Mustafa, you're better off with Mustafa.

53:04Do something. So the Torah says that you have to rebuke people until they get to a point where they're threatening or even get to a point of beating you up. That's actually what it says. Now, There are certain mitzvot that you have to continue telling them up to that stage, and there are certain mitzvot where you stop. So, what's the difference? If it's Shabbat, for example, and you see somebody driving on Shabbat, you have to do whatever you can to remind this person, directly and indirectly, that they have to keep Shabbat. Every time you see him violating Shabbat, you have to tell him something. And again, directly and indirectly, meaning you could tell them yourself, or next time you see them, you give them a CD about Shabbat, or you bring them to a lecture about Shabbat, or you send them an email about Shabbat. It doesn’t necessarily always have to be the same thing, the same way, but you have to do something about it every single time.

54:15Because that's De'oraita. That's from the Torah. That's a biblical sin. That's the foundation of Judaism. On the other hand, if you see somebody not doing the Netilat Yadayim, which is a rabbinical mitzvah, or you see, let's say, somebody not honoring Chanukah, which is also a rabbinical mitzvah, you should only rebuke them if you know that they're going to be receptive. But if you know for sure they're not going to be receptive, don't say anything. Because it's a rabbinical mitzvah. Now with drugs, it's a biblical mitzvah. So anytime you see somebody that's doing drugs, you have to do something about it. Now, the thing is with helping people do teshuva, is that there's a way to do it. And one of the most important things to know about how to do it is that you need to know with whom to do it. You can help a stranger do teshuva much faster than you can help somebody you know. You could influence a stranger much easier than you could influence your brother, your sister, your father, your mother, you know, it's much easier. And the reason why is because your brother, your father, your mother, your sister, and everyone else that you know, they're always going to remember that maybe you used to be like them. They're not going to remember you now as a tzadik. They're going to remember you in the past. Oh, you used to smoke with us. Now all of a sudden you're a tzadik. All of a sudden you're Moshe Rabbeinu. All of a sudden you're...

55:35So they're not going to give you the credit. So, with people like that, it's better for somebody else to do it. So what do you do? You give them a CD. You send them a lecture. Somebody else talking, not you. Say as little as possible. Say, "Hey, watch this." What is it about? "It's really good." What is it about? "It's good." Don't even give them the idea of what it's about. Just send them somebody else talking. Bring them to a lecture. Give them a CD. Send them a movie. Something with somebody else talking most of the time, mainly because they're not going to listen to you anyway. So, you want to do that, but with people that are strangers, or people that are not necessarily as close to you, or people that don't know you as well, with them, go full force. Remind them, tell them, but also remember that you have to act the part too. You can't be Mechalel Shabbat and tell people to keep Shabbat. Because then they say it's like a joke. Go ahead. There's a sense in... American drug addiction culture suggests that the best way of confronting a family member about their addiction is through family intervention. Yeah, it's insanity. But that goes against what you just said. Yeah, it's insanity. It's completely wrong. Family intervention, first and foremost, this is not a family business. Somebody's problem does not necessarily need to become the family business. If, let's say for example,

57:00the father is the only one that knows that the son has a drug addiction. He doesn't need to tell the other siblings, the brothers and sisters. He doesn't need to tell them. Maybe they're going to be embarrassed. You're going to lead them to be embarrassed. Maybe they're going to lose respect for him. Maybe he's dealing with it already in his own way, and the last thing he wanted was for one of his brothers, sisters, friends, or wife to know. So first and foremost, the best way to deal with it is one-on-one, if you have some type of influence on this person. Not embarrassing in public. It's absolutely no, absolutely not. It's a horrendous idea. First of all, when someone is surrounded by a bunch of people in such a way, immediately they feel attacked. They feel sabotaged. They feel like they were set up. They feel like it's a, there's just something like, they were, you know, everybody's in on it except them. I don't know of any intervention, if you will, that went well. I tried it one time with somebody, and it went horribly. And this was a very, very dear friend. And it wasn't even that many people; it was three people. It's just, it's people that go through it. The way he described it is that he felt like his—this is obviously before Torah—

58:23He felt like his privacy was violated. Why did she need to know? Why did he need to know? You knew, okay fine, talk to me. Why did all of them need to know? Even more so, when it comes to the Torah, when we know that someone who embarrasses another person in public has no share in the world to come. So, to put somebody in an intervention, you put them in a situation where you're embarrassing them in public, which means that even if you cure his disease, you still have a problem with your own disease now. You have a problem with your own sin. So, making an intervention is not a good idea. I think that it needs to be one-on-one. If one-on-one is not possible, then you can bring another authority figure, like a rabbi, somebody else he respects, but not the whole neighborhood. It should be contained. Continue with, you know, try to do it as little as possible. First, it's one person. Then it's another person that's really important, a wife, a husband, you know, somebody that's really close to them, or a rabbi. At some point, this person is going to give in. He doesn't need the whole community to know that he's a drunk. So it's the traditional mentality and way of fixing the system.

59:38is against the Torah. It's not a system that works because, in essence, what it infuses is what we talked about before, which is it infuses this idea that the person is sick. Oh, we all know, we all love you, we all know you're sick. It's okay to be sick. He's not sick. No, it's okay. It's okay. We're with you. But he's not sick. There's nothing wrong with him. He just chose to do drugs. Convince him to stop. Show him that it's bad for him. Remind him. That's it. It doesn't need to be a life-ender. But this mentality that the person is sick, that's the life-ender. That's the part that kills people. It's the wrong medicine that kills more people than the actual drug itself. So, this system of embarrassing people in public... It's horrible. All these rehab centers that have, you know, like these gatherings. A lot of these rehab centers have these gatherings. And a lot of times, there are a lot of problems between the people. This guy hates that one, this guy hates that one. They all fight each other, and sometimes it gets violent. And the reason why is because they feel embarrassed. They feel embarrassed.

1:01:03You know, it's a once in a while you get motivated by seeing somebody else's breakthrough story, but there's more damage than there is good. This is something that needs to be contained. Yeah. Same thing, same thing, if not worse. Wine is considered alcohol 100%, but if you're allowed to drink it for Kiddush, you're allowed to drink it on special occasions. within reason. You're not allowed to just drink it like, you know, on a Tuesday afternoon because it's wine. You know, you're allowed to have it for Kiddush, you're allowed to have it after Birkat Hamazon, you're allowed to do it in certain conditions. But to just get drunk on a Tuesday afternoon, there's no permission for that. Sin. Sin. Sin. Sin. Well, listen, liquor stores have their business. They have seven and a half billion potential customers. They don't need us. No, it's not necessarily just, again, drinking within reason is permitted. Drinking to the point of being drunk in a stage where you are a Chillul Hashem, then obviously it's not allowed.

1:02:23Smoking cigarettes generally is not allowed. Smoking cigarettes, you're talking about? No, smoking marijuana, there's no stages because marijuana, all stages get you high. Whereas liquor doesn't get you high off of one sip. Let's say, for example, somebody has a sip and he likes the taste of vodka or he likes the taste of scotch or some other liquor. He takes a simple sip. Most people will not get drunk off a sip. They just like the taste, just like you like Coca-Cola. They like the taste. Drinking takes more liquor. Whereas with marijuana, all stages get you high. There is no higher level or low. All of them get you high. There's no like, oh, no, this is a low-level ecstasy, this is a high-level ecstasy. There's a low-level cocaine, there's a high-level cocaine. There's no such thing. All of them get you high. Liquor, on the other hand, is stages. Same concept when it comes to smoking cigarettes. The reason why there's the psak, smoking cigarettes, you're not allowed to smoke cigarettes, but there's more kulot, more leniencies with cigarettes, is because the damage is not done all at once.

1:03:25It's cumulative damage. Over a long period of time, somebody who smokes cigarettes is obviously harming their health. But with other drugs that are stronger, like marijuana or cocaine, that damage is done on the spot. There's risk on the spot. It could lead somebody to do a lot of bad things that minute. Also, you've never seen anybody murdering for cigarettes. You do see people murdering for other drugs. Yep. Okay. How do you prevent them from going to drugs? Or you already found out he has a drug problem already? Okay. Okay, so as far as anxiety, I mean kids, a lot of the teachers today for some reason believe that every kid is sick, or they all have ADHD.

1:04:39ADD, some DD, triple D, all types of Ds. Everybody's sick all of a sudden. We're a generation of sick people. No one's sick. We're either lazy or we like to play around. Kids always like to jump around in class. And the old generation and new generation. Just this generation, the teachers are lazy. No, no, no, he's sick. Send him to special ed. The guy just wants to play around, that's it. If you read some of the stories about the tzaddikim of the old generation, some of them were the biggest trouble-making kids in the world. Rabbi Yonatan Eybeschutz, he tells stories about himself, of how he was when he was a little kid, he was a rascal. My Rav, Rav Ephraim, he says, you don't know me, when I was a kid, I almost stabbed my sister. He said, this tzaddik, he finished the Shas four times before he was 20. B'ezrat Hashem, he's going to be one of the gedolei ha'dor. He says, I wanted to stab my sister, I just don't know how. Little kid, tiny little kid. Listen, kids like to play. Kids are troublemakers. Kids. Doesn't mean that just because the kid wants to jump around, they have some type of sickness. They're being a kid. The sickness is being a kid. So, first and foremost, all this ADD and ADHD and all this, it's all garbage. There's no such thing. The kid just likes to jump around. The kid likes to play around. So we have to remove that. Teacher tells you, your kid is sick, you tell him, no, you're sick.

1:06:02you're sick. It doesn't matter where. As a matter of fact, there is a real story of what happened in the yeshiva. A guy goes to the rabbi, the principal calls a father, and he says, listen, your son has ADHD. He says, my son has ADHD? No, he's a nice son, he's good, he's this, he's that. He goes, no, no, your son's a troublemaker, he's a horrible this, he's a horrible that, he has all these wonderful things to say about the kid. So, He says, "Listen, I'm kicking him out of the school." The father responds, "No, come on, my wife and I work overtime just to afford to send him to yeshiva. Both of us work non-stop to send him to yeshiva. Hashem, please, you want to kick him out?" The principal replies, "Listen, I feel for you, I understand, but the only way that I'm allowed to keep him here is if you give him this drug. You give him this pill." The father says, "No, but come on, he's going to be embarrassed every day. The kids in his class are going to say he's going to do this..."

1:07:03sick. He says, "No, don't worry, I'll give it to him. I'll show you, he'll take it next to me." He goes, "You're going to administer it?" "Yeah." So the principal, every day, that was his job. The kid came to his office, he says, "Listen, take your pill." That was his job. So, after a month, the father sees the kid is much happier, but not much has changed. But there's no complaints from the principal all of a sudden. The drug must be working. Two months, no calls whatsoever. He goes, it's that good of a drug, it would be... He calls the principal to see what's going on. I mean, the principal has to pick up, so he talks to the son. So, honey, how is everything with school? Everything is good? Oh, yeah, everything is wonderful, Abba. He goes, and what about the relationship between you and the principal? He goes, oh, no, he's great, he's amazing. The father's like, okay, now something is fishy about this drug. He goes, why is he so amazing? He goes, no, every day when I come to his office, he lets me make his coffee. And ever since I've been making his coffee and putting the pill that he wants me to put in it, everything has been wonderful. He's so much nicer to me. So the father finds out that, in reality...

1:08:25The kid is putting the drug in the principal's cup, and he calls the principal. It's a true story. He tells the principal, "You know that my son is giving you the drug, right? And I'm taking you to a Beit Din. Because now I've been paying for this drug for the last two months, but you're benefiting from it." He took him to a Beit Din, and he has to pay for it. So in reality, the problem was that the principal had to admit. The problem wasn't the kid. The problem was the principal. Kids are kids. I'm not saying every kid is an angel. Some kids are tough. But to say that 8 out of 10 kids have ADHD, come on, no. Enough. It's all nonsense. Teachers just don't want to do what they're supposed to do in many cases, or it's just a bad system. Whatever it is, 8 out of 10 kids do not have ADHD. As far as what's the responsibility of the parents, parents' responsibility is to make sure that the kid is not only getting the education in school. The problem that I see is that many kids go to yeshiva, they get Torah teaching in yeshiva, but they come home to a secular house.

1:09:39So yeshiva, they see the rabbi with the beard, with the hat, and the rebbetzin looks tzanua, but then they come home and Abba doesn't even wear a kippah, doesn't have tzitzit, goes to the beach on Shabbat. They don't really keep much. So the kid's confused. So he doesn't know who's right. Is it Abba and Ima, or is it the rabbi? Within a very short period of time, he decides that Abba and Ima are right. The secular is right. And the rabbi is only acting. The rabbi is fake. He's only putting on a uniform because he gets paid. So then the kid becomes not only a victim, and he starts going against the religion, but in many cases becomes an atheist. In many cases, he becomes anti-Torah. But it's not the rabbi's fault; it's the parents' fault. So the parents have to make sure that whatever they do in yeshiva, they also do at home. You can't teach the kids tzniut, and then at home Ima walks around half naked. You can't teach the kids that learning Torah is the number one thing, but as soon as the kid gets home, let's watch the baseball game. It's got to be on the same page. It's very, very important for things to be on the same page, and the parents are responsible for that. If parents are being wishy-washy, the kid's going to be wishy-washy. So that's the thing. The third thing is, you have to see where this kid is getting his influence.

1:11:08Kids don't just find drugs in the street. They don't just, like, appear. There's no, like, some special ghost that appears at schoolyards and gives them out. Obviously, they find the drugs through people. Who are they hanging out with? Who are their friends? You have to pick their friends. If the friends are bad, they're not allowed out of the house. It's better, the Rambam says, if you're surrounded in a neighborhood and everyone is against the Torah, everyone is not doing what they're supposed to do, you have to move. And so then he says, what if there's no other place? What if there's no other place for you to move? Everywhere you go there are kofrim. He says, better for you to live in a desert. Your neighbor is going to be a scorpion and a snake. Meaning that we have to monitor who we choose to be friends of our kids. If all the available kids in his class are kofrim, drug dealers, drug addicts, or troublemakers, better for them to have no friends. Stay at home with them. I'm telling you myself, personally, right now, my daughter, Baruch Hashem, my oldest daughter is only two years old. We're not sending her to school anytime soon. I haven't found a school where I live that I'm confident will teach her the right thing. So until I find something, my wife is going to educate her.

1:12:28Hashem, we have the luxury that we're in it and also that, you know, she's still very young. But it's to that extent today. There are many, many so-called religious schools that are being taught by secular people. Because religion is a very good business. It's very good business. So, I see sometimes you have a kindergarten, and all the teachers are secular. What do you teach? You know it's supposed to be a kindergarten for religious people, but all the teachers don't even keep Shabbat. Or there's one school that I know, in a different place, we're not going to mention a name. I'd say no less than 35% of the teachers, this is a yeshiva, no less than 35% of the teachers have no idea whatsoever what is b'chol Torah. Nothing. Zero. But they're cheap. They're easy. They're at a stage in their lives. They fill in the spot. I had one thing. One, you know, they have these groups on WhatsApp. It's WhatsApp. My wife told me the other day there's one group. There's one woman who advertised. She has a kindergarten, a religious kindergarten. And every day she makes a post: whoever is bored and wants to take on a shift to teach the kids can come.

1:13:42Like if you have nothing to do, you come teach little kids. But I'm not paying the volunteer. I'm paying you. How do you know this is the right person? How do you know this person is not sick in their mind? So that's the thing. Just like if you can invest a million dollars into a piece of property, into a business, what are you going to do? Research it first. You're not just going to say, oh no, it looks good. Buy it. You're going to research it. Does it have good foundation? Does it have good neighborhood? You're going to research it. Same thing with school. You have to research. Who's the teacher? What are they teaching? What's the curriculum? You have to investigate what's going on. You can't just send the kid, no, no, everybody else goes there. Everybody else goes there, so I'm going to send my kid like a sheep. You have to investigate. Who's the teacher? What are they teaching? Why? Who? What? When? Sit down with them. You have to do it. You can't just send the kids and be surprised the kid ends up being a kofel. Does it have a good foundation? Does it have a good neighborhood? You're going to research it. Same thing with school. You have to research. Who's the teacher? What are they teaching? What's the curriculum? You have to investigate what's going on. You can't just send the kid, "No, no, everybody else goes there." Everybody else goes there, so I'm going to send my kid like a sheep. You have to investigate. Who's the teacher? What are they teaching? Why? Who? What? When? Sit down with them. You have to do it. You can't just send the kids and be surprised the kid ends up being a kofer.

1:14:38Sometimes you see that some of these teachers are worse than animals. Some of these teachers are worse. In today's world, you have to be very careful with people. To such an extent that Rabbi Ovadia says that as far as guests, you know, in the old days, welcoming guests was not like people think today. People think that if you welcome guests for Shabbat, your next-door neighbor, that's also a millionaire, you welcome him for Shabbat, you get a mitzvah. There's no mitzvah for welcoming your neighbor that's a millionaire. It's nice, you enjoy yourself, but it's not considered kibbud orchim. It's not considered like you welcome guests if he has food. With the honoring of guests, it is if he doesn't have a place to go. Not necessarily poor, he just doesn't have a place to go. It could be because he's from out of town, or because, I don't know, something happened. He doesn't have another choice, and you're bringing him to the house. That's the mitzvah of honoring guests. In the old days, this is what they would do. The guests of the town would come to the shul,

1:15:44And after the end of the shul, people would say, "Okay, you come to my house, you come to my house," and people would take these different people to their houses. Strangers, complete. That's the mitzvah. Rabbi Vadya said, Zikhrono Livracha, today, you can be considered patur from it. Why? Because there are too many sick people. There are too many sick people in the world. Somebody that's like, you don't know where he's from. Shema Hashem, he could be a murderer. You bring him into your house. Look, the guy, what happened this week in Hashem in Israel, terrorist, killed three people, three innocent people on Kiddush. You look at his picture, he looks normal. Look at the terrorist's picture, he looks 100% normal. He doesn't look like, oh yeah, that guy's tattoo of a terrorist on his head. He looks normal. So you have to investigate. You can't just let people in. No, no, I'll be tzaddik. Don't be tzaddik. Be alive. You know, so same thing with schools. You can't just send people to school just because it's a popular school or because this big rabbi is there. If the big rabbi is teaching, fine. But if the big rabbi just has his name on it, you have to be careful. Because again, it's just too much. Too much nonsense. Too many bad stories. There are too many bad stories in communities all over the world of these teachers that are just...

1:17:08They shouldn't be out of a house, let alone be a teacher. You know, I mean, there are horrible stories you hear from Israel. I don't know. I don't know whether there are more bad stories today or it's just easier to hear them. But there are just too many bad stories of what happens in school, of these teachers that do bad things to people. And listen, of course, it's the school's fault and the teacher's fault, 100%. But part of the blame is also on the parents. invested 20 years to learn how to do your business, you invested 20 years to learn how to invest in different things. You should invest 20 minutes into your kid's school. Simple as it gets. Next question. Yeah, meaning broken spirits, where they understood that there's a Creator, they become religious, and they start keeping Shabbat

1:18:30And you believe this story, b'met? Not necessarily. I believe it. I'm just saying people... Oh, yeah, it's a nice fairy tale. It's like Harry Potter. Harry Potter is also a good story. He flew on a carpet, or not carpet, broom. Same thing. It's garbage. It's an excuse to rationalize our behavior. Here's the thing. I'm going to teach you guys something about all religions at once. All religions in the world, all of them, Christianity, Catholicism, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, 80,000 different types of religions and cults, all of them agree on one mitzvah. There's one mitzvah that everyone agrees on. Everyone teaches it and every single human being has heard about it. What is the mitzvah? Tzedakah, charity. Every religion believes and agrees that you have to give charity. Everyone knows. Not necessarily everybody gives, but everybody knows that part of religion is charity. This is a popular mitzvah. Now, when it comes to charity, a lot of people will lead you to believe that that's the only mitzvah you need to have. This is nonsense. There's nowhere in the Torah that says tzedakah is going to override all of the mitzvot, that tzedakah is the only mitzvah you need to do.

1:19:53The only thing it says is that tzedakah will buy you more time in this world to do teshuvah. But all of these religions that teach falsehood are going to teach you that. And the reason why is because they want you to continue giving them money, and they want you to feel good about it. So, in essence, what they're trying to do is make you feel good about exactly where you are. to justify, and they're helping you justify your own behavior. Meaning you don't have to change. If I tell you, listen, you have to change. You have to do this, you have to do that. I give you a list of 27 different things you have to do. This guy's hard. Or the other guy says, all you have to do is one thing. Give tzedakah. you continue doing whatever you want, you're going to choose option B most of the time if you have a big yetzer hara. Why? Because it's easier. That's what most teach. Most teach the easy way out. They say, "You're going to be fine," "You can be a murderer," "You can be a thief,"—it's all nonsense. The same thing with all of these things that are shortcuts. There's no such thing as a person needing ecstasy or acid or whatever other drug there is in this world to meet God.

1:21:06A monkey knows God. He doesn't need ecstasy. The cow knows God. The donkey knows God. Everybody knows God. You need to be a donkey on purpose instead of a human to not know that there's a God. So you don't need drugs to know what God is. And as far as getting closer to God, He gave you instructions. You can't say that there's two sets of instructions, that the Torah will work for 99% of people, And not for this one person. He needs ecstasy to do drugs, to follow Torah. It's all nonsense. That's just somebody that's trying to rationalize and justify their own negative behavior. They're trying to pretty much convince themselves that it's okay what they're doing. I'll give you an example. There is, I don't know if any of you know, but there was a big war that I went with a kehillah in Florida. Because in the beginning of the year, there was a big problem. The head rabbi of the kehillah and one of the top rabbis in Florida decided that it was a good idea to bring a Christian missionary to speak in a shul, to speak in a synagogue. So, Baruch Hashem, we went to war and publicized this and, Baruch Hashem, the event was canceled. But since that day,

1:22:31Since we went to war, I haven't gone to the shul. This was the shul next to my house. I haven't gone to that shul. And the reason why is because of what happened. I mean, these are not exactly people I can rely on and so on. Even though it's not necessarily saying that everybody in the kehillah is bad, the leadership is terrible. So there's one guy, nice guy, a neighbor of mine. He comes to me a few days ago, and he says, "Oh, so how come you're not coming to the kehillah?" I'm like, "You already know why I'm not coming to the kehillah. People from Australia know why I'm not going to the kehillah. You don't know?" He goes, "Yeah, but this, but that, but that, that, that." And he gives me all these different arguments. So I ask him, "Who are you trying to convince? Me or you?" He's trying to convince himself, really. And the reason why is because he still goes there. And he knows it's wrong. He knows it's wrong. So that's the thing. Most people, when they do something wrong, they want somebody else to agree with them. They want somebody else. They want you to agree with them that it's okay to smoke pot or to do acid or to cheat on the wife or to cheat on a customer or to do all these different things. People need justification from their peers. So that's what gives them a sense that they're doing okay because inside they know they're not doing good.

1:23:46They know they're not doing good, so they need you to tell them they're doing good. Because everyone, deep inside, knows the truth. Everyone knows the truth. There's no such person in the world who doesn't know the truth. Hashem instilled the truth in you. Everyone knows there's a God. Everyone knows that there's a truth. Everyone knows that there's reward and punishment. To say otherwise is being intellectually dishonest. To tell people you could do whatever you want, live a free-willy life, and nothing's going to happen is just lies. Because we know it doesn't work like that in the world. You work hard at work, you have a much bigger chance of succeeding. You steal, you have a much bigger chance of going to jail and getting fired from your job. Reward and punishment. To say that you can do whatever you want and... You know, you're always going to get a reward and never get punished is being intellectually dishonest. So, this is what we have to tell people around us: when someone is trying to convince you that it's okay for them to do ecstasy, for them to do hashish, for them to do all these things that are against the Torah, you, as a Jew, have to also be a doctor. And you are diagnosing them. And your response should be, wow, you're sicker than normal.

1:25:05You're spiritually sicker than a normal person. Most people are sick to some extent. Everybody has a yetzer hara. Everybody has certain things that they're soft in, strong in, and so on. You, my friend, are sicker than normal. Because now you have turned, the yetzer hara convinced all of us he's not there. You, he convinced that he's good. You, he convinced that he's actually good for you. You're sicker than normal. That's what you have to tell these people. Especially if they claim to be religious. There's no such thing as a religious person that does drugs. Yeah, next. Yeah. Okay. Jews need to have their own AA. Jews need to have, yeah, I think there is, I don't know if it's, obviously it's not as big, but Jews need to have their own meetings, in shuls, or in community centers, or houses, or places that are kosher. And, I mean, in general, again, having these meetings, in my opinion, in my opinion, I'm not necessarily a professional in rehab, but in my opinion, it's a safek whether it's even allowed to allow it.

1:26:15Because you're embarrassing people in public. But anyway, even if it is allowed, obviously you're not allowed to do it in a church. So what should we do? We should get people into the shul, into a house, into an office. There are plenty of places. Baruch Hashem, Am Yisrael owns a lot of real estate. Find one. And we go and we meet with people and we help them one-on-one. Just like when somebody has a shalom bayit problem, where do they go? They go to a rabbi, in a shul. If somebody has parnassah problems, they go somewhere. So we make this somewhere available to people, but publicize it. Tell people, listen, we have a center, we have help, we have an expert, we have this, we have that. We have to start talking about this. Because right now we have am yisrael dying. With kids dying. Not just spiritually dying, but actually dying. Every week there's something new. Every week there's an overdose. Every week there's some horrible, horrible thing happening to Am Yisrael. For what? For nothing. You know, so we have to do something about it. Yeah. Okay.

1:27:28Sure, no, 100%. This is why it's... It's a very, very, very difficult tikkun. It's a very, very difficult test. But it's no different than any other hardship that a relationship has to go through in order to grow, if it's manageable. Again, if it gets to a point where it's dangerous, then obviously that's a different level, then you have to run away from it. If, let's say, for example, if the drug addict becomes, you know, somebody that becomes a wife beater or something like that, you got to run away from a person like this. But if there's a person that, let's say, for example, has the addiction and he's wasting money, or he's being, you know, just not a good person... has to go through in order to grow, if it's manageable. Again, if it gets to a point where it's dangerous, then obviously that's a different level, then you have to run away from it. If, let's say, for example, the drug addict becomes, you know, somebody that becomes a wife-beater or something like that, you have to run away from a person like this. But if there's a person that, let's say, for example, has the addiction and he's wasting money, or he's being, you know, just not a good person, you've got to try whatever you can to help him, just like you would if he was physically sick. Just like you would take him to a doctor, so here, you take him to somebody else that can help him. You've got to do whatever you can to help him, to support him. No, no, no, your life comes first. Your life comes first.

1:28:46Like I said, if it's not dangerous, if it hasn't gotten to the point of being dangerous, do whatever you can to help this person. Whether it's your son, your husband, or whoever it is, try to do whatever you can to help this person, to support them, just like you would if they were physically sick. If somebody's husband or mom had cancer, you're not going to say, "Oh no, you have cancer, I'm going to stay away." No, you take them to the doctor if you can, you do whatever you can to help them, because at this stage, it's not hurting you, their cancer. Same thing with this, try to do whatever you can. As long as it's not hurting you, try to do whatever you can to help them. The moment it gets to a point where it's literally killing you, where it's dangerous for you to do it, then obviously you have to give it to professionals to handle, because you can't put your life at risk. But again, I think the most important part of what we learned today, actually we didn't really go too deep into it, was actually what the Rambam said, which is the preventative medicine. A lot of the kids, young kids right now, are still young. A lot of us right now are still young. We're still not, you know, we're still not sold to these things. We're still not too far in. So if we use a lot of preventative medicine, which is learning a lot of Mussar, working on our character traits, we're never gonna get to that stage. For anyone that's already at that stage of addiction, then...

1:29:58The people that are around them need to do whatever they can to support them. Sometimes support is going to come directly, meaning from the wife, from the husband, from whoever that's directly involved. But sometimes it can't. Sometimes the wife can't help the husband because the husband won't listen to her. Sometimes the husband can't help the wife. So you have to bring a third person to help. Like I said before, bring somebody else that they respect, who also has some knowledge about the area and can help. But you don't necessarily need to bring the whole community. You know, try to limit it to as few people as possible in the beginning. Because, again, the more they realize that this is a problem, the more they're going to be embarrassed. So it's better for them to be embarrassed in front of fewer people than more people. But you're not allowed to put your life at risk, though. You're not allowed to put your life at risk for it. So, if a husband is not willing to stop some type of drug addiction, then obviously you have a case for a get.

1:31:00This is not to advocate everybody getting divorced these days. We obviously, again, have to try to help each other. But, again, you can't just sit and do nothing. Yeah. Okay. But specifically about drugs or anything? Yeah. I mean, I think with kids it's much easier simply because you teach them, you teach them in the beginning, like when they're really kids, when they're really, really young. Once they get a little bit older, it becomes a little more difficult because you have to give them a lot more answers and details. When they're really, really young, you teach them anything that a stranger gives you, you say no. So once you have this imprinted into the little two-year-old's head that anything from a stranger is no, even if the stranger is the cousin, even if the stranger is the uncle, unless it's coming from Ima and Abba, it's no, already you saved yourself half the battle. Once the kid is programmed to pretty much just accept only from Ima and Abba, and anything that anybody else wants to give them,

1:32:11I have to ask Ima and Abba for permission. Once it already becomes part of the person, you've already won half the battle. If the kid is already older, he's five, six, seven, eight years old, has a little bit more chokhmah in him, then it's a little more difficult, but you have to explain to them that this is poison. You don't need to tell them the details, this gets you high, that stuff is not relevant to them. Tell them, this will kill you. Teaching kids about Hashem, by the way, is much, much easier than teaching adults. Because kids understand yes and no. Kids understand good and bad. They are the best type of students. This is bad. This is poison. This kills. A kid knows that killing is no good. They won't do it. So you have to be extreme with them. Don't sugarcoat it. Don't say, oh, no, this is not so good. It's not good for them. This is no good. Poison. And in my opinion, that's the best way to go about it as far as teaching children. Again, as they get older, it gets a little more difficult. When they start getting to a point where they're 10, 12, 13 years old, you have to give them a little bit more reasons. They're going to ask you why.

1:33:19Why is it poison? What does it do? Why does somebody sell it then? Why does somebody give it to me? They're going to ask you 500 questions about why, why, why. To a six-year-old, you could just keep repeating, "It's poison, it's poison, it's poison" 500 times, eventually they'll stop. To a 12-year-old, he's going to want answers. So you have to give them, again, more answers as they grow older, but try to... Not necessarily give them a whole shiur about drugs and all the effects of it, but you have to, you know, give them at least the basics to know why to stay away from it. Making some visuals is also good if there's, let's say, any type of kosher movie, DVD about it. That's also very good. If there's a program, a community program, that's also very good. People like visual things. So if you have a three, four, five-minute skit that's kosher, doesn't have any things that are against Hashem, you can show them stuff like that. And kids, especially kids, they like things that are visual. But don't ever give up on the kids. Don't ever give up on yourself. Don't ever give up on spouses so easily. It's a big battle. It's a big Yetzer Hara. And again, the biggest part of it is the fact that the Yetzer Hara has fooled all of us. He told us he's not there.

1:34:38We're knocking on the door. He's answering the door, but he's telling us, "I'm not home." That's the battle. It's mamash the same thing with anything else. The same thing with modesty. The same thing with Shabbat. The same thing with anything. All mitzvot are easy. It's easy. Once you decide that it came from God, it's easy. The only time you don't want to do something is because you don't know if it's from God. Because if God came here right now and told all the guys from now on, you have to wear your tefillin all day. God came down, some type of something. There's a voice that came from Shamayim, and said, "All of you, from now on, have to wear tefillin all day, until you go to sleep." Is there one person here who wouldn't wear tefillin all day? No, right? If the voice came from Shamayim, and said to all the women, "All the women have to cover their hair with a mitpachat all the time, and you have to be modest like the biggest rabbanit in the world," is there any woman that would dare wear a short-sleeve shirt in history? No, right? Is any woman not going to wear a kisui rosh?

1:35:38No. Why? Because you know it's from God. Meaning that anytime you don't do it, it's because you have a safek. You have a doubt. Did it come from God? Did it come from the rabbi? Did it come from some cult? Some this, some chumra, some that. You have a safek. So that's why it's important to learn about our mitzvot. learn where it came from, learn the basis behind them. But in reality, we don't need to, when it comes to a lot of the basic foundational mitzvot, whether it be modesty or Shabbat or drugs or anything like that, all of these big mitzvot or sins, it's not too hard. It's in the books. It's available. And it's also part of common sense. You just ask your grandparents. Next? Question? Somebody else raised their hand before I didn't pick them. Baruch Adonai le'olam. Amen ve'amen.