EARN $50 with RABBI YARON REUVEN - “STUMP THE RABBI”

0:12For everybody, it's the Chol HaMoed of Pesach 5779, the year 2019, the Minyanim. We have a very special shiur today. This week was actually supposed to be our vacation, but because we have some visitors, From out of town, we have, Baruch Hashem, some new people that wanted to come to this shiur, and also because we have to always thank Hashem, thank HaKadosh Baruch Hu for the endless amount of chesed that He does with us. Couldn't go a week without a shiur Torah. So today's shiur Torah is also part of a hodayah to HaKadosh Baruch Hu for all the miracles that He does for us. I'll tell you one of the stories later today, Baruch Hashem, if not two or three or five, because there's, Baruch Hashem, a lot of amazing stories that just press the "bread" button. There's an enormous amount of miraculous stories that we experience on a weekly basis. I always tell people, if you ever have

1:16a down time, you need some chizuk as far as emunah, just ask for a story and you'll get it. Because there's an endless amount. Also, this will be for a refuah shlema, for Dvora Naomi bat Rivka, may HaKadosh Baruch Hu give her refuah shlema, refuat ha-nefesh, refuat ha-guf, b'ezrat HaShem. Also for a refuah shlema to Avi Mori, David ben Esria, Doris bat Jorah, My dear mother, for Rabbi Ephraim ben Shulamit, Rabbanit Sarah bat Anat, Dvora bat Mercedes, Elisheva Chaya bat Sarah. Anybody else? And all of Am Yisrael, b'ezrat HaShem, will have refuah shlema, refuat ha-nefesh, refuat ha-guf. So we thought today that, I mean, there's a lot of interesting things to talk about, but really I was more interested in talking about what you want to talk about. So we have an interesting, just to try to get you guys motivated to ask questions. Usually, I have questions and answers. I tell people, okay, ask questions, whatever you want, and as soon as I say that, then the camera goes on, nobody has questions. The camera goes off, everybody has 5,000 questions.

2:32So that's usually how it works. So today, to try to motivate you to actually ask questions while the camera is on so other people can benefit from your questions, anybody that asks a question that I don't have an answer for is going to get 50 bucks. Now, even if you're rich, you should still take it because it's part of the whole thing. Now... If you ask so many questions and I don't have the siyata dishmaya to answer your questions to the point that I run out of money, then I'll just send you a check or something. I'll send you a PayPal. But I want to motivate you guys to ask questions. Also, one way or another, I want to give somebody something so you guys realize it's serious. So even if, let's say, for example, nobody asks a question that perhaps is not in front of me, then, and perhaps Hashem has mercy on me, and I know all the answers or He gives me all the answers and... I'm still gonna give $50 to one person that is going to ask the best question of the night. How do we know what's the best question of the night? You guys vote for it. You vote. What's the best question of the night? Which means you have to stay till the end. When is the end? The end is whenever you run out of energy. Anyone that knows me and has been coming to my shiurim for the last few years knows that I have a little bit of both Hashem when it comes to the Torah.

3:54We can go for a little while. So, actually, in the next few months, actually in a month and a half, we have Shavuot. It's a night that we do a shiur Torah the whole night. We start usually around 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock. We go all the way till 7 o'clock in the morning. Straight, no breaks. Questions, answers, stories, whatever you want. So, anyone that doesn't live in town, it's worth it to come to town just to come to the shiur. We do the same thing on Hoshana Rabbah. But if you guys only want to do it for a short period of time, we'll do it for a short period of time. Whatever it is, whatever you want. The key is for you guys to leave here with something to take home. Meaning, ask questions that are actually going to change your life. Ask questions that are actually going to do something for you. Don't ask me, how many stars are in the sky according to the Torah? Can tell you the answer, it's one zero six four three four zero and then twelve zeros after it, but that's not gonna change your life. What's gonna change your life is how do I know the answer that could change your life? That could change your life, but the question is, they can ask me a question now, you know, what's gonna happen when Mashiach comes? I could tell you certain answers, but the question is, why are you asking? Ask questions that are gonna give you some chizuk, some type of motivation to get closer to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, motivation to do something more than what you're already doing now and...

5:12If you keep Shabbat now, then keep Shabbat even better. If you're learning 15 minutes a day now, then learn 20 minutes, 30 minutes, a half hour a day, an hour a day. If you're not keeping Shabbat, then start keeping Shabbat. If you're not keeping Taharat HaMishpacha, then keep Taharat HaMishpacha. If you're not keeping Negiah, then start keeping Negiah. The point is, ask the questions that are relevant to something that you're having difficulty with. Don't ask me questions that don't really mean anything to you. And definitely don't ask me questions if you already know the answer. Don't test me. I'm not interested in being tested. This is not school, okay? If you know the answer, don't ask the question. Ask the question if you don't know the answer. Why? Because I'm not interested in being tested. I'm interested in helping people. So, without further ado, let's start with people that have never asked a question. Meaning, if you've been in my shiurim before and you've asked questions, don't ask the questions first. Let everybody else go first. Because you guys, Baruch Hashem, already know a little bit. So, let's start with the back. Over there. No one wants to volunteer. First question. $50 opportunity. Vayidom Aharon, Aharon became quiet as soon as something happened. No, come on. Don't worry, I don't bite. I just answer, just words. Okay, she's asking, why do we eat kosher? Why do we eat kosher? Okay, that's a fantastic question. It's a very good question. So HaKadosh Baruch Hu, the question is really even bigger than that. The question is, why do we even do mitzvot?

6:39Why? Does G-d really need us to do mitzvot? Any mitzvah. You can ask the same question about Shabbat. You can ask the same question about Taharat HaMishpacha. You can ask the same question about really anything. Why do we do anything? Because the answer to all of them is the same. The answer is, the basic shortest possible answer is at the end of Pirkei Avot, the last chapter, which says, because Hashem said so. That's really the reason. That's it. That's the real reason. Now, there's more details to that though. There's more details to that. The real reason is what I just said. Because if Hashem is G-d, that means He's the King. The King doesn't have to explain Himself to us. if you go, for example, if you have a government, a democratic government, people vote. They can vote the guy in, they can vote the guy out, meaning that people have a say. But once the guy is already in, he doesn't have to answer to everything. Why? Because that's the point of being in power. Let's say a president But if it's a king, let's say in a certain country in Africa or in different parts of the world that still have kings, kings don't have votes. They become king because of their lineage, because of who their father is. And once they become king, that's it. You can't say, "Oh, I don't like you anymore. You killed my cousin, who was really a nice guy because he did something bad." You can't do that. Why? Once the king is

7:58Is the king, there's no more questions than answers. He can answer if he wants, but he doesn't have to. He doesn't owe anybody any, what we call din v'cheshbon, any accounting for anything that he does, because that's the point of being a king. And that's the king of flesh and blood. Now, the King of Kings, HaKadosh Baruch Hu, even more so. He is perfect. He actually doesn't even need us. With or without us, He is perfect. The only reason why He created us is because He is the ultimate, the epitome of good. And good is defined by something that does good. You can't say, "I'm a good person," if you hurt everybody you meet. You can't say, "I'm a good person," if all you do is bad. You can't say, "I'm a good person," if you're very selfish, and the only thing that you do good is for yourself. That's not a good person. A good person is somebody who does good for others. That's what defines good. HaKadosh Baruch Hu is the epitome of good. He's the ultimate good. And therefore, He decided to create us in order to give us good.

8:59But at the same time, because of His wisdom, He knew that to just give us good without the opposite would make no sense. Because then the whole world would have no purpose. We wouldn't know the difference between good and something else. So He had to give us a world where we have both options, good and bad. So the good He wants to give us is according to, if we follow a set of rules that He created. He gives us good if we follow those rules. Why? Because even though us violating the rules doesn't change His status—He's still the King, He's still perfect, He's still everything—by us violating the rules we put Him in a situation where He is now forbidden by His own rules to give us good. So the only reason why He created us is because He wants to give us good. By us doing something bad, we, in essence, stop Him from doing what He really wants to do. So the punishment is not necessarily for the sin itself or for us doing something against Him. It's for us going against the rule book because now He can't fulfill His will. And His will is to give us good. He can't give us good if we're constantly doing things that are bad. So, with all that being said, He gave us specific rules. For example, He wanted us to feel a little bit like Him, how He felt on the seventh day of the week.

10:23by Him stopping creating. He created the world in six days, and He stopped creating on the seventh. He said, you cannot, as a human being, create anything. You can innovate, but you can't create. We, as human beings, cannot create something out of nothing. We can innovate something that already exists. So, a human baby, for example, doesn't come from nothing. There's a seed and there's an egg. So even all of these scientists that tell you, "Oh yeah, but we got a little sheep from a test tube and it came from nothing." Yeah, but that sheep came from a seed and an egg. It didn't come from nothing. Same thing with anything else in the world. Nobody created the phone automatically. The first person discovered technology and electricity. Then he discovered how to minimize and put electricity in a small battery. And then he discovered how to actually take that energy and put it into something else, and so on and so forth. So the point is that we took everything that existed and we innovated. HaKadosh Baruch Hu, He creates. He's the only one that can create from nothing.

11:32Created for six days, but on the seventh day He stopped creating because He wanted us to have something in common with Him as His children. Because we could also stop creating. Technically, we can't create, but we could, in essence, feel like we are not trying to create anything new. So therefore, He started Shabbat. He said Shabbat is a day that you don't create and I don't create. Therefore, you're going to feel like My son or My daughter and... Now, when we violate Shabbat, we drive on Shabbat, we use our phone on Shabbat, we go on a computer on Shabbat, we light fire on Shabbat. In essence, we are creating something. Even though it’s innovation, we’re creating something that didn’t exist before. We’re innovating something. Let’s say, for example, the coal that’s there, and then we take a match to it and we light fire. Now, even though the fire is not a new creation, in essence, we’ve given birth to something new. Hashem says, you are defeating... Purpose of the creation. Because I created this whole Shabbat just for you. I didn't create it for Me; I created it for you. But by violating it, you are going against the entire purpose of creation. Same concept when it comes to kosher. HaKadosh Baruch Hu said to us, "I want you to understand that everything that you're going to eat is...

12:49whether it's ice cream, or it's a donkey, or it's a kosher hamburger, or it's candy, everything that you eat is going to have one of two options. One, it'll turn into blood. Two, it'll turn into waste. Those are the only two options. I mean, technically, you could throw it out before it goes anywhere, but that's not really a real option. So, once something goes into your digestive system, it doesn't matter what it is—if it's a steak, ice cream, candy, or an apple—everything turns to blood. Whatever doesn't turn to blood turns into waste. So, in essence, you are what you eat. That's not merely a statement; it's a real statement. You truly are what you eat because the blood is really you. If a person has the blood removed from their body, they can no longer live because the blood contains part of the soul. So, in essence, everything that you eat becomes you. And HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, I want you to be as close to Me as possible, which means that you have to take care of this neshama that you have, this soul that you have. You have to keep it pure. The only way to do that is by eating things that are pure. Things that are...

14:01Within the guidelines that I gave you, within the rule book that I gave you, if you eat something pure, then it'll turn into pure blood. If you eat something impure, then it'll turn into impure blood. Now, by vision, you can't tell. Why? Because we don't have the ability to see it. We just see blood. We just see red. With the naked eye, you can't even see white blood cells. Even though we know they're white blood cells, we can't see white. There's no white blood somewhere in your body. We just see blood, even though we know it's white blood cells. And you need them because if you don't have them, you can't fight disease. Still, it all looks red. So with our eyes, we're limited, but who is not limited? So he says that blood, if it came from pork, if it came from a cheeseburger, if it came from a treifa, some type of non-kosher animal, that blood is impure. You've impurified your neshama and... He says you became impure because of it, and the hint of what it causes to us that we can see, other than it being a sin against Hashem, is what the sages say: "And you became impurified by it." It also means you became stupefied. You became spiritually stupid as a result of eating non-kosher food.

15:22What does spiritually stupid mean? It doesn't mean that you can't build buildings. You can build buildings. There's no problem. It has nothing to do with spirituality. It doesn't mean that you can't fly a plane. You can. There's no problem. Plenty of people eat non-kosher and they fly planes with no problem. But what does it mean? It means that when it comes to spirituality, when it comes to Torah, you're going to have almost an impossible time understanding the deep meaning of what's being said. Why? Because the soul is impure. It has almost like a border or some type of wall on it as a result of the food. So there's always going to be a pure part of it because that's a part of Hashem. There's always a pure part of it, but the impurity causes some type of friction. What is it like? It's like, for example, if you, let's say, for example... you want to feel what your skin feels like. You just want to feel what your skin feels like. You want to see around you, you want to see maybe you got burned, maybe somebody bit you, something—you don't know what's going on. But you have a jacket on, you have three layers on. You're not really going to feel what's happening. You're going to get a sense of it, that your finger is touching your arm, but you're not really going to know for sure what's really under the skin until when? Until the jacket goes off and the shirt goes off, and so on. And once you touch skin to skin, that's when you're truly going to understand what actually happened here.

16:43Same concept goes with impure food. When you eat impure food, you could still listen to shiur Torah and get a basic understanding of what's being said. But to truly accept it and to truly connect to it is impossible as long as you eat non-kosher food. Decent answer? Okay, next question. Free, same price. You have like five questions. I know, I see it. When you take eggs from a mother bird, eggs from a mother bird, why do you do it? Why do you take the eggs from the mother bird? Okay, there's a mitzvah of shiluach haken. There's a mitzvah in the Torah of shiluach haken. And this is one of the mitzvot in the Torah. It's a fantastic question because this is one of the mitzvot in the Torah that the Chachamim say that Hashem actually didn't give us ta'am. What's ta'am? Ta'am means He didn't give us a taste of the reasoning behind it.

17:54Because technically, the reason for all of the mitzvot is because Hashem said so. But still, we see that there are certain benefits to doing them. For example, Shabbat: you have a vacation, you have time to connect to Hashem, you have time to learn, you have time to feel like Hashem. Kosher: technically, it's healthier, technically, it's better for your neshama, and so on and so forth. Taharat HaMishpacha: when there's family purity, you separate from your wife for half the month, which actually makes the marriage better, believe it or not. When the separation occurs, you have to use things with tact. For example, if you eat chocolate non-stop, one after another, eventually you get sick of chocolate. You're not going to want to even talk about chocolate. If you eat chocolate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, even if it's your favorite food, and you eat it for three weeks straight, guess what? After three weeks, you won't want to talk about chocolate. When you see chocolate, you start throwing up because you ate so much chocolate for three weeks straight. Maybe in some cases, three months straight. But the point is...

18:54Too much is no good. Same thing with intimacy between a man and his wife. Too much is no good. That's why, for example, in the secular world, the goy world, you see that the divorce rate is over 80% in the Western world. And in some places like Colorado, it's over a 92% divorce rate. Meaning that there's over a 90% chance of every marriage in Western society breaking up. Breaking up within five years. What's the point of getting married then, with a 90% chance of failure? Would anybody go on a plane if the pilot says, "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Jet Something. We have a 92% chance of crashing." And Good luck. Like anybody's going to stay on the plane. Raise your hand if you're going to stay on the plane if the pilot says to you there's a 90% chance of the plane crashing. Tell me one. Tell me somebody, one person, tell me who's going to stay on the plane if the guy says you're going to crash possibly. No, right? Even if he says there's a 50% chance, you wouldn't want to stay there.

20:02So the point is, Rabotai, is that a person needs to know that HaKadosh Baruch Hu gave mitzvot for a reason. But there are a few mitzvot in the Torah that He says, these, the only reason I'm going to give you is because I said so. Now some people want to say, wait a minute, maybe Hashem is trying to teach us something here. That He says, take the mother bird's eggs, take the mother bird's eggs, to do a berachah and then you return them. You don't just return the eggs. You shoo the mother, take the eggs. Why? To see what it feels like, to feel what it feels like if you take somebody's kid. It's not good. It's a bad feeling. So imagine how Hashem feels when His own son is not keeping Torah and mitzvot. That's a nice story, right? You start feeling bad for Hashem. One of His kids is lost for 3,300 years. He gave him a Torah 3,000 years ago. Till this day, he doesn't keep Shabbat. Till this day, he doesn't keep Taharat HaMishpacha. Till this day, he doesn't keep anything. Hashem is sad. Why? It's His son. It's His daughter. Till this day, she's not modest. Why? It's My daughter. So it makes you feel good. Makes you feel sad at the same time. But the Chachamim say, don't say that. Why? It's not the reason. It's not the reason. What's the reason? Hashem said so. That's the reason.

21:25Hashem said so. That's the reason. That's the only reason for that mitzvah. There's another mitzvah like that called parah adumah. Parah adumah is the red heifer, the red cow. The red cow—we had nine in history—and the red cow is something that we needed in the Beit HaMikdash, where anyone that became impure by either touching a dead body of an animal or a dead body of a human being, became impure and as a result they had to become purified. The only way to become purified is if one of the kohanim takes the ashes of the red cow, slaughters it, burns it up, turns it into ashes, mixes it with a few herbs and incense, and then takes the droplets of water and sprinkles it on the impure person. That makes the person pure, and Now, what's the difficulty with the red cow? The difficulty with the red cow, Shlomo HaMelech says, is that the person who's impure touches the water and becomes pure now. But the person who's already pure and sprinkles the water of purity on an impure person, he himself becomes impure. We don't know why.

22:43We can't explain it. Why? Because if one person became pure and the other person stayed normal, we'd understand that. Why? He's already pure. He's touching something pure. He's making somebody else pure. That way, our logic can make us understand. If it was impure and he was impure and they stayed that way, we understand that also. But both of them having the opposite effect, that's beyond human logic. Shlomo HaMelech, who was the wisest man of all time, says this is beyond human logic. We don't know really the real reason for it. How, who, what, when, and how, this we don't know. This is bigger than me, this mitzvah. So, there are few mitzvot that are like that, but very few, less than a handful. One of the questions you asked is one of them. Chazak u'Baruch. Very good question. Next question. Chavot. Same price. Harder for men or women to convert? If you're talking about physically harder, it's harder for a man, and I'll explain why. If you're talking about spiritually, it's irrelevant simply because it depends on the person. It depends on the person. If somebody wants something bad enough, they'll do anything for it. If they don't, then that means that they have limitations. For example, if...

24:08if you didn't really want to know this answer, but you didn't really care about it. You wanted to know the answer, so if I say it during the shiur at some point, you'd be happy. But you didn't really want it bad enough. So when I looked at you and I said, "Do you have a question?" you'd either not ask a question, or you'd ask a different question. Meaning, you didn't want to know it bad enough. But obviously, you do. So that shows that this is on a priority list of questions you want to know. Somebody wants something bad enough, they will do more than the normal requirements and needs for something. On the other hand, physically speaking, it is more difficult for men to usually convert for a couple of reasons. Number one, many men, not all, but many men who are non-Jewish don't have a brit milah; they don't have a circumcision. Now... Hashem, a Jewish person that has parents that are relatively normal, usually has his parents give him a brit milah when he's eight days old. So, whether he wants to or doesn't want to doesn't make a difference. He doesn't really have much of an option, and nobody remembers when they were eight days old. One time, I said that in a shiur in California, and one guy said to me, "Yeah, I remember." I said, "Okay, next time you give the shiur, you can say you remember when you were eight days old." But anyway, some people just like attention.

25:36Nobody remembers when they were eight days old, and Hashem made it that way. Also, your body heals very differently when you're eight days old versus when you're eight years old or 80 years old. The vitamin K, which is the vitamin that is responsible for your blood clotting and the speed of recovery, reaches 130 percent on one day in your life. For the rest of your life, it never reaches that level again. When you're born, it's at 90-something percent. Every day it increases a little bit. By the eighth day, it's 130%. After that, and for the rest of a person's life, it will continuously decrease. It will never be 130% again, meaning there's one day in a person's life that it's a superior day for recovery. When is it? The eighth day. The one day you need recovery, which is for the Brit Milah. That's why the baby usually stops crying literally within seconds after the Brit Milah.

26:38recovers very quickly only in the first couple of days. It's a little uncomfortable, but in general, they're relatively quiet. Baruch Hashem, I have had the merit to have Brit Milah for my kids, and it's unbelievable how the wisdom of HaKadosh Baruch Hu goes into all the small details. Now, when I adult has a Brit Milah, it's very, very different. And the reason why is because his skin doesn't heal the same way. His recovery is not the same way. The recovery, instead of being three to four days, is usually 30 to 40 days. And it's extremely painful. I didn't have a Brit Milah as an adult, but I have some students who have, and it's extremely painful. Now, for most guys, you start talking about Brit Milah, and they're already in pain. They don't even know what happened, but they're already like, "Hey, all right, I already had one. Don't talk to me about it. I already had one a long time ago. Talk to somebody else." Why? Because guys already think, "Oh, what? It's a very sensitive part of our body." So when a guy thinks, "I'm gonna have to have a Brit Milah," I...

27:41It can only mean one of two things: either he's crazy—he's an adult, and he's simply crazy—or he's extremely passionate about Torah and HaKadosh Baruch Hu. He really wants to be close to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. He wants to be like Avraham Avinu. So a person that does Brit Milah already, that's something different. That's a different level. In reality, I can tell you the truth. Unless I knew a lot of Torah or some magic happened. If I was 30 or 40 years old, and somebody told me, "Listen, to be a Jew, you have to do Brit Milah," I would say, "You know what, I'll stay Noachide. I'll do something else. I'll be a doorknob. Don't give me Brit Milah. Do me a favor." Why? Who wants a Brit Milah? Touch something else. Cut my finger if you want. An ear. Hair. Something else. What do you want in Brit Milah? Leave me alone. So, a person that wants a Brit Milah, that means that somebody, again, like I said, he's either crazy about craziness, or he's crazy about Hashem. It's fantastic. That's like Avraham Avinu. I have a student who, when he found out about Torah, he tried to go to the doctor to get a Brit Milah, but the poor guy found out that his insurance doesn't cover it. He had one of these garbage insurance plans that didn't want to cover his...

28:57his plan, his Brit Milah, and he says, "Okay, so how much is it to pay for it? I really want to be Jewish." So the doctor says, "$15,000." Now, in many other places, it's much cheaper, but this doctor apparently saw a sucker and wanted to take advantage of him. He says it's $15,000. The good news for this student is that he didn't have any money. He had $15 to his name. So he's missing a little bit. So now he's missing $14,985 out of the $15,000. But he wants to be a Jew today. Now, he didn't know much Torah. He just knew he wanted to be a Jew. So he decided, I have to have a Brit Milah. Why? I got to the Torah. I got to the book of Genesis, Sefer Bereishit. I read about Avraham Avinu. Avraham Avinu had a Brit Milah. I'm going to have a Brit Milah. How did he do it? He did it himself. Now, when he told me this, I almost passed out. Because I'm a guy, I can visualize, whoa, are you serious? He did it himself. I said, after, after, like I got my senses back, I said, how? How did you do it? How did you not pass out? How did you not die? How did you not commit? Like, how? How do you do? I mean, I can understand being passionate in, like, the first cut or something.

30:17But after the first cut, just take a little needle, take a little needle and stab yourself. A little needle, not brit milah. A little needle, stab yourself. Within a second, you regret the day you had a needle in your hand. Why? Because it hurts. Imagine a whole brit milah. Brit milah is not a simple thing. So I said, how? He told me the whole process. By the way, you're not allowed to do it. The beit din frowns upon it. If somebody does it, they frown upon it. They don't like it. Why? Because it's very likely you did it wrong. And two, it's very likely you're not going to listen to your rabbi because you're starting to do things on your own. It's not good. But the point is, he didn't know. But he didn't ask somebody who does it on their own, "Did you know that you're not allowed to do it that way?" He didn't know, and it's okay. But in general, if somebody knew and they did it anyway, it's a very big problem for them. But this guy did it. He literally took ice and froze his member and did a brit milah. Now, just imagine, just imagine how much passion a person needs to have I mean, it's borderline crazy to do something like that. So, a woman, good news for her, she doesn't have to do it, unless she wants to become Muslim. If she wants to become Muslim, she has to have brit milah. But Jews, Baruch Hashem, we don't have to have brit milah.

31:30So, that's already one physical obstacle. The second thing that is more difficult for a man is that it's a little more expensive for a man to convert because a man has to have certain tools. He has to have tefillin, he has to have a tallit, he has to have a siddur, and he has to have books to learn Torah every single day. A woman doesn't have to have as much. She has to have a whole new wardrobe; she has to become modest. But that's actually required even if she's not Jewish; she should start to be modest. But even more so if she's a Jew. But she doesn't have to buy tefillin. She doesn't have to buy a tallit. So it's a little less expensive for them. Aside from that, a woman is not obligated to learn as much Torah as a man. Because a man is obligated to a lot more mitzvot than a woman. A woman is naturally much more spiritual than a man. A woman does not have to do as much to connect to HaKadosh Baruch Hu as a man does. The woman not doing as many mitzvot is not looking down on them. It's actually looking up at them. It's the opposite. Feminists think it's a bad thing. No, like the Women of the Wall, the Reform Women of the Wall, they go, they say, "No, we can do the same thing as men. We're going to put on tefillin and miniskirts." Okay, well, the men don't wear miniskirts, but they do wear tefillin. But why don't you put something longer? If you're going to put tefillin on, at least put some clothes on too. But they don't think like that.

32:51Why? Because they don't want their own role. They want the man's role. Because they don't realize that it's actually extraordinary to be a woman in Judaism. Am Yisrael was only freed from Egypt because of righteous women. Am Yisrael is only going to get to Mashiach because of righteous women, not because of righteous men. So, a woman that's righteous, that's modest, that protects herself, that connects to Hashem constantly, has a much easier time connecting to Hashem deeply. She could read a couple of Tehillim and already start crying hysterically because of how close she is to Hashem. A guy has to do a lot more. He has to learn a lot. He has to pray a lot. He has to dig deeper and deeper to reach that same standard level that a woman does. So, with that being said, he has a lot more responsibilities. For him, it is more difficult to get to that level as far as conversion. In general, women have it much easier at the beit din because usually there's no brit milah holding them back. Once they have the knowledge and they've made certain life changes, you can take them to the beit din, and they're ready. They dip in a mikveh, finished. A guy has to go through a whole process.

34:08Yes, that would meet the halacha if he already had a brit milah when he was a kid. They have to check the brit milah. They have to make sure that he goes to a shul. They have to make sure that he is part of a kehillah, that he has a rabbi that he's really connected to. It's a whole procedure to make sure that the guy is a Jew. Why? Because if the guy is a faker, it could create a lot more problems and it creates a lot more problems. I mean, a woman that's a faker also creates a lot of problems, but a man that's a faker creates a lot of problems. So the point is that there's a procedure, but in general, as far as overall, I would say that the real serious converts, it doesn't really make a difference if they're men or women. They both overcome obstacles. It's very, very difficult, but they overcome the obstacles, and eventually they get to the promised land. The ones that are not so serious, it doesn't matter if they're men or women, they never reach the Promised Land. You know, they always look for shortcuts. Sometimes they find a fake shortcut and they go to some Reform or Conservative rabbi that'll convert them and their dog and go from there. But the point is, is that if somebody wants to be a real Jew, it's some difficulty. Not because of the Beit Din, just because of life. It's a major life adjustment.

35:29You have to pretty much disconnect from your entire past, physically and spiritually. You have to change your entire lifestyle. You have to change where you live. You have to change what you do sometimes. You have to do a lot of things. So it's not so simple, but whatever we can do to help people, we try. And Baruch Hashem, I deal with many, many converts, probably more than most people in the world. Simply because I have, number one, a special place in my heart for them, and number two, I can relate to them a lot more than most people because we've gone through the process. Next question: as a Jew, yeah? The Gemara in Masechet Sanhedrin has the same question you're asking. They ask one of the Chachamim, "What's going to happen when Mashiach comes?" He says, "Mashiach comes, he's going to save all of the people that used to be criminals against Hashem, but did teshuva." He says, "What's going to happen to the rest?" He says, "Oh, the rest, he's going to destroy them."

36:50What? Yeah, yeah, Mechalelei Shabbat, He’s going to destroy them. What? The one that goes and touches a woman who's not his wife, He’ll destroy him immediately. What? The one that's eating pork? Gone. What? Scary Gemara. Scary Torah. So what do we do? How is He going to destroy them? He says, the Mashiach, there's going to be two things that destroy people. One is a war called Gog u'Magog. Gog u'Magog is like what the Goyim call Armageddon, the end of the world. Now, at the time this Gemara was written almost 2,000 years ago, it was unimaginable how the world could end in a few moments. Why? Because the weapons we had back then were spears. So even if you had 10 million people throw their spears against the next army, which also had 10 million people, and everybody hit, worst-case scenario, 20 million people died. What about the rest of the billion? How is the rest of the world going to die? Meaning, it was unimaginable for an end-of-the-world scenario to happen in such moments. Today, every average person that has used technology one day in their life understands how the world could end in a second. All somebody needs to do is press the button, atomic bombs go. Once one country sends atomic bombs, the enemy country sends atomic bombs in return. Within moments, the world is destroyed. Hashem yerachem. So this, we already knew.

38:17the prophet Zechariah, who wrote in chapter 14 of Zechariah, that at the end of the world certain things are going to happen. He describes exactly what's going to happen, and the way he describes it, it's literally the definition of what happens during an atomic war: melting skin, eyes becoming fluid, and all types of hideous, hideous descriptions of what happens as a result of atomic or biochemical war. Now... So the Chachamim were asking their Rabbi, he says, "So how do we get protected from this?" He goes, "Mashiach." "Okay, but what's the Mashiach?" "You said Mashiach is going to destroy us." He goes, "Oh yeah, that's the second one." "How's the Mashiach going to destroy?" He says the Mashiach is going to be able to smell the sins on people. Whoever did teshuva, whoever did teshuva, he's not going to have to say anything. He doesn't have to say, "Oh no, I did teshuva." No, no. Mashiach is going to be able to smell whether he has Yirat Shamayim or not. Meaning whether he is a Mechallel Shabbat or not. Whether he is touching women he is not allowed to. Whether he is protecting his eyes, we are going to know it just by simply seeing him. A person that did not do teshuva, unfortunately, joins the rest of the people that go with Gog and Magog. A person that did...

39:37David HaMelech tells us in this Tehillim that those people that did Teshuva will be saved by Mashiach. Despite the war, despite the pain, and so on. So then the next question is your question. They say, okay, so what do we have to do in order to be saved? So Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrkanus answers and he says, Torah and Gemilut Chassadim. What does that mean, Torah and Gemilut Chassadim? First and foremost, you have the Torah. First and foremost, what does Torah mean? It says Torah means go learn the Torah, see what it says, and do it. No excuses. Torah says keep Shabbat, keep Shabbat. Torah says keep kosher, keep kosher. Torah says you have to be modest as a man or a woman. Be modest as a man or a woman. Torah says you have to do certain things, do it. As soon as you learn it, start doing it. It's hard for you? Try again. It's hard for you? Try again. It's hard for you? Try again. Try and try and try until you succeed. Just like anything else that's worthwhile in life. If somebody wants a really good job, and they go apply for that job, and they don't get the job, if they're a loser, what are they going to do? Go kill themselves. Oh, I didn't get it. If they're a winner...

40:57If they're a winner, what are they going to do? They're going to try again. They're going to ask the guy, "Okay, why didn't I get the job?" The guy says, "You don't have the qualifications." "Oh, what qualifications do I need?" "Oh, you need to have C++, A++. You have to have all these qualifications for this job." "Oh, okay, no problem. I'll see you in a few months." He goes to special courses, gets these degrees, gets these things. He comes back to the company. He says, "I got it." "What did you get?" "What you told me I was missing." Why? Because he wants the job. You want something? You go after it. That's what a winner does. That's what a winner does. So, HaKadosh Baruch Hu told us, you have a Torah. You have mitzvot. Some of them, in the beginning, are going to be hard for you. Why? You have a lot of peer pressure. Your friends are going to the movies. You want to go to shiur Torah, but your friends say, "Where are you going to go to shiur Torah? Come to the movies. No, the new X-Men is out. The new Spider-Man is out. The new Hashem Yirachem is out. The new something is out. The new gay gnome is out. No, why don't you go to shiur Torah? Why? Come with us to the club. Come have a couple of drinks. You're going to find a new girlfriend today. And tomorrow a new one. Every day a new one. Come to the club."

41:57He said, "Yeah, I want to go to the club, but I also want to go to Gan Eden. They don't go together. Gan Eden and the club, they don't go together. If I go to the club, no Gan Eden. So the only person who's going to help me go to Gan Eden is a shiur Torah." So the guy makes a choice. It's hard because all of his friends are going to the club. But he makes that choice. If he fails once, he tries again next time. If he fails another time, he tries again next time. And he tries and tries and tries until he succeeds in every mitzvah. But in order to know what to do, you have to learn. So that's Torah. Torah is learning and then doing. what's gemilut chasadim? Gemilut chasadim means doing an abundance of kindness. What kind of kindness can you do? Small kindness, like for example, giving somebody a little bit of money. Somebody needs some money, give a little money. Somebody needs challah, you go buy it for him, you go to the store for him. Your mom, you know, is under pressure, you help her out. That's kindness. But Gemara says, not kindness, abundance of kindness, a lot of kindness. So they ask him, what's the highest level of kindness? The highest level of kindness is introducing and influencing somebody to get closer to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. That's the ultimate kindness. Get somebody closer to Hashem. How? There's countless ways. One way, bring him to the shiur Torah.

43:18You bring them to the shiur Torah. You don't have to say anything. Just get the guy to come, get the girl to come to the shiur Torah. She comes, he comes to the shiur Torah. They listen to the shiur Torah. Next thing you know, they start doing mitzvot. You did your job. You finished. You have achieved an enormous, enormous achievement that's worth a lifetime. Just for that, you get 310 worlds in heaven. Not one world. You get 310. Just for bringing one Jew back. Imagine you brought 10. Imagine you brought 1,000. There's no one richer than you. Why? Because you brought them to a shiur one time and then they decide to stay. You can't bring them to a shiur? Ah, give them one of these free CDs. Give him a CD. Give her a CD. Hey, listen to this. They listen to it. They start doing what it says. You finished. Why? That's it. You saved the person. You saved this person's olam haba. That's the best kindness in the world. Why? Because even if you save somebody's physical life, for example, somebody—there are certain people that are a little bit crazy. They decide they want a job. They want to work for the president. How? As a security guard. That's his personal bodyguard. What's a personal bodyguard for the president?

44:26Job requirement is you have to be willing to die for the president. Even though he's not going to be here forever. He's only going to be here for another few years. You have to be willing to die for him, even though a lot of people don't like him. You have to be willing to die for him, even though a lot of people disagree with him. You have to be willing to die for him. That's the job. So even if it's literally, if he's going to be fired in two hours from now, you know that his whole presidency is over in two hours. He's gone. He's not going to be president anymore. He will never have another seat in office again. Why? Because his presidency, eight years, maximum, is finished. You know it's over in two minutes, but somebody comes with a gun and wants to shoot him. Guess what? If you're that security guard, you have to jump in front of that bullet. Yeah, but he only has two minutes. You're going to lose an entire life of 70 years. For what? For this guy to be president for another two minutes? Yes. That's a crazy person. That's a crazy person. Jews don't have such a thing. Why? Because we don't want to be crazy people. We don't want to save lives physically only. We want to save neshamot. Why? Because the neshama is eternal. It's forever.

45:29It's worth much more than the body. Much more than the body. Even if the body dies, the neshama continues, either in a good place or a bad place. The point being is that a person realizes, ah, you know what? I'd rather save this guy's neshama much more than save his body. Why? Because if I save his neshama, I save him forever. If I save his body, all I'm doing is maybe buying him another few minutes. Maybe he's still going to get hit by a truck five minutes from now. So even if you give him money, let's say, for example, to buy food, maybe he's going to choke on the food and die anyway. So it's not considered the highest level of kindness. It's good, but it's not the highest level. The highest level is saving his neshama. So that's what a person needs to do. They need to learn as much Torah as they can on a daily basis. If you're not learning at all every day, start with shiurim. Start watching our shiurim 10 minutes a day, 15 minutes a day, a half hour a day, an hour a day. But make it every day. Every day you learn a little bit. After that, start doing the mitzvot. After that, start influencing other people by sending them whatever you're watching. You watch a shiur, you like it, send it to your friends. Send them on WhatsApp, send them on email, and...

46:42Get them to come to the shiur. Get a few CDs and give them to people. If you have some money to sponsor CDs but can't distribute them yourself, you could donate the money. We'll distribute the CDs for you. The point is to do something to save other people. If you do those two things, the Gemara says, you have nothing to worry about. If you don't do them, you have everything to worry about. Next question. Yes. Yes. Do the Malachim know what we're thinking? Do the Malachim know what we're thinking? To a certain extent, yes. Because we know that the Yetzer Hara doesn't necessarily need you to say something vocally in order for him to interfere. So, for example, he will interfere much more if you say it vocally, but if you start thinking something. So, for example, you decide...

47:42...not talk. Today, you decide that you're going to do a fast of talking, which is actually good sometimes. If you can do it every day for two hours, you can have miracles in your life, but that's a different story. Anyway, you decide not to talk, and you're going to say, but you're not going to do anything, so the Yetzer Hara is still going to come and interfere. Now you decide that you're not going to tell anyone what you're going to do, but you're going to want to go watch, or you're going to want to go learn some Torah... Because you see that the kids are at school, the wife is working, the house is free, you have it to yourself. I'm ready to study. Everything is going good. As soon as you decide, I'm gonna go start learning. You didn't tell anybody. you start seeing interference. All of a sudden the electricity goes off. All of a sudden there's a, somebody calls. All of a sudden something breaks. Why? Because the Yetzer Hara knows what you're doing. So they do know to a certain extent, but there is much more power that you give them, or especially the Yetzer Hara, if you make things vocal. Like if you say, "Honey, how are you? Listen, everything is good? Okay, I'm going to a shiur Torah."

48:45Most likely not making it to the shiur Torah. Why? You said it out loud, Yetzer Hara knows, oh, May Day, May Day, May Day. May Day, this guy's going to shiur Torah. He sends all the soldiers to do everything possible to destroy this opportunity. So, yes and no, at the same token, is the answer. Next question. Yes. Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead. I've heard these questions before. I didn't hear your questions. No offense, I want to hear her questions. Why do we make a big fan of dishes? Why do we make a big fan of dishes? For the same reason, in essence, that we have a mikvah for women. There are certain rules that HaKadosh Baruch Hu gave us, and He says that everything that you have physically in the world... Sani, do me a favor, tell Rabbi Cohen if they could be quiet a little bit; it's interfering. Thank you. I...

49:48HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, look, I created a world. The Gemara in Masechet Berachot, page 32b, says HaKadosh Baruch Hu created an extraordinary world. beautiful world. You have trees, you have oceans, you have rocks, you have all types of animals. Everything has different colors. All of that is for us, not for Him. If it was just for Him to create something, He could have made everything gray. Imagine everything is gray in the world, or everything had the same taste. It would be such a boring world. So Hashem made all these beautiful colors, beautiful tastes, and beautiful visuals in the world for us. And the Gemara says He created 1,064,340,000,000,000,000,000 stars in the world, in the whole universe. For what? For you. For you. Why? He wants you to enjoy them. Look at the stars. Wow, how many stars? I don't know. Let's count. Today, count until next year. You're still never going to get to the end.

50:55Point is, He created a lot of beauty for you. Created a world with beautiful tastes for you. But He says there's only one rule to all of this. Everything that's material in the world, you have to find a way to connect to Me through this tool. Food is allowed. There's forbidden food, there's permissible food. Technically, any taste that you want is allowed. But there's certain food that's not allowed. So one of the women, the wives of the tzaddikim in the Gemara, says, "Wait, I want to have—it says in the Torah that everything's available to us—I want to have something that tastes like pork, like bacon. But I'm not allowed to have bacon, I'm not allowed to have pig. So what am I going to do? So what's missing?" Rabbi Meir, her husband, says, "No." Her husband was Rabbi Meir Ba'al Hanes. He says, "No, nothing's missing." So how can I get pork? How can I get bacon? He says, "There's a fish called shibuta." Africa we're gonna get that fish. Once we cook it, it tastes exactly like bacon. It's also, by the way, today—even there is a duck in Japan. They grow in Japan a specific type of duck; you cook it, it tastes exactly like bacon. Same concept goes for a lot of things. Let's say somebody says, "I want to taste a cheeseburger," meaning the taste of meat and milk at the same time. Now, you can't have it today. You have soy. But before we had soy, how did we do it?

52:20Eat the part of the cow that carries the milk. The meat of the cow that carries the milk tastes like milk and meat together. All types of beautiful things that Hashem created are permissible, but there's a way for them to be permissible. Your wife is permissible, but there's a certain time she's allowed. The tools are permissible, but there are certain times that they're allowed. Why? Because everything has to be pure. If it's pure, it can connect to me, HaKadosh Baruch Hu. If it's not pure, it connects to the Satan. The one that's trying to get you away from Me. So, when you take something that Hashem gave you, for example, a plate, how are you going to connect a plate to Hashem? Are you going to throw it at Him? "Here, Hashem, catch!" What are you going to do? Hashem says, take it to the mikveh. Take this plate, dip it into water that came from heaven. Not just any water. Don't just throw it into some bucket with water in it. It has to be specific water that went into a specific place undisturbed.

53:20Meaning it cannot go into a place and then some pipes and machines push it into some pool. That's not a mikveh. A mikveh has to be where the water comes undisturbed into this pool, with no influence, no one's pushing it into it. So it has to be heavenly water. Why? Because that is pure. How do you purify the tool? With this mikveh. Same thing with a woman. A woman has a time of the month when she becomes impure. This is specifically in order to improve the marriage. Now, to show you an example of how significant it is for a woman to be pure, your grandparents—what are you guys, Ashkenazim, Sephardim? Sephardim—your grandparents Your grandparents were willing to sacrifice their lives. Sacrifice their lives, mamash. Not to violate nida. Not to violate the mitzvah of touching his own wife if she's nida. For example, there's a story Rabbi Yagen says he once told about an Ashkenazi.

54:40That was born and raised in Russia. A religious Jew, which was uncommon to begin with, came to the yeshiva of Rabbi Yagen and told him a story. He says, "You know, you guys have it good here. Good." He goes, "Well, there's poverty everywhere." He goes, "You don't know what poverty is. You don't know what poverty is." He goes, "No, tell me." This is my country, Russia. We were born over there. It's colder than Canada. In Canada, when I went there, literally one minute, it was nice outside. Within literally five to seven minutes, it became 15 to 20 degrees below zero when I went there to Montreal. Unbelievable. I've never seen anything like it. He says, in Russia, it's worse. Shami, I have like one second. You're okay the next second if you don't go inside. That's it, you're finished. Unbelievable. He says in Russia, it's worse; the water freezes. He says in Russia, you weren't allowed to be religious. You weren't allowed to build a mikveh. So how could you be with your wife and with Hashem at the same time? He says, "I had to take my wife to the lake."

55:59The frozen lake. The frozen lake, Abu Tayy, make a hole in the frozen lake at night. Make a hole in the frozen lake at night so my wife can dip into the frozen water that's 40 degrees below zero. Why? So I can touch her finger. Yunus, when you think about this, Me and you, we're saying, you know what? No mikveh, no taharat ha-mishpacha, just leave me alone. Why? Because we're weak. We're weak, we're weak. I'm just thinking about cold, I get cold. She's dipping in water 40 degrees below zero. Why? So her husband doesn't touch her while she's impure. That's how important taharat ha-mishpacha was for your grandparents, for my grandparents. For Am Yisrael. To go into the water was a life risk. There's a very good chance you're not coming out. If it's not the water because it's frozen, it's because it's the middle of the night, it's a lake. It doesn't play around. There's no stairs. The whole thing can break. Rabotai, literally every month, a Bat Yisrael was willing to sacrifice her life just so her husband, her own husband, could touch her.

57:20Now, if a Bat Yisrael is not married, she can't go to the mikveh, which means that if a boy touches her, if a man touches her, automatically she's not only violating the rules between her and Hashem, and he's violating the rules between him and Hashem, but now she is looking at her own grandmother, her own great-grandmother, and saying, "Ah, what a fool you were, that you were willing to risk your life." for this mitzvah. You want to risk your life to jump into water that's 40 degrees below zero to be with your husband. She's not even willing to get married. She's not even willing to go to the mikveh. So you see, do you understand? This is a different generation. This is a people that actually understood what it means to be close to Hashem. So when a person wants to be close to Hashem, he or she looks for every single opportunity to use the material world in a way that's going to connect to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. So a woman says, "How could I connect to HaKadosh Baruch Hu if my husband is the one that's learning all day and I'm home with the kids?"

58:34I'm home with the kids. He's at the yeshiva. At least he's learning Torah. How can I connect to Hashem if I'm home with the kids? Think about this. If you knew that your kid is Mashiach, you know for sure he's Mashiach, would you take care of him a little bit better than if you didn't know? Possible why because he's Mashiach, if you will, let's say, a kindergarten teacher. Kindergarten teachers, it sounds like fun, but it's not that much fun. Why? Because as soon as the diapers start getting filled with stuff and it's not your kid, it's not so much fun to be a kindergarten teacher. Now, if the kindergarten teacher knew this kid, I'm about to change his little poopies, I'm about to change poopies. Not my kid. It's somebody else's kid. It's smelly stuff, about to change it, but this poopies belongs to the Mashiach. And What's he going to do? He should do it all the time, Mashiach. Poop all day for me. Why? Because what happens? One day he grows up, he becomes Mashiach. "Hey, Mashiach! Who changed your poop? Mashiach! Mashiach, who changed your... You changed Mashiach." Imagine, you changed Mashiach's poop. I mean, it's unbelievable. It's funny, but it's not. It's funny...

59:50But it's not. Why? Every single kid can be Mashiach. Every kid. Every kid can be Mashiach. Which means... A woman takes that into consideration. She says, "Wait a minute. My kid can be Mashiach. How could he be Mashiach if I don't send him to yeshiva? How could he be Mashiach if I let him watch all this garbage cartoons that show people killing each other? How could I let him? How could he be Mashiach if I give him playing cards—playing cards that have death on the playing card?" I saw two kids playing cards today. Somebody showed me two playing cards today. One of them has... Mummies killing each other, saying that the fight of the dead people, and the next playing card the kids have to trade among each other is a cemetery full of crosses. Jewish kids are playing with these playing cards. How old are the kids? Six, seven years old. How is a six or seven-year-old going to be a holy Mashiach if he's playing with crosses and dead people? How so? A woman says, "My kid can be Mashiach, my kid can be Mashiach," and...

1:01:01No way. No way I'm going to let him watch TV. No way I'm going to let him play these garbage video games. No way I'm going to let him do all these things that are going to ruin him. Why? She connects to HaKadosh Baruch Hu by cleaning the house and taking care of the kids. In a way, it's different from everybody else. Why? She's preparing for Mashiach. So, this, Rabotai, is a way for a woman to elevate her role in the world. Elevate her role in the world in something that she has to do one way or the other. Just take care of the kids. Somebody has to. Or else, don't have them. So, the point is that you can get to a very, very high level regardless of what you do, regardless of what you have. You can even get to a high level with a pen. Use the pen to write Torah. Everything can be used to get close to Hashem. Next question. So, I have a shiur from about three years ago answering, it's a 15-20 minute answer about that. I'll send it to you if you want. In short, the Gemara says in Masechet Avodah Zarah, at the end of page 3b beginning of 4a, that in the time of Mashiach, once the Mashiach arrives, there are no more conversions.

1:02:26conversions. But there will be a lot of conversions at the same time, meaning a lot of people will convert before Mashiach comes because that's a promise that Hashem made to the nations. But at the same token, once Mashiach comes, no more conversions. This means that once everybody knows who's right, everybody knows that the Torah is right, and the New Testament, the Quran, Buddhism, and all the other stuff that's out there are all garbage. Going to interfere with people's free choice. Why? Once you see who's the winning team, it doesn't take a genius for you to want to join them. Hashem says they have worked and sacrificed everything when it was hard, when they were the underdog. You can't just go and decide to join them now after they've already won and... So if somebody was already serious and genuine about their conversion and already started the process, and already started taking steps in the process, then of course in Heaven they'll reward them for it. They'll reward them for it by allowing them to complete it.

1:03:31Just like one of the Mashiach's roles is going to be to identify the 12 tribes, because right now we really only know about two, maybe three tribes out of the 12. He's also going to identify who are the real converts and who are the fake ones. Who are the real Jews, and who are the fake ones? There are a lot of people that look like they're real Jews, but they're actually not even Jews. There are a lot of people that are actually Jews, but they're fakers. They worship idols inside. They steal. They cheat. They have a long beard, but they cheat. They steal. They rape. They are pedophiles. So the Mashiach is going to uncover all this stuff. He's also going to uncover all of the righteous people that were in the process of conversion but were simply going through the process and weren't able to finish it. And of course, he'll reward them for it by allowing them to finish. So every single person that does a single mitzvah will be rewarded for it. And if that reward, if the ultimate reward that a person wants to have is to connect to Hashem by being a righteous Jew, then of course Hashem is going to allow him. But that's assuming he's making that decision to do it and taking the steps to do it when it's difficult, not when it's easy. Next question. Yes, Hashem is going to give him the month...

1:04:54Right, there's no physicality to Hashem. So you're talking about after they got out of the Sea of Reeds? So there are a couple of times that it says that they saw Hashem. For example, during the crossing of the Sea of Reeds, when Hashem split the ocean for them, it says that even a low-level individual had received vision prophecy. a visual of Hashem or His creation at a higher level than the prophet Yechezkel. Meaning, one of the last prophets, Yechezkel, one of the highest level prophets we've ever had.

1:06:08His prophecy was extraordinary because he describes what happens in heaven. They said in Torah that the people that crossed the Sea of Reeds, the lowest level of them was even higher than him in prophecy. They saw something unbelievable. Hashem opened the heavens, showed them things that are impossible for us to even visualize. That's one part of the glory of Hashem. At Mount Sinai, it says that Hashem opened the seven heavens. showed them a certain aspect of Hashem. He showed them there's nothing else in the world other than Him. How He can show that, I have no idea. But He showed them that there's nothing else in the world other than Him. Another part says that when they saw the feet of Hashem — Hashem doesn't have feet — it's in essence where Hashem showed them a certain rock, a certain special rock that's under His throne and... To give them some type of physical visual of something in order for them to connect to something. Also, there is a long Midrash about that. So, there are different parts of the people seeing things physically; most of it is spiritually, but nonetheless, it's nothing of an actual physicality of Hashem. It's just different things that Hashem wanted to show Am Yisrael at different times.

1:07:33Now, the question is asked: How is it that Am Yisrael, who crossed the ocean, Am Yisrael who saw the ten plagues, and Am Yisrael who saw miracles, saw food come from heaven, how did they go worship an idol? Anybody have that question? Like if I showed you right now, I said, you know, Hashem, do me a favor for this shiur. Instead of 50 bucks, open the heavens for us. Show me really who's the boss. And He really did. Is anybody here ever going to violate Shabbat again? Is anybody here ever going to say Lashon Hara once in their life again? No, right? Why? Because now you know for sure. Until now, you believed in Hashem. Now you saw something, you're scared to move. Am Yisrael saw much more than that. They saw the plagues in Egypt. They saw water turn to blood. They saw frogs go inside people's bodies, the Egyptians only. They saw hail with lava inside it, which is against nature. All types of things that are unbelievable. Unbelievable. They saw an ocean split into twelve, one for each tribe.

1:08:48They saw the bottom of the ocean flatten out so it would be easy for them to walk. They saw trees, fruit trees of all types, grow in mere seconds just for them to eat the fruit from while they were crossing the ocean. They saw the salt water of the ocean trickle out pure spring water just for them. The salt water became pure just for them to drink; it was a long walk. All types of amazing miracles. But yet, a few weeks later, they worshipped an idol. How could it be? That's a serious question. How could it be? You saw those miracles. Even if you guys today, 3,300 years later, saw one of those miracles, you're never going to sin again. They saw thousands of miracles, and Hashem, and they made the worst sin. How? How could it be? And they didn't stop sinning. They didn't stop complaining for 40 years. How? Better yet, The Gaon MiVilna asks a question: When a rabbi walks into a shul, what is everybody supposed to do? Stand up. Why? Because of the Torah that he has, not because of him physically, because of the Torah that he possesses. Meaning, you stand for the Torah, not for him. So the Gaon MiVilna says, how come we don't stand every time we see a pregnant woman?

1:10:13Why? The Gemara in Masechet Niddah says that there's a Malach in Shamayim; he goes into the stomach of the mother with the baby. Why? To teach the baby Torah, the entire Torah. Meaning that the baby inside the mother, he's eight months old, he's nine months old, he's about to be born. At this point, he knows more Torah than the entire world combined. That's how much Torah he knows. As soon as he comes out, he forgets everything. So at that moment, you see a six-month pregnant woman. How come you don't stand up for her? Rabbi, she's carrying. He knows more Torah than the Gadol HaDor. How come you don't stand up? How come? Anybody have an answer? The Gaon MiVilna gives a genius answer. That answer answers both questions. Why did Am Yisrael see all those miracles but then sin right away? For the same reason we don't stand when we see a pregnant woman. Am Yisrael was gifted all of this significance, all of this prophecy, on a silver platter.

1:11:29Hashem, they didn't earn it. They didn't fight for prophecy. They didn't say, "Oh, we were really good to Hashem." No. They were simply gifted this prophecy. One day they were idol worshippers, the next day Hashem showed them prophecy. One day they were slaves, the next day they saw prophecy. They were gifted all of this. Because they were gifted all of this, it didn't have staying power. It didn't have staying power. Soon as the prophecy went away, they finished crossing the ocean. They came back to the same idol worshippers they were before. The same goes with why we don't stand when we see a pregnant woman. Yes, that tzaddik inside her is learning the entire Torah, but it's all being gifted to him. It's all being gifted to him, so it's not like the rabbi that wakes up at 12 o'clock at night to study till 6 o'clock in the morning before prayer. It's not like the rabbi that studies day and night to become a talmid chacham. It's not like the rabbi that fasts a few times here and there just in order to get close to Hashem, you know, spiritually. It's not like the talmid chacham who's fighting for his Torah by chewing ice just so he can stay awake.

1:12:44It's not him. Why? The baby is being gifted this Torah. We don't stand for a baby that's gifted Torah. Why? It doesn't have any staying power. As soon as he comes out, he forgets everything. As soon as Am Yisrael was taken out of the ocean, they forgot everything. They started chasing the gold, started chasing the money they saw from the ocean. They forgot everything they saw. Why? It was gifted to them. Torah, without sacrifice, has no staying power. That's one of the most critical, one of the most important Ba'alei Teshuva in history. His name was Reish Lakish. He was a former mobster, head of the Mafia, almost 2,000 years ago. He says in the Gemara, Torah, without you being willing to sacrifice your life for it, is worthless. If you're not willing to sacrifice your life to go learn the next chiddush, to go to learn the next shiur, to go learn the next clip, to go learn the next sefer, you're not willing to sacrifice your life for this, you won't have staying power. Why? You don't really care about it. You're treating it like it's something nice. If you want it to stay, you're willing to sacrifice your life. So Torah that you learn easily, in the beginning,

1:13:59You need that easy part, but if you want the real serious Torah, that's going to take more effort. It's going to take much more effort, much more yetzer hara overcoming. And that type of Torah will stay with you eternally. So that answers your question and the question the Gaon MiVilna had that was similar to yours. Next question. Next question, who else? Same price. Nobody is winning yet with the 50 bucks. Ken. Important, yes. So the Gemara in Masechet Sotah says that the hair of a woman is considered ervah. In fact, kol b'ishah ervah. And there are two meanings for it. Kol b'ishah ervah means, one meaning is that her voice is considered nakedness, which means that when a man hears, if one woman hears another woman sing, it doesn't do much for her. She may like her voice, but it doesn't do much for her in any other way.

1:15:26But when a man hears a woman's voice, he hears her sing at the top of her lungs. If he knows what she looks like, naturally he will start visualizing her in inappropriate ways. That's just the natural makeup of a man. She could be somebody that he's considering unattractive normally. But as soon as she sings and he hears it, and she sings in a nice way, automatically she becomes attractive to him. She becomes attractive to him, so a man is not allowed to listen to a woman sing if he knows what she looks like, and On the other hand, it says kol b'isha erva, which also means that the entire woman is considered nakedness. That a woman is so beautiful to a man, in a man's eyes and a man's brain, the way he's made up, that her entire self is considered nakedness. Meaning that everything about her that is not supposed to be covered or uncovered naturally is something that could lead a man to think inappropriately.

1:16:30meaning, a man doesn't look at the palm of a woman's hand and think about anything inappropriate. Why? Because the palm of her hand looks like the palm of his hand. The back of her hand looks like the back of his hand. It's not that much of a difference. The same thing with the feet. The same thing with the face. Unless she's making all types of looks and things like that, it's a different story. But in general, there are things about her that a man sees that don't automatically lead to certain thoughts. Even if she's attractive, if she's covered everywhere, most men will not start thinking extremely inappropriate thoughts. But there are certain parts of a woman that do create them. For example, certain parts of her body, certain parts of her legs, and needless to say, her hair. The hair of a woman is by far the most attractive part of a woman, the most attracting part of a woman. Even if a woman does not have a nice body, or a body that's attractive to a man, or this particular man, if she has a normal-looking face and nice hair, she will become attractive to him.

1:17:37it's quite frankly, it's a reality that most women have much more attractive faces and hair than they do bodies. And that's what attracts men. So the reason why our Torah has in Parashat Naso is said that a woman has to cover her hair. From there is where we learn, the source of where we learn that Hashem says that married women have to cover their hair is because once a woman gets married, she makes a promise. What's the promise? The promise is: "You, my husband, my beauty from now on belongs only to you. I'm giving you my beauty." He, in return, promises her whatever sustenance she needs, whatever intimacy she needs, whatever clothing she needs, whatever materiality she needs. "I promise that to you. I'm yours, you're mine. But that's it." This means that the woman is no longer allowed to share her beauty with someone who is not her husband, because she belongs to someone else. So, that is what Hashem wants a woman to do because He wants her to have a happy marriage.

1:18:50Happy marriage is impossible if a man, that's a normal man, knows that every time he walks down the street or every time he goes to shul with his wife, every second guy is staring at his wife and... walks with his wife and every guy is looking at her. It's very annoying. Why? A normal man that loves his wife is jealous. Even if she's his wife and no one's taking her, still, he sees another guy commenting on his wife, it drives him crazy. If it doesn't drive him crazy, it's one of two reasons: either he doesn't really like her, or he likes somebody else much better—he's cheating on her. It's not normal for a man not to be jealous of something that happens with his wife. Even if they're married for 50 years, if he's not jealous, there's something wrong there. So the point is that for a woman to put herself in a situation where she's causing men to become attracted to her, she's violating that Ketubah. She's violating that contract that she has with her husband. And that's why the Gemara Masechet Ketubot says what kind of women you are allowed to divorce without giving them any money and...

1:20:02If the woman you know intentionally cooks you non-kosher food, you ask her for food she intentionally cooks with pig. Okay, you kick her out. If this woman Does not want to go to the mikveh. Okay, if your wife doesn't want to go to the mikveh, then you can't be with her. You can't be with her intimately; there's no marriage. Okay, you kick her out. What about another one? If this woman does not cover her hair. Doesn't cover her hair, you kick her out without paying her ketubah. Why? Because she's causing other men to look at her. She's violating the ketubah every single day. This is Torah. So a woman that wants a happy marriage, first and foremost, needs to know. The only good that exists in the world comes from Hashem. Whether I have a good life or a bad life is if Hashem decides I'm going to have a good life or a bad life. So why would I do something against Hashem's instructions and expect a good result from it? Why would Hashem give me something good if I'm going against His instructions? If I'm going against the instructions that He set for me, this is how you get good. Why should I expect good if I go against the instructions?

1:21:12It's like the phone manufacturer says, "Warning: Do not throw. The phone may break." And you say, "Ah, it broke. Ah, this phone is terrible." You call iPhone, you call Apple. "Listen, you guys are terrible." "Why? The phone broke." "How did it break?" "I threw it." "Hey, wait, the warning said don't throw the phone." "Yeah, but I threw it anyway." "Okay, you violated the instructions. You violated the warranty. Everything is void. You didn't follow the instructions." You follow the instructions, it's going to work. But if you follow the instructions and it still broke, then we'll fix it. But if you didn't follow, then it's not our fault. Same thing with Hashem. Hashem says, I gave you instructions on how to have a good life. You follow the instructions, you will have a good life. You don't follow the instructions. Don't complain to Him about divorce, about cheating, about lying. And I don't need to prove anything to anybody. You can simply look at the statistics. Over 80% of Western society gets divorced. And like I said earlier in the lecture, over 90% in some places in America, like Colorado, get divorced. Now, if you fly a plane, anybody consider that hard, flying a plane? Anybody here know how to fly a plane? You know how to fly a plane? You don't know how to fly a plane? I don't know how to fly a plane. I don't know. Nobody knows how to fly a plane.

1:22:33Anyway, but you would think to fly a plane, to fly a plane, it's hard, right? It's hard. So they go to school for a couple of years, at least two, three years, to learn how to fly a plane. Depends on how big the plane is. Now, if you look at the statistics, as far as how many plane crashes there are in the world each year, it's a very, very small number. Very small, small, like single digits. Very small number. Even though there are countless planes going up, going down, some airports have literally hundreds of planes landing and taking off every single day. Unbelievable, there are so few. Actually, they say one of the most stressful jobs in the world is to be one of those people that looks at the screens and tells the planes where to go. Why? Because at any moment, if you tell the guy to make a right and he makes a left, it's a crash. If you tell the guy to go at 30,000 feet instead of 29,500 feet—what's the big deal? The big deal is there's another plane at 29,500.

1:23:35Same thing, same lesson, they get a crash. So you have to constantly look at all these planes, know where everything is—a very stressful job. But with all of that being said, there are still very, very few crashes in the world, Baruch Hashem. Very few. But it's hard to fly a plane. Guess what? It's even harder to have a happy marriage. Why? Because we see from statistics, planes only single digits crash. Marriages, 90% crash. 90% crash. Why? People didn't go to school. For the plane, they went to school for a few years. For marriage, they didn't go to school. What school? Learn Torah. Schoolers learn Torah and do what it says. Now, sometimes people know how to do mitzvot. They know how to keep Shabbat, they know how to keep kosher, they know how to pray at shul, but they don't know how to be married. Why? Because there are parts of the Torah, like what we're teaching—Mussar, teaching you ethics, teaching you behavior—that they skip. So they know how to go to shul, they know how to grow a beard, they know how to eat like a cow, they know that stuff. But how to be a decent human being, they don't know. They skip that lesson. They interrupt the lesson by making noise in the back.

1:24:46They eat food that doesn't belong to them. They start interrupting a conversation that they weren't even a part of. Stuff like that. They forgot the Mussar lesson. They skipped that part. They don't know how to be human beings. That's a problem. Why? Because that means you're going to crash at some point. You could crash. Why? The plane crashed. You'll crash. But more likely, you'll crash faster. Why? You didn't learn how to be a human being. So it's important for a person to look at every single one of the mitzvot as an opportunity to not only get closer to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, but to increase their own chances of never ever crashing in life. Never getting into a depression. Never getting a divorce. Never getting into a fight. Imagine living a life where you're never ever upset. Never. Like stuff happens, but you're not upset. Why? Because you know it all comes from Hashem. Imagine such a thing. It's an unbelievable life. Now, there are things about life that are upsetting, but you're not upset like the next guy. You don't lose your mind. I can tell you something. Yesterday, my son, God bless him, my son Ovadia, God bless him, he's one of these kids, a special kid. Why? He only looks for trouble.

1:26:08He's one of these smart kids. So he looks for stuff. He gets himself in trouble. I don't even know how. So on the eve of Pesach, on the eve of Pesach, little Seder, little Seder, little Ovadia, he and his sister are running around. Yosef is in his little stroller hanging out. they're running around. They're singing all types of songs. Unbelievable! Best setup I've had in my life. At some point, Ovadia goes to the kitchen. Ovadia in the kitchen, no good. Dangerous. So I run after Ovadia because he's in the kitchen. I arrive in the kitchen, but Ovadia already took something from the counter. I don't know what it is. He took something from the counter, and it looks red and white, and I'm not really sure what it is, but he's holding it. And he's holding it, and I said, give it to me. Because I know it doesn't belong in his hand. I don't know what it is. It just doesn't belong in his hand. I said, give it to me.

1:27:10give it to me. He goes, "Oh, my hand." I said, "Give me that. What is it? What is it?" It's a cook's knife, a chef's knife. What's a chef's knife? A chef's knife is, by the way, a chef's knife is—you look at it, you get cut. He's squeezing the knife part. Oh, my head. I was looking for Hashem—all kinds of blood, 9-1-1 is in my mind. I look at this, I put the thing away. Nothing. He said, "Out of my hand." So I saw, there has to be something. Nothing. Some miracle, number one. Yesterday, he's playing with his sister, whatever. "Oh, out of my hand." Running, he's crying. He's crying for 20 minutes. We have no idea why. We see he doesn't want to move his hand. I don't move his hand. I try to pick him up. He's crying, crying. He doesn't stop crying. What happened? He doesn't want to move his hand. I said, no, show me your hand. Raise your hand. Something. He's not moving his hand. Not moving his fingers. After crying for a while, anything you move, anything you touch, he cries hysterically. I said, oh, he must have broken it. Something happened. I don't know what happened, but something happened. We go to the hospital. This was my vacation, by the way. We go to the hospital. After a lot of kaparat avonot, we finally get in.

1:28:30We go to the hospital. We sit down. Everything is, you know, we're, Baruch Hashem, we say at least it's this, it's not something else. And we're over there. Ovadia is under control. Everything is good. But maybe a minute, less than a minute, before the doctor finally arrived. So this is about three hours after the whole hand thing happened. For three hours, he's crying. if you touch his head the right way or the wrong way, something. A minute, a minute before the doctor came, a minute, he starts jumping and going on the bed. I said, is this a joke? I said, give me your hand. He's like, give me a high five. He's telling me, give me a high five. I said, I give him a high five. He goes, no, give me two hands. And he gives me two hands. All of a sudden, miraculously, the doctor comes and goes, where's the patient? He doesn't know what to do with us. I said, I'm sorry to waste your time. I don't know what happened. The doctors explained to us some natural way, giving this excuse of what happened. In reality, another miracle. So now, throughout all of these things,

1:29:44Under normal conditions, it's very easy to lose your mind. Why? The kid's two years old. There's a knife in his hand. The kid's two years old. He can't move his hand. He's crying non-stop. It's very easy to lose your mind. It's very easy to start crying with him. It's very easy to start questioning God. Why did You do this to me? Why me? Why him? He's only two. It's very easy to do all that stuff. But if you know that all of this, all of these difficulties are coming from Him, from HaKadosh Baruch Hu, keep control. You're under control. You don't lose yourself. You don't lose your cool. You don't lose your mind. You don't lose hope. You don't lose anything. Why? Because you realize this has something good in it. What? I have no idea. But it has something good in it. It has something good in it. Maybe Hashem wants to show you how He controls nature. Maybe Hashem wants to show you how a lot of things happen. A lot of things that we learn in Yeshiva. The point is, Rabotai, that a person who is constantly connected to Hashem is going to see miracles in front of his own eyes. Another story for you. Yesterday or the day before, Rav Ephraim gets invited to do a shiur in Netanya.

1:31:07Israel and at the same time, somebody calls the house. He's visiting his parents and says, "Listen, tell your son, Rav Ephraim, to come to my house. I want to give him some money. I don't know, a decent amount of money, a couple hundred dollars, which is a lot of money for them. I want to give it to him, but he has to come to my house. No, yes, you know. Oh, if he doesn't come, I'm not giving it." Then I... I want to get a blessing. You want to sit with them or this, well, you know people want to, they want to buy you because of your cattle. So, as far as it's a lot of money, this is uh, what do you want to do? Rav Ephraim says there's no question. I have a shiur. He says, "Yeah, but it's a decent amount of money." "It's no question." "No," Rav Ephraim says, "there's no question. No question. That's it. No question," says Abba. "It's not a test. We're gonna get ten times the amount." The kids, the kids are the oldest among them, 16-17 years old, maybe has 37 shekels in his bank account. He's a poor kid. "I don't have anything." "No, I'm gonna send ten times the amount." He goes, he has a shiur. If anybody saw the shiur or saw some of the videos we posted online, the pictures we posted online, you see the kids putting on tzitziyot, taking on Shabbat, taking off earrings. I was doing serious teshuvah on the spot. Unbelievable.

1:32:31Unbelievable. Later the next day, he is sitting down with another tzaddik, his father-in-law. He asks him what's going on with the parnassah. "I heard about the story with the guy. Yeah, yeah, he didn't give up. What's good? Tough, tough times. Don't think of now because, b'ezrat Hashem, everything's gonna come. Ten times more is gonna come." As he finishes saying "ten times more is gonna come," ten times comes. How do I know? I sent it. was on the other side as soon as we sent it. Donations and so on came; he calls me, goes up. "Oh, Hashem, You are part of a kiddush Hashem." The people next to me started crying. I said, ten times, ten times happened. Why? A person that believes in HaKadosh Baruch Hu gives Hashem a reason to believe in him. But you have to pass a test.

1:33:34You can say ten times all day till tomorrow. But if you don't believe it, Hashem knows. Hashem knows. What are you going to do for it? The point is, Rabotai, the person that believes in HaKadosh Baruch Hu is going to make certain sacrifices for Him. He's going to make certain sacrifices, certain things that are difficult. But if he or she is willing to make difficult decisions for Hashem, Hashem is going to make difficult decisions for you. Meaning He's going to give you things that technically you don't really deserve. Technically, you don't really deserve it. If you really looked at the Torah and saw what you're getting versus what you deserve, you'll see that you're getting a lot more than what you deserve. Why? Because you're doing certain things that Hashem wants you to do, and therefore, He's giving you more than what you deserve. But that doesn't last forever; that only lasts as long as you keep doing what Hashem wants. Next question. Any more questions? Any more miracle stories if you want? The amount of money that a person gets is decided on Rosh Hashanah, but each day it's decided how he's going to get it. How he's going to get it? The only exception to that is what he gets for mitzvot—money that he spends on mitzvot and...

1:35:04So it means that if, let's say for example, it was decreed in Shamayim for him to get, let's say, $50,000 to live on. Okay? $50,000 to live on, which for most people is plenty of money. And he is a tzaddik with a lot of emunah. And he says, okay, I'm making $1,000 a week. It's good money. But I want to make sure that I have a really nice Shabbat. So I'm going to spend 300 bucks just on Shabbat. Just on Shabbat. Meaning I'm spending 30% of my salary just on Shabbat. Why? I want to have all the salads. I want to have guests. I want to have kedusha. I want to have this. I want to have the best Shabbat. I'm not looking to save a penny. I want to have the best of the best for Shabbat. Not because of my big stomach. For Shabbat. But I'm doing it so Hashem says, "You spend money on My mitzvot. You spend a few hundred dollars on Pesach. You spend a few hundred dollars on tzitzit and...

1:36:13You spent a few hundred dollars on matzah. You spent a few hundred dollars on Shabbat. And you're doing it for Shabbat. You're not doing it because you like the tzitzit, or you like the food, or you like to show off. No, no. You're doing it for the honor of Shabbat. You're doing it for the honor of the mitzvah. Hashem says, that $50,000 that I promised you, that's separate. All the money that you spend on My mitzvot, I'll pay you back on top of the $50,000. Now, how, Hashem? I have a job. They paid me $50,000. So what, you're going to give me a second job? I don't have time to work a second job. I barely have time to study now. I'm going to study with a second job? A shiur is three hours with this Rabbi—he doesn't stop talking. I don't have time to eat. As soon as I get home, I have to go to the shiur. As soon as I get home, I have to go to sleep. I don't have time for a second job, Hashem. Hashem says, don't worry about it. Don't worry about how I'm going to give it to you. I'm going to give it to you. That's My business. I'm going to give it to you. It's My business. I'm going to give it to you. I'll give you an example.

1:37:13Today. Today. Live. Rabbi Ephraim, Baruch Hashem, he takes his kids, and every time they finish a perek from the Gemara, he gives his kids a present. Why? To get the whole family, all the kids excited about finishing Gemara, about learning Torah. So every time they learn something, when they finish a perek in the Gemara, he says, ah, we get ice cream. Ice cream. Why? So the kids say, "How about my ice cream? Did you finish a perek? Did you finish the Gemara?" Why? Because anytime he says, "I want to study," and the kids are interrupting, he says, "You want to get ice cream?" "Yeah." "Okay, so let me study." You get the whole family excited about learning Torah. The point is, once the kids get a little bit older—three, four, five, six years old—you can... It's much easier than if the kid is one and a half. You can't tell a one-and-a-half-year-old anything about learning. He doesn't understand. Once they get a little older, they start communicating. Anyway, the whole family is excited. Why? We're going to get ice cream. But at the same time, we're getting a present too at the toy store. We go to the toy store; they go to the toy store. The present is 120 shekels.

1:38:20But if you press this button on this celebrity's machine, it's a coupon for 50 shekels. Just for argument's sake, 120 shekels, but it's a 50 shekel coupon. A 50 shekel coupon, meaning now 120 shekels becomes, you buy it for 70 shekels. For somebody that doesn't make much money, 50 shekels is a lot of money. You rich people, 50 shekels is not a lot of money. It's a lot of money. Problem. Problem. What's the problem? What's the problem with this $50 coupon? A $50 coupon means that somebody, one of the daughters, the mom, or another family member, somebody in the family has to press a button on a celebrity that's immodest. That's it. It's not the real celebrity. The human being is in Hollywood somewhere. But in the store, there's something that has a button on it with the picture of the celebrity. And if we press it, we get $50. We want to get the toy, and we get $50 off. But we have to press it on a machine that has an image on it. Which one of you doesn't press it? What are you going to say? "I'll close my eyes and I'll press it five times." Press it, right? It's just a machine. It's not really the real person. That's the difference.

1:39:45Rabbani says to Rabbi Fahim, "We're not pressing this button." Rabbi Fahim says, "What's the question? What's the question? We're going to benefit from something that's against Hashem? No coupon. So it's $120 instead. Hashem will pay for it. Hashem will pay for it." They get the toy. Okay, now it's time to go get ice cream. So Ima Rabbani, Rabbani Tzara, goes to the store to get ice cream. She comes back. Rabbi Fahim says, "Oh, here's the ice cream and here's the 50 shekels that I found on the way here." Coupon? I found it on the floor—50 shekels. But this time, it's cash, not a coupon. Fifty shekels on the way here. Why? Because you didn't press a button. Why didn't you press a button? Because you believe that HaKadosh Baruch Hu cares about the button. He cares about the button; He cares about everything. It's all a test. It's all a test. If you believe in Him, you'll care about the button, too. If you don't, then you'll sell. Close your eyes. Pretend like you care. That's what the Gemara says. The Gemara says, somebody that knows that there's a bunch of immodest women on one road, and another road, no immodest women. And he has to get to the end of the road. On the road of immodest women, it's very short, two minutes. On the road with nothing, it's an hour.

1:41:09So he says, "You know what? I'm gonna go on the two-minute road because I'm gonna be able to see with that hour that I'm saving, I'm gonna learn more Torah." Yeah, what about the immodest women? "I'll close my eyes, I'll close my eyes, I won't look at them." Gemara says, he went on the road for two minutes, closed his eyes the whole time. What do you guys think of him? He closed his eyes, didn't see one woman. He didn't see one woman on the two-minute road, and he learned Torah the whole time. He learned Torah the whole time. The other, he saved himself an hour. What do you guys call him? Tzadik, right? He's a nice guy. Should be giving him a shiur Torah, no? Gemara says, Rasha hu. Rasha. Wicked. Why wicked? What gives you the audacity, the gall, the guts to think that you're going to overcome your yetzer hara? To think that you're going to actually survive these two minutes without opening your eyes. So you passed once. What do you think? You're going to pass every time? The only reason the yetzer hara let you win once is so you can lose a second time. And bigger. You think that you can play with the yetzer hara like that? You're a rasha. You're taking a chance with your own life. Better you walk an hour on a road with no immodesty than two minutes closing your eyes with immodesty. Don't take a chance with your neshama. Yes?

1:42:36Fantastic question. In a few weeks, we're gonna have a parashat shavua called Parashat Bechukotai. There are two parashot in the Torah that give very, very vivid details that aside from being petrifying, are quite familiar to us in today's world because they sound like the Holocaust. One of them is Parashat Bechukotai, and the other one is Parashat Ki Tavo. Meaning that what Hashem describes here, if you didn't know this was 3,000 years ago, you'd say, "Oh, this is 70 years ago. This is the Holocaust." So Hashem says in these two parashot, If you do what I said, if you follow my laws, if you will follow my decrees,

1:43:58Observe My commandments and perform them. Then I will provide your rains in their time, meaning you'll get the money that you need and all the sustenance you need exactly when you need it. You won't have any struggles, any famine, or any hunger. The land will give you produce, and the trees and fields will give you fruit. And then He continues to say that your enemy will be scared of you and run away from you. You'll win every war. Five of you will pursue a hundred. meaning that five of you could kill a hundred people, which is amazing. So, if you do everything that I say, you're going to have this world turn into heaven. He gives 13 different blessings that we get as a result of following what He says. On the other hand, in verse 14 of this parasha, He starts 49... different curses that He gives us if we don't follow. And He says, meaning the opposite here: You heard Me, you did what I said. This is what you're going to get as the reward. On the other hand, if you don't follow My decrees and you will not perform My Commandments and you will consider My decrees loathsome and

1:45:17you reject My ordinances. Not only are you not going to listen, you are going to consider them annoying, boring, you don't feel like doing it, and so on. Then He starts telling us about all the punishments in this world that we will get. And when you read the details of the punishment, you will see a depiction of what happened in the Holocaust, so much so to the detail that where it says that regardless of how many we are, what weapons we have, our enemies will always win. Regardless of what wisdom we have and what brilliance we've attained, we will reach a level lower than animals. To the extent where it says that you will get to such a level of hunger that you will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters. People will become cannibals. And you're going to say, okay, this is scary, but when did this happen in the Holocaust? If you look at the history books, the real history books, not the fiction stuff that they give you today in schools, the real history books of what really happened, you'll see that some of the testimony...

1:46:37that's not really known very well among most people, especially Americans, is that the real testimony of the people says that all of this came true in a worse level than you can imagine. They starved the people so much that when they were going on the trains and sticking everybody into one cart, a lot of people would die. And The level of hunger was so bad that when somebody died, people didn't really mourn that much. Why? Because they were so hungry. As soon as someone died, they all fought to get the liver so they could eat something, as they hadn't had any food in days. Another time, one of the stories in the books talks about how the evil Nazis fooled the people into eating their own children. Have a whole lecture about this if you want to know. Point is, everything that Hashem says would happen if we don't follow Him happened in the Holocaust. So the only answer that's available, that's true, that's genuine, that's Torah, to the question of "Why did the Holocaust happen?" is because we didn't follow Hashem. That's the answer to "Where was God during the Holocaust?" The answer is, He's the one that did it as a result of us not doing what He said, and...

1:48:06Now, when we do what He says, we get good. But if you look at the entire history of Am Yisrael, from the time of Egypt all the way to now, you'll see that we've had very high highs and very low lows. We reached the highest level in many different countries, and then a pogrom would happen, an inquisition would happen, a disaster would happen, and millions would be killed. The Holocaust is not the only event that's ever happened where millions of Jews were killed. It's just one of many. It literally happens every generation. That's what you actually said in your Haggadah at the beginning. We said that Hashem created the world in such a way where, in every generation, somebody will try to destroy us. because if Hashem does not use the world in order to get us back to becoming righteous Jews, we will lose ourselves altogether and become like them. So, when we do good, Hashem gives us good in this world and the next. When we do bad, Hashem has to send us a punishment, not because He benefits from punishing us or gets pleasure out of it, but sometimes you have to slap your kid in order to get his attention and...

1:49:23Because if you don't get his attention, he's going to put his hand in the fire. And once he puts his hand in the fire, it's already too late to get his attention. You understand? Once he already jumps, he says, "Oh, but what's going to happen if I jump?" Well, if you jump, you're going to die. "No, let me see, let me see." You give the kid a nice slap, he's going to remember you next week. Why? Because you cannot allow the kid to keep playing with his life. Because if he really jumps, that's it. There's no more slapping him. He's going to die. If a Jew continues to violate Shabbat, if a Jew marries a non-Jewish woman, a Jew marries a non-Jewish man, a Jew continues to eat non-kosher, a Jew continues to go against Hashem, eventually he becomes a goy. He assimilates. He thinks of himself as like them. And that's one of the scariest stories that you will find. One of the Rabbanim, I forget his name, said a story recently. He said when he went to Yad Vashem, Anyone that wants to know a little bit about the Holocaust should go to Eretz Yisrael, go to Yad Vashem. There's a museum over there that will show you some serious stuff about what actually happened in the Holocaust. When you go to the one they have in America, the one that they have in Washington, D.C., I went to it one time with an old friend of mine, a"h, Larry Krause. He said they ruined it. I said, why? It's horrible. He goes, yeah, it's...

1:50:47They ruined it. So why did they ruin it? We went to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. We had a case, and we had to go there. Anyway, while we had a break, we went to the museum. So I said, why is it bad? He says, when I came to this museum, this Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., he said I came to it a couple of years ago, they had the real stuff. They had the real stuff here. They had the real stuff. Now, They made it politically correct. Now they lowered the viciousness. Now it's all like, yeah, it's bad. It's no good. The Holocaust is no good. But why? The Arabs across the street complained. The Arab embassy across the street complained about the Holocaust, the Holocaust, the Holocaust. So what happened? The museum... Tone down what happened to the Holocaust. They started removing certain exhibits. So you don't see what really happened during the Holocaust. So you go to the museum, and some of them, it always looks bad—I mean millions of people died—but they're not going to show you a lot of the gruesome stuff, the stuff that really happened. But you go to Yad Vashem in Eretz Yisrael, you're going to see more. You read some books about the actual events that happened. You watch some documentaries and see how they shoveled the bodies and...

1:52:07You see what happened. You see what really happened. Very different. And you'll see, all of it is described in the Torah. All of it. All of it is described in the Torah. Why? Because HaKadosh Baruch Hu said, if... you start treating the world as if everything is nature, as if everything is by chance, as if everything is by luck, and it's not God. I'm gonna show you that it is God. I'm gonna do things that are so unnatural, you're gonna know only God can do this. And many, many horrible things happened at that time, and There are many horrible things that you guys probably never heard of, and most people never heard of, that happened even after the Holocaust. There was another Holocaust—another Holocaust that people don't really know about—that happened after the Holocaust. But that Holocaust happened in Eretz Yisrael, inside Eretz Yisrael, where the Zionist criminals killed countless people.

1:53:20especially Sephardic Jews, especially Yemenites. Anyone that wants to know, there are many documentaries, trials, and all types of videos about it. I mean, the overwhelming majority of it, if not all of it, is in Hebrew. But there are countless trials that have taken place in recent years uncovering the massacre of a people, and because of racism, because of anti-Torah attitudes, and the stuff that some of the Zionists did makes the Nazi Germans look good. Meaning, one minute the Nazis are killing us, three days later, the Zionist Jews are killing us. But most people don't know about this because it's been hidden under a carpet for a long time. It's out now, but most Americans don't talk about it, don't know about it, don't care for it, don't teach it. But it's true. A lot of people died. A lot of people died, a lot of people were killed, murdered, sold as tests. They kidnapped babies, all types of horrible, horrible things. Maybe one day we'll do a lecture about it, but the point is that

1:54:38This too was part of the hand of Hashem. All of it, everything, is the hand of Hashem. And you see the same thing happening during the Spanish Inquisition. Before the Spanish Inquisition, we were the leaders in Spain. During the Roman Empire, we were top-notch at the time. In the Greek Empire, we were the best of the best. Every country that we had this, we were always really in a good situation before the massacre started. Why? Because the higher we got in materialism, the further we got in spirituality. And in order to save us, Hashem sometimes has to hit us. Does that answer your question? Who gets the best question of the night? You do? What did you ask? Why do we go? That's actually a pretty good question. That's three questions. No, no, give anybody else more questions. Yeah, go ahead. Because we have free choice. If He did not allow us to make mistakes, then it would defeat the purpose of the creation. Meaning, if you were like a robot and you're always good, then why should I reward you for doing something that I programmed you to do? But if you choose good, then you deserve a reward.

1:56:07If, let's say, for example, you want to give money to somebody, you want to pay him a salary. You're not going to pay him a salary for just sitting there. You pay him a salary for overcoming an obstacle. The same concept applies: Hashem says, "I want to pay you a really, really handsome salary, but I'm going to pay you if you do the job. The job is hard, but I'll pay you for it." What is this like? The Chafetz Chaim says, there was one time a guy went to Africa looking for diamonds and... He found a few diamonds, spent his money on them, and he only had 50 bucks left. That 50 bucks he wanted to save to get home, to go back to America. So he got his few diamonds. Yeah, there's $50. He's ready. Tomorrow, he's gonna go buy the ticket and go back home. As soon as he gets back to the hotel, somebody knocks on the door. "Yes?" Some mysterious-looking guy says to him, "Listen, I..."

1:57:07Look what I have. And he shows him several million dollars worth of diamonds, stuff that he's never seen before, something unbelievable. He says, "I like it. This is good stuff. I just don't have the money for it. I don't have it." He says, "What do you have?" He says, "I don't want to embarrass you. I don't have it." "What do you have?" the guy says. He says, "That's 50 bucks." "Give it to me." 50 bucks. Yeah, without thinking, he gave it to him right away. Why? This is millions of dollars. Millions of dollars. I'm gonna take $50. Yeah, I gotta get home. That doesn't make a difference now. What? I have millions of dollars worth of diamonds. The guy gives us the diamonds; he goes. He has millions of dollars in diamonds. But now there's one problem. How is he gonna get home? Nobody's buying diamonds. Why? Everybody has diamonds over there. They don't have money. They don't have food. They have diamonds. So here he has no money to get home and So, he starts working in the kitchen. He starts picking up some garbage. He starts looking for opportunities to make money. After months and months of doing it, he finally gets 50 bucks to buy a ticket to go back home. When he got back home, his friends saw him right off the plane, disheveled and disgusting.

1:58:33tells them the whole story. "I did this, and I did that, and I went here, and I did that." "How'd you do that?" He goes, what do you mean? I just told you. No, no. How'd you survive? How'd you survive eating from garbage, you know, sleeping in the streets and the stairs with rats? I mean, it's disgusting. You're a guy whose mattress cost $30,000. You're a rich guy. How'd you do it for months? He says, to be honest with you, I wanted to kill myself a bunch of times. I couldn't do it. When I saw my first rat, I was so scared I almost lost my life. Second time I had to—first time I had to eat from the garbage, I wanted to commit suicide. But you know what? Every time I got to that line, every time I got to that breaking point, wait, hold on a second. I took the box out. I opened it up, and I saw, wow, look at that. I got millions of dollars in diamonds. All I need to do is get home. And that gave me hope to go another day. The Chofetz Chaim says...

1:59:38This is us. If we only look at things the right way. You can go through life and struggle day by day and be suffering with or without mitzvot. With or without Torah. Everybody struggles. But if you look at things the right way and you say, I have a struggle. I have a difficulty. I can't take it. I have Torah that I'm learning. I'm connected to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. That's diamonds. All I have to do is just make it to the finish line. That's all I've gotta do. How much longer? 20 more years? 30 more years? 40 more years? But then I have the diamonds forever. That's what a person needs to do. You have to overcome those obstacles, that difficulty, that test. Now, why? Because then you'll actually have a diamond. But if Hashem took away all of that and He just said, "Here are diamonds, here are diamonds, there's diamonds in the streets, there's diamonds everywhere," guess what? The diamonds instantaneously will lose all of their value and they'll become like sand. The only reason why people believe that diamonds are valuable is because they believe they're rare. And

2:00:54The only reason why mitzvot are valuable is because they are rare. Not everybody is doing them. The only reason why there are certain tzaddikim that are mentioned for eternity, Moshe Rabbeinu, Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, Rabbi Akiva, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, Rabbi Ovadia, the Rambam, all these different tzaddikim, some you've heard of, some you've never heard of. Why? Because they're rare. They're the diamonds. They end up benefiting forever in this world and the next. You can be just like them. You have to make the same choice. Next. During the time of the flood in Noach's (Noah's) era, was incest not allowed? Because if it wasn't allowed then, how is it that the Jewish people were married to their aunts before the Torah was written? It was allowed during the first generation, during the generation of Adam HaRishon, in order for the world to build up, because it was not possible otherwise. But after that first generation, incest was no longer allowed, because then Hashem gave Adam the six rules, one of which included that you're not allowed to have incest. He then gave the seventh rule to Noach. So, at the time of Noach's flood, you weren't allowed to have incest. Their biggest sin, as the Gemara in Sanhedrin 57a says, was wasting seed.

2:01:59build up, because it was not possible otherwise. But after that first generation, incest was no longer allowed, because then Hashem gave Adam the six rules, one of which included that you're not allowed to have incest. He then gave the seventh rule to Noach. So, at the time of Noach's flood, you weren't allowed to have incest. Their biggest sin, as the Gemara in Sanhedrin 57a says, was wasting seed. So the Gemara actually says, I actually, Baruch Hashem, have it open here. It says that the generation of the flood, with a boiling substance, meaning with semen, they acted corruptly, and therefore with boiling water they were punished. Meaning that when a person warms himself up, when a guy warms himself up, and then... ejaculate semen inappropriately, meaning it's not for the purpose of reproduction. Hashem calls it "wasting seed," meaning that you are using what I gave you to produce life and wasting it. That's a severe sin. It's one of the biggest sins there is. The generation of the flood did that regularly by being promiscuous, by being animalistic, and so on and so forth.

2:03:18Hashem says, "I have to punish you measure for measure. You warmed yourself up in order to get pleasure; the punishment you'll get is also going to be warm. How warm? Also liquid that's warm. The water of the flood boiled to the point where it literally melted their bodies and bones." That's what the Gemara in Sanhedrin says. So, there are certain sins that were not allowed, but the biggest sin of all, as a result of promiscuity, was wasting seed. There weren't Jewish people at the time of Noach. No, I'm not talking about Noach. I'm talking about after, before the Torah was given, there were Israelites who were married to their aunts. That was already forbidden. Aunt is not considered incest. No, before the time of the Torah, an aunt wasn't considered incest. Incest was considered immediate family: brother, sister, mother, father, grandfather. Not aunt. An aunt was only forbidden after Matan Torah.

2:04:18Even being married to two sisters, you were allowed to do it until Matan Torah. Now, after Matan Torah, you weren't allowed. So there were certain things that changed, that evolved as time went on. But nonetheless, the rule we have now is the rule that is permanent. I have another question. If the water was boiling hot, why were the people still laughing in the water when the water was up there? It wasn't hot right away. It wasn't hot right away. Got hot over time. Over 40 days, the whole world was destroyed. It wasn't destroyed in a second. Hashem gave them an opportunity to do teshuvah. He gave them 40 days to do teshuvah. They didn't do teshuvah. After that, everything melted. Next. Naftulei. Ketoret. Okay, Rabotai, our next shiur is going to be, B’ezrat Hashem, Sunday, right? Sunday? Yeah, Sunday. Okay. Sunday night we’re going to be back here, B’ezrat Hashem. Hopefully, we’ll have fewer distractions than this time. But hopefully, you guys have some more questions. We have a series about Bitachon, but also some interesting stories.

2:05:31Questions are always welcome next Tuesday. Next Tuesday is still up in the air as far as where we're going to have this shiur. If we're going to have it, Be'ezrat Hashem, we'll be here also next Tuesday and Wednesday. By the way, I’ll see you beforehand. Log on to the website to see the calendar, www.[website].com or the Facebook page. You can just type my name or you could just look at one of these CDs. Follow the instructions over there, and you can watch this shiur. It's going to be on the internet tomorrow on YouTube or our channels. Baruch Adonai le'olam. Amen ve'amen.