Emunah Killer, Money Making Segula, Bad Luck, Wasting Seed TeShuva Guide - STUMP THE RABBI (38)

0:23very good to see everyone; thank you for coming to learn with me. We are in our Wednesday night shiur in Sunny Isles, doing our questions and answers. Hopefully, you guys have some questions. The... You know, a few small updates. Somebody sent me a report today about the situation that's happening with this coronavirus, and they said that, you know, everybody knows that China is a... you know, a very unique country, to say the least, where they don't allow their citizens to communicate with the freedom that we have here in America and that you have in other countries, few, but some other countries out there. So if you say anything bad about the country,

1:30your life is on the line. Sometimes not even on the line, your life is just gone. So, anyway, there is a news organization of some kind that leaked out a report that the numbers of victims for this coronavirus that's being reported, which is only about 300 deaths, is a complete lie. and the number of sick diagnosed with it, about 14,000-15,000, is also a complete lie by a factor of 10. by a factor of 10. You're talking about tens of thousands of people who have already died. And there are at least 150,000 that have the virus right now. Just there. We're not calculating anywhere else. But then, a few hours later, literally, I think it was less than 12 hours later, the number reported on this site changed again to what the government approved.

2:32went back to 300. Now, this has happened many times throughout history with them, where they change certain things. This is actually part of the reason, for example, when I was in the business world, when it came to investments, everyone wanted to invest in China, but generally speaking, nobody did. Unless you knew somebody that's really important over there. Because over there, if you want to do business, you have to bribe one of the three million mayors that they have. Without bribes, you're not going to make it. And even to invest in that market, you have different classes of shares. There are A shares that are only available to citizens, B shares that are available to certain types of people, and C shares are available to anyone else outside of the country. The only problem is the C shares don't move. Meaning you're just parking your money there, and it's like you're burying it. Unless it goes down, then they take your money. But needless to say, there's a lot of business to be made over there. You just have to be very, very careful and very connected. I remember there was a group of CEOs, a group that I was a part of,

3:48a group of CEOs that would travel to different places. And one of the trips that they had—I didn't attend it—was to China. ...You know, a bunch of CEOs, and it was probably at least 100-150 CEOs from America who went to China. The guy organizing the trip, who has been to China many, many times, says the first thing that we had to do as soon as we landed was to meet a few mayors. Why? These are the people you need to meet if you want to do business there. You can't do business there without it. You cannot do business because your money is never going to come out, and you could send it there, but it's not coming out... Point is, Rabotai, that the things that stress people the most are the news. They watch the news, and the news' job is to stress you out, tell you about all the bad stuff that's happening in the world. Generally, if you see good news, good news does not get much coverage. It's the depressing news, the anxiety-driven news, that's the stuff that gets people to watch the same exact show for five hours straight.

4:54You know, whether it's a chas v'shalom, like a September 11th, or it's a market crash, or it's some type of political issue, whatever it is, they'll repeat the same thing 500 times. Every hour on the hour, and people are going to listen to all five times. Why? Just in case the fifth time he mentions an extra two or three words. And people stress themselves out over the news a lot. And you see, as soon as something comes out that hits a person's heart, if they don't have any emunah in Hashem, then what ends up happening is that it affects their life. Immediately, the next day, they wake up already stressed out. The next day, they already start off their day on the wrong foot. The next day, they already start with, you know, pessimism about the future: What am I going to do? How am I going to do it? How am I going to make it? All types of things, all types of junk that enters our mind. So, the two points I'd like to make about this are: number one, it's all fake news. All of it. There is no such thing as fake news. It's all fake.

6:07You know, people think, you know, since Trump coined the term "fake news," you know, people like to say, "Oh yeah, this thing, that's fake news. No, but that's real, but that's fake." No, it's all fake. It's all fake news. Why? Because there's always somebody that has a bias that's manipulating what's being reported to people, what's said, what's not said, why it is said, why it is said at a specific time. It happened in the market many, many times. I remember one time there was a company we were investing in, one of the first big ideas that we were investing in, a company called Nextel. and, uh, this idea, you know, I thought it was a brilliant idea, and I thought it was worth a lot more money than it did. And, um, I, uh, recommended to clients to start investing in this thing. One day, a report from Goldman Sachs, which is still one of the most respected investment banks in the world, came out. They have some of the smartest, most connected people out there, if not the most connected. And they came out with a report with a sell recommendation, meaning that this is garbage. This company, don't invest in it, sell. If you have it, get rid of it.

7:26So now, if I come out with a report, no one really cares. But if Goldman Sachs comes out with a report, everybody cares. So immediately the stock dropped by, like, 50%. As if the company were declaring bankruptcy. They're not declaring bankruptcy. They're fine; they had cash, they had all types of good things. But, oh, Goldman Sachs doesn't like them? Oh, the stock crashed. Everybody's panicking. My phone is ringing off the hook. The only good thing I had is I didn't have that many clients at the time, so it wasn't that many phone calls. But still, all the recommended people were panicking. We reviewed all of our facts; we saw there's nothing wrong with this. We continued investing, and... It ended up working out really well. We made about 10 times our money. But the funniest part is what we found out along the way is that right after they issued a sell recommendation, the institutional investors, the big investors, have to report what they bought and what they sold every few months, depending on who and what it is.

8:38But if they own more than a certain percentage, they have to report it right away. It's SEC filings. Anyway, what I found out along the way, after everything calmed down already, I got some more people to invest, now that it's a discounted price, and so on and so forth. What we found out, shortly after they came out with this recommendation, is that the research department of Goldman Sachs came out with this recommendation, and this is garbage—the investment department bought 6.5 million shares. But for a discount now, why? It dropped 50%. Now, if I did that, I'd be in jail till this day. That's stock manipulation. But when you have, you know, your best friend's the president, and his wife, and his kids, and the kids that weren't born, and the grandkids that weren't born, and all of his friends, and everybody else, you can do whatever you want. Point being, Rabotai, it's all fake news. All of it. Do not waste your time watching news for even a minute. I'm in it, I promise you. If you need to know it, it'll arrive at your desk anyway. If there's a war, you'll hear something. You'll hear something. Don't waste your time. Unless you need it for your business. Unless you need it for your business, you're in an investment business, you're in a business of business, and so on. You need to know certain things. But even then, even then, Rabotai, you should do it as little as possible. Just less frequently, because...

10:01It's just going to stress you out. And the reality is, the only thing that you see in a newspaper every day, whether it's the Wall Street Journal or the anti-Semitic New York Times or any of these other newspapers, the only thing you see is that the information is the same, just that the names changed. They tell you a bunch of people died, just every day. Just the names changed. They tell you a bunch of people declared bankruptcy, just the names changed. A bunch of people made money, just the names changed. A bunch of people are getting arrested or getting promotions, just the names changed. It's the same nonsense all the time. It's the same thing all the time. So when you spend any time whatsoever on the news, you're literally wasting your life. You could spend that time, and the judgment of Heaven will one day ask you, how come you spent a half hour, an hour every day reading the news, but not a half hour, an hour a day learning Torah? You can't tell me you didn't read because you read the paper for a half hour or an hour. You can't tell me that you can't learn because you watch the news for a half hour or an hour. So you can learn for a half hour or an hour. You always say you don't have time. You had time to watch CNN. You had time to watch CNBC. How come? They're going to ask you, and it's your mind. Now, the second reason, the more pertinent reason, the quiet killer of watching the news is that it's simply an emunah killer.

11:24When you watch the news, you are, in essence, taking whatever emunah you have and you're throwing it in the toilet. Why? Because now they're going to tell you a bunch of things, and all of those things are going to manipulate your beliefs. You believe that things are going to be good, they're telling you no. You believe that things are going to be bad, they're telling you it's going to be even worse. You believe this, they're going to tell you something else. And it hurts your emunah because now you're thinking, when you watch the news, you're thinking that the future is in the hands of those people on the screen. Whether it be the president or his friends or some newscaster or some scientist or whatever it is, some reporter, you think that the future is in this guy's hands. In her hands. You think it's in their hands because they said something that caused things to happen or they're reporting something that caused things to happen that's going to affect you. You have to understand, when a tree, when Hashem decides for a seed to turn into a tree, Hashem has to review all of the seeds and decide. After all of the seeds are planted, not all of the seeds turn into trees or even into flowers. Hashem has to look and review every single seed and decide which one of them is going to turn into a tree.

12:53and which one of them is just gonna die, do nothing. Some animal's gonna come eat it. Bugs are gonna eat it for lunch or something, but it's not gonna be a tree. He decides every single tree. So if you ever saw farmers and how they grow and they harvest every season, you see when they plant trees, they don't do one seed at a time. They take a bunch, huge amounts. They don't count one, two, three. Huge amounts they plant, huge. Because they know. Who knows if this one's going to work, that one's going to work? They don't know. They throw a bunch of them. Now, it takes a long time for a tree to grow. A long time for a tree to grow. Now, one day that tree is going to bear fruit. Hashem decides if those fruits are going to be bitter or they're going to be sweet. He decides. That tree is also going to have leaves. And those leaves have a season, and sometimes they fall. They fall. Each year they fall off the tree. Before the leaf falls off the tree, pay attention to this. Now, imagine a tree. There are lots of trees here in Florida and other places, right? You've seen trees. I don't have to give you a visual. You've seen trees. Trees, tens of thousands of leaves. Lots of leaves.

14:17Each leaf, before it falls, whether it's the season or it's not the season, before it falls, it has to ask HaKadosh Baruch Hu, the Malach of the tree, the Malach of the leaf. There's an angel on each and every little seed, each and every little leaf. There's an angel next to each one of them. The Malach has to ask HaKadosh Baruch Hu, "Hashem, can I fall today? Can I fall, please?" Oh, no, I stay. Hashem says, "No, no, today you're going to stay." The next day, Hashem, what about today? No, no, today you're going to stay. Hashem, what about today? A man straight, he's asking, Hashem, today? No. Hashem, today? No. Hashem, today? No. One day Hashem says, alright, today, yeah, go. Go for it. Jump. Yay! And he falls to the floor. Before a leaf falls off a tree, it has to ask for permission. And you think, you think that this newscaster has control of your finances, has control of your health, has control of the economy, has control of the government, has control of anything? The leaf has to ask for permission. You think anyone in the world has any control of anything? This was our mistake during Egypt. During the time of Egypt,

15:38the people were enslaved. They were suffering enormous pain. They were watching their kids die every day. They were watching themselves being dismembered. Horrible things happened. Now, finally, when the salvation came, when the Mashiach, when Moshe Rabbeinu arrived, he told them, "Okay, I'm going to free you." They were gun-shy. They weren't really sure. Sure, no, maybe, yeah, no. Eventually, He brought the plagues, Hashem's plagues, destroyed the Egyptians, one plague after another, the arbeh, the locusts, Demolish their economy along with everything else that happened, which is actually what's happening right now in Africa. There's a plague of locusts there right now. They say—I don't know how they count—but they estimate it's going to be 200 billion locusts. These locusts are simply destroying all of the harvest over there. If something is not done, they're simply not going to have food because these locusts eat their body weight every day and...

16:48Imagine you weigh 150, 250 pounds, whatever you weigh. Imagine your food for the day to survive every day is 200 pounds. You wouldn't be able to work. You wouldn't be able to do anything. You'd just be in a restaurant all day, just eating all day. That's what locusts do. They're in a restaurant all day. They don't have time to do anything else. They eat all day and they destroy everything in sight. Anything that's edible, they eat it. In Egypt, when Hashem sent it to them, since Egypt didn't have that much harvest, you know what they did? They ate the Egyptians' eyes. That's what they did. That was lunch and breakfast and dinner until they ran out of eyes. Now, after you see all of these plagues, the Jewish people could see clearly, no problem. They're not even touching them. The hail is coming from heaven with lava inside it. The Egyptian gets hit. The Jew right next to him is walking like he's walking in a park. Nothing affects him. So after seeing all of these miracles, the least you would think is that these people must believe in God. When they got to the darkness plague, Hashem told Moshe Rabbeinu, tell all of them we're about to leave. The vast majority of the Jewish people, of the Bnei Yisrael at the time, the sons of Yaakov, we're talking about millions and millions of them,

18:11Some Midrashim say there were hundreds of millions of them. Moshe said, "Listen, we've been slaves for so many years. We suffered so much. Finally, it's over. Finally, the slavery is over. The Egyptians are not messing with us anymore. Leave us alone." You know, Yaakov over here just opened a little busta over here. He sells candy. You know, Tzvika over there just opened a little restaurant. You know, Steve over there, he's starting a skating rink. Everybody's starting businesses. Leave us alone. We're finally free. Leave us alone. We don't want to go into the desert. Why are we going to go into the desert? We already have a city over here. We have our friends that are living next door to us. Nice place. Everything is good. The weather is good. Why are we going to go into the desert? That's dangerous. This is dangerous. The last people who tried to go to the desert, they never came out. We don't want to go to the desert. Moshe said, "Yeah, but Hashem says go to the desert. He didn't ask you. He said go to the desert. Because you have to go to Har Sinai. You have to get the Torah." Moshe, tell God it's not for us. If He wants the Torah, if He wants us to have the Torah, He has to bring it to us. You want to bring, you want to share Torah? Rabbi, you have to come to my house.

19:25to come to my house. Yeah, but you live 15-20 minutes away. Okay, I'll watch you on YouTube. I want you. Why can't you come? Your car doesn't work? No, it works, but I'm tired. Tired? What time do you go to sleep? At 9 o'clock? No, usually, I go to sleep at 1 or 2 o'clock in the morning. That's obvious. So come here; you'll be finished at 11 or 12. Yeah, but you know who doesn't like that. He doesn't like it so much. that our parashat Beshalach starts, "It happened when Paro sent out the people." Now, Chazal tells us that any time a parasha starts with the word "vayihi" (it happened), it’s actually symbolic of "oy vey." "Vay vay," the Gemara says. Why vay vay? It says everybody that left Egypt was very sad. Why would you be sad? You just got freed from slavery. You were with Hashem. Moshe Rabbeinu was the best of the best. What's wrong? No, everybody has a cousin, a brother, a sister, a mother, a father, or somebody—a son, a daughter—that died. How do you know everybody? It says because at least 80% were killed by Hashem Himself in the plague of darkness. Some say it was over 98%.

20:51where they said in the best-case scenario, one out of every five survived. The other four, Hashem killed them during the plague of darkness because they didn't want to leave Egypt. Only one out of every five wanted to leave, so he survived. His four friends, his four brothers, his four sisters—they all died. Hashem buried them in Egypt. But some say, no, it's not one out of five, it's one out of 500,000. Meaning two out of every million. So if three million... If 3 million survived, you're talking about we had hundreds of millions of Jews. Hundreds of millions of potential Jews. There were Bnei Yisrael yet. There were no Hebrews before Matan Torah. The point being, Rabotai, is that why didn't they want to leave? They had emunah problems. They didn't believe they were able to survive the desert. They didn't believe they were going to get parnasah in the desert. How am I going to get parnasah over there? I just opened my business over here. How am I going to survive over there in the desert? My house is over here. How could I survive in a tent? Are you crazy? They didn't have emunah. Now, the ones that we have, the ones that survived, means that they are the best of them. They are the best of them. Out of all the people that we had in Egypt, whatever number you want to pick, the ones that actually survived Egypt were the best of the best.

22:14Yet when we travel just a few days and arrive at Yam Suf, they see that Mitzrayim noseh achareihem, that the Egyptians are chasing after them, and they got scared. Bnei Yisrael el Hashem. They were scared the Egyptians are coming. So the Children of Israel cried out to Hashem. They started screaming to Hashem, "No, Hashem, please help us." Now, when you really think about it, it doesn't make any sense. What do you mean? God just made all of these plagues. You know, we're looking from our perspective because we're comfortable in air conditioning here. ...know. So we're thinking from our perspective. What do you mean? God just showed you Himself in the best way possible. He just made a plague, destroyed the biggest civilization in the world, the biggest economy in the world, the biggest army in the world, and made them into nothing in front of you. Their water turned to blood; your water stayed water. Frogs went inside them; frogs didn't even look at you...

23:29Lions and bears and anacondas and all types of vicious animals were eating them alive. You're walking right next to it like the animals were your best friends. Like what? And that the whole thing took a year. So why are you—how are you scared? What, because they're back? Hashem already destroyed them. Why wouldn't He destroy them again? Fake news! They watch the news and they believe the news. They saw the Egyptians. They saw Egyptians are here. Egyptians here? Oh, that's the problem. They started screaming to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. They started screaming to Moshe Rabbeinu. They didn't know what to do. Part of them wanted to commit suicide. Part of them wanted to go back to be slaves. And only very few from the tribe of Yehuda, led by Nachshon ben Aminadav, had some emunah left. Nachshon, being the leader, jumped into the water, saying, "Listen, if Hashem brought us here to the desert, and the only choice we have is either to go back to being slaves, or to go right and left and fight a bunch of anacondas, then the only place to go is into the ocean. Even though nobody here knows how to swim, no one took any swimming classes while they were slaves—they didn't have time. So the reality is that this is the only way." He went into the water to the extent that he started swallowing water. He was drowning.

24:57but he believed 100% that Hashem is going to bring salvation, and that's exactly what happened. He wasn't paying attention to the news. He wasn't paying attention to the weather. He wasn't paying attention to a lot of things. And I see in the last several years, there have been a couple of times where there were major threats of hurricanes. Here in Florida, I remember when they had Irma over here. And we brought some chiddushim about Irma in the Torah. ...and how it's actually mentioned in the Torah, and there were others, but I remember seeing how people were panicking over here. How much panicking. "Oh, Rabbi, what should we do? Is this the end? Should we move? Should we do this? Should we do that?" Do whatever you want, but what are you going to do? I said, "I'm going to stay home with my family, and I could learn." "Were you not worried?" "No." "Why?" "If Hashem wants something bad to happen to me, it doesn't matter where I'm going to go." No, but what about your hishtadlut? I'm like, that is my hishtadlut. I'm going to go learn Torah; that's my hishtadlut. That's the best that I can do. I can't do much. I can learn, I can teach; that's it, nothing else. That's my hishtadlut. Now, I believed in Baruch Hashem, everything went okay, even though a couple of houses next to us didn't work out so well for them, but Baruch Hashem for us,

26:23Everything was okay. Why? Who runs the world? Not because I'm anything special. Just simply, it wasn't my time. And B'ezrat Hashem, it won't be for a long time. If a person pays attention to the news, he's bound to fall into the trap of the Satan that's going to confuse him—that someone other than Hashem has control of the future. And that means that his actions will start becoming manipulated by those people instead of by Hashem. This is why I say when people ask me, "Oh, should we buy a gun? There's so much terrorism now. There's so much anti-Semitism now and all types of other 'isms' now. Should we buy a gun? Should we learn Capoeira? Should we learn some Jujitsu? Should we become Jedi? What should we do? Maybe pretend to be Darth Vader. What should we do? X-Men maybe." I said nothing. Go learn Torah. Instead of going to kick some bags for an hour a day, go learn Torah for an hour a day, it'll be much better for you. No, but isn't hishtadlut? Listen, a lot of people did hishtadlut in the Holocaust. They still died. Why? That's what Hashem wanted.

27:32If all of those people that bought guns or put their money in special safety boxes in different countries and hid their money, if Hashem, if that was really going to work, it would have worked then. It would have worked many other times; it didn't. What do you think, people didn't buy guns back then? What do you think, people didn't put their money in some special banks, which the Germans stole anyway? But if all of those people, instead of doing all of this fake hishtadlut, they would have just opened a Chumash and learned parashat hashavua for an hour, the Holocaust may not have happened. Why? They would have left their non-Jewish spouse, they would have left their non-kosher business, they would have left their idolatry, they would have left a lot of things that Hashem brought the Holocaust because of. Now, anyone says, no, it's not right. You're not supposed to say that. Why not? That's what Torah tells us. Torah tells us, you have to review your actions. And you, how do you know? What do you know what God thinks? No, I don't know what God thinks. I know what Torah says. Hashem says He's going to bring bad things if we do bad. When you have bad stuff happening to you, as we talked about last night, you have to review what you are doing. Why? Because the Kadosh Baruch Hu is giving you a message.

28:55The more you ignore the message, the stronger the message becomes. When we waste our time watching the news and acting on it so much, it hurts. It hurts much more than it helps. No one ever went to Gan Eden because he was a good watcher of the news. He was a committed watcher, a subscriber to every news channel. No one goes to Gan Eden for subscribing, even if they get the pay-per-view version. They still don't go. There's no special department in heaven for pay-per-view watchers. Cable watchers. There's a Gehinnom department for them, but not Gan Eden. I promise you. Why? Because when you pay attention to the news, and it influences your behavior, you're, in essence, what are you doing? You're taking Hashem out of the equation, and you're giving all of His power to some human being. And that's at the minimum, avak shel avodah zarah. The dust of avodah zarah. Minimum. Maybe actually I'll write avodah zarah. But the minimum that it is, is avak shel avodah zarah. Dust of avodah zarah. Of idolatry. Why? You just gave God's power to some newscaster. Some journalist. Some politician. Some something. Some human being. Some creation that one day is going to be lunch and dinner for maggots.

30:19Am Yisrael unfortunately made this mistake many, many times, including at a time where you would never think they would be making this mistake—a time where they saw open miracles. This is why when people ask, "How come Hashem doesn't just show Himself? Maybe He'll turn everybody into a believer." He won't do it. And you know why? It didn't work. He did it once. It didn't work. Look, He just saved them. Did all types of things. A day later, they lost emunah. Why? Because emunah is not something that you can just acquire based on seeing something and that's it. That changes you forever. may change you, but if you don’t continue working on developing and building this emunah by learning more and more about Hashem, by noticing Him in everything—noticing Him in your business, noticing Him in your marriage, noticing Him in your personality, noticing Him in the ideas that you have, noticing Him in your health, or the lack thereof, noticing Him in the food, noticing Him in the birds, noticing Hashem in everything—guess what, that...

31:27The jolt of energy that you got from some experience becomes forgotten. You forget. How many people can really, honestly admit that they remember all of the miracles that happened to them? Not their whole life—I'm not going to ask you a ridiculous question—but just the miracles that happened to them this week. The truth is, you don't even remember most of them because you don't even know most of them. All miracles. The fact that we wake up is a miracle and... The fact that you take a piece of meat, you eat it, and it actually helps you. Your stomach takes this piece of meat and makes it into something useful, but yet the stomach doesn't eat you. That's a miracle. How come it destroys the meat that you ate but doesn't destroy you because you're also a piece of meat? The fact that you have these two little bubbles, and you're able to see through them. When you actually see the mechanics of the eye, it's unbelievable. It's thinner than a balloon. You take a little balloon, any balloon, any part you see, if there are a lot of balloons, there's a lot of popping happening. Why? Because they're fragile. How come you never see, you never see somebody walking in the street, "My eye popped"? It doesn't happen. How come? How come it doesn't happen? It's thinner than a balloon. It's thinner than a balloon. How come it doesn't happen?

32:51Because HaKadosh Baruch Hu decides. HaKadosh Baruch Hu decides. Now, when Bnei Yisrael failed, they started screaming to Hashem like we scream to Hashem when bad stuff happens to us. Did Hashem answer? No. They prayed to Hashem. What else do you want us to do? They prayed to Hashem. They didn't pray to idols. They prayed to Hashem. Hashem didn't answer them, showing us that sometimes prayer is not enough. Prayer by itself is fantastic. You have to take advantage of it, not just for the three times a day Jews are supposed to pray. Women pray once a day. Men pray three times a day. You want to pray more than once a day as a woman? Go ahead. But you're obligated once a day to do Shema Yisrael and Amidah. Amen? Three times a day. But you should do more if you can. Why? Pray to Hashem. Talk to Hashem. Cry to Him. He's your Father in Heaven. He wants you to talk to Him.

34:02Sometimes the prayer that you do independently is much better than the prayer that you're praying in a Beit Knesset. Not to guide you guys to go start praying by yourself without a minyan, but I mean a prayer that's not from the book. Pray just your own words. Cry to Hashem. The Breslovers call it Hitbodedut, and the rest of Am Yisrael just call it prayer. Talking to Hashem. It's good. But the reality is, sometimes it's not enough. How do we know? Here, look, this parashah, Parashat Beshalach. So you know what? I'm gonna tell my rabbi. I'm gonna go to my rabbi. Rabbi, pray for me. I'm gonna go to the kever tzaddikim. I'm gonna go to the Lubavitcher Rebbe's kever, even though they don't believe he died. I'm gonna go to some other tzaddik's kever, and I'm gonna go pray over there. Why? Because that's where the yeshuah is. That's where the salvation is. Guess what? Sometimes it doesn't work either. Sometimes it doesn't work. You go, and it doesn't work. You go to the kever, you go to Morocco, you go to Eretz Yisrael, to Tveria, or you go to Tzfat. There's many kevarim in Yerushalayim, many, many tzaddikim. You go pray there, and you're waiting for Hashem to bring you the salvation. Sometimes it doesn't work. A person is sick, goes there, prays, cries, comes home, stays sick. Looking for a zivug,

35:25hoping that if he goes to this kever, everything's going to work out. Not only does it not work out, but the zivug that he thought he had, he lost. It gets worse. How come? They went to the rabbi. The rabbi prayed to Hashem. So Moshe Rabbeinu starts crying to Hashem. After he calms everybody else down in Exodus 14:14, he says, "God will fight your war. Don't worry about it. You just stay quiet. You just be okay. Believe in Hashem." He gives them chizuk, but himself, he says, "I'm going to go cry to Hashem for them." And Hashem gives them a response, rabotai, that's really a response for us. Hashem says to Moshe, "Why do you cry out to Me? Speak to the children of Israel and let them journey forward." So Chazal, our sages, are baffled here. "I don't understand, what do you mean, Hashem?"

36:47Who else is he going to cry to? The Egyptians are there, the anacondas and scorpions are over there, and there's an ocean that begins at 20 feet deep. Who else is he going to cry to? Mustafa, Pikachu, the desert. Who is he going to cry to? The idols? But then Chazal tells us no. What's the answer? The answer is, HaKadosh Baruch Hu says to Moshe, "Moshe, this is not the time to cry to Me. This is not the time to pray to Me. You already prayed. You already showed that you understand that I'm God. You told Me that you believe in Me because you are the few that were chosen, right? But that's not enough. Now you need to show Me. You told Me you prayed already in Egypt." You prayed, right? Now you need to show Me. Go tell Am Yisrael, I want them to show Me they have emunah. By making a sacrifice. By doing something. And the reason why is because right now is not a time for prayer. There is a prosecutor against you. The Satan came to Me and he said, "Listen, Hashem, it's not fair. You are going to split the ocean for them."

38:00And then the Egyptians are going to follow, but then you're going to close the ocean on the Egyptians, killing the Egyptians, but the Jews are going to survive. That's not fair. Why? Why are you going to let one survive and kill the other? They're both idol worshippers. They both believe the news. They both pray to idols. How do we know they both do this? Chazal says something scary. Even though the best of us, the best of us that survived Egypt, said we're leaving Egypt because of Hashem, they still brought their idols in their bags. Some of them still brought the idols in their bags. They brought the idol just in case it doesn't work out. It's like, "No, no, Rabbi, I believe in Hashem. I believe in Hashem." Okay, so how come you're saving so much money for retirement instead of using it to help Am Yisrael do teshuva? No, just in case it doesn't work out, my belief in Hashem at least I know I'm gonna be okay. At least I know I'm gonna have money for... but you have money already. You have a house already. You don't need to buy another house. No, just in case I need something else. What else are you gonna need? You have insurance, you have stuff. I mean, okay, you need to have some type of savings, but halas! I mean, you're not buying food for Shabbat because you're saving for retirement? You think that extra dollar that you save on the challah is going to help you?

39:28We see here, rabotai, that there is a lot that Hashem expects from us when it comes to emunah. But ideally, our hishtadlut, our efforts, should be under control. Don't overdo it. Don't overdo it. Don't work 800 jobs because you're trying to save for the future. Who promised you the future? Don't try to do things so much that, in essence, you think you've gotten to the point where you think you are in control of your future. The only thing you're in control of is today. What are you going to do today? Are you going to learn Torah today or not? Are you going to go against Hashem today or not? Are you going to go to work today or not? Are you going to get married today or not? Are you going to get divorced today or not? Today is the only thing you have in control. The past is already the past. You can't do anything about it. The future is not in your hands. People that spend a lot of time thinking about the future end up living a very, very anxious life. They're under anxiety constantly. They're constantly stressed out. Why? Future, future, future. Who told you you're going to survive the future? Who told you?

40:47You have to look at things a little bit differently, Hashem says. Why? Because when you look at things that are beyond your control, which is the future or the past, naturally that's going to lead you to have less emunah and more anxiety. Because those are things that you can't do anything about, which means you're going to get stressed out because you're helpless. You're thinking about the past. Oh, I can't believe what happened to me. I lost this. They think about me this way. I said this. All the things of the past. Okay, but you can't do anything about it. It already happened. The milk already spilled. What's the point of being stressed out about it? What's the point of being sad about it? Move on. Move forward. Okay, you lost this. No problem. I had a woman send me a message just the other day. I've been in touch with her for some time now. And this woman really gave me chizuk. She gave me chizuk. Why did she give me chizuk? She tells me that a few years ago, maybe five years ago, she had a kid, and something happened when he was four months old, where somebody hurt him or whatever, so from that day on, he always had different health issues. But Baruch Hashem, he was okay for a while.

42:11One day, they go to sleep. The baby's in their bed, two years old. She wakes up in the middle of the night because she feels there's something wrong. She looks at the kid; he died. Doesn't know why, doesn't know who, nothing. Wasn't sick. She thinks it's because of what happened when he was four months old and so on. The reality is because of Hashem. But why am I telling you this story? Not to make you sad. Because she gave me chizuk. Because after that, instead of doing what most people would do. What do most people do at that point? They blame Hashem. Ah, why are You doing this to me, Hashem? Ah, the hell with it. I'm not going to keep anything. I'm not doing anything. That's what they do. How can You do this? How this? How that? This woman has a strong neshama. She says, "I must have done something wrong. I must have done something. It had to happen. I'm not doing something. This happened. It doesn't happen to everybody. Baruch Hashem. I have to find out what the truth of life is." And she started looking for a book. She goes, "Listen, I’ve got to look. What does the Torah say?" She's a Christian, was born a Christian. She goes, "Yeah, but I need the book, the original. I need the original book. I want the Torah."

43:37She started learning Torah, rabotai. She started learning, and it gave her a new purpose in life. Baruch Hashem, she got remarried. Baruch Hashem, they had another child. And Baruch Hashem, they're doing fantastic now. Not because the child didn't die. He died. But because she knew that this too came from Hashem. This strong, strong difficulty. that may no one ever actually experience such a thing. But the reality is, Hashem gave it to her because she could handle the test. She could handle it, and she not only handled it, she overcame it, and she became better because of it. The difficulties that we have in our life are different opportunities that Hashem gives each and every single one of us to grow. are different opportunities that Hashem gives each and every single one of us to grow. If we harp on all the bad things that happened to us in the past—we lost money, we lost reputation, we lost this, we lost that, we lost everything—you’re never going to be able to move forward. You’re going to simply be living in the past, you’re going to be depressed about it, anxious about it, miserable about it; it’s just going to be one useless life.

44:57Why? Because you can't do anything about the past. Hashem does not want you to think about the past too much. It's past. It's gone. It doesn't belong to you anymore. Chazal said the past belongs to the Satan. Why? He uses it as a fantastic tool to depress you, to give you anxiety, to make you do all types of silly things. Why? Because you're helpless. You can't change it. Needless to say, the future. When a person looks too much into the future, plans too much into the future, they simply forget about the present. The only way that a person should live is today. Live today. Learn from the past. Do different things to try your best to make the future better. But focus on the present. Focus your life on the present. That was the mistake of Bnei Yisrael.

45:57They were looking at, listen, it doesn't make any sense. We were this, we were that. They were looking at all types of other things that were happening in the world, everywhere except Hashem. Hashem told them, listen, you are praying to me, you're crying to me, but you're still holding on to the idols of the past. You still have all the sins of the past. You still haven't changed. you say, "Oh Hashem, I love you, I love you, I put a kippah on, I put on tefillin," but you're still not really committed to Hashem. You're still holding on to the idolatrous beliefs. Hashem says, "You want salvation? Move forward. Move forward, do something about it. Show me you believe." So when Nachshon ben Aminadav went into the ocean, sacrificed his life, He was the pillar. He was the example. He was the leader that the Mashiach comes from, actually. And after he went, several others followed him, and the ocean was split into twelve. One for each tribe. Here we see, Rabotai

47:12that emunah is one of the things that people like to talk about, but emunah requires a person to change their actions. First and foremost, all of this stimuli that we have around us, whether it be news or people chit-chatting, all of this fortune-telling types of things, you have to abandon it like it's a plague because it's going to hurt your emunah. Second of all, if there are bad things happening in our life, review what you're doing. What can you do better? First and foremost, all of this stimuli that we have around us, whether it be news or people chit-chatting, all of these fortune-telling types of things, you have to abandon it like it's a plague because it's going to hurt your emunah. Second of all, if there are bad things happening in our life, review what you're doing. What can you do better? Everyone can pick at least a few things they can do better. Look at the Torah, look at what you're doing. Are you doing everything in the Torah? No. Okay, so pick something, change it. You did it, it didn't work, do something else. Maybe Hashem wants something else. Don't just cry to Hashem, "Why, why, why." You have to do something about it. Prayer is sometimes not enough. Sometimes the prayer itself is not enough, and sometimes we didn't pray enough. We prayed once; we think that one prayer, and you know, everything changes, and...

48:21Sometimes we didn't pray enough. But the point is that prayer by itself does not work. It requires action. We have to change things. There are many people that come to me and say, oh, listen, can you pray for my dad? Can you pray for my son? Can you pray for this one? Can you pray for that one? Yeah, sure, I can pray for them. But if they don't change and do teshuva, my prayer is not going to work by itself. The prayer has to be connected to an action, to teshuva. It has to be connected to give Hashem a reason. Why? Because technically Hashem does not change His mind. So how does prayer actually work? Prayer works when you pray, really pray, that prayer is actually supposed to change you as a human being. You are now praying to Hashem. You're saying, I'm sorry, Hashem. You're saying, Hashem, I promise you, I'm going to do better. Not, "Hashem, please, please give me, give me, give me." It's not an ATM machine. You have to say, "Hashem, I'm sorry for what I did. Everything that You did to me, You are right." That's what it says in our Tachanun: "All of the bad stuff You brought upon us, You are right." But I promise You I'm going to change. The promise is not enough.

49:46I'm going to take action. From now on, I'm going to at least one shiur a week. From now on, I'm going to two shiurim a week. From now on, I'm going to pray on time every day. From now on, I'm going to keep Shabbat. From now on, I'm going to become modest. From now on, I'm going to do this, this, and that. That prayer, you have to bring it to life. So now, Hashem doesn't change His mind, but how come He's going to answer you now? Because now that you've changed your actions, now that you've changed your actions, you are no longer the same person. So Hashem says, wait a minute, hold on a second. Gavriel, Michael, Raphael, what's going on over here? This guy is sick? Why is he sick? Hashem, there was a decree on him. No, no, no, no. The decree of sickness was on somebody else. This guy's a tzaddik. Look, he's keeping Shabbat. He said his wife is going to be modest from now on. He's committing to learning Torah. He's a different person after this prayer. Hashem, that was 20 minutes ago. He goes, no, the prayer he promised, he did a bunch of things. He's a different person. Take off, Raphael. Make him healthy. Michael, give him a new job. Gavriel, do something. Find him a shidduch or something.

50:56Different person is not the same guy. Why committed this prayer became something. That's actually tangible, not just words. That's what HaKadosh Baruch Hu was saying to Moshe Rabbeinu and to Am Yisrael. You have to move forward. speak to Am Yisrael and move forward. Journey forward. Do something. Don't just scream to me. Do something about it. Everybody has something to do. So with that being said, hopefully we get a little bit of emunah, a boost, and a little bit of instructions on how to move forward with the rest of the week in our lives. Who wants to start off with some questions? Joshua, if you don't mind, take the mic. No, you got to prepare today, Baruch Hashem. No, Harold, first question. Hello.

52:15What is the... I know you don't like to talk so much about mystical stuff, but... Well, mystical is fun. It just depends on which direction we're going to. No, what's the what? So, is there a deeper mystical interpretation or understanding of the song that's sung in this parashah? Yeah, of course. We sing it in our prayer every day. There are many Mekubalim that delve into the Pesukim, where they say that every Pasuk in the Torah has a prophecy. Every Pasuk in the Torah has a prophecy, something in the future. And we also see today from Torah codes that there are lots of secrets in every single verse in the Torah. One of the things that I can show you that I learned years ago... There's a couple of midrashim that talk about it. When you read the midrashim of what actually transpired at the time of them singing the song, you learn some of this during Pesach when you read the Haggadah of Pesach. It says there was a certain amount of miracles that happened at the ocean. Some say there were 50, some say a few hundred, and so on and so forth.

53:40So the sages explained to us that the miraculous events that happened during this shiur, during this song, which was during the time they were crossing the ocean, were greater than any other time in history. There were more miracles happening at Yam Suf than everything that happened in the last year in Egypt. How many more miracles they were! Hashem flattened the ground of the ocean so no one would get tired. Hashem miraculously caused fruit trees to grow in one second, so anyone who was hungry could just reach out. If you wanted an apple, you got an apple. If you wanted an orange, you got an orange. If you wanted a watermelon, you got a watermelon. Anything you wanted, you had in the ocean. What about fresh water? Anyone who was thirsty, there was a little window from the ocean that became a wall. A little window came out, and it squirted fresh water, not salt water. You could pretty much live there for the rest of eternity. Everything was good. Now, that was just one of the small miracles, not the big ones. Now, in this shiur, one of the sections says, Zeh Eli ve'anvehu.

54:58This is my God, and I will build Him a sanctuary. The God of my father, and I will exalt Him. So, Chazal says, who said this? Who said this specific line? says the babies. Says which babies? Says all of the babies that were still in their mothers' uteri, in their stomachs, in their bellies. They were saying it. How do we know they said it? Because HaKadosh Baruch Hu miraculously made all of their stomachs clear, and you saw little babies, little six-month-old, four-month-old, five-month-old, six-month-old, nine-month-old babies, in utero, sitting over there with the malach, pointing at Shema, "This is my God, and I will honor Him, I will build Him a sanctuary." You see, these few words have enough midrashim that you could write a book on.

56:02One of the other interesting things that I learned in Midrash Me'am Lo'ez years ago is something that we say in our prayer. Who is like You? Who is like You among the heavenly powers, Hashem? Who is like You, mighty in holiness, too awesome to praise, doer of wonders? Now, in English, what I just said doesn't really mean very much other than the pshat, the basic meaning. But in Hebrew, if you notice, it's in your siddur also. It says, meaning it's the same exact thing, the word kamocha and chamocha, but it's spelled exactly the same way, but in one of them, it's pronounced chamocha, and the other one, it's kamocha. Almost like, I used to think, when I used to read this, when I was a young kid, I'm like, oh, they forgot the dot. The guy, the publisher, forgot to put a dot in this one.

57:06One chaf has a dot in it, so you pronounce it "ka." And one of them doesn't have a dot, so you pronounce it "cha." It's a mistake in the siddur, Rabbi. But if you look at the Midrashim, it says, no, no. This is a message in its own. Why? It says the first one, one of them is said by Am Yisrael, "Who is like you? Who is among you?" Who is like You among the heavenly powers? And the other one is said by Paro. One is by Am Yisrael, one is by Paro. Why? All of the Jews were saying, who is like You? You're unbelievable, you're amazing, you're the best. Hashem, You're the best. They're all singing to Him. Mi kamocha Hashem, mi kamocha Hashem. That second after all the Egyptians died, Hashem left only one alive. Who was it? Why? He wanted him to see what happened. Paro came out of the water. He started, he heard the song, he was like, you know, spitting out water. "Who is like You?" He didn't pronounce it right, but he knew. He knew no one’s like Hashem. And he himself did teshuvah. He himself did teshuvah and became the king of Nineveh.

58:30So every single one of the lines in this shiur, you can do a whole shiur about. A whole shiur about. All types of mystical things. The Chazal, the Anshei Knesset HaGedolah, know that there is all types of salvation inside the song, so they included it in our prayer. They specifically use different tools from Tehillim, from the Chumash, from different parts of our Torah, specifically and added them to the prayer. Because prayer originally was just Amidah. But later on, more things were added to it. You know, the Gemara says that prayer began with Avraham. He started praying Shacharit. Then it was Yitzchak who said, oh, you should also pray in the afternoon. Then Yaakov added also Arvit. But initially, it was just, when we say tefillah, when you see the word tefillah in a Shulchan Aruch, Yalkut Yosef, any halachic text, or in a Gemara, when it says tefillah, it's referring to Amidah. That's what it's referring to. Tefillah is Amidah. But when we refer to it, when we say, oh, did you daven today? What do you guys say? You say, daven the whole thing, not just Amidah. Daven the whole thing, the whole Mincha, Arvit, whatever it is.

59:54So, which was comprised of our sages, and also a few of them were actually prophets. They added specific parts of the Tanach inside our prayers because they knew that these specific words are pleasing to Hashem and are, in essence, opening different gates of Heaven that bring salvation to His people. When they're prayed at a certain time of day, when they're prayed a certain way, when they're prayed with a certain amount of people, it's almost like the code to the safety box. You know, you have a safety box. It has a very elaborate system of how to open. You have to put your fingerprints and your eye, and you have to put a code with certain numbers, but you have to put those numbers in a certain way in a certain amount of time. But if you don't do it quickly enough, you have to start all over again. That's what Chazal did with the prayers. They said, you're going to pray these words, these specific words at specific times, and if you do it that way, It'll open different gates of heaven that will bring salvation to the people. Bring refuah shlemah, good health, parnasah, zivug, whatever it is that you're praying for, those gates of heaven can be opened at that specific time. But now the Gemara Masechet Shabbat says, what if somebody prays on time every day? He goes to netz. He goes to netz, he prays in the morning, 6 o'clock in the morning, 5 o'clock in the morning.

1:01:23Or he prays Mincha like the best of them. He prays, and he screams, and he dances, whatever you want him to do. But in reality, you ask the guy, "Listen, your business, it's not an ethical business. You're taking advantage of people." Ah, it's okay. No, no. "What do you think, Hashem cares about my business? I pray, I'm the best prayer, and everybody knows. Everybody comes to shul because they hear me pray. I'm the chazan." Okay, chazak u'baruch, that you're a good prayer. You know how to pray, it's good. But your business is not kosher. You're selling stuff as new when it's really refurbished. You're lending money with high interest. You're doing things that are not good. You're selling people things that you say are medicine, but in reality, it's just saline. It's salt water. You're stealing. Ah, no, no, no. Stop being Moshe Rabbeinu, Ami. Go away. What does that mean? That means that that person has no Yirat Shamayim. has no fear of Hashem. So the Gemara Masechet Shabbat says, someone that has no Yirat Shamayim, his prayer cannot be answered. Why? Because even if he prays, and he prays on time, and he prays with the nice sounds, and he sings, and he dances, whatever you want him to do.

1:02:40When you don't have Yirat Shamayim, even if you're doing everything else right, you keep Shabbat, you keep kosher, you keep mitzvot, you keep everything else. But if you don't have fear of Heaven, it's like having the key, the key to the safe, to the safe inside, without having the key to the outside to get into the building. You have the Torah, you have the mitzvot, you have Shabbat, you have everything. That's the key to the inside safe. But you can't get into the building, so it's useless. Without Yirat Shamayim, nothing works. Nothing works. That's why HaKadosh Baruch Hu says in His Torah, "The fear of the Almighty, that's His treasure." That's His treasure, that's what He wants. He wants us to be afraid of Him. But not just afraid of punishment, afraid of destroying the relationship, afraid of His majesty, afraid of hurting our lineage, afraid of hurting each other, and so on and so forth. There are different types of fear. But the point is, a person needs to be conscious of the necessity to have Yirat Hashem.

1:03:47If a person does not have fear, all of the things that he is doing, unfortunately, are not going to work well. He's not following the code. These are just a few, Baruch Hashem, things that I can remember about the song. But if you take Midrash Me'am Loez, or Midrash Rabbah, or many of the other Midrashim, you could learn just about this song. Many, many, many books. But in general, this song, like any other verse that's mentioned in the Chumash, opens different keys of heaven. Different keys of heaven that bring salvation. There's another part of this parasha that opens keys of heaven: the parashat HaMan. It's an auspicious time to read a section of this parasha that talks about the manna bread and the whole story of it, of how we cry to Hashem for food, and then Moshe Rabbeinu says, we're nothing, why are you crying and complaining against Hashem? And Hashem says, okay, I'm going to give them manna, and so on and so forth. It's a couple of paragraphs. This is an auspicious time to read that every day.

1:04:48You should really read it all year round, but you should read that particular part every single day, especially now because it's good for parnassah. The Mekubalim say that if you read it every day, it can open up the gates of heaven for your parnassah. Now, there are also things that close the gates of heaven to parnassah. So you can read Parashat HaMan 500 times a day. Wake up to sleep, 500 times a day you read Parashat HaMan. But if you continue to waste seed, or you continue insulting and abusing your wife, or you don't keep Shabbat, nothing's going to help you. Why? Every time you waste seed, whether by yourself or with your wife or with your girlfriend or whatever it is, all of the shefa that Hashem wants to give you goes in the toilet, goes to somebody else. Because what ends up happening, when a person wastes seed, those neshamot, those neshamot, whatever happens to you here, happens to your neshama in shamayim, Chazal says. Zohar HaKadosh says there's your neshama, there's a piece of you up there. When you waste seed over here, the seed comes out; spiritual seed comes out of the neshama part that you have in heaven. It creates all of these neshamot for every single seed. Every ejaculation, you're talking about hundreds of millions of neshamot. Now all of these neshamot say, "What are we doing here? We're waiting for a body." No, no, you're out.

1:06:08You're out. Why are we out? He got you out. He let you be, but he's supposed to make me a baby. Make him a baby. No, no. You're out. So now all of those hundreds of millions of seeds that you took out on purpose, not an accident. Not an accident. You went to sleep and it happened because you're still recovering from your past addiction. You did it on purpose. You watched a movie. You did it. You have a girlfriend. You did it. Or even with your wife, but she doesn't want to get pregnant. She wants to stay pretty. When you waste seed, rabotai, all of those neshamot, millions of them, hundreds of millions of them, now are going to prosecute against that person. They don't leave his sight; they're next to him at all times. And when they go to the Beit Din of Shamayim, whenever that person leaves this world, every single one of those seeds arrives at the trial and sues him. Look what he did to me. He brought me to the world without a body. Look how much I'm suffering because of him. Hashem says, you're right. Go, take your shot at him. Each one of them takes a shot at him. And each one of them gets the right to destroy you. Why? You hurt them. You hurt them. So now if a person reads Parashat HaMan, it's not going to do anything for those seeds? No.

1:07:30Why? Because Hashem has to give them something for now to quiet them down. He says, okay, it's parnasa, okay, you're going to get something now. He gives them your parnasa, He gives them your health, He gives them your zivug, He gives them everything that's supposed to come to you. because you did that sin. So a person wastes seed, Chazal in many places, Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, the Zohar HaKadosh, Arizal, all of the Mekubalim, Shulchan Aruch, all of them discuss how it's not only forbidden, it destroys your life in this world, needless to say in the next world. So if a person reads Parashat HaMan but he's still not careful with his eyes and he's wasting seed, he has a very serious problem. Same thing goes with Shabbat. If a person doesn't keep Shabbat, that's the connection to Hashem. That's our entire religion. Without Shabbat, there's no Judaism. We got the mitzvah of Shabbat before Matan Torah. Before we arrived at Mount Sinai, we were already obligated to keep Shabbat. That's the foundation of the entire religion. That's the foundation of the entire Am Yisrael. Without Shabbat, there's no Jews.

1:08:34A person that forsakes Shabbat, desecrates Shabbat, drives on Shabbat, you know, plays on his computer or his phone on Shabbat, smokes cigarettes on Shabbat, works on Shabbat, Hashem yachem aleinu, does all types of things on Shabbat. HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, "Look at this. He's worshiping an idol. Look, he's screaming in the streets that I don't exist. I..." he's screaming in the streets, "I don't exist." Why? Because Shabbat is a testimony. What do we say in Kiddush? It's a testimony that Hashem created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. Meaning that when a person desecrates Shabbat on purpose, he is like somebody, the Gemara says, that's running in the streets, screaming out, "I don't believe in God. I don't believe in God." And yet he wants to get parnassah. Yet he wants to get zivug. Yet he wants everything else from the God he doesn't believe in. And guess what? God loves you so much, He still gives it to you. Why? Because He feels bad for the foolish brain that you have. He caused you to violate Shabbat. He gives you more chances, but the chances run out eventually. So, the secrets in this verse, in this parasha, we could learn from here until the end of the world twice. And we’ll finish. But you gotta get a little taste. Next question.

1:09:53The rest of you know the rest of the Torah? Oh, no, Netanel has something. Chabad. I don't know. I talk to my rabbi every day. I have 900 questions. How do you guys have no questions? No end to my questions. He wants to go, listen, we've got to do this. Okay, one more question. One more question, Rabbi. Okay, all right. I never have an end to my questions. How do you guys not have questions? If I had a rabbi who could answer my questions, I'd come here with notebooks of questions. Actually, that's what I used to do. had questions. No, go ahead. Well, and in the past, shall we? We know the story. We know that the people of Egypt did their share. There are a lot of things they did to the Israelites or to the Hebrews, right? But also, Pharaoh was the one in charge, allowing the people to do these things. Now, why would Hashem spare him, although at some point...

1:10:55get his free will, take his free will away. That's the key. Yeah, but at the beginning, there were a lot of things he was doing. And even then, as a result of him being, you know, so stubborn, he went after them again. Technically, he allowed all these people, his nation, to be destroyed. And all these people kind of somewhat follow him. What do the Sages say? What's the measure for measure here? What do the Sages say? The question is, Paro technically is the one that told all of his people to kill the Jews, to hurt them, to enslave them. He told them. And how come he's the one that survived? Now on one hand, you say, wait a minute, he took his free choice. So initially, for the first three plagues, he had his free choice. He was stubborn on his own. But after he made a mistake three times where he promised to free Am Yisrael and he didn't, Hashem removed his free choice and he continued making the same bad decision seven more times or six more times.

1:12:10He didn't free them until, obviously, he was nearly completely destroyed. So Chazal say, on one hand, the reason why he survived is because Hashem took away his free choice. But that doesn't answer your question yet. Why? Because you feel like it's not enough. Okay, he took his free choice, fine. But technically, he only took away his free choice because he made really bad choices. So here's the completion of the answer. The Gemara in Masechet Gittin talks about the time of the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash, the first Beit HaMikdash, where Nebuchadnezzar sent his general, who was a massive, vicious person, named Nebuzaradan. And Nebuzaradan came to Jerusalem.

1:13:13to take control. When he got to the Beit HaMikdash, he saw the area for sacrifices, but in a certain section, he noticed a lot of blood boiling on the floor. So he asked the Kohanim who worked at the Beit HaMikdash, "What is that?" I've seen blood before. I've never seen this. So they said to him, no, it's nothing. He goes, what do you mean nothing? The blood over there was blowing bubbles. It's hot. Why doesn't the ground swallow the blood? This blood is different. What kind of blood is it? He goes, no, it's just from the sacrifices. You know, we do a lot of sacrifices every day. He goes, okay, bring a sheep. I want to see. They brought a sheep. They slaughtered the sheep. The blood came out. It wasn't boiling. It went into the ground, and the ground swallowed it. Nothing happened. Okay, maybe something else. Bring a cow. Bring a cow; let's see. Maybe it's a cow. Maybe it wasn't a sheep that made boiling blood; maybe it's a cow. They bring a cow, slaughter it. Nothing. Regular blood goes in the ground; the ground swallows it. It doesn't boil. Nothing. He tells them, "If you don't tell me what this is..."

1:14:26I'm gonna take special, nice tools I made just for you, and I'm gonna peel every one of your skins while you're alive. I'm gonna peel your skins and make you guys watch each other as I'm peeling your skin. I'll give you a death that will make you curse the day you were born and every second you're alive. So they got scared to death, obviously, because they knew that this massive person is vicious. He has no problem killing. He saw more dead people than breakfasts. His soldiers, a massive amount of soldiers, they literally killed more people than the times they ate breakfast, these people. That's how many people they killed. So for them, killing was no big deal. Point at somebody, kill them for no reason. So they knew it's not an empty threat. So they told him, "Listen, over 250 years ago, we had a prophet who was also a Kohen named Zechariah. And Zechariah came to us, came to the king and told us, 'You forgot Hashem and Hashem is going to forget you.'"

1:15:51you are worshipping idols. You're forgetting Hashem? Don't you know, you fools, that it's going to lead Hashem to abandon you? Even David HaMelech, David HaMelech says, "You hid Your face from me, and I got scared." Hashem, when He hides His face, Holocaust, inquisitions, cancer, AIDS, Corona, Barona, whatever you want, all the worst things in the world are just the beginning. And Hashem hides His face. Zechariah comes to them, he says to them, you don't understand, you're worshipping idols. You're forgetting Hashem. You forgot what happened to our forefathers, you forgot everything. Hashem is going to forget you. Hashem is going to abandon you. Hashem is going to hide His face. They didn't like to hear that. He told them, you better keep Shabbat or it's the death penalty. They didn't like to hear that. He said, stop wasting seed. They didn't like to hear that. So what they do is say, listen, Zechariah, stop coming around. We don't want to hear you anymore. Don't talk to us that way. You're a fanatic. You're crazy. You scream all the time.

1:17:05We have our own rabbis. Our rabbis say it's okay to drive to shul on Shabbat. Our rabbis say it's okay to wear a wig that's longer than the exile. Our rabbis say it's okay to eat at Starbucks because the milk is kosher. We're not really sure about the rest of it, but it's okay. Our rabbis say it's okay to have unethical businesses, as long as we're only stealing from goyim. Zechariah says, "I don't know who your rabbis are, but they're also idol worshippers. They're also resha'im, just like you. If you continue going like this, Hashem is going to hide His face from you." They got so upset, they killed him. But before they killed him, Zechariah prayed to Hashem. The Torah says, he says, "Hashem, avenge my blood. Because what did I do, Hashem? What did I do? What did I do, really? I came here to help people do teshuva. What did I do?" i came to spread Your word. I came here to tell everybody to come back to You. Now they're gonna kill me? So, Hashem, now it's on You. You avenge my blood. I did Your work. They want to hurt me? No problem. He's not scared of death. Death to tzaddikim is like moving from one room to the other. They're not scared of death. It's like you go from this room to the next room. That's death to them. It's nothing. Tzaddikim are not scared of death. They're scared of judgment, but not death.

1:18:28So, they're going to kill me? I'm not scared of anything. Why? I'm just going to go to Gan Eden. I'm retiring. But Hashem, still, You have to avenge my blood, because I did Your work. The Gemara says that after they killed him, the blood that came out of him never left. It stayed on that ground for over 252 years. Imagine how much rain fell on that blood. Imagine how many storms. Imagine how many times people tried to sweep it away, sponge it away, wash it away, or do something—build on top of it—never leaving. Right now, you take this tea, you spill it on the floor, within a few seconds it becomes a mark, and you're not really sure if it's dirt or if it's tea. Two seconds. blood, let's say somebody cuts their finger. A little piece of a little blood goes on the floor. Within a few moments, you're not sure whether it's ink, blood, or just dirt. You have no idea what it is. To have blood last, boiling fresh and hot, for over 250 years... Have you heard the story of what they did to their prophet? He started, told his army, "Kill everybody you see."

1:19:47And they started killing hundreds of thousands of Jews. Massive scale of murder. No exceptions. They killed the big dayanim, the big Sanhedrin, the small Sanhedrin, the big ones, the small ones, everybody. Nebuzaradan himself was killing people. He himself killed tens of thousands of people with his own sword. And not like, you know, today people just say, "Oh, listen, army, go over here," and I'm just sitting in my office, you know, in air conditioning. He himself was slaughtering people in vicious ways. Now, every time he would come back to the blood. Look at the blood. Blood still is there. Okay, killing continues. Another few hundred thousand. Comes back to the blood. Blood still boiling, goes again. Another few hundred thousand. Rivers of blood, rivers of blood, Rabotai. After he killed so many people, he screamed out to Heaven, he said, "What good are you that you're so much better than the rest of the people here that I killed?"

1:21:03Why are you so much better than everybody else that your blood is not settled yet? You want me to kill everyone? You want me to kill your entire people just because you died? At that moment, Hashem's mercy opened up. Hashem says to the blood, calm down. The blood calmed down, and the ground swallowed it. At that moment, Rabbotai, Nebu Zaradan had the trauma of his life. Trauma. Why? He just saw—he didn't get trauma from killing hundreds of thousands of people, seeing people missing heads, missing arms, missing legs. No, he didn't. He killed like it's nothing. Like you eat a sandwich, you don't feel bad for the cow. You eat a sandwich, you don't feel bad for the chicken. Oh, poor chicken. Maybe he had a family. You don't feel bad. You like the chicken. Put some ketchup on it, ta'im. You don't think about the cow. Oh, maybe the cow was really just ready for retirement. No. You like the chicken. You like the cow. Right? That was Nebuzaradan. He was killing people like chicken. He didn't get traumatized by this. But he got traumatized after he saw that Hashem just took the blood away. Why? Because he did a calculation in his head. He said, wait a minute.

1:22:28Look what happened to all of these people. Millions of people that I just killed because they killed one guy. What's going to happen to me? What's going to happen to me when I get to Shamayim? When I get to heaven? Or at some point when Hashem decides for me to pay the bill for all these people that I killed? If all of these people got such a horrible punishment because their grandparents killed one guy, what will I get for killing all of these people? He did teshuva. And at that moment, the Gemara says, he had the sparkle of ruach hakodesh. He couldn't take it. He was traumatized. He realized he's in big trouble. He realized the God of Israel is the only God in the world. He wrote a letter, sent it back to his house, and said he's never coming back home. Some say he sent a suicide letter. He took off all of his plaques, all of his medals. The general, this was the number two person in the world after Nebuchadnezzar, took off all of his medals, took off his uniform, put on a sack, joined Am Yisrael, became a slave, and became a Jew.

1:23:49And the Gemara says, why? For the same reason as your question. Pharaoh made a million and a half mistakes. Hashem took away his free will. But after all is said and done, after the tenth plague, He realized his mistake, and he started looking in the streets for Moshe and Aharon. He started telling them, come, come, I'll help you leave. I'll help you leave. Go. He embarrassed himself. He could have just told one of his generals, listen, tell Moshe, tell Aharon, tell all these slaves to get out of here. But no, he says, no, no, no. He embarrassed himself. He embarrassed himself, lowered himself, humbled himself. He had like a moment of weakness where he said, listen, what am I, crazy? I'm going against Hashem? That's why it says that Paro, in this week's parasha, sent us away, as if Paro freed us. Who freed us? Hashem freed us, not Paro. Paro didn't free us; Paro got destroyed.

1:25:01Hashem says in the parasha, Paro sent us away, like, "Hey, go kids, go away to school, go away to yeshiva, go kids, I'll see you soon." As if it was like a nice goodbye event. A nice, you know, go-away party. Why? He lowered himself. He embarrassed himself. And even after he made a mistake again and went and chased after them in the ocean, Hashem manipulated it to happen that way. And after everything was destroyed again, when he came out of the ocean, he completed his teshuva. He says, "There's no one like you, Hashem. No other god, not me, nothing. Hashem, you are the only God." That teshuva, that teshuva, rabotai, is full teshuva. HaKadosh Baruch Hu, as long as you're alive, you do teshuva, HaKadosh Baruch Hu will change nature for you. That's how much Hashem loves teshuva. That's how much He desires teshuva. The only reason any of us are in this world is for us to do teshuva. The only message that all of the prophets we ever had, all of them, with no exceptions,

1:26:13to give to Am Yisrael and to the Goyim was to do teshuva. All of them. That's the purpose of life. People ask, what's the purpose of life? In one word, teshuva. Two words, but teshuva. That's it. So when Paro did teshuva, everything changed. Nature changed. His din changed. His judgment changed. His soldiers never did teshuva. That's why they died. Now, is it possible — because I think we've discussed this before — now, is it possible for someone who led other people to sin, and then these people go to Gehinnom, or let's say they died before him, never had a chance to do teshuva, and then he... So, this is part of the reason why part of our Emunah is that Hashem runs the world and

1:27:29that Hashem brings merit to one that already has merit and obligation to one that already has sins. Meaning that it's not just anyone that is led astray. It's not just anyone that is led to sin or just anyone that is led to do teshuva. he went to this rabbi, that's why he went off the derech. Oh, he went to that rabbi, and that's why he did teshuva. It doesn't work that way. Life doesn't work on happenstance, and he didn't just happen to go to that rabbi, that's why he's righteous, and he went to that rabbi, that's why he's wicked. No, it doesn't work that way. A person has certain actions that he makes in order to make Heaven decide which door will open for him, and... so the people that go off, the people that end up becoming idol worshipers, becoming missionized, becoming the victims, if you will, of the spiritual holocaust, it didn't just happen to them. They did something themselves in order for them to deserve that. They already wanted an excuse to sin.

1:28:50They already didn't like the mitzvot and weren't really keeping them, but they were going against them, you know, in secret. They were Mechalelei Shabbat in secret. So when they review their judgment in Shamayim, Hashem says, this guy is pretending to be righteous, but he's really Mechalelei Shabbat. Okay, so when the missionary comes to town, I'm going to make sure he meets him. So now, the missionary comes to him and says, "Listen, Yoske died for your sins," and all types of other nonsense. He's like, "Ah, see, good, okay, there you go, he died for my sins, I'm still religious, just in a different way. I believe that I don't need to keep Shabbat anymore." In reality, he wasn't keeping Shabbat anyway. In reality, he was already going against Hashem anyway. In reality, he deserved what he got. So the one that caused him to sin, he'll definitely get punished for it. But the guy that suffers, he also did something to deserve that.

1:29:51Now, the guy that's a machti harabim, that causes people to lead astray, he has a very, very difficult time doing teshuva. It's almost impossible for him to do teshuva, depending on what kind of massive scale of causing people to sin it is. But again, it's much more severe if it's leading Jews astray, rather than leading non-Jews astray. Because to lead a Jew astray means that you are, in essence, telling them to go against the Torah and you are telling them to go against God. Whereas when you lead a non-Jew astray, you are telling them to go against logic. Meaning, it's much, much more difficult. Much more difficult to rationalize this and think that the non-Jew that went astray...

1:30:51He did it because of him. Why? Because what does the Torah say for the non-Jew? Believe in one God. Don't eat any animals while they're still alive. Have a court system. Don't commit adultery. Don't commit murder. You don't need the Torah to know these things. This is pure logic. Which means that if you're doing anything against the seven Noahide laws, that means you didn't want to keep them anyway. It wasn't because you were led astray. It was because you didn't want to do it. So, the punishment for leading that guy astray is lesser than if you lead a Jew astray. Why? Because here you're breaking an entire Torah. Here there's a lot of laws you have to go against. You're replacing God with an idol. You're doing a lot of things here. There's a lot going on here. So that's also, you can't count the two the same. So Paul leading, let's say, his people, his non-Jewish people astray is very, very different than, let's say, Yoshke leading Jews astray to Christianity.

1:31:52So there's a very, very different weight between the two. It's not that the non-Jews are not important, but we have to understand here that, number one, there is a priority list that God Himself says. The Jews are the chosen ones. No one can disagree with that. And two, here you have an entire body of Torah. Here you have logic. The entire body of Torah, you're going to argue with them and so on. You're going to convince them, okay, that's going to require some work. But logically, there's no way you can convince this guy that there are three gods or that God is in three parts if he's actually using his mind. This guy already wanted something. He wanted an excuse to justify his actions. So now you told him, listen, that God is in three parts, and the fact is, if you believe that God is in three parts, that means you can pretty much do whatever you want. Oh, okay, so it's convenient, this belief. I like this belief. I'll take two. I'll take two. Why? It's convenient to have this belief that you can do whatever you want because God has three parts according to this religion. You understand? So this is against logic. Leading Jews astray is much, much worse. So, next question.

1:33:06i don't know if you already answered this or not, but when you were talking about when a person wastes seed and all these babies are going to prosecute him or something when he dies, but what if this person does full teshuvah for all the seed that he wasted and then he... What happens to those spiritual, to those babies? What happens to them in the end? So, the Zohar HaKadosh says, teshuvah for wasting seed has several parts. First, a person must stop. That's obvious. If he has a girlfriend, he either has to marry her right away, or he has to break up with her and not replace her with something else. If he's by himself, if he's his own girlfriend, or if she's her own boyfriend, because women are also forbidden from doing that, Even though they don't emit seed, the Ben Ish Chai writes that they also produce demons. They also produce these neshamot when they pleasure themselves, or whatever you want to call it. And they are, in essence, destroying themselves as well. So whether a man or a woman is doing teshuva, they cannot have a boyfriend or a girlfriend. And they cannot even be with themselves. They have to either get married or simply be abstinent altogether.

1:34:30So that's the first step of teshuva. The second step of teshuva is to put a fence around the fence, meaning that they have to make sure that they don't go into different places that trigger it. If they know that every time they're on a computer, watching shows, or playing games, it leads them to commit a sin, they have to stop altogether. If they know that every time they hang out with certain types of people, it leads them to sin, they have to stop. If they know that if they do certain things, it leads them to sin, they have to stop it. So that's a fence. Just like an alcoholic who is trying to stop should never go to a bar or even a bar mitzvah that has alcohol there. Why? Because that's a trigger point. That's a trigger point. That's something that's going to trigger him to remember his past and, in essence, sin again. So that's a fence. The third thing is they have to regret the sin. How do you regret the sin? You have to learn about it. You have to learn all of the shiurim that we've made, all of the clips that we have about this topic, all discuss different things. You have to learn about this topic extensively, become an expert in it to the extent where you become disgusted by the sin. Not that you just realize it's wrong. Realizing that it's wrong takes about two and a half seconds. You come to my lecture, you're going to find that it's wrong.

1:35:55Realizing it's wrong, a donkey realizes it's wrong. Believe it or not, every human being, every human being, even if he's never heard any of my lectures or read any books, knows it's wrong. How does he know? The second he finishes this horrific act, he feels horrible. The second he finishes, he'll never feel like that if he was with his wife. Never. When he's with his wife, the seed goes where it's supposed to, he feels fantastic, she feels fantastic. But if he's with his girlfriend, using some condom, or he's doing like Er and Onan outside, or if he's doing it by himself, the second he's done, he's like, "What just happened?" What did I just do? Why? He doesn't want to be next to her. He doesn't want to be next to himself. He's disgusted. He doesn't know what's going on. He doesn't know why he's disgusted. He doesn't know, but he's disgusted. He doesn't know why. That's what he has to get to before the sin now. He has to learn about the topic to the point where he's disgusted by it before the sin.

1:37:08It doesn't entice him to see all this filth in the streets of people walking around naked or on TV or on the internet or in pretty much everything. He's disgusted by it. That's what he has to get to. Meaning, learn enough about the sin where you find people that are immodest filthy. Filthy like manure. You don't look at a woman that's half-naked and say, "Wow." No, you think like she has, "Oh wow, she's going to get burned and maggots are not even going to have anything to eat yet." You think it's disgusting. That's what you're supposed to get to. You're supposed to find this sin something repulsive. That takes a lot of work. You have to protect your eyes. You have to learn about the topic. You have to protect yourself from yourself. Not to look at yourself. Not to touch yourself. A massive amount of work. That's how you're going to get to the point of regretting it. Because to regret you made a crime, it's okay. It's bad. I feel bad. But how much do you really regret it? You had a good time, after all.

1:38:10You still reminisce with your friends that you went out with her and her and her and him and him and him. You know, people say, "Oh, you remember when I was a kid, I had this girlfriend, that girlfriend." You're still reminiscing about your past. You're not regretting anything. You haven't gotten to step number three of the teshuva. The Rambam says you haven't done teshuva yet. You think you're going to remind me to do teshuva? You didn't do teshuva. They're going to laugh in your face. You're still reminiscing with your friends about your club days. You're still reminiscing with your friends about how you had three girlfriends at once, three boyfriends at once, all types of garbage and filth. You still think it's good. Until you get disgusted, you cannot regret. Now, what are some of the things that are going to help you become disgusted? Learning about it, but also keeping yourself strong by encouraging other people to do teshuva. Because that's also going to wipe out some of your sins. Every time somebody does teshuva, It erases your crimes. Now, at that point, Hashem puts a stamp: this guy is a Baal Teshuva. But the Teshuva has levels. Each time a person does another step of Teshuva, another step of Teshuva, his level goes higher. Now he wants to, he stopped. What does he do about the past? There are two things that a person can do about the past. One is to do Kiruv.

1:39:26do Kiruv to get people to do Teshuva, either directly or indirectly, give them a CD, give them a link, bring them to a lecture to hear about the specific topic. They stop every single time they would have done it, goes into your account, wipes out one of your past sins. Second thing is, he has to do tikkunim. Tikkunim, the Arizal says there are 84 fasts, or 84 times the amount of money that it costs you to eat every day. So let's say if we're conservative, it's $5. It's $420 for every single time that a person wasted seed, which means it's a lot of money for the average guy that only learned that this is a sin. When he's 25, 35, 45 years old, but nonetheless, that's what it is. No one tells you that you have to fix it all in one day. If you could only afford $420 one time this month, you do $420 one time this month. We'll see what happens next month. If next month you could do $800, you do $800 next month. If next month you could do $5, you do $5. Whatever you can afford, that's what you do. Hashem is not going to prosecute you for things you can't do. But don't lie to yourself and think that Hashem doesn't know how much money you have.

1:40:36Whatever you can do, that's what you do. Whatever you can't do, you can't do. You're not going to get punished for things you can't do. But you have to do something. So you have to do tikkunim. A tikkun specifically is something that wipes out the sin from the past. Because again, it's taking on suffering on yourself. Giving money is suffering for people. Trust me, I know people suffer a lot when they donate money. It's almost like they prefer to give you a lung. A lung instead of giving you money. One cute kid, he is in touch with me. And God bless him, he has a tikkun with money. He has a tikkun with money. And b'ezrat Hashem, he will overcome it. But he says, listen... How many times do I have to fast for three times? I said, 250 times. He goes, wow, so it's either 250 times or 250 times ten dollars? I said, yes. He goes, alright, so maybe I should split the 250 times over a few years. I said to him, you're honestly thinking about fasting like Yom Kippur 250 times?

1:41:40Instead of giving some money. Like that's actually a thought. That's actually a thought in your brain. Like you actually think that you're going to fast 250 times. You know what 250 fasts are? Even if you fast 25 extra times a year, that's almost a full month a year you're fasting. For a full month a year. It's still not going to finish for 10 years. And that's just for three times you wasted seed, not for everything. actually thinking that's better than giving. Let's say you have some that say maybe you should only fast 250 times instead of giving money. That's enough. But if it's money, then you have to do a lot more than three times. So let's say it's 250 times and you're finished with the whole thing. But that's just the past. What about next week? What about the week after? Maybe you're gonna fall? actually thinking that fasting is better than giving the money, that's unfortunate. How much people love money! So when you give money for this sake, it's a very big tikkun because Hashem knows your heart, and He knows it's hard for you to donate for this purpose—harder than anything else. Somebody comes to you and says, "Listen, who wants a thousand, two thousand, five thousand, twenty thousand?" People are throwing money at the guy. "All right, listen, I was only planning on buying a thirty-thousand-dollar [item], but now I'm gonna buy a hundred-thousand-dollar [item] and have extra money."

1:42:53there are organizations that build new buildings because of their Sefer Torah campaigns. They say campaign, we're gonna buy a Sefer Torah. So many people donate for the Sefer Torah, they can buy the Sefer Torah and a building too. Easy mitzvah, people love it. Oh, we're going to buy a Beit Knesset. Easy mitzvah, money. Hanukkah party, Purim party, some carnival—they send so much money, nobody has a problem donating for it. Tikkun HaBrit, it's almost like giving a lung for people. Kiruv, two lungs. The two combined, the whole body, sacrifice yourself. One of the Ten Martyrs, Rabbi Akiva. It's hard for people to give money. Why? Because also the Satan knows this is the real teshuva, so he interferes. All of a sudden, you have a new bill that shows up at your house. All of a sudden, your mom needs some money. All of a sudden, your brother needs a loan. All of a sudden, you're not really sure if you can have the job next week. All of a sudden, all types of things happen that put all types of thoughts in your head. You know what? Maybe I should give less. Maybe, you know what? I was planning on giving $2,000.

1:44:06Maybe I'll just give $1,500. Okay, I'll do $1,500. Okay, you know what? I'll just do it tomorrow. Tomorrow, I'll think about it tomorrow. By the next morning, you woke up, we're down to $1,000. $1,000. But you know what? I have to move the money from my checking to my savings. My savings to my checking. You know, it takes a day. It takes a day, so I'll just do it tomorrow. By the next day, you're down to $300. You're at $300, I can do. $300, for sure, I can do. But you know what? I don't really want to use this card. You know what? I'll use the card that I have at the house. I'll use the card that I have at the house because I don't want to use this card. I'm going to use a different card because the other card has more points on it. The other card has more points. If I'm already going to pay, let me get something out of it. I want points. So maybe one day I could buy a bazooka gum on an airplane. Oh, so he gets to the house. By the time he gets to the house, he's down to $36. $36? Yeah, I'm going to give $36. Two times chai. Two times chai, that's life. That's life. I'm going to have life because two times chai, $36. All of a sudden, his wife calls him. His son calls him. Abba, Abba, I need you for something. Okay, I'll just do this when I get back. He goes to sleep. By the time he does the thing, he maybe, maybe donates $18. Maybe. Maybe. Three months later. Rabbi, did you see my donation? He sends three emails. Rabbi, did you see my donation?

1:45:17Yeah, I stopped my day. I stopped my day because your $18 came in. We can breathe now. We can breathe now because your $18 came in. We can buy, we can buy, we can breathe. Everybody just, the whole staff, all staff, 30, 40 people, everybody can eat because you sent me the $18 after three months that you told me you sent it. Why? He has a yetzer hara. Yetzer hara, he loves money. loves it. He prefers to fast a thousand times than give money, but that's why Hashem appreciates it. It's hard for you; that's why it's a tikkun. That's why it's worth so much because you gave blood, sweat, and tears—all types of difficulties—to give the money. Hashem knows how hard it is for you; that's why He likes it. So, if a person does such a tikkun... He gives money, gives the kiruv, he learns about it, he stops, all of those things. Each time he takes a step, the Ben Ish Chai says, he's taking those neshamot that he brought from the upper world down to this world without a body, and he's raising them back up there. He's putting them back into the place in shamayim called guf.

1:46:34taking those neshamot that are here, they're next to him. He's bringing them back up there. So now, when he goes up there, they are friends of his. "Hey, how are you? How you doing?" Yeah, his friends. Why? Because he brought them back the way they need. Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. That's one of the most important things that you need to understand. The mystical aspects of Judaism are part of its foundation. People that have a hard time believing in the mystical parts of Judaism will eventually have a hard time believing in God too. Because the entire Torah, from the beginning all the way to the end, is one mystical story. There is nothing other than mysticism in Judaism. So a person that does real serious teshuvah, will take all of the damage that he brought into this world, and actually can even turn it into merits. Because now that he's brought those neshamot from here back there, that's turned into a merit. That's turned into a mitzvah. That's turned into something he's going to get rewarded for.

1:47:46And that's why you see many times people that do this tikkun specifically, it helps with parnassah. Suddenly he makes more money. Suddenly his boss wants to give him a raise for no reason. Suddenly people want to do business with him. Suddenly his company grows and he has no idea why, because it's the same exact product he's been selling for 20 years, but people found an interest in it. You know, you hear sometimes stories of some guy that's been selling the same thing for 15 years, but suddenly he became a millionaire. Like it's on the news or somebody likes this toy or somebody likes his product and all of a sudden it's the biggest seller. He's been selling it for 15 years, but now it became a bestseller. It happens many times. So a person could literally change their fortune with this tikkun, because once a person fixes their brit, they're reconnecting to Borei Yitbarach, but also they're eliminating any interference with something that's hurting their job prospects, their money prospects, their zivug. A woman can't find her zivug. A man can't find his zivug. Why? Because of this sin.

1:48:53Fixes that it fixes their mind. They're able to learn. And because I'll also say that it could fix a person's vision. Now, I read this in books, and I've mentioned it in the lecture, but I also have proof for it. What's the proof? One of my students, I believe in Atlanta, just sent me an email the other day. He tells me, "Listen... I'm not just thanking you because now we keep Shabbat and everything else. I'm thanking you because my life has changed. How did it change? He says, I used to wear glasses. He used to wear glasses. He's a driver. He drives at night. He drives in the day. He's a truck driver. So he needs to see. He said, I used to wear glasses. Ever since I started watching my Yeshuvim, started protecting my brit, stopped eating non-kosher, stopped watching pornography, fixed my eyes, fixed my brit, I don't need glasses anymore. He said, sometimes I use them in the house, sometimes, sometimes. But on the road at night, I don't need them. I don't need glasses. I have an email, but it's not the same. He's going to write this, put this on the website. You see, I'm not making this up. I had one woman tell me her kid used to be very disturbed mentally.

1:50:09I told you guys a story. The husband stopped wasting seed, the kid became healthier. Countless stories of people, literally their entire reality changes because of this tikkun. Because of this tikkun specifically. Hashem hates it. Hates it. I'll give you a chiddush. About this topic, just like we have the coronavirus, corona is now also another name for the male member, part of the male member, which leads me to believe that it's not a happenstance, because the goyim, they have no problem with promiscuity or even bestiality and homosexuality, which is usually where most diseases start from. promiscuity, homosexuality, bestiality—all of them come from immorality. It's not a happenstance that coronavirus is called that. Hashem made somebody decide to call it that because it has to do with that. It's not because they eat bats, like people think. They've been eating bats for a long time. Nothing ever happened before. It's because they did something that Hashem got fed up with.

1:51:30Now also, if you noticed, one of the tools of the Satan to make people remain promiscuous without worrying about bringing any children to the world is by using what they call protection. They don't realize that eventually it's going to be prosecution, not protection. But they use condoms. And the most popular condom company in the world is what? Trojan. What's the picture of the Trojan? It's a Roman. It's a horse. But on the picture on it, it's not a horse. Where does Trojan come from? It comes from the Torah. Who is Trojan? One of the Greek gods. One of the Greek gods of promiscuity. One of the Greek gods of filth. One of the idolatries of the Romans. What was his name? Trajan. Trajan, instead of Trojan. And Trajan's wife gave birth in Midrash Me'am Loez. Yirmiyahu says to us, how did this all happen? How did we get to a point where we got punished so badly with the Beit HaMikdash, Nebuchadnezzar, and so on,

1:52:58It says, Trajan's wife gave birth on Tisha B'Av when the Jews were seen mourning in public. And one of the reasons why this child passed away is that on Chanukah, the Jews kindled Chanukah lights. When our people's enemies related these events to the emperor's wife, she urged her husband to avenge these acts of disrespect. And he set out on a ship, planning to reach Eretz Yisrael in ten days, and he arrived in five. So in the war, part of the issue was that Am Yisrael was sinning against Hashem, but they thought that everything was okay because they still kept the biblical holiday, Chanukah. But when the emperor's wife saw that they were celebrating when her son had just died, she told her husband, "No, what are they doing?" He sent his soldiers to start killing and Instead of him arriving in ten days, he arrived in five, which means he saw them partying while his son is dead. But also, the Gemara says that Trajan is not just an emperor, but he was named actually after the god, the Roman god of promiscuity and so on, fertility, and other things. Now, this Trojan, the Greek god or the emperor,

1:54:21His expertise was killing children. And you see here that Trojan of today, same thing, expertise in killing children. Do you think it was a coincidence? Do you think it was a coincidence that Trojan and Trajan sound similar? No. I'm going to give you my chiddush. Until now, I just read you the Midrash. What's my chiddush? When you write Trojan, T-R-O-J-A-N, right? Trajan is T-R-A. So what's the difference? One has an O, one has an A. The rest of it is the same. The letter A that you write, well, it's not the first, not capitalized. It's in the middle of the word. How do you write it? It's a little circle with a line next to it. What does that look like? Also, if you switch it this way, sperm. Seed. That's what it looks like. What's the difference? Seed. So it looks like an upside-down or a sideways-turned seed. So we see that Hashem gives people specific ideas to name things, to go to places, to do certain things.

1:55:41Not for no reason. Everything has a reason. Everything is named for a reason. Hashem doesn't have anything that's beyond His control. Everything is within His control. Everything. Now, the only thing that we can decide is whether we're gonna listen to Him or not. Once we decide to listen to Him, He manipulates and maneuvers the world in order to fit that decision of you doing what He wants. When we decide to do things that are against Him, He now remaneuvers the world and reshapes the world into a place where we go against Him. When a person does complete teshuva for wasting seed, He is allowing Hashem to do what Hashem wants, which is to remaneuver and manipulate the world in a good way to give you all the good that He's wanted to give you for 3,000 years. In essence, every single day that you protect your brit, every single day you protect your eyes, every single day that you do teshuva, you are doing Hashem the greatest thing you possibly can be doing for Him, which is you are allowing Him to give you good.

1:56:50And He changes nature and manipulates nature all over again just for you. Because you stayed strong for another day. You stayed strong for another day. You didn't go with your boyfriend. You didn't go with your girlfriend. You didn't go with yourself. You stayed strong for another day. That's a big deal. Hashem changes the world all over again just for you. If a person really thinks about it, that's enough of a reason to do teshuva. It's enough of a reason to do teshuva. That's what you want. You want Hashem to give you good. If a person doesn't do teshuva, it's not a good decision in this world, nor the next. One more question, two more questions, then we're done. Why is Bnei Yisrael referred to in different ways? Ha'am, Bnei Yisrael, Beit Yisrael, and Beit Yaakov.

1:57:52You're talking about a specific verse you're reading? Just throughout. Bnei Yisrael, Beit Yaakov. All the way up to Exodus. It says, Ha'am. Ha'am, Bnei Yisrael, Bnei Yisrael, and Beit Yaakov. Ha'am, Bnei Yisrael, yeah. Okay. Arba. Right. So far. So, nation of Israel, it's because we're a nation. Ha'am Yisrael. Beit Yaakov is because our most immediate forefather out of Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov. Yaakov. Why Yaakov? Because Avraham had two sons. He had Yitzchak and he had Yishmael. He had Isaac gave birth to Yaakov, but Ishmael gave birth to all the Yishmaelim, all the Arabs, all the Muslims. So in essence, two nations came from Avraham. Two nations came from Avraham. Yitzchak had Yaakov and Esav. Two nations came from Yitzchak. Esav is the Christians,

1:58:57and the Catholics, and Yaakov is the Jews. Yaakov, all of his sons, all 12 of his sons were Am Yisrael. So that's why we're called the House of Yaakov, and that's why we're also called Yisrael in general, because Yaakov had two names, Yaakov and Yisrael. Now, we're called Bnei Yisrael, and we're also called Am Yisrael, for another reason. Bnei Yisrael is the sons of Yaakov. Am Yisrael is the nation of Yisrael. Meaning, we were Bnei Yisrael before Matan Torah. We were still Noahides. So we were called the sons of Yaakov. But after Matan Torah, we became Jews. Because what makes you a Jew is if you follow the Torah or not. Not if you have a beard. Not if you have a hat. There are plenty of Jews without a beard. Good Jews. Plenty of Jews that don't wear a hat. They're good Jews. Plenty of bad ones with a hat and with a beard. The hat and the beard and the uniform don't make you a good Jew. What makes you a good Jew is if you follow the Torah. There's plenty of Jews that are black. There are plenty of Jews that are white. There are plenty of Jews that are Chinese. Plenty of Jews that are in India. I got one young Talmid Chacham in Manipur. Manipur. You guys complain about, oh, my house is not big enough. Or, oh, my car is old. In Manipur, some places don't have running water.

2:00:22Do you understand? Running water. This tzaddik in Manipur just wrote us a translation of a new blessing that we're coming out with in a day or so in our Alon HaKodesh for Tu B'Shvat. Remember the new blessing? He wrote me a transliteration because he knows we deal with a lot of Baalei Teshuva, a lot of converts that don't know how to read Hebrew but they want to do the blessing. So he took the time, he read the blessing, and he wrote a whole transliteration of the whole thing. Hours of work. Hours of work. Where is he? He's in Manipur. None of you have probably even heard of this place. He showed me pictures of what the town looks like. The whole town—you could probably buy it with just half a house of yours. The whole town! But he has time to learn Torah non-stop. What's our excuse? What's our excuse? He can learn Torah over there. How come we have excuses? Oh, I don't have the books. He doesn't have the books either. He reads them online. Nobody has an excuse. Why? Because you have a talmid chacham in Manipur. Meaning, there are Jews of all types. What's the difference? It doesn't matter where you live. You can live in Manipur. You can live in the USA. You can live in Israel. You can live in Germany. You can be a rasha or a tzaddik in any place. That's the difference between us and the resha'im. Resha'im are going to find excuses. Us, we're going to try to eliminate those excuses.

2:01:46We'll try to overcome those excuses. We'll have those excuses sometimes, but we realize that we're full of it. So overcome it. Find a way to learn Torah. Find a way to do mitzvot. When did this mitzvah come into play? After we received the Torah at Har Sinai. Before Matan Torah at Har Sinai, we were not obligated to learn Torah. We were only obligated to keep the Sheva Mitzvot Bnei Noach. After Har Sinai, we all became Jews. We accepted the Torah, which means we accepted upon ourselves the obligation to learn Torah every day. Not all day. It doesn't have to be 24 hours a day. You have to learn a little bit every day. A little in the morning, a little at night. By little, I don't mean like 30 seconds. By little, you know, a real amount of time. The point being that if you're just starting out, and you haven't learned your whole life, committing to three or four hours a day is going to be too much. I started with 15 minutes a day when I first started doing teshuva. Baruch Hashem. Eventually, it got to many, many hours, but the point is that everybody has to start somewhere. Somewhere that's something, but every day. Every day. Why? Because if you learn Torah every day, that's a potion to overcome the Yetzer Hara. It's telling you to stop; it's telling you to do sins. Young guys that come to me for help and guidance in the issues of wasting seed...

2:03:05Most important thing I tell them is to learn the shiurim that we have about the topic, to learn Torah every day. Every single time they contact me and say, I was going strong for two weeks, I was going strong for two months, I was going strong for six months, but then I fell. 99.9% of the time it is because they skipped a day of learning Torah. One day. They didn't stop for a week. One day they skipped. Why? You need that Torah to overcome that sin. You need it. Without learning Torah, you're not going to overcome it. It's a matter of time. When you say learning Torah, there are many seculars who don't even know what you're talking about. What does learning Torah mean? Literally, they don't know anything. I didn't know anything either. You tell them, you have to learn Torah, and it's like, what? Like, open the book and read it? I didn't know anything. First of all, in English, because we're in America. First of all, in English. Yeah. just like reading, yeah, yeah, so is that it? Learning Torah is very simple. I didn’t know anything. That’s why I don’t ever make fun of anybody else who doesn’t know anything, because I know that most of the time, I knew less than them. I only know what I know now because I’ve been learning. Before you learn, you don’t know anything.

2:04:24Nobody knows everything on day one. So as far as a person starting out, what does learning Torah mean? Learning Torah means that you are going to learn different parts of the Torah every single day, and there are different ways to learn. The most common way to learn Torah is to watch shiurim. To watch a shiur, to attend a shiur, could watch it online. If you're close by, you can attend the shiur. If you're close to it, it's much better for you to attend it than to watch it online. If you're not close to it, then obviously, watch it online. We have it on our website bezratHashem.org. We're on YouTube, we're on Facebook, we're on WhatsApp. We're in pretty much every place that there are people. We make sure that we put the shiurim out there. You can reach us. So, watching shiurim is the most common way that people learn Torah today, especially people who are not in the frum world, who haven't been in the religious world their whole life. They're not in a kollel, they're not someone who's dedicated to it their whole life. But even people in the religious world watch shiurei Torah. Everybody watches shiurei Torah to some extent. I have rabbis who call me on a regular basis asking me questions about my shiurim because they watch them.

2:05:36It's not just ba'alei teshuvah watchers. There are many people from all over the world who watch our shiurim. As a matter of fact, one rabbi was supposed to attend today's shiur. He's visiting from Costa Rica. He was supposed to come today, but he couldn't make it. But he's a rabbi who's been watching me for years. He's not a ba'al teshuvah; he's a rabbi. Many rabbis watch the shiurim, and they watch it in their own time, in the car, in the house, whenever they have time. And there are also new people who are not religious who watch the shiurim. That's one form of learning Torah. Another form of learning Torah that a person needs to do at some point, maybe not on day one because maybe it's difficult for some people because it's easier to learn when someone is speaking than perhaps from the books, but a person needs to learn Torah from the books. The first book that a person needs to read is the Chumash. five books of Moses. Read the five books of Moses with commentary by Rashi. At least have an understanding of what makes you a Jew. Where did you come from? Where did it all start? The five books of Moses is the best way to start simply because you need to connect to what happened in the past. If you haven't read the five books of Moses, it's very, very hard for you to be spiritually strong.

2:06:46because you're always going to have doubts in your head of maybe this and maybe that. You have to read the Five Books of Moses, and in reality, it's one of the obligations that a Jew has to read the Chumash every week. He has to complete the Chumash every single year, more than once—actually twice. Twice with the basic and one commentary, meaning every week you have to read the same parasha. Twice. Twice the parasha and one commentary. Why? You need to know what's going on. You need to know why you're a Jew. Now, that's how you start with the Chumash, the five books of Moses. Aside from that, you have to read Mussar books. Mussar books are about character development and ethics. The whole purpose of the Torah is not just for you to keep Sukkot, Pesach, and Shabbat. It's also for you to become a better quality human being. The Torah teaches that in the five books of Moses and the Mussar books show you where and how we learn this lesson of ethics here and we learn this lesson of ethics there. So you have to learn Mussar books. You also have to learn Halachot. Halachot are their books, countless books about the laws.

2:08:03What to do every day. The laws of Shulchan Aruch. The laws that a person needs to learn for day-to-day life. What do you do when you first wake up in the morning? What do you do after you wake up? Do you wash your hands? Do you jump in an ocean? Do you jump off a building? Which one do you do? It tells you. Do you wash your hands with oil? Or do you wash your hands with water? It tells you that also. Do you eat before you pray? Or do you pray and then you eat? It tells you that too. It's the second answer. You pray, then you eat. What do you do after that? Can you just study whenever you feel like it, or do you have to make it the same time every day? How do you treat your parents? How do you treat your wife? How do you treat your boss? How do you treat your employees? If I work for somebody, can I just take a personal phone call? I work for somebody, I work for a company, okay? And my phone rings, can I take that call?

2:09:04My friend's calling me, my mom's calling me, my cousin's calling me, and I know they like to chit-chat a little bit in the afternoon. Can I take the call? Now, how come most people take the call? You say no, right? No. Are you allowed? Allowed, not allowed? Not allowed. You say yes, you say no, you're confused. If you take a personal phone call during work, you are stealing. Gezel. Oh, you want to... Oh, no, I don't take calls. I'm just text messaging for five hours a day. I work, I get paid for the day, but I'm text messaging for five hours a day. Every two seconds. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do with the text messaging. You're stealing. That's chilul Hashem. Now I have to play with your phone. No, no, not that. For many people... Oh, let me answer one question at a time. Now, you work for somebody. You have to understand. First rule of working for somebody. Stop stealing from him. Stop stealing from him. Stop stealing. That's the first rule. Why? A guy opens a restaurant to do what? To make money. Not for you to steal from him. You're going to steal from him? Go work for somebody else.

2:10:13That's what a guy wants a business for. To make money. Not for you to steal from him. You want to steal? Go work for somebody else. Don't work for him. Why doesn't he want you to steal from him? You're going to be on the phone all day while you're supposed to be working, supposed to be cooking, supposed to be cleaning, supposed to be whatever it is you're supposed to be doing in his company. You're stealing from the guy. That's how you're going to say, wait a minute, can I listen to a shiur Torah during work? If the boss says that you're allowed to listen to something because it doesn't disturb your job, no problem, allowed. But text messaging and phone calls surely disturb your job. You have to have patience for the rabbi to stop speaking. And you also have to have patience for yourself to stop working. You have a lunch break. You have a time to go home. You have a time to go to work. Why? That's rule number one. That's what the Torah teaches you. Stop stealing. You know why I'm focusing on stealing? Because almost every single person, almost every single person is a thief. In Shamayim, almost every single person is a thief. The Gemara says it. Why? Because we don't delve into the rules. And we're thinking, why? What's the big deal? It was just 10 minutes.

2:11:20Well, it was just ten minutes I was on the phone. It was just ten minutes I was texting. It was just ten minutes. Ten minutes each hour. Guess what? After a ten-hour day, that's a lot more than ten minutes. So that's almost two hours. Ten minutes every hour. It's almost two hours. He's not paying you for eight hours. He's paying you for ten hours. You're a thief. You have to come back in a gilgul, maybe as a horse, a cat, something that's going to serve him. Or you learn. You learn these halachot. Stop stealing. The Mussar books are going to teach you some of these things, to be careful of this stuff. Why? Because a person needs to know. If you work for somebody, that means they're buying your time. If you have a lenient boss, and you ask permission, "Boss, listen, I got an important call. Can I take it? Do you mind if I'm on the phone as long as it doesn't disturb my job?" He says, okay. She says, okay, no problem. You can do it. But if you just decide for yourself, "No, he won't mind," you're a thief.

2:12:20Yatif, you have to come back into Gilgul. Keep Shabbat, everything you do, you have to come back into Gilgul. Reincarnation. So a person needs to know, this is the basics, alef-bet, basics. A person doesn't learn halachot, doesn't learn the laws of Judaism, he can live 80, 90 years thinking he's a kosher Jew, he's 100% a thief. So what does he do? He has to learn and start. Okay, I didn't keep it until now. What could I do? Okay, you give a little, you pray to Hashem. "I'm sorry, Hashem, I didn't know. It was a shogeg (accidental sin). From now on, that's it. When I'm working, I'm working. When I'm eating, I'm eating. When I'm having fun, I'm having fun." Why? Because that's what you're doing. You want to do whatever you want, you have to work for yourself. Work for yourself. And guess what? Your profit and loss statement won't look good if you're on the phone half the day. It won't look as good. You'll realize, you know what, I don't have time for these calls. I don't have time for these personal calls. I've got to work. I've got to make money. So that's why it's part of the reason you have to learn halachot. Every day you learn a few halachot. One, two, three, five, ten halachot every day. Whether man or woman, you have to learn something every day. Why? You need to know how to live as a Jew. So halachot is one of the things. You have to learn Chumash. You have to learn mussar. You have to learn halachot.

2:13:34You have to learn how to pray. All of these different things. Now, you can't learn everything in one day. So, you learn a little bit every day. Little by little it accumulates to more and more. Now you can ask your follow-up question. But still, you're cut off. It sounds impossible. Is that why only two from 500,000 left Egypt? It sounds impossible to keep the laws. You keep Shabbat for 80 years, then you turn on the light switch. And that's it? You're cut off? Because you said you're cut off. The whole thread is cut, and then you're cut off from the nation. You don't go anywhere. So you spent your whole life, 80 years, keeping Shabbat perfectly. What do you mean, intentionally? I turned it on. Why would they want to do that after 80 years? Okay, accidentally. We had a... But you're cut off completely. Who's making the rules here? You, him, which religion are we starting? Are you asking the question or are you answering it? Which one is it? Oh, he's answering the question. He's the Rabbi now. You're both going to lose a lot of money if you continue. I could ask too. Okay, so what's the question? Stop talking. Stop talking. Let me answer now. You ask the question. I speak English. Hebrew also.

2:14:49Okay. Now, first of all, there's a halacha. If there's a rabbi and someone asks a question, you're forbidden from answering the question. That's number one. Somebody asks you, are you allowed to drive on Shabbat? The rabbi's in the room, you're not allowed to answer. Why? That's against the Torah. That's number one. Number two, I speak. I can hear Baruch Hashem. No one has to help me. If I need help, I'll ask you guys for advice. Number three, Hashem does say that you could lose Olam HaBa just like that, but not like you said. You can lose Olam HaBa just like that, but not like you said. I'll explain: if a person makes an intentional sin That's one of the sins that are 36, one of the karet sins. Even if he kept all of the good things, he kept Shabbat, he kept kosher, he kept everything. But he's 80 years old, and he decides, you know what, I'm gonna take a drive on Shabbat to Bet Knesset.

2:15:50He knows it's a sin. He did it on purpose. He's dafka driving on Shabbat. Yes, he just lost Olam HaBa. Even though he kept it for 80 years, but he did an intentional sin, he lost Olam HaBa. He decided, listen, I kept everything for so many years, but this girl is really cute. Even though she's not my wife, even though she's not Jewish, I want to go with her. He did it. He lost Olam HaBa. So yes, it does happen just like that. But that's when it's an intentional sin. If it's not an intentional sin, it's shogeg, it's by accident. He forgot it's Shabbat and he turned on the light. He forgot it's Shabbat and he got into the car, but then he realized, oh no, and he got out of the car. It's an accident. Hashem doesn't want to send you to Gehenom just because He knows accidents are going to happen. He knows accidents are going to happen. So if it's an accidental sin, you don't lose Olam HaBa. You get punished, but you don't lose Olam HaBa. What is the best way to lose Olam HaBa? bad attitude saying it's impossible—that's how you lose Olam HaBa. That's why four-fifths of Bnei Yisrael lost Olam HaBa. Why? They said, "Listen, go in the desert. It's impossible to survive there." Now, let me ask you a question: Do you think God is a monster, like Manis Friedman says? If your father

2:17:10says to you, "My dear son, go make me some coffee." Does that indicate that he knows that you can make it, or that he knows you can't make it and he wants to see you fail? If your father loves you, he's only going to ask you to do things that he knows for sure you can do. Because, or else, Or else, he's a monster. He's not going to ask you to lift an 18-wheeler on top of your head, or else you're going to gehinnom. Why? Because then he knows you can't do it. Might as well put you in gehinnom anyway. He's only going to ask you to do things that you can do. You can do it. It seems like a lot because you're starting from nothing. And you feel like you're starting behind. But that's why I tell my personal story. If I can do teshuva, and I can turn my life around, and do everything that I'm doing today, anybody in the world can do it. I have seen people come out of church as pastors, and now they become rabbis. I have seen people that were illiterate, illiterate, didn't know how to read and write, become people that are serious about Torah. I saw a young kid, my own student, young kid, in the middle of nowhere in Africa, completely different religion. His father almost killed him because he told him, "I want to be a Jew." His father shot him. So what, he can't do it? You can't? What, God hates you? God wants you to fail? It all starts with your attitude. Don't expect to learn the entire Torah in one day.

2:18:28completely different religion. His father almost killed him because he told him, "I want to be a Jew." His father shot him. So what, he can't do it? You can't? What, God hates you? God wants you to fail? It all starts with your attitude. Don't expect to learn the entire Torah in one day. Hashem is not going to judge you based on the things you can't do. He's going to judge you based on the things you can do. You can read, read. You can read for an hour a day, read for an hour a day. You can read for 10 hours a day, read for 10 hours a day. He can watch you, watch you. The point is that Hashem knows exactly what you're capable of doing, and He's only giving you the things that you can do. Which means that every single person in the world can fulfill the entire Torah. Now, it seems hard because you're starting without even the knowledge of what you can do. But no one is telling you that on day one, you're expected to do everything. What are you expected to do? You're expected to start. Just like when you start working. When I first started working on Wall Street, you know what they paid me? $250 a week. I used to work 12 to 15 hours a day for $250 a week.

2:19:50making 700 to 1,000 phone calls a day. All right, Mr. Jones, this is, ah, you wanna buy this, you wanna buy that, $250 a week. 12 hours, 14 hours a day. Why did I work for $250 a week? What, I had some bad dream or something I was trying to run away from? What was I, what was I, smoking crack? Why would anybody work so many hours for 250 bucks a week? Why? It was never a lot of money, 250 bucks a week. Why did I work such long hours, 80 hours a week, for 250 bucks? You could work at McDonald's and make more money. Why? Because I wanted the dream. I wanted to be like the boss. I wanted to be the guy that makes 250,000 a month. But I can't start that way. I gotta start as a little guy that everybody spits on. I gotta start as a little nobody that everybody makes fun of. That's how I gotta start. I gotta start something. Can't start as the big boss. Gotta start somewhere, though. So that's how I started. Started with 250 bucks a week. One phone call, two phone calls, 5,000, 10,000, 100,000 phone calls, little by little. Things start rolling. Before you know it, you're making 1,000 a week. Before you know it, making 5,000 a week. Before you know it, making a million and a half thousand a day. It didn't happen overnight.

2:21:09But the dream was there, the goal was there; I was narrowly focused—that's where I wanted to be. That's how people succeed in life. Anyone who has ever become a success in life is because they focused on something, they narrowed it, they eliminated all distractions, all opinions, all everything, except that focus. You narrow your focus. When I left Wall Street, I had no intention of coming back. I had simply a focus: I want to work for Hashem. People ask me all the time, "Oh, you want to get into business?" No. Why? It's going to disturb my focus. Yeah, but you're not making any money. Baruch Hashem. I'm focused though. If Hashem wants me to be rich, I'll be rich doing this also. The key is you have to focus. What can you focus on? What do you have today? Do something today. Whatever you can do, you do it today. You can pray three times today, pray three times today. You can read the Chumash today. One page, two pages, three pages. That's what Hashem expects from you. You come to a shiur, stay here for two hours, Baruch Hashem. Make fewer mistakes, Baruch Hashem. That's what a person needs to do. First and foremost, don't let the whole world tell you what you can and can't do. If Hashem gave it to you to do, you can do it. You can do it, all of it. Not on day one, but you can do it over the long run. You can do it over the long run. You just have to be patient.

2:22:33Hashem has been patient. For 3,000 years He's waiting for you. 3,000 years He's waiting for you. He's waiting for you to convert. He's waiting for you to become a righteous Jew. He's waiting for you to do teshuva. He's waiting for you to marry a tzaddeket. A tzaddik is waiting for you for 3,000 years. So what? You expect Him to give you everything in one second? It doesn't work that way. You have to earn it. You have to earn it. Judaism is not the lotto. You don't just buy a ticket and suddenly have everything. You have to acquire it every day. A little bit more of it every day. A little bit more Hashem every day. A little more of His Torah every day. A little more every day. Every day. Every day. And you're going to have a million and a half different tests every day. You're going to have a million and a half different opinions telling you you can't do it every day. You know how many times people called me all types of names? Ah, what are you doing? All types of things. To this day, they do it. They don't know anything about me, but they decide who I am. If I listen to even one opinion, the good or the bad, I would never make it one day. Either you become arrogant or depressed. You listen to what Hashem says. Hashem says, do it, you do it. You focus, you can do it. Without Hashem, you can't do it. The mentality of "it's impossible," that's the Satan himself.

2:23:50That's the Satan himself. Satan is going to tell you, you can't do it. Ah, I'm going to lose anyway. Ah, I'm going to go again anyway. That's the loser mentality. You have to eliminate it. Like Amalek. You have to eliminate that mentality. Your Father in Heaven loves you. Hashem loves you. That's why He's waiting for you for 3,000 years. If He hated you, I promise you, you would not be in this world. You would be in Gehinnom, rotting with Yeshu. That's where you would be. You would be in Gehinnom right now, rotting and boiling in feces with Muhammad, with Hitler. That's where you would be if Hashem hated you. The fact that you're in this world means Hashem loves you and He's waiting for you. But, don't think He's going to wait forever. Last chance. You got a chance. You're 20 years old, you're 30 years old, you're 40 years old, you're 50 years old, you're 80 years old like the woman I met earlier this week or last week. She finally realized she's a Jew; she's 79 years old. Guess what? Hashem waited for her. 3,300 years, part of that 3,300 years, 79 years in this world. From now on, the clock's ticking. Now you know you're a Jew, now you know what you need to do. Do it every day, every day, every day, every day. If you're committed, Hashem will open. I have rabbis asking me all the time, how is it possible that you're only religious for an X amount of years, but you know more than the Rosh Kollel?

2:25:15How is that possible? What do you have, like you were extra? No, nothing. When you help people, Hashem gives you different things. There are special gifts for doing certain things. Point being, Abotai, there's nothing special about me. All I do is I commit. I commit, I have a focus, that's it. That's all I care about. That's the only thing that I can say that's maybe a little bit different from other people. The rest of it, same thing. Flesh, blood, everything else. But even the focus you can do also. It's just that most people are failures. Most people are just not willing to commit. They want everything in one day. So you have to focus on the prize and do whatever you can today. Hashem gave it to you. That means you can do it. And b'ezrat Hashem, you will. Any last questions? Chavot. If you could pass the mic. I have a question. One of my roommates has a pet snake, right? Has a what? A pet snake. A pet snake? Yeah. Trying to relive the story?

2:26:21Yeah, so it actually leads to that. So I looked at it, and I'm like, whatever, it's cool, right? And I'm like, wait, I saw the shape of the snake, and it reminded me of the shape of the spermatozoon, of the sperm. No. So my question is, what's the Chiddush? Because Adam and Chava, the sin of giving birth was given as a punishment after listening to the snake, right? Well, anguish during birth, yeah. So, the Creator actually decides the shape of everything, right? No. So, what's the Chiddush, the connection? Why does the sperm look like the snake? Because of the sin, you're saying? I don't know. So, what's the question? What's the Chiddush? That's my question. It's your Chiddush. No, it's not my Chiddush. I'm asking... Why is the snake shaped the way he's shaped? Yeah, why is the sperm and the snake's shape very similar? Well, there's a lot of things that are that shape. I mean, you could also say that about lizards, alligators, many different types of reptiles. I mean, technically, you could look at different things that are a similar shape. The few things that you could connect the snake to are promiscuity and so on, as the Zohar HaKadosh says.

2:27:36That the reason why the snake, the serpent, wanted Chava to eat from the Tree of Knowledge is because he wanted Hashem to kill Adam. Because he wanted her to be his wife. He wanted Chava to marry him. So when he saw that this was not happening, he actually raped Chava. He raped Chava. And that's how the Yetzer Hara entered our body. The body, the yetzer hara that we have in us today is from the seed of the nachash, is from the seed of the serpent. That's how the yetzer hara entered our body. So everybody has a yetzer hara from that rape, if you will, that the nachash had with Chava. So he was a beautiful creature before Hashem changed his nature and so on. He was actually supposed to be the king of all the animals. but so you can connect certain things to that, perhaps because he lost control and made a sin, now he looks like the seed itself. That's a possibility. I've never read it anywhere, so I can't really say that's a Torah thought, but it is very possible. It's interesting, but the whole issue of promiscuity

2:28:56General, whether it be wasting seed, homosexuality, bestiality—all of these immoral sins—we see that if you look deeply into the Torah, you'll see that this sin is part of the Torah from the beginning of the Torah and practically in every parasha until the end of the Torah. There is a reason for this. is that the foundation of kedusha, the foundation of holiness, starts with morality. Meaning, if you eat a certain way, it doesn't make you holy. For example, if you eat like an animal, it makes you look like an animal. But if you eat with your mouth closed, and you don't make extra sounds, you're not becoming the music in the background for anyone, that may make you polite, may make you good-mannered, if you will, at least for your eating, but it doesn't make you holy. Now, if you're generous, let's say you like to give a lot of tzedakah, you're giving a bunch of money every month, you're very, very generous.

2:30:08You're very, very generous. It doesn't make you holy. It doesn't make you holy because you're generous. Because there are plenty of people that are vicious people who are generous. Bernie Madoff was very, very generous. The only problem is he was generous with other people's money that he stole. But still, nonetheless, he was generous. So generosity does not make you holy. Certain manners do not make you holy. What makes a person holy? When he takes the physical and sanctifies it. Which part of the physical? His own intimacy. When you make intimacy into something spiritual, into something that's holy, you become holy. Because that means that from that moment on, you're going to look at your organs, your reproductive organs, as a way to connect to Hashem, as a way to do the will of Hashem, as a way to, in essence, bring holiness into the world. Not just because holiness comes from a child. It's not necessarily just, that's not holiness by itself. Holiness could be how you take a shower.

2:31:19Holiness can be how you behave when you're on a toilet seat. Holiness can be how you get dressed and undressed. If you get dressed and undressed, just in a room walking around like you're in a zoo and you're one of the zebras, and you're walking around half naked or naked completely, there's nothing holy about you. If you go to a mikveh and you walk around without a towel, there's nothing holy about you. You shouldn't even dip in the mikveh. You'll ruin the mikveh. The mikveh was pure before you dipped into it. You walk around naked without a care in the world. You don't feel embarrassed. You don't feel embarrassed to cover this. There's nothing holy about you. What is holiness? Holiness is taking those reproductive organs and realizing this is a way to either desecrate Hashem's name or sanctify it. That's why the issues of kedushah are talked about in Parashat Kedoshim, which is also the parashah that talks about the issues of morality. whether it be homosexuality, promiscuity, and so on and so forth. Hashem says, "You be holy because I am holy." And Chazal say, how can one be holy? By making themselves a moral person. Meaning, treat your sexuality as something that is a way to serve Hashem. If a woman knows that her sexuality is a way to serve Hashem, she will never flaunt

2:32:45She will never flaunt her good looks to the general public. She'll show it to her husband with no problem. But to the general public, never. Never. Why? That's my holiness. That belongs to my husband. Not married? Okay, that belongs to Hashem. No one is allowed to see me that way. No one is allowed to see certain body parts. No one. Why? It's for Hashem. When she's intimate with her own husband, she knows she's only allowed to do it at a certain time of the month. She's only allowed to do it in a certain way, with certain rules and guidelines. So even though a husband and wife are technically allowed to be intimate in different ways, the Rambam writes, He writes, you're allowed to do whatever you want with your wife, but don't ever waste seed. But even then, that doesn't make you holy; you're just doing a kosher thing. You want to be holy? Even the way you're intimate with your wife, as far as the position, has to be a certain way. It has to be the traditional way, not the animalistic way that they have in the world. Modeling ourselves after dogs and cats and all types of animals. Model yourself as a human being.

2:33:52Why? Because, yes, you're allowed to do certain things, but if you want to get to a higher level of holiness, you even have to have Hashem in your mind during that time. You're allowed to have fun, you're allowed to enjoy, no problem. But a person that wants to make themselves holy also thinks, how can I bring Hashem even into a time like that? People that understand this, pray and learn Torah before they're intimate. They're not like the movies, where they get aroused because they saw a movie and they start going crazy in the middle of the living room like some animal. No, it doesn't work that way. People who are holy do things they enjoy even more than everybody else, but in a different way. different way. So if a person wants to be holy, he has to look at his kedusha as the foundation of how to become holy. So this is, rabotai, very, very critical. We have a shiur about kosher intimacy online. It's had tens of thousands of views on the internet. So I think that anyone who is married should watch it. If you're not married, you have to be careful with it because it can lead you to have certain thoughts.

2:35:05With that being said, we'll continue next week. On Sunday, we're back here with another lecture, but also we have the 24th and 25th, we're going to be in New York. And on the 16th and 17th, we're going to be in Canada. So... Just pay attention to the schedule on our website. If you're in those locations, come to the lectures. If you're here, then watch me online. Be'ezrat Hashem. We'll learn a little bit more next week. Baruch Adonai le'olam. Amen ve'amen.