EMUNAH Secrets Revealed For PeSach

0:12A lot of people that have the journey that I had in my life have to go through the journey in a certain way. Which way is, why should I celebrate Pesach? Why should I not eat chametz? Why should I believe in all these scary things that you're telling me? Is there any proof to it? The answer is yes. Now, we already did a long show and several short films about Torah and science to prove that our Torah is real. What's to say that everything in the Torah is real? Is there any unbiased information that proves it? So, the reason why people believe everything else except the Torah by default is because it doesn't obligate you. So, if I tell you this jacket is a custom-made jacket, you're not going to say, really? Show me proof. not going to say that you're going to believe me. Why? Because whether it's a custom-made jacket or it's not a custom-made jacket doesn't really make a difference in your life. If I tell you this jacket, only one person worked on this jacket, not two like your jacket or three like his jacket, one person worked on it, handmade the whole thing, what are you gonna do? You say, "Okay, with your jacket, you show up with your jacket."

1:32It doesn't make a difference to you. You're going to believe it by default. If I told you, I arrived here from my house, typically it takes me a half hour, I arrived here in three minutes. Guess what? Most likely, if I'm convincing enough, you'll believe me. Why? It doesn't obligate you. It doesn't make a difference to you. It doesn't make a difference to you. But if I tell you, God spoke to me right before I came to this shul, and He told me, I have to look at you the whole shul. And you say, oh, hold on a second. God spoke to you? What did He say? Why? Because now it's getting interesting. Now it's something that has to do with you. God spoke to me and told me that you have to keep Shabbat. What? Why do you say that? Why do you care now? Because now it obligates you. Now it has something to do with you that causes you to have to think, do I need to change my life or not? So when it comes to the historical events of Mount Sinai, of the Exodus from Egypt, people constantly doubt it. Why? Because if you believe it, it obligates you. If you believe that God took Am Yisrael out of Egypt, that means that you believe that God took them to Mount Sinai. And if you believe God took them to Mount Sinai,

2:54that means that you believe that He gave them the Torah. And if you believe that He gave them the Torah, that means you have to know what the Torah says. Because if He said it, only a crazy person wouldn't do it. So now, why do people not follow it? Because many people either don't believe that it really happened, there's a doubt in them, Not 100% doubt, but there's a partial doubt. Or, they just don't know what actually happened. You know, okay, we left Egypt, and we got to Mount Sinai, and He gave us some rules, but I don't really know what the rules are, and I never cared enough to check what the rules are, because I wasn't really planning on keeping them anyway, so I figured I could just stay ignorant. Like, I wasn't planning on keeping the traffic laws, so I didn't read the book before the license test. Okay, but you'll fail. either in practice or in reality, you'll fail. Either you're not gonna get the license or you're gonna get a lot of tickets for disobeying the law.

4:07So we see that events that obligate people automatically make people doubt it, by default. That's human nature. The same thing goes with people that are naysayers and say that the Holocaust never happened, even though there are thousands of Holocaust survivors that have testified and are even still alive, telling you, "Hey, I was there." You tell me I wasn't there? Even the movies you have of the actual Holocaust are showing you. Every Jew should see this at least once in their life. what happened to our brothers and sisters a little over 70 years ago. How they literally treated them like animals, worse than cattle. Every person should see this. Why? You can see what happens to the world without Torah. How they kill countless people and then shovel them with tractors. You have to see this at least once in your life.

5:07And there are still people that watch those movies and say, no, no, it didn't happen. This is like Hollywood. Why? Because if you believe that the Holocaust happened, that obligates you. It obligates you. So we wanted to see, are there ways to prove that the Exodus from Egypt happened beyond the shadow of a doubt by third-party, unbiased people? And there are countless proofs. One of the funniest things that I remember people saying is that if Am Yisrael left Egypt and they were in the desert for 40 years, wouldn't you find a bunch of graves? Because millions of them died in the desert. wouldn't you find a bunch of graves? And the answer is yes, you would. Oh, so see, that's why. That's a proof there's no Yetziat Mitzrayim. Why? Because they assume we didn't find graves. That's the problem. We found graves—millions of graves in the desert.

6:14We haven't till this day. We know exactly where they are. They've been searched. They're there. Countless graves. It's written in many books. Why do they say there's none? Because the people that say there's none never actually looked at the answer. They asked the question without a desire for the answer. They assumed that no one found the graves because they didn't see it on CNN every day during the week. They didn't see it on CNBC right next to the stock text. They didn't see, oh, breaking news, they found the graves for the 87,000th time. They think that just because they don't know, that means it doesn't exist. And that's usually most people. They assume just because they don't know something, it must be either a lie or it doesn't exist or there's something wrong with it. That usually comes from arrogance. So, Baruch Hashem, we have found countless graves. Archaeologists Discovering things on a regular basis that are from the Tanakh. The historian and philosopher Will Durant writes in "The Story of Civilization": "Within its scope, the story of the Jews, as it unfolds in the Bible, stands the test of criticism, and archaeology every year adds confirmation to the monuments, documents, and excavations."

7:35He has no interest, whether monetary or religious, to say what he's saying. This is a person that's simply an archaeologist, saw what he saw, and he says it's incontestable that the Exodus from Egypt actually happened. Further, in the Lost Tanakh by Yeshayah Etzion, He says, one of the most impressive findings is the Egyptian papyrus containing a lamentation by the Egyptian poet named Ipuwer that describes the ten plagues. This is an Egyptian. This is an enemy of Am Yisrael that lived at the time of the ten plagues. And he writes about it. And One of the people that reviewed this writing, one of the scientists that reviewed this writing, saw, "Wait a minute, everything he's writing sounds familiar." And he says the following words in his papyrus, in the Egyptian collection of the museum of Leiden, Holland: this is where you'll find this papyrus. It's what he writes in his book.

9:00There is an early Egyptian papyrus that was translated into English by the Egyptologist Alan Gardner and given the title Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage. The papyrus describes the condition of desolation and destruction, and in Gardner's opinion, this is an account of the destruction that befell the Egyptian early kingdom. It was Velikovsky who first noticed the striking similarity between this description and the biblical account of the plagues of Egypt. The ancient Egyptian text tells of blood in the land, stench rising from the rivers, buildings being destroyed by fire, the darkness plague, and a great slaughter of the local population. This is in the book "Ages in Chaos," page 51. Some of the things that the papyrus says to quote: One part, it says, "The river is blood. Men thirst for water, and all the beasts cry in their hearts; the cattle low." In essence, he's describing the first plague where all the water turned into blood. Next, he says, "Verily, everything is ruined that yesterday was yet seen. The land is left as after the flax harvest." Another one of the plagues.

10:22Next, verily the sons of the princes were thrown over the walls. The prisons were destroyed. There was a great outcry in Egypt. He's describing the last plague. All the firstborn were killed. And then he says something very interesting. He says the servant girls, meaning the Jews, are wearing their mistress' jewels, which is actually what it says in the book of Exodus, chapter 3, verse 22, where every woman, every bat Yisrael, shall borrow from her neighbor articles of silver and gold jewelry and clothing. This is one of the ways that Hashem gave Am Yisrael a lot of wealth. So, he writes this in his book that all of these slaves are now wearing our jewels. Then he describes something even more interesting. He says, the pillar of fire that went before the camp of the children of Israel at the time of the Exodus is also described. He says, the fire rose very high and its flames moved against the country's enemies. He's describing the Jews as a pillar of fire from the ground all the way to the heavens. He's describing it in Papyrus 3,000 years ago.

11:40A book, The Ages in Chaos by Velikovsky, tells about another finding—another archaeological finding of a stone that was found at the Egyptian border near El Harish. In this place, it says that on the stone, there are hieroglyphics that virtually describe the plague of darkness. Saying, "The land was very stricken, evil was its portion. There was a great riot in the palace. During the days of the riot, there was a storm so great that neither god nor man saw another's face." Which is exactly what the Torah says. The darkness was so dark that you couldn't even see each other. Even if you were right next to each other, you couldn't see each other. In the second stage of darkness, you couldn't even move. Then he says in another place, the march of Pharaoh and his army after they went after the Jews. He says that they reached a place called Pi Hachirot, which is exactly what the Torah says in the book of Exodus, chapter 14, verse 2. The children of Israel camped facing Pi Hachirot. Same place.

13:02name of the place in the Torah, that's what the papyrus says also. That's what this coin says that they found. Now, Yehoshua Etzion also in his book says that researchers discovered remains of settlements that held large numbers of people. And the most remarkable finding is the large number of graves. And he follows and he says, he explains, quote on page 53, he says, the children of Israel left Egypt and in their bags were artifacts from the time they were in Egypt. These are the artifacts that were found in the desert. The many graves are the graves of those who died in the desert. It is also understandable why reservoirs and granaries were not found since they ate dew and drank water in a miraculous way. were not found since they ate manna and drank water in a miraculous way. Now in another book by William F. Albright called From the Stone Age to Christianity, on page 152, William Foxwell Albright says,

14:16He's a historian. He says, according to our present knowledge of the topography of the Eastern Delta, there is no doubt that the lecture on the journey of those leaving Egypt as described in the book of Exodus is entirely correct. The point being is that you see that there is scientific proof of the Exodus of Egypt. There's no, "Oh, it's unprovable," it's on this, it's on that. It's all provable if you simply want the answer. But if you're looking for an excuse to continue justifying your life, then obviously you don't even need the Torah to help you. All of this, by the way, was written in an essay by one of the wisest, one of the wisest rabbis that's a speaker also. He put this together, this essay that I just mentioned to you or quoted from, along with some other things in this Haggadah by Gadi Pollack, who is the artist as well. It is a very interesting Haggadah, with a lot of really beautiful drawings, but also the drawings are correct, which is even more significant.

15:32A lot of times you have drawings of matzah, of maror, of piyut; that's all nice. But when it comes to yetziat Mitzrayim and things like that, they'll draw different things. They'll draw you cartoonish drawings of certain things that are nice, but they're not always historically or biblically correct. So here you actually have a team of talmidei chachamim. a team of talmidei chachamim, led by Rabbi Baruch HaLevi, that actually put this beautiful Haggadah together, which has an enormous amount of information. If somebody spends the time to actually read it in a language they understand, they'll really enjoy it dearly. Now, during the seder, like I said, you have a responsibility. In the beginning, you say something, you say a bunch of words. Each one of these words has a connection not only to Egypt, not only to Pesach, but also to Mashiach. Each one of the words has a certain connection.

16:42because of the lack of time, we're not gonna go into each detail, but also, the first word is really what I wanna focus on. If somebody's going to arrive at the Pesach Seder with the mentality that he had the rest of the week, with the mentality that he has the rest of the year, he's already failed before he started. Why? You have to arrive at the Seder after you've already gone over step number one, which is Kadesh. Kadesh means sanctify yourself. Make yourself holy. Watch your eyes. Learn some Torah. Prepare for the Seder. Be mentally prepared for it. Why? The Torah tells us that there is, and our sages elaborate on it even further, that there is no holiday greater than Pesach. It's the biggest holiday of the year. It's the biggest night of the year. Where do they learn this from? Mordechai HaYehudi found that Haman HaRasha had a decree to kill all of Am Yisrael, similar to what Hitler tried to do. But unlike Hitler, he wasn't doing...

18:03certain amount of quantities. He was planning on killing everybody in one day. Mordechai, who was part of the Sanhedrin, in his ruach hakodesh, knew this decree was already sealed and signed in shamayim. It's not one of those decrees that you could just pray a little bit and everything's going to go away. This is one of those decrees where we have a serious problem. So to tell everybody, "Listen, guys, why don't you fast? Everybody fast today. Everybody fast every Monday and Thursday. Everybody fast every Monday and Thursday for the rest of the year." He knew that's not going to work. He says, "We only have one hope. What's the hope? We have to fast on Erev Pesach," which is, in essence, canceling a mitzvah de'oraita. A biblical mitzvah to fast. Why? It's our only hope because it's the biggest day of the year for salvation. So anyone that has a serious problem, and Baruch Hashem, I don't know anybody who doesn't have a serious problem.

19:10Everybody has some type of problem. Some people are looking for a zivug. Some people are looking to have kids. Some people are looking for parnassah. Everybody has something. Everybody has something that is their own personal issue that is a... Really, uh, they need help. They need some divine assistance; they need some serious, serious mercy from Shamayim for this thing to come true because it's just not happening. They're learning and they don't understand; they're working but they don't have any money. They're looking, but they can't find a wife or a husband. It's just something in their life that is not working. And it's not working because they're doing nothing about it. They're doing, but it's not working. If you're not doing anything about it, then this is not for you. Why? Because you didn't even try. You're not doing anything. But if you're trying, you're doing everything you're supposed to, you're doing teshuvah every day, you're learning what you need to learn, you're doing everything you need to do, but it's still not happening. That means you need your own personal salvation, your own personal exodus.

20:21The Chachamim tell us Pesach has a special segulah, a special moment where you ask for it. If you do it right, this is the best time of the year. When? In Haggadah Shel Pesach, there's a section where we talk about where Am Yisrael is suffering in the slavery after the Pharaoh died. And the second Pharaoh took over and he started torturing us even more than the previous one. He made the women do the men's jobs. He made the men do the women's jobs. He took the kids and killed them either to bathe in their blood, to throw them in the water, or to put them instead of cinder blocks. A type of torture that none of us can even imagine. Worse than the Holocaust. Millions and millions were being killed like water. he didn't even want them to enjoy anything to the extent that whatever they built, he destroyed. Destroying their morale, destroying their everything. We got to a point where we scream to Hashem. As it says,

21:44In the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 26, verse 7, we have a verse here that we say in the Haggadah, that we scream to Hashem. At this moment, the Segula is, when you say "Vayitzak," scream it. But scream it with all of your heart to Hashem for your salvation. Now, if you're embarrassed, it's not going to work. Why? Because you're embarrassed for people and not of Hashem. If you're embarrassed for people and not of Hashem, you have a different problem, much bigger than what you're screaming for and not screaming for. This is the moment. This is your moment. Do you have something? Did you read that? Why? I need Hashem to help me. Why? I can't help myself. I can't help myself. I can't. I'm trying. It's not working. Anything I do, it's not working.

23:03Now, if you didn't already do step one, which is a Kadesh that's small, you sanctify yourself, guess what? You're gonna reach Yitzia, you're gonna pass Yitzia, you can get to the end of the Haggadah. It's like, oh, we did Yitzia already. Why? You're not following even. You're not gonna remember. You're not gonna think. You're gonna pass it. Oh, we did. Can I do it again? Is it a do-over? This is the one moment of the year, Rabbi. One moment of the year, you have to mamash scream to Hashem, but not just scream to me loud. Scream to Hashem mamash with all of your heart. Mamash ask Hashem in your heart, "Please, Hashem, please take me out of my personal Egypt. Please, HaKadosh Baruch Hu, I have nothing else. No one else. No one else can help me. No one else wants to help me. I have nothing." Only you. That's your opportunity. That's your opportunity. This, Rabotai, is a very interesting segulah all the way from the time of Mordechai. So the

24:27Haggadah has some beautiful things that, if you review them, you'll see Am Yisrael suffered tremendously. You see that Am Yisrael saw miracles. Each one of the plagues has its own beautiful story, which we went over in other shiurim. I'll go over it briefly and then go over the last part of the shiur to see how we can apply all of what we just learned and summarize it to get some chizuk for the holiday. The blood, it's one of the ways that Hashem punished the Egyptians, but it's also one of the ways that Hashem also punished the Jews. Now, in the past, I told you He rewarded the Jews. I didn't make a mistake. Punished the Jews. Highly punished the Jews. Chazal tell us, what was the number one food that we ate in Egypt? Fish. Water turns to blood. Guess what? All the fish died.

25:29So Am Yisrael thought, "Oh, see, Hashem hates us. There's no salvation. See, I got fired from my job. See, I can't find a zivug. See, I can't do this. See, I can't do that." We complain to Hashem because we think that the only thing that's in front of us, the wall in front of us, that's it. Hashem says, "Wait, wait, son. Wait, son, wait. Let me show you. Let me show you. I'm going to close this door. Why? Because I want to open a much better one." So yes, I'm going to close the door of the fish, but this very same plague is going to make everybody millionaires. So it looked like a punishment for the Jews in the beginning, but if you believed in it, you saw the whole story turn into a blessing. The same thing goes with everything. Not just the plagues, all of life. All of life. There's no such thing as a curse. The curse is a blessing. You should give it time.

26:31Give it time. Now, the Tzefardea started with one frog, as I told you in the past, and turned into millions of countless frogs. But also some of the sages say that it wasn't just frogs, it was also alligators and crocodiles. It's very interesting. But the frogs, mamash, tortured the Egyptians to the point where they literally went inside their bodies, like the pasuk says. Then the Kinim were disgusting, just even from the drawing I'm seeing right now. Disgusting. I don't know how they all committed suicide, but they literally infested every single thing you could possibly imagine. But this was what? Why did Hashem do this? Because the evil Egyptians did not let the Jewish women go to the mikveh. This is before Matan Torah. This is before Matan Torah, a woman was still obligated to go to the mikveh. There was still Taharat HaMishpacha. Before Matan Torah, needless to say, 3,300 years after Matan Torah, what happens if a woman doesn't go to the mikveh? And she's intimate with her husband. You know what? Even if she's not intimate with her husband, she's single, but she has a boyfriend. And she holds hands with him on the street when they go to the mall together.

28:01I will tell you. People have skin diseases, there's a reason for it. People have strange things appear in their house, bugs and stuff like that, there's a reason for it. Sometimes it's that. Sometimes it's this. It's not that hard to go to the mikveh. Why? Because today the mikvehs are so beautiful and so clean. I mean, you have to literally hate G-d not to go. I want to go to a women's mikveh. It's so beautiful. I wish the men's mikveh were like that. Women's mikvehs, mamash, beautiful. Each one, they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on them. They should. It's a Kiddush Hashem to have a beautiful mikveh for women. But, I mean, it's beautiful. It's nice. It's clean. And some fools that don't know anything say, no, why? There's other women there. It's disgusting. Oh yeah, how come you don't say the pool is disgusting? That you went to the hotel, but you dipped into the pool where all the kids do their stuff in there. You never said anything. Oh, there's chlorine. There's chlorine in the mikveh also. And by the way, nobody pees in the mikveh. We don't bring little children into the mikveh. So,

29:16Reality is, Rabotai, Hashem gave women a mitzvah, but it's not just to go dip into a mikveh. It's to keep yourself pure all the time, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, your whole life. You have to keep yourself pure. Even when you're tameh, you have to be pure. How can you be pure when you're tameh? By not violating that. By not touching another man when you're not allowed to. When you're not married, and also when even if you are married, but when you have your menstrual cycle. Arov is another one of the plagues where Hashem changed nature, showing everyone that He's the one that's in control of nature because He literally brought the predators from all over the world with their climate. Meaning if He just brought a polar bear, to Egypt, you'd say, oh yeah, maybe this polar bear is different. And if you brought a gorilla, okay, this gorilla is different. But no, no, no. These animals have their own unique climate that they could survive under. They can't survive in the desert. So what did Hashem do? Wherever these animals were, their climate traveled with them.

30:34So, imagine the tiger is running 50 miles an hour, and the jungle is going with him. I mean, it's like literally, right now it's glass, then it's a jungle, then it's back to glass again. I mean, even the sci-fi movies couldn't figure this stuff out. Unbelievable stuff happened in Egypt. They killed all of their cattle, their animals, gave them a plague that hurt their pockets even more. Then, shechin... making my story of seven to ten years of suffering with infections seem like child's play if you look at these people, what happened to their skin, much infections from head to toe. I honestly don't understand how they didn't all commit suicide. Some did actually, but not all, not enough. Then you have the Barad, which we talked about, it's the hail with lava inside it, and the Arbeh, the locusts. which, by the way, are actually kosher to eat for Yemenite Jews, but we don't really know which ones are which because they all look to us like grasshoppers. But anyway, what was the Arbeh? The Arbeh did two major damages. One, it damaged by eating all of their food. It's like having, you know, a...

31:53budget for Pesach, but then you invite your family over and you didn't realize that each one of them has 5, 6, 7 kids and 39 people show up to your house. That's like Arbeh, showed up to your house. Why? By the time the holiday is over, the walls are heaving. There's nothing left. There's nothing left. There's no bottles, there's no chairs, there's nothing left. Why? Everybody's hungry. What are you going to do? Baruch Hashem. But that's like Arbeh. But he was prepared. But the second thing that he did is that Hashem sent the locusts to go eat the Egyptians' eyes. Eat their eyes. So, the next part is Choshech, which was another miraculous event of its own, of how Hashem, number one, showed all of the righteous or at least the ones that were trying to be righteous, that He favors them. Why? If they couldn't see what's in front of them, that means they were already dead. Because also, during the plague of darkness, that's when He killed all the wicked. Not the Egyptians, the Jews. That's when He killed all of them. And He did it specifically during that plague because He didn't want the Egyptians to see Him killing, technically, His own children.

33:19And then Makkat Bechorot, the slaying of the firstborn, has several interesting aspects to it. Aside from the obvious fact that He killed the firstborn, it was also a time when He destroyed all of the statues. The Avodah Zarah statues. He destroyed a lot of them. Why? Because in those times there was a lot of kishuf. The Gemara says ten levels of kishuf, of witchcraft, came to the world and nine of them were given to the Egyptians. So the Egyptians had the power through tum'ah to make the statues move, talk, and do stuff. That's also part of the reason why Bnei Yisrael could not escape even if they wanted to. Because as soon as somebody broke the line, broke the border, either the statue would catch them or make an alarm, something would happen, and the Jew would die.

34:26So the only ones that tried and succeeded in actually escaping the border were part of the tribe of Ephraim, not the whole tribe, because we still had some left after it. We see in the Tanach there's still a tribe of Ephraim left that unfortunately made a big sin. But anyway, part of the tribe of Ephraim did escape, but because Hashem did not permit this, He had the Philistines kill them. So, here we see that the plagues, each one of them, had a beautiful miracle attached to it. If you read into it, you see how the Sages arrived at different numbers in order to magnify the beauty of the event, the enormity of the event. And then you arrive at the next part, which is an interesting part of the Haggadah that usually we like to sing, but very few people actually delve into what's happening here. When we say, if He had, meaning if Hashem had taken us out of Egypt but not executed judgment upon them, meaning He let us leave, but He left the Egyptians alone, it would have been enough. But He did that too.

35:41And again, we continue. If He had not executed judgment upon them and not upon their gods, it would have been enough. Not only did He destroy them, He destroyed their idols. And not only did this, not only that, and everything we say, He could have done this, He could have done that, and so on and so forth. It would have already been enough. Meaning that here is a time to have hakarat hatov to Hashem for showing you love. Hashem bringing His nation salvation is not necessarily love. It's delivering on a promise. He promised Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov. But when He does above and beyond what's necessary, that's a show of love. Where's an example of that that we see? When David, the King of Israel, fought against Golyat HaRasha. Now David, what did he have? He had a couple of rocks and a sling. a little stick. So Goliath looks at him and goes, "What do you think, I'm a dog? You come with a stick?" David, the Midrash tells us, says to him, "You come with your shields, you come with your sword; I come in the name of Hashem." Pak! Kills him.

36:59The rock kills him. The rock pierces the steel, which, as I explained to you in the past, was because he used the name of an angel that helped him open the steel and let the rock penetrate his helmet and kill Goliath. But that salvation that Hashem showed David is not love; it's a promise. What's love, the Gemara says? What's love? Love is that Hashem made Goliath fall forward, not backward. Why? If you get hit by something, what happens? You fall backward. Naturally, that's the way it works. You get hit, you fall backward. Here, Hashem changed nature. He got hit, but he fell forward. Why? He says, David, I love you. I love you so much, I don't want you to spend the extra 20, 30 seconds walking an extra 20 feet because he's so big. If he fell backward, that means that David HaMelech has to walk a little more. David, I love you so much, I don't want you to walk a little more. I'll get him right to you. Right to you, he's gonna fall right to you, chop off his head, bring him to the army, everything is good. Meaning that when HaKadosh Baruch Hu brings salvation,

38:16That's one thing. But when He brings it to us, He brings it to us sweet. Sweet. That's why when we ask for prayer, we don't always ask for specific things. We ask for clarity. We ask to know what to do. Why? Because that's as sweet as can be. The Torah says that when Yocheved and Miriam had fear of Hashem and therefore they didn't kill the babies, even though Paro told them. Now, technically, what would be the salvation? Salvation would be that Hashem wouldn't have Pharaoh find out and He would let them live. No. What did He do? He saw. Hashem saw they feared Him. He didn't say, Hashem saw He saved lives. It says, Hashem saw they feared Him, so He gave them houses. Gave them houses. Now, since they didn't take this to their head, they continued being servants of Hashem, He gave them another test. What happened? Now you have to give away your baby. You have to put him in a little basket. Why? Because you have emunah in Hashem that HaKadosh Baruch Hu is going to protect him. How? You don't know. It's not your business. Where's the sweetness? Sweetness is not only once Batya bat Pharaoh got Moshe Rabbeinu, she needed somebody to breastfeed her baby.

39:39So she found who? Miriam. Miriam says, "Oh, I think I know somebody. I think I know somebody that can help you." Who should she bring? Her mom. Moshe's mom. What's the sweetness? The sweetness is that she was able to breastfeed her baby, raise her baby for the first few years, and get paid for it. Get $10,000 a month from the king. $10,000 a month from your enemy. For what? For breastfeeding your own baby. That's sweetness. That's HaKadosh Baruch Hu saying, "I love you." All of us, if we look at the things that have happened in our life, we can find that. All of us, we can find that. When salvation arrived for certain things, you see that there are certain things, you know what? Hashem didn't actually have to do this. Like He could have done that, but not this. That's what this whole Dayenu is about. Look for the sweetness, not just in Egypt, not just in the Exodus, but in your life. Look for the things that HaKadosh Baruch Hu is doing for you. Technically, He doesn't have to. It's above and beyond. It's above and beyond. You have the meal. You eat. Eat part. Please, please do not forget to do Birkat HaMazon with kavanah. It's the most important blessing out of all of our blessings. Birkat HaMazon is critical. It's more important than Shema Yisrael. It's more important than Amidah.

41:07Needless to say, it's very important during the time of Pesach, during the seder. If you fast forward after the Birkat HaMazon, you read the Hallel. When you read the Hallel, you see some beautiful things that apparently the politically correct rabbis and liberal Jews of the world are not going to like. Why? Because it says the opposite of what they say. Like Mirvis and company and some other rabbis in the world, they saw that when a church was burnt to ashes, instead of doing a blessing from the Torah that Hashem will destroy all idolatry, especially a place that destroyed idolatry. destroyed our Oral Torah, destroyed books and books, tens of thousands of books of our Oral Torah, our holy Torah, in public, and had mamash, a practice of killing Jews. Instead of doing a blessing on it, they say, "Oh, we mourn. Oh, wow, chaval. Oh, wow, what a tragedy." Rabotai, if you look at your prayer every day, Mincha,

42:14You read certain verses from the Torah, from Tehillim, and so on. You say to Hashem, about the glory of your kingdom, they will speak. They will declare your power. Why? To make it known to humankind. of your mighty deeds, of your glory, of your splendor, of your kingdom. Your kingdom, not the idol. Not Jesus. Not Buddha. Not Muhammad. Not Pikachu. No! Not money. Hashem. When the enemy of Hashem is destroyed, you're supposed to celebrate. Not mourn. You don't want to celebrate? Be quiet at least. The Haggadah of Pesach, because apparently people don't know what they're saying in the Siddur, the Haggadah of Pesach has the Hallel that reminds us. What does it say in the beginning of the Hallel? Lo lanu Hashem, lo lanu, right? And then it says, not for us Hashem, not for us, but for Your name. What does it say? Atzabeihem kesef v'zahav ma'aseh yedei adam.

43:35They're disgusting idols of silver and gold, the work of man's hand. The Hallel, when you're thanking Hashem, how do you thank Hashem? By glorifying His name. How do you glorify His name? By desecrating the idols. That's how you glorify Hashem's name. The Gemara in Masechet Megillah says, what's a Jew? A Jew is someone that goes against idolatry. That's a Jew. That's why Mordechai was called a Jew. That's why Batya was called a Jew. Before Matan Torah, she was called a Jew. Why? She went against idolatry. That's a Jew. If you don't go against idolatry, you have a serious problem with your mind. Why? You're not glorifying Hashem's name. Rav Dov Kook, one of the Gedolei HaDor right now, one of the biggest Mekubalim in our generation, he says, anyone that wants special miracles, like above and beyond miracles, in this generation, must fight Christianity. Why? It's Tum'ah of Tum'ah. You can't fight Christianity if you don't know Torah. Don't just watch debates. Learn Torah first. Leave debates for the experts who have already learned Torah. But here, Rabotai HaKedoshim, HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, part of sanctifying My name is publicizing that their ideology is disgusting. Their church is disgusting. Yeah, but it's not politically correct. Perfect. Yeah, but people are not going to like me. Good. Those people, it's good that they don't like you.

45:04Yeah, it's going to create anti-Semitism. That's not true. Anti-Semitism exists one way or the other. One way or another, anti-Semitism is going to increase. No, no, but it's going to increase it. No, only Hashem is increasing it. You saying that your statement will increase anti-Semitism is actually heresy. It's kefirah from the Torah. The Ramban will call you a kofer. Kofer. Can't count for a minyan. No, your statement is making anti-Semitism. No, my friend. Hashem makes anti-Semitism. It's one of the tools He uses. Now, who's going to do this? That's what the first paragraph says. The first paragraph says, He's their help. He's their shield. Who is Hashem, the helper and the shield? Who does He protect? He protects the house of Aharon. He protects those who fear Hashem. Those who trust Hashem. That's who He protects. So, you see, a person that has no Yirat Shamayim is not going to be able to say Hallel with Kavanah. He's not going to be able to fight Christianity with all of his heart. Why? Because, first of all, he doesn't see so much wrong with it. And, second of all, he has a disconnect between him and Hashem.

46:26She has a disconnect between her and Hashem. Why? Because she feels bad to insult the church. He feels bad to insult the Christians. How come you don't feel bad that they murdered millions of us every generation? Which is, by the way, what the Haggadah started with. The Haggadah starts with what? What does the Haggadah start with? In the beginning, before you even go into the story, the Haggadah starts with something wonderful. The Haggadah says, by the way, all the stuff that's happening, what happened over here in Egypt, Hashem made a promise. Hashem made a promise. What? It's going to happen in every generation. And you are going to sing it. You're going to sing about the fact that it's happening in every generation. What song? What are we singing? This is a promise.

47:29of what stood for our fathers and for us, because not just one rose up against us to destroy us, rather in every generation and generation they rise up against us to destroy us. But the Holy One, blessed is He, saves us from their hand. What do you mean every generation and generation? Why don't you say everything happened? No, no. Every generation, including your generation. If the Christians haven't started killing you, or the Muslims haven't started killing you, don't worry, it's going to happen soon. But you try. But HaKadosh Baruch Hu is going to protect you if you believe in Him, if you trust Him. That's the difference. To think that now is different, that this generation is different, is a very serious problem. You have no idea that you are reliving the mistakes of our brothers and sisters who got themselves killed. So Pesach is a time to uncover our emunah. The Zohar HaKadosh calls the matzah lechem ha'emunah. The sages say that there are three major things that a person needs to do in order to acquire emunah, real emunah. One, emunah is developed by overcoming obstacles. You have an obstacle in your life; if you accept that obstacle as coming from Hashem and as being good for you, that will increase your emunah.

49:00if you complain about it non-stop, not only will it not increase your emunah, it will decrease it. It will hurt your emunah. Because if you non-stop complain, you think as if Hashem has nothing to do but just to torture you. Second, you want to get to the next level of emunah? Public embarrassment. Wonderful, wonderful, welcome public embarrassment. What kind of public embarrassment? Oh, well, He embarrassed you in front of everybody. She embarrassed you in front of everybody. And you? Nothing. Not a word. Nothing. Why? Because you know this embarrassment? He's a shaliach. He's just a messenger from Hashem. She's just a messenger from Hashem. Public embarrassment? Most of us, something sounds like an embarrassment. We're already... We're already ready to fight. But here, rabotai, public embarrassment. You have an obstacle, lose some money, that's the first level. You want to get to the second level of emunah? It says public embarrassment. What's the third level? Not just money problems. Not just public embarrassment.

50:24But what the Torah says is that it can even make the righteous crazy. What? Poverty. Overcoming the test of poverty, you can become close to G-d. But overcoming it, not by saying "Oh, poor me," no. Overcoming it is saying "Baruch Hashem." Like who? Like Rabbi Eliyahu HaKohen. Rabbi Eliyahu HaKohen lived about 300 years ago. Wrote the Shevet Mussar, and a few other books. About 40 books. Only 40 books. Rabbi Eliyahu HaKohen was rich. Very, very rich. But as Hashem would have it, he lost all of his money. When he lost all of it, he thanked Hashem. He did a special thank you to Hashem. A special thank you to Hashem. "Oh Hashem, I lost all my money. Millions and millions of dollars. Oh Hashem." All I was thinking, "Well, this guy." Living on money. Yeah. Why? He knew the money came from Hashem. He knew the money was taken by Hashem. He thanked Hashem for interacting with him. Thank you. One day, before Pesach, a poor man comes up to Rabbi Eliyahu HaKohen and asks him, "Rabbi, every year you give money to hundreds and hundreds of Jews. Please help me."

51:48I don't have any money for Pesach. I don't have food for Pesach. Rabbi Eliyahu HaKohen started crying. He cried to Hashem. He said, Hashem, I don't have money for my Pesach. I don't have matzah. I don't have matzah. I don't have matzah. Rabbi Eliyahu HaKohen, the Gadol HaDor, doesn't have matzah to eat for Pesach. But he's not crying about his matzah. He said, Hashem, please just give me money so I can help him. Give me money so I can help the poor people. Not for me. Keep me poor. But just let me help them. That's a person who understands what his mission is in the world. At that moment, when he cried, the poor man revealed himself and said, "I'm Eliyahu HaNavi. And I'm here to tell you, because you prayed for Hashem to give you for them, for the poor..." You are going to get all your money back. You become rich again. That's what happened. That, rabotai, is salvation, but it's sweet. Why? Not only did you pass the test, you're getting paid for it right now. Now, the biggest difference between Am Yisrael and the non-Jews

53:09the biggest difference between a righteous Jew who sanctifies Hashem's name by worshiping Him, by serving Him, by praying to Him, by learning His Torah, and a Jew who is on autopilot, a Jew who is not really interested in being a Jew. What's the difference? The difference is how they deal with trauma. When a person deals with trauma usually they don't want to talk about it. Why? It's traumatizing. They want to forget about it, as if it never happened. They have nightmares, they have night terrors about it. But here we see in the Haggadah, something very unique. Rabbi Fein says, look at the interesting part of Am Yisrael. What are we doing throughout the entire Haggadah? What are we doing? We are reviewing the details of details, and the more details, the more Mevorach, the more blessing.

54:09The details of details of details of what? The biggest trauma that ever happened to Am Yisrael. That's what we're reviewing at the Seder with the little kids, with the parents, with the grandparents, with the guests, with everybody. That's the main focus, to review the trauma. what happened, how they killed millions of us, how we used to be idol worshippers, how we didn't do what Hashem wanted, how all these horrible things happened, how 80% of us died in Egypt. All of that stuff, we have to review it. Why? Why are we reviewing the trauma? Why can't we be like the goyim that escaped their trauma, pretend like it never happened? Why? Because, Rabotai, the key to emunah in HaKadosh Baruch Hu is overcoming the obstacles, overcoming the trauma, seeing the light in the trauma, seeing HaKadosh Baruch Hu's salvation at the end of the trauma. You see, that's where Hashem saved you. He saved you at the end. That's the point of the whole Haggadah. The whole Haggadah is, okay, there was suffering, there was murder, there was this, there was that, there was everything. All the horrible things in the world. But look at what happened at the end.

55:24You became Am Yisrael, the chosen people. The greatest people on the face of the planet. The people of the book. You have a book that HaKadosh Baruch Hu wrote to you. He wrote to you. He wrote not to them. To you, He wrote it. Hashem wrote you a book. It's called Torah. I mean, it can't get better than that. If that's the outcome of all that trauma, it's worth it. People sacrifice their lives just to make a few dollars. If you told somebody, listen, what if I gave you a book and I told you Eliyahu HaNavi wrote it? You'd pay for it? Yeah. How much? Good money. A thousand bucks? For sure. Ten thousand? It's signed by Eliyahu? For sure. Yeah, ten thousand. A hundred thousand? If it's original ink. What if I got you a blessing from Eliyahu HaNavi, came to your house, gave you a blessing? How much would you pay for that? A million bucks, check, no problem. 500,000 cash. What if he gave you any blessing you want? Oh, that's, just name your price. Eliyahu HaNavi, for sure. If he brought Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai with him. Eliyahu HaNavi, Rabbi Shimon, Rabbi Akiva, all came to your house, gave you a blessing. How much would you pay for it? Take the bank.

56:48I have something better. HaKadosh Baruch Hu. HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Be'atzmo. Himself. gives you an endless amount of blessings every single second you're alive, reading His Torah, learning His Torah, fulfilling His Torah, following His mitzvot, having a seder with real significance, going over the trauma for the sake of building your emunah by seeing the light in all of that darkness. To finalize tonight, I'll give you a story that, in my opinion, it was worth coming to the world just to listen to the story. Pesach, 1945. The Holocaust is at its end, but nonetheless, people are being murdered, killed,

57:54And Bergen-Belsen, the Rebbe of Bluzhov, is in the camp, and he is a tzaddik who is so precise with his avodat Hashem that he's counting the days and the hours to make sure that he knows when to pray, when to tell people Shabbat, when to tell people Pesach, Technically, you're an Anus. You're in a concentration camp. They're killing people in the middle of the day for no reason. All the Rebbe of Bluzhov has is Hashem. One day, a week before Pesach, he tells everyone, "Rabbotai, Pesach is coming. Pesach." They ask, "What do you want from us? We have to make matzah. Matzah, we need it in two days. We don't have bread. You want us to make matzah?" He responds, "It doesn't make any sense. We have to find a way to make matzah."

58:55and he starts getting everybody together, and they start gathering materials. They make matzah. I mean, miracle after miracle, the whole week, everybody's grinding up a grain here, a grain there, a grain here, a grain there, they make matzah. The night of the Seder, a German general, yimach shemo v'zichro, comes into the place. He sees there's matzah. He says, "Who's responsible for this?" Everybody looks at the Rebbe. He takes one of his bats and he starts literally breaking all of his bones. He starts hitting him with the intention to kill him. The fact that he didn't kill him is a pure miracle, no different than Mount Sinai. He starts hitting him and hitting him and hitting him. But just to make sure that everybody gets the point, he takes all of the matzah, ruins it, and defecates on it to make sure no one's eating matzah. After he leaves, there's blood everywhere. Some weren't even sure if the Rebbe is still alive. But after some time, he

1:00:19wakes up, first question, is it still night? Meaning it's still the same day. And I say, yes. He says, okay, let's have the seder. What? Let's have the seder. He goes, Rebbe, you look like you just got hit by a train. He goes, it doesn't make a difference. We're still not absolved from the mitzvah of doing Leil HaSeder. We have to have a little Seder. Rabbi, we don't have anything. No, no, we'll do the Seder. Okay. What are they going to do? Fine, let's do the Seder. What are we going to do? Everybody gets together. Let's start off with what? Kadesh. Do Kiddush. Oh, wine. Okay, wine. We don't have wine, Rabbi. Oh, wine. It's like our blood. Look, Baruch Hashem, I have a lot of blood over here, all over the place. That is symbolic of the wine. Urchatz. Wash. Oh, look, also, the Egyptians, Baruch Hashem, the Nazis, same thing. Baruch Hashem, all of us have blood on us. That is symbolic of Urchatz. Karpas. Karpas. Oh, we're slaves right now. Same thing, symbolic of that. They get all the way to Matzah. Okay, what about Matzah? He ruined everything. He defecated on everything. There's no Matzah.

1:01:48Takes his hand. He opens his hand. He says, before he started hitting me, I took a small little piece. A small little piece and I have it in my hand. This is the matzah. Everybody said, wow. So they're waiting for him to eat it. He said, no. You're Jews too. We're going to have a lottery. We're going to have a lottery of who is going to eat the matzah. They said, Rebbe. You're the one that toiled for it. You're the one that had the idea for it. You're the one that almost died for it. Well, I'm more Jewish than you. No. We're going to have a lottery. Whoever wins is going to get the matzah. At that moment, A lady comes from the back and says, "Rebbe, Rebbe, please, please, please, let me through." He let her through. It's a woman with a four-year-old kid, a little boy. She says, "Rebbe, you see, my son, his whole life he's been here in the concentration camp. He's never celebrated Pesach. This is the first Pesach he's ever celebrated. Now, if you let him eat the matzah,"

1:03:05then he will have something to remember as Pesach. And that's also a mitzvah of teaching our kids. The Rebbe says, you're right. A four-year-old little boy, he gets the matzah. And that's what happened. Some time passed. The Rebbe of Bolozov left. went to the United States, started a small kehillah, grew little by little. One day, a woman comes to the Beit Midrash. She's asking to speak to the Admor, to Rabbi of Bolozov. He said, I'm sorry, ma'am. He doesn't speak to women one-on-one. She starts hysterically crying. She says, "I need to speak to him. I don't have anybody else. I went through the Holocaust. I lost my husband. Please, please, please." They go to the Rabbi and say, "I don't know, this woman is crying. Oh, a Jewish woman is crying. Bring her up right away. Bring her up right away." Oh, they bring her up. She says, "Rabbi..."

1:04:20I went through the Holocaust. Disaster. And after the Holocaust, for most people who don’t know, the disaster didn’t end. There were a lot of problems after the Holocaust. Germans were pretending to be Jews. You didn’t know who was Jewish or not. A lot of Jews were doing their best. There were a lot of problems after the Holocaust. So she said to him, she said, All I have, I have my kid. I lost my husband. And now I need to get married, start a new life. But I don't know who I can trust. I don't know if I'm going to get somebody who has some type of trauma from the Holocaust. And then I'm going to, you know, I don't know what he's going to do to me. Or if he's Jewish or he's not. Can the Rabbi please help me? I can't take any more suffering. He says, sure, sure, I'll help you. He says, I have a list of people that they're offering me. And I don't know who these people are, but can the Rabbi review the list and maybe just tell me, verify who these people are? He says, yeah, do you have any of the names? She says, yeah, I have one name here. He says, Israel Lifshitz. Oh, I know him. I know him. No, Rabbi, what do you think? Oh, he's a good person. He's a good person, he's reliable. And, yeah, you should go on a date with him. Really? Yeah, you should go on a date with him. He's reliable, he's a good person.

1:05:46Thank you, Kvoda Rav. I said, listen, meet him at a place where there are other people, you know, a quiet place. And get to know him. See where it goes. Thank you, Kvoda Rav. I really appreciate it. They set up a shidduch meeting. She shows up to the meeting. What does she see? She's meeting the Rebbe of Bozov. No, no, no, Kvoda Rav, I'm sorry. I didn't mean for you to come to the meeting and oversee it that way. No, I know the rabbi is very busy. I know the rabbi is very busy. I don't know, Kvoda Rav, you're going out of your way. You don't have to do it. He says, no, no, I need to be here. Why? I'm Yisrael Lipshitz. I'm Yisrael Lipshitz. Who's the woman? The one with the four-year-old. They got married, and today, the Admor, the leader, is that four-year-old. It's that four-year-old. He's the leader. He's the Admor. That's Hashem being sweet. That's Hashem being sweet. When the salvation comes, it's as sweet as can be.

1:07:13but on the way to salvation, there may be some bones crushed. There may be some tragedy. It may look as ugly as can be. Pesach is a time that we're reminded that as ugly as it can be, Hashem is driving the wheel. Hashem knows what He's doing. As ugly as certain things in our life look, Certain tragedies, certain issues that are happening, fighting, whatever it is. As long as you're connected to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, you need to know rule number one: He is the one doing all of it. All of it. As ugly as it is, He's in it with you. And He'll get you out of it also. Pesach is a time for us to connect to HaKadosh Baruch Hu on the highest level. Through the trauma that our brothers and sisters went through, the trauma that our forefathers went through, and the trauma that we're going through. Connect to Him through that. Why? Because if you connect to Him through the tragedy, you're also going to connect to Him through the salvation. Overcoming the obstacles is what builds our emunah.

1:08:36Any questions? You said before that we should celebrate when our enemies are destroyed. Why have I learned in the past, though, that you shouldn't cheer at the fall of your enemy? It shouldn't bring you happiness. If your enemy is just your enemy, then no. But if your enemy is an enemy of God, then yes. If, let's say, somebody insulted you and he's your enemy. That's one thing. You're not allowed to take pride in somebody else's fall if it's a personal issue between you and him. But if that enemy is an enemy of G-d, then as a pasuk in the Torah says, there's no peace to the wicked, Hashem said. Meaning that if they're Hashem's enemies, you're obligated to celebrate their fall. Obligated. The person that desecrates Hashem's name falls, it's a mitzvah. It's a mitzvah. In fact, the Gemara in Masechet Rosh Hashanah, it says right here, page 31a, that the Leviim used to sing.

1:09:50A different song every day. But on Wednesday, they had a special song in Tehillim that, until today, traditionally, we still sing it. We're not Leviim, but we still sing it in our tefillah. What's the song? Hashem is the God of vengeance. The God of vengeance has arrived. So, the Gemara says, who is this about? What is this God of vengeance? We're singing every Wednesday, why? In the Beit HaMikdash, they were singing this, why? He says, Wednesday is the day we sing, what? For the inevitable and eventual vengeance that Hashem will take against His enemies. Who are His enemies? Idolatry. When an idol falls, that makes Hashem happy. When an idol falls, you're supposed to be happy. That's the point. You say it in your prayer. Honestly, I think if people just simply learned their Siddur, they'd already do Teshuva. Not that I understand every single word I ever read, but seriously, if you just simply understand what you're saying in prayer, it already helps. Obviously, if you learn a little bit of Gemara, it helps to understand what's in the Siddur too, but the point I'm trying to say is that it's very, very important to know you are chosen, not because you're better.

1:11:12but because your forefathers were better. But that means that you have to continue doing what they did. Avraham Avinu destroyed idolatry. Even though it put his whole life at risk, he jumped into a fire. Moshe Rabbeinu had idolatry his whole life around him. He ran away from it. All of the tzaddikim had to fight it. Why? That's our job. That's our job in the world. So when we see idols falling, those are enemies of God. And if the enemy of God is not your enemy, there's a problem with your ideology. Because that's what David HaMelech says: "I hate those who hate You. Your enemies are my enemies." So we're not saying go start killing Christians in the street or Arabs in the street. That's not what we're saying. We're not hating them personally. We hate their beliefs, and we hate what they do with it. Hopefully, they all do teshuva. But the point is that if a person, even if he's a Jew, if he's an idol worshiper, if he is a missionary, you pray for him to die.

1:12:24You also pray for him to do teshuva, but you pray in the same exact paragraph. You pray for him to do teshuva, you pray for him to die. Why? Whichever happens first. If he does teshuva, that's preferable. But if he's not going to do teshuva, better off he dies. Even if he's a Jew, needless to say, a non-Jew. Why? Because he's the enemy of your Father in Heaven. That's a big deal. It's not a personal hatred toward him that you're saying, oh, he has a funny-looking nose. Oh, he comes from a certain family. No, that has nothing to do with that. It's what he does that desecrates Hashem's name. Just imagine, I don't know, if you love your parents, if you love somebody in your life, let's say your wife or your husband or whatever, and somebody decided to make a huge billboard and put... embarrassing pictures of them and insulting them in the worst possible way on every single highway all over the world. What are you going to say? Yeah, but you know, everybody's got their days. What are you going to say? What kind of excuse do you have for that? Nothing. Yeah, you hate the person. Why? Because he's an enemy of somebody you love. If you don't love Hashem, then that's a different issue. Next.

1:13:36Well, if it's a mitzvah to destroy idolatry, how come I've heard other people say that you shouldn't waste your time disproving Christianity to the Christians? You shouldn't waste your time, you know. Because there are priorities. First, your first responsibility is to save yourself. Your second responsibility is to save your brothers and sisters. Third responsibility is to save people that are already looking for righteousness. And only the last one is to fight the idolatry. So, first and foremost, the vast majority of the people in the world have not even begun to save themselves. The vast majority of people don't know anywhere near enough Torah, which is what the basic requirement is. So, if we simply just learn what the Torah says, that already puts us in a different status. The second thing is helping our brothers and sisters. If you have time to spread messages, you should spread messages that are helping Jews. Why? Because they have a bigger priority on your list than some Christian that you're trying to help get out of Christianity.

1:14:44as nice as it is to help Christians leave Christianity, which Baruch Hashem we've helped many of them, and we continue to help them, they're not our priority, and they won't be. Why? Because that's not our priority. We'd like to, if it happens, great, if there's an opportunity to do it, great, but it's not going to be on the time that you're obligated to do it for a Jew. Why? Because the Jew is your first responsibility. It's just like, for example, if there's a fire, you have your son, Or your cousin. Okay, your cousin, you love him. He's great. He's a nice guy. He had a barbecue with you last week. But you're not going to save him before your son. Why? Because it's your son. If you're a normal parent, you're going to save your son first. Why? Because that's reality. It's not that you don't like the other one; it's that your son has a priority. Same thing, your brother has a priority over your cousin. Same thing. Suddenly, you don't like your cousin, so you have more priority. Needless to say, if your cousin is currently actually your enemy too. So, the point is that you have to save yourself, then your brothers and sisters, and only then can you start talking about that. Baruch Hashem, I think none of us here, myself included,

1:15:58are at a level where we can dedicate our time solely to saving Christians and Muslims and so on. Why? Number one, we still haven't even begun to save ourselves. And number two, we still haven't begun to touch even an ounce of how many of our brothers and sisters we have to save. Until we do a lot of that, then we can still worry about that. If they come, and you know, they ask, and I have many students who are, Baruch Hashem, leaving Christianity, or have left Christianity, and I help them. But again, it's only if they come on their own, only if it's something that's not going to take more than the time that you're obligated to do for yourself and for others. So it's important to spread the message, but that's also part of the benefit of when somebody is trying to do a mitzvah of honoring Hashem, Hashem allows them to help many other people do the same. So what we teach, which is predominantly Mussar, is applicable both to Jews and non-Jews. So non-Jews can listen and learn and follow the overwhelming majority of all of our shiurim. Why? Because it talks about ethics that they're obligated to do anyway.

1:17:08So it also helps them. But as far as making a special class or special videos just for that, not if it's going to come at the time of the one that you're responsible for. Next. On the subject of idolatry, Shabbat is usually or normally mentioned together with mitzvot for Jews to break in. But I think in Berachot, it talks about how Hashem is going to punish the goyim for not accepting the Shabbat. If it is the case for goyim, then how much worse does it make it for Jews who don't keep Shabbat in our time? Right, well the goyim are not allowed to keep Shabbat like we keep Shabbat because that would be inventing a new religion according to the Rambam. At the same token, a goy is allowed to have a special meal on Shabbat. They're allowed to do a lot of things, but they're not allowed to refrain from the 39 restrictions, the 39 melachot of Shabbat, specifically because it says it. They're not allowed to keep Shabbat the same way as a Jew, unless they're in the process of conversion, which then puts them in a completely different status. Now, a Jew that does not keep Shabbat and violates Shabbat openly is put in the same category as an idol worshiper.

1:18:35If that Jew dies that way, he has no share in the World to Come, unfortunately. If the Jew does teshuva, then his past is his past, and he can clean it all up, and have a share in the World to Come, and even have a fantastic share, better than most, because he's a Baal Teshuva. When a Jew violates Shabbat, the vast majority of times that people violate Shabbat today is due to ignorance. Most people either don't know that they're obligated to do it, meaning they think that if you're religious, you have to do it, but if you're not religious, you don't have to do it. Like it's not really an obligation. They know it exists. The vast majority of Jews know that Shabbat exists, but they don't think it's an obligation for everybody. But worse than that, that's a relative minority. the majority, which includes religious people who violate Shabbat without even realizing it, the majority of people who violate Shabbat, or even the majority of people who don't honor Shabbat as they're supposed to, which we're all guilty of at some point or another, is because we don't understand the significance of Shabbat.

1:19:49We don't understand the magnitude of Shabbat. We don't understand what it means to talk about things that are not appropriate on Shabbat. We don't understand what it means to make a mistake on Shabbat. We don't understand the significance of violating Shabbat, even accidentally. We don't understand. Ask people who know, they still, so the ones who don't know, you tell them, listen, yeah, Gehinom starts and it doesn't end, people can't comprehend that. They say, what do you mean Gehinom? There's a Gehinom? Well, I thought that was just Christians. Most religious people today do not believe in Gehinnom. They don't believe there's a reward and punishment. I told you, I showed you the other day. There's a recording I have from a religious woman, a supposedly religious woman. She says that the murderers, the rapists, and the religious people all go to heaven. Everybody goes to heaven. Nobody goes to Gehinnom. There's no such thing. She completely destroyed the Torah saying there's no reward and punishment. She says, "Who am I to say that I'm going to go to heaven and the murderer and the thief are not going to go to heaven? Why wouldn't they go to heaven? That's their choice." This is a Hasidic woman. She's a Hasidic woman. I don't know what Hasidut teaches such nonsense. Even Christianity doesn't say such stupid things. But that's the thing. Most people don't understand. Most people don't understand the magnitude of violating Shabbat. Why? Because instead of using our brain, we use our hearts.

1:21:12Why does she think like that? Because her grandfather was secular. She says in the recording, "Our grandfather was secular, so there's no way that our grandfather is not going to be in heaven with her." And guess what? All of us have somebody that's secular. All of us have somebody that's probably going to Gehinom. All of us. People sometimes ask me, "Rabbi, don't you know such and such?" "Yeah." "Don't you know him for a long time?" "Yeah." "You know he doesn't keep Shabbat?" "I said, yeah." "He said, so?" "He said, there's a place in Gehinom for him too." Why? There's a place in Gehinom for everybody. There's even a welcome sign: "Welcome to Gehinom. One-way street. Do not enter, but if you did..." Rabbi, isn't it actually a privilege to go to Gehinom though? Because after, you go to Olam Haba? I'd rather go to heaven. No, but I'm saying, don't some people not even have the fortune to make it to Gehinom? They go to a worse place.

1:22:14Yes, but needless to say, if you can avoid going to Gehinom altogether, that should be the goal. Not to say, oh yeah, Gehinom is a good place. It's not a good place. There's nothing good about it. Nothing good about it. It's a torture. It's fire. It's a lot of horrible, horrible things. We should do everything possible to avoid Gehinom, which from my knowledge, the only way to avoid that is by helping other people do teshuva. Aside from us doing teshuva, helping other people do teshuva. And the reason why is because there are many sins that we've made that we forgot we made them. Or there are certain sins that we don't even know how to do teshuva for. So the only way for us to fix that stuff is by helping other people do teshuva because they'll do those mitzvot which, in essence, will clean our record of it, if you will. So... Gehinnom is not a place to aspire to be. Yes, is it possible for even righteous people to be in Gehinnom for a short period of time? Absolutely, but it's not an aspiration. It's not anything that somebody says, "I can't wait to do it." Or no one ever says, "Oh, it's so wonderful to be there. You should go too." No, no one says that. It's a horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible thing.

1:23:33Horrible, horrible place that you should do everything possible to avoid. Rabbi Yisrael Salanter says that if people only knew what Gehinnom was, they would simply fulfill the entire Torah, not because of any reward, but just simply to avoid Gehinnom. That would be enough of a reward, even if there's no heaven. The point is, sages didn't say stuff like that, like some idiots today say, just to scare you. They had better things to do in their life than just to scare you. They didn't quote it all over the Gemara, all over the Tanach, all over the Chumash, all over the Mishnayot, all over the Zohar, all over Sifrei Tzaddikim, a million times, just to scare you. What, nobody has anything else to do with their life? So, the point is to do everything you possibly can to avoid it. Do teshuva, get other people to do teshuva. But during the time of Pesach, aside from obviously avoiding punishment and Gehinnom and all that stuff, it's a time for our personal salvation. It's a time for our personal connection with HaKadosh Baruch Hu, to see the light in the darkness. Our own personal darkness, our family's darkness,

1:24:56Whatever darkness you have in your life, hopefully it's very small; hopefully it's non-existent. But the point is that if it ever happens, it's good to be prepared for it before it happens. That's what the Gemara says. The Chachamim, they pray for the salvation before the problem. They don't wait for the problem to happen. So B'ezrat Hashem, this gives us a little bit of chizuk for Pesach. Chizuk of emunah, we utilize Pesach the right way. Avoid anger. Avoid altercation. If somebody embarrasses you at the seder, just know that it's HaKadosh Baruch Hu that's actually trying to lift you up. Even though you want to lift the other guy up, it's Hashem trying to lift you up. And the Rosh Hashem uses it. Before the seder, do a couple of things. One, go over the shiur again. Go over the makkot, all the plagues. And two, go over like two or three jokes. Try to remember two or three jokes. Why? Anytime somebody gets into an argument, you have to break it up. How? Give a joke. Give them a joke. Give them something of a joke. You know, like have a joke ready. Something. You know, like I'm not very good at jokes, but that's why I say study for it. We don't have any shiurim next week. Next week is family time with Hashem. Learning time with Hashem.

1:26:20But if anybody needs us or something, you can obviously always call 911. But if they don't want to help you, then you can also call us too. Baruch Adonai le'olam. Amen v'amen.