Enlightenment In Montreal

0:32Wonderful to be here in Montreal. Thank you for having me. May Hashem bless each and every one of you for hosting and for coming. We'll learn some Torah together. It's our first time in Montreal, and Baruch Hashem, it's been an adventure to get here. So that means it's going to be a lot of good things going to come out of this trip. Anytime things go easy in life, you know, the yetzer hara is not interested. It's not interested. Go, go, do, do, do what you want to do. But if there's a lot of hafraot, if there's a lot of disturbances, that means the yetzer hara is interested. And Baruch Hashem, it's been an adventure to get here. So that means a lot of good things are going to come out of this trip. Anytime things go easy in life, you know, the yetzer hara is not interested. It's not interested. Go, go, do, do, do what you want to do. But if there's a lot of hafraot, if there's a lot of disturbances, that means the yetzer hara is interested. You'll see, anytime a person wants to make a sin, the yetzer hara doesn't interfere. He wants to go to a club, the yetzer hara tells him, "No problem, someone's going to give you a ride." All of a sudden, someone wants to give you a ride. But you want to go to beit knesset, flat tire, car breaks down, there's no minyan, Hashem yerachem, all types of things happen.

1:32I just want to go pray. No, no. All types of things have to happen. You want to go to a bar? A game? Baseball? Football? There's shtuyot in the world. People are giving you rides. The stadium sends you a limousine. So you know. You see. You see. You can see Hashem through His actions. So, b'ezrat Hashem, we're going to try to cover a lot of ground in a short period of time, but I'm here all night as long as you are. I don't know if any of you know my... I know that a few of you I'm familiar with are familiar with my story, but I already heard a few of you say that you don't know anything as far as my personal background, so I'll try to cover it. But really, the main key, the main... of every one of my shiurim is to leave you with something to take home, meaning something for you to go home and think about and ask yourself: Why am I not better? Why am I not better? Why am I not a better eved? Why am I not a better servant of Hashem? And the reason why is because the Torah tells us that each and every single one of us is supposed to ask every day and

2:50When will my actions be like Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov? When will my actions be like the Avot HaKedoshim? This is both for men and for women. Which means that if we're not asking ourselves this question, it's one of two things. Either we're delusional and we think we already are like Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, or we stopped caring. The second is a bigger problem. Delusional—you could always wake somebody up. But when someone stops caring, it makes it very, very difficult for me to help them. It makes it very difficult for anybody to help them, and the reason why is because you can't help somebody who doesn't want to help themselves. You know, a lot of people send me their friend, their parent, their brother, their son, some name, some phone number... Sometimes they bring him to shul to help him. Wow, what happened? What did he do? Does he need anything? No, he's going out with a goya. Oh, she's going out with a goy. Oh, she's doing this. She's doing that. He's not keeping Shabbat. I said, okay fine, but what does that have to do with me? What did I do to deserve this? They say, no, but you tell him the truth. Okay, I'll tell him the truth, but does he want to listen? I'll tell him the truth. I have no problem telling the truth, even when the truth hurts.

4:11But does he want to listen? Sometimes, a person doesn't want to listen. You can't help such a person. Even if Moshe Rabbeinu himself comes down and tells a person the truth, if he doesn't want to listen, he can't help him. But if a person wants to listen, if a person wants the truth, no power in the world can stop him from getting it. And that's because there's a pasuk in the Torah, in the book of Devarim, chapter 4. Hashem says that at the end of days, if you look for me with all of your heart and all of your soul, you'll find me. If you look for Me with all of your heart and all of your soul, you'll find Me. Meaning that if you look for Hashem, you look for the emet, you'll find Him. So what about all those people that haven't found Him yet? There's only one of two possibilities according to this pasuk. One, they're not really looking for Him. Two, it hasn't come time yet. Sometimes you have to go through certain things. Hashem has to prepare you. He has to cook you a little bit before you're ready. And this is exactly what happened to me.

5:12So for all of you who don't know my personal story, I'll give you a little bit of a background, but of course the key is to give you something to think about, and then at the end we'll go with questions and answers. Any questions you have, B'ezrat Hashem, we'll have the merit to give you some answers. And then at the end, I'm going to try to do something new to test my own emunah. So I asked three people to write down questions. Now, I don't know what the questions are. But a lot of people tell me that when they come to the shiur, they have questions. They leave the shiur, and they don't have questions. So I wanted to ask the questions, and I don't know the questions. I'm going to answer the questions without knowing what the questions are. Why? Because this shows you that it has nothing to do with me; it has to do with Hashem. Torah tells us that when a person comes to a shiur Torah, he gets something called schar halicha. He gets a reward, a merit, for going to the shiur. for going to the shiur. Now in the old days, sometimes if you wanted to go to a shiur Torah, you had to travel three, four, or five days just to go to the shiur Torah. It's not like today, where you go into a car, drive ten minutes, and you're at a shiur Torah. Or you turn on a computer, and you have a shiur Torah. In the old days, you had to travel, sometimes for a few months, to go learn some Torah.

6:32If you want to learn a certain book, you have to go to a rich person's house, stay in his house for six months until you finish the book, and then leave. There's no library, there's no ArtScroll, there's no internet where you can buy stuff or get it for free. Meaning it was a lot more difficult to get Torah in those days. In today's world, we have no such excuse. In today's world, anyone that wants Torah, it's as easy as a button. Which means that when any of us go up to Shamayim after 120, They're going to ask us if we learned Torah. If the answer is no, they're not going to ask why. Because the answer is obvious: you didn't want to. Why? Because it was easy. Hashem made it very, very easy and very accessible for a person to learn Torah. That's why there's a Mishnah in Avot that says Gadol Talmud shemevi lidei ma'aseh—that if a mistake, if a sin, comes as a result of not learning... Even though the sin was made by mistake, he just simply didn't know they're not allowed to grind on Shabbat. He didn't know they're not allowed to turn on the electricity on Shabbat. He didn't know. In Shamayim, they're gonna say, "Wait, did he not know because he studied, studied, studied, and he just never got to it? Or he didn't know because he just didn't study?"

7:51He didn't get to it, but he studied, then it's shogeg, an accidental sin. That's a lower level punishment. But if he just didn't study, then we consider the accidental sin as on purpose. Why on purpose? Why intentional? Because he intentionally didn't study. He intentionally didn't study in a generation like today, where you could literally get more Torah than the Rambam had access to, for free. We have no excuse. But Baruch Hashem, sometimes you have tzaddikim in the community that know that it's not enough to have it accessible on the internet. You have to bring it to people. So they bring somebody from a different country. They bring somebody from a different town. They arrange people. They call, they text, they email. They do whatever they gotta do just to get people to come to a shiur Torah. Why? Because they want a savings account for Shamayim. They want a savings account for Shamayim. So this will also be to their merit for anyone that's toiled to get this shiur together to get people here. You should know that every single person that attends this shiur goes to your merit. Now, when I first started learning Torah, I didn't learn Torah because I wanted to become religious. I learned Torah because I wanted to prove that not being religious is the right way, and...

9:19Because I wasn't religious most of my life, I was on Wall Street. I was making a lot of money. I had most of what people want, especially at the age that I was. So, for me, religion was just something that you can do if you want to. If you want to be religious, you should be religious; if you don't want to be religious, you don't have to be religious. That was my mindset. There were certain things that are... Obviously, for example, you're not allowed to eat on Yom Kippur. That's obvious. But whether you drive on Shabbat, don't drive on Shabbat, that's not as obvious. Why? Whenever a person starts making excuses, there's no end to his rationale. So, I came to the United States when I was 10 years old. We went to school, and I knew that I didn't want to be a doctor or lawyer or anything in between. I wanted to make money. I went to Wall Street, and... For the first few years, I was paying my dues, meaning I was working for other people. They made money; I made nothing. But eventually, I started making money. By the time I was 23 years old, I made my first million dollars and realized that the sky is the limit. The sky is the limit. Why? Because just a few years before that, I was making zero. I had to borrow a dollar from this kid named Dimitri just to get on the bus, just to eat a donut every day.

10:48But now, just a year and a half, two years later, I have a million dollars to my name. The sky's the limit. I worked for a big firm. I made sure that my business was legitimate because my father taught me a very, very good principle in life. He said you can do anything in life, any business in life, in two ways: the right way and the wrong way. If you do it the wrong way, you make a lot of money very, very quickly. But you won't last. Eventually, it will all explode in your face. You can make a ton of money very quickly, but eventually, you'll have a ton of explosions. Or you can do it the right way, and you won't make as much money right away. It will take you a very long time, if you even succeed. But whatever you do is yours. So I chose option B. I chose the right way. Hashem merited me to actually have a lot of money in a short period of time, meaning while most people are hoping to reach a million dollars by the time they're 40 or 50 years old, I already reached it at a very young age. When the market was crashing, I was convincing people to invest. So when eventually the market rebounded, my clients made money while everybody else was still trying to recover.

12:13Invest when no one else wants to invest, and you're making a good investment. When you're investing when everybody else is investing, you should know you're the sucker. So, for anybody, people still ask me to this day, even though I've been out of Wall Street for five or six years already, people still ask me questions about Wall Street: "Should we invest? Should we not invest?" and... I tell them the market's been going up for 10 years straight. I don't follow it, but that's what people tell me. It's been going up since I left. It's still going up. Which means that whoever's investing now, you're not the first one. You have to know that the main money has already been made. But again, people don't want to listen. They still do it, and that's why every market crash has losers in it, and every market recovery has winners. Needless to say, this logic helped me on Wall Street. I made some money. I raised, I started building a company. My hobby was to go play Texas Hold'em in a casino with the best players in the world because I thought it was fun and it was legal. I made sure that whenever anybody asked me for money, they needed tzedakah, they needed a sefer, they needed to build something, and...

13:31Had an open-door policy, so at least every week, at least two to three rabbis showed up to my office, and they never got a "no" as an answer. Somebody always got some type of money. Now, I had the office for 16 years, and because of that, I have a very, very strong case against most rabbis in the world. The case is... Today's strategy of making waves to get people to do teshuva is a complete failure, and I'm the proof. Today's strategy is to tell people what they want to hear, to appease them, to please them, to make sure they're happy, to make sure that they think that God loves them no matter what. that we all hear on Shabbat that all of Israel have a share in the World to Come no matter what, even if you drive on Shabbat, even if you marry a Goya, even if you go out with an Arab, even if you do this, you do that, you do whatever you want. Hashem loves you anyway. That's unfortunately the strategy today. The reason why I say unfortunately is because it's a lie. It's not true. There's no source in the Torah that says that.

14:56The pasuk that you read on Shabbat that says that all of Am Yisrael have a share in the World to Come has a continuation. We just read the first part on Shabbat. The continuation is, "and these are the following who do not have a share in the World to Come," and it gives you a list over ten pages of Gemara of who is excluded from this list. It's put it this way: if you look at the list, it's very hard not to find yourself in it. You have to be very creative not to find yourself in it. Meaning that it's very, very difficult to get to Olam Habah. It's very easy to lose it. So if anyone is giving you the opposite impression, that with or without keeping Shabbat, with or without keeping kosher, with or without learning Torah, with or without doing mitzvot, you're going to get to where Moshe Rabbeinu and Rabbi Akiva are, there's a very serious problem with that logic. Because that will make the entire Torah into one big sheker, chas v'shalom. So now, when I had all of these rabbis come to my office every week, they never told me any of this stuff.

16:13Because the strategy is not to tell the strategy. Today, the goal is to just keep the person interested, keep the person warm, make sure not to turn him off. People always tell me, "No, don't say that! That may turn people off," and... I said, yeah, but he's dead already. Forget off. He died. He's not off. He died. There's no pulse. He's dead. He's married to a Goya. He has three kids with another one. He's eating shrimp on Pesach. What do you mean? He died. He's not off. There's no off here. What off? No, but maybe he's not going to come to the Beit Knesset. Who needs him at Beit Knesset? Wait, you count him for a minyan? What, he's going to bring the shrimp with him? What are you going to do with him? What off? No, no, don't turn him off. Said, you know, when somebody loses consciousness, what's the first thing you do? First, you give him a slap in the face. First thing you do is give him a slap in the face to wake them up. It doesn't work. What do you do? Call his name. It's actually, psychologically, a very good thing to do. Why? Because psychologically speaking, she's right and...

17:28the most pleasing sound that a person can actually ever listen to is their own name. But after you slap them, after you give them mouth-to-mouth, after you do all these things, then what? You put a shock to them, you shock them. And if you shock a regular person, chas v'shalom, if you shock one of the people here sitting, oh, you're enjoying, you're laughing, you're happy, but I start shocking you, you're not going to like me so much. Why? Because you're alive and well. But if you shock a dead person, they may wake up. What about if it doesn't work? So if a person is already so far away from the truth that, in reality, smacking him in the face is not going to do it, giving him mouth-to-mouth is not going to do it, shocking him is not going to do it, you can't help him. But the reality is that most of Am Yisrael is not that far, and Most of Am Yisrael today, even the ones that eat shrimp on Pesach and Yom Kippur, even the ones that are married to goyim, even the ones that don't even know the very basics of kosher laws—nothing. They're not that far. They only have one problem, and that problem is ignorance. They simply don't know anything. That does not absolve them of

18:54fulfilling the Torah because when they wanted to know how to make money, they went to college. They wanted to learn a profession, they learned a profession. wanted to do something in life, they learned it. They put on some YouTube videos, they learned how to do it. Meaning, if anybody ever wants to do something, they ask questions, they make phone calls, they go on the internet, they do research. Which means that if they really cared about Hashem, they'd find out. So, not knowing does not absolve a person from fulfilling the Torah. But what it does, Rabotai, is that it puts the onus on us. It puts the responsibility on us, any of us that actually know a little bit of Torah, any of us that actually know a little bit of emet, and tells us that in reality, we are at fault. It's our fault they don't know anything. The Gemara in Masechet Sanhedrin says that Malach Gavriel comes to Hashem and he says, Hashem, when are you going to send Mashiach? Hashem says, like I said in the books, I said to the prophets, every prophet, same message, whether it's Moshe Rabbeinu, the Prophet Yeshayahu, Yechezkel, anyone you want, they all have the same exact message. What's the message? Am Yisrael, do teshuva, please. That's the message. Every generation, from the beginning of the world all the way to the end. Am Yisrael, do teshuva, I'm going to send Mashiach. You don't do teshuva, I'm going to send Haman. I'm going to send Hitler. I'm going to send somebody to wake you up. One way or another, you're going to do teshuva. One way or another, you're going to do teshuva.

20:25So Malach Gavriel says, "Okay, Hashem, I understand that when they do teshuva, you're going to send Mashiach. But between you and me, you know they're not all going to do teshuva. You know the future." Hashem says, "Okay, so let me lower the price a little bit. Not when everybody does teshuva, but when just the religious people do teshuva, the Bnei Torah." The people that already keep mitzvot, they should know about teshuva. The guy that's married to a goya, she's married to an Arab, they don't know what teshuva is. They think it's an answer. They don't know. Maybe this is teshuva with the cookies on it. They don't know. But someone that's frum, someone that has a kippah, has tzitzit, everything else, he knows what teshuva is. So Hashem says, when the religious people do teshuva, I'll send Mashiach. The Gemara continues with this conversation between Malach Gavriel and Hashem. And Malach Gavriel comes back to Hashem and he says, Hashem, between you and me, you know that the frum people are never going to do teshuva. They already think they did teshuva. They're more difficult than the secular people. At least the secular people, you tell them something new, they listen. The frum people are like, no, no, no, I already have a kippah. I'm already Moshe Rabbeinu. What are you talking about? My wife Simcha, you didn't see.

21:45They already think they did teshuva. Hashem says, okay, okay, fine. Let me lower the price. I'll lower the price a little more. When one kehillah, one minyan of people, one beit knesset, everybody does teshuva, I'll bring Mashiach. This is good and bad news at the same time. It's good news because it shows us that we only need ten people in one building to do teshuva, and Mashiach comes automatically. The bad news is that we haven't been able to do it in 2,000 years. That's the bad news. If you have nine people, I'm willing to be the tenth. The reality is, Rabotai, that we have so many debates about everything and anything that we forget the ikkar, we forget the key, the most important, which is to do teshuva. When people came to my office asking for money, their goal should have been to help me do teshuva. Instead, their goal was to help other people do teshuva, or to build a building, or to build another Beit Knesset, or to buy more books, or to do everything else except help me. Why? Because they figured eventually he's going to do teshuva somehow, some way. This simply doesn't work. If you don't tell somebody, then Hashem has to tell them.

23:10Difference is if I tell you to do teshuva. It's nice. Maybe I'll make you laugh, maybe I'll make you upset, but either way it's not gonna hurt so much. When Hashem says it, it hurts all the time because He doesn't speak in clear language like me. He speaks in a different language, which is the language that He spoke to me with, and I'll tell you about that next. So, since they didn't tell me, I continued operating my life just like I did and I made money, I built a business, I had my fun, and I chose whatever mitzvot I wanted to keep. Whatever mitzvot I didn't want to keep, I didn't keep, which was pretty much the majority of Judaism. I said, okay, you're not allowed to work on Shabbat? Fine, I won't work on Shabbat. I'll go to the casino instead. Why are you laughing? It was perfect logic for me. You're not allowed to eat non-kosher meat? Fine, I'll eat the sushi and the cheese at the non-kosher place. It's perfect logic for me. I won't eat the meat at the non-kosher place; I'll eat the dairy at the non-kosher place, not realizing there's also meat in the dairy. Meaning that everything had an excuse, everything had a way that I would make it allowed. One day, when I met a wonderful woman...

24:35I said, "This one is the one. This one is the one. This one is amazing. This one is just, I mean, the best of the best. All she cares about is making me happy. Who won? Who's better than that?" Yeah, but you're on, she's not Jewish. I said, "Yeah, but Hashem sent her. Hashem sent her. If Hashem didn't want me to marry her, He should have sent somebody else." This is the logic of a secular person. This is the logic of a person that's not glued to Hashem. You can make a rational reason to do every single sin in the Torah. People always ask the question: How is it that Am Yisrael, who saw the Shechinah, saw miracles, saw wonderful things in the Beit HaMikdash, could worship idols? How do they do such a stupid thing? How do you go worship an idol? You see a fire in the shape of a lion coming from Shamayim every day to eat the korban, and you're going to go worship some statue bought from Chinatown for $15? How does that make any sense?

25:43The Gemara answers that question too. It says that Am Yisrael, in reality, didn't believe in the statues. They knew it was all nonsense, all shtuyot. But they knew that the rabbis kept telling them to do teshuva, do teshuva, do teshuva. They kept coming to their office, telling them to do teshuva. He says, how do I stop this rabbi from coming to my office? Ah, you know what? I'm going to bring a statue to the office. If the statue comes to the office, the rabbi is not coming to the office. That's exactly what they did. They brought the statue to the office so the rabbi doesn't come to the office. Why? Because in reality, what they wanted to do was go out with goyot. They wanted to go commit sex crimes. They wanted to go do things against the Torah, but as long as the rabbi keeps coming to the office, they can't do it. They don't have free rein. So, they had to make the rabbi think they're an avud, a lost case. How could they show him they're a lost case? Statue to the office, so in reality, they didn't bring the statues because they believed in the statues. They brought the statues as a tool to get the rabbis not to come anymore. The mistake the rabbis made is they stopped coming. They actually listened, and that's why the Gemara says that they got punished also. When a rabbi tells the crowd what they want to hear because they want to hear it and not because they need to hear it, he gets punished for it even more than they do.

27:03But the reality is that it doesn't absolve the person that's sinning from the aveirot. So as time elapsed, Hashem lost His patience, and He started giving me bigger and bigger tests. In the beginning, dust was turning to gold. Hashem started turning the gold back to dust. I started losing some money, but I thought, okay, you know, there are ups and downs in business; it doesn't mean anything. One day, I decided that I wanted to have surgery, an elective surgery, meaning I didn't really actually have to have it. But something was annoying me, something that two-thirds of the population has. I decided to have the surgery. The doctor told me it's very simple. You come in the morning, you leave in the afternoon, you go home, you relax for a couple of days, and you go back to work. I said, okay, fine, no problem. Doesn't sound too bad. I went to the surgery. Had the surgery, and everything changed. When I woke up from the surgery, I was screaming and yelling my lungs out, asking everyone to kill me because the pain was unbelievable. It felt like someone was taking a dagger that commandos use and was ripping my body up over and over again, but it was also connected to electricity at the same time, if that's not enough.

28:30They started giving me morphine, and it didn't work. They gave me more morphine, and it didn't work. They gave me more morphine, and it didn't work. Eventually, I told my wife, "We gave him the most amount of morphine legally allowed. If it doesn't work, there's nothing we can do because by now he should die." Eventually, it worked and it calmed me down. Then they released me from the hospital. I went to sleep. I woke up 40 minutes later, and the pain came back. This time it was worse. Because this time I didn't have the morphine and it didn't stop for 62 days. Now, for 62 days, when you have such pain, that means that you can't go to sleep. You can't eat, you can't function, and then your body starts failing. So, when each and every one of you says the bracha that I brought for you, which is a bracha that's very, very personal to me—Asher Yatzar—hopefully, you can think of me one day. Why? Because it'll help you appreciate the bracha. The bracha, you have the posters here with you? I brought you posters, B'ezrat Hashem, at the end, you'll get it. Maybe it's still upstairs. B'ezrat Hashem, I'll give it to you. Before you leave, you should collect it. It's a poster you should have outside of your bathrooms. Outside of your bathrooms, not inside your drawers. In a drawer, it doesn't help you.

29:48If it's in a drawer, it doesn't help you. If it's on the wall, just like a painting is on the wall, the bracha should be on the wall. Why? Because when you look at a bracha, instead of just doing it from memory, you appreciate it differently. To such an extent that the Gaon of Vilna, who knew the entire Torah back and forth, he says when he does Birkat HaMazon, which is a simple bracha that a six-year-old knows by heart, he says, I read it from the Siddur. There is a bigger kavod now. There's more significance when I see the words than doing it from memory. I show you it's all... When you say Asher Yatzar after you relieve yourself in the bathroom, most people don't realize the significance of this until they get older or they have something like what happened to me. They think that it's just supposed to work. ... it just goes and it comes and it goes, and whenever I have to do. What's the big deal? Trust me when I tell you it's a very, very big deal when your body works. Regardless of whether you eat ice cream, steak, or an apple, everything turns to blood, and all the waste comes out of your body effortlessly, painlessly, seamlessly. No big deal, right? It's a very big deal. This beracha tells you that Hashem made holes and...

31:09he made closings that whenever one of these holes is closed and one of these closings is opened, we wouldn't be able to survive a single hour. Only a person who has struggled can tell you that this is as real as it gets, and I can tell you that for those 62 days I The holes didn't work, the closings didn't work, nothing worked. Wherever it was open, blood came out instead of anything else. Blood out of your eyes, out of my eyes, out of my ears, out of every hole there is, there was blood. It was like a horror movie. Whatever was closed became open. Meaning everything and anything that could fail, failed. And no one could explain it. was 24 hours a day, and the only thing that would subside the pain was 50 painkillers and boiling water. The 50 painkillers eventually put you to sleep. The boiling water is because it’s a different pain, numbing the old pain. After two months of this wonderful experience, Hashem gave me a little bit of a break. Baruch Hashem, I started coming back to myself and

32:31Started going back to Wall Street, started going back to work. Give him the price at the end, not now. So Hashem gave me a break, and I started coming back to life, but still, I was in a lot of pain, though not like I was before. Nine months later, I felt the pain in my leg. I went to the hospital because I couldn't walk anymore. They said that I had an abscess, which is an internal infection that is so big that if I waited another hour, it would explode in my blood system, and I would die within an hour. I said, "Wow, this is good news." So, we had the surgery, and now I had to spend the next few weeks in the intensive care unit next to all the people that are dying. Everyone's screaming, comparing screams. He's louder than that one. Whenever someone started screaming, we got worried. Why? He most likely died. This is the adventure of being in an intensive care unit. I'm sorry that you don't like it, but this is what happens in an intensive care unit. One thing that the intensive care unit also has is the same thing as hospice. Everybody believes in God in the hospice center; everybody becomes religious and...

33:55Everybody becomes, why? Because everybody's screaming God's name. God help me, God help me. Why? Because the money can't help them. The family can't help them. The friends can't help them. The house can't help them. The car can't help them. Nothing in the world can help them other than God. After enough experiences in the hospital, whether I liked it or not, I had to start screaming to God. surgery, second surgery six months later, another surgery three months later, another surgery. Then it got to the point where there was surgery every month. Then it got to a point where I would have to be at the hospital or at a doctor or some type of experiment every week, two to three times a week. I became a part of a study to experiment on my body because they had no idea what was going on. One day, I had a toothache. Went to the dentist like normal people do, and he tried to numb my face, but it didn't work. So he gave me more Novocaine, and it still didn't work. He gave me more and more and more, and then he eventually told me, "I think you should donate your skull to science." I said, "This is not good news. It just keeps hurting." He goes, "Yes, but at least the science people will benefit."

35:13My body, for some reason, doesn't like drugs, so they don't work very well. But the point is that this was all different signs from Hashem. Hashem is trying to wake you up. First, He sends you a text message. Then He calls you. Then maybe an email. Then He sends you a letter in the mail. Eventually, somebody knocks on the door. Eventually, He comes Himself. Depends how long. Depends how much of an akshan you are. How stubborn you are. I was very stubborn. Don't tell anybody though. So Hashem had to come Himself. One surgery, two surgeries, three surgeries, four, five, six, keep counting. Every month a different surgery. No surgeries related to the one before. Then He calls you. Then maybe an email. Then He sends you a letter in the mail. Eventually, somebody knocks on the door. Eventually, He comes Himself. Depends how long. Depends how much of an akshan you are. How stubborn you are. I was very stubborn. Don't tell anybody though. So Hashem had to come Himself. One surgery, two surgeries, three surgeries, four, five, six, keep counting. Every month a different surgery. No surgeries related to the one before. The best part of it, no one understood why I had a surgery last month because it was not connected to the one the month after. But then one day, it got to a point where I had a surgery, and this one was different. Sometimes you go through difficulty, and you have this feeling inside that everything's gonna be okay, and...

36:21You have this feeling, you go through some difficult time, and you have this false assurance, this feeling like, "It's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay, honey. It's gonna be okay." I didn't feel that. I felt the opposite. One time, we came to this hospital, and when I saw the doctor's face, I realized it's not gonna be okay. I thought, oh, this is the one; I'm going to sleep and I'm not waking up. What do you do? There's only one thing to do: you start crying to Hashem. Even though you didn't do anything He said until now. So my wife is there, my mom is there, and they're all crying, when my mom says, "It's Tehillim." I'm like, what am I gonna do with this Tehillim? She says, "Talk to Hashem." I said, okay, so give me the Tehillim then. Why didn't you give it to me last time? So I started reading Tehillim and I'm crying hysterically, and I'm saying goodbye. Did you ever hear your mom tell you a quote from the Torah as if she heard it from Mount Sinai that says, "The salvation of Hashem comes in the blink of an eye"? Well, sometimes that happens. When does it happen? When you call out to Hashem. One time a person

37:50big businessman. He had a lot of money on ships. And one day, he was with his rabbi in the kehillah and someone comes into the kehillah and says, "I'm sorry to tell you, your ship is gone." The guy got a heart attack and died. They threw some water on his face, they slapped him, they punched him—this, they brought him back to life, and Rabbi Tom, don't worry. Everything's gonna be okay. He goes, "What do you mean, Rabbi? How do you know it's gonna be okay?" "I know the ship didn't sink." "Rabbi, do you have prophecy or Ruach HaKodesh?" "No, I know Torah says Hashem doesn't give you a test that you cannot overcome. If you died, that means you can't overcome it. So I know the ship is somewhere, and eventually that's what happened—they found the ship and..." Hashem will give you a test that you can handle. If you can't handle it, that means He’s not gonna give it to you. Which means that if you have a test in your life, Hashem knows for sure you can handle it. Well, I got to a point where I couldn't handle it. I went into the surgery, and I woke up from the surgery, which was a surprise by itself. The doctor told me, "We have good news and we have bad news." I said, "Okay, what's the good news?" The doctor replied, "We didn’t do the surgery."

39:18I said, "Okay, great. So when I get the feeling back to the rest of my body, you mean I'm not going to have pain?" They said, "Yes." I said, "Great. That's great news. What's the bad news?" "Oh, the bad news is we have no idea what's wrong with you." This was my life for seven years. Eventually, I started realizing that the only thing that actually ever worked was talking to Hashem. But what do you do? So I started going to shiurei Torah here and there. But still living my life the way I did, trying to recover the business, trying to recover, trying to do things—whatever I thought was good. I would do it. The only problem is that I didn't have anybody telling me the truth, so there's just so much you can do without knowing. You don't know what's right. You don't know what's left. You go to a shiur, and you hear the rabbi. If he says keep Shabbat, you'll keep Shabbat. If he doesn't say keep Shabbat, you're not gonna keep Shabbat. And even if he says to keep Shabbat, you have to tell me why I should keep Shabbat. Don't just tell me to keep it. What am I, a dog? Are you going to train me? Give me a reason why. Oh, if you don't keep it, you go to Gehinnom. Okay, I'll keep it. Now I'll keep it. Why? You told me the cost. You told me there's a price. A lot of people don't like that sometimes I mention in my shiurim things that are very scary, like Gehinnom and Kaf HaKela and all types of things that are in the Torah. People don't like to hear it because it's scary.

40:47The problem is that it's very much a living part of the Torah that's necessary for you to know. If it wasn't necessary for you to know, then Hashem wouldn't put it in the Torah. How do I know? Because when we were at Mount Sinai—and I say "we" because it was our neshamot there—Hashem gave us the Ten Commandments and The first two commandments He said out loud, and then the next eight He gave to Moshe Rabbeinu one-on-one. Why? The p'sukim say that after He said the first commandment, the level of kedusha that He had in His voice was so scary to us, we all died. He brought us back to life and He said the second commandment, we died again. He brought us back to life. And before He started the third commandment, we said to Moshe, "You go up there and listen to Him and do whatever He wants to do. You do it. We’re going to do and then we’ll listen." We’re going to do and then we’ll listen, meaning we’ll just do whatever. Why? Because if He continues talking, we’re going to die. How do we know we’re going to die? Because we died twice. So what did Moshe Rabbeinu say to Am Yisrael? "Oh, no, no, don’t worry. He’s just scaring you to death so you don’t sin."

42:14meaning that scaring a person is a necessary tool in life. If you look at the Forbes 500 list of the richest people in the world, if you ever look into their own bios or interviews that they have, most of them have a very common fear. That common fear that the average billionaire has, that's irrational to us, is to be broke. To lose all their money. That's the biggest fear: to be homeless. Meaning, a person that has 30, 40, 50 billion dollars would have to lose that kind of money on purpose, and still probably wouldn't be able to do it. Their fear is a fear that even us regular people don't have: to be homeless. They're afraid of being homeless. They're afraid of losing everything. Why? Because that's the gauge. they have to have in order to reach a high level of success. They have a high level of fear of the exact opposite. If I told you that the next time you drive on the road here, if you drive too fast, you'll get a ticket, some will drive too fast, some might not. But if I say the next person that drives fast, I'm gonna send them to jail for ten years, no one's gonna drive fast. In fact, some people are gonna start walking and

43:39Why? The price has changed. The price has changed. Once you know the price, everything changes. If you know it's a ticket, okay, I can risk a ticket because I'm in a hurry. But if it's jail time, I'll just walk. I'll ride a horse. I'll ride a horse. I'll be a cowboy for a day. Why? It's too expensive. Meaning that it's very, very important for us to know the price of our mitzvot, the price of our aveirot. Especially our mitzvot, especially sins. Because if we knew that when a Jew violates Shabbat, he's destroying his own Olam HaBa, meaning that he has no share in Olam HaBa. According to Halacha, he is considered a goy. Him and the Arab are not considered the same; the Arab is considered higher. Because if the Arab, you use him in a kosher kitchen, you could eat his food and... But the Jew that violates Shabbat, you can't use. Because if he touches, if he cooks the food, it's treif, you can't eat it. This is a very serious problem, Rabotai. These are things I didn't know. I didn't know the price. So when the rabbis didn't tell me, and I didn't search enough, eventually Hashem had to tell me.

45:03Eventually, I started looking, and after enough tears, Hashem sent me a message. He sent me a person who was willing to tell me the answers, but only after I got to a point where I couldn't handle it anymore. One day, my mom was calling different rabbis to try to ask for a beracha. She called the wrong number in Israel, and the woman on the other side of the phone ended up being my cousin. She called a different country, the wrong phone number, but it ended up being a relative. This relative happens to be the only person that could actually help. Why? Because her brother is a talmid hacham by the name of Rav Ephraim. So she called Rav Ephraim, and Rav Ephraim said, "Does he speak Hebrew? Can I speak to him directly or do I need to speak to you?" She said, "Yeah, you could speak to him, but he probably won't speak to you. He doesn't speak to anybody anymore." She gave him my phone number, but again, how do you start this conversation? They continued talking. I happened to call her on the other line. She's hysterically crying. I'm in the middle of a conversation with her. I have no idea why she's crying, and she's saying, "Talk to him! Talk to him!" And I said, "Who? Why are you crying? And who is this person?" Rav Ephraim said, "Just stop crying, and I'll talk to whoever you want. I'll talk to Michael if you want, just stop crying." The worst thing in the world is to hear your mom cry. So Rav Ephraim calls me.

46:29we should start talking. He tells me some nice stories about the Torah. I asked him a question. He gives me an answer with a source and a Tosafot who asked the same question 800 years ago or 300 years ago or 500 years ago, and I was baffled at how he knew all this stuff. We had another conversation the next week, and other conversations the following weeks. Every week, we would have this conversation. I would ask him questions, and he would give me answers and Eventually, it got to a point where every Thursday at four o'clock, we would have this conversation for seven hours straight—seven hours of questions. This means that any question you asked, I probably asked it because eventually, you run out of your own questions and start asking other people's questions. I figured he had answers, so I might as well ask the questions. Eventually, I started realizing that the more answers I got, the more I realized that my life is one big sheker, one big lie. Because now I had answers, and the answers contradicted my life, so I started changing my life. Little by little, I started doing more and more of what Hashem wanted. And little by little, my life changed. Now, initially...

48:17Asking other people's questions, I figured he had answers, so I might as well ask the questions. Eventually, I started realizing that the more answers I got, the more I realized that my life is one big sheker, one big lie. Because now I had answers, and the answers contradicted my life, so I started changing my life. Little by little, I started doing more and more of what Hashem wanted. And little by little, my life changed. Now, initially... Health problems stayed the same; the money problems got worse. But you still keep going. Why? Because it doesn't make a difference anymore. Once you have the truth, living a lie is not a possibility anymore. It's not an option. People ask all the time, "How come such and such person went off the derech?" "How come such and such person became not religious?" has an answer. The answer is he was never on the derech. There's no such thing as a person living a kosher life that goes off. It's impossible. They can look religious. They can have a beard that sweeps the floor, a kippah that covers the sky. It doesn't mean anything; that's just looks. Looks are deceiving. The only thing that makes a person religious is their actions—what's in their heart, what's in their mouth, what are their beliefs.

49:45the two match. If a person says one thing and does something else, the Torah says, "People, with their lips, with their mouths, they respected Me, they honored Me, but in their hearts, they were far away from Me." A lot of people speak one thing and do something else, which means that when a person goes off the... It's not that he went off like it's just breaking news to heaven. No, it's the same thing. He's been off the derech the whole time, but he's been pretending for you folks the whole time. Hashem knew the whole time he was off. His heart was somewhere else the whole time. He was thinking about girls. He was thinking about avodah zarah. He was thinking about McDonald's. He was thinking about sports. He was thinking about everything else, but he felt constricted by the religious community. Ah, if I go to McDonald's, they're going to say something. Then they're not gonna want to marry me. They're not gonna want to marry my kids. They're gonna throw us out of school. So really, he's not scared of Hashem. He's scared of the community. Eventually, he gets sick of the community. He says, "You know what, I'll find a new community. I'll find a new community." That's what they do. Meaning he never left the derech. He was never on. She never left the derech. She was never on.

51:02This, Rabotai, means that teshuva is an obligation for every single one of us, whether you are in the religious community or outside. ...the reason why is because many of us have a part of us that's off the derech a little bit. All of us have a little bit of safek, a little doubt, about why we're not serving Hashem more, why we're not learning Torah every day, why it's only once in a while, why it's only 15 minutes and not 20 minutes, not an hour, and so on and so forth. All of us have some type of doubts. What I've been trying to do over the last five or six years is try to help people's doubts, try to answer any question that they have now... Finalize my point, then I'll open it for questions and answers. But I think your questions will probably be more interesting than my answers. We have a holiday coming up, the holiday of Chanukah. We also had what the goyim call a holiday last week, Thanksgiving. I don't know if it's an epidemic in Canada or not, but in America, we have this epidemic where Jews want to celebrate goyishe holidays and

52:14now, since whenever somebody discovers the truth, the lie, like I said, is no longer an option. How do you know you discovered the truth? When the lie becomes disgusting to you. If McDonald's still looks delicious, that means you haven't discovered the truth yet. Going out with a woman that's not your wife still looks okay to you. That means that you haven't really discovered the truth yet. If doing something against Hashem is still even a remote possibility in your mind, that means there's still a part of you—not the whole thing, but a part of you, 1%, 2%, 5%, 50%, depending—that still is a little bit like Korach, a little bit like Esav, not really much like Moshe Rabbeinu. There's still some doubt, some safek. Why? Because if you discovered the truth... Then that means that the opposite is disgusting. It's revolting to you. It's like a dead animal on the street. No one says, oh, look at the beautiful animal. No one says that. It's dead. The stomach is splattered all over the street. No one says, wow, what a beautiful animal. No one says that. Why? It's disgusting. The same thing that a person needs to look at something that's against Hashem.

53:31Akiva, alav haShalom, one time went to visit a king for the sake of Am Yisrael. The king was a great king, and he thought that the Jews are like goyim. So what did he do? He sent three prostitutes to the hotel of Rabbi Akiva, thinking that he's honoring the Rabbi. The next few hours came, and all of the prostitutes ran to the king and... Screaming their lungs out, "So what happened? What happened? Why'd you send us to him? What's the matter with this person?" The king goes, "What?" They respond, "The whole time he's throwing up in the corner and... ...time. So the king took it back, asking, "What happened?" Rabbi Akiva goes, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, they were ugly there. They didn't like them. What happened?" Rabbi Akiva continues throwing up in the corner. He goes, "Well, what happened? Why are you throwing up so much? Did you eat something not good?" Because when you see something disgusting, what do you expect other than throwing up?

54:34Meaning Rabbi Akiva saw the emet, saw the truth to such an extent that immodesty, a woman wearing a short skirt, a woman going out in an immodest way, speaking in an immodest way, became so disgusting to him that he started throwing up physically. To get to become such a holy person. So when you see something that is against the Torah, you try to celebrate when you see something that's against the Torah, you try to wake other people up because it's disgusting. But sometimes they don't smell it, and the reason why is because sometimes when a person is inside the garbage, he doesn't realize it's garbage. That's why the rat eats the food in the garbage. He doesn't realize it's garbage. He's part of it. Sometimes we get so deep inside the garbage we become part of it. We don't realize it's garbage, and... For a sham, you try to celebrate when you see something that's against the Torah. You try to wake other people up because it's disgusting, but sometimes they don't smell it. The reason why is because sometimes when a person is inside the garbage, he doesn't realize it's garbage. That's why the rat eats the food in the garbage; he doesn't realize it's garbage. He's part of it. Sometimes we get so deep inside the garbage we become part of it. We don't realize it's garbage, and... So this epidemic we have in America is that it's become okay to be a goy.

55:38I don't mean the secular people like I was most of my life. I mean the religious people. I mean that it's very normal and actually advocated and celebrated for Jewish communities to celebrate Thanksgiving, the 4th of July, and other celebrations of the goyim. In almost every single Beit Knesset on Shabbat, they talk politics and... What do you think Trump did? What do you think he should do? What did he do? What about his tie? What about his wife? What about his daughter? Do you think she's really Jewish? Do you think her husband is Jewish? Are they Shomer Shabbat? Are they not? What do you care? Why do you care? Do you think Trump is asking about you? What about the Jewish community? Are they having minyan? In this Beit Knesset, is it a Reform or is it Orthodox? Is it this? Wait, you think Trump is asking about you? You're asking so many questions about him. Is he asking about you? I don't understand people. Every Jew became a politician. Every Joe's a politician. "No, I think you should increase taxes." "No, you're crazy, lower taxes." "No, but China owes us too much." All the studio, all this stuff, all this nonsense inside the Beit Knesset. Why? We forgot that we're surrounded by garbage, so we became part of it. So when I mentioned last week...

57:02I've mentioned it before, but I did a whole clip about it—a 30-minute clip—explaining to people that if you celebrate Thanksgiving on a regular basis, you're going against the Torah in multiple ways. Even the people that want to use some type of leniency that Rav Moshe Feinstein mentioned 40 years ago are not even reading it the right way, and it's not allowed even according to his opinion, and so on and so forth. Now, you would think that all of the secular people that celebrate even Christmas would call me and say, "You're crazy, you're racist, you're this, you're that." No, as a matter of fact, the secular people said, "You know what? What you're saying is true. What you're saying is true; Jews should not be celebrating Thanksgiving. Jews should not be celebrating non-Jewish holidays. We have plenty of our own." Who went against it? The religious people. Which religious people? Some rabbis. They call me. They say, "Oh, what are you doing? You're turning people off of Judaism." I said, "How? By telling them not to celebrate goy holidays? If that's turning them off, Baruch Hashem." The biggest turnoff for me is when you see that sometimes a Jew is more excited about eating a turkey

58:22his non-Jewish friends than he is about Hanukkah, a Jewish holiday. And the reason why is because even though Hanukkah is a holiday that every Jew likes to celebrate, even the most secular Jews, the Jews that are completely disconnected, they love Hanukkah. Why? It doesn't obligate you at all. What do you do? Eat some doughnuts, play with the dreidel, have some fire Some friends think it's great if we put a Hanukkiah here. We have Hanukkah already today early. Who's better than you? It's Hanukkah, the greatest thing in the world. Everybody loves Hanukkah. But that's because they don't know that Hanukkah is actually the most religious holiday of the year. Hanukkah is more religious than Yom Kippur. Hanukkah is more religious than Pesach. Hanukkah is more religious than any holiday that you could ever imagine, and the reason why is because if it wasn't for Hanukkah, we would not have a Torah today. A couple of thousand years ago, a few fanatic religious Jews decided that even though there were only a handful of them, they still needed to fight for the Emes.

59:43decided to fight for the Emes even though the rest of Am Yisrael did not really care so much. Because they fought for it, Hashem gave them the siyata d'shmaya, the help from Heaven, to win the war. And because of that, our entire oral Torah today is Everything you see in the Gemara, everything you see in the Mishnah, which is the basis of our entire Oral Torah, which is basically our entire Torah. Without the Oral Torah, the Written Torah would be illegible. We wouldn't be able to read it. The entire Oral Torah is from the Chachamim that came after Hanukkah. Meaning that before Hanukkah, there were many Chachamim, there were many Nevi'im, there were many prophets, but we don't have their Torah. What do we have? We have Rabbi Akiva, Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, Rabbi Meir Baal HaNes, all of these giants. When were they all around? After Hanukkah. So that's why the Chachamim know that Hanukkah is the holiday that saved the Oral Torah.

1:00:53Without it, the Written Torah would be impossible to read. Now, why did Hanukkah happen? Why did we get such a big test? Because at one point, the most religious people in Am Yisrael, the Kohanim, the ones that worked in the Beit HaMikdash, decided that doing korbanot, they don't have to do all of them, just some of them. Let's do... Modesty? We don't have to be really modest. We'll be sometimes modest. Like, you know, sometimes these women, they go to beit knesset, they cover their hair, but the rest of the week they walk around like they're half-naked. In beit knesset she's a tzadika, but outside of the beit knesset you would think she works for a bar. Why? No, because that's where Hashem is. So, Hashem is nowhere else? If Hashem is only in the beit knesset, stay there. Why would you go anywhere else if He's only in a beit knesset? Why would you ever leave a place that Hashem is? And if He's everywhere else, then how could you look like that everywhere else? Meaning if we think about it, sometimes we don't make sense. The Kohanim didn't make sense even though they were the most religious of the nation, and they started becoming modern Orthodox. They started shortchanging certain mitzvot—modesty, but not a hundred percent; mitzvot, but not a hundred percent; Torah, but not a hundred percent.

1:02:16It's not that they became Reform. They didn't start driving on Shabbat. They didn't start eating pig. No, no, they didn't do things like that. They just started shortchanging certain mitzvot and not wanting to do it 100%. Hashem saw this, Hashem brought the test. Why? Once you start cutting Hashem short, you start lowering the Torah, you start lowering the mitzvot, it's only a matter of time before we become goyim. It's only a matter of time. Because a Jew is either going up in spirituality or going down. He cannot stay neutral. He cannot stay on one level. This, Rabotai, is one of the most important things that we need to celebrate on Hanukkah. The fact that we're trying to grow. We're trying to do something. If you want to do a big mitzvah on Hanukkah, learn Torah. The sufganiyot are good. But even without Hanukkah, you can eat sufganiyot. You can eat them all year round. The menorah is also good. But if it was just for the menorah, there wouldn't be holidays. There wouldn't be any Hanukkah. Why? Because the menorah we can live without. The Torah we can't. The only thing that defines us as Jews is the Torah. This is the most important thing that a Jew needs to know in this generation. Because this generation is very, very confused. People don't know what the emet is. They don't know anything. What I try to do is to bring the emet to people. Sometimes it's because...

1:03:42They're looking for it. Sometimes because Hashem is looking for them. So I want you guys to ask me some questions to see if there's something that's been bothering you for a very long time that, if you had the answer, maybe it would make you closer to Hashem. And then I'll show you what the questions are and then I'll explain to you what I try to do with these questions. But you had a question before, so go ahead. Ask again so they hear you and they don't think it's just me. I ask, some rabbis, some rabbis, they accept it, not flashy, but they said short, modest, it's okay. So, the question is, some rabbis accept the...

1:04:43...as something that's allowed in Judaism, and some rabbis say it's not allowed. Now, you said before this shiur that you've never seen any of my shiurim. So, the reason why I specifically mention that is because anyone that has seen my shiurim knows that I'm actually very soft-spoken about the subject... So here's the answer. Now, in the Gemara Masechet Shabbat, the original debate about Pe'a Nochrit, about wigs, begins. And the Chachamim say, what if a woman has a bald spot? She has a bald spot, can she put something there? she can put some hair there from the tail of a horse or some type of hair replacement, but she must cover it with a hat, and the two have to be tied to each other, meaning you have to sew the hair to the hat. Why? Because if she

1:06:03wore the hat and it wasn't sewn together, God forbid, she would take off the hat and show people her hair, and that is absolutely not allowed. But if they are sewn together, she would never take off the hat because then she would show people her nakedness, her ervah. No woman in her right mind would ever do such a thing. That's where the original debate started a couple of thousand years ago. Originally, the whole argument was whether a woman was allowed to wear hair or not, and the answer was yes, as long as it's covered with a hat, a mitpachat, or something similar, meaning you're never supposed to just walk around with just the hair itself. And even though the hair in those days, a couple of thousand years ago, was like a leaf or something that you would see from a mile away, it was not real hair. Still, you were never allowed to show such hair. Now, about 400 years ago... One Ashkenazi Chacham came out and confused the world, and said, no, you're allowed, in his opinion, you're allowed to just walk around without the hat, just the wig itself. Again, keep in mind that 400 years ago, the wigs of that day looked nothing like the wigs of today. The wigs of today look better than real hair, and the reason why is because it is real hair. Just without the dandruff, the lice, the problems.

1:07:32gray hairs and all that. But anyway, 400 years ago, one Chacham came out and confused the world, and said, yes, but most of the Chachamim throughout the generations ruled against them. However, over the last hundred or so years, it became pretty much common that many Ashkenazim didn't voice their opinion or even said it's allowed to wear a wig. Sefardim, on the other hand, said it's forbidden 100% with the exceptions of a few cases. Now, most people think that it's most of the Ashkenazim in history that said it's allowed, and that's the mistake. I have a list with me, and the reason why I say this is siyata dishmaya, is because who comes with a list and I have a list with me of a hundred and twenty-seven of the biggest poskim in the history of Am Yisrael that spoke and wrote about the subject. Poskim meaning the biggest rabbis in history and...

1:08:47Oh, with the exception of a few poskim in the Sephardic world, a few poskim in the Sephardic world said it's allowed also. But most of them say it's not allowed. Most of the poskim in the Sephardic world say it's not allowed, not allowed to wear a wig. But the reality is that most of the Ashkenazi poskim also say it's not allowed to wear a wig. Now, this is not the conclusion. I'm giving you all the background so you know where we're at today. I'm painting you a picture, and then I'm going to destroy the entire picture. So now the picture is that most people think that all of the Ashkenazi poskim said it's allowed, and all the Sephardi poskim say it's not allowed. This is not true. In fact, most of the poskim, both Ashkenazi and Sephardi, say it's not allowed. Only a few exceptions say it is allowed. Namely, the Lubavitcher Rebbe was the biggest advocate of wigs. But the one thing that

1:09:52No one ever said it's allowed is the modesty that came with it after. Meaning, the actual wigs that they said were allowed were very different than the wigs of today. But today's wigs make every woman, whether she's 20 or 90, look like she's 20 and just came off the runway. Sometimes, they act as if they're still on the runway. And they make sure that you know that their hair is flowing with the wind. Now, to win this argument is impossible. Why? An Ashkenazi is going to tell you, "Listen, I like you, you're a nice guy, your story is entertaining, but I have my rabbi. I have my rabbi, he's Ashkenazi, he says it's allowed, you do your thing." I do my thing. The Sephardi is going to tell me, "Listen, I'm Sephardi, but there are a couple of Ashkenazi chachamim that I like also. And there are even a couple of Sephardi chachamim that I like also. I'm going to hold by them." So that's why the machloket, the debate between the two sides, is a complete waste of time. I still had to tell you about this machloket because you're going to hear it somewhere else.

1:11:20Now I say that wigs are forbidden for a different reason. It has nothing to do with Sephardi or Ashkenazi. It has nothing to do with it. Now I have a list with me. I'm going to show anyone that's interested. 127 poskim, all the way from the time of Yonatan ben Uziel, 2,500 years ago, to the Vilna Gaon, to Rav Ovadia. The biggest poskim in history. Not like no-name rabbis. All the biggest people you've ever heard of in history, they said it's not allowed. But let's ignore as if they didn't say it. Let's just pretend they didn't see it. And the local Chabad rabbi is more important than the Vilna Gaon. And the local rabbi that you like from the Sephardi community is more important than Yonatan ben Uziel, who was able to create fire just from studying Torah. Let's pretend they're better. Let's pretend. We have to find unity. Unity, right? Unity is important for Am Yisrael. We have to find a unified opinion, something everyone agrees on. Baruch Hashem, before I left the business world, I found the unified opinion before I even knew what the unified opinion was. Part of my job in the business world was doing research. I would do research on businesses. You gave me a business, you give me any business, I could tell you exactly how much it's worth and whether it's going to succeed or fail. I could tell you if you should sell it, if you should buy it, and so on and so forth. I

1:12:45Part of what I did, because in order to invest you have to know what you're talking about. Funny thing is, I could build other people's businesses better than mine. But nonetheless, I would do research on different industries, different economies, and so on and so forth. I could identify red flags. I was able to uncover several companies that were cooking the books, and a couple of Ponzi schemes. Unfortunately, no one wanted to listen anyway, so people still invested and lost money. And... Told a person that if he invests in this company that told him they're going to be the next Disneyland, he'll lose every single penny because they're both thieves. He didn't listen, and he lost every penny. I told him this one company was cooking the books. They didn't want to listen, so they lost the money, meaning that people want advice until they don't like it or it doesn't agree with their pre-existing opinion. But anyway, at one point, I did some research and I looked into the hair industry for some random reason. At the time, I thought it was a random reason. And I found out that the hair industry has grown drastically. The reason why is because there is a place in the world where you can get the best hair in the world, meaning the best quality hair in the world. There's hair everywhere. If you go to half of Africa, Israel, America, there's hair everywhere. That's one thing that doesn't stop growing, even after you die. There's hair everywhere. Hair and nails don't stop growing.

1:14:12your ears. But anyway, the thing is that this is something you can find anywhere. But everything in the world costs money. If I want to buy a jacket, it costs money. If I buy a jacket from Paris, it'll cost me a certain price. If I buy it from New York, it's a different price. If I buy it from Armani, it costs a different price. If I buy it from a closeout, it's a different price. Meaning, the quality makes a difference. Now, what if I told you, you could buy the best, the best of the best? There's nothing better. And not only that, it's free. It's the best, and it's free. You tell me, it's already too good to be true. I say, okay, you know what, I'm going to add even more. I'm going to give you the best, and not only is it free, not only is it free, but it's so abundant, I have so much of it, it doesn't matter how much you order, I'll always be able to meet the demand.

1:15:13Any normal businessman says, "Where do I sign? Where do I sign? I'm gonna sell my house. I'm gonna sell my kids. I'm gonna sell my wife. I'm gonna invest everything into this business." Why? It's the greatest business in the world, Abotai. Now, if you go to Cambodia and you want to buy some hair, you can get some hair. But if you have a big store, you're not gonna be able to buy as much as you want. Why? Because it's a limited supply. If you go to Brazil and... You can buy some hair. But even though they tell you it's from Brazil, really it's not. Still, let's say you believe it's from Brazil. You can't buy as much as you want. Let's say you go to Paris or you go to Italy and you find a bunch of homeless people that want to sell their hair. And you convince a bunch of them to sell their hair. Still, you're limited. You cannot supply the market. There's only one place in the world that can supply the market. And that place is India. India.

1:16:13Here's the problem with getting the hair from India. In India, it's part of their religion to donate their hair to idols, meaning that their hair becomes a korban, a sacrifice to an idol. That means that you can have all of India donate the hair, but you're still not allowed to use it, and... And the reason why is because the Torah tells us, and all opinions agree, there's no Ashkenazi or Sephardi here. It doesn't make a difference. The Torah tells us, as soon as something becomes a part of idolatry, you're no longer allowed to enjoy it. You're not allowed to eat it, you're not allowed to sell it, you're not allowed to enjoy it in any way, shape, or form. Where do we learn it from? In several places in the Torah, Gemara Masechet Avodah Zarah talks about it extensively, but there's one maaseh that most of you have heard, by Yehoshua bin Nun. Yehoshua bin Nun

1:17:16took over after Moshe Rabbeinu went into the Land of Israel. The first thing that Hashem told him, after circumcising all of Am Yisrael and fighting the wars, was to destroy all the trees. What did the trees do? Did the trees do something? Hashem said, "No, somebody worshipped these trees." Okay, somebody worshipped them, but they're not here anymore. Once somebody worshipped the tree, that tree has no right to exist. The only mitzvah you can fulfill with something that was used for idolatry is to destroy it. You're not allowed to do anything with it—not to sell it. Even if it's a diamond that's worth an infinite amount of money, that you could use to buy and build a million kollelim, a million yeshivot, you're still not allowed to do it. The only thing you're allowed to do is destroy it. Why? Because avodah zarah, idolatry, is the epitome of the opposite of Hashem. It's that you've replaced everything, which is Hashem, with nothing. So to enjoy the nothing, instead of Hashem, it's the biggest insult in the world, spitting in Hashem's face. So now in India, they have not only people donating their hair, but they have over a billion people in India, meaning it's one of the biggest populations in the world, of which the average Indian, after we did research, donates their hair three times in their life.

1:18:42meaning that every year, no less than just children alone—just children, we're not counting adults yet—no less than 25 million children get their hair shaved off their head as part of their birthday celebration at three years old. Like Am Yisrael, where we do it as a minhag, but they shave their head for Avodah Zarah. The adults shave their heads for different reasons related to Avodah Zarah. Now, once you have one, two, or three people donating their hair, you can build a market from that. But when you have between 25 to 60 million people donating their hair every single year, that creates a market. In fact, that is the market. And that's why anyone who does honest research about real hair wigs will know for sure that over 90% of the real hair wigs in the world come from idol worship, from Avodah Zarah. Which means that it doesn't make a difference if you're Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Chabad, Litvish, or even if you could be an alien. It doesn't make a difference.

1:20:02If you want to serve Hashem, you're not allowed to enjoy Avodah Zarah, even if you're a goy. Even the non-Jew is not allowed to do it. So here, Rabotai Yekarim, is the closing argument. You want to serve Hashem? You cannot wear a real hair wig. Now, what about the synthetic? We also did some research on that. After testing Some synthetic wigs, the average synthetic wig, have approximately 3% real hair in it. Why? Because there's such an abundance of real hair from India that it's actually cheaper than synthetic. Even though you buy the wig in the wig store, it's $2,000. And then they sell the same hair for $30. Why? Because over here you won't pay $2,000, so we'll sell it to you for $30. So you won't be a sucker over here. Over here you're not going to be a sucker, so we'll pay $30 for it. Meaning it all depends on whatever you want to buy. Whatever you want to pay, we'll charge you for that. That's the reality. Why? Because there's so much of it. So synthetic wigs, you cannot, unfortunately, rely on that either, because you don't need the whole wig to be from avodah zarah. It needs to be one hair.

1:21:21single hair on the wig is from avodah zarah, already the whole wig is assur. Now, what about if the store and the payes? The wig maker tells you, "No, no, no, look, the sticker says it's from Brazil. The sticker says it's from Cambodia. The sticker says it's from China. The sticker says it's from Gehenom, wherever you want it to be. It's not from India." Well, anyone that knows a little bit of business knows that a Anytime in merchant banking, you learn about what businesses do in investments. You learn about what businesses do, and you know that every time you take goods from one country and move them to another country. Let's say, for example, I wanted the jacket, but the people that make the buttons are real experts, but they're not in the same country. They're not in Italy. They're in China. So I'm gonna send the jacket... China. Now, as soon as I sent the jacket to China, they put the buttons on. Now they change the sticker from "Made in Italy" to "Made in China," even though originally the jacket was made in Italy. It doesn't make a difference. Now it changes the sticker to "Made in China." But now I say, "No, no, but I want it to be made in Italy." So what do I do? I send it back to Italy, put another string on it, put another string on it, and now it's made in Italy again.

1:22:45Now it's made in Italy again. Every time you change a place, a shor (workshop), and there's some type of work done, the sticker changes. So when you see the wig that says "Made in Brazil," "Made in Cambodia," "Made in Guam," or made wherever you want it to be, it means nothing. All it means is they added one hair from somewhere over there, and they're calling it by that country. And the reason, the proof of that is that even if you go... Ask the people in Brazil, "Do you have people that donate their hair?" They're going to start laughing in your face. Why? Because the Brazilians would rather commit suicide than shave their heads. Now they say, "No, no, but my wig came from England or it came from France." Do you see any French people walking around with bald heads? If there were enough people to supply the market, you would see millions and millions of French people walking around with bald heads. There is no such thing, but there is such a thing in India. There are millions and millions of bald people in India. You do find it over there, nowhere else. Last question in regard to the wigs that people are going to ask is: what about the kosher certification? There are rabbis that put a kosher stamp on...

1:24:04There's a kosher stamp in Israel. There's a kosher stamp in America. There's a kosher stamp on a lot of things. Well, rabotai kerim, like I said, having a beard doesn't mean that much. It's free—even a tayish, even a goat, has one. It doesn't mean that you're going to say the truth. A kosher certification doesn't actually mean something is kosher. It just means that business is being done. That's all it means. When something is impossible to kosherize, it doesn't make a difference to have a kosher stamp. It's impossible to kosherize a wig, impossible. And the reason why is because in order for a wig to be kosher, that means that you have to monitor the hair that's being shaved from three women, because every hair, every wig is from three heads, not one to one. It's not one-to-one equivalent. It's three heads. Why? Because the wig, if you notice it, why is it so beautiful? Because all of the hair is the same length. So obviously, no woman has all of her hair the same length. Some is long, some is short, some is gray, some is bad, some is good. So they take three heads, they take the best of the best of the three heads, and they make it into one wig.

1:25:17now you're not going to have one wig from one head; you can have three heads. But that means that the factory has to monitor the hair from the time they shave it from three separate women. The way they go on to the next head of the next person is an impossible process. Why? Because if you actually go online and look at the actual manufacturing that's done, there's all the things that the hair goes through. It's impossible to ever track even a single hair from the time it's taken off of somebody's head all the way until it arrives at somebody. Even a single hair, not a whole wig, just one hair—you can't track it. you can't track it, you can't use it. Let's say, for example, I told you, "Listen, you know the meat that you're buying? I believe it's kosher." And you tell me, "Okay, what's your proof?" Well, I saw the cow. I looked at it and said, "Do you think you're gonna be a kosher cow?" And the cow said, "Yeah, I'm gonna be a kosher cow." Of course you're gonna let the guy you know slaughter you without giving any problems, no problems. And I saw that they saw each other and the cow looked at the shochet, and it winked its eye, and I left. I said, "Oh, I'm relying on this cow. This cow is reliable," and I leave. And eventually the steak arrives at your house. They say, "Oh, this came from the same cow." I said, "Yes." "How do you know?" "I don't know." Meaning it's a demented argument without following the whole process of how they slaughtered the cow.

1:26:41To make sure it's the same exact cow, to make sure that the cow, after it's slaughtered, was checked for what's inside, whether it's sick, whether it's not sick, whether the lungs were punctured. You can't just decide, "Oh, just because this cow is this way, that means the rest of it is going to work out okay." You can't just decide that just because one step is good, the rest of it is good. To make tefillin takes over a thousand halachot, a thousand different steps to make tefillin. Kosher food that you eat has an enormous amount of eyes monitoring the cow or the sheep or whatever animal is being slaughtered, from the time it's literally born until it arrives on your plate on Shabbat. Enormous amount of eyes. Every single step. If at one point somebody missed something, what do they do? They sell it to halal, to the Arabs. That's why every shochet next door has halal. Every time you see a shochet, every time you see a butcher, next door there's always, or down the street, there's always halal. Why? Everything that's not kosher, they send to them. Because they also slaughter their animals. But they don't have the same rules as we do. So they buy our non-kosher. Because for them, it's halal. For them, it's still okay. For them, it doesn't make a difference if the animal suffered or anything like that.

1:28:00But for us, as Am Yisrael, if we miss one step, we're not allowed to eat it. Even though it's one bite, even though it's one sandwich, Hashem says if you eat it, you become tameh, v'nitmeitem bam. You become impure by eating one sandwich that's not kosher. So if you become not kosher by eating non-kosher one time, what do you think is... What do you become if you put Avodah Zarah on your head all the time, not just one time, but all the time? It doesn't make a difference what your rabbi or his rabbi or that rabbi said if someone can prove without any doubt that their wig came from a kosher place. Sure, without a doubt, and you want to rely on the leniency. That's your risk, but at least you have something to rely on. But until you have that, there's nothing to rely on other than gambling your whole eternity on this. So now you're going to tell me, last but not least, "Yeah, but there's probably more religious women wearing these wigs, big Rabbanits that are very holy." What, you're telling me that they're all part of this idolatry? Yes.

1:29:18Yes, that's exactly what I'm telling you. Yes, it's exactly, they're not doing it on purpose. But yes, yes, that's part of it. Now, where is there, where is there a source in the Torah that a Rabbanit is making a mistake? And then I'll open to more questions. Why are you not doing it? Okay, so for Shalom Bayit, we make Hashem an enemy. That's a new theory. He's not a Mekubal. I can tell you that he's not a Mekubal. Maybe at home there's but not a nine-nine. I'm not clearly saying Mekubal, but I mean that you're above and beyond the law. You're doing something that's if you're just let's say for example you do one tefillin that you do two tefillin and if you keep Shabbat 24 hours, he keeps Shabbat 26 hours. That's, Mekubal does above and beyond what's necessary. Even more than a Chasid. But if you tell me, no, no, I'm gonna violate Hashem's law because I don't want my wife to yell at me.

1:30:27I'm not judging anyone. But again, everyone has to understand there are certain things in Torah that are black and white. There are certain things that are black and white, and there are certain things that are gray, that both this and this are right. Until recently, there was a discovery that we brought to light over the last two years, and... People had some level of argument to say, you know what, I'm going to rely on the Ashkenazi poskim, on the Lubavitcher Rebbe, who said you're allowed to wear a wig as long as it's modest. Like you said, as long as it's modest, it's not like one of those that reaches the floor, it's modest, I can rely on it because I'm Ashkenazi. Fine. Now you have nothing to rely on. You have nothing to rely on. Why? Because unless you can confirm that every single strand of hair that you have on top of your head came from a kosher place, not from India, you have nothing to rely on. There's a book that we work with in Israel that came out recently,

1:31:29Published it online a few months ago. It's 240 pages. Anyone that wants to read it, it's in Hebrew, but anyone that wants to read it, it's available. It's free. There's one that they actually printed, a hard copy with pictures. With pictures, huh? Oh, okay, with pictures. Serious book. It's for serious Talmidei Chachamim that want to see the truth. The point is that in reality, we never really had an excuse to wear a wig in reality. But let's say, let's say you wanted to do it and you want to use the leniency. Now Hashem is telling us, you don't even have that. So because of that, my Rav, Rav Ephraim, he says that this is one of the things that Rav Elyashiv, who fought against the wigs, said that Mashiach is gonna come when B'not Yisrael start doing teshuva for kisui rosh. So I figured that since I'm already coming to Canada, maybe I'll help some women do teshuva. So I brought some kisui rosh. Whoever wants some kisui rosh, you get it for free from Yerushalayim. Anyone that wants to take on the mitzvah of kisui rosh, we brought you a kisui rosh from Yerushalayim. Please, whenever, any of you. Oh, but also there's one thing, Rabotai. Only if you're married, yes. But also, also there is one condition.

1:32:49Don't let the rabbis fool you. Rabbi Eliyahu used to tell us all the time, something very important. You don't have to put kisui rosh unless you're married and unless you have a head. If you're not married or you don't have a head, you don't have to kisui rosh. But as long as you're married and you have a head, you have to have kisui rosh. So anyone that wants to have a head and has a husband, here's a kisui rosh for them. This? This? Okay, okay, the other thing I brought for it, so you don't think I'm picking on the women, and obviously, I didn't know you were going to ask this question. So you see siyata diShmaya? That's the other siyata diShmaya. The other things you don't see, so you don't think that I'm picking on the women only. I brought tefillin for the men. Anyone that wants to take a mitzvah to see? Anyone that wants to be a Jew and wants a mitzvah for every second and... Every second that they're alive, they want to take a mitzvah? You want a mitzvah?

1:33:53Okay, so last but not least, he's reminding me of something about the wigs. Then I'll answer the questions. There was a scientist who became a rabbi and had a special camera that he developed, which is a camera that could read your aura. Anyone that ever heard of what the aura is, he loved the aura, which is the colors around your body that give an impression of your state of being—whether you're holy or not holy, whether you're pure or not pure, mad, and so on and so forth. So he discovered something very, very interesting: once a man puts on tefillin, his aura changes color to a very special holy status, either purple or white—white being practically perfect, purple being near perfect. Now, if he took out the klaf, if he took out the scroll from the tefillin, then that person's status drops to worse than normal. Meaning, if his normal status was yellow...

1:34:54He now became closer to black, meaning he looks terrible, in terrible condition. Why? Because he has fake tefillin on, just leather without the actual Torah in it. Now he discovered something interesting. He said when a woman puts on a kisui rosh, a mitpachat, she has the same aura status as a man putting on tefillin. Same status, and he has this on, there's a video online that I could send to you. You can see this with your own eyes. It's actually in the book that I brought. It's actually in the house. I'll show you. It's in the book. It shows a woman with a mitpachat. Her aura status is very high. It's the same as a Jew that puts on tefillin, kosher tefillin. What about a wig? A woman that puts on a wig, her status is the same thing as fake tefillin. Any wig. Apparently, he knew the order they did. The camera knew before we knew. So, baruch Hashem, anyone that wants, once he saw us, please let me know. I have it for you. But plenty of them, yes, divorced women. Alev haShalom said that a woman should not go down in Kedusha, should not go down in Kedusha. Because once you take on a mitzvah of kisui rosh, she shouldn't go down. But if...

1:36:14Creates major issues for her to get a zivug. There are some leniencies that you could rely on, that you can go back to having a wig or having something that's lower than a thing. But again, the wig itself is not kosher now, so we'd have to replace it with something else. She could uncover her hair though. Yeah, but I mean, again, this is not so pashut. It's not such a simple answer to give, because you're never supposed to lower in Kedusha. You're never supposed to lower in Kedusha. So if you do something, you already did something good, you shouldn't lower it. Again, like I said, it's not such a simple thing to just tell women, "Okay, you're not married, so therefore you should lower your mitzvot." Because for many women, I know, for example, my wife, she's so connected to Kisui Rosh, she sleeps with it. So some women get so close to, they feel the Kedusha that comes from their mitzvot, whether it's they're reading Tehillim or the Kisui Rosh or the Challah or just sending the kids to Yeshiva, whatever mitzvah that she really connects to,

1:37:21Every time she does it, she feels she's closer to Hashem. So a person that feels closeness to Hashem doesn't want to stop. So if that closeness is coming from putting on kisui rosh, she obviously wouldn't want to stop it. So you shouldn't tell her, "Listen, you should stop because your husband is a fool and left you. You should stop doing it." So if she wants to continue wearing it, she should, and in fact, in general, she should. And try to find a zivug with it. I have several students that are in that status that got divorced and are still wearing a kisui rosh. And Baruch Hashem, they're still going on shidduchim and still looking for Mr. Wonderful. But that hasn't stopped the shidduchim. Yes, there was somebody over here before you guys. Somebody over here was asking a question before. I told them I'll answer it. Okay. I have several letters here. Oh, it's Thanksgiving. No worries. Not too sure. No, but that's the history of Thanksgiving. Really? Yeah. History of Thanksgiving. All in three letters. Okay.

1:38:34Yeah, it's a history of how the Americans killed a bunch of Indians. That's the history of Thanksgiving. I have many letters here about the wigs and things of that nature, the poskim. I have a letter from Rav Ovadia, alav ha-shalom, that says that if an avrech says that he wants a woman that wears a wig only, then the shidduch should be canceled. He's a rasha. I have a picture of Rav Kanievsky, the current gadol ha'dor, burning some wigs. You know, after the information came out that it's all coming from idolatry. This is the biggest rabbi in the world today by all opinions. He's burning some wigs. It's not for fun. He has better things to do with his life than burning wigs. But like I told you, the mitzvah of destroying a wig is a mitzvah from the Torah. It's burning idolatry. I have a Plenty of information for anyone that wants to see it, some with me, some on the internet. I could send you. I have some poskim that wrote and signed a letter saying that you're not allowed to wear wigs. There was actually an article that came out two weeks ago from a kehillah, the Satmar kehillah, for whom wigs were standard at some point, but they actually made a psak that any woman who wears a wig is not allowed in beit knesset.

1:39:56Satmar in New York and Monsey in New York are not allowed in beit knesset. This happened two weeks ago. So the news is coming out. People that want to do teshuva are finding a way to do it. People that don't want to do teshuva are finding an excuse not to do it. So I have to look at all these letters, but I'll look for it and I'll give it to you. No, if... So, Rabbi Ovadia said that if somebody wants to go on a shidduch, a woman wants to go on a shidduch, and she asked, "I have an avrech that I'm going to meet, somebody who learns Torah all the time, but his condition is that I wear a wig after we get married." Okay, so a woman asked Rabbi Ovadia, "Should I continue going on a shidduch with a man that says that the only way he would get married is if I wear a wig?" I put on a wig. Rabbi Ovadia says that he is a rasha, cancel the shidduch, and even said it on video, that he's considered like Doeg HaAdomi, which is a person that has no share in the World to Come. Why? But then they asked him another question. They asked him, okay, but the guy found the woman,

1:41:16Guy found a woman and she says, "Listen, I'm interested in getting married, but I'm only going to get married if you let me wear a wig." And they asked Rav Ovadia. So this contradicts. This contradicts. Why is it a contradiction? So now, if the woman wants to marry and wants to wear a wig, it simply means she has a yetzer hara and... Which is something that the husband can influence over time. If she loves him enough, and he teaches her enough about Hashem, eventually she will take off the wig and put on a mitpachat. So you shouldn't cancel the shidduch. But if the man wants the woman to wear a wig, that means that he's at fault. That means that he wants to look at pretty women and... doesn't want to, he doesn't want to get married. That means that he has a—it’s a lie, has nothing to do with his wife. He wants to justify when a man wants a woman to wear a wig, that means that he wants to justify him looking at other women. Why? I'll explain to you the logic. Because right now, today, who are the biggest advocates of wigs? Believe it or not, it’s not women. It’s men. Why? Now, obviously, one side is the business; there are billions of dollars in the business. But not everybody's in the wig business, and

1:42:34Why do men want wigs? Because I'm telling you as a man, not even as a rabbi. Anyone that understands a little bit of psychology, psychology of a man versus psychology of a woman knows that it's shamayim v'aretz. They're very, very different. A woman looks at a man, she looks at his personality. She's like, oh, he looks funny, he looks angry, he looks generous. She thinks about personality character traits. A man looks at a woman, he looks like at cattle. i could do this. I could do that. He doesn't think about any personality, cares less about personality. That's the nature. That's the nature of a man. Nature of a man. He looks at a woman as an object. That's a reality. But I, I'm one of you. It's a reality. I'm one of you. I'm not, it's a reality. This is why the whole time looking at you and not at them. That's the way men are, that's the way we're programmed, and... Don't tell me you're not because that would mean you don't belong in this world. You belong in Shamayim like Eliyahu HaNavi. Reality is, rabotai, or you belong in San Francisco with the animals. But here, rabotai, men look at women a certain way, women look at men a certain way. Now, when...

1:43:49woman wants a wig, that means she wants to feel good in the eyes of whom? In the eyes of men and women. Women always like to talk and chitchat about who wears what, and they're competing amongst each other. But men, because she wants attention. Meaning that a woman wants to look good simply because she has less attention than what she needs from her husband. If her husband makes her feel amazingly beautiful, she will never ever want to wear anything that matters in her life. Now, when a man wants his wife to wear a wig, it's a completely different argument. Why? Because now, if his wife wears a wig, means that he can look at every other woman without her ever complaining about it. "Why, honey? I'm not looking at her; I'm looking at her wig. Look, she has a wig like yours. I'm not looking at her dress; I'm looking at the dress, just like yours." He's giving himself a "get out of jail free card" to look at every woman in the world. Why? He doesn't know who has a wig and who doesn't; they all look the same. In reality, he's giving himself a "get out of jail free card" to not watch his eyes and

1:45:04That's a reality. That's psychology; that's innate. That's why men are the ones fighting for it, and not women. Women want to fight it, but in reality, a woman who gets enough attention from her husband and love from her husband has no problem putting on a mitpachat. Initially, it's a little difficult, unless she gets a little bit of getting used to it, but ultimately if she loves Hashem and she loves her husband, she'll do it. The man, unless he wants to do teshuva for his eyes and start protecting his eyes, he's always going to tell his wife, "No, you know what, I don't think the mitpachat looks good on you, because look at the rebbetzin, look at this one." He's always going to compare it to other women. It's like, wait a minute, why are you looking at other women? Torah says, if a man doesn't look at another woman's hair or body, if he looks at another woman's pinky, if he looks at her hands, her hands, when? When he's giving her change. Let's say you do business. You do business. You have to give somebody change. If he decides to give her change slowly, just to make sure that he looks a little bit at her fingers—not her hair, not her body—he just looks at her fingers. The Gemara says there's no way that he could avoid going to Gehenom. He's definitely going to Gehenom. For what? For looking at her fingers. And this is Naftali Ruvain. This is Gemara.

1:46:27Yes, buy online buy online say it's a good good eye, but this, with time, means that the eyes of a Jew, the eyes of a Jew are critical. The eyes, the mouth, the ears of a Jew are critical. Why? Because these are the tools that Hashem gave you, either to sanctify His name or to desecrate it and If you use your eyes the right way, instead of looking at women, you're going to look at Chidushim in the Torah. But if you look at women, anytime you look at Torah, you're not going to understand anything. If you listen to Lashon Hara, anytime you listen to a shiur, you're not going to understand anything. If you speak Lashon Hara, anytime you want to say something, you're going to forget it. Meaning, the same tools that Hashem gave you to sanctify Hashem's name, you are using to desecrate His name. So, when a man wants his own wife to look attractive for Steve, Joe, and Wilbur at the supermarket, this is a man that obviously doesn't love his wife. He loves other women, but he wants to justify a way to look at other women.

1:47:36He can't look at other women if his wife is tzanua and she's a little tzaddeket and he's looking at other women. Why? Because it's obvious. That's why he said, no, no, no, I didn't look at her. I wanted to compare her wig against yours. You have a much nicer wig. Yeah, but what about the other parts that you were looking at? No, no, I wasn't looking. I was looking. I was just thinking. Just thinking. All you need to know is a little bit of psychology, a little bit of human psychology. You know the whole thing, sheker. No man in his right mind should ever give a single argument to justify and defend the wearing of wigs. Why? If you're protecting your eyes, you should never even see a wig. It exists when the women wear mitpachot. If their wives wear mitpachot, then you have a better chance, but for men who look at other women, unfortunately, that's one of the biggest issurim you have in the Torah. Why? Because every single time you look at another woman, you start thinking about things and you have no idea what they say. The Sefer Chasidim considers a man who looks at another woman as if he was with her physically. So it's not so pashut to just say it's okay to look at other women.

1:48:44only you have to understand that when you get married, b'sha'ah she'nishtaneh, anybody signs a ketubah. The guy signs his life over, and it's not just the money. It's his eternity. Why? Because he's obligated to the woman. What is he obligated to do? He's obligated to satisfy her physically anytime she wants, not the opposite. People think it's the opposite. Now, what does that mean aside from the obvious? It means that his eyes and mind also belong to her and Not just his time and his body. Meaning his eyes and his mind belong to his wife. Which means that anytime his eyes and his mind are about another woman, you have an issue from the Torah. You're violating the Ketubah. And that's why there's an opinion in the Gemara, I believe it's Masechet Sotah, that says if a man thinks of another woman while he's with his wife, there are some Chachamim that say maybe it’s a mamzer. Maybe it’s not really considered like a legitimate child.

1:49:45He's thinking about another woman. He's not really with his wife, and the Shulchan Aruch says, what if a man had a dream? You know, men have dreams, everybody has dreams, but he dreamt about somebody else, not his wife. What should he do? He wakes up. Okay, do something now—not touch his wife. Okay, but what if he dreamt about his wife? He dreamt about his wife. He says, "Honey, I dreamt about you." Who says stay away from your wife now? Touch your wife until you cool down. Why? Whatever woman a man sees in his dream is not his wife. It's the Satan's wife who pretends to be his wife. Why? Because she wants him to waste seed, so she creates more demons. The point is about... Judaism is not avodah zarah, shtuyot of the goyim that have black and white. Every single step that you make in your life has significance for eternity. Oh, creates demons? You guys are a good crowd. So, the Gemara says... Yeah, Satan has a wife. You know who she was?

1:50:58So, actually, I'll tell you. This is going to make it a little more complicated, but we'll try to keep it simple and get going with it. Originally, the Zohar HaKadosh says that when Hashem created Adam HaRishon, He gave him a wife. He gave him a wife. But the original wife didn't want to be with Adam HaRishon. She didn't want to be with Adam HaRishon. You know not to say her name, by the way. Not to say her name, Satan's name. You can say her name. You can't say it. If you say it, see what happens later in the dreams. Somebody comes; it's not him. Sorry. So, not allowed to even say her name to that extent. Originally, she was supposed to be the wife of Adam HaRishon, but she didn't want to be with Adam HaRishon. She ended up marrying the Satan. So now, she creates demons. What are demons?

1:51:58Certain creations in the world that you don't see—in fact, most of what’s in the world you don't see. The reason why is because if you really saw what's around you, you wouldn't survive; you would simply go crazy. There is a Gemara that says how do you see those things if you want to, and it gives a strategy of how to do it. You take a cat, take its stomach, burn it, and you do something with the ashes, put it on your eyes, and then you ruin your life. But there's no way to undo it. There's no way to undo it. So when one Chacham did it, he wanted to commit suicide until all of the other Chachamim that were able to revive the dead prayed for him, and they were able to undo it. But we don't have such Chachamim in the world today, so don't try these tricks at home. The point, Rabotai, is that if you really saw what's next to you, you would lose your mind. And the reason why is because the real world is very, very scary. Why? If you ever read Tehillim, you read that David HaMelech says at one point that... 1,000 on your right, 10,000 on your left. So what does David HaMelech mean? It means that there are things on your right side, there are things on your left side. What are these things? These things are creatures that you created. What creatures? Every time you make a mitzvah, you create a malach, you create an angel, and his name is the name of that mitzvah. So, for example, you ate potato chips.

1:53:27If you ate potato chips and you did a bracha of borei pri ha'adamah before you ate the potato chips, you created an angel that's going to protect you. You created an angel that's going to protect you because you ate one potato chip and you did a bracha. So in Shamayim, one day you go up to Shamayim, this angel will say, no, no, no, he's a tzaddik, Hashem, he's a tzaddik. Why? Look, he created me. I'm the proof. I'm the potato chip. I'm the bracha he made in... 57 79 when you went to Canada and they gave David, he made a bracha on the potato chips. He did a bracha, I was there. I'm the witness. I'm the witness. On the other hand, if you ate the potato chip and you forgot to do a bracha, you also created an angel, but he's not protecting you. In fact, he's doing the opposite. He's gonna fight against you. He's gonna fight against you as long as you're alive and... Why? Because you created him without a body. You created him incomplete. And he's called a demon in English. Now, the problem is that when a person goes up to Shamayim, this demon goes up to Hashem and says, "Hashem, You sent up the Gehenom, he's a rasha, he's menuval, he's a terrible person, he's the worst person in the world. Why? Look what he did to me. He created me without an arm. He created me without a leg. He created me missing a head. He's created me with missing parts. Because he ate without doing a berachah. He created a demon."

1:54:51Now, this is a single sin, a single mitzvah, a single angel, a single aveirah, a single demon. But there are certain mitzvot that create many. On the bad side, when a man wastes seed, he's not creating one demon. He's creating hundreds of millions of them. Because every single seed belongs to a certain demon, to a certain neshamah, and each one of them wants to take revenge against him because he created him without a body. That's why in Yerushalayim, to this day, children are not allowed to bury their father. They're not allowed to go to the Beit Kvarot. Why? Because everyone fears that in Yerushalayim, there's such a level of Kedusha that those demons will come and kill the kids at the cemetery. So they're not allowed to bury the father. They have to stay out of the cemetery. Because any seed that the father wasted throughout his life, when the time comes, they want to take revenge. They want to take revenge when they're jealous of the kids. When the kids are burying the father and they are not able to bury the father, and they are able to do something that the father is not able to do. So when a man wastes seed, he is creating millions of them. That is why anytime a man wastes seed, the punishment begins here and does not wait for Gehinnom.

1:56:14Anytime a person wastes seed, usually Hashem punishes them right away, so usually there's an immediate punishment. It's obvious, which is they lose money. One of the reasons is because Hashem gives a person shefa, gives a man shefa, gives a person a reward. And anytime he wastes seed, that reward leaves his body, that shefa is his seed when he wastes it. Wasting the reward, so let's say, for example, Hashem gave him a $25,000 reward this year. He wastes seed, and the next day he sees his portfolio dropped $25,000. He says, "What happened? How come the market dropped so much? Nothing else went down except my portfolio. I don't understand." No, no, you should understand. You wasted seed yesterday. You wasted it yesterday; today, that's what happens. So many, many times when you see people go broke, this is part of the reason. The Ben Ish Chai says that women also have something equivalent. It's not to the same level of magnitude as a man, but it's also forbidden for women to do such things. Now, on the other hand, on the good side, there is a mitzvah that a person can do that can yield them endless reward. Just like there's endless punishment, there's also endless reward. What is this mitzvah? The mitzvah of zikuy harabim.

1:57:31If you do a mitzvah, for example, you eat kosher, you get one mitzvah. You give somebody food, you do another mitzvah. You do tefillin, another mitzvah. Go to the Beit Knesset, another mitzvah. Keep Shabbat, another mitzvah. These are all mitzvot; it's good. But sometimes you get an opportunity in the Torah that the mitzvah can create another mitzvah. What is this mitzvah? The mitzvah of zikuy harabim, which is to make other people do teshuva. Why? Because let's say, for example, you take one of the CDs that I gave you for free, and you listen to it, and after you listen to it, you're not going to listen to it a second time. You take that CD, and you give it to your cousin, your friend, your colleague, your wife, whoever— you give it to somebody, they listen to it. First of all, every second they listen to it is a mitzvah, because it's full of Torah. Every second they listen to it is a mitzvah, because it’s Torah. That means every time they perform a mitzvah, it also goes to your account. It goes to their account, and it goes to your account. If they do teshuva, from that moment on, every single mitzvah that they ever do, or are actually a part of, goes to your account also. Which means that a single move, not even money, just like a single handshake of giving a person a CD, can yield you

1:58:46Hundreds of mitzvot for eternity. And that's why people that really understand this mitzvah, that see what the Chovot HaLevavot says—one of the biggest mussar books that Am Yisrael has in history—that says that even if somebody gets to a level of Torah and prophecy like Moshe Rabbeinu, and perfection like the malachim (angels), he's still never going to be on the level of somebody that gets other people to do teshuva. Why? Because the person that learns Torah and is good and does mitzvot, he's limited with himself. A person that gets other people to do teshuva, gets other people to get closer to Hashem, his reward never ends. Why? The other person does teshuva, he starts doing mitzvot. Now he's going to have a wife, she does mitzvot. They're going to have kids, they do mitzvot. Those kids are going to have kids, they're going to do mitzvot. Meaning the reward never ever ends. The only thing that's going to save a man or a woman from their previous sins, the Book of Ezekiel says, is to get other people to do teshuva. Why? Because there are certain sins that you know you did, so you can fix them and...

1:59:55There are certain sins you forgot you even did. There are certain sins you can't even fix. You worshiped an idol one time, you went to church, you went to a Reform synagogue, you ate treif, you went out with a goya, you went out with a goy, you did all these things. You made mistakes in your life, like I did. We're not perfect. How can I fix these things? It's already done, ah, what can I do? I get somebody else to stop. i get somebody else to stop it. Once you get somebody else to stop it, it's as if you didn't do it. And that's why the book of Yechezkel tells us you want to do teshuva, get other people to do teshuva first. Get them also to do teshuva. And this is something that you could do for free, you could do with money, depends, depends what you have, what tools Hashem gave you. Either way, the mitzvot and the aveirot have equal weighing, meaning that you have just as much potential to make sins as you do mitzvot. Hashem wants you to do mitzvot. But the only way that we can do this is if we acknowledge first what's emet. What else? Yeah? What if you find yourself in situations where you have the opportunity to teach Torah, but the people that you have access to are goyim? Is there any merit in that? Can you repeat that again? I'm sorry. What if you find yourself in situations where you have opportunities to teach Torah, but the people that you have access to are goyim? Is there merit in that? It depends. It depends what type of goyim. I mean, there is a...

2:01:21Yeah, but it depends why they want to learn. If the goy is a Christian and he's not planning on converting, then you're not allowed to teach him. In fact, the Rambam paskens that you're not allowed to be within six feet of certain Christians. Why? Because they're missionaries, and their job is to get Jews to leave Judaism and go to JC Penney. Right, so there are certain, I'm saying, there are certain goyim, right? So there are certain goyim that you're not even allowed to be next to. The asurim, goyim, it's a mitzvah not to teach them. So you can't just say "goyim"—it's a very, very general word. Even Am Yisrael is called goy kadosh, a nation. But we usually imply it when we refer to just the nations, not non-Jews. There are certain goyim that you're allowed to teach, and it's a mitzvah to teach them. The asurim goyim, you're not allowed to teach them. Now... Very, very important thing to know if you're ever going to teach goyim is a very, very important thing to know: they are always secondary to Jews. Meaning if you have 1,000 goyim, each one willing to pay you $10,000 to hear you speak Torah, listen to this very carefully: 1,000 goyim willing to pay you 10 grand each to listen to your divrei Torah for five minutes and

2:02:42Then you have one Jew who's not going to pay you a penny. Instead, he's probably going to complain about you and write stuff about you on the internet, but he's willing to listen to you for five minutes. You have to go teach the Jew. You have to go teach the Jew. Have to. There's no, it's not an argument even. You have to go teach the Jew. This, personally for me, is one of the most difficult halachot to understand. But nonetheless, it's emet. This is what you have to do. So if you're ever going to teach goyim, you have to know, you have to be very, very careful that you're not making them take precedence over Jews. Now, if they're looking to convert, then you're allowed to help them convert, meaning teach them all the things of a Jew. Everything. If they're looking to become righteous Noahides, then you're only allowed to teach them Mussar and Tanach, meaning what happened in the Tanach. You're not allowed to teach them mitzvot, you're not allowed to teach them about Shabbat, you're not allowed to teach them about all the mitzvot of the Torah, you're only allowed to teach them Mussar and what happened in the Tanach. That's it. They're not allowed to learn the Oral Torah. They're only allowed to learn a specific aspect of it. So what are you going to teach them if it's not this and not that?

2:03:59I teach them. I'm saying, I'm not talking about teaching to that degree. I'm talking about, okay, in Toronto, when I was in Toronto, in my practice, the patients that came to me, the vast majority of them were goyim. And in Toronto, people have respect for Jews, and they were interested. They want to know. I felt like I was doing some service to G-d. Like, if it brought respect to the Jews. Sure, what are you teaching them, though? What are you teaching them? Like, give me an example. You know, I honestly don't. Sometimes it was just a basic principle, like a principle of Shalom Bayit. Okay, a patient that talked to me about marital problems, and he didn't quite understand the importance of Shalom Bayit. Okay, so you're teaching them behavioral things. And so I would teach them values. Okay, so that's considered Musar. That's allowed. That's allowed. That's considered mussar. Mussar is ethics. Teaching people ethics. You're allowed. You're allowed to teach them those things. You're allowed to teach them mussar. Is it to your benefit? Yes, it's a mitzvah. Yes, it's a mitzvah. It's a mitzvah, but as long as it... Right, as long as it's not a...

2:05:24Replacing a Jew, meaning if you have two opportunities, you have to... But what you're explaining to me, it's allowed, it's a merit. It's actually certain tzaddikim that spent a lot of effort into it. Well, the Jew, you're obligated to chase. The goyim, you're not allowed to chase. Excuse me. Yes. If somebody has the intention of becoming a Jew, what are the possible conversions? Once they attend, for example, certain cities, they can see the holidays and show up. He's already in the process of converting? What does it mean, intention? I have an intention to eat, but I'm probably not going to eat until tomorrow. Oh, a non-Jew is dating a Jew? No, you're not allowed to host him in your house. A non-Jew is dating a Jew, has no intention of converting, he's not even being a righteous Noahide. Okay, so I can tell you, because I have more experience in this field than probably any Rabbi in the world. because I was in it. So most people think that hosting an intermarried couple is getting them closer. That if you host a Jew that's with a Goy or a Goya that's with a Jew on Shabbat, you're getting them closer to Judaism.

2:06:55introduction to Judaism. The truth is, 99% of the time, it's not. 99% of the time, you're actually just enabling them to continue doing what they're doing because what you're doing is making them feel normal. They feel accepted the way they are; they're accepted that they're not a Jew with a Jew, and so on and so forth. When is the 1%? The 1% is when the person that is hosting them is an expert in doing kiruv and Meaning, he's not going to hold back in telling them, "By the way, you realize that if you stay this way, you're both going to lose Olam HaBa for eternity. You realize that, right? You realize, by the way, that if she doesn't convert, you're going to be glued to her like a dog, because that's what the Gemara says." And you have no problem saying these hard things, even if she may start crying, or he may start crying, or both of them may start crying. And you have no problem saying that. If you have no problem saying those things, and obviously some nice things too,

2:07:58You could be a person that could help them get closer to Hashem. But if you're just saying maybe they're just going to see that the food is so delicious and the kids are so happy and cute, then maybe eventually they're going to arrive at their own conclusion that it's just better this way. Then please don't do them any favors, and I'm telling you from my own experience, people hosted us for years and never ever affected us in any way, shape, or form. Why? All they did was make us feel normal and... All they did was make us feel normal. We went to Shabbat many places. We felt absolutely normal. We didn't even think about the fact she's not Jewish. Why? She was doing "Shalom Aleichem," "Aleichem Shalom." She was doing the same thing with us. She knew it already before she converted. She knew the whole thing. She knew brachot, she knew everything. Why? We did it for years. We did it for years. When did we realize that this is not allowed? When we found out. By the way, not allowed. Why? Papa, all these things, this is how much it costs. This is how much you call. Once you realize the price, you say, "Okay, now it's different." So, if you have no problems in telling people the price along with some good things to get them closer while they cry, then...

2:09:17You should do it, but to just simply make people feel at home and think that eventually they're gonna come to their senses, I'm telling you, it doesn't work. And my proof is the 80% or so of assimilation that's happening in America today. What, do you think no one's hosting these people for Shabbat? Everyone's hosting them for Shabbat. There are entire organizations that host them for Shabbat. It doesn't change anything. Doesn't the statistic get worse and worse every year? Every year the statistic gets worse. More and more Jews marry goyim. Why? Because they feel normal. They feel normal; they go to Chabad, they get hosted by H, this one hosts them, everybody hosts them. So they feel very normal. So what if they're married to a goyah? In fact, I... Some of them feel so normal that as soon as they have a nice check to write, they write the check to the rabbi. You know what the rabbi does? He says, "You know what? She's converted." Who decided? "I decided. She's converted." They make a fake conversion. They make a fake conversion on the spot. I know a few stories like this—one in Florida, one in New York. Happening as we speak. Happening as we speak, I know. Unfortunately, Rabotai...

2:10:32You have to understand, the emet, the emet is black and white. The emet is black and white. There's no sugar-coating it. There's nothing else. So as soon as people start... Breaking the rules and bending the laws of Hashem as if they're allowed to bend them, then all bets are off. There's one place in Florida where the rabbi bent the laws so much that he allowed a Jew, that's a Kohen, to marry his convert wife. That's not really a convert. Why is it such a bad thing? Because even if she was a righteous convert, which she wasn't because she didn't keep mitzvot at all, he still wouldn't be allowed to marry her. But the rabbi still felt it's okay for them to get married and have kids, and today they have kids, both in their 20s, serving in the IDF, and they both think that they're Jewish, the kids. Orthodox. Orthodox, like you and I are trying to be. Like the Pope. Like the Pope, yeah. Positive conversion, okay. The woman that he's with now is Jewish, and she's pregnant.

2:11:38No, there is a dayah—there is a dayah in a Gemara that says that a woman who has a child with a goy, it's considered that. But that’s Rabban Yochanan who says that, but we don’t pasken that. The halacha is that if the child comes out of a Jewish woman, he is a Jew. Even if the father is not Jewish, it’s a problem. It’s a very serious problem because if the father continues being not Jewish, then most likely that kid's gonna be an atheist. He’s not gonna be Jewish. He’s not gonna be Christian. He’s gonna be an atheist. Children that come out of mixed homes end up becoming atheists, end up becoming very confused, and they end up becoming haters of everything. Why? Because they don't know right; they don't know left. They end up hating everybody. Ah... It's just that statistically speaking, that's what ends up happening. I mean, of course, there are always exceptions to every rule, but for the most part, marriages where there is a husband of one religion and a wife of a different religion usually end up being a very, very serious problem for the kid, because the kid doesn't know which side to pick. When he picked Ima's side that was Jewish, Abba made fun of him.

2:12:53When he picked Abba's side that was Christian, Ima said, "How can you do this to me? I carried you for nine months." So eventually, he says, "The heck with you, the heck with you. I'm going with Obama. I'm going with Osama. I'm going with Buddha. I'm going with somebody. I'm going somewhere else. Why? Leave me alone. Leave me alone. I'm breaking both of your hearts, and I'm going to go somewhere else. I'm going to go to India." And this is what happens. This is what happens all over the world. So, assimilation is our own weapon of mass destruction against ourselves. But if the frum people, if the religious people, started taking kiruv seriously, then they would realize that if they don't do it, they will eventually be affected by it themselves, either from their own kids or grandkids or cousins or so on. Meaning that, at some point or another, somebody knows somebody that's off. that wants to marry a non-Jew, that wants to not keep Shabbat, that wants to eat treif. Everybody knows somebody. Which means that if you start protecting Hashem's kids, even the ones that you don't know, He'll protect your kids. If you don't, then don't ask for protection. Yeah, you have a question. Good. Good. Good.

2:14:16No, not necessarily, because they... Sorry, my throat was getting dry. No. So, no, not necessarily. And the reason why is this. I wasn't on the derech. But the thing is, it's different. It's different. Why? The person... Okay, so the person that was on the derech, but then went off, in reality... He never really believed in Hashem. He never really believed. He may believe that there is a Creator, but many people today who call themselves religious, sometimes they're even Chasidim, don't actually believe that Hashem cares. They have a belief similar to that of the Greeks. The Greeks said that Hashem created the world, but then He left. So, a lot of people believe this today. A lot of religious people, who call themselves religious, believe that Hashem created the world, but He's not here all the time. They think He doesn't really care if they violate certain things. They believe He's only here sometimes.

2:15:16That's kefirah, that's heresy. So that person that eventually just decided that he doesn't want to keep anything because he just decides that Hashem doesn't care, in reality, he didn't change his mind. He always had this mindset, but today he just decided that he doesn't want to do anything anymore. The person that was never on and then came on, usually come on because when they were off, when they were simply keeping nothing, it's not that they were off because they hated God. It's not that they were off because they wanted to go against God. They were off simply because they didn't know; they were off simply because they had a certain amount of information that was not available to them. They didn't have it in their possession. So, for example, if I tell you that I have this envelope over here and this envelope and I'm willing to sell this envelope for $100. You're gonna tell me, "Listen, thank you, but no thank you." Why? I don't really know what's in this envelope, and I'm not gonna take a gamble with a hundred bucks for some piece of paper or maybe nothing is in this envelope. Why? Because there's certain information you don't have.

2:16:31if I tell you, "Listen, in this envelope there is the blueprint of how you can build the next Empire State Building for half the cost, which is something you can sell, something you can make money out of," then you can say to me, "Okay, I'll buy it. I'll give you $200." Why? Because now you have certain information that's in your hands. So a person that doesn't keep Torah and mitzvot and then eventually does, the only thing that changed is information. Information he simply didn't have before. Once he now possessed this new information, everything changed. Usually, that information is something that puts his current status, his current life, at risk. If I tell you that if you keep Shabbat, Hashem will love you, that may encourage you to keep one, two, three, four, five Shabbats, ten Shabbats, but as soon as somebody else tells you that... if you don't keep Shabbat, I'm going to love you and she has blonde hair and blue eyes. Most likely, you're not going to keep Shabbat anymore. Why? Because she's here, and the other guy is not here anymore. And this being called God is also not here anymore, but the blonde-haired, blue-eyed person is here. So, love doesn't sell. Love doesn't make people do teshuvah, at least not for an extended period of time when they have a big test. It makes them do teshuvah when there's no test, when things are easy, and...

2:17:55You go to a secular person, tell him, listen, you should give tzedakah, it's a big mitzvah. If the guy just made a bunch of money, he has no problem giving money. He has no problem giving ma'aser. Why? It's easy for him. It makes him feel holy. No problem. Who do I make the check payable to? Take the money, no problem. When is it a problem for him to give money? When he's having a tough time. Tell him, listen, I know you only made $10,000 last month, but you still have to give ma'aser $1,000. No, no, no, no, no, it's not for me. It's not for me. No, but it's ma'aser. Last month you gave it, and it was $2,000. The month before that, you gave $10,000. The month before that, you gave a million. What's the problem? Now it's only $1,000. No, no, it's not for me. It's just, I'm not doing it. It's not working for me. Why? Because he never really understood that he has to do this mitzvah. It's not because he loves Hashem. He has to do it. It's an obligation. Meaning there's a certain obligation, a certain mitzvah is not just something you could do or not do. You have to do it. When you realize that something is an obligation, you realize that if you don't do it, there's a very severe cost. So if you tell a Jew that if he does not keep Shabbat, in the eyes of Hashem, he's considered 100% an idol worshiper. Same thing like the guy from India selling his hair, same thing like the guy from China worshiping a statue, and...

2:19:18A Jew is not going to like to hear it, but it's true. That's what the halacha says. That changes the perspective; it's like, "Oh, you know, I don't want to be an idol worshiper." If you tell a Jew, "Listen, by the way, if you continue wasting seed, all your dreams of being successful you can throw them in the garbage. Even if you end up making a million dollars, you would still cry. Why? Because you were supposed to make a billion." Whatever money you have was supposed to be a lot more. Where's our proof of that? Someone that watches their brit gets a reward from Shamayim to be the mefarnes, to be the person that gives sustenance to other people. How do we know this? In Parashat Vayeshev, we have the whole sequence with Yosef HaTzaddik. Yosef HaTzaddik had a big test in front of him... where Eshet Potiphar, the wife of Potiphar, tried to seduce him. And Yosef HaTzaddik overcame the test and did not allow it to happen, even though it meant him going to jail for 12 years. He didn't fall for the test. For that reason, he was rewarded...

2:20:28Becoming the king of Egypt, the viceroy of Egypt, not only made him very wealthy but made the entire world depend on him. The entire world had to come to him to ask for money, including his own family, including Yaakov Avinu. Why? Because he protected his brit one time. From there, we learn that somebody who protects their brit is not just someone who ends up being successful themselves, but also someone that other people end up depending on. This is something that any normal person would want, because it means you have significance in the world—you mean something. And that also is a reason why Hashem gives certain people a long life. Anyone who wants a long life should make sure that as many people as possible depend on him or her. Why? Because even if somebody deserves, chas v'shalom, to die, if he knows somebody that doesn't deserve to lose him, doesn't deserve to lose this person, they could stay alive just because of the merit of somebody else. So the point is that when a person watches their brit, they become a helper for other people, and that also gives them, you know, another opening to have a longer life. Next question.

2:21:42Beseder, Rabotai. Tomorrow, we have a shiur in the morning. I believe that Rabbi Ephraim is going to tell you exactly the time. Anyone that wants to have a private meeting or has specific questions or specific issues, please let me know. I believe in the morning or in the afternoon, we're going to have some time that we have some lectures at some schools. 8 o'clock, and I believe at 12 o'clock, but I think sometime in between those times or after that time, just be in touch with Rabbi Ifrah. Anyone that wants to meet about specific issues, please let me know. And then tomorrow night, we have it at the big Knesset, a different shiur about a different topic. Also, it could be Sh'eilot U'Teshuvot or anything else at the same time. I think it's at 7:30 or 8 o'clock. Thank you very much for having me. Baruch Adonai l'Olam, Amen v'Amen. By the way, here's the question. Let's see the questions, actually. Actually, what? Oh, actually, the questions. There's a question for anyone who wants to know. Sorry, here are the questions. I wanted to ask, I wanted to see these questions. I wanted to see if the shiur answered them. Okay, are you allowed to rebuke someone in shiur even if the rabbi is there?

2:22:57That's the first question. The second question is, what's the opinion on the age difference between men and women, specifically older women? Okay. Why is it important for a Jew to have a rabbi? I think we answered part of the questions. We did Maariv already. Oh, you guys already did. I did Maariv already. We're going to do Maariv upstairs.