Fake Chabad Destroying Real Chabad Name and Judaism

0:07So the questions always come from people in regard to someone who said something, and sometimes the mistake is made by the speaker, where the speaker assumes that you know what he's talking about, meaning he will tell a story, And then I'll mention some side comment, like, "Yeah, you remember what happened with Avraham Avinu and his father," and continue, assuming you know what he's talking about. If you're talking to a group that has learned this with you, it's correct to do. However, if you're addressing the general public, for the most part, it's incorrect. Unless it's just too long of an explanation, it's incorrect to do it simply because it's assuming people know what you're talking about, and many times they don't. It makes them actually very, very confused. To assume people know the basics is incorrect in this generation, and...

1:21and probably quite a few generations before us even, but definitely this generation because most people today, including religious people, do not know the basics. How do I know? I deal with them every single day. I deal with religious people, I deal with non-religious people, I deal with all types of people, and quite frankly, the vast majority of people do not know the basics. They simply do not know the basics. So assuming they know the basics is incorrect. So if you're going to say something with the assumption that people know the basics, then you're going to have a lot of confused people, and the audience that you have is going to be underserved. But that's sometimes the reason why people have confusions. Sometimes that's the reason why somebody will answer that question the way that you just said it, whether Mashiach is going to die. Assuming you understood there's two Mashiachs and one is not going to die and one is going to die, you assume maybe that's the reason. If he talked about Mashiach ben David, then he has to learn again. The other reason is sometimes that the listener mishears or misunderstands what the speaker says.

2:32Mishears and misunderstands. He says something, and the listener just doesn't hear it the right way. He misunderstands it. And this happens even more often. Even more often, this happens. That's why Hakadosh Baruch Hu invented and created YouTube and video. which allows you to rewind 10 seconds, rewind 20 seconds, rewind 30 seconds, and hear it all over again, because you obviously did not arrive at the right conclusion. You hear it again, you play it again, and you hear it enough times you'll understand it. Sometimes I myself listen to the same recording that Rav Friedman gave, sent me, of an answer 15 times. I heard it the first time. It's a two-minute recording. It's a two-minute recording. I heard it once, twice, three, four times. I'll hear it 15 times. Why? Because until I know that I understand every word that he said in there, I'm not finished. Again and again and again and again. If I were you guys, if I were sitting in there listening, what would I do with my rabbi? If I talk to my rabbi, we have a shiur. Every day there's a shiur. I have a pen and paper in front of me. I write down as many words as I can. And after I write,

3:46I listen to the shiur, just like everybody else listens on the internet. They listen to Rabbi Ephraim's shiur. I listen to the shiur also, just like them. I'm one of the views, sometimes two, sometimes ten, sometimes twenty. Why? I want to make sure I understand every word, depending on the shiur. If it's material that we've never covered, if it's brand new, I'm going to hear it as many times as I have to until I remember it. But people listen to Shiurim, they listen to Shiurim every day, three, four, five, six hours, even ten, for ten years. Nothing changes. Why? Because they're listening. They're not learning. They're listening superficially, like music. So, sometimes the listener mishears the speaker, misunderstands the speaker, and arrives at the wrong conclusion. But then sometimes, The speaker is a rasha. Sometimes, the speaker is a rasha. And he simply has so much ego that he decides he's going to contradict all of the chachamim before him who said the opposite. He decides to say something that's completely unheard of. He decides to say something from his own mind as if he's equivalent to them.

5:03Like one of my dear friends went to visit Russia, and he went to a Beit Knesset over there in Russia. Unfortunately, another terrible Chabad story. And he goes to a big multi-million dollar building, and he sees almost every single person. drove to shul on Shabbat in a kehillah. Big kehillah. Not like five people. Big kehillah. Almost every single person drove to shul. Like as if it became mutar. Allowed to drive. Then, since he's familiar with the people, starts... Wait. Almost every single person is married to a goyah. As if it became mutar. Until marriage became allowed. Now he's there on Shabbat. Who's going to give an Aliyah to the Torah? There are a few people that keep. Who's going to give an Aliyah to the Torah? Every single Aliyah, Mechalel Shabbat, married to a Goyah. Every single Aliyah.

6:14Then he says, here's the caveat. Here's the bonus. He says, here's a picture of one of the new Baalei Teshuva. He did Teshuva. What did he do? One guy did Teshuva in a kehillah. What did he do? He got a huge tattoo on his back: "Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad," tattooed on his back with an angel on top of it. You see this big giant Russian guy, 400 pounds, with a tattoo of a verse from the Torah. You're not even allowed to erase it now. Not allowed to erase it now. Because it's a verse and it's Hashem's name. Now let's not erase Hashem's name when it's inscribed like that, engraved like that, because it's a sin. It's about a Baal Teshuva, a Baal Teshuva, a Baal Teshuva. He says, "Hashem, the things he told me." Some of the things, honestly, I'm just giving you guys a heads-up that I don't want to mention. Some of the things he told me. Hashem, what's happening. Anyway, now you would think, okay, so if somebody, all these people are off, this, that, somebody says something to get them to do teshuva, oh no, so he decides to take the initiative and start saying some chizuk to a few guys. No, listen, you can't be married to this woman, you have to do teshuva, you have to keep Shabbat, Mashiach comes and says, he's only going to save people who do teshuva.

7:34The rabbi, the rabbi of the kehillah, the rabbi of the kehillah comes, interrupts him, says, hey, don't listen to him. He doesn't know what he's talking about. Doesn't know what he's talking about. Mashiach comes, the rabbi told us, Mashiach comes, everybody's saved. So he's talmid chacham, he knows what he's talking about. He goes, no, no, no, rabbi, I'm sorry, but... We have verses in the Torah. It says, the verse in the Torah says specifically that the go'el, the Mashiach, is only going to save people that do teshuva. Not people that just drove to the shul on Shabbat. People who do teshuva, keep the mitzvot. No, no, no. Okay, but... What about, it says in the Torah, Yetziat Mitzrayim, Chamushim left Mitzrayim, only a small portion of Am Yisrael, of Bnei Yisrael, left Mitzrayim. Hashem killed the rest of them because they didn't do teshuva. He says, no, over here, we don't believe that. Here in this Chabad, we don't believe that. It's a meforash in the Torah. No, no, we don't believe that. The guy wanted to start crying.

8:45The guys start crying, mamash. Why? This, rabotai, is literally destroying any chance that those poor people have of doing teshuva. Why? Because even if they've already made the mistake of marrying a non-Jew, even if they've already made a mistake of not living a religious life, even if they've already made a mistake of driving on Shabbat, even if they've already made a mistake of... mistakes they're making. What's their hope? Their hope is that the rabbi, rabbi, rabbi, rabbi, is what? The rabbi is going to tell them, oh, my dear son, listen, Hashem says, now let's drive on Shabbat. Hashem says, now let's marry a non-Jew. Hashem says this, Hashem says that. The rabbi's job is to do that. That's the point of the rabbi. But he doesn't do that. What does he tell them? Rosh Chodesh Elul, drasha, on Shabbat. The only mitzvah, it tells us in the Kehillah, that my friend is over there. The only mitzvah you're all responsible for is to give tzedakah to Chabad. That's it. I know that not all of Chabad is like this, but this is another example. Unfortunately, a lot of the bad stories come from Chabad. Not necessarily because they're all bad. There are many that are bad because they're the most common.

10:09It's as common as Starbucks. I mean, there's one on every corner, Baruch Hashem. Alevei, they all actually had people do teshuva before they become rabbis. Before you become a rabbi, do teshuva first. This is happening all over the world. You think the story is bad? It's happening all over the world. I have the same exact story in Australia, the same exact story in Seattle, the same exact story in New York, the same exact story in Florida, the same exact story in all four corners of the world. I have the same exact story. It's like I keep asking, how do these people know each other? How do they all have the same story? What, they all go to the same Chabad? Is Chabad that big? It covers four continents out of seven? Where's this building? I can't see it. Everywhere, Rabotai. Why? Because, Rabotai, page 49, says that before Mashiach comes, most of the rabbis are going to be Erev Rav. They're going to be Resha'im. Most of the people that are supposed to be doing one thing are going to be doing the opposite. And people that tell you the truth are going to be publicly embarrassed and made fun of.

11:25The chutzpah that people have, the nerve that people have, will reach new levels, where they literally tell people to do whatever you want, just give us money. That's your teshuva. If that's not bad enough, the rabbi knows that all the guys that are married to goyot doesn't say a single thing. He tells them, "Give money." All the guys that are not married, he knows they all go to prostitutes on Shabbat. That's their mitzvah for Shabbat. They all go together. I have another Chabadnik over here. Calls himself a Chabadnik. He married a Goya to a Kohen. All types of people. All types of people destroying the Chabadnikim. Destroying the Chabadnikim. Destroying it. Why? You know what kind of tzaddikim Chabad had? You know what kind of tzaddikim Chabad had? The Rogatchover Gaon. The Rogatchover Gaon was a Chabadnik. You know, Rabbi Kodesh Kodashim, he met Einstein, or better yet, Einstein met him. After five minutes, Einstein came out of the room and said, "With his brain, you can make four Einsteins." They came to the rabbi later on and said, "You know, this Einstein was very impressed by you. He said you could make four of him with you." The rabbi responded, "What? What was he so impressed about? All we talked about is hishtuyot."

12:55His nonsense about E equals MC squared, I just showed him, all of that stuff is already in the Torah from thousands of years ago. All we talked about for four minutes was his nonsense. If he wants to be impressed, come learn Gemara with me, I'll show you. Meaning, Einstein, what was Einstein impressed by? He wasn't impressed by the Rogatchover Rebbe, who was able to show him different halachot inside some verse in the Torah in some magical way. No. Einstein was impressed that in a matter of seconds, His 40, 50, 60 years of work was on the fingertip of the Rogatchover Rebbe who knew more about it than he did. From the Torah, though. The Rogatchover Rebbe, Rabotai, was very charif, very, very sharp. And you couldn't fool him for anything. And he was very, very hard on people that wanted to be chachamim. He didn't give you an easy route. He'd rip you apart. And some, mamash, a lot of people would, mamash, leave meetings with him crying hysterically. One time, this rasha, that was a Rosh Yeshiva, very arrogant, known to be arrogant, came into town, and, uh,

14:24He asked me, are you going to go meet the Rogatchover Rebbe? He says, yeah, you know, I'll go meet him. So he went to go meet the Rogatchover Rebbe. He said, he's here in town. So the guy did what I was talking about in the beginning of the shiur. As an introduction, he told him his resume: Oh, you know, I wrote this book and this and that. I did this and that. He's showing his glory. So the Rav says, you know, that's it. It was nice to him. So before the guy left, he says, you know, Kavod HaRav, it's not nice what they say about you. He says, well, what did they say about me? He says, they say that you're very harsh on Talmidei Chachamim. He says, I am. I'm Talmid Chacham. I'm harsh on them. He didn't get the joke. He's telling the guy he’s not coming, so why should I be harsh on you? A very, very sharp individual, somebody that had enough to align his mind. Someone who had a complication, he couldn't arrive at a solution. He studied it and studied it but couldn’t find something, so he wrote a letter. In those days, they didn't have computers.

15:50So, I heard this story from Aharon Levy, Shlit"a. And he says, somebody sent a letter to the Rogatchover Rebbe. He said, I have this sugya, this complication. I can't find an answer, and it's just bothering me at night. I can't go to sleep. What should I do? Can you give me an answer? So Rav Yisrael Salanter writes him a letter, gives him over 50 different sources. He didn't give him the answer like I give you this answer, I give you the whole story, you ask a question, I give you a 15-minute answer, and I show you how to make words out of it. No, he just says, look, page 37a. Look, Tosafot over there. Look, this one over there. This one over there. This one over there. Page numbers, and then. Because the guy's Talmid Chacham. He's not... starting out, gives him over 50 different sources. So the guy gets a letter, starts looking at the sources, has nothing to do with his question. There's no way, he's not like giving me a wrong answer.

16:59Studies all the sources, over 50 different sources. Everything he said, "Look at the Tosafot here, Tosafot there, Tosafot here, Tosafot there." Nothing. After a month of studying it, he writes another letter, "I'm sorry, I studied all the sources, all the Tosafot that you gave me. I don't even know, I maybe made a mistake, but how is this relevant to my question?" The Rogatchover Rebbe writes him a letter back. He goes, if you notice, all of the places that I gave you, the Tosafot over there, Tosafot was a group of almost 2,000 Chachamim. It wasn't one person. I actually used to think it was only one person. Tosafot was like Rashi, one person. No, Tosafot was a group of over 2,000 Chachamim. He says, if you notice, Tosafot in all of those places had a question, an unanswered question. had a question about what was happening but didn't have an answer, yet you continue seeing Tosafot everywhere else. This means that even if you reach a complication, you have an answer to keep going. Don't worry; you keep going. That's the answer that's more valuable than just giving you the answer on a silver platter. Don't decide, "Oh, I can't learn anymore until I find the answer." Sometimes you have to keep learning even if you don't know the answer.

18:19So one of the things that you'll notice as you learn more and more Torah is that the Chachamim, the real Chachamim, write more with fewer words. The books that you buy today, you know, a lot of the modern stuff that people write, Quite frankly, you know, everybody put a lot of toil into their work and so on and so forth, but you cannot compare it to the writings of the Gedolei HaDor. You cannot compare it to the writings of the Acharonim, the giants of the generation. You cannot compare it to anything before them. And, you know, it's a nice book. It gave me a little emunah boost. It's a nice book, gave me a little chizuk, and, you know, explained to me a couple of stories. But you can't compare the two. It's a world of difference.

19:20But then you see also a very interesting thing that the writings of the Acharonim, the Acharonim were the latest sages, the most recent ones. When they write answers on a question, they write mamash chapters and, in some cases, entire books on just one answer. Books, chapters, hundreds of pages on one answer. And in there, they have literally dozens, if not hundreds, of sources. But then you look at the Rishonim, like the Rambam and the Ramban. All of the giants from 600 years ago, 800 years ago, 900 years ago—they don't write that much. you see the Rambam's Mishneh Torah. He writes an answer, one paragraph, sometimes two sentences, one sentence. Sometimes it's a page and a half, but generally, it's small. But if you look at some of his talmidim from 500 years later, or 800 years later, let's say, they write an explanation of what he wrote 900 years ago.

20:43He wrote five books on this little paragraph. So the question is, how come the answers of the Rishonim from 900 years ago are so simple, if you will, so minimal, if you will, but the Acharonim are so elaborate? Now everyone knows that... that the Rishonim, the Rambam, the Ramban, the Rashba, all of the giants, they're bigger than the Acharonim. Rabbi Yosef Karo is greater than anyone that lived in the last 100 years. You can't compare the two. So how come Rabbi Yosef Karo wrote a halacha in three sentences? The Rambam wrote a halacha in two sentences. But if you see somebody in the last 20 years write a book, he wrote a whole book on one halacha. What, they have more Torah? No, it can't be possible. They're better, they're higher. How come? I heard a fantastic answer from, like I said, Rabbi Aaron Levy. He says, everyone knows that the generation of the Rambam and the Acharonim were bigger. Everybody knows. No one is saying that their Torah is less. So how come the ones that live more recently have more elaborate answers?

22:10live more recently have a more elaborate answer. He says when somebody's blind and they're looking for an exit, what do they do? They touch all the walls. That's all the walls. "Let me check here. No, it's not here. No, let me check here." They check and check and check everywhere. They touch everything just to make sure, and eventually, they find a door. When someone can see, they go straight to the door. Meaning that even though the Acharonim, Gedolei HaDor, Kodesh Kodeshim, they had Ruach HaKodesh, still they were considered blind in comparison to the Rambam. We're talking about people, people, Malachei HaSharet, HaRav Ovadia, the Chazon Ish, Chafetz Chaim, the Steipler Gaon, these people were Malachim. considered blind in comparison to the Rambam, and the Rambam is considered blind in comparison to Rabbi Akiva. Such is the difference between the Chachamim, even though they're all big, they're all Tzaddikim, they're all great, they're all everything. Needless to say, people today that speak freely and say things freely and...

23:33If the giants of the generation were considered blind in comparison to the previous generations, who are you, and who do you think you are to come up with a chidush that contradicts them? So how come their Torah is so elaborate? It's because they're not contradicting them. What are they doing? It's like, I have a chiddush. I have a new thing. But it's not really me. I'm going to give you 50 different chachamim, 50 different proofs that said the same thing. It's just that I'm going to condense it into one book. All of these chachamim that came before me, they said the same thing. I'm just going to show you all of it in one book. It's not really my idea. I'm just shedding light on it. I was shedding light on a pre-existing idea, but it was spread everywhere. So I'm going to give you 50 different sources, 150 different sources, that say what I'm saying to you in a simple way. But because I cannot contradict the Rambam, I cannot contradict anybody before me, what I'm going to do is give you the sources that this actually already exists, just in a nicer format. So the real Chachamim, they're not bringing anything new, if you will. They're, in essence, showing you that everything already exists and already has existed before.

24:49Which means that if anybody here comes today and has the audacity to tell you they have a new tradition, a new idea, run away as far as you possibly can from that person. And the reason is, they're either evil, like this guy from Russia, and anyone that does what he does. That tells people that the only mitzvah they have to do is give tzedakah. Or they're too ignorant to even deal with. They're too ignorant to even know they're ignorant. Thinking that their idea, their chidush, has legs to walk on. And they can challenge the gedolim before them. It's not a problem to have a chiddush, as long as your chiddush has legs. Meaning, what does legs mean? Legs mean there are other chachamim that have said the same thing, that agree with your idea. It doesn't contradict anything before you. But unfortunately, a lot of people don't understand this, and they think that the Torah has changed. And that's why they fall trapped to such wicked people.

26:17that run kehillos and speak against the Torah, speak against the Amein,