From Wall Street To The Western Wall 2 (w/ NEVER BEFORE SEEN FOOTAGE OF PAST LIFE)

0:16Great to be here. Thank you for having me. It's been an extraordinary journey over the last few years of giving shiurim in different places around the world. Here in Florida, where we live, but also in Jerusalem and Netanya, in New York, in Arizona. Also, an amazing Bukharian community over there—we did a Shabbaton over there also in... Great to be here. Thank you for having me. It's been an extraordinary journey over the last few years of giving shiurim in different places around the world. Here in Florida, where we live, but also in Jerusalem and Netanya, in New York, in Arizona. Also, an amazing Bukharian community over there—we did a Shabbaton over there also in

1:30New York and those I'm continuing to do things all over the world, b'ezrat Hashem. So the question is, why? Why would somebody in their right mind leave Wall Street, where on a bad month we'd make $200,000, if we worked half the month, and leave everything and go work for free? I... After you lose everything already, so it's not like you're still living off of millions. So, I've told the story of my book, "Hashem, My Teshuva Story," a few times. But today, with Siyata Dishmaya, I want to do something a little different for some of the fans who have been watching the story a few times already. A lot of people tell me that, you know, since usually the story is a little long, there's not enough time for questions and answers, and... Usually, the way I tell the story is I tell the story, and I usually have some idea to combine the story with. The good news is I have no idea what—other than the story—I have no idea what else I'm gonna say. So I'm gonna ask you for help to ask me a few questions now, but I'm only gonna answer them during the story. So I'm sure that all of us have had some type of questions, whether it's about God or...

2:58It's about Judaism or it's about the rules of something. So if anybody has any specific questions, you can ask. If not, then we'll continue. We'll figure it out from there. But if anybody has specific questions about why we're even in the world, why be a Jew, why be a religious Jew, what is a Jew, all these purpose of life questions that at some point or another we all have to ask ourselves and... If it's not when we're still young, then at some point when we get old. So, does anybody have any questions at all? We all know the entire Torah. Usually, the first time I ask if anybody has any questions, nobody has any questions. When I turn off the camera, everyone has questions. So if you want, I can turn off the camera. Okay, so I'm going to start with the story. If anybody has any questions, you can ask along the way. Don't worry about interrupting. It's fine. It's not a speech. I didn't write anything down; this is just books, and I'm hoping they're going to tell me what to say. So, where do we begin? In the year 1990, my father decided that it was time for us to join him in the United States. He had already come to the United States, I believe it was in 1989. He decided that it was time for us to move to the United States from Israel and start a new life.

4:25I was a 10-year-old boy. Not much of this really mattered to me. All I knew was that I was changing friends. Now, the only problem was that I didn't know that these new friends were not going to speak the same language. The only thing that I knew when I came to the United States was the ABCs. Literally just the ABCs, because it was on a cereal box. Other than that, I did not know a word of English. But, needless to say, when you're 10 years old, you can learn the language pretty quickly. but the American education system needs a little education. The reason is because after about a year, I was already fluent in English, and I passed the ESL test, but for whatever reason or another at the time—it's probably the same in the public school system today—they thought that if you don't speak the language, it means you have a mental deficiency. means you have a mental deficiency. Little do they know that the education system in most schools outside of the United States is usually superior. So, for example, my math when I was 10 years old was the equivalent of the math of someone that was already in high school. Not because I was a genius, simply because that was the education system in Israel and

5:49I came to the United States, and I didn't understand why they were doing math that I did when I just got into first grade. It didn't make any sense to me. So they sent me, after I passed the ESL test, instead of sending me to a normal class with normal people, they sent me to a class where there was special education. One of the guys in the class looked like he was 30 years old, even though we were all 11. He had a beard, and... Another guy, I think he was a father. Another guy, I don't know if he spoke at all. He looked like a murderer, though. Each one of them was one better than the other. This was in New York. This was in New York. Again, this is one of the downsides when you go to the traditional public school system, even though we were born into a relatively religious family, little by little, each generation that doesn't hold strongly to the Torah gets further and further from the truth. So by the time we came to the United States, all bets were off. Meaning, you come to America, you become American; you start going to McDonald's, you start going to public school.

7:07You become a goy, but you still think of yourself as a Jew because sometimes, when you don't know enough Torah, you don't think that Torah and Judaism necessarily have to go together. You think it's an elective, like something nice, like something religious people do. But the question we have to ask ourselves is: What makes you Jewish? What makes you Jewish? Is it the fact that your mom was Jewish or... If that's your answer, then I could tell you you're wrong. Because Rabbi Akiva, one of the greatest sages that ever lived, his mom wasn't born Jewish. She was born a goy. But she converted to Judaism. So did the parents of Rabbi Meir Baal HaNes, whose name every Sephardic woman loves to say and for whom they light at least five or six candles a week. So did some of the greatest sages that ever lived throughout Jewish history. They weren't born Jewish. As a matter of fact, each one of you that reads Parashat HaShavua, at some point you're going to read a name called Onkelos. Onkelos himself was not born Jewish. He was a convert. And from him, in the Gemara Masechet Avodah Zarah, we actually learn about the minhag of kissing the mezuzah. You ever wonder why we kiss the mezuzah? We learn it from a ger. We learn it from a convert. So the fact that your mom was Jewish doesn't make you Jewish.

8:34Because sometimes your mom is not Jewish, but you're Jewish. What's the other thing that can make you Jewish? I speak Hebrew. There are plenty of Palestinian terrorists that speak Hebrew. Doesn't make you Jewish. What makes you Jewish? The question is, when did we become Jewish? Before Mount Sinai, we were called Bnei Yisrael. We were called the sons of Yisrael, sons of Yaakov. but we're all considered Noahides. Because there was no Torah yet that we had to comply with. We had a Torah, but we didn't have to comply with it the same way we had to do after Mount Sinai. What happened at Mount Sinai? We received the laws, we received the Torah. At the moment Moshe Rabbeinu received the Torah and he came down from Mount Sinai and he says, here, these are the laws, we became Jewish. Meaning that the only thing that changed at Mount Sinai was not the personalities, was not the mothers, was not the cousins, was not the traditions, it was the laws. Hashem says, "You're officially Jewish." So what makes us Jewish is whether or not we follow the Torah. This is the reason why, for anyone who doesn't know, the Rambam in Hilchot Shabbat says that a Jew who does not keep Shabbat, who wants to drive on Shabbat, even though his grandfather was a tzaddik and a rabbi and

10:02his father, an amazing tzaddik, a tamid chacham, but he doesn't feel connected to it. He wants to drive on Shabbat. So the Rambam says if you drive on Shabbat, you're lighting fire. If you light fire on Shabbat, that's a problem. That puts his Judaism on suspension. He can't be used as a witness. He Religious ceremony, he can't be used as someone as a witness for chuppah and kiddushin. It's a problem. In a minyan, he cannot be counted. Cannot be counted. Why? Because his Judaism is on suspension. Why? Because he wanted to drive to the mall on Shabbat. So, for a silly drive to the mall on Shabbat, he decided to put his entire ancestors' history and his own history on suspension. And For 3,300 years, we've been fighting for survival. The Egyptians wanted to kill us, the Spanish Inquisition, all the pogroms, the Nazis, the Greeks, the Romans, the Turks—everyone and anyone that ever existed that had weapons wanted to kill us. We all survived. Why? Because we had unity. But not unity because we liked each other. Unity because we had Torah.

11:27Now this Torah traveled three thousand three hundred years for us to be Jewish. And someone that drives on Shabbat to the mall to get a drink for three dollars and fifty cents from Starbucks just put his Judaism on suspension that we've been fighting for, for three thousand years. Kind of silly. Now, I didn’t know this, so most of my life my Judaism was on suspension. So, when they sent me to special ed and... Didn't think I belonged there; little did I know that, in regards to my Judaism, I did. In regards to our overall intellect, I didn't. So, little by little, I grew up the ladder. By the time I was in eighth grade, I started taking high school classes. By the time I was in ninth grade, I started taking college classes and became what you call a talmid chacham, but in the secular world I... Went to a top state school, had nearly a perfect GPA, everything was wonderful. All while I had three jobs in high school and was making $100,000 a year as a 17-year-old kid. I had two newspaper routes, but the newspaper routes were making only $250 a week, so I decided to pay somebody else $20 so he could actually do all the jobs, and I could still collect $230.

12:44That gave me more time to play some sports. I played football in high school. Not the Israeli football, the European football, but the American football. With us, every person is six foot five and much bigger and faster than me. But for some reason, I was attracted to the sport. So imagine a small, short Jewish guy playing with these giants. I thought it was a good idea. And I had jobs. I sold shoes. I sold clothes. I sold computers. I sold anything that I possibly could. I worked in flea markets and stores and tried to do whatever I could to help the family. But eventually, at the age of 18, I realized that I didn't want to be a doctor. I didn't want to be a lawyer, and I didn't want to be in school for the next eight years because... to go start doing the same thing that I already know what I want to do now. What do I want to do? I want to make money. That's all I want to do. I have no interest whatsoever in any specific profession. Originally, I came into college thinking maybe I'll be a psychiatrist or psychologist. But then after taking a few biology and chemistry classes, it bored me and I said, this is not for me. And I don't want to be, I don't think it's worth it for me to wait eight years to become a lawyer because I'm already making almost as much as him.

14:00So let me go find a way to make more money. So I was introduced to Wall Street. Wall Street on TV looks great. On TV, everyone wears a suit. Everyone looks civilized. Everyone looks like they're honest, genuine people. Once you actually get on it, it's a little bit different, a little different, a little... For the first three years of being on Wall Street, I did what they call "paid the dues." I worked for other people, made them millionaires, while they at most paid me a thousand dollars a month. They would make forty, fifty, even a hundred thousand dollars a month off of my work, and at best, they paid me a thousand dollars a month and maybe gave me a tie as a bonus. That was the first three years. Eventually, I worked at a firm called Raymond James, which was a big firm with about maybe five or six thousand brokers. I was just about 21. The partner that I had decided to quit after September 11th, and it was my opportunity to shine. It was my opportunity to finally go on my own, not have any bosses, not have any partners, and

15:14So I told the owner of the branch, "Listen, the guy that I was working with wasn't exactly an honest person. I want to be on my own. I don't want to have a boss. I don't want to have a partner. I don't want to have anything." He says, "No problem. You'll have $5,000 a month in bills just to walk in—for the computer, for the secretary, and for a bunch of other fees that you'll have to make up somehow." So he said, "You have the money?" I said, "No, absolutely not. I've been making $1,000 a month and..." How are you going to pay me? I said I have no idea, but if I leave and I go to another firm, I have to start all over again. He said, okay, so what are your intentions here? This is a question that I will never forget in my life. The owner of the branch was in the business for almost 20 years at the time, much older than I was. I was a 20-year-old little nothing with a ponytail and a lot of bravery and...

16:15asked me, "What are your intentions here?" So the first thing that came to my mind was to buy him out. He found it interesting and he said, "Okay, no problem. Just make sure the money's here on time." And I had my chance right after September 11th, which anyone who knows a little bit about the stock market knows wasn't exactly the best time for the stock market. I But that was the time that Hashem decided I was going to start in the business. Now, when you don't have any clients, and now you don't have a salary, not even the thousand dollars a month, you still have expenses. Somehow you have to pay for those expenses. So, to pay rent, I sold my car. For food, I borrowed a dollar every day from this guy, Dimitri, so I bought a donut for 50 cents and coffee for 50 cents. And that was my food for the day. The bus cost $1.50 each way at that time. Now I didn't have the $1.50. So at 5:30 in the morning, when I would get on the bus, I'd pretend I had the $1.50 by telling the bus driver that the MetroCard is going to go in and it's going to have $1.50 in it. Now, when the machine said it doesn't have $1.50 in it, I said, oh, it's the wrong MetroCard. It's the wrong card. Let me get you a new one.

17:45I'll be right back, but I don't want to hold anybody up. There are other people behind me, so let me go to the back of the bus. I'll put my stuff down and come back with the $1.50. Now, may Hashem forgive me for my sins, but I never came back. I went to the back of the bus, fell asleep, and right before I fell asleep, I did Kriyat Shema, praying for him not to call me and kick me out of the bus when he realized that I'm not coming back because I don't have the $1.50. The same thing would happen at 12 o'clock at night when I finished work. So you start the day at 5:30. By the time you get home, it's 1:30. You find time to sleep for a couple of hours. And in between, you eat a donut and have coffee. That's Wall Street. Welcome. So six months later, living off of a dollar a day and sneaking on the bus and getting thrown out a few times, which was good for the embarrassment.

18:46made my first $5,000. Out of the $5,000, I had to pay something to the boss, so by the time everything was paid, I had $1,000 left for me. It was all the money in the world. A thousand dollars, the first thousand dollars I made right in the beginning of 2002, around maybe March or April of 2002, felt like I had made a million dollars. Little did I know that only a year later it would be The next month, it was $5,000. The next month, it was another $5,000. The next month, it was $10,000. After that, it was $17,000. In November of 2002, barely a year after I started working in this office, I broke an office record and made $117,000 in one month. Now, I became the top guy in the office, the guy who didn't have food just a few months earlier. Six months later, I became the number three biggest producer in the entire country for all 6,000 people that work for the company. A bad month would be 150 to 200 thousand dollars. It was time to move on. I had to decide: do I stay at this firm? Would I start my own? Now, my motto was always, "I’d rather die living my own dream than be comfortable living somebody else's."

20:11than be comfortable living somebody else's." You compared the cost of Oprah and Howard Stern, and you did it a little differently than most people, but what did you find? Explain it to us. Well, the thing is, though, that Wall Street has made every analyst have their own proprietary way of analyzing things, which is very complicated for the individual investor to understand. These cash flow analyses, the P/E ratios, everything that the average investor out there, whether they have money or not, can't understand. We did it the simple way. You know, Howard Stern has approximately a four-hour show just on one of his stations, not including the second one, per day, five days a week, which is about 1,040 hours a year. He's getting paid $100 million a year for him and his crew, which is about $93,000 an hour. Granted, it's a lot of money. Okay? It's obviously a lot of money, but because of his track record in the past, because he's already brought in at least a million subscribers, that pays for it. Now, Oprah, on the other hand, is getting paid $55 million for three years, which is about $18.3 million a year. Okay? Now, she's only going to do a 30-minute show per week.

21:17That's it. Oh, I don't really think that anybody's going to subscribe to just, you know, a little bit extra if they're a big fanatic of Oprah just for that extra 30 minutes. And when you do the math, 30 minutes a week is 26 hours a year, which is about seven hundred and five thousand dollars an hour. If she was spending just as much time on XM as Howard Stern is, then her contract would be worth about 3.7 billion dollars. Okay, now this is not... decided to go and start my own company. Little by little, I started hiring people. Little by little, the money started getting bigger. I made the first million, then the second million. But in the first couple of years, we were making a million dollars. By the time 2004, 2005, and 2006 came, we had already reached the point where we were practically printing money. Everything was wonderful. Now, one trait that Hashem created me with, and it's absolutely no credit to me whatsoever, that I never actually cared for money. I never bought toys. We've made plenty of money, but I was never one of those people that bought fancy cars or bought a jet. The fanciest thing I had was my house, and the only reason I bought it was because it was five minutes from my office on Wall Street. That's it.

22:41Other than that, it was a regular car. It was a sports car, but it was a $100,000 car. If you're making $200,000, $300,000 a month, a $100,000 car is not exactly a big deal. Most kids that are 18 and don't even have credit somehow get their parents to buy them a $100,000 car today. My money went to two things. One, back into the business to make it bigger, to build the next Goldman Sachs, to build the next Merrill Lynch, to build the next big empire. The second thing was to invest it. The stock market is because I was my own biggest investor. But the last part was to help people. Anybody that came to my door, if they needed something, they got it. Why? Because for me, money, for whatever reason or another, Hashem told me money is the same thing as a hammer. Now, did any one of you ever pray for a hammer? Did anybody ever get excited when they found a hammer? Anybody ever have a hard time giving somebody else a hammer when they asked you if you have a hammer and you have a hammer? No. Because it's a hammer. Money is the same thing. A hammer is a tool. Money is a tool. I used to always tell people, money will never make you happy. It'll just arrive to your problems with a limo.

24:03You'll have problems regardless, different problems, money problems, but you'll arrive at the problems with a limo. That's it. That's all we'll do. It's the same thing as any other tool. Unfortunately, today most people don't know this. Most people chase money as if it's God, and Hashem already warned us about this many, many years ago in the Torah. He says, "Don't worship the god of money, the god of gold." And the way kesef was of... God of silver, God of gold. Kesef is also money. Kesef is also silver. Don't go to those gods. Don't worship money. Many of us are going too fast. But it's very hard to connect to something that happened 2,000 years ago. Because we all say, listen, they had problems back then. There was idolatry. there was murder, there was sinat chinam, there were all these different things. Like, I'm not an idol worshiper. I didn't murder anyone. I don't hate my neighbor. Unless he's Ashkenazi. Unless he's Yemenite. Unless he's from a different tradition. But I don't hate him that much. But the reality of it is that most of us are still idol worshipping. We still have the same problem from the first Beit HaMikdash.

25:30Now, anyone that has a dollar bill in their possession, take it out. And you see, on the dollar, it says, "In God we trust." All of you have read this at least once, right? "In God we trust." This is a misnomer. What's the confusion here? The problem is that most people who read this think that the "God" they're talking about is the dollar. And this is why people spend most of their lives chasing it. Someone that worships money will do everything they can to hold on to it and to get it. They'll even sell their family for it. How many times have you heard horror stories about families breaking up because they all got an inheritance? Abba and Ima were rich, they died, and the family broke up because of it. Why? Because he got five million, the other one got six million, and the other one got ten million, and they all hate him. Or even worse, brothers start a business and

26:33everyone is friends. They're both 18 years old. They start a business. They both have five dollars to their name. A few years later, they make it good. They start making money. They both get married and have kids, but the wives don't like each other. Why? Because she's from here, and he's from there. She has this hair, she has that hair. She has this dress, she has that dress. His house is bigger. Why is our house smaller? Why does he get to go on vacation and we don't? Eventually, the partnership breaks up and The brothers don't want to talk to each other for the next 20 years. Why? Because he got 51% and I got 49%. And I hate him for it. So, for 1%, you lose your brother? 1%! When you started the business, you'd give him 90%. 1%, you lose your brother. Why? Hello! A kiss of lashon hara. We love money; we're connected to it. That's the problem. It's the beginning of the problem. Continuing with my story, I liked making money. As far as money itself, I didn't care about it. So whenever someone came to me, I valued my time. I said at that point, in 2006, by May of 2006, I broke my own personal record and made 1.6 million dollars for the month. And I said, okay, so at this point, at this rate, I'm making approximately $3,000 an hour. So $3,000 an hour...

28:01I don't really want to waste an hour listening to anyone's story. So if anyone comes and needs something, the easiest thing to do is instead of listening for an hour and then giving them $5,000, let me just say, how much does the problem cost? Five seconds into it. Because that's really all they want. Little did I know that it's really insensitive. But the point is, that's what they want. They want money. So they start talking. And sometimes they're upset. And I say, OK, fine, fine, fine. How much does it cost? Oh, it's $5,000. OK, fine. Write a check. Salish alone, good luck, and everyone was happy. Everyone got their problem solved, whether it was a brother, a parent, a Chabadnik, religious, or not religious—it didn't make a difference. I had money, they needed it, give it to them. If I got all those loans back, I'd be a millionaire again. But now, a couple of years before that, my...

29:05memory served me right, and even though I wasn't keeping really many mitzvot, I kept kosher to the extent that I understood—just eat meat at home and vegetables outside and pasta outside. Little did I know that the vegetables and the pasta outside have meat in them. Sometimes it's worm meat; sometimes it's pork meat, and... Anyone that eats pizza in a non-kosher place, just so you know, the problem is not with the milk. The issue is that you're eating milk and meat together. The milk itself is not the problem. Any milk you buy in a store in America has a kosher sign on it, so the milk they use in the cheese is not a problem. The issue is that in order to make the cheese, they use meat. To make the sauce on the pizza, in Pizza Hut, Domino's, all non-kosher pizza has meat in it. That's the difference. You have five pizzerias in New York on one block. Why do they all have different tastes and different meat? So if you're eating non-kosher pizza, the problem is not the milk. It's the meat. That's the problem. I didn't know this. I didn't know that when I'm eating pizza with just cheese on it, I'm really eating not only milk and meat, but usually the meat is pork. It's the cheapest meat.

30:29So now I thought I was keeping kosher. I would go to shul once or twice a year, Yom Kippur of course, Rosh Hashanah maybe, Pesach never, but I'd eat matzah, traditional. I didn't know that Shabbat was bigger than Yom Kippur. I didn't know that Shabbat is bigger than all the holidays. I didn't know that Shabbat... such an extent that Chazal say that we have 613 mitzvot from Hashem and seven mitzvot from the rabbis. Most people think it's 613 mitzvot from the rabbis and seven from Hashem. It's really 613 from Hashem and seven from the rabbis. Rabbi Noach Weinberg sometimes. So now those seven, what are those seven? Your favorite mitzvot. Which are those mitzvot? Who likes Chanukah? Like Hanukkah, that's a rabbinical mitzvah. Purim, every secular person on earth likes Purim. Rabbinical. Blessing before you eat something, it's rabbinical. Most of the mitzvot people like are rabbinical, but they always complain against the rabbis. What's God's mitzvah? Shabbat. Chazal say that if you keep, somehow you find a way. It's not possible.

31:57Somehow, you find a way to keep 619 out of the 620 mitzvot. The 620 are 613 plus 7. You kept 619 out of the 620. Now, you can't because some of them are for kohanim, some of them are only for women, and some of them are only for men. In today's age, maybe you could be a man and a woman, but in Torah, you can't. Some of them are only for the Beit HaMikdash, you can't keep all of them. But let's say you found a way, you found a trick, you found a loophole. You want to be extra tzaddik, extra tzaddeket. You kept 619 out of 620, but the one mitzvah you're not keeping is Shabbat. Chazal says the other 619 are worth zero, and the reason why is because you're keeping them for the wrong reason. What's the wrong reason? The wrong reason is you're keeping it because you like it, not because God gave it, because you don't believe in God. Why? Because God said, you know, according to the Gemara, Masechet Shabbat page 119, He says you want to be my partner. You could be my partner by being my witness, witness that I created the world in six days, and I stopped creating. I rested and...

33:26the seventh day. Obviously, Hashem doesn't rest; He doesn't sleep, but He stopped creating on the seventh day. Now, I need someone to testify. This is what I did. By you not creating on the seventh day, by you not driving on Shabbat, by you not playing with your phone on Shabbat, by you not watching TV on Shabbat, by you not smoking a cigarette on Shabbat, you are acting as a witness that you believe that I created the world in six days and I stopped creating on the seventh, and... By doing that, you're a partner. You're a partner. We're partners. By you not doing it, you're saying it didn't happen. By you not keeping Shabbat, you're saying, I didn't create the world in six days. Maybe it took me longer. Maybe it's like the scientists said, it was 13 billion years. Maybe I needed to hire construction companies, had a delay. Maybe I needed to borrow some money. So I need to apply for a mortgage, so it took me a few million years. I didn't create it in six days. Maybe like the goyim say sometimes, and sometimes Jews, maybe I didn't create it. You're not a partner anymore. You're not a witness. I need a witness. So if a Jew decided to keep 612 out of 613 mitzvot, and the one mitzvah missing is Shabbat,

34:55619 don't work. What is it like? If someone told you today, "I have a deal for you. All you have to do is call me tomorrow at 8 o'clock in the morning, right after you email me your name, phone number, and address." So, email me your name, phone number, and address, and... then the number my number will automatically work, but if you don't email me, the number doesn't work. Simple. If you do this, you get a million dollars. Simple enough, simple. What's the email? It gives you the email. What do you do? First thing you do, you go home, take a rest, have a barbecue? No, the first thing you do is you go email. Go to the phone, start emailing. All of a sudden, you see "return to sender." Why is there an error? The email doesn't go through. You send it again. The email doesn't go through. You send it again. The email doesn't go through. You call them. The phone doesn't work because the key to the safe is the email. You send it, it doesn't work. You're running out of time. It's two o'clock in the morning. You only have six hours, or you lose a million dollars. You work on it. You work on it. You call tech support. You call Dell. You call whoever you can call. No one knows how to help.

36:208:01 in the morning. He calls you and says, "What happened? The email didn't work." "What do you mean the email didn't work? I gave you the email." "Yeah, it didn't work." "What do you have? What's the email that you sent it to?" "I sent it to ABC at your own com." "Yeah, you missed it. You missed the dot in dot-com." Well, you're making a big deal out of the dots. I made the whole thing ABC at your own com the one dot because he had the one that's the whole thing. Without the dot, the email is worthless. Without Shabbat, the Mitzvot are worthless. That's the dot in dot-com. You understand? I didn't know this. Now, all of these Rabbis that came to my office to collect for the yeshiva and... for the camp, for the kollel, for the Hanukkah party, and the pizza party, and then this party and that party, none of which I had time to actually attend, but I funded them. None of them told me this. At some point during my career, I decided to invest some money into a Sefer Torah.

37:47And the reason why is because I had money. And I heard that the Sefer Torah is a big mitzvah. Easy mitzvah for me. I have the money. Get the Sefer Torah. So we got the Sefer Torah. The problem is when the Sefer Torah came, it’s online, you can see the movie. They made a whole film of it, of the Sefer Torah coming. It was in a newspaper. And they wrote a nice story about it. Beautiful, amazing thing. The most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

38:51Sefer Torah took a year to write in Jerusalem. The Sofer, the scribe of the Sefer Torah, was a very, very holy man, but he didn't know me. All he knew was that I wanted to get the best possible Sefer Torah; the price was irrelevant. Good customer. It took a year to write it. Once the Sefer Torah arrived, I They told me, "We're going to have a party." I said, "For what?" They said, "For the Sefer Torah." I said, "Yeah, but it's already here." He said, "Yeah." I said, "Okay, so enjoy." He said, "No, no, you have to come." I'm like, "I'm working." He said, "No, but you have to come." I'm like, "Do you know how much money I'm going to lose if I come to this party? I don't have time for parties. It's $3,000 an hour." He said, "Yeah, but your Sefer Torah." I didn't get it. I said, "Okay, fine, I'll come to this party." I came to the party. I saw the Sefer Torah. It was the most amazing thing in the world. They celebrated. They danced. They jumped with the Sefer Torah. It was beautiful. There was only one problem. One problem. I paid for the Sefer Torah. The Sefer Torah arrived. The sofer, amazing. The rabbi of the kehillah, even more amazing. Everything was great. There was one small problem with the Sefer Torah. I didn't read it.

40:20So I kissed it. But I didn't know what it said. I heard that there was some guy named Moshe Rabbeinu when I was a kid. I heard there was Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov. I heard there's a day in the week called Shabbat. I heard that there's some concept called kosher. But the details, I didn't know. I said, I have a Sefer Torah. I thought I was a tzaddik. Donated a bunch of money. Everyone's happy. Apparently, they're calling me very, very... Righteous person for some reason because I gave some money, so I thought I had a "get out of jail free" card. So I thought I was a tzaddik. So for the next few years, when people were coming to my office, no one told me that I need to read the Sefer Torah and actually do what it says. I thought just giving money was all I needed to do. I knew that there's more I could do—I wasn't an idiot. But I thought it's for elective... know, you go to school and there's what you have to take, and then there's what you can take if you want. Like if you want to be extra, you want to be better. You know there are the hours you have to work, but then if you want to work overtime because you want to take a vacation once a year. I thought it's like that.

41:46And all of these rabbis that came never told me it's not an elective. They never told me that Shabbat is the dot and dot com. They never told me that tzedakah, when it says tzedakah tatzil mimavet, tzedakah will save you from death, it doesn't mean it'll save you for eternity. It just means it's gonna buy you more time to do teshuvah. If you gave tzedakah, it's just buying you more time. No one gets Gan Eden purely for tzedakah if they're not keeping the rest of the mitzvot. It's not like a get-out-of-jail-free card. So, for anyone that donates a bunch of money once a year because once a year they come to the Beit Knesset like I used to, they donate $15,000 for some Aliyah. They don't even know what it means. They think, "Oh, this is great, I'm a tzaddik." They put my name on the Beit Knesset, the name stays in the Beit Knesset, but nothing else happens that's any good. Shamayim, it's not enough. So now, none of these rabbis told me this. All they told me is they needed money. I had it, I'd give them. Now there's also another problem. They didn't tell me about this either, that the fact that I was married to a non-Jew wasn't exactly good. It wasn't exactly good in Hashem's eyes.

43:07The reason why is because even before we got the Torah, Hashem told Avraham Avinu, "You see your helper Eliezer? Eliezer was one of the most righteous men that ever lived, and he got to Gan Eden. He got to heaven alive. He never died. He's one of ten people that got to Gan Eden alive. We only hope to get there dead. He got there alive." Hopefully, we get there dead. He's there alive. But Hashem said to Avraham Avinu, "Eliezer, you can't have your son, Yitzchak, marry his daughters. Even though he's holy of holies. Even though he's Kodesh Kodashim. Even though he's going to get to Gan Eden alive, you can't have his daughters marry your son. Why? He's from Canaan. He's from a different nation. Not allowed."

44:10deal. So I said, "Listen, I'm not really following Judaism. I can't make somebody else follow it. It was my fault that the woman that I love happens to not have been born to a mother that's Jewish. Not our fault. I She wants to be Jewish. She'll be Jewish. I can't tell her to be Jewish. I didn't believe in being a hypocrite. I can't tell you to do something I'm not doing. I'm only Jewish because my mom was born a certain way, not because I decided to be Jewish. So, we got married, we started a company, we were making money, everything was wonderful. My hobby was playing high-stakes poker with the best players in the world. All the people you see on TV were sitting at the same table as me. I was the guy that, when I showed up to the casino and... There are five or six hundred people in the room. They stop what they're doing, and they start a table for me. Why? Because I'm the guy with the money. The good news is they were all excited to play with me because they thought I was the fish. The bad news is I was also a shark, too. So I won some money. I knew a little bit of math, and I also didn't care about money. So it's very difficult to beat me. It's like the terrorists; it's very difficult to beat terrorists because they don't care about dying.

45:33Played in the World Series of Poker and all these different tournaments, and I lived the high life. And everything seemed wonderful. November 18, 2006. Just came back from a month-long vacation to Las Vegas. Made plenty of money. It was great in the business. It was great in everything. I thought I was a tzaddik because they told me I was okay. I kept giving money. So, I decided I was going to have elective surgery for a little bit of pain that I had. The pain was called hemorrhoids. Don't worry, two out of three people have it. This annoyed me once, maybe twice a year, and it was annoying enough for me to go to the doctor and ask, "Is this going to go away by itself, or is it going to stay around?" Well, listen, if you want, you can have surgery. It's very simple surgery. You go into the surgery. It's called elective surgery, elective meaning you don't have to have it. You come in the morning. We do the surgery while you're asleep. You don't feel anything. You wake up. It's a little uncomfortable, which, by the way, in doctor words, means a lot of pain. Uncomfortable means pain; pressure means pain. Pressure means pain; uncomfortable means pain. The difference is pressure is a lot of pain.

47:01Uncomfortable is like it's painful. But if they say pain, you're not gonna come back. Listen, you have this surgery. In a couple of hours, you wake up, you go home, you relax. You're a little uncomfortable for a couple of days. No big deal. You go back to work. I said, okay. How long am I out of work? He's like, listen, you come, you have the surgery on a Wednesday. You're back to work on Monday, no later. So, listen, it's $3,000 an hour. I said, "Okay, no problem. I'll have a vacation for a few days. I can afford it. Let's have the surgery." My clock ran out, and everything changed. You know, when you were a kid, you would go to the beach. Sometimes, you would see little kids playing in the sand. One time, there was this little kid playing in the sand with his brothers and sisters, and they were all playing in the sand. He thought it was foolish. Why? Because they built the sandcastle. They built the castle. They built the castle. The wind comes, the castle falls. Water comes, the castle falls. So he said, "What am I going to do? It's a waste of time." So what did he start doing? He started waving to the boat. He started waving to the big boat.

48:22So an adult saw him and goes, "Stop, no. What are you waving to the boat for? You think he can see you? It's a huge boat. He can't see you." He goes, "No, he can see me." He goes, "Stop waving to the boat, little kid. Go play in the sand." He goes, "I'm not playing with the sand. I'm waving to the boat. I'm waving to the boat. I'm waving to the boat." He's waving to the boat. He's excited about this boat. He goes, "Stop waving to the boat. You look ridiculous." He goes, "I'm waving to the boat. He's going to say hi back to me." He goes, "He's not going to say hi back to you." He says, "He's going to say hi back to me." He goes, "Why do you think he's going to say hi back to you?" He goes, "He's my father." He's your father. He's probably looking for you. If he's your father, he's probably looking for you. My father was looking for me. Father in heaven was looking for me. The problem was I was playing with the sand. I wasn't waving. I was playing with the material that kept building and destroying and didn't really mean much. The boat was passing, and I was running out of time. When Abba was looking, I wasn't waving.

49:22When Hashem was looking, I wasn't waving. I was busy with the sand. So, on November 18, 2006, I woke up out of the surgery screaming and yelling my lungs out because the pain medicine was not working, and something went wrong with the surgery. The surgeons didn't understand what happened. Everything started failing. I'm asking them to kill me. My wife... ...My mom won't listen and neither will the doctors, but all we can do is continue enduring the pain and scream and yell as if they took a huge blade like Commando and were cutting my body up over and over again while connecting the knife to electricity. That's what it felt like. Now they started giving me morphine. Now, since I liked my brain, I never took drugs... I never tried weed. I never tried hashish. I never tried cocaine. I never did anything. I like my brain, so I figured let's keep it intact. They showed me on TV: "This is your brain on drugs. This is your brain after drugs." I said, "Okay, let's listen to the commercial. They sold me," so I never tried drugs. What I didn't know is that my body doesn't accept most drugs. I

50:51So they kept giving me morphine, but my body was rejecting it. It just didn't work. And they asked my wife if I'm a drug addict. She said, no, he doesn't do drugs. He's actually against them. He sent a few of his friends to rehab. He's very much against drugs. He goes, okay, well, why doesn't he accept the drugs? She goes, you're the doctor. They kept giving me drugs. They kept giving me morphine, and eventually, they had to stop. They said, "Ma'am, we gave him the most amount of morphine legally allowed, which is enough to kill a large horse and a few of its riders. No human should be able to handle that much, but that's the most we're allowed to give him. Pray that it works." At least I thought I calmed down. I thought, oh, that's what getting home looks like. And they told me, oh, sir, everything is fine. It was just a little bit of a glitch, but you can go home. After all, it's only an elective surgery. I said, okay, thank you very much. It was fun to be here. I'm going home. On the way home, we picked up shawarma, had the shawarma sandwich. I told everyone, thank you for coming.

52:15I'm going to sleep, and I thought that the show would end. I woke up approximately 45 minutes later and realized that the show had just begun because the same pain that I had in the hospital came back. Only this time, it didn't stop for 62 days. So, for the next 62 days, there was never more than 15 minutes of no pain. to take all types of painkillers, more than they would even prescribe me. I had some of my assistants get some from their friends who were doctors. They gave me extra—anything and everything that could work. The problem was that it wasn't working. All that happened was my body started failing. I started peeing blood, bleeding from my eyes, and getting infections in my ears. Little by little, the doctor said, "I'm sorry, ma'am. He's dying, but we don't know why." So, imagine screaming and yelling for 62 days, unable to sleep for more than 15 minutes. Eventually, after a while, when you don't sleep for a long time, you start hallucinating and start dying.

53:43Your body starts failing. And that's what happened. After a couple of months, Hashem had mercy on me. It was enough Gehenom for a little while. The pain started subsiding. So instead of taking 60 or 70 painkillers a day, I was down to maybe 20. It was manageable. For me, it was almost like Gan Eden. For most people, it was Gehenom. When I asked my Rabbi in the beginning, "Can you teach me about Gehenom? I want to know about Gehenom. I'm one of those people, I like to know the real story. Got anything that sounds good, but I'm interested in Gehenom. What happens there? Is it real?" He says, "Yeah, it's real." I said, "It's like really bad? It's horrible." He said, "Can you teach me about Gehenom?" He goes, "No." I said, "Why not?" He said, "Because you think you went through Gehenom and I don't want to disappoint you."

54:45It's much worse. So now, after two months, I'm starting to get back to myself. And eventually, I start going back to work. My body is not the same anymore. So, for example, for me to walk from here to the door, for an average person, it would take maybe two to three seconds. For me, it would take about 40 minutes. So, imagine a 20-something-year-old kid With all the money in the world, living on the 35th floor on Wall Street, with a 400 square foot balcony, I am walking slower than the 93-year-old man. And every step is ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow. All day, every day. Now I thought this was eventually going to go away. You know, like a headache. Nine months later, I feel a pain in my leg. I thought maybe I pulled a muscle.

55:46Slept on the wrong sides that are right. I never actually understood what the right side of the wrong side of the bed is, but somehow I thought I slept on the wrong side. I woke up with a pain in my leg. Later that afternoon, I wasn't able to walk. By the next morning, it was an emergency. They said, "Sir, you have an infection between the muscle of your leg and the muscle of the, I guess, rectal area." Absolutely nothing to do with the surgery because, again, the surgery is exterior. But the infection is big enough that if you would have waited probably another hour and a half to two hours, it would have blown up, gone into your bloodstream, and you would have died instantly. So we had to have an emergency surgery. Good night. I go to sleep. I wake up from the surgery connected to all types of morphine, and I stay in the intensive care unit next to dying people for the next 10 days. That eventually they released me. The second surgery was worse than the first. Now, I thought this was going to be over. Six months later, I got another infection called an abscess. Another surgery. Now, the hospital staff started to know me by my first name. Three months later, another surgery, another hospital visit. I...

57:15Eventually, it got to the point where it was every month, and for the next seven years, I was fighting for my life. Now, throughout those seven years, remember there were many, many people in my life. When times were good, I had a lot of friends. Something happens when you have money; everyone wants to be your friend for some reason. So, a lot of friends, some of them were religious people, some of them were not religious people, and... People continued showing up. Some people didn't really show up to say hello; they usually showed up to take something. What ended up happening is that at the very same time that I had the surgery in November of 2006, I also started losing money. But if making 20 million dollars is...

58:18miracle to go from nothing, to go from a dollar a day—that's borrowed—to millions of dollars; if that was a miracle, losing it was a bigger miracle. I lost it much faster, and I didn't lose it the same. I didn't lose it in some unusual way. I didn't lose it because I bet it all on, I don't know, oranges, and they all went bad. Everything and anything I touched used to turn to gold. member about your company. My personal expertise is in the investment world, and we've done extremely well over these last 12 years. And I generally do better in bad times than I do in good times. The reason why is because I'm able to evaluate companies very well as far as understanding what their true value is in comparison to what their stock value is. And bad times present good opportunities. My personal expertise is in the investment world, and we've done extremely well over these last 12 years. I generally do better in bad times than I do in good times. The reason why is because I'm able to evaluate companies very well, understanding what their true value is in comparison to what their stock value is. Bad times present good opportunities.

59:20You know, so I don't buy things based on a trend. I don't buy things based on what the TV is saying. I buy things based on value. If times are bad, then that creates opportunities because people make mistakes, and sometimes they make irrational decisions, which will make something that may be worth, you know, only equal 20 cents. Right. You know, or something that's worth 100 only worth $20. Right, because they're panicking. Right. Now all the gold that I had turned to dust. It didn't matter what it was—if it was a company, if it was a deal, if it was a loan, if it was anything. Hashem says to the prophet: "Li ha-kesef v'li ha-zahav, ne'um Hashem Tzevaot"—"Mine is the money, mine is the gold," says Hashem, Master of Legions. It's all Mine; I just lent it to you so you could do something good with it. You didn't do it. Didn't do it. You thought that giving some tzedakah here and there to some people in need was going to be a get-out-of-jail-free card. It's not. It's not a get-out-of-jail-free card. Now, since you didn't listen with the few tests that I gave you, I have to wake you up in a different way. And the reason why? Because we are now at the end of days, according to the sages in our Gemara.

1:00:49We are now at a time where it's the end of times. In Gemara Masechet Sotah, page 49, it talks about there being different signs that are going to happen before the Mashiach arrives. Now we've been hearing about this Mashiach for 2,000 years. He's late. But he's Jewish, so he has to be late. But now, they said you're going to have signs. You're going to have something happen. It's going to indicate that he's here. The Gemara gives you the signs. We did a shiur about a year ago in New York, talking about all the signs. The interesting part is today, when you read all those signs, it's like reading the newspaper. Everything and anything that they said was going to happen 2,000 years ago happened over the last few decades. So all the signs... We've been waiting for it, we have. Even the red heifer, we've been waiting for a couple of thousand years for, we have two of them. Two thousand years there were no red heifers, now we have two. Just in case the first one doesn't want to do it. The only sign we're missing is the Mashiach himself. That's it.

1:02:09The sages also read from the Prophets. We have chapter 14 from Zechariah. They say it’s going to be a little bit of an interesting time before the End of Days. Everyone’s going to want to fight. There’s going to be a war called Gog and Magog. Now, you don’t have to follow the news on a daily basis to know that it’s happening. A little over a year ago, Russia decided that they wanted to fight ISIS, so they sent... Submarine carrying the most amount of nuclear weapons in the world. We don't even know how many. Now, ISIS is a bunch of gangsters that decide that beheading people is fun in the name of their god. The reality of it is you don't need an atomic bomb for ISIS. One plane could really destroy all of them if we were just persistent enough and... Russia said they're bringing a couple of hundred atomic bombs to fight ISIS. If anyone believes they're really fighting ISIS, you need to go back to school again. As we all know, the world has changed. If you ask your parents, your grandparents, and you ask them, "How was the world when you were a kid, when you were my age?" You'll never hear, "Now, it's the same thing."

1:03:31It doesn't exist. Why? Because we find ourselves, according to the Torah, in the time that we call the end of time. Anyone who watches the news for five minutes can realize the Third World War has already started. It's just quiet. Before Russia sent all of its planes and helicopters and jeeps and tanks, they sent a ship with 200 atomic bombs to Syria. Accordingly, they're saying that it's to fight ISIS. I don't know why you need even one atomic bomb for ISIS. Whoever buys that story is a fool. If that wasn't enough, since that was September of last year, if the 200 atomic bombs were already used up, we need some more. So about two months ago, they sent a submarine that's the biggest submarine in the world with more atomic bombs than the original ship. We just don't know how many. This is also for ISIS? So we realized that this is not for ISIS. You don't need to be Einstein to see that the United States is heating up every day. Everyone wants to fight.

1:04:35Israel is becoming the most hated country in the world on a regular basis. It's actually becoming popular to be anti-Semitic. A recent study from just a couple of years ago said that over 40% of Americans consider themselves anti-Semitic. These are our allies. Missiles are being shot at us in Israel on a regular basis. Jews are being beaten up all over the world, some of them being killed, Hashem yirachem. I think there were a few incidents in Brooklyn as well recently. The world is not the same. The world's heating up. According to the Nevu'ot, according to the prophecies, you can find all over the Gemara, all over the book of Yechezkel, Zechariah, and also even the Chamishah Chumshei Torah. We have every single sign we need for the end of times, except one, the Mashiach himself. They think it's peace. They think it's a secret. They think it's complete nonsense. That's why it's said in the book of Tehillim, and why it's said today, the people are stupid and not wise.

1:05:53If you go to the last page of the Gemara Masechet Sotah, page 49, It says, these are the things that are going to happen at the end of times before the Mashiach comes. You listen to it, and it's like reading the newspaper, the daily news. Everything they said is going to happen, which was unheard of in those times, is happening as we speak.

1:06:55A couple of days ago, we got news that the United States sent either the largest or one of the largest aircraft carriers to the coast of Israel in Haifa to fight ISIS, the biggest ship With the most amount of weapons and atomic bombs arrived in Israel to fight ISIS. This ISIS is really getting the best of everyone. North Korea would press the button if they had the atomic bomb right now, without even a target, just press it. You know, like I press the vending machine when it doesn't work. Go, go, ready, go, ready, go, go, go. For where's it going? Just go. Iran is pressing the button. They don't have anything. They have the button. The world wants to fight, and the sages say that in the end of times, initially they're all gonna fight each other. But then they're gonna say, you know what, it's really all the fault of the Jews and...

1:08:21Truly, all their fault was all about wanting to make Jerusalem just a separate entity, not part of Israel, even though it's in their history books for over 3,000 years. Let's just make it a separate land; they refuse to do it. It's all their fault, so Yishmael and Esav... Arabs and the Christians and Catholics decide it's all the Jews' fault. Let's all attack them. Seven and a half billion people attack a country with less than 20 million. If you gather all the Jews from all over the world, not just Israel. Now, if you think about it, they don't need weapons. If you have seven and a half billion people... Yet, if you have 1 billion people, not 7 billion, half the Muslim population, 1 billion people spit and Israel drowns. Do you think the Iron Dome, which everyone is so heavily invested in relying on, is going to help us? Do you think the Zionist mentality is going to help us? I...

1:09:38Do you think the secular government that hates Hashem is going to help us? Or maybe it's the terrorist members in the Knesset of Israel. Maybe they're going to help us. In the end of the Gemara Masechet Sotah, it says at the end of times we will have nothing to rely on other than Avinu Shebashamayim, our Father in Heaven. You don't need to turn the news on anymore. It's happening. How much time we have, I don't know. ...week, could be a month, could be a year, five years. I have no idea. All I know is it's there. It's happening. The question is whether we're going to be saved when Mashiach arrives. Everyone is always excited, they sing "Mashiach, Mashiach, Mashiach." But if you read the prayer in Tehillim, it says, "The Mashiach, who is he coming for? Who is he going to save?" ...the ones who used to be pushing, the ones who used to be Mechalel Shabbat, the ones who used to violate with a lot. The ones that did Teshuva, I'm gonna save them. Those that did Teshuva, I'm coming for them. They have nothing to worry about. You did Teshuva, you have nothing to worry about. No isis, no smices, no nothing. Doesn't matter where you are in the world. It doesn't matter...

1:11:04Teshuva, you have nothing to worry about. If you didn't do Teshuva, you should pray, you should do Tehillim that he doesn't come. You know people read Tehillim, "Come Mashiach, come Mashiach." If you didn't do Teshuva, you should pray he doesn't come because after he comes, there's no more Teshuva. After Mashiach comes, there's no more conversion. The clock's over. Like I thought mine was on November 18th of 2006. Now, this Mashiach is a little different than me. The way he's different is that... When he talks, it's a little different outcome. It's not funny. So, the Prophet Isaiah says, there are a few things we need to know about this Mashiach. First, he's telling us he's going to be able to smell our Yirat Shamayim. Fear of Heaven. Why does he want to smell our Yirat Shamayim? If you have Yirat Shamayim, you're not going to sin. You're afraid of God, you're not going to sin. Why? Because God said so. When God gave us the Ten Commandments, first He spoke Himself. The first two commandments, after the first commandment, everyone died. The entire nation, millions and millions of people, died because they couldn't handle the Kedusha of His voice, the magnitude of His voice. They died and

1:12:34Hashem revived the dead. He said the second commandment, they died again. He revived the dead a second time. They said, "Moshe, you go talk to Him now. Na'aseh v'nishma — we will do and then we will hear what He actually said, because if He continues to talk, we're all gonna die. How do we know we're gonna die? We died twice. We can't handle His voice; it's too much." So Moshe Rabbeinu says, don't worry. He's only scaring you so you don't sin. Because the only way you don't sin is if you're scared of God. So the first thing that Mashiach is going to look for is if you're scared of God. Do you have Yirat Shamayim? Do you ask yourself, "What does God think about what I'm about to do?" before you do it? If you do...

1:13:35Give the beginning of Yirat Shamayim. So, the first thing that Mashiach is going to look for is if you have this Yirat Shamayim. Do I wear the short dress or the long one? Do I wear the long sleeve or the t-shirt? In this week's Parashat Balak, we learned something interesting at the end of the parasha. At the end of the parasha, we hear that Hashem got so upset... Decided to destroy the nation without warning. Why did He decide to destroy the entire nation without warning? We got a warning about idolatry. We got a warning about all complaints. We got a warning before the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash. We got a warning countless times throughout history before Hashem punished us, except in this parasha. In this parasha, Hashem says enough's enough. I'm going to destroy all of them. Baruch Hashem, Pinchas ben Elazar, and next week's parasha you'll hear more about it. Save the day. Why did Hashem get so upset that He said, "Enough's enough"? It's worse than idolatry. It's worse than Chet HaEgel. We built an idol at Mount Sinai. We just got the Torah, and we made an idol. You think it can't get worse than this. He goes, no, this just got worse. Why? You went with the immodest women. That's not Jewish.

1:15:01Not only being modest but also not being Jewish. It's not worth it to have you. Today, unfortunately, it's acceptable behavior. So Hashem says, "time's up." So when Mashiach comes, he's not going to say, "Oh, I smell you don't have Yirat Shamayim." The very next verse says, "U'veruach sfatav yamit rasha." With the words that come out of his mouth, he will destroy the Rasha. Who is the Rasha? The one that doesn't have Yirat Shamayim. The one that still doesn't want to be modest. The one that still doesn't want to keep Shabbat. The one that still doesn't want to do Teshuva. Not ready. I want to make money first. Then I'll do Teshuva. I want to get married first. Then I'll do Teshuva. I want to get really, really old. And then I'll do Teshuva when I don't have any friends that want me to go to the clubs anymore.

1:16:05I want to be a millionaire and then I'll do all the different excuses in the world that we have before we do Teshuva. I had more of those excuses than anybody else in the world. Why? Hey, you have money, you have a lot of stuff to do. So now, I thought that this story was going to end, but over the next seven years, I became an experiment for doctors. I went to over 50 different doctors, all types of medicine, traditional medicine, non-traditional medicine, even got to a point where I legitimately became an experiment in a science project or a science experiment. They started injecting ozone into my veins to see if maybe they could clean my blood. It feels somewhat like chemotherapy. I never had chemotherapy, but the way that people I know who had chemotherapy tell me they felt, I felt. for the next seven years, the money kept disappearing. Some of these friends I told you about became enemies. They started stealing, taking everything they possibly could because there was no one to defend the castle. Little by little, everything was disappearing. Eventually, I got to a point where I wanted to commit suicide. You get to that point after you...

1:17:28Really, pain 24 hours a day. The money doesn't mean much anymore. And even the money you used to have, you don't have anymore. The nightmare. So, I got to my kids. I got to my wits' end. And I started planning. One day, I said, you know what, let me be nice to my mom because I'm probably gonna leave and... ...this world soon. Let me be nice to my wife because she's the greatest person on earth. Jew and non-Jew didn't make a difference to me; she was the only one that stuck around. She's the only one that was loyal. She's the only one that dedicated her life to make me happy. I asked her every day why she didn't leave. She said, "So where would I go? Not to continue with your life? You're young, you're beautiful..." I'll give you all the money in the world. She goes, I don't want the money. What am I going to do with the money? I don't buy stuff. She goes, I don't want stuff. I want you. I said, why? I'm sick. She goes, no, you're not. You're you. It didn't matter to her. I thought she just went crazy. So, I felt bad, but I said, I can't continue. If she's not going to leave, I'm going to leave. So, I started planning.

1:18:55Doing hanging is kind of not for me, jumping. I'm kind of scared of heights. I lived on the 35th floor, but I never looked down. I started thinking I got to the end. You know, before you do something stupid, you have to be stupid. I got to that point, but Hashem is not going to give you a test you can't handle, and the reason why is because He loves you and a mom will never tell her daughter, "Honey, can you pick up the car for me? Just pick it up with one hand." Why is she not going to pick up the car with one hand? Because she knows she can't. So why is she going to give her a test that she knows she's going to fail? If you love somebody, you don't do it. So if the mother here of flesh and blood knows that, the Father up there knows too. So, Started being nicer to everyone for the next few hours, thinking, "What am I gonna do?" I'm sitting in my office starting to plan. My mom, on the other hand, is crying her eyes out, dialing this little black book full of different rabbis' phone numbers that apparently every Jewish mother has. I don't know how they get all these phone numbers, but they have these phone numbers of every rabbi that lives. She starts calling the phone numbers in Israel, in America, and in every country that's possible, but today no one picks up.

1:20:23Everyone's busy for almost two hours. She's calling different rabbis, and no one picks up. Eventually, a woman picks up, and she asks for a certain rabbi's name. She says, "Rabbi so-and-so." The woman responds, "I'm sorry, ma'am," in Hebrew, because it was in Israel, "but you called the wrong phone number." So imagine you're dialing, crying your eyes out for two hours. No one picks up. Eventually, a woman picks up, and it's the wrong phone number in a different country. And... So my mom, what does she do? Naturally, what does a Jewish woman do? She starts crying to this strange woman. That's when Hashem comes in. And the woman on the other side of the phone says, "She says my mom's name." And my mom says, "Who are you?" She's shocked how this strange woman in a different country knows her name and not only knows her name but knows her voice. What are the chances? Sometimes we have kids calling us, or cousins, or aunts, or uncles, and even parents, and we don't know their voice. A strange woman in a different country knows my mom's voice. "Who are you? How do you know my name?" She says, "Well, I'm your niece, and that's why I know your name." Penina, just Penina. "How did I get to you? I don't even have your phone number. We've never spoken on the phone, ever!"

1:21:48She says, "I don't know how you got to me. But if you got to me, then Hashem has a reason." And Penina happens to be in the most religious family out of all of our families. And she says, "Why are you crying?" She says, "Well, my son is dying." She says, "And I'm trying to get to a big rabbi, but nobody is picking up." She says, "Why don't you talk to Rav Ovadia?" Well, I don't have access to Rav Ovadia, but you could call my brother, Rav Ephraim. He lives next door to him. He's a talmid chacham, and although he's young, he's already written a few sefarim. Let's call him; he will talk to you because, of course, you are calling from America. So she calls Rav Ephraim. Well, Rav Ephraim is not there because he's in kollel studying, but his wife answers, and she says, "I'll call you back," and she calls her back. Rav Ephraim talks to my mom, and she's crying her eyes out. He's now my brother, Rav Ephraim, and I have never met him. I actually didn't know he existed, and he didn't know I existed, or at least that's what I thought. We've never spoken.

1:23:12But Rav Ephraim is very smart, so he said, a few minutes into her crying, "Does he speak Hebrew?" I said, "Yeah, he speaks a little Hebrew." He said, "Oh, can I talk to him directly?" She said, "No, he's not going to talk to you. He doesn't talk to anybody, barely talks to the family." And at the very moment that she said, "He's not going to talk to you," I decided to be nice to my mother and call her for the first time in maybe a year. My mom answers the phone, and she's hysterically crying. She says, "Talk to him, talk to him!" I obviously have no idea what she's talking about. "Talk to who? And why is he making you cry?" The question is actually a known question: Why did we come to the world? Every person who does not know the answer to this question is in a situation that spoils his life on earth. A person eats, drinks, sleeps, wakes up, works, gets a salary, looks for a brother, a rabbi, returns home, eats, drinks, enjoys, does things, returns, and so on and so forth. Why did we come to the world as human beings?

1:24:19What makes us different from the animals? What right do we have to kill the animals and eat them? Have you thought about that? There are indeed many organizations, even some considered savage, who ask, "Why do you want to kill cows?" I want to delve even deeper. According to scientists, they discovered a secret that there are sensations also in cows and plants. So when you cut a cow, you also kill the cow. There are sensations; you can measure and check it. So, if I eat more, then don't eat cows, don't eat plants, don't eat fish, don't eat animals, don't eat... What right do we have, if possible, to manage and give to the whole world, which is the world of the red, the plant, and the living, our power over it? Because we are wiser? Because they can't talk and we can? What makes us, as human beings, more special than the rest of the living beings? If a person thinks about this and doesn't have answers, then his situation is very difficult. If you don't know why you came to the world, why are you different from your mother? After all, in fact, your mother enjoys more. What if a person was born as a bird? The end of a song. He enjoys, gets everything he wants. Why did someone do that to you as a person? Is there a difference between you and a living being? Another thing, if there is no purpose for the world, why do people cry and cry when a person dies? A person dies. They bury him. People cry. Why are you crying? It's over. Why, when a person kills a person, doesn't he cry? What's the difference between you and the whole world? What's the difference between you and everything else in the world?

1:25:42And a Jewish person should ask, why was I born a Jew? Why was I born a Jew whose rate of anti-Semitism is so high in the world? Why do they hate us so much? Why wasn't I born a Mexican? Two hundred million Mexicans, a billion Chinese, Japanese—there are so many people in the world. Why wasn't I born like them? Who told me that I would be born here? A person who doesn't have answers to these questions, his situation is difficult. His situation... Dangerous. He will spend all his life, in fact, without a relationship to life. Because a person who thinks that life is only to eat and drink and enjoy, and that life has no supreme value, then he does not relate to life as life. He relates to life as something material that they do a little. So when he gets a little trouble in life, he dies. When he gets a little trouble, he escapes from reality. He fails to function. He ruins his world. But if a person has answers to these questions, If you want answers to these questions, come and follow, listen to Torah lessons, Torah speeches, and understand what the purpose of the world is, what makes us different from all other living beings, what right we have to control them and rule the world. If you are interested, come and join the lessons. Recognize the internal Judaism, the divine light in the Torah of Hashem, and in the commandments, and in the global universe.

1:27:04So this is Rabbi Ephraim, call him, he's your cousin, he's your this, he's your that. I'm like, listen, if you stop crying, I'll talk to anybody. Just stop crying. The worst thing in the world is to hear somebody crying, especially if it's your mom. So she gets on the other line. She calls, she tells Rabbi Ephraim to call me. Rabbi Ephraim calls me. How are you? How are you? We start talking. I tell him a problem. He says, oh, yeah, it's the same problem that he mentions a character in the Torah had, and he gives me a verse and a page number of where it happened off the top of his head. I said, oh, this is very interesting. This guy knows page numbers. I tell him a problem. He says, oh, yeah, it's the same problem that he mentions a character in the Torah had, and he gives me a verse and a page number of where it happened off the top of his head. I said, oh, this is very interesting. This guy knows page numbers. He has the book in front of him? How does he know? So I ask another question. He says, oh, what a great question. This is the same question that Rabbi so-and-so asked 823 years ago in this sefer on this daf. And it says, da-da-da-da-da-da-da. So he not only knows the name of the sefer and who wrote the sefer, but the year that it was written and exactly what it says. I said, no, he has both sefarim in front of him? So I just keep asking questions.

1:28:21And he tells me my favorite story still to this day from the Torah, the story of Yehuda and Tamar. It took me a few years to understand why he told me this story. And he answers my questions and we have a conversation for an hour and forty minutes. And for the next hour and forty minutes, I feel like I don't have any problems anymore. I run to my wife and I say, he knows. And she says, what does he know? And who is he? I said, it's Rabbi Ephraim. She says, what does he know? I said, he knows the secret. She asked, what are you talking about? I said, he knows the secret to the world. He knows how everything works. She says, keep talking to him. I said, I can't wait until he calls me again. So the next week, at exactly the same time, Thursday at 4 o'clock, he calls me, and this time we talk for three hours. For three hours, I ask him questions. And he gives me a rabbi's name, a book name, the year it was written, the verse, the page, on the spot. And it just continues. So I just keep asking him questions. I didn't even know I had that many questions. I ask him about dinosaurs. I ask him about scientific proofs. I ask him about business. I ask him about everything. If you had a question, I probably asked it. Sometimes it was because it was interesting to know what the answer is. Sometimes I just wanted to know if he knows it.

1:29:51Next week, he calls me on Thursday at four o'clock, and this time we talked for five hours. The next Thursday, he calls me at four o'clock, and we talked for seven hours. From that day on, every single Thursday, Baruch Hashem, we talked for an average of six to seven hours straight. I ask questions, and he gives me answers. And now the whole week doesn't matter anymore. I wait for Thursday at 4 o'clock because if it's Thursday at 4 o'clock, I don't accept business calls. I don't accept doctors. I don't accept anything. All I accept is Rav Ephraim's phone call. And we continue this every single Thursday, and little by little, I start understanding I have a problem. I have a lot of problems. Money is the least of my problems. So, in terms of health, I have to start fixing myself. So now, everything I learn, I start teaching my wife. She is more excited about Rabbi Ephraim than I am. The reason why is because, for whatever strange reason or another—at least I didn't know at the time—she's always wanted me to be a religious Jew and...

1:31:18Grew up as a religious Christian, and she wanted me to be a religious Jew. Doesn't make sense to you guys, but it made sense to us. So now I'm learning stuff, and after this shiur with him, I'm teaching her everything I learned. We're both enlightened. Eventually, he tells me: "Listen, I think it's time for you to keep Shabbat. It's a big deal. It's this, it's that." Shabbat is usually when I go to the casino. Can't do that. Yeah, that's usually when I have business meetings. I can't have them during the week, so I do it on the weekend. He doesn't answer. I said, "Yeah, but you know, Shabbat is, you know, it's usually a time I rest. It's the time I go here." And I start listening to myself talk, and I remember this day. I was talking on the balcony, and I was starting to make up every single excuse in the book of why Shabbat is not for me, and

1:32:18After about two to three minutes of talking about why Shabbat is so difficult, I said, "Wow, I never knew how much nonsense I'm full of. I'll keep Shabbat. It's all nonsense. I could do it all on Sunday, whatever it is that I want to do." So we decided that we were going to keep the first Shabbat. He didn't say I have to keep Shabbat forever. He said to keep the first Shabbat. Shabbat, so we kept Shabbat. How do you keep Shabbat on the 35th floor in New York? You make food and you don't leave the house. And that's what we did. We got a couple of sefarim (Jewish religious books). We read Rabbi Amnon Cohen's book, "Torah and Science," or it's called "The Coming Revolution," or "Science Comes of Age." It's all the same book, just with a few different titles. We read some other books, "Anatomy of a Surge." We read "The Shabbat Book," which is a book that was written in the 1950s. We read a bunch of books together. What we would do is one of us would read out loud and the other one would listen. It was a great way to learn Torah together. And this was Gan Eden. We had some good food, we learned some Torah together, and we had peace. No phone, no TV, nothing.

1:33:43We liked it so much we extended it by almost two hours. We didn't want it to end; it was so upsetting. We couldn't wait for the next Shabbat. That's how Shabbat started. Now, as we continue talking, one day, Rav Ephraim was a genius, by the way. He had accomplished more before the age of 20 than most people do in a lifetime. And b'ezrat Hashem, he will be one of the Gedolei HaDor. Or if he tells me, you know, the way he talks to me is, you know, when you don't know anything and someone wants to help you, they don't talk to you on their level. They talk to you on your level. So, he talks to me like an infant. So, even though I thought he talked to me on my level, in reality, I realized later on that he talked to me like an infant. And how did he do it? He goes, "You have to hear this Hiddush. I have this Hiddush from the Zohar. Anytime some Jew hears the Zohar, they get excited. I have this Hiddush from the Zohar."

1:34:44You read the Zohar. Yeah, I don't really mean read the Zohar, but I have this ḥiddush, this new insight from the Zohar. You have to listen to it. Okay, no problem. I can't wait for this ḥiddush. Rabbi Meir Baal HaNes says a Jew that marries a Goyah loses all of his money, his health, and his Olam HaBa. What do you think my reaction was? Who is this Rabbi Meir Baal HaNes? He doesn't know me. What does he know, this Rabbi Meir? I didn't know who Rabbi Meir was. I just know his name. Meir, I thought it was some other rabbi from Chabad or something. Meir, rabbi. It's fine. Same thing. He doesn't know me. He doesn't know this. He doesn't know that. What does he think he is? I had a conniption. I couldn't accept it.

1:35:44Little did I know, you don't need to go to the Zohar to find this chiddush. It's in the Five Books of Moses in Sefer Bereishit. It's in the beginning of the Torah. But if he told me it's in the beginning of the Torah, it's not as interesting. So now I realize, okay, I don't like it, but I kind of have a problem here. Okay, listen, I can't make her do something. I have to find out what it is. Until this moment, I thought that Judaism is true and Christianity was like second best. It's like the remix. That's what we'd call it to make fun of it. You know, back in the day, they would take old music, combine it with rap songs, and it would make a new hit. So we called it a remix. I said, okay, so Christianity's a remix. So we'd make fun of it. She'd laugh about it. But I... entertaining for us. So, I just thought, okay, there's some truth in it. Then they just make the whole thing up. I mean, come on, you make up a whole book, a hundred thousand words, a hundred thousand letters? You're gonna make that up? By the way, they do that every day with the whole series called Harry Potter. So, I said, you know what, I need to find out about this. The whole thing never really made sense to me that some guy died and

1:37:04Jewish and somehow Christianity was born, and no one has to do any mitzvot. None of that ever made sense to me. I said, okay, if they believe it, good luck to them. What do I care? I need to learn about this, so I asked a friend who says, listen, there's this rabbi called Rabbi Tovia Singer, and He's an expert. I start watching his shiurim online. I tried to introduce this to my wife. My wife says, "He speaks too fast. I can't hear it. I can't. He mentions verses. He talks like a computer. I can't do it." Okay, fine. I continue learning and continue learning. Eventually, I start realizing this Christianity thing is not really second best. There are actually a lot of contradictions here. There are a lot of problems here. It doesn't really make sense. I... Eventually, one day, I land on a video called "The Debate" by Rabbi Mizrahi. I watch the debate by myself, and my heart drops because, for the first time in my life, I realize that Christianity is not a contradiction. Christianity is not a problem. Christianity is fake.

1:38:20It's outright fake. It's man-made. There's zero truth to it. The only true part of the New Testament is the Old Testament. That's it. They say that the Old Testament, a.k.a. Torah, which has 304,800 letters, is the first part. The New Testament of 100,000 approximately is a continuation of it. So, 400,000 letters approximately. So, the only part that's true... The Torah part, everything else 100% man-made. There are contradictions in it, errors in it, that anyone who has ever read the Torah would know it’s literally fake. It’s not like it’s hard to find out it’s fake. It’s fake, like if you've ever read the Torah, you would know it’s fake. There are mistakes that a six-year-old yeshiva kid would not make. For example, Yaakov Avinu is mentioned in the Torah as coming down to Mitzrayim with 70 people. God wrote this in the Torah a few times. In the New Testament, it mentions that Yaakov Avinu came down to Mitzrayim with 75 people. This is a simple numerical error. God doesn't make numerical errors; people do. Therefore, God didn't write the New Testament.

1:39:44It also has the Cave of Machpelah in the wrong address, wrong city. What, they changed location? First place went out of business? You can still find out where it is. It still exists. And so on and so forth. There are many, many contradictions that don't make sense. So now, for the first time, I realize this is not a problem about trying to convince my wife to convert. It has nothing to do with it anymore. This has now turned into pikuach nefesh. I'm trying to save her. I don't care if she stays with me. She just needs to stop believing this garbage. How do you make somebody unbelieve? You can't just tell them to stop. It's bad for you. Has any one of you ever said "you could stop" and they stopped right away, or do you have to say it like six times? So that's what I had to do. I had to continue learning, and I became obsessed with the topic, learning as much as possible, and... Torah and also about the falsehood of Christianity, and every single day I would bring new facts to her. It didn't take long for her to realize there's something wrong. One day I told her, "Listen, you have to watch this video by Rabbi Mizrachi." She said, "Okay, put it on." Part one goes on. She says that he's so arrogant. "I can't take it. I don't want to hear it anymore, and the Christian guy is an idiot."

1:41:13said, "Okay, but he's still right, right, right, whatever, but I don't want to hear anymore." I had to convince her over the next few days to listen to part two. There are three parts. Part two goes on. She's even more upset than the first one. She knows it's right, but she hates the guy. Part three, to this day, she never watched. But after the second part, she says, "Okay, I'll start doing my own research." So, she starts doing research. Now, every day, I don't care about work anymore. I don't care about the pain that I'm in 24 hours a day. Nothing matters anymore. I become obsessed with learning Torah, obsessed with proving everything right, because it’s either I’m eating pork on Yom Kippur, or I’m keeping everything. It can't be 50-50. If God's real, He's real all the time. Not sometimes, not when I feel like it. If it's real, we keep everything—no 50%. We go for the whole bank. I don't do anything like a goy. So, I decide that I have to learn all of it, everything, as much as I could possibly absorb. Every day, at six o'clock in the morning, I'm still learning. I can't wait for her to wake up so I can give her my chiddushim.

1:42:39She just wants to wake up and have coffee. I'm like, "Here, honey, look what I found." She wasn't exactly happy about it, but this became something she had to get used to—this mad scientist at 6 o'clock in the morning trying to show her why Christianity is fake. So little by little, she started looking into things. She said, "Listen, I know there's a lot wrong with it. I always knew there was something wrong with it. But I don't know if I'm allowed to convert. I don't know if Hashem wants me to do it. What if this, what if that? I need a sign." i need something now at this point. We still didn't know enough to know that we're not allowed to ask God for signs. We're not allowed. Hashem told Avraham Avinu, "The stars—you could actually learn a lot from them, but you are not allowed. The goyim are allowed. You could learn the future from the stars, but you're not allowed to do it. The goyim are allowed." Why? You're beyond luck. I decided. So, we didn't know we're not allowed to look for signs. So, what do you do? You start praying for signs. And I've been praying for months already, crying to Hashem every single day.

1:44:00Begging Him to show her the truth. I know it's true. It's as clear as day to me, but she just can't see it. She finds a few articles; she starts believing, she starts seeing. She starts finding things on her own, but still, she doesn't have the sign. There's still one missing piece. We've already had a huge miracle with Rav Mizrachi. He's teaching us as much as possible, but still, she needs something extra. Eventually, I keep learning from different rabbis, different, excuse me, different books. And one day, I run into the same rabbi again, Rabbi Mizrachi. And he has this film called Torah and Science. I said, "Honey, we like science. We like Torah. Let's look, let's watch this thing. It's only four hours." She goes, "Oh, okay, fine. Oh, this guy again?" Today, she's his biggest fan. But at that moment, she wasn't. This arrogant guy. So we watched part one. After an hour and a half of finishing part one, we're both shocked. Everything changed. Whatever we knew just took to the next level. We're like, amazed. We're like, wow. Now, what do you do at two o'clock in the morning when you finish part one? You press on part two. Doesn't matter that it's two o'clock in the morning. Part two doesn't work.

1:45:27Part two doesn't work, and I'm the kind of person that needs to do things in order, like, you know, in books where they tell you there's things written in the beginning of the book: the preface, and the credits, and the guy thanks his parents and all the people who donated for the book. I'm the guy that reads it. They wrote it for me. I have to do things in order. I don't know, it's a tikkun I have in my brain. I have to do things in order. So not having part two and skipping to part three was just unacceptable to me. I But I was desperate. What am I going to do? She's into it. We'll press on to part three, honey. She goes, you're going to do it? I have to do it. So we press part three. We're amazed. We're shocked. It's about 4 o'clock in the morning. We're going to sleep. The next morning, we wake up. She's in a Tisha B'Av mood. She woke up on the wrong side of the bed. For the first time in all these years that we've been together, First time I see her in a bad mood. Why? Why are you in a bad mood? I don't know. I know there's something wrong. But maybe it's just better off that God just kills me. Because I know that we're not allowed to be together. That's not right. But I'm not leaving. And you're not leaving. But I don't want to destroy your life. So I just prayed all night after the movie: for God to either give me a sign and show me the truth or just kill me.

1:46:54This is what you pray for? I was so upset. What kind of prayer is that—to die? So apparently, God answered our prayer in a different way. I was very upset. I went back to my desk, back to Rabbi Mizrachi on YouTube, and I found part two. And part two works. For the first time, part two works. Honey, I know you're in a bad mood, but you want to watch part two. You're obsessed anyway, so let's just watch part two. Watch part two, and in part two of Torah and science, Rabbi Mizrachi introduces us to something that I heard about but didn't know much about. He introduces us to something called Torah codes. Torah codes of secret messages that you can find beyond the literal part of the Torah. Now there's the pshat, which is the basic literal translation of what it says. There's the things that the rabbis give commentary on, explain to us what it means. There's secret parts of the Torah that come from different places. One of those secrets is also mentioned that the sages already knew about over 2,000 years ago in the Gemara, mentioned in Massechet Megillah, and also in Sefer HaBahir.

1:48:18Torah codes. The only difference is they were really, really smart. They were able to do it without computers. We are not that smart. We need computers. So these Torah codes find us different messages by calculating an equal mathematical skip between different letters in order to make complete words. So in essence, if you want to find the word Hitler, yimach shemo, there's obviously no character in the Torah named Hitler. But you can find the word Hitler if you, let's say for argument's sake, find the H, and then there are, let's say, 10 letters, and then the I, and another 10 letters, and then the T, and another 10 letters, and then the L, and so on and so forth. But it has to be an equal mathematical skip. It can't be 10, 27, 312, because then it's just random. It has to be an equal mathematical skip to show that it's there by design. Even more so with Torah codes, which you won't find in, let's say, a Harry Potter book or Fiddler on the Roof, is that the codes have to be in a paragraph that has to do with the word. Meaning, the word "Hitler" and much more has to be in a paragraph where God talks about something like that. So, for example, all of the things that have to do with the Holocaust and...

1:49:37whether it be Hitler or it be the gas chambers or the different names of the other resha'im that murdered our brothers and sisters 70 years ago, all types of names and all types of details and words that are associated with the Holocaust, all of them appear approximately in the same paragraph that has to do with the punishments of what happens when we don't listen to Hashem. The details of the punishments are exactly what happened and... It's in Parashat Bechukotai and also Parashat Ki Tavo. It even mentions the eagle. And if anyone knows a little bit of history, they know that the logo for the Nazis was the eagle. Same thing as the Romans. So anyway, these are Torah codes. There's obviously a lot more. I'm trying to cut it short because time is running out. But we have something called Torah codes and Rav Mizrachi wants to show us a few examples. One of them he says that Hashem, after we betray Him time and time again, says at the end of times, "You're going to betray Him, and He's going to punish you. How? He's going to send you and spread you amongst the four corners of the world, and..."

1:50:57but since He loves you and since He promised Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov that He's never going to officially abandon you, eventually, He's going to bring you back, but not before you make the sin even worse. You sinned already to get kicked out. You're gonna sin even more when you leave the land and go to the four corners of the world. What are you gonna do in those four corners of the world? And he says literally in Parashat Va'etchanan, chapter 4, verse 27: He says, "Hashem will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where Hashem will lead you. There you will serve gods, the handiwork of men." The gods of wood and stone, which do not see and do not hear and do not eat and do not smell. So here he's telling us not only do we get in enough trouble to get kicked out, but we're going to actually go to the four corners of the world and become idol worshippers. But he gives these idols names. There are two names. There are two major names. It says one god is a god of stone, and another god is a god of wood. You don't need to know too much to know this sounds familiar.

1:52:07Wood represents the cross, the Christian cross. Stone represents Mecca, where all the Muslims pray. Now, this could just be pure coincidence. So that's where Torah codes come in. And Torah codes give us a little more precise detail. And Rabbi Mizrachi shows in the video, and he says, where is the only place in the entire Torah, in the entire 304,804 letters, You can find the names of these false gods. Both of them are not only on this page, but both of them are in the same verse. Their feats scatter starts with the Aleph, the second letter is Hei. If you count 49 letters, you get the Kaf. To the word Atem, if you count 49 letters, you get Mem.

1:53:07In Yishma'un, that spells Mecca. The same exact words, Yishma'un, also have a Vav; you go backwards to Shema, which has the Shin; that goes back to Efitz, which has the Yud, and spells Yeshu. Yimach shemo v'zichro, Jesus in Hebrew. So, you have not only similar gods of wood and stone, but you actually have their names. And the only place in the Torah that you can find them is this verse. This is by design now. I thought this was pretty cool. I've seen some other Torah codes before this, and this one was very good, but to me, it wasn't exactly as big as reading of a frame. It wasn't as big as discovering how great Shabbat was. But for her, it was the sign. That's what it was. You can't expect the world to see what you see and

1:54:10have their own eyes. So now, for her, in that moment, she says, "Okay, I want to convert," and I'm thinking of all the mitzvot. One day, we're not Jewish; the next day, we're taking on everything. Anything we knew, we had a lot of siyata d'Shmaya. The conversion went relatively quickly because we had already learned a lot. We already knew a lot. We were already keeping a lot. On the day of the conversion, we wanted to make sure that everything was kosher. So we had the chuppah on the same day because, obviously, we were already living together. So, we're not going to go separate. She's not going to live in a different house than me, but we can't live in the same house not married. So, on the same day we had the conversion, we also had the chuppah. Kisui Rosh came on the same day. Modesty mitzvot, everything and anything we knew, we did. All of a sudden, I look like a rabbi. She looks like a rabbi, neat. We both look like we were religious for a million years. We look like we just came back from Har Sinai. Now, to finalize it all, at that point we were on a big high. Hashem made so many miracles for us. It didn't make any sense, and...

1:55:33But to make sure we knew, then prayer, when he says at the end of Shacharit, "If you keep My mitzvot, I will not give you the sickness and the diseases that I gave Mitzrayim. For I am Hashem, your healer." So, on the same day of the conversion, what no one knew except her and me... Was that I had an infection, a really, really big infection, and I couldn't walk, and I was in enough pain to really say it’s debatable if being home is worse than this. But it didn't matter because Gan Eden is about to begin. We arrived at the Beit Din, me walking like a penguin because I couldn't move. They ask her questions. She answers the questions. Instead of five minutes, it ends up being an hour and a half of questions because they were just fascinated at how much she knew, as well as one of the dayanim was late. So instead of five minutes, it was an hour and a half of questions. But she answers all the questions, no problem. I'm in a lot of pain, but I'm as excited as can be to see her do as well as she's doing.

1:56:58The background, you know, you can't see each other. She can't see my face. No one thinks I'm helping her or anything like that. They ask a lot of tough questions, but I'm watching from the background. Then eventually they tell me, "Okay, let's go to the mikveh," and I wait outside. I'm in a lot of pain, and we're planning that as soon as she finishes this mikveh and... i'm going to the hospital. There's no chuppah. There's no kiddushim. There's nothing. I'm having surgery, and I may not come out for another couple of weeks. But at least she converted. But something strange happens all of a sudden. I sit there, and I'm in an enormous amount of pain, and then it just stops. The pain just stops. And And I feel as normal as I feel right now. Maybe better. She dipped in the mikveh, my pain stopped.

1:58:05After she comes out, we're all excited. We call her fine. We have a Skype in the car. When you see the Skype, we still have the picture, and if anyone wants to see it after the shiur, I'll show it to you. It looks like, I don't know, it wasn't really that sunny, but it looks like both of us have some type of really, really bright light on us. It's a very strange picture. And we're as excited as can be, and she says, "Wait, aren't you in pain? I was supposed to go to the hospital." I'm like, "No, I'm perfect. It's great. It's amazing." Okay, so And when we get to where we need to be, I said, "Okay, honey, I'm going to the bathroom for one second to change." And, you know, part of changing is taking off your clothes. And I take off my clothes and I see that my clothes and my body are full of blood. I am Hashem, your healer. There's no surgery. Abscess is gone. Infection is gone.

1:59:08I just have to take a shower instead. And from that moment on, everything started getting better. Instead of getting infections every single month, they started becoming more rare. Every three months, every six months—eventually, it stopped coming. Maybe you get it once or twice a year, but they're superficial and maybe annoying for a day. No surgeries, no pain, no nothing. When you see this kind of stuff in real life, it's close to home. It's not a story that happened to somebody far away 300 years ago. I was there. You say, "Okay, this is real." So, little by little, we decide that we have no interest in the business world. We want to just learn Torah, maybe teach it, and get other people to see what we see and... decided to leave New York. We had a little bit of business still left. I lost most of my money, but I still had a few hundred thousand dollars left in the market. I was managing a small fund. I said, "Listen, this fund is going to make me a few thousand a month, so we could survive. And I'll just learn some Torah. Maybe I'll have a weekly shiur to teach some people the little bit of knowledge that I have. Whatever I know, I'll teach." I had a weekly shiur every Tuesday. Every Tuesday, a few people would come to my house, and we would learn Torah.

2:00:35Hashem gave me the ability to speak, and whatever I learned, I teach. Interestingly enough, most people didn't know what I know, so it was exciting and was helping people. Now, after a few months of doing it, I started seeing that these people who came to me were completely secular. Actually, they started to do teshuvah. One guy had been driving to the Knesset for 25 years, and no one ever told him it’s not allowed on Shabbat, and... 25 years, he's driving on Shabbat to the Knesset, thinking he's a tzaddik, just like I used to think I was a tzaddik. A Jew is supposed to feel like a king on Shabbat. And that's why Hashem made Shabbat. But why does Hashem take it so offensively? Why is He so angry when we violate it? Because He's saying to you, I technically created the world in one second or less than a second. In no time. Hashem doesn't have time. The past, the present, the future is all the same thing. I created the world in an instant. Whatever an instant is, He created it in an instant, right? But I minimized Myself. I minimized Myself to stretch it out for you. For you to feel like Me.

2:01:53For you to feel like you are part of creation. For you to feel like God. Felt on a separate day. Instead of saying thank you, Hashem. Baruch Hashem for the Shabbat. I can't wait for the Shabbat. Let me do great things for the Shabbat. I'm preparing for the Shabbat. What are you saying? Like that woman, "I don't want this diamond." I minimize myself, but you're not willing to minimize yourself to stop your life. Hashem minimized and said, oh, for this Jew, I minimize Myself. But he's not willing to minimize himself for Shabbat and stop his job. Or stop his television. Or stop anything else that he's doing. And that is very, very offensive. The Rambam says... Whoever observes the Shabbat and honors it, and indulges in its pleasures to the best of his ability, will receive an abundant reward in this world, in addition to the reward set aside for him in the world to come. In the merit of observing Shabbat, just so you know how big it is for Teshuva, all of one's sins can be forgiven.

2:03:15even if someone had worshipped an idol. Observing as the halacha dictates, he will be forgiven for it, even for idol worship. That's how strong Shabbat is. Another guy got married, had a kid, and then his wife got pregnant again, but he had a visitor. And the visitor wasn't exactly a good visitor. The visitor was trying to convince him to divorce his wife and kill the baby. Not that good of a visitor. So I had to pretend like I didn't know the story. And I called him and I said, "Listen, I'm really, really bored." Which, by the way, never ever happens when you learn Torah. I said, I'm really, really bored learning. I was wondering, what do you do? Oh, I'm going to do this, this, and that. Can I hang out with you for a few hours? Oh, yeah, sure, why not? So I hang out with him for the next six hours, and today he's an avrech in a kollel, not a murderer. And little by little, you start doing these things, and you see that people change their lives if they only knew the truth.

2:04:43The only reason they lived the way they lived and sinned the way they sinned and went against God the way they did is not because they hate God. They just didn't know. I didn't know. So that's what I decided to do. I'm gonna start telling people. But Hashem said, you know what, you have a few distractions. This money thing is a really big distraction. You want to teach people about emunah. Now, the only way you're gonna get emunah is if you go through a few tests. Okay, you know what? This few hundred thousand dollars that you have left, I'm gonna take that too. So on a Tuesday morning, same day I have a shiur. The market opens at 9:30 in the morning, and at 9:30 in the morning, I still have a few hundred thousand dollars of my money and some money of a few clients. It's enough money to survive. It's enough money to start a new life. It's enough money to do a lot of things, and... Virtually very little money in the bank because when you're an investor in the market, you don't believe in banks; you believe in investing. There's maybe enough money to get through a month or two. Most of the money is in the market, which again is maybe 1% of what we used to have. So we're investing, we're trying to build. At 9:30 in the morning we have this money; at 9:35 we have zero and...

2:06:03biggest investment we have just announced horrible news. The market overreacted. We were over-leveraged; we made mistakes. The market decided to take advantage of them. Long story short, in five minutes everything went to nothing. In my entire career, that never happened. The fact is that when I lost the money, I knew maybe fifty to a hundred times more than than what I did when I made the money, which is the reason why I tell you it was more of a miracle to lose the money than to make it. Usually, you gain money when you gain knowledge. In the investment business, knowledge is money. The more knowledge you have, the more money you can end up making due to this knowledge. That's why the best firms in the world hire Ivy League students. They want people that are able to grasp a lot of knowledge. They don't care that you got a 4.0. They just care that you have a good memory and that you're able to work through the night without sleeping. That's how you get a 4.0. You don't get a 4.0, you don't get a perfect GPA, perfect scores just because you were born smart. There are plenty of losers who were born smart. Plenty. I hired some of them. They became winners sometimes. But the point is that hard work is what people look for.

2:07:28I had it but at 9:35 in the morning, I had nothing. The one thing I did discover that I had that day is that Hashem gave me this emunah. So I said, the prophet Iyov, who went through some serious, serious difficulties that make my difficulty seem like Gan Eden. Where the Gemara says that it's better to live in... Miserable life that Iyov lived for seventy years, then have one moment in Gehenna. Iyov lost all of his sons—ten sons. He lost all of his money; he was a billionaire. He lost all of his health to the point where worms were coming out of his body instead of coming in. He lost everything, much, much worse than I could ever imagine, despite the difficulty I went through. I... And the Gemara says his life for 70 years is still not one minute in Gehenna. That scared me a lot. So when I realized that this stuff really means something, I read the book, and Iyov said after he had all this difficulty, while he was having all this difficulty, "Hashem natan, Hashem lakach, y’hi shem Hashem mevorach" — God gave, God took, may His name be blessed.

2:08:53Pirkei Avot, we learned we have a series we do every Tuesday next door. We learned Pirkei Avot a few months ago, maybe about a month ago. We learned one of the tzaddikim, one of the Chazal taught us something: Ten lo mi shelo biglal she shelcha v’ata shelo — Give Him from yours because yours and you are His. When a person Questioning whether they should give us the car or not, whether they should invest in a religious school or not, whether they should invest in a sefer or not, or whether they have left or not. When you're investing in Torah, in reality, you're not investing at all; all you're doing is returning. It's all His. So I said at 9:35 in the morning, "Everything is His. He took, He gave, He took; may His name be blessed." I shut off the computer, I went to study for my shiur Torah, and I never turned it on again.

2:09:54And since that day, for the last almost three years now, all I've been doing is teaching Torah, learning Torah, and trying to help Am Yisrael come back to Hashem. Any questions? Baruch Adonai le'olam. Amen ve'amen.

2:11:07Anah Adonai Hoshiyah Na, Anah Adonai Hoshiyah Na, Anah Adonai Hoshiyah Na, Anah Adonai Hoshiyah Na, Anah Adonai Hoshiyah Na, Anah Adonai Hoshiyah Na Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

2:12:39Great to be here. Thank you for having me. It's been an extraordinary journey over the last few years of giving shiurim in different places around the world. Here in Florida, where we live, but also in Jerusalem and Netanya. In New York, in Arizona, there is also an amazing Bukharian community over there. We did a Shabbaton over there also in...