God Knows The Future so Does He Make Us Sin? (Gorsky Kavkazi Jews Of New York)

0:14Okay. Great to be here. It's always wonderful to be with you guys. I think last time we did really well together. You guys asked some really good questions, and we went on for a few hours. I got some good feedback from people. So, if you have any questions, ask away. There was one question that... was asked on the way here. It's a fantastic question that I'm sure everybody's asked or should ask at some point in their life. You may want to start with it. We'd want to cover it later on. It's up to you. But, you know, anyone that believes in God knows that in the Torah it talks about how Hashem is beyond time. The past, the present, and the future are the same exact thing to Him. And He knows the past. He was there. Well before the world was created, Hashem was there by Himself. 974 generations before He created the world, the Gemara in Masechet Chagigah says that He wrote the Torah with black fire on white fire. That's why it's symbolic still to this day that when you write a Sefer Torah, you use a light scroll, a white scroll, with black ink on top of it.

1:41symbolizing the same concept that was created by Hashem in the beginning. But He was there. Present obviously is here. But also the Torah tells us that He's the future too. Meaning He's already in the future. For Him, He already knows the end. To such an extent that it's all the same to Him. The past, the present, and the future are all the same to Him. Now this is impossible. The Rambam says that this concept, in general, you can only understand superficially. To understand it completely, you have to be God. You can't understand it completely. But there is a question that we can understand, there's a question that we can have, which is, if He knows the future, then that means He knows whether I'm going to sin or not. So if He knows I'm going to sin, Why should I be punished for it? He knew I was going to do it, so technically, did He make me sin? Or some people say, in different words, they say everything is from Hashem, which is true, but they say that even, you know, everything is good that He does, which is true, but then they manipulate it, and they say, well, listen, if it happened in the world, it must be good, meaning that even if you committed a sin, it's good. That's not true. That's the part that's not true.

3:10In essence, they're trying to say that Hashem wanted us to sin. And that's not true. Hashem does not want us to sin. But the real question is, if Hashem knows the future, then why am I getting punished for it? He knows I'm going to sin, so why would I be punished for it? This isn't how it works. Okay. But how do we explain it? Shalom. how do we explain that He knows the future and yet we're getting rewarded or punished for it? So the Ramban, alav ha-shalom, almost 900 years ago, says that if you look at the Torah and review everything that the sages have said, everything that Hashem said. You have to understand something very, very important, which is that the Torah existed before man. The Torah existed before everything. Now, if a person looks at the Torah that we have today, which mainly we're talking about the five books of Moses, when Hashem wrote the Torah, it's referring to the fact that He wrote the five books of Moses and

4:35Obviously, all of the Oral Law and so on, but what he's talking about in this, what I just mentioned, is that He wrote the five books of Moses before the world was created. This is considered the Torah. Everything else is also considered Torah, but it's different, different parts of the Torah. So if He wrote the Torah before the world was created, 974 generations before Adam HaRishon, 974 generations before Noach, 184. The point is, if He wrote it before Moshe, before Am Yisrael, before everything, then how could it be? So, He already wrote the future? What's the point? Did He take away their free choice? If He already wrote that Am Yisrael is going to sin with the golden calf, why did they get punished for it? He wrote it, so it had to happen. So, the Ramban explains that the Torah itself was written, but was written in a different way. Meaning that all of the letters in the Torah were written before the world.

5:35From the first letter of the Torah being bet, all the way to the end of the Torah, every single letter was exactly the same as it is today, 3,300 years later. What's the difference? There were no spaces. There were no vowels. Everything was written as if it was one word. What is it like? This is like if you ever saw something called binary codes. If you know what binary codes are, binary codes are the zeros and ones. Have you ever seen zeros and ones, for example, on CDs or on any type of technology? Everything is made of zeros and ones. If you have music or videos or anything, a program, if you go into computers, everything is based on zeros and ones. These zeros and ones, in essence, depending on how many zeros there are and how many ones there are and how much in between, determine what the program is going to do. So, in essence, the Torah was written in the same exact format. The Torah is actually the original binary code. It's much deeper than the zeros and ones because there are multiple characters, not just zeros and ones. But all of the letters were written in the same format that all of them were written in just one long word. Now, as history happened, Hashem separated the words.

6:59Where they needed to be separated in order to write what was actually happening. That, obviously, is the divine nature of the Torah. So, for example, the first two words of the Torah are "Bereishit Bara." In the beginning, Hashem created. Everyone knows this doesn't matter if you're from Christianity, Judaism, or Islam. Everyone who believes that the Torah, which they call the Old Testament, is real, starts the same way: "Bereishit bara." Now, the Ramban says if you take those two words and you combine them again like they were originally, but you separate them slightly differently... instead of separating them where they're separated at the end of the taf, you separate it at the end of the resh. So now you have two different words. "Be-resheet" is the creation, meaning free choice. So, instead of "Hashem created everything in the beginning," everything's created in the head.

8:11Meaning the same two words, you don't have to change, you're not manipulating the letters where the aleph goes here, then it goes over there. No, no, the words are exactly the same. All you're changing is the separation between the letters. Such was the Torah from the beginning of time. And Hashem, in essence, in His divinity, in His perfection, manipulates the words in a sense where He changed the separation in those letters to make what happened happen. So, to tell us what happened happened, whether it was Avraham Avinu, Noach, Yitzchak, Yaakov, Moshe Rabbeinu, Am Yisrael, and so on and so forth. To such an extent, that the Torah literally has every single thing that ever happened or will happen in it. The Zohar HaKadosh says that Hashem looked at the Torah and created the world, not looked at the world and created the Torah. The Torah is the blueprint of creation where all of the things that could be

9:18In it, Hashem took those things that are in it, and He put all cows in here: "Okay, I'm gonna create a cow. Kosher is in here. I'm gonna create the kosher concept of the cow," and so on and so forth. There's male, there's female, there's animals, there's fish, and so on and so forth. Now, Professor Eliyahu Rips, Shlita, showed us something that the sages already knew at the time of the Gemara, but it wasn't as developed until recent days because of computers, where he showed us something called Torah codes. but it wasn't as developed until recent days because of computers, where he showed us something called Torah Codes. And Torah Codes is, in essence, another way of reading that very same Torah, where, again, you're eliminating all of the space between the words, you're combining all the letters once again, and now you're trying to find different words using equal mathematical skips. so there's an actual method to what you're doing; it's not just random words. For example, when it says the blessing that you say on Friday night for Kiddush, if you actually start with the letter yud and then you count seven letters

10:35go to you get to the letter shin, count another seven letters, you get to the letter resh, another seven letters, another seven letters, what do you spell? In the mitzvah of Shabbat, you spell the word Yisrael. Why? Because the mitzvah of Shabbat was given to Yisrael. So these different mathematical skips, it's called Torah codes. It's a scientific way to find different secrets within the Torah. Now, using this, the sages already talked about it in the Gemara, of how there were certain Chachamim that were able to count letters. Now, at the time, we had no idea. What does it mean they knew how to count letters? Only now, many, many years later, we understand what it means to count letters. They needed to count the spaces and so on. And they actually had such high wisdom that in their days, they were literally able to do what we barely can do with computers. They were able to do it with their heads. But now, if you want to look for anything, you can actually find it in Torah; you just need to know what you're looking for. So, when Professor Eliyahu Rips brought this, he and his partner brought this to the science department in 1994. They wanted to bring evidence and show conclusive evidence that not only is the Torah divine, but that it's from Hashem.

11:55it's impossible to say that it's not how to show that there's information in it that no human being could ever say, "No, you just found this randomly," because you can find words in every book if you counted, uh, seven spaces in every book or 20 or 50 or 100 spaces. You could find random words in every book. It could be a book about Harry Potter; it could be Fiddler on the Roof. The key here, as far as Torah codes, is number one: to show that it's a minimal skip, meaning it's not a space of 500 letters between each word; it's much closer. Number two, that the words are actually relevant. It's not just some random words you're creating, but most importantly, that the actual place you find the word, you're also finding other words on the same page that are relevant to it, and the paragraph that they're all in. are about the subject itself. For example, they were able to find all of the words that have to do with the Holocaust, whether it was Hitler or the gas chambers or the camps, Auschwitz, the names of the commanders—all of them are all on the same page in a Torah, in Parashat, and also in the Parashat. So you find different secrets where it actually has to do with Hashem punishing us for not following Him.

13:22Now, if that wasn't enough, in 1994, Professor Eliyahu Rips brought conclusive evidence to the science department, and unfortunately, they rejected it without giving it a chance. Why? Because if they gave it a chance, the world would never be the same. What did he bring to the table? Chabad, you can sit on this side, it's fine, no problem. What did he bring to them? He showed them headlines, newspaper headlines that they wrote, different people wrote, secular people wrote, newspapers from different times of different people that died—rabbis, important people, government officials. I think it was something like 10 or 20 different names. And And he showed them through the Torah codes that not only are their names exactly as they are written in the Torah, but both their date of birth and their date of death are right next to the name—the date of birth and the date of death right next to the name.

14:37This is not something you can create. Now, let's say you found it randomly. Let's say, I don't know. I don't know what the mathematics is of, let's say, finding one name with the date of birth and the date of death next to it. Let's say there's, I don't know, one in a hundred million. But ten? Twenty? There's no number. You can find as many as you want. You just need to know what you're looking for. Showing us that literally every single thing that's in this world today has to be in the Torah first. So now we go back to our question: if it's in the Torah that we're going to sin, why are we getting punished for it? Amisa, if Hashem already wrote the Torah and in the Torah said, "Hey, they're gonna sin with the Golden Calf, they're gonna sin with the girls of Midian, they're gonna sin with complaining to Hashem, they're gonna sin with Avodah Zarah," they're gonna say all these things, why are we getting punished for it? It's already written! So the Ramban HaKadosh explains it. No, the explanation is different. He says everything is written, but by everything it means both options.

15:52Both roads, the right one and the wrong one. The right road, if you make the right choices, you go in the way of Hashem. The choices are all the choices and everything that's going to happen is inside the Torah right now. Your life, I'm not talking about the Ramban's life only. Your life, my life, everybody's life is in the Torah if we do everything good. Everything that will happen in our life, that road is literally written inside the Torah. You just need to know how to find it. But also the wrong one. Meaning that although Hashem knows the two choices, He knows the outcome of both choices. He wrote it in the Torah. You still choose. You still choose. You still have the free choice of which one you're going to do. So Bereishit Bara is there. But also, it could spell Baroshit Bara. Same words, he just chose, there's a different choice that was made, which is to separate the two words differently. Same exact letters, same exact order, nothing has changed except a space. Same exact life, nothing has changed, the profession is the same, the wife is the same, the kids are the same. What's the difference? He chose to put a kippah and tzitzit on and go to shiur Torah or not.

17:12That's the difference. Why? If he chose to put the kippah on and go to the shiur Torah, then he's going to decide, oh, I'm going to do teshuvah now. Once he does teshuvah, the kids are the same, the wife is the same, but everything changes. Now they have a kippah on. Now they have tzitzit on. Now they have Olam HaBa too. So, in essence, everything is the same, but it's different. So, rabotai, it's very, very important. You can sit right next to it, right there. Good. Cover, cover. The choices are in our hands. Although Hashem knows exactly what can be. Both options are there. We still choose. Now, the Ramchal, in his Mesilat Yesharim, writes something very important. He says, if you ever want to learn Torah, go learn from a Baal Teshuvah. Why shouldn't you go learn from somebody that's been frum from the beginning? Ramchal says because if it's a real Baal Teshuvah, you go learn from him because he's not only going to tell you what's right to do. He's also going to tell you why doing wrong is not worth it because he saw it. Telling you you're not allowed to drive on Shabbat, anyone can tell you. You could open the book; it says there don't drive on Shabbat. But how many people drive on Shabbat anyway? Telling you you shouldn't touch your wife when she's niddah, everybody knows. You just open the book. You don't need somebody to tell you. Open the book; it tells you.

18:43But the Baal Teshuvah, who made the sin and understood that it's not worth it because he got punished, because he saw the consequences in his life, he's not only going to tell you you're not allowed; he'll tell you, "Listen, man, it's just not worth it. It's not worth living that life. Why? I lived it. I saw it. In the end, all the glory that you think is glory, it's all nonsense, it's all garbage." And that's what we try to tell people day and night without stopping. Because most people are chasing the dream that, Baruch Hashem, Hashem gave us the ability to see at some point in our life. People chase money as if it's God. People chase fame and fortune as if it's the point of life. Now anyone that knows my story, which I'm assuming is all of you, with the exception of one, you have the CD, B'ezrat Hashem, you'll learn it. Know that, Baruch Hashem, any type of monetary success that people look for, Baruch Hashem, we had at some point before Hashem took away everything. And I'm not telling you that money is the root of all evil as some blind statement that's nice to say. I'm telling you that money can be evil, but it could also be good. It all depends on how you treat it.

19:59If you treat money as if it's God, as if it's a priority in your life, then yes, money is the root of all evil. Why? Because you have turned money into God. You have turned money into avoda zara, into idolatry. That's a problem. That's a very, very serious problem because Rav Wasserman, alav ha'shalom, says that the only mitzvah in the entire Torah where Hashem says, "I'm a jealous God," is when it comes to idolatry. Meaning that He punishes in this world and the next world for idolatry. He hates idolatry. But idolatry is not just having a statue. Idolatry is giving anything too much attention above and beyond God. Whether it be money, or it could be women, or it could be a game, or it could be a hobby, it could be poker, it could be whatever it is. To such an extent that it could even be a son. What's the example? the story of Yosef HaTzaddik, the son of Yaakov, whom Yaakov thought was dead for over 20 years, only to find out after 22 years that his son is alive and well. He’s actually the viceroy, the second in command of Egypt after Pharaoh. He’s running the country. He’s running the show. He’s a multi-billionaire, the most powerful person in the world, and he’s still righteous.

21:26So Yaakov says, "I'm ready to die, I'm going to go see him." So he moves his whole family, 70 nefashot, all move to Mitzrayim. Now, Yaakov has been crying about his son Yosef because he thought he was dead for 22 years. But the Torah says that when he saw him, finally, Yosef hugged Yaakov. But it doesn't say that Yaakov hugged Yosef. Why? Because the Torah says that Yaakov said Shema Yisrael. Instead of hugging his son back after 22 years—he hasn't seen his son—he says Shema Yisrael. I love you, give me kisses. What's the big deal? Shema Yisrael five minutes later. What's the big deal? Now you're saying Shema Yisrael? Say Shema Yisrael five minutes ago. Now you have to say Shema Yisrael? Yaakov Avinu understood that as soon as he saw his son, he was overwhelmed with emotion. He missed his son. He loved his son so much. It was his favorite son. He wanted to hug his son and kiss his son. He never wanted to leave his son. He's been crying, imagine crying about something for 22 years, every day of your life.

22:46Tikkun, it's a nightmare. You're supposed to, even the Torah says, even Hashem made a miracle, He gave us the ability to forget. Why did He give us the gift of forgetting? So after somebody dies, usually the suffering starts to lower after a year. After a year, somebody dies, usually you don't feel as bad after a year as when it just happened. But Yaakov, his neshama knew that Yosef never died. So he was suffering exactly the same as if he just heard it every day for 22 years. So now, finally, he sees his son, and he says, I love him. I want to hug him. I can't believe he's alive. Wow, it's so great. But instead of hugging him, he stops himself. He says, wait. No one and nothing in the world deserves that much of my heart. other than Hashem. Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad. Meaning, Hashem, all of this emotion that I have built up for 22 years, all of it belongs to You. It doesn't belong to my son.

23:53Why? He was afraid of the dust of Avodah Zarah. Even though it wouldn't be Avodah Zarah. It's his son. He loves him. He's hugging him. He's not turning him into an idol. But he's afraid of maybe too much emotion, even to a human being. Maybe it can be concluded in Shamayim that maybe it's Avodah Zarah. He was so afraid of Avodah Zarah. So a person needs to know that Avodah Zarah is a big deal. Now, when a person knows, and I'll start answering your questions, when a person knows that Hashem is an El Kana. He is the one that's a very jealous God when it comes to idolatry. He knows that we have to run away from idolatry as much as possible, whether it be money, hobbies, and so on and so forth, whatever it is. And that's why, Rabotai, a person needs to know the truth, needs to know what's in it, needs to know that all of it, the whole purpose of your life, the whole purpose of why we're here is is for us to serve Hashem. And someone asked the question in the previous shiur that we're going to answer now, to understand the logic of Hashem versus our logic. And then I'll answer any questions you guys have. Someone asked the question of, in the Gemara, it says that Hashem judges us based on what we are today, not based on what we used to be. That's, in essence, the root of teshuva. And not based on where we're going to be.

25:20If you did teshuva today, Hashem, when you show up to Rosh Hashanah, will judge you based on your teshuva, how real your teshuva is. If you have real teshuva, He's going to judge you based on your real teshuva. Even though we may have made some big sins, if we're doing serious teshuva, Hashem judges us based on that teshuva. But if we don't do teshuva, He judges us based on us not doing teshuva. So the Chachamim ask, okay, so how come Hashem didn't kill Yishmael if He knew all of his descendants were going to turn out to be all these Arabs? Because Yishmael at the time did not deserve a death penalty. He actually did teshuva. His descendants became resha'im. But he himself actually did teshuva. And Hashem judged him based on him, and not based on his descendants. So even though Hashem knows that certain things we do may lead to bad, or will lead to bad, He still judges us based on us today. So now, how come it says in the Torah, in last week's parasha, that there's a concept called ben sorer u'moreh, which is a wayward child that sins against his parents, curses them, eats like an animal, drinks like a drunkard, and the parents, even though he's young, he's only 10 years old, they bring him to the sages. The sages, after they see this son is a lost cause, they kill him. Even though he's before mitzvot, he's not obligated to mitzvot, they kill him.

26:49And the reasoning is, even though it never actually happened in history, the Chachamim say, the reasoning is, because they say we would rather kill him now, when he only sinned against his parents, than later on when he sins against God. Because right now he's not obligated to God, as he is before 13 years old. So how come we judge him now, before he made the sin against God, but at the same time the Torah says, we don't judge you before you make a sin? reason is because he did sin. He didn't sin against God, but he sinned against his parents, so that's why we kill him. So the point is that the Divine logic, the logic of Hashem, doesn't always agree with us because we think, "Wait a minute, why are you going to kill a 10-year-old kid? Just send him to jail, just send him to a camp, a boot camp, rough him up a little bit, show him who's boss, do something else." The point is that the Divine logic shows that the sin against God is so terrible that that it's literally better to die than to sin against God. It's literally better to die than to go to a mixed beach, than to go to a mixed dance wedding, than to go out in the street as an immodest woman.

28:03it's better off to die. It's better off for a woman, instead of her going outside with a short skirt and a tank top or a t-shirt, it's better off for a truck to hit her before anyone sees her. Why? Because what she's going to get in Shamayim, if someone sees her immodest, is so much worse than a truck hitting her. Now, obviously, we don't want anyone to die, but the reality is, Rabotai, People need to know they need to do teshuva because if they don't do teshuva, the consequence is much, much worse. It's much, much worse. A woman told me at the end of the last shiur, she said, "Yeah, but if people don't drive to Beit Knesset on Shabbat, they won't go." And I explained to her, "Well, it's better off they don't go." She goes, "Yeah, but then no one's going to be at the shul." I said, "It's better off no one's going to be at the shul then." Why? Because the whole point of going to shul, if you're doing it for the right reason, is to obey G-d. You can't obey God by lighting fire on Shabbat. You can't obey God by spitting in His face first. That's like saying, "Honey, I love you," and then slapping her in the face. Don't tell me, "I love you," next time. I don't need your love. Love like this, I don't need. Thank you, but no thanks. Hashem says, "I don't need your Shabbat if you're going to drive on Shabbat. No thank you for your Shabbat. No thank you for your driving on Shabbat. Stay home." Why? The Ten Commandments say, "Keep Shabbat." It doesn't say, "Go to shul."

29:26supposed to go so you pray with the minyan as a ma'alah for it, but if you have to drive on Shabbat in order to go to shul, don't go to shul ever. Why? Because the punishment for violating Shabbat is so much worse than death. It's better off to die, and that's why we don't want to die; we want to live. It's an easy way to live. Hashem says, "I give you the mitzvot to live." What does it mean, "I give you the mitzvot to live?" Follow them, and you live forever. Not only do you live forever in eternity, which is hard for us to understand, but actually, once you start following the mitzvot, you start seeing how your world around you starts working in a certain way, where even though you still have problems, You have an answer for the problems. Anyone that tells you if you do teshuva, you start keeping mitzvot, you have no problems is a liar. Moshe Rabbeinu had problems. He kept the entire Torah. Rabbi Akiva had problems. He kept the entire Torah. Rabbi Meir Baal HaNess kept the entire Torah. Everybody has problems. Why? That's life. Life is problems. So what's the point of the Torah? The Torah gives you a reason why. The Torah gives you a purpose behind the problem.

30:44So a person can say, listen, you can wake up in the morning, and like I did for much of my life for the last 15 years or so, I wake up in a lot of pain. Most people that wake up are normal. They wake up, they're maybe a little tired, but that's it. For much of the last 15 years, I'd have to wake up and take a painkiller just so I could move on. Why? Because there was so much pain in my body. So much pain that literally I wasn't able to get out of bed. So much pain that if you let your finger... Has anybody here ever burned their finger? How much does it hurt to burn your finger? You know, like a lighter, you burn your finger? It hurts, right? Imagine your entire body. Forget the finger for a second. Imagine the entire body like the finger. Imagine that every day. Imagine that. Your whole body is on fire every day. Wake up, good morning. Imagine, good morning. Imagine. Hurts, right? Now you can live like that. Not you, Hashem. A person can live like that and just hate life and want to commit suicide like I used to.

31:55Or they could say, wow, it's so good. Why? It's kaparat avonot. Why? I had avonot. I had sins in the past. Now I'm suffering. Yeah, but you know what? Suffering here for what? 10, 20, 30 minutes, 2 hours, 3 hours, 5 hours. Better than 500 years in Gehenom. Now I have the problem, but I have a solution too. I have a purpose behind the problem. Now the suffering has significance. I said, "Okay, this is just a down payment. I suffered for 20 minutes instead of 20,000 years in Gehenom. Good deal. Thank you, Hashem. Give me more." Meaning, the problems don't go away, but you now have a purpose behind them. Now you have an understanding behind them. Either way, overall, once you have a God to follow... and you have a Torah to follow, everything in your life has to have a purpose. You become a human being. And that's the difference between us and the animals. We have to have a purpose. We're not creatures that just do things based on instinct. We don't do things based on instinct; we do things based on a purpose. There has to be a reason for what we do.

33:09That's why anyone that says, "Listen, I was born gay. I was born gay, so that's why I can't keep the Torah because I was born gay," that person is full of it. Why? Because even though, yes, it is possible that a person has tendencies to be attracted to the same gender, it doesn't mean they have to follow it. Okay, let's see. A person is attracted to the same gender, so what? It doesn't mean you have to be with them. Some people have, you know, an attraction to stealing. They're kleptomaniacs. They call them kleptomaniacs. They have a psychological disorder. They feel like everything that’s yours is really theirs. They also have to put it in their pocket. They do nothing like them in everybody’s house. They feel like what's yours is mine, but no, not really. What's yours is yours. They like it, but it doesn't mean they have to do it. Some people are called pyromaniacs, where they like to light fires. They're a little crazy. They like to light fires. It doesn't mean they have to do it. The point is, I will tell you, just because somebody has an attraction to something doesn't mean they have to do it. And that's what separates them from the animal. The animal, on the other hand, doesn't have that choice. Why? Because the animal works off of instinct.

34:27Animals are hungry; they go hunting. You're never going to see an animal that's hungry, a lion that's hungry, just sit there and sleep all day. Nah, I don't feel like it. Yeah, but you're hungry; you're going to go eat. Yeah, but I feel bad for the giraffe and the zebra. They were really nice to me last week. I'm not going to eat them. Yeah, but you're hungry; you're going to starve to death. Yeah, but I'd rather starve to death than hurt my fellow zebra. don't want the Discovery Channel to highlight me while I'm committing a crime against nature eating a zebra. You're never gonna see a lion thinking, "You know, I'm going on vacation. I'm gonna go vegetarian. I'm vegan now." You're never gonna see such stupidity. Why? Because the lion works off of instinct. He doesn't have free choice; he does what he has to do. A human being is different. So when a person who is a homosexual or has any other type of sexual addiction or desire says, "No, no, I'm a gambler, so I have to go gambling. I'm this, so I have to do it," that's why the Torah says that person has no Olam HaBa. Why? Because he is acting like an animal by saying he has no choice. Okay, you want to act like an animal? No problem. Hashem will judge you like an animal. The animal doesn't have Olam HaBa and neither do you.

35:48Simple. You want to be an animal, that's what you get. But that's the thing. The reality is everyone has a choice. Everyone has a choice. Even if someone has such a mental deficiency that they literally cannot find the opposite sex as attractive at all. They're disgusted by it. You don't have to be with anyone then. The point is, Abutai, in the Torah... is our path to fixing and rewiring our own neshamot. Just like you take a plate and you put it in a mikveh to make it kosher, the Torah is taking our neshama and putting it into holy waters to make us kosher. Because without the Torah, we're just simply not kosher. Without Torah, Judaism could literally turn into avodah zarah. By that, I mean that a lot of people say, "I believe in the Torah," they kiss the Sefer Torah, they celebrate some of the holidays, but they don't follow the Torah the rest of the year. What do they follow? They follow segulot. They follow the quick tricks. Oh, give me a quick prayer that I can get more money. Give me a quick prayer that I can get a wife. Give me a quick prayer that I can have a kid. Well, how about keeping Shabbat? No, that's too much. Give me something else.

37:04What about wearing tzitzit? No, no, no, I'm too hot. Give me something else. What about making sure your wife is modest? No, I like her when she's half-naked. Give me something else. So what have they turned? They've turned the Torah into idolatry. Why? They're looking for tricks. They're looking for tricks to beat the system. They're looking for a string, a silly red string to put on that they're going to pay 20 bucks for. And make somebody rich because they think that the string has the power to give them money. The string has the power to make them holy. Or if they do this one blessing, that's going to change everything. It's complete nonsense. The only thing that can change everything is God. Why would God change something? If you give Him a reason. You gave Him a reason. You said, Hashem, if you give me more money, I'll give more tzedakah. Who says you're lying? Who says if you're telling the truth? Hashem knows. Number one, He knows because He knows the future. Number two, He knows because He knows the past. What did you do? You're saying, "Hashem, I'm going to give more tzedakah if You give me more money." He says, "Yeah, but when I give you $5,000 a month, you give $50. The guy that makes $300 a month also gives $50. You're not such a big shot. You're not such a big deal. I'll keep you at $5,000."

38:29Why? So why? I give you $10,000, and you give $100,000? Thank you. I give the other guy, it's cheaper for me to do it somewhere else. I give the guy $300, you give $50,000. So if I give him $600,000, he's going to give $100,000. He's already better than you. It's cheaper for me over there. He knows the past. You can't lie to Hashem. That is better than any segulah in the world, Abutai. Why? Because you're being honest with yourself by being honest with the Creator. Now you can start with any questions you have. David, I think you start. Yes, I'm listening. meaning the real name of Hashem that you're not allowed to use is a person that pronounces the real name of Hashem has no share of the world to come according to Halacha. The real Shem of Hashem, a person that uses it without getting specific permission from Hashem, like for example who got the permission, loses their share of the world to come. allowed to do it. A person that pronounces the real name of Hashem has no share in the World to Come according to Halacha. The real Shem of Hashem, a person that uses it without getting specific permission from Hashem—like, for example, who got the permission—a person that uses that name loses their share in the World to Come.

39:49So, no one used it unless they have specific permission from Hashem to use it. During blessings and during the reading of the Torah, we're not allowed to say it. Well, yeah, I mean, as far as when Hashem is talking, when Moshe Rabbeinu is performing the miracles, of Egypt, the plagues, the real name for us was actually written, engraved into his staff. As far as how to pronounce the real name, we have no concept of how to pronounce it anymore. We don't really know how to pronounce the real name, like as far as the Yud-Kei-Vav-Kei that we have today. There are countless ways of how to pronounce it. We don't know the right way of actually pronouncing it. And the real name of Hashem has over 70 letters. The Yud-Kei-Vav-Kei is a concept of it. It's not the full name. There are many names for Hashem. The real full name that I'm referring to is a much longer name. It's over 70 letters, I believe. And the Yud-Kei-Vav-Kei is a representation of that name, just like the word Hashem is a representation of Yud-Kei-Vav-Kei.

41:01So we're not allowed to say the real name. And people that try to pronounce what Yud-Kei-Vav-Kei actually say could lose Olam HaBa because you're not allowed to even pronounce that. So holy is the actual real name that even the representation of the real name, we're not even allowed to say. Unless, again, there's specific instructions from the Torah. There's actually a story in the Gemara that says that Rabbi Chanina... Rabbi Chanina ben Dosa, I believe it was Rabbi Chanina ben Dosa in Masechet Ta'anit, was punished because he said the real Name. Even though he was allowed to say it, he said it out loud and other people heard it, and Hashem punished him for it. Even though the same Gemara says that the entire world eats because of the merit of Rabbi Chanina. Meaning he was so righteous that literally the entire world gets food because of his merit. Still, he was so holy he still had to get punished for doing something that he didn't realize he made a mistake on. Meaning that only after the fact he said the Name out loud and somebody heard it. So sometimes you have Christians

42:17Like to say to Messianics—they call themselves Messianic Jews—they're really Christians. When they write the name "Yahweh" or the like, it's not allowed to use those names. First of all, it's a mistake. Second of all, they're trying to say the real Name, and you're not allowed to say the real Name. So a lot of these people simply are ignorant. No, we can say things that sound like it. We can say things that even hint at it. We don't know for sure if that's it, and No, you could find it in the Torah itself. Yeah, of course, but I'm saying that the way that the pshat, it's not written like, for example, the nikud of Moshe can only be written one way. Moshe is Moshe. Whereas the nikud for the vowel system for that particular word for Hashem can be written in countless ways. So, for example, if you look at your siddur, you'll see that the word is actually written with the same letters, but with different nikud in different places. Why? Because there are different ways to pronounce the name. You'll notice that there's a difference. On one page, for example, in Shacharit, you'll see at the beginning of Shacharit, it is a certain set of vowels there. Certain dots are in certain places.

43:32Later on in Shacharit, it's completely different. Same letters, but just different vowels, different dots in different places. So, the name of Hashem is something that a person doesn't want to mess with, meaning, Our sages knew what they were talking about. They said, listen, even the word Adonai, you can only say if it's for the purpose of teaching, reading, or praying. But sometimes people actually read the verses from the Torah and are so careful that instead of saying that word, they say Hashem. Why? Because they're so scared of losing Olam Haba simply by saying one word that they don't think it's such a big deal. That's why it says in the Ten Commandments, don't use Hashem's name in vain. Hashem's name is not like Mikey. You can say Mikey as much as you want, and six people are going to show up. Hashem is Hashem. There's only one. We can't just say His name whenever we feel like it. Some people talk to Hashem like He's their buddy. He's not our buddy. That's why on Rosh Hashanah, all the way until Yom Kippur, every time we say a blessing, instead of saying HaKel HaKadosh, like our King is Holy, we say HaMelech HaKadosh.

44:44We change the words only for that time, for those 10 days. We constantly say Hashem is HaMelech. Hashem is a King. Why? Because first, realize He's a King. Then everything else. Then your Father, then everything else. Well, because the reality is He created the world because He's the King. Then everything else. And a person that makes Hashem King, already is going in the right direction. A person that does not want to make Hashem King is always going to go in the wrong direction. It's the silliest thing in the world when a person says, "The King of the world," but in reality, he's the King of the world except me. He's the King of everybody else except me. He wants Hashem to be King of everyone else, but not themselves. silly person. So, a person needs to know they need to first and foremost make Hashem King over themselves. That reminder of Rosh Hashanah is that reminder that we're obligated to make Hashem King—King of ourselves and King of everybody else. But it all starts with ourselves. It's very, very important to know that our sages specifically warned us not to pronounce the Name, especially even the Name that's the...

46:02...the indication of the real Name, we have to be careful with. Only when you're actually reading a prayer or for the purpose of reading from a Torah itself...

47:15Next question. Same price. Well, the verse says, "I am what I am." He told Moshe Rabbeinu to tell them; He didn't tell all of Am Yisrael what His name is. He says, "I will be what I will be," meaning that He tried to imply to Am Yisrael that He was, He is, and He will be. He is the past, He is the present, and He is the future, and that is much more important for us to know than His name. The Torah is constantly teaching us that although there's an infinite amount of information available, the only information that's available to the general public is the information that's relevant to everyone. And... So, for example, there are many secrets in the Torah. There are secrets of what happened to the world before this world, where there were actually six other worlds.

48:15Before Hashem created this world, He actually created six other worlds. But we don't have that much information about what happened in those worlds. We have some information, and we even have some Kabbalistic information that the people who didn't do teshuva in some of those other worlds actually came into this world as plants, rocks, bugs, and different creatures. in order to fix their neshama, we have different teachings like that, but that's not general public information; more Kabbalistic type of teaching. But how come Hashem doesn't give us the history of everyone? How come all of that is not written in the Torah? Because it's not relevant to us. The same reason why the Torah doesn't talk about aliens. You know, people see things They believe it's aliens. They believe there are people on different planets and they're green and blue and all types of things. They let their imagination run wild. And the sages, to my knowledge, do not ever say that aliens exist or don't exist. They don't say they don't exist. They don't say that there's no such thing as people on other planets. They don't say that.

49:33But also, they don't say that it does exist. Why? Because it's not relevant to us. It's not relevant to our teshuva. Meaning that it will never be, according to our Torah, it will never be like that movie, Independence Day, where a bunch of aliens show up to earth and want to kill us. That will never be. That's just in the movies, to waste two hours of your life and 20 bucks a ticket. That's all it is. It's only in the movies. It's not in reality. But you should know that Shlomo HaMelech did reach other people look very different from us, act very differently from us, and have a whole life different from ours inside this world. Part of it is underground, and part of it is under the ocean. There are different creatures, all of which we would call aliens because they're small, they're big, they have multiple heads, they look different, but they actually exist in this world. And Shlomo HaMelech was able to reach them and... So the point is, why isn't all of this literally in the Torah that's available, and why are there countless books written about it? Because this type of stuff is not relevant to everyone. It's nice to say it makes your brain stimulated—wow, the Torah is endless—but that's where we end it. We don't delve into things of who and what and where and names. Why? It's not relevant to your teshuvah. It's not going to help you in your life. It's not going to make your marriage any better or worse. It's not going to help your kids get a good education or a bad education.

50:59It's not going to make you closer to God or further from God. It's not going to do anything for you. If anything, there's more danger. Why? Because sometimes people get so into the mystical part of the Torah, they forget the pshat. They forget the basic obligation. They want to learn the Zohar before they even know the Chumash. And the Zohar, you're not even allowed to talk about or think about unless you're an expert in the entire Torah, as well as the basics of the whole Torah, which means Mishnah and Gemara. so Zohar talks about a lot of mystical things that people want to go into, and even though there's a lot of mystical things in other parts of the Torah, they want to go to the Zohar part. Why? Because the Zohar has names of angels that, if you say them, you could literally manipulate nature. The problem is that most people don't tell you, or don't know, is that if you say the name of an angel and you somehow find out and know actually how to say it, because the words are huge, and they're very hard to pronounce, and somehow you said it. Luckily, or unluckily, you said it, and you pronounced it right. You're, in essence, commanding the angel to come to you. Now, what does that mean? That angel actually comes. Now, that angel is not God. That angel does not have mercy, does not have the midat harachamim.

52:22He only has the Midat HaDin, which means that if you're holy, he's happy to be here. If not, he's going to punish you for it. And that's why there's an entire hospital in Har Nof in Yerushalayim for people that lost their mind as a result of learning the Zohar without being prepared for it. Why? The angels were offended that these impure people said their names and they decided to punish them. so people want to go into the Zohar and different things that are far and away, and they don't realize that they're putting their life in danger. It's a silly thing to do. Go ahead. Why does God allow His angels to descend into this realm and visit people who pronounce their names? They are, they are. The thing is, though, that Hashem instilled rules of nature. The pasuk says in Jeremiah, "If not for My covenant day and night, the rules of the world will cease to exist," and

53:41Hashem tells the prophet Yirmiyahu, which in essence is a message to us, that if not for the covenant of Am Yisrael learning Torah day and night, meaning that there has to be a Jewish person in the world learning Torah at every single second, if for a second... There's no one in the world learning Torah, chas v'shalom. Hashem says the rules of nature that I instilled into the world will cease to exist. Now, what are these rules of nature? Some of them are very obvious, like the rules of gravity or the periodic table that includes all of the chemicals and gases and things of that nature. But also, there are rules of nature regarding how the world operates. As far as, for example, when you say a certain angel's name, that is like pressing a button. Like you press a button on Amazon.com, l'havdil, and that was a buy. That means that within a few days, that product that you bought, as long as your credit card went through, is going to arrive at your house. That's a system. You press the button.

54:54saying that name of the angels is like pressing a button in heaven and the angel comes, so it's not a matter of whether Hashem allows it or doesn't allow it. He actually did it. He instilled the world to have this possibility. The same answer goes to people that ask, "Where was God during the Holocaust?" Where was God? He did it. How did He do it? You have this week's parasha. This week's parasha is called Parashat Ki Tavo. And Parashat Ki Tavo says something very, very important. It's a parasha that tells us wonderful things: if we do what Hashem says, He'll give us extraordinary blessings, unbelievable blessings, even more than what we want. so much blessing He's going to give you, you're going to say, "Hashem, dai! Enough, Hashem! Too much, too much, Hashem! You gave me too much money. My wife is too good to me. My husband is an angel. My kids are little malachim. Too much, Hashem, enough! Enough, Hashem, it's too good already. I feel bad for everybody else; they don't have so much." If we do what He says, He's going to give us enough to the point we say, "Enough!" But on the opposite end...

56:20What happens if we don't do it? He says, "I will show that he made it later." I thought last sort of time that Marko la'amin, a person who does not fulfill the Torah is considered cursed, and the entire nation of Israel said "Amen." Millions of people, millions of people are there and... and Moshe Rabbeinu says, announce this to the public. If someone doesn't fulfill the entire Torah, Arur, Arur is the worst curse in the entire Torah. The entire nation was obligated to say Amen. What does Amen mean? El Melech Ne'eman. The God, the King, Reliable, that's trustworthy meaning. He said it. He'll do it. So what does it mean to be "arur"? The parasha continues with Hashem. It says, it gives the curses—the curses of what happens to a person that's a "hole" and gets to such a level where a person gets different diseases, goes crazy to such an extent that literally a person could get to a point of starvation of eating their own children and...

57:39And this is what's written in the Torah, literally. It's not Oral Torah, it's Written Torah I'm talking about. It literally says, women that used to be tzaddikot get to such a level of starvation, they ate their own kids. Now people think, yeah, but this never happened. Wrong. It happened multiple times in history. It happened in the First Beit HaMikdash. Just read the Midrash Eicha. It happened in the Second Beit HaMikdash, destruction. Read the Midrash on that time. It also happened in the Holocaust. Read the history books. The history books have multiple stories where Am Yisrael unfortunately got to such a level of starvation that some people were waiting for their fellow to die. Why? So they could eat him. That's the stuff they don't tell you in school, but it's true. That's in the history books. The reality is, rabotai, that Hashem said it. We said amen, meaning we agree.

58:40So when people ask, "Where was God during the Holocaust?" God says, "What do you mean, 'Where was I?' You said 'Amen.' You said if you fulfill all of the mitzvot, I give you good. You said if you don't fulfill the mitzvot, you get bad. So I gave you bad. What's the problem? You said 'Amen.'" Where was God during the Holocaust? He was doing His job. The question should be, "Where was Am Yisrael a week before the Holocaust?" Where was Am Yisrael a month before the Holocaust? They were exactly, unfortunately, where they are today. Worrying about buying new cars, worrying about marrying goyot, worrying about marrying goyim, worrying about sports, worrying about being goyim. Instead of saying, "Baruch Hashem, we are Jews," they would complain that they're Jews. And that's why in Germany, for example, you look at the history books, you see that in some parts of Germany, the assimilation rate was over 90%. 90%, meaning out of every 10 Jews, 9 married goyim. Meaning that if Hashem did not bring the Holocaust, they were only one generation away from destroying themselves anyway.

1:00:02that the Holocaust unfortunately was the best-case scenario. It was actually a gift from Hashem to save the nation. As horrible as that sounds, that's the truth. That's the truth. The sad part is that we're in the same situation today. Today, we have The assimilation rate in America and in Europe is disgusting. You have certain parts of America that have assimilation rates of over 90%. The average is over 75%, 80%. Now, most people think, "Oh yeah, well listen, I'm just not gonna marry a Goy or a Goya, but where does it say that I have to keep Shabbat? I don't have to keep Shabbat not to marry a Goy or Goya." Here's the problem. When they did a study, Four generations after the Holocaust, meaning after we got our wake-up call. After we got a wake-up call where some people started doing teshuva, some people went crazy, some people did this, some people did that. Bottom line is, the nation got a wake-up call. They did a study over four generations, and they wanted to review what would happen after four generations if we follow 100 families that were Orthodox Jews and...

1:01:20100 families that were Conservative Jews, 100 families that were Reform Jews, and 100 families that were secular. They didn't keep anything. They didn't go to shul. Maybe they went to shul once or twice a year. They said that after four generations, the Conservative had 54 left. 54 families left. 54 people left. The Reform had about 18 left, if I remember correctly. Meaning, they dropped over four generations. Instead of growing, they dropped 80%. Conservative dropped about 50%. The Orthodox had over 1,000. They grew. They're the only ones that grew.

1:02:21secular had six left. The secular Jew had the worst statistics, even worse than the Reform. Even worse than the Reform. Why? He simply had no direction whatsoever—neither the right way nor the wrong way. No way. He decided that he's going to make his own rules. Now, has anybody ever asked the question of why we say, when someone dies, chas v'shalom, "chas v'shalom someone dies"? People die all the time, unfortunately, and... Somebody dies, we say Kaddish. Everybody knows this, right? We say Kaddish. Now, does anyone know—you don't necessarily need to know the meaning of all the words—you just need to know the first few words. Everybody knows Yitgadal v'yitkadash shmei rabbah. In essence, what you're doing is telling Hashem, "May Your name get bigger, be more sanctified, be more holy," and... among the entire world. When are you seeing this? Somebody just died. In essence, what you're saying to Hashem is, "May Your name be glorified," but somebody just died. Why are we glorifying Hashem's name after He took somebody? Anybody want to try to give an answer? I guess it's kind of like to appease Him in a good way.

1:03:52Somebody died, too late. Interesting. Anyone else? Okay. But you can say, you can say, Hashem takes the same gifts. Why are we sanctifying His name? So, I'll tell you the chiddush that we had. When somebody says Kiddush, they're sanctifying Hashem's name by saying, "And the reason why is because when somebody dies, that means Hashem did it. No one else." When someone loses their life or someone gains life, it's only Hashem who has the power to instill life or take life. No one else. When Hashem takes away a life, there has to be a reason. He either took away the life because the person sinned, or He took away the life because it's time for Hashem to bring him to Gan Eden and deliver on the promise that He made if they're righteous.

1:05:14And that's the reason why we say, Baruch Dayan Ha'emet. What's Baruch Dayan Ha'emet? Blessed is the true judge. What true judge? The true judge who said He would take life if you sin, or said He would reward if you do good. And for that, we sanctify His name. Meaning that when we see someone leave this world, we're seeing Ha'emet. we're seeing Hashem at work. At the highest possible way. The clearest possible way. Why? He said He would take life, either for good or for bad. But He said He'll do it. And when we see it happening, why? Hashem's at work. That's the open miracle. Actually seeing death, unfortunately for us, because we don't really understand, because we think this world actually means something, is the biggest sanctification of Hashem's name. Because He's showing us literally an open miracle. He said, I'll take life for sinners, or I'll take life for the righteous. Both for different reasons. The righteous, because I'm bringing them with Me. I want them with Me. I want them to hang out with Me, with Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov. Give them the reward that I promised them for their hard work. I want to put them there. The resha'im, oh, I want to put them somewhere else.

1:06:38I want to put them somewhere else, get their danger to themselves and to society. And I promise them that if they continue sinning, I'm going to take them. And now it's time. And that's why we sanctify His name. Next question. Yes? How would you explain to somebody who believes... that it isn't. Well, first of all, you should know that the person is in desperate need because just that belief alone, the Zohar HaKadosh says that a person that thinks ...or says out loud that they believe that the Torah is a storybook or a history book of Am Yisrael loses their right to live. Which means that every single day a person who says that the Torah is a storybook lives is a miracle. They're on borrowed time. Now, unfortunately, there are a lot of people like that today. Some of them even like to study Torah just for the sake of going against it, unfortunately.

1:07:46Person like that it all depends on one important factor: Are they looking for the truth or are they looking for an excuse to justify their life? If they're looking for the truth, then you can show them different material, whether it's Torah and science that Rav Zamir Cohen has a movie on, or the ones that we made—Torah and science videos that they could see and... different scientific evidence to prove that not only is the God of Israel real, but the Torah is the only divine document known to man that ever was or ever will be, and that the Torah is Obligation vehicle, it's not something that you could, you know, pick and choose what you want. Because if it's given to us by God, we have to follow it. If it's given to us by Moshe or somebody else, we don't really have to. But if it's given to us by God, that changes everything. So you could prove to the person scientifically that...

1:08:48that the Torah is divine by showing that the Torah possesses information that no human being could have written. For example, we talked about in the beginning of this shiur today, how you separate the words, the Torah codes; these are different things that you cannot find this type of intellect, this type of wisdom, in any other book, in any other type of wisdom at all. So if they're looking for the truth, there are countless videos that I can provide you, aside from the ones I made and the ones that Rav Mizrachi made, that can prove the Torah is divine scientifically. But that's only for people that are looking for the truth. If they're looking for an excuse, then all you have to do is fulfill one mitzvah. And that mitzvah is to run away from them. Because they're considered a menace and not because. And a menace and not because, you're not allowed to be next to them. We didn't even six feet. It doesn't matter if it's even a parent, a brother, a cousin, your son, or anyone like that. Once a person gets to a point where they're intentionally trying to teach people that the Torah is just a storybook, that the Torah is not divine, and things that are heretical, you're not allowed to even be next to them. To such an extent that if they teach it to the public, even if they come to you later on and say, "I want to do teshuva," you're not allowed to help them.

1:10:08That's how much danger they put themselves into. The Rambam says that if someone used to be a missionary, whether a missionary to atheism or a missionary to Catholicism or Christianity, and then he wants to do teshuva, he comes to you and says, "Hey, listen, I want to do teshuva." The Rambam says, "Ger?" If he's a missionary, if he has to do teshuva on his own, you don't have to help him. You accept him as a ger if he did it on his own, but you don't have to help him. So he has to help himself to get himself out of that heretical state of mind. And the reason why we don't help him is, number one, because he's too dangerous, where it could be a trap. If he's a professional, He could simply tell you, "No, no, I believe what you say. Everything I said is nonsense. Everything I said is nonsense." He gets you to introduce him to your friends, and then he starts, you know, spitting out his venom. There's a guy by the name of Michael Brown. He, unfortunately, is a Jew. He was born to a Jewish mother, at least that's what I'm told. But he is one of the most dangerous human beings alive today.

1:11:23the reason why is not because he's so wise and so smart or anything like that. He's actually a fool, even though he wrote many books. Why is he dangerous? It's because he's a very, very clever speaker, and he has a few dollars that he's willing to invest to convince any person looking for attention to introduce him to friends. So he gets rabbis to agree to have a debate with him. But not just any debate. Debate in public in their beit knesset. Why in their beit knesset? Because first of all, he's been doing it for 30 years. He knows what he's doing. He knows what the rabbi is going to say most of the time. But even more so than that, he knows that out of the 100 or 200 or 500 or 1,000 people that are going to show up, even if he loses the debate with 999 of them, he's going to win the debate with one guy. And that's all he's coming for. He's coming for the one guy he's going to turn away from Hashem and bring him to his idolatry. That's what makes him very dangerous. A person like that, even if he says, "I want to do teshuva, I want to go back to being a righteous Jew," you're not allowed to help him under any condition. He wants to be a Jew, he can be a Jew by himself. You're not allowed to accept him in a kehillah. The reason why is because he is too dangerous. You can never believe him. You can never give him kaf zechut.

1:12:44And even more so, his sin is so great where he destroyed so many neshamot that we can never really accept his teshuva because even in Shamayim they can't accept his teshuva until he undoes all the things he did. All the people that he got to convert to Christianity, he has to bring them back. How is he going to do it? Does he even know who he affected? So, a person that says silly things like the Torah is not real or it's just a storybook and things like that, you want to try to help them if they're just ignorant. They're simply ignorant. But if they are having a blast... They're having a good time publicizing things against Hashem. Teaching this stuff. They want to be the center of attention. They make videos on the internet. They get their friends together to come see them make fun of the Torah. That's a person you stay away from. That's a dangerous person. Yes? They usually do it like, "Oh, your Messiah, you know, whatever, his name be erased," like he's a Messiah. And once they let you in, they also tell you that he's, you know, the Maker. That's how they do it.

1:13:49K, you're right. The Torah is for everything. The Torah is endless. It has no beginning and no end. Meaning, the Torah literally means orah. Orah means instructions. Instructions for what? Instructions not only on how to get to Olam HaBa, but instructions on how to live in this world, instructions on how to have a good marriage, instructions on how to succeed in business, instructions on how to succeed in raising your kids, instructions on how to be a healthy human being, instructions on how to be kind to both Jews and non-Jews, instructions on how to make the world a better place altogether—this world and the next. Now, the reality is that a good Jew is concerned about the entire world, including non-Jews. And the reason why is because everything that Hashem Yitbarach created, even though He created it for the Jew, He is going to communicate with the Jew through other things. So, for example,

1:15:15One of the talmidim of the Chafetz Chaim came to him one time after he came back from a trip to Africa. He wanted to report that the Chafetz Chaim had success during his trip. The Chafetz Chaim asked him, "Well, how are the black people in Africa doing?" The student was dumbfounded. "Why does the rabbi care about black people in Africa?" He doesn't know what he meant. So he asked the rabbi, "What does the rabbi care about black people in Africa? Are they maybe the hidden tribes? Are they Jews? Like, what do you care about them?" He goes, "No, of course we care about them. I heard that they were being mistreated. At that time they were mistreated. I think today it's the opposite. But it is. Someone told me recently that it's the opposite today. In certain parts of Africa, it's the opposite." But the point is that he says, of course we care because they were being mistreated. If they were being mistreated, that means that Hashem is talking to us. He's telling us that in reality, we're supposed to be mistreated, not them. The punishment they're getting is a warning for us, for our sins. If there's an earthquake in India, that's a warning shot to Am Yisrael.

1:16:37If there is a tsunami in Japan, that's a warning shot to Am Yisrael. If there's a September 11th in America, that's a warning shot to Am Yisrael. Everything is referring to Am Yisrael. Everything. So that's why it's an obligation for Am Yisrael to do enough good, meaning through the Torah, through the Kedusha of the Torah, that the rest of the world also benefits. That's what it means, אור לגויים (or la'goyim). Be a light to the nations. Not a light to the nations by becoming friends with them. Not be a light to the nations by playing sports with them and inviting them to our bar mitzvah. That's not what I mean. Be a light to the nations by leading by example. Show them how we succeed because of our Torah and not because we go against it. A lot of people try to succeed in the world by going against the Torah. They try to tell the goyim, "Listen, I'm just like you. You're a lawyer. I'm a lawyer. You're an accountant. I'm an accountant. You work. I work. You have a wife. I have a wife. I'm just like you." That's a problem. We're not supposed to be just like them. We're supposed to show them what it's supposed to be, not be like them. And a lot of these people think that by assimilating...

1:17:52Accepting the world for what it is and accepting everyone and being politically correct. We're doing a good thing. They should look at history. Whether they want to look at Germany, or they want to look at the Spanish Inquisition, or they want to look at the Babylonian times, or they want to look at the Roman times or the Greek times, pretty much every single time Am Yisrael was persecuted, right before they were persecuted, most of us were best friends with the goyim. Most of us became part of their government. Most of us became part of their parliaments, part of their kehillot, part of their congregations, part of everything. We became like them. And in essence, Hashem brought the inquisitions, the pogroms, the destructions, and everything in order to save us. Because when we did not want to separate ourselves from them, Hashem had to make the separation. Because He promised Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov that Am Yisrael is Am Segula. It's a sanctified nation. It's a nation that's special. It cannot be like the other nations. So when we want to be like the other nations, and in essence, we're saying every day, Baruch Shelo Asani Goi, but in reality, we're saying, oh, I wish I was a goi. We have a serious problem.

1:19:08We have a very serious problem. So that's why during Rosh Hashanah, every single person has to really think: Do I really mean it when I say, "Baruch Shelo Asani Goy"? Or do I, in reality, want to emulate the goyim? Do I want to dress like them, act like them, have a haircut like them, and have my wife look like their wives? Do I connect more to their lifestyle or to the ways of Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov? Not by yeah my dream one day. No, no, I'm talking about today, today. Who am I emulating today? Like if you had a dream, if you woke up in the morning and said, "Listen, Hashem says, 'What's your wish? Who do you want to be like? Who's your role model? Is your role model LeBron James or Warren Buffett, or is it Moshe Rabbeinu?'" Now, you can't tell me it's Moshe Rabbeinu, but you look like LeBron James. You can't tell me you want to be like Rabbi Akiva, but you have the haircut of Mr. T. You understand? The actions have to follow the words. The actions have to follow the words. Don't just say you want to be like Moshe Rabbeinu, but you're acting like Saddam Hussein. It can't be. The actions have to follow the words. What are my actions representing?

1:20:31When I put clothes on, am I trying to emulate a Jew that's modest, that's holy, that's sanctified? I'm trying to look like Lil Wayne. I'm trying to look like Kanye. I saw a little Jewish kid today on the plane. How do I know he's Jewish? He's wearing a kippah. Well, he actually wore a hat. But his father wore a kippah. And his little brother wore a kippah. But a t-shirt of the boy... Supposedly religious boy said "I love you as much as Kanye loves Kanye." What does this mean? This means that Kanye West, with all of his ga'avah (arrogance) — the most arrogant human being in known history — that's his role model. That little religious Jewish kid's role model is Kanye West, and... What do you think this boy is going to grow up to be? You think he's going to grow up to be Rabbi Akiva? Think he's going to grow up to be Moshe Rabbeinu or he's more likely to grow up to be the producer of the next Kanye West? You understand? That's the problem. The kid says, in the morning, "Bless you, Hashem, for not making me a goy," but in reality, he says, "No, really, Hashem, I was just kidding. I was just saying it because you wrote it. I was just kidding. Just kidding. Cross my fingers."

1:21:55That's what we have to ask ourselves. We have to ask ourselves why. Because we are going to be the mirror, or the kids are going to be our mirror. You're going to have kids one day. Now, right now, most people here are very young. I don't know if any of you have kids or if the kids are very young. You have to realize that one day the kids grow up and they start saying stuff. says if you ever see a kid cursing, only look at his parents. Why? Because the kid is only doing what his parents said. If the parents curse, the kid's gonna curse. If the ima is immodest, the girl's immodest. If the boy likes sports, that's because Abba likes sports. If the boy only wants to be a businessman, that's because Abba talks business on Shabbat and One of the big Mechanchim Rabbanim that came to a yeshiva of little kids in Israel. He went to a little kids' yeshiva. Why little kids? Because little kids are honest. They don't know what it means to lie. If they lie, they don't have the same malicious intent as adults. Kids say things straight out of their hearts.

1:23:16So he knew that before he came, he knew that the teachers were training the kids what to say. Because it would be busha, he's a very famous speaker, if he hears them say things that are against the Torah, it doesn't look good for the yeshiva. So, he asked them initially, who knows what Shabbat is? And obviously everybody raised their hand. Who knows what Yom Kippur is? And obviously everybody raised their hand. Who knows who Moshe Rabbeinu is? And obviously everybody raised their hand. knows what Torah is, and everybody raised their hand. Then he asked them, "Well, who knows what's more important than Shabbat and Torah?" And all of a sudden, only one hand went up, and he was surprised to see any hands.

1:24:16But he asks the little boy and he says, "What's more important than Shabbat?" He says, "Soup." "Excuse me? Soup? Soup is more important than Shabbat?" Because why is soup more important than Shabbat? Because on Shabbat, we all talk at the Shulchan Shabbat, I say something, and my brother says something, and my other brother says something, but as soon as Ima brings the soup, my father says, "Everyone be quiet, I need to eat my soup." So, soup is more important than Torah and Shabbat and everything else. Do you understand that how such a small little thing can destroy a kid's holiness forever? The little kid now thinks the soup is more important. Now obviously he's going to grow up, he's going to realize soup is not more important, but the meaning transfers to something else. Meaning, yeah, it's not the soup. It's just that the Torah is not so significant. It's really not so important. It's really not such a big deal. Money is probably more important because Abba spends a lot of time chasing money.

1:25:27Other things are more important. Abba does that. And the reality is that the way we talk in our homes is what our kids are going to end up becoming eventually, and much worse. So when a person brings a kid into the world, he has to realize that if you make the Torah a big deal, your kids are going to make it a big deal. Ultimately, you're giving them the biggest gift that money can't buy. If you don't, then your kids are gonna grow up and be very, very confused, and they're gonna have to have a life where they're gonna have to realize, wait, should I go right, should I go left, should I marry a Jew, should I not marry a Jew, should I go to shul, not go to shul, should I keep Shabbat, not keep Shabbat, because you're not gonna be Abba and Ima forever. You may be the parents forever, but Abba and Ima is only at home when they still live with you. Eventually, they move on in their life. They wanna go to college. They want to go into the business world. They want to do other things. They have to become their own man, their own woman. And if Torah is not already engraved into their heart as the number one most important priority in life, unfortunately, you have actually put this kid in danger.

1:26:38Now, in this generation that we live in today, we don't have much of a choice. A lot of people think we have a lot of choices. They always say, yeah, but there are different parts of Judaism. There's the Chareidim, there's the Chabadniks, there's the Breslovers, there's different parts of Breslovers. There are some people that are in the kollel, and there are some people dancing breakdance in the streets. There are some people that are Talmidei Chachamim in Chabad, and there are some people that are crazy, thinking that the Rebbe is still alive. There are some people who, you know, are Orthodox, who go to shul and pray and learn, and then there are some of them who are throwing rocks in the street at anyone who doesn't pray and do it their way. So, people think there are different options, like it's a supermarket where you could pick different parts. There's Orthodox, there's Modern Orthodox, there's this, there's that. All of this is just the Yetzer Hara trying to confuse you. There are no choices. There are only two choices, and... is you're either a lover of Hashem or a hater. That's it. There's nothing in between. You go to the end of Parashat Va'etchanan, Hashem says, "I pay my lovers for thousands of generations," meaning to eternity, and I pay my haters, el panav la'avidam, "He pays His haters cash to their face to destroy them."

1:28:02What does it mean, lover or hater? Lover or hater means that every single time, if you're a lover of Hashem, every time before you do anything, you think, what does Hashem want me to do? Does He want me to steal from this poor old woman? Or does He want me to just be honest and just give her the money back? Does He want me to keep Shabbat? Or does He want me to go to the casino? Does He want me to go learn Torah at 11 o'clock at night? Or does He want me to go to sleep or maybe watch some sports on ESPN? Does He want me to go to the strip club or does He want me to go to the kollel? Does He want me to yell at my wife or does He want me to give my wife a compliment? They can do it. That's the free choice. That's the free choice that a person has. A person has the free choice to live their life according to whatever they want. The only difference is that they believe that the choice is free. Free choice is just a figure of speech. It's not free. It's not free at all. What we actually have is choice. But the choice is not free. It's actually very expensive. Why? Because if it was free, then that means that anybody could do anything they want with no consequences.

1:29:16So they could go violate Shabbat, and Hashem would say, "Oh, you violated? You didn't like it? All right, no problem, no big deal. All right, give me a high five. High five, I like you anyway, you're a funny guy. That would be, 'Come, come, Gan Eden, be with Moshe Rabbeinu. Come, meet Moshe Rabbeinu, he actually kept Shabbat. Maybe you'll like each other.' That's free choice, you can do whatever you want." That's not what we have. We have Gan Eden, we have Gehenom. We have reward, we have punishment. Meaning, that if somebody does the will of Hashem, they will get rewarded. Ultimately, in Olam Haba, for eternity. They'll also get rewarded in this world, but the biggest reward is eternity. If they don't do what Hashem says, no problem. It's not a problem at all. Just that Hashem has to talk to them in a different way. They'll be punished, both in this world and eternity. Daas Sheikha Kadosh said, what's more difficult to get to? Gan Eden or Gehinom?

1:30:16Most people would say it's much more difficult to get to Gan Eden. Why? You have to pray, you have to go to the Beit Knesset, you have to do mitzvot, you have to do all these different things. Now, Sheikha Kadosh said it's wrong. It's much more difficult to go to Gehenom than to Gan Eden. Why? He says, just look at the path to Gehenom. It's full of lies. It's full of deceit. You're cheating. You're yelling at people. You have the biggest ego in the world. No one likes you. What kind of life is that? the path to Gan Eden, there's no ego. You love everyone. You teach everyone. You do good for everyone. You never cheat. You never lie. It's a much better life anyway. Meaning that the path to Gan Eden is much more difficult. Why? Because your life is terrible anyway. So a person that says, "Oh, why should I live according to Hashem's will?" It's not the right question. The question is, why shouldn't I? Why shouldn't I live according to His will when the reality is that if I look at what His will is, it's actually much better for me than what I think my will is.

1:31:22When a person actually looks at what Hashem wants for us, it's even more than what we want for ourselves. The problem is that we trust the doctor, the lawyer, the accountant, and even the garbage man to all do their job, but we don't trust Hashem. Every Monday morning, I trust that the sanitation department will send someone to pick up my garbage. And that's why on Sunday night, I take out the garbage and put it in the street. Now, I don't second guess it. I don't say, you know what, maybe they're not going to come tomorrow. I don't say that. I already rely. I'm taking it to the bank that I'm going to put my garbage out there. And on Monday morning, somewhere between 6 a.m. and 11 a.m., somebody from the sanitation department will go all the way to my house in my neighborhood in Florida, where it's hot all year round. And they're going to send a huge, giant truck to pick up my garbage. I know for sure it's going to happen. Sometimes it doesn't happen, but I trust that it's going to happen more times than not.

1:32:27Meaning that I trust the sanitation department. Now, if I trust the sanitation department that doesn't really owe me anything, I trust the sanitation department that doesn't really have to hold by their words. For example, just a few weeks ago, they didn't show up. They didn't show up for whatever reason. The whole neighborhood had the garbage left for a couple of days. No one knows why. Can I sue them? No. Can I complain? Who cares? Who's going to listen anyway? I trust them anyway to do it again the next week. So, how can I trust the sanitation department but I can't trust Hashem? How could I trust that the sanitation department is going to do what they said because that's what they're meant to do, but I don't trust Hashem when He said, "I'm going to give you all the blessings"? I trust them anyway to do it again the next week. So, how can I trust the sanitation department but I can't trust Hashem? How could I trust that the sanitation department is going to do what they said because that's what they're meant to do, but I don't trust Hashem when He said, "I'm going to give you all the blessings"? He said that He's going to do one of two things. He's either going to give us endless blessings or endless curses. The endless blessings are far above and beyond anything we can imagine. Success in family, success in learning, success in business, success in war, success in every single thing that our hands touch as a people, as individuals and as a people. Or,

1:33:50punishment, but the type of punishment that even in our worst dreams we cannot imagine. Punishment that's so horrible that it makes the Holocaust seem like kindergarten. So if I trust the sanitation department, at the very least I should trust Hashem that He's also gonna hold up by His word. And that's why when someone dies, we say, "May His Name be sanctified." Why "may His Name be sanctified"? Because I'm seeing that I can trust Him. He said He'll take away a life. When? Either when they sin or when they've completed their mission. And He did it. Not a single person is able to prove Hashem wrong. And that's what a person needs to know. So yes, anyone can do whatever they want until Hashem says, "Okay, now I have to show you who runs the show." Now I have to show you who runs the show. And the difference between me saying it versus Hashem is that when I say it, maybe it bothers you a little bit. Maybe it tweaks your heart a little bit. Makes a few people uncomfortable. They don't like to hear it. They don't like to hear about, you know, people eating people. People eating their own kids. They don't like to hear stuff like this. Anyone that watched my shiur about Gehinnom had at least half a heart attack.

1:35:10Anyone that watched this shiur had at least half a heart attack. It's so scary, and by the way, that shiur was not even 1% of the truth. It gets a lot worse than that. The real punishment of Gehinnom is much, much worse, and I am telling you myself, when I studied for that shiur, I was crying the whole time, realizing how terrible it is. No one actually understands. It's not a joke. But the reality is that it's much better to learn it from me than to learn it from Hashem. Because when I say it, it bothers you a little bit, it's annoying a little bit, it's obligating a little bit, but in the end of the day, it doesn't hurt. Maybe it hurts a few egos, but other than that, it doesn't hurt anything. But when Hashem talks, it's very painful. Very painful. A person can wake up feeling like they're on fire. for hours. I have a little experience with that too. Yes, next question, behind you. Behind, behind. Yes, you had a question. Ken. Ken. Ken.

1:36:33Practically speaking, the person who looks and is honest with themselves can talk about themselves. Okay. They have to do teshuva for him. Yeah. Right. It becomes like, I mean, how many people can actually do teshuva properly? Everyone. Just give them that time, and then stick to that teshuva. If you look at what we do as adults, How many people actually come out of Yom Kippur with the teshuva fully committed to the Yom Kippur? So how do you do teshuva practically? Okay, so a very good question. How do you do teshuva when we've made so many sins? When we look at the viduy hakaton, the small one that we do every day, we see so many sins that were made and we're admitting we made them. Somebody came to the Ramban one time and he told him, "For the love of God, I didn't make all these sins." And the Ramban said, "If you actually understood what these sins are, you'd realize not only did you make all of them, but you actually made one extra one by thinking you didn't make them." So, if we just do teshuva for the viduy hakaton already, we would be tzaddikim now, and on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur...

1:37:54read what he said, which is called the viduy hakaton, which is a much more extensive list of different types of sins we've made. A large portion of it, especially on Yom Kippur before Ne'ilah, is sex crimes, specifically regarding wasting seed, immodesty, and things of that nature. So how could a person, in such a short period of time, do teshuva? know if a person has judgment day on Rosh Hashanah and if judgment day wasn't successful, we all rely on Yom Kippur. Why? Because Yom Kippur is the appeal. Anytime somebody goes to court, they always assume they're going to win, but sometimes life doesn't work that way, and we lose. So the court system, the civil court system, has an appeal process, meaning you can retry the case. And you can bring new facts and new information and so on. Where do they get this from? They got this from Hashem. They got this from the Torah. Hashem also has an appeal system. It's called Yom Kippur. And Yom Kippur is the appeal process. If the original Judgment Day of Rosh Hashanah didn't work, then we have an appeal on Yom Kippur.

1:39:14Now, between those two days, there are ten days. Between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, there are ten days. They call it the Ten Days of Teshuva. Meaning the ten days to prove to Hashem that, listen, I know maybe you didn't judge me 100% favorably, but I promise I'm going to do teshuva. So by the time we arrive at Yom Kippur during those ten days, we're arriving ready. Look, we've done some things. I did a little kiruv. I arranged a lecture. I donated some money. I did this. I did that. I did all these things. During these ten days, I'm showing You that I'm serious. But still, when you look at all of the other words that we go over during the viduy, technically we're still guilty of all of them. We fix all of them. So the Gemara in Masechet Rosh Hashanah says the answer, and then I will elaborate. The Gemara in Masechet Rosh Hashanah explains that the person is only judged based on who they are at that time. Now, David HaMelech cried to Hashem in one of the Tehillim, and he said, Hashem, they're all liars and cheaters. They're lying about me. Chachamim said, who is lying about David HaMelech? And the answer is, he was talking about the angels. So Chachamim said, wait a minute, David HaMelech is saying angels are lying about him? Angels are even capable of lying?

1:40:39Angels are lying about David HaMelech. What interest do they have in lying about David HaMelech? It's not like it's people that go against him. It's angels. David HaMelech is crying out to Hashem, crying for teshuva. He says, Hashem, whatever sins I made, they had to create some type of bad angel. Because every time, Gemara says, every time you do something good, you create a good angel. Every time you do something bad, you create a bad angel, a.k.a. demon. So David HaMelech is crying to Hashem, "I made some sins, whatever the sins are, I don't know all of them. But whatever those sins are, these angels that are coming to You and they said, 'Hashem, look, he sinned, he did this, he did this, he did this,' they're all lying. Why are they all lying? You created them. How are they lying?" He says, "Because since I created them, I did teshuva. I'm no longer the same person that I was when I committed that sin." I'm no longer the same person. They're saying that David did this, this, and this. They're right. That was a different David. Now I'm a new person. I did Teshuvah.

1:41:42So that gives us the actual, real answer—the completion of the answer. When a person arrives at Rosh Hashanah, when a person arrives at Yom Kippur, they have to do the first part of teshuvah. And the first part of teshuvah is acknowledging the wrong that they've done. I made all of these mistakes. The next part of the teshuvah they have to complete is they have to regret it. They have to regret all of the bad things that they've done. I'm sorry, Hashem, for doing all of it. And that's why, ideally, a person will get to a point of crying, especially on Yom Kippur, crying during the vidui. I'm sorry, Hashem, I actually thought about it. I can't believe I did all this stuff against You. I'm really sorry, Hashem. And then, Rabotai HaYekarim, a person gets to the third level. What's the third level? The third level is committing to never do it again. Never doing it again. I'm never going to do it again. But what if he does it again? Hashem doesn't judge him about what he does in the future. If he at that moment got his heart...

1:42:48Committed: I'm never going to drive on Shabbat again. I'm never gonna drive on Shabbat. I'm never gonna use my phone on Shabbat. I'm never gonna walk around immodestly again. I'm never gonna gamble again. I'm never gonna go against You. I'm never gonna do it. He honestly believes in himself. He's not planning on doing it. It's not like he says, "I'm never gonna do it again," but he has a vacation planned to Vegas next Shabbat. A person like that shouldn't go to Beit Knesset, by the way. A person like that, a person that already has his sins planned, is better off not going to the Beit Knesset. They'll receive a second punishment for it because a person that says, "I'm going to sin and then do teshuva, I'm going to sin and then do teshuva," they don't let him do teshuva, and Yom Kippur doesn't fix anything for him. There's no forgiveness for him on Yom Kippur. Why? Because he planned his sins ahead. He planned his sin and then he planned to do teshuva. Like he's trying to beat the system. He's making a mockery of the Torah. He's saying that if you're planning to do sins ahead of Yom Kippur, you shouldn't worry about the teshuva.

1:44:04You should do a different teshuvah. You should do serious teshuvah. Not if you think you will. You plan on it. Meaning you intend on doing it. Like I'm intending on going with goyot every day. I'm intending on driving on Shabbat every week. A person like that, their problem is much more than what teshuvah can solve. Because they're kofer gamur. so a person needs to know if they arrive at Yom Kippur already with a few things that they've done, "I'm sorry for what I did, I'm not going to do it again, I regret it," and they really get their heart to that status on Yom Kippur, that's true. That's the idea: to continue after Yom Kippur to maintain that status at all times, continuing to stay away from it. I have young kids that are religious from birth, who go to yeshivot. Some of them are even older, in their 20s and 30s, and unfortunately, their Rabbanim never told them that the sin of wasting seed is such a big sin. The Shulchan Aruch calls it the biggest sin in the Torah, and they have become addicted to it.

1:45:16I tried to help them after showing them the shiurim and the information and answering all the questions. I showed them different ways to stop this addiction. It's a physical addiction that the Rambam says is the biggest addiction in the world, more than even drugs. Now, one of the ways to stop is to count every day. First of all, understand that it's wrong. Second of all, learn as much information about the subject as possible. That's with every sin. Third of all is to take each day on its own. Don't think about "Oh, I'm never going to do it ever again in the history of mankind, ever, ever, ever." Don't plan. Who knows if "ever, ever, ever" is going to exist? Who knows if you're going to be there? And "ever, ever, ever" plan for tomorrow. Hopefully, we survive, so survive the day today. I'm not going to do it once the day is over. Write down a note of how you wake up in the morning. I feel good. I feel bad. I feel good that I didn't commit a sin. I feel bad that I committed a sin. Whatever it is. Now, once you've succeeded one day, go on to the next day. Second day.

1:46:21How do you feel? You've succeeded two days already. Now the momentum starts to build. Write yourself, oh, you know what? I actually kind of feel good. I didn't sin two days in a row. I feel good. And then you start seeing the three, four, five, six, seven days, a week, two weeks, three weeks. You start building momentum. So even when sometimes we get a really big Yetzer Hara to make the sin, we look and open that little notebook that says, "How good did I feel when I didn't sin?" That gives us the Yetzer Tov. That reminds us how good it's going to feel if I pass the test tomorrow. Because I felt so good already in the last 20 days in a row. So, use different strategies to actually help yourself overcome these sins that we're addicted to. And I work with a lot of young people, some older, some younger, but literally they send me messages every day. Countless people send me, "Oh, I'm on day 14. I'm on month six. I'm on month seven. I'm on day two. Oh, I messed up. I have to start all over." And it's every day, it's the same thing. And every day we try to give them the chizuk to go again.

1:47:25To go again, to go again. Why? There's no other choice. There's no other choice. Giving up is not a choice. Giving up is suicide. That's not a choice. That's craziness. So teshuva is not something that we should do. It's really the only thing we can do. Everything else is suicide. So a person needs to arrive at Yom Kippur, explain to him, and by the time he gets there, he has to understand what he's doing really bad, commit to the fact that he's going to learn about these things, understand that they're terrible, and commit to not doing them again. and learn enough about them, either then or at least commit to learning enough about them in the coming year to at least get himself to an understanding of why he should regret it. Now, of course, there are just too many sins for him to cover all of them overnight. But the point is that he can get to a commitment of not making those sins, at least not intentionally. He can get to a point of agreeing not to do it intentionally.

1:48:32And to regret it. He can't get to that point. Whether he's going to make the sin again a week later or a day later, that's a different story. We'll cross that bridge when we get there. But at least he has to get to Rosh Hashanah with some type of commitment to at least not do it intentionally. And pray to Hashem every day to help him overcome these sins. And the more a person wants to do teshuva, the more Hashem helps him. The Gemara says, somebody that comes to become purified, they give him a hand from heaven. Meaning, if somebody really wants to do teshuva, Hashem helps him. If someone really wants to do teshuva and he's already fixed a few things, let's say he fixed kammah brit, let's say he fixed Shabbat, let's say he fixed his stinginess. Let's say he fixed his anger. And he's like, "Oh, I finished doing teshuva. I finished, right?" And then one day he watches a shiur. He says, "Wow." And then realizes that there are so many halachot for Shabbat. It's not just about fire; there's more. Hashem starts uncovering other things. Or He reminds him of a sin that he forgot about. Sometimes you borrow money from somebody and you forget to pay him back.

1:49:50Usually, this tends to be with small money. 20 bucks, 50 bucks, 100 bucks. If it's a lot of money, no one forgets a lot of money. Unless they intentionally forgot. But somebody gives you 20 bucks, you ask them, "Listen, I don't have any money on me. Can you lend me 20 bucks? I want to get lunch. I'll get it back to you tomorrow." You know, like one of those things. And if you have a decent friend in your life, they'll lend you the 20 bucks. Tomorrow came and left, and you forgot to give him the 20 bucks. Then they went somewhere, you forgot, they forgot. But Shamayim didn't forget. Shamayim didn't forget. Someone that wants to do teshuva has to give back that 20 bucks. How is he going to give it back? He forgot. He has to pray for Hashem to remind him of the things that he forgot. Why would Hashem give him that blessing to do full teshuva? Because he has shown to Hashem that he's interested in doing teshuva altogether by doing teshuva for the things he remembered. He did teshuva for the things he remembered, "Please help me, Hashem, to do teshuva for the things I forgot." And that's where Hashem, a person that really wants to do teshuva, will get those gifts. Next question. Yes. What's the time for teshuva for men?

1:51:06At the time of Ezra, they tried to bring a halacha to obligate a man to go to a mikveh every time he ejaculates, whether he does it on purpose or not, with his wife or by himself. He has to go to a mikveh. Initially, they meant for it to actually help people learn more Torah. And the reason why is because they wanted people to not be like rabbits and be with their wives every single day. They wanted people to realize that if you're going to be with your wife, that means you're going to have to go to the mikveh before you start learning Torah again. And that takes time. And if you really love Torah, you're not going to want to be with your wife as often. You'll be with your wife enough, a few times a week, once, twice a week, whatever it is, but not every five seconds because then you're going to be sleeping in the mikveh all day. So the point is that you have to go to a mikveh, right? But then they saw that this is not possible. Why? A lot of people weren't complying with it. It became too difficult for the people to comply with this halacha. And since it was rabbinical, they canceled it. So according to halacha, a man is not obligated to go to a mikveh at all. Ever.

1:52:32But he should, from time to time, if it helps him, if he understands the significance of it. But what does he have to do? Anytime he does have intimacy with his wife, he has to make sure that he takes a shower and cleans himself very thoroughly to ensure that there's no seed left on his body. Because if he does, it's considered the same thing as tzo'ah. It's considered the same thing as feces. So a person needs to clean themselves, and that's it. Then he can continue to learn Torah five minutes later, no problem. But as far as going to the mikveh, people go to the mikveh every day, or once a week, or before Rosh Hashanah, or before Yom Kippur, and so on and so forth. They want to do it, they can do it. There's different significance to it, but it's not an obligation. It's a minhag; it's nice to do, it's good to do if you can connect to it, but there's no obligation whatsoever. Nobody goes to Gehinnom for not going to the mikveh as a man. A woman, on the other hand, must go to the mikveh.

1:53:32Throughout the time that she is with her husband, anytime after she becomes Niddah, she has to count a minimum of four days. After four days, if there's no more bleeding, then she counts seven clean days. She has to check with a bedikah cloth every day. If she misses checking during one of those seven days, as long as it's not the first or the seventh day, she's fine. If she didn't check during the first or the seventh day, then it's a problem. But as long as she checked at least during the first or the seventh day after the four minimum days, meaning 11 days already, and it's all clean, then she goes to the mikveh. Checking during one of those seven days, as long as it's not the first or the seventh day, she's fine. If she didn't check during the first or the seventh day, then it's a problem. But as long as she checked at least during the first or the seventh day after the four minimum days, meaning 11 days already, and it's all clean, then she goes to the mikveh. But if, let's say, for example, some women bleed for more than four days... So she can't start counting seven days after four days if she's continuing to bleed. The four days is a minimum. But if some women, let's say, bleed for five days or six days or seven days, they can't start the seven clean days until they stop bleeding.

1:54:40So after that, a minimum of four days to as much as whenever she stops bleeding, she counts seven clean days. After she counts seven clean days, and everything is clean, she goes to the mikveh. At that moment, it is a huge mitzvah obligation for her to go to the mikveh and for her to be intimate with her husband that night. It's of huge significance, to such an extent that I'll explain to you. You remember I just read to you guys in the parasha of this week that Am Yisrael says the person that doesn't fulfill this Torah is considered cursed. Now, some of the chachamim say that what is some of the meaning of this not fulfilling this Torah? It is someone that decides to cancel a shiur Torah. He just feels like, he doesn't feel like going to the shiur Torah, he just wants to cancel it for no reason. He gives shiur Torah, and he wants to cancel it. He says he gets the curse of arur. Even though he does good the whole year, but now he decided to cancel a shiur Torah for no reason, he gets the biggest curse in the entire Torah.

1:55:52Why? You're not allowed to just cancel a shiur Torah just because you don't feel like it or if somebody gets in the way. For example, you schedule a lecture at a place, but one of the board members doesn't like you, and he decides to influence the rest of the people to cancel the shiur Torah. That person now has to do teshuva for being arur. It's a very, very serious problem because you can't undo it. It's almost impossible to do teshuva for such a thing. So, To get to, meaning here I'm trying to imply to you guys that having a shiur Torah is a very big deal. Now, what about if the person is married and his wife has to go to the mikveh? He has to cancel the shiur Torah. Now he's not allowed to have the shiur Torah. Why? Because if he has the shiur Torah in the morning, no problem. It doesn't affect. But if his shiur Torah is at night, That means that by the time he comes back, it's going to already be too late. And his wife is most likely going to be sleeping, and he's not going to be able to fulfill the mitzvah of Pru Urvu. He's not going to be able to fulfill the mitzvah that he wrote and he signed off on in the ketubah. He's not going to be able to be with his wife intimately that night.

1:57:08That's a big aveirah, a big sin. Meaning that being with one's wife on the night of the mikveh has such significance in Shamayim, it's even more important than a shiur Torah. That's what I'm trying to imply to you guys. So the point is that a person, a woman needs to go to the mikveh and she has to be with her husband. Now, after, obviously the first time they're together, then each person has to evaluate themselves, how often, who, what, when, and how. Each person has to know that you're perfectly allowed to be with your wife as often as you want, but of course, you also have to realize that you cannot be to such an extent that it's your only life. You have to give time for Torah, you have to give time for mitzvot, and so on and so forth. Everything with tact. If you found honey... Eat a little bit. Don't eat too much. Why? If you eat too much, you'll throw up. The Chachamim explained, what is he referring to? Do we really need Shlomo HaMelech, the smartest man of all time, to teach us about not eating too much honey? He's referring to women.

1:58:19You say you found a good wife? Good. Don't have too much, though. Don't be too intimate too often. Don't be intimate five times a day, every single day, every single minute. Why? Eventually, if you do that, you'll vomit. You're not going to want her. You're going to be disgusted by her. Proof of that? Look at every single marriage, without exception, of the celebrities. Celebrities tend to be beautiful people, but yet every one of them has five divorces. Why? He's ugly. He smells. I hate him. I hate her. I hate this. What happened? How come you loved each other and you were in the headlines of the newspapers a year ago, but now you hate each other and you think each other are disgusting? Why? Because they have no brakes. They work like animals. Am Yisrael is not animals. So even intimacy has rules. Even intimacy has rules. Of course, you'll have to do whatever you want as long as it's kosher, as long as you're able to contain yourself and so on. I actually made a shiur about other intricate rules about intimacy in one of the Pirkei Avot series, but we actually made a clip that we'll publish hopefully in the next few weeks or maybe sooner.

1:59:30...about the specific laws of intimacy, details of what you're allowed, what you're not allowed. Ultimately, the Rambam says you're allowed to do everything as long as you don't waste seed. Meaning as long as the seed goes exactly where it's supposed to go and nowhere else. Other than that, you're allowed to do whatever you want. Some Chachamim say that you shouldn't do some of the other things because it's not modest. But it's not against halacha. It's just not modest. As far as intimacy, that depends if you want to be a chasid or not. Next question. Hashem told the rabbis in the book of Deuteronomy, in one place, and also in Exodus in another place, and Leviticus in another place—a few different places in the Torah—where He instilled power into the rabbis. He told Am Yisrael that you must follow the rabbis; they have to put a fence around the fence. What does a fence around a fence mean?

2:00:36the fence around the fence. In the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 17, verses 10 and 11, it says, "You shall do according to the word that they," meaning the rabbis, "will tell you. You shall not deviate from the word that they will tell you, right or left." "They" is referring to the rabbis. So Hashem told Am Yisrael that you have to follow them, "them" meaning the rabbis. Because it's implying the rabbis. That's what the commentary is explaining to us. Who is it going to be? They? The terrorists? Because it's... Well, that's what the Chachamim explained to us from the Oral Torah. And the Oral Torah is, in essence, without the Oral Torah, we have no Torah. Even though people say, "Yeah, but that's the rabbinical part." So of course they're going to say that. The problem is that the Oral Torah is a... Critical part of our Torah, because without it, we wouldn't understand the Written Torah. For example, the Oral Torah tells us how to lay tefillin. Now, when you go into the Written Torah, it says you should put it on your arm and between your eyes. What do you put on your arm and between your eyes? The Written Torah doesn't say it.

2:01:56It doesn't say what you put on your arm and between your eyes. It doesn't say that it has to be a black box. It doesn't say that it has to be from a kosher animal. How come you don't see any snake skin tefillin? Nice snake skin. Like crocodile skin tefillin. You have crocodile boots, how come you can't have crocodile skin tefillin? Because the halacha is that it has to be from a behemah tehorah. It has to be a pure animal that you're allowed to eat. So we have the rules of how all over a thousand halachot, over a thousand laws pertaining to the tefillin from our Oral Torah. We don't know how to fulfill even a single mitzvah in the Torah without the Oral Torah. Another example is Shabbat. It says don't violate Shabbat. But aside from don't light fire, it doesn't say anything else. So okay, don't light fire. But Hashem says that there are 39 restrictions. How do I know what these restrictions are? It says in the Oral Torah. Another proof of the Oral Torah is the fact that there's something called a codex. Now in English, when you write a word, every word, regardless of whether it's a big word or a small word, must contain a vowel. And the vowels in the English language are letters: A, E, I, O, or U.

2:03:24And sometimes the letter Y. Meaning that one of these letters, A, E, I, O, U, or Y, they have to be in every single word in the English language. One of them. At least one of them has to be in every word. There's not a single word in the English language without one of these. Even the word "A" is "A." There's no "T." There's no "B." There's no single word that doesn't have these letters. Why? Because these letters are the foundation of the English language. In the Hebrew language, in Lashon HaKodesh, our vowel system is not letters. Our vowel system is the punctuation, the dots that you see, the Nikud it's called. The Nikud. Now, if you have Nikud, then you know what the word actually means. But if the Nikud changes, the dots change, even though the letters can stay the same, the meaning of the word changes. So what does it mean? So for example, if... you take out the vowel system, in English, out of the word Moses. You took out the vowels out of the word Moses. So instead of it saying Moses, now you have, you have to take out the M, that's fine. But you have O, you have to take out the O. S is fine, you have to take out the E. And then S again. So instead of it saying Moses, now it says M-S.

2:04:50So instead of it saying Hashem spoke to Moses, it says Hashem spoke to Miz. Who's Miz? We don't know. So now we have something called the Codex, which is part of the Oral Torah, which told Am Yisrael at Mount Sinai, all the way until today, where exactly we put the vowel system. How to read our Sefer Torah. How do we read this book? This book, you only know how to read it, you only know how to read it because we have a copy has the vowels. But if we didn't have the copy that has the vowels, that has the exclamation point, we wouldn't know how to read it. We wouldn't know how to pronounce a single word. We wouldn't know how to say even a single sentence in the entire Torah. So that's part of the Oral Torah. And the Oral Torah also tells us the significance of each one of the words in the Written Torah, one of them being that when Hashem says "listen to them," we have our Sages, our commentary. predominantly on Kli Yakar and Rashi and Ramban that actually say when it's referring to "today," it's referring to our rabbis, our sages. Logically, you can also use the process of elimination. It can't mean anyone else because if we're saying you shall do according to the word that they will tell you, if "they" means your family

2:06:12But what if your family are atheists? So you should do according to what they tell you? No, that would go against Hashem. What if it says, oh, you should do according to your friends. If "they" means friends. What if your friends are Nazis? They like to kill people for a living. If you listen to them, then you go against Hashem. What if "they" means listen to the Christians? Well, then you become a Christian and there's no more Torah. What if "they" means ISIS? Okay, then you become an ISIS terrorist. Meaning logically also, "they" cannot mean anything else. And last but not least, if you also see the contents of the previous and the following sentences, where it actually says who "they" are, it's referring to the rabbis. So you see that it talks about rabbis who are called leaders or anashim. So you see that "they" is not some guess. It can't be that when we have a halacha, the halacha has to be conclusive. So these specific verses, we know for sure this is the only thing that it could mean. There's no other thing that it could mean. And according to our Torah, Hashem told us that we have to listen to the sages to such an extent that every time we violate one of His laws, the penalty could be different. If, let's say, for example, somebody stole money and they got caught, the penalty is they have to pay double.

2:07:37If someone violated Shabbat accidentally, they have to bring a sacrifice. In today's world, they have to give tzedakah. If they did it on purpose, it's karet. They have to be killed. In today's world, no one kills anybody, but they have to do very, very serious teshuva to ask Hashem for forgiveness. And they have to get other people to keep Shabbat. But those are all biblical mitzvot. The rabbinical mitzvot, there are very few; there are only seven rabbinical mitzvot. But violating any one of them is always a death penalty, and the reason why is because violating the rabbinical mitzvot on purpose means you violated the entire Torah. You simply don't want to comply with the entire Torah and the rules that are telling us that part of the Torah is having a rabbi. listening to the rabbis, and that's why the Gemara Masechet Yoma, page 119, says that a person who chooses not to have a rabbi, God hates him. Why does He hate him? He hates him because he can live a life full of sins his whole life and never have the ability to do teshuva because he doesn't know it's a sin, since he doesn't have a rabbi to tell him. So, Hashem says, "I created you, and you're just going to sin the rest of your life, and no one's ever going to tell you because you're too arrogant to even have a rabbi."

2:09:03So that's why there's a mitzvah—you must make yourself a rabbi. Ultimately, rabotai, doing teshuva is not so difficult. It's in your mouth, it's in your heart to do it. Hashem created you to do it. How do you do it? Just like I told the last kehillah we did a shiur for, you have to decide. Decide, do I want to do the will of Hashem or not? If you do the will of Hashem, no one ever lost in the history of mankind for doing the will of Hashem. If you don't want to do the will of Hashem, every single person that didn't do the will of Hashem always lost. Now, remember this. It's very, very important and it actually put things into perspective for people last night, and last night she joined in Florida. There are countless people in the world that left the life of Torah. became big businessmen, became big heretics, and became whatever they became. It's countless; they regretted it. Countless times they regretted ever leaving the Torah. There's a documentary of a businessman that used to be a prodigy, you know, was supposed to be a big rabbi, and

2:10:25but ended up going into business, succeeded in business, still religious, but he's no prodigy, he's nothing special. And every year he goes to Uman and different parts of Russia, the Kivrei Tzaddikim, crying, pleading with Hashem to give him the ability to learn Torah like he used to. But you became really successful, you have all this money, you have all this success. But he's crying for Torah. There are countless people like him that have left Torah and are crying to have another chance. But what's the real chiddush? The chiddush is you're not going to find a single one in the history of the world that ever did teshuva and regretted it. Not a single person in history that adopted the life of Torah, really, ever regretted it. Every single person died happy. Every single one. But I'm talking about people that really adopted Torah, not just started keeping Shabbat because they like to eat cholent. I'm talking about people that really adopted Torah, they started learning every day, fulfilling mitzvot every day, complying with Torah every day, and adopting the Torah lifestyle. Not a single one in the history of mankind from the beginning of the world until the end of the world ever regretted it. Anyone that ever said, yeah, a lot of bad things happened to me since I did Teshuvah, okay, this is just now. Let's see the end of the story.

2:11:47No one in their right mind ever regretted it once they adopted it. Why? Because once you've actually adopted Torah, you've adopted happiness. Who's unhappy about being happy? That's what everybody else is looking for. Yes? The seven girls? The girls that died from the fire? Here in Brooklyn? What about it? Same answer as the Holocaust. Where was God during the Holocaust? Huh? Oh. Oh, yes. Well, that's the thing. So, if a person... If a person really believes in the Torah, then they would never be sad.

2:12:47The Rogachover Rebbe, alav ha-shalom, when his mother died, he cried a lot at the levaya. And they were surprised, the talmidim were surprised to see him cry so much. They said, "Rebbi, were you really that close to your mother?" He says, "You fool. You think I'm crying over my mother dying? No, I'm crying over the fact that I'm not allowed to learn Torah." It's not that he wasn't sad about his mother dying. that he knew that his wife was a tzaddeket and she's in Heaven. Why should I be sad that she's in Heaven? That would be selfish of me. If she was righteous, then she's in Heaven. She's in a much better place than here. Why should I be sad that she's in a better place? That would make me selfish. Maybe we're crying because we're going to miss them and so on. Yes, we cry for ourselves, but we shouldn't cry for righteous people that are dying. if they're wicked, why didn't you do something about it before? You should have cried when they were alive, not when they're dead. So when we see that tinokot shel beit rabban die, that innocent babies that learn Torah, 'innocent babies' doesn't literally only mean babies. It can mean anyone that's underage; for a girl, anyone that's under 12 years old, for a boy, anyone that's under 13 years old, before they have the obligation of the entire mitzvot. We see such young kids...

2:14:12from zero years old to 12 years old die, Yes, of course, for the parents, it's a horrible thing. It's terrible. The Torah says it's the biggest form of suffering in this world. But in reality, on a grand scheme of things, once the emotions are out of the way, people should know that this is actually a good thing. Why is it a good thing? Because these neshamot, if we really love them, we want the best for them. And if Hashem took their neshama before they've accepted mitzvot, that means they're automatically in Gan Eden. They're automatically in Gan Eden. Why? Because they never had the ability to do teshuva like we need to do teshuva. Meaning they only came to the world to fulfill a specific tikkun. They were righteous in some other life. They had to come back to live for another three years, for another five years, for another two years, for another two minutes, whatever it is. And now they're in Gan Eden. They've completed their tikkun. So again, this chas v'shalom is not something that you ever pray for or want in your life or anyone else's life.

2:15:17But we should never ever think that it's a mistake or a flaw in the system. Once a person realizes that this world is only a corridor, it's only a small, tiny little hallway in a huge hall that Hashem has. This world is just the bus ride to work. Not actual work is not the actual career. The real career, the real life, is after this world, and they are already there. And then the reality is there's nothing to be said about, or at least on a longer-term perspective, because we know they're in a much better place that hopefully we get to one day, too. Yes, well the Neshamah combined, the status of the relationship changes very significantly because over there there's no physicality and But the wife that a person has here is the wife he's going to have over there. So that means that you're stuck with each other whether you like it or not. So it's better that you have Shalom Bayit because if you don't have Shalom Bayit here, you're not going to have Shalom Bayit over there. The Neshamot, when a Neshamah comes to this world, it comes as a partial Neshamah.

2:16:31...and is only completed once they have their spouse. And those two neshamot combine again in Olam Ha-Emet. Now, the problem is for people that don't do teshuva, serious teshuva, when they're intimate with goyim, then that neshama also comes with them. So a person that had intimacy with a goya, or a woman that was intimate with a goy, that neshama is glued to them. And the Gemara says it's glued to them like a dog. What does it mean, glued to them like a dog? It's not that the goyim are considered dogs. It's that the dog always follows his owner, never leaves him. Never leaves him. So that neshama of the goy that you want to have a quick fling with one night after the club, she's not leaving. Ever. Until you cleanse your soul of all the sins. Until you regret it. Until you cry about it. And you ask Hashem to help you and so on. What about Hagar? I don't know. Hagar, meaning the wife of Avraham? At the time, there was no obligation for Judaism. There was no Torah yet. There was Torah She'be'al Peh. There wasn't Torah She'bichtav. Meaning there wasn't an obligation to only marry within Jews. Hashem actually wanted Avraham Avinu to bring a child with Hagar. That's why when...

2:17:50When Sarah Imenu said something to Avraham, Avraham had doubts, but Hashem says, no, listen to whatever Sarah says. Meaning that even when Sarah said, go and listen and be with Hagar, at least bring a child to the world, This was the will of Hashem. So even though the Mashiach or nothing good came out of Yishmael, at least not that we can see, still it was the will of Hashem, and it wasn't a violation of the Torah. That's also the reason why Yaakov Avinu was allowed to marry two sisters. According to the Torah, he's not allowed to marry two sisters. Why was he allowed to marry two sisters? Because it was before Matan Torah. Now, even though the Torah existed 974 generations before the world was created, it wasn't officially gifted to the world, to the nation. It was gifted to individuals to comply with certain parts of it. And that's also why Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov were not allowed to keep Shabbat 100%. They were only allowed to keep Shabbat 99%, like a Ben Noach. That's in the process of conversion, 99%. Meaning they had to violate Shabbat, like a convert.

2:18:56Yes, they kept the mitzvot that they were allowed to keep, but they weren't allowed to keep Shabbat fully. They kept the mitzvot, for example, by not keeping Shabbat 100%. They kept Shabbat meaning they kept the mitzvah of not keeping the mitzvah. Meaning, they wanted to keep the entire Torah that Am Yisrael, their descendants, would eventually receive. several generations, but they knew that they were not allowed to because they didn't have the right to do it. So, they wanted to do it so much that they would keep it, but they didn't want to violate it at the same time, so they would break it. The Sefer HaB'riyah was a book that Avraham Avinu had, and he would use it to create things on Shabbat in order to break Shabbat. So the Zohar HaKadosh says he used to create a cow every Shabbat. No, the Avot. The Avot were much higher spiritually than us. There's really no comparison between the two. They are the beginning. They're the seed that started everything. There was also a different level of intellect. Their minds worked differently. Their bodies worked differently. Even if you don't necessarily have to go all the way back to the Avot to see superiority, you could simply go to the times of the Gemara 1,500 years ago, 2,000 years ago,

2:20:19They ask, what does a person do, an old man do, if there's a fire? And they explain an example that the old man, the Talmid Chacham, will take two young men, two grown young men, 18, 20-year-old young men, and carry both of them like they're two bags of potatoes, and run together with them out of the building. Now, you show me one old man that can pick up a bag of potatoes. Forget a man. My question is this: When Moshiach comes, Drastically, drastically, drastically. I mean, the physical nature of the world initially will stay the same. The Rambam says that the physical nature of the world will stay the same, but to discuss the intricate details of what will be exactly after Mashiach comes is a fool's errand that doesn't help us get yirat shamayim or ahavat shamayim because no one actually knows, and no one will know until after the fact because there are so many different possibilities. But initially, the common belief is that the nature of the world will stay the same.

2:21:28until the Gog and Magog war happens. The book of Zechariah discusses that two-thirds of the world will die, and a third of the world will remain. This has to do with how Mashiach will save the righteous among them. After that, there's going to be seven years of burying the bodies because so many people will die, and seven years of burying the bodies. After that, the world, in essence, will start coming back to its normal state. There's not going to be any war; there's going to be peace. But still, the ways of the world as far as people being married, people working, people learning, and so on. It's going to remain the same until the resurrection of the dead. The resurrection of the dead is 40 years, according to the common opinion, after Mashiach comes, when Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, Moshe, Aharon, David, Shlomo, and all the righteous of all the generations will come back. the world in their best form, meaning that if our neshama came to the world multiple times, which one comes back? The sages answer that it’s going to be the best version, the one that was most righteous. There’s also a common belief that all of the neshamot looked alike.

2:22:45All of the neshamot looked alike. So if you ask, what am I going to look like if I come back? You're going to look pretty much the same as you look now. But the neshama is going to be a much more complete neshama at the resurrection. But again, the intricate details of who and what and what year and what's the sky going to look like, all that stuff we don't know. There's a lot of midrashim and possibilities. I'm just trying to figure out what it says in all these prophecies. When the prophets came, there's going to be, God's going to write the law in our hearts and in our minds. I'm just trying to find a connection between patriarchal times. And, you know, the prophecy that Jeremiah gave to the Jews, he's going to write the law in their hearts and in their minds. I'm thinking that he's going to be, again, like a teacher of the time. The thing is, though, that the mind of a Jew expands as he learns more and more Torah. Each Jew that wears tzitzit will have to become a teacher, and part of his students are going to be the goyim.

2:23:52Each Jew that wears tzitzit, the prophet says, will have 2,800, at least 2,800 goyim as his students. You want to call them servants, you want to call them avadim, you want to call them students, it doesn't really make a difference. The point is that these 2,800 people are going to do everything and anything that he wants. Why? Because they want him to be their teacher. So each Jew that survives the Messianic times after doing teshuva and doing good will also have to know an enormous amount of Torah because he's going to have to teach a bunch of people. Imagine you have 2,800 people running your business, running your houses, running your this, running your that, but what do they want as payment? They want you to teach them Torah. You don't know anything. You have to know. So a person, obviously, the mind of a Jew expands as they learn more and more Torah. Holiness of a Jew expands more and more as they learn more and more Torah. But as far as the Avot and Moshe Rabbeinu and David HaMelech, we will probably be able to see them from afar. It's not like people think they're going to be able to high-five and play basketball with Moshe Rabbeinu. They have no concept of who Moshe Rabbeinu is. Most likely, we'll be able to see the fire of Moshe Rabbeinu from afar, maybe.

2:25:07But to see him like a regular person, I highly doubt it, unless a person is extraordinarily righteous. But comparing the times of the Avot to the times of today is like comparing almost a different species. And the reason why is because their level of kedusha and their level of understanding and wisdom is beyond our understanding. What is it like? I give this example a few times that hopefully puts things in perspective. People that like to go against the Torah, the first thing they like to do is to go against the rabbis. They love to go against the rabbis because they think that the rabbis are people like them. And the Ben Ish Chai says that if anyone that thinks that the Avot he's not even talking about the Avot being Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov. He's talking about Avot meaning just literally their grandparents. Just one or two previous generations. If they think that they're just like them, they're simply donkeys. They don't know what they're talking about. Why? Because if you compare the wisdom of, let's say, for example, the Rambam 900 years ago to the smartest man on the planet today.

2:26:28two cannot compare. one Nobel Prize winner tried competing with the Rambam 900 years after he died by saying, "What's the big deal about the Rambam?" Well, the big deal about the Rambam is he was a philosopher, a scientist, a doctor, and more. It wasn’t just that he had many careers; it's the depth and breadth of his wisdom that stands out. Well, his wisdom you can see in his work. He's like, yeah, I read some of his work. What's the big deal? He didn't just write halacha. He didn't just write the law, but he wrote it with such wisdom that he minimized the amount of words he used, similar to the way Hashem wrote the Torah. That true wisdom is told in fewer words. So, for example, if you read a book, a regular book, you know, some science fiction book or some novel, in reality, even though it's 500 pages or a thousand pages, you could tell the entire story from beginning to end in one page.

2:27:36The guy came, the guy conquered, the guy died, he got married, she cheated on him, he found a new wife, and he went to space, and he flew away. Or some nonsense story. You could say the whole story in literally one page, one paragraph, maybe even one sentence. But they sell you a thousand pages because you're not going to pay 20 bucks for one page. But Torah cannot be told in one page. Why? Because there's so much wisdom in each sentence; it's endless. And you see that, for example, there's one video that I publicized maybe two years ago that Professor Shur from Israel publicized, and he shows that literally there are more secrets inside the first verse of the Torah than all of the wisdom of all of the rest of the world put together. And he literally shows hundreds and hundreds of different secrets inside one sentence. I'm not talking about the whole Torah, big paragraphs—one sentence. It's a 17-minute video that, if you understand Hebrew, I think they may actually even have by now an English translation.

2:28:44so it's worth looking up. If you understand Hebrew, your mind will be blown. It just goes from where it is right now to a different planet. Why? You realize literally how limited we are in comparison to the wisdom of the Divine. It's just so much in it. Now, the Rambam wrote his Torah, his Mishneh Torah, similarly. He's obviously not God, but with such wisdom When they told the Nobel Prize winner, "Can you do something like this?" he thought he could. He said, "Okay, pick any law you want in the entire Torah and write the entire law and everything that has to do with this law in the least amount of words." So, he did it. After working on it for six months, he wrote two paragraphs and said, "We're sorry, this is too many words. It's not even a contest. Minimize." He restructured it, edited it, worked on it for longer. A few sentences too long. Lowered it to 35 words. Still too long. said, "We're sorry, this is too many words. It's not even a contest. Minimize." He restructured it, edited it, and worked on it for longer. A few sentences too long. Lowered it to 35 words. Still too long.

2:29:55kept going for months and months and months and months to again, he has to continue, he could continue erasing, but if you're erasing valuable information, then it's no longer the same thing, it's no longer valid. It has to remain still as informative as you had it as a full page. Ultimately, I believe he lowered it to 21 words, and then they said, "Okay, let's open the Rambam." And the Rambam wrote a much clearer halacha with even more information in seven words. To such an extent that if you compare the smartest man in the world, pick Einstein or anyone else like him, and you compare him to the Rambam and to a monkey, a chimpanzee in a zoo, you give him a banana. The wisdom of the smartest man in the world today is closer to the monkey than it is to the Rambam. And the Rambam is only 900 years ago, and he wasn't even enough to be a talmid, a student of Rabbi Akiva from 2000 years ago, because you had to revive the dead.

2:31:08And Rabbi Akiva was the highest in his generation, but he wasn't at the level of Moshe Rabbeinu in prophecy, or at the level of Avraham Avinu. Meaning that if you see the level of wisdom that we had in previous generations, you can't compare. And that's why if you look at some of the Midrashim about Shlomo HaMelech, and the chair of Shlomo HaMelech, you see that the technology that Shlomo HaMelech had in his throne is still not available to this day. Technology that Shlomo HaMelech had 3,000 years ago in his throne is still not available today. He had a dove made of gold that would fly—no technology, no microprocessor—a dove made of gold that would fly, carrying his crown and placing it on his head as soon as he sat down. He had his throne with something that he was able to speak to, and it would elevate him. He would go on the first step. On one side was a lion, and on the other side was an eagle. He would have to say a verse from the Torah, like Siri you have on your Apple phone, but without Siri—3,000 years ago, without the microprocessor.

2:32:25would say the verse and then the lion would take the... uh, the eagle would take the wing. It would go under the feet of Shlomo and raise him to his throne. Now, after Shlomo died, others of that generation tried stealing the throne. It was a huge throne, and they couldn't—it was too big. So he said, "You know what, let's just build it here. Let's just go here. Let me go on this throne." But he saw that something was blocking him. There was this eagle and this lion. So he decided to just say something. He tried to cross without saying the verse. Instead of the eagle lifting him, the lion hit him in the back and broke his back. He became paraplegic. From what? From trying to bypass the process without the necessary preparation. So the point is that some of the technology that our sages had is even superior to today. All you have to do is just look in the books. The enormous amount of wisdom they had is nothing to compare to today. But that is something that we're going to be able to see with our own eyes and also inherit ourselves once the Mashiach comes. Why? Because that's part of the reward. You get endless wisdom. We will have what they had and more.

2:33:39Because once you're in Olam Ha'Emet, there's no lying anymore. There's no secrets anymore. There's no nothing. You actually know the truth for what it is. And Hashem will uncover literally everything. ...that point where you cannot even compare the two. So the least of our concern is, "What do people think about me? Does she like me? Does she not like me?" People compare this world to the next world, like, "What's going to happen with my kids?" Trust me, once you get to Olam Ha'Emet, you're not going to care about your kids. You're going to care about Hashem. You are going to be right next to Him... Mashiach comes and follows. Mashiach comes as one stage, and then Olam HaBa is the next stage. There's Olam HaBa. Right. There's Olam HaBa in this world. There are several stages. There's before Mashiach. There's Mashiach, there's resurrection of the dead, there's a thousand years in this world after the resurrection of the dead, which is considered the first part of Olam HaBa, and then there's another world that we leave this world. This world gets destroyed, we all leave this world, we go to a different world that's an extraordinary world, and even then there's even more and more stuff that eventually all of the neshamot go to the original source.

2:34:58No, this is nothing Hollywood can ever imagine. Yes, you guys have good questions tonight. See, I told you your questions are better than my shiurim. He doesn't believe that the third Beit HaMikdash is going to come down from Shamayim. It's a verse in the Torah. How is it possible? So the way you answer people like that is you ask them, when you say, Baruch Atah Hashem, Elokeinu Melech HaOlam, the King of the world, who are you referring to? So I'm asking you, you ask them. No, no, you ask people that have limited belief. limited, you ask him. When you say, "You just took a drink, you said, 'Baruch Atah Hashem, Elokeinu Melech HaOlam,' the King of the world, who are you referring to?" If he says, "Oh, I'm referring to Hashem." "Oh, you're referring to the same Hashem of the Torah?" "Yeah, you mean the same Hashem, the Creator of the world?" "Yeah, okay, so if He created the world, how come He can't create a bet? If He created the world, how come He can't create the chicken before the egg?"

2:36:17If He created the world, how come He can't create everything? Like, why is He limited? If He's King of the world, Creator of the world, why is there a limitation? And that's the problem, that people constantly try to humanize God. Because as soon as something is beyond their human ability to understand, they stop believing. Why? Because all along, they thought God is like them. They thought God was a human. And that is one of the biggest flaws in today's world. of people that go against the mystical parts of the Torah because it's too mystical. "I don't want to believe mystical stuff. There's no scientific proof of mystical stuff." Well, the reality is the life of a Jew is mystical. The fact that you're still alive when you have eight billion people that want to eat you for breakfast, that's a miracle. That's why, Rabotai, in the morning, every day, you pray to Hashem. you say the Tehillim that David cried to Hashem. He cried to Hashem, telling Him, "Hashem, thank you very much for not making us food in their teeth." Whose food? Us, food in their teeth. Why? Because there are so many people that hate Israel that if they could eat us literally, they would do it.

2:37:37The fact that a Jewish person is alive when he has 8 billion people that don't want him to be, that's mystical. The fact that you believe that your neshama left your body when you went to sleep and then came back, that's mystical. The fact that you believe there's an Olam HaBa, There's a world beyond this world that you cannot prove scientifically. That's mystical. The fact that there's an ocean that split into 12 pieces and an entire nation of millions of people crossed it, that's mystical. That's supernatural. The point is that the entire Torah is supernatural. There is no Torah without the supernatural. And anyone that doesn't want to believe in the supernatural part of the Torah is simply saying they don't believe that God is supernatural. They believe that God is a person like them. They want to be friends with God. So that's where I say that Judaism without the full Torah, the full Teshuva, is idolatry.

2:38:38why is it idolatry? They believe in a god; they also call him Hashem, but it's a different Hashem. It's a different god because our God is unlimited. Our God doesn't need to fit into your instructions, into your box that limits Him and contains Him. ...into certain things. Our God can do whatever He wants, and He showed us this in the Torah. There was a pillar of fire that went from the ground all the way to the heavens that only burned the Egyptians, not a single Jew was burned. How is that not supernatural? A bunch of frogs came and only attacked the Egyptians, but not a single Jew. A polar bear arrived along with a lion. He arrived from Antarctica, and the lion from the jungle, all arriving at the same time in Egypt, in the middle of the desert, to eat Egyptians, but not Jews. How is that not supernatural? they watch the Discovery Channel, and the Discovery Channel puts an illustration to the story. They watch the story and they like to believe the story. The reality is that this is the unfortunate reality we live in today: people try to match the Torah with science instead of the opposite, and...

2:39:58Instead of matching science with the Torah, they try to match the Torah with science, assuming that science is fact and the Torah is theory, even though it's the opposite. Science is theory, and Torah is fact. For such a person, it's the same exact issue as a person that says, I don't believe the story. I don't believe that there's really all this stuff. I believe it's just stories. It's the same exact thing. You have to prove to them that the Torah is provable, that it's divine, that it's supernatural scientifically. And there are proofs. But that's only if they're looking for the truth. If they're not looking for the truth, it doesn't matter if you bring Moshe Rabbeinu himself here, and he shows them all the miracles of Egypt, they still wouldn't believe. That's why I say sometimes about Chabadniks, God bless them, they all mean well, but some of them are so cuckoo about their Lubavitcher Rebbe, and they say, no, the Lubavitcher Rebbe said this, and he said this, and a lot of things they say he said, he didn't say them.

2:41:03He didn't say them. And the reality is that sometimes you say, you know what, you see that they're so convinced in what they're saying that even if the Rebbe himself came back from the dead and told them, "Listen, by the way, I didn't really mean for you guys to wear these immodest wigs," they'd respond, "Yeah, yeah, you're not a rabbi anymore. Go back to heaven." They're not going to listen to him even if Moshe Rabbeinu came; they're not going to listen to him. Why? Because some people are just looking for excuses. They're not looking for the truth. We have to ask ourselves, are we one of them, or are we looking for the truth? If we're looking for excuses, what's the point? If we're looking for the emet, then how do we fulfill all of it? Yeah? I was going to say, what about the fighting... Sad reality, aren't that bad? What do you mean under that? Great, both. First of all, the Torah says that we are our own biggest or even worst enemy.

2:42:19Biggest enemy of Am Yisrael is Am Yisrael. That's unfortunately the truth. We have our own limitations, we keep falling for the Yetzer Hara, and unfortunately, we've been our biggest enemy. The Goyim, on the other hand, sometimes have been messengers of Hashem to help us, and sometimes they've been messengers of Hashem to punish us. That's why at the end of times when the Mashiach comes, it only says that two-thirds of the world is going to die, and not everyone. Because a good part of the goyim are good people who are going to be considered among the righteous of the nations, they will survive and actually become the talmidim of the righteous Jews who survive. Not all Jews will survive, contrary to what some people think. No, to my knowledge they are going to become righteous talmidim of the, I mean Judaism in essence is for this world. After this world there's no like Judaism and Noahide. There's going to be the leaders and then there's going to be the others. But as far as the Olam HaBa of a righteous Jew is very different than the Olam HaBa of a righteous Noachide. They don't get the same Olam HaBa. But at the time of Mashiach they become talmidim. They don't become Jews.

2:43:35students. They're allowed to learn Torah from the rabbis. They're not allowed to learn today. And they cannot become Jews. No, they had their chance in this world. Gemara Masechet Avodah Zarah page 3b says, and in the beginning of 4a it says, that after Mashiach comes, no more conversion. No more conversion, meaning that if you were not Jewish before Mashiach came, Chazak u'Baruch, you're not Jewish. you stay not Jewish. But you can still get Gan Eden, it's just not the same one. It's not the same one. But if you don't get some Gan Eden at the end, when you said, all the way at the end, when everything comes back to the Source, are they going to come back to the Source? Whatever is in them, yet ultimately everything is the Source. In reality, the Zohar HaKadosh says that everything is the Source, meaning there is nothing other than God. We are all, in essence, a part of Him. He had to minimize Himself in order to make room for everything else. But everything ultimately does come to the Source. The Jewish neshama, you can't really put a physicality on it. You can't really put a...

2:44:42Size on it that you know a Jew is 1% and the non-Jew is 10% is half a percent. There's no size because Hashem has no body or likeness of a body, but the Sifrei Kodesh do say that the original neshama of a Jew is obviously much more significant but also has much more obligation. The obligation of a non-Jew is much less, so it cannot be as pure, it cannot be as holy, it cannot be as significant. If a non-Jew decides that they want to convert, they get a brand new neshama. And the Rambam writes in Mishneh Torah that a non-Jew that converts, the day that they convert, they dip into the mikveh. They may have dipped into the mikveh with the name, I don't know, Mustafa, but they came out Yaakov. they're a completely different person. The day that they dipped in the mikveh, they're officially a brand new Jew. It's a brand new neshamah. That's their birthday. Their old birthday, their old parents, their old sisters, their old children even are not connected to them spiritually anymore. To such an extent, believe it or not—I mean, we don't do this anymore because it looks weird to the goyim—that if, according to the Torah,

2:46:00If, let's say, for example, a mother and a son both converted. They're both Mustafa and Fatma; they both converted. Okay, they're mother and son. Because they're no longer considered the same people, according to the Torah, they're allowed to get married. Even though, you know, it's incest according to the Torah. And even the Goyim are not allowed to have incest, not allowed to marry their mothers. But now that they've converted, they both became two completely different neshamos. But the Chachamim still forbid it. Why? They set a fence around the fence. Why? Because even though it's allowed according to the Torah, the public at large, especially the Goyim, are not going to view it that way. They're going to say, look, these Jews are marrying their own mothers. then that's wrong. So, the Chachamim said, it's going to look wrong in the eyes of the Goyim, it's going to become a Chilul Hashem, therefore we don't allow it. We don't allow it.

2:47:06Right, so it's permitted according to Hashem, but the sages said no, because it would still look wrong in the eyes of the Goyim. You said Hashem permitted it, or was it permitted? When I'm mad, I'll stop. I understand. Yeah, but where specifically did the guy come from? Okay, so the Shema, so the Rambam poskins l'halacha that the Jewish Neshama that a convert gets, he gets on the day of his conversion. Meaning that whatever he did beforehand, he's 20 years old, he lived 20 years as an Arab. At 20 years and one day, He became a Jew because he dipped into the mikveh, he had brit milah, and so on. That 20 years and one day, he officially became a brand new neshama, a brand new person that's completely disconnected from the Mustafa he was yesterday. Even though it's only an hour, even if it's a one minute difference, the second before he's in the mikveh and the second after he's in the mikveh, it's two different people altogether. So now that he's a different person, according to the Torah, he can marry whoever he wants as long as they're Jewish.

2:48:17So if his mom, his biological mom, did the same thing, technically he would be able to marry her also, because she's also a completely different person. But the sages still forbade it, still said it's not allowed in practice, because it still looks strange. So we still don't do it. But according to the times of a few thousand years ago, they would actually be allowed, believe it or not. The point is to prove, right, right. The point of the message is to show that a convert really is a new person. That's really the point of the message. It's not for somebody to have sick thoughts and think, maybe I'm going to convert, so I can marry my mother. No. The point is to have normal thoughts and think, wow, a convert really is a brand new person. He really is a brand new neshama. He really is a Jew. He really is a ben Avraham. We don't just say it to be politically correct. And that's why the Torah, the same Rambam says, a Jew is obligated to love a convert as much as they love God. Believe it or not, even more than they love a natural-born Jew.

2:49:25Any more? You guys are tired enough. Go ahead. I'll stay here all night. I see you guys are a little tired. Higher. Higher. A convert's neshama is higher than a natural-born Jew. And the reason why, a few things. Number one, the Jewish neshama is... something that you didn't pick, you didn't choose. So you were born into Judaism, your parents decided to give you brit milah, they didn't ask your permission at eight days old. So you didn't choose to be a Jew or not. Whereas a convert chose to be a Jew, that makes it more significant and... The difference, the similarity of someone that does teshuva versus someone that's from birth. Someone that does teshuva, according to our sages in the Gemara, in the Rambam, the Ramchal, and several other places, someone that does teshuva is considered a higher level than someone that's been righteous their whole life because they saw the wrong and still chose right.

2:50:40The goy, that when he saw the avodah zarah and he still chose God, is considered much higher. Much higher than a natural-born Jew because he saw not just the wrong, he saw the worst of the worst, and he never had an obligation to convert. There's no obligation for the non-Jews to convert. There's no obligation for them. But the Gemara says that there is going to be a kitrug against the people that do convert. There is a case, there is a prosecution in Shamayim against converts. Why? The ones that take their time. If someone identifies the truth and wants to convert, but he takes his time. He's like, you know what, I'll convert after college. I'll convert after I make more money. I'll convert later. I know that Judaism is the truth. I know that's the ultimate way of serving Hashem. But I'll do it later. Then Hashem is going to come to them and He's going to punish them. In this world. They asked, the Gemara asks in Massechet Avodah Zarah, why do converts have tough lives? It says, because many of them delayed the conversion. Many of them delayed the conversion themselves. No one says that someone who knows the truth has to convert. Someone who doesn't know the truth has to be a Ben Noach. They don't have to convert, but a person that wants to convert, once they've decided to convert, they have a din of a convert.

2:52:09But the point is that a person who chooses to delay the conversion can suffer in this world, the Gemara says, because Hashem says, "You knew that to serve Me best, the King of Kings, you could do it better. Why did you delay serving Me? I am the King; I am not your friend." Converts have a special level of Emunah. Converts that are real converts have Emunah that's higher than most natural-born Jews. They're willing to do things that natural-born Jews are not willing to do. I'll give you an example. I have a student that she was married for almost 20 years. Four kids. For almost two years, she tried to convince her husband to convert. She knew that Torah is 100% real. And she actually thought that she was a Jew, because she went to a Conservative rabbi 10 years ago, and the rabbi said, "Yeah, okay, you just pay this fee, come to the class, and you're a Jew." Even though she's married to a non-Jew, with non-Jewish kids. Only after she met me, I told her that conversion by the Conservative or Reform is the same as conversion by a donkey—neither one means anything.

2:53:33So she realized that in order for her to be the righteous Jew that she wanted to be, she had to make sure that her family was Jewish. Now, for almost two years, she tried to convince her husband. And her husband not only didn't want to convert, he was an atheist; he hated God. But she gave him a chance, another chance, another chance, and another chance. Other than that, the marriage had its ups and downs. You're married for 20 years. You don't just throw marriage in the garbage after being married for 20 years. But for her, it was unacceptable. So after almost 20 years of being married, she said, "I cannot be with somebody that doesn't love God as much as I do, that's not willing to serve Hashem on the ultimate level like I do." And she literally broke up a marriage, not because of any other reason other than God. A Jew, most of the time, can't do that. Even if you tell a Jew, "Listen, leave your girlfriend. You've only been going out with her for three years, and she's not Jewish. Why don't you leave her for God?" The response might be, "I'll leave her if she cheats on me. I'll leave her if she spends all my money. I'll leave her if she doesn't like me anymore. But to leave her for God, not so much."

2:54:44Why? We don't have the same level of emunah and mesirut nefesh as some of the converts. And that's why the Gemara says that the gerim, the holy converts that are righteous, are like a tzaraat. They're like a skin disease for Am Yisrael. Why? Because they remind us how good we can be and should be. The other story I can tell you is that I have another student in Bulgaria. And he... Literally surrounded only by idol worshippers. That's all he has. It's not like he has a Beit Knesset and a church next to him. All he has is idol worshippers. He comes from an idol-worshipping family, but he went through Christianity, realized it's complete nonsense, and then he went to Islam. He researched it—he's a smart kid—and he realized that's nonsense too. And he arrived at Judaism. he fell in love with it and he couldn't deal with the fact that he's not Jewish. He said, "I have to convert," and he contacted me. This has already been a few years, and I tried to help him, give him some information, answer questions back and forth. But again, at the end of the day, he lives in... the closest community to him is four hours away. I told him, "You have to move, you have to get a Brit Milah, you have to do a lot of things." It was, "What could I do now?"

2:56:08He said, you could learn certain things and you could do kiruv. You could volunteer to do kiruv. How do I volunteer to do kiruv? I said, you're already on Facebook. Why don't you share these lectures with people? And he joined our team. He was actually one of the first ones when we first started doing kiruv on Facebook and other places. And little by little, he started doing kiruv and he took it seriously. He started realizing there's a lot of other people just like him. And there are other Jews who are lost souls. And he realized the significance of it. But one day he came and said, "Okay, listen, we have to take the next step of conversion, but I can't move yet. What else can I do? I'm going to get a brit milah. I'm going to go get a circumcision." And he took all of his money, his whole life savings, to go schedule the surgery. To have a brit milah. Now, me and you, we wouldn't have a brit milah at that age. Why? We like ourselves too much. We like ourselves too much. The only reason we have a brit milah is because no one asked us; we were 8 days old. But he was already in his 20s and he chose to have a brit milah. Now, the day of his brit milah, I see him on the internet. And I say, what are you doing on the internet? What happened? They canceled it?

2:57:29They canceled the surgery? He says, no. He says, so aren't you in pain? He says, yes. I'm in a lot of pain. He says, okay, so why don't you go rest? He says, if I go rest, how is Am Yisrael going to learn Torah on this Facebook? You understand? That's mesirut nefesh. That's self-sacrifice. That's a person that cares more about Am Yisrael even before he became part of Am Yisrael. That's a ger tzedek. What happened as a result? The result is that when a person sacrifices themselves for Am Yisrael and for Hashem Yitbarach, they could never lose. They could never lose. So the first time that I said this story was about two years ago in a shiur in New York, on Tisha B'Av. As Hashem would have it, another person, a Jewish person from Bulgaria, saw this shiur that I made in English, not Bulgarian. And he heard the story. And he had his rabbi contact me, and he said, listen, we are a kehillah. We're not that far away from this student of yours. We want to accept him into our kehillah and help him convert. And whatever we have to teach him, we'll teach him. And whatever we have to pay, we'll pay. And whatever we have to do, we'll do.

2:58:53Why? Because when a person sacrifices themselves for Am Yisrael, for Hashem, and for His Torah, Hashem can change nature, even if changing nature means He has to literally create a new kehillah in the middle of Bulgaria that no one's ever heard about—for one guy that likes to do kiruv. That, rabotai, is real miracles. Anyone that wants to see real miracles, just has to open their eyes. You want to hear stories? Watch my lectures, I give them all the time. You want more? Call me or send me a text, usually. It's usually better. Huh? Yes. Right. Yes. Yes. Well, I mean, once the original sin happened, the original...

3:00:09began in Gan Eden. There's actually a real Gan Eden in this world. And there's a real Gehenom in this world. There are two Gehenoms and there are two Gan Edens. There's a physical Gan Eden and there's a physical Gehenom. And there's a spiritual Gan Eden and a spiritual Gehenom. Now the original world started in the Gan Eden of this world. As a matter of fact, there's a Midrash that says that Alexander the Great arrived at the gates of Gan Eden in this world. and he wanted to enter, but they said he was not allowed to enter. He wanted to enter Gan Eden, but he was not allowed. There are several Midrashim about the real Gan Eden in this world that some people have found. It is in places in the world where people are not present, such as Antarctica, Greenland, and similar locations. The point is that after Adam HaRishon was expelled from Gan Eden, the world changed, but not as drastically as it did after the destruction of the flood. The entire physicality of the world changed after Hashem destroyed it at the time of Noach.

3:01:14At that time, before Noach's flood, there used to be many, many giants, many big animals, and many mystical things. A lot of things that existed back then don't exist anymore. In fact, there are even things that existed a thousand years ago, 500 years ago, that don't exist anymore. There are even things that existed a hundred years ago that don't exist anymore. They're called extinct. Of course, the physicality of the world has changed drastically over the years, both for people, animals, and nature. I mean, the vision of people was much greater in the past. The physical strength of people was much stronger in the past. You see some of the stories of the sages, where people would write about them, that the tzaddikim would fast for 10-20 days in a row and... 30 days in a row. The average person can barely fast Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur, they're like, I barely survived. Can I have a cookie? They haven't gotten to the house yet, and they want a cookie.

3:02:24They fasted for 25 hours, big deal. In those days, people would be able to fast for a week, two weeks, no big deal. So the world has changed drastically, but b'ezrat Hashem, the tikkun olam, the real tikkun olam, is to bring more Torah to the world, just like now, just like we did tonight. Instead of all of us just wasting our time sleeping, or just talking and chit-chatting about nonsense, where do we come? We come to Beit Knesset. We learned Torah for three and a half hours, four hours. Baruch Hashem. We brought more Kedusha to the world. The amount of miracles that are going to happen in the world as a result of the Torah that you learn from people watching you on the internet, from you watching, from you learning, from you asking and getting involved, the amount of good things that come to the world as a result of it is beyond our imagination. or just talking and chit-chatting about nonsense. Where do we come? We come to Beit Knesset. We learned Torah for three and a half hours, four hours. Baruch Hashem. We brought more kedushah to the world. The amount of miracles that are going to happen in the world as a result of the Torah that you learn from people watching you on the internet, from you watching, from you learning, from you asking and getting involved, the amount of good things that come to the world as a result of it is beyond our imagination. We're only going to be able to see the true impact of our deeds after we leave this world, after we leave the physicality of the world, because the physicality of the world limits our ability to see. You can, excuse me, you can see only what's in front of you. And at best, you can use a tool to see the intricate details of also what's in front of you, but just in more detail. The neshama, though, that's inside the stomach of the belly of the mother, can see from the end of the world to the end of the world.

3:03:42Why? Because Hashem is not limited by the physicality of a human being like we are now. So why? Because it's still sinless, it's still pure. B'ezrat Hashem, this Torah is going to help us become sinless, become pure, so we can arrive at Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, with real teshuva, with real ma'asim tovim, with a fantastic year ahead of us, where we can actually say to Hashem, "Look what I've done this year, not only for myself, but for the nation. I not only did teshuva, but I brought my friends with me. Another five here, another ten there, another fifty, another hundred, and the more you help other people do teshuva, the stronger you become." Why? The reward for a mitzvah leads you to another mitzvah. Each one of us becomes tzaddikim. So when we finally do see Moshe Rabbeinu, he's going to say, "Oh, it's David. I've been waiting for you the whole time." Baruch Adonai le'olam. Amen ve'amen.