Hanukkah MUSSAR Are You A Maccabee Or A Wannabe

0:13We have first light tonight of Hanukkah. Please, if you haven't lit, make sure you light tonight. It's a very, very special holiday. It's a very special day. It's a lot of segulot. Also, anyone, I mentioned in a shiur the other day, but for anyone who didn't hear it yet, anyone that has problems with their eyes, with its vision issues or any type of problems, it's a segula to look at the candles. To look at the candles for a half hour. When you light the candles, look at the candles for a half hour. It's a segula. It's like a special merit, special spiritual healing, where the Chachamim say that it could help improve your eye condition. So definitely do that. Aside from that, a few things in regard to the chag. First off, actually, refuah shlema to Levana bat Sarah, Sarah bat Levana, Doris bat Jorah, David ben Nisria, Elisheva, Chaya bat Sarah,

1:27And all of Am Yisrael have a refuah shlema, refuat hanefesh, refuat haguf. So, a few things about Hanukkah. So, you know, you're supposed to do it, obviously, for eight days. It's from right to left. You light the candles from right to left. But one thing, these are a few things that people know. I brought you guys the books that I told you I was going to bring you. So after the shiur, tell me. Remind me. I'll give you the books. So, a few things that everyone knows: You are supposed to light from right to left. Oil is ideal, but if you don't have oil, then you can use candles. But the most important thing that I think I personally didn't know for a very long time is that for a half hour after you light the candles, you're not allowed to do any melacha. essence, you're not supposed to do anything. You're supposed to just sit there and enjoy the menorah. Don't play on your phone. Don't go on the internet. Don't go back to work. Don't wash dishes. Just sit there and enjoy it with your family. You know, maybe eat some sufganiyot and

2:39If you play some dreidel, enjoy it. Sing some songs. Learn a little bit. But for a half-hour, you know, don't do any Melachot. That's the most significant part of lighting the candles. It's not just what I thought most of my life, like you light the candles, you're finished, you go away. You know, it's up to me to go by, you just fulfilled your little obligation like you're doing God a favor, and you're finished. You go home, you go somewhere else. That's not lighting candles. So, for anyone who's heard a few of the most recent lectures, we talked a little bit about Hanukkah, which we'll do again tonight. Hanukkah, unlike what many of us misunderstood most of our lives, is actually a Chag for the Chareidim. Hanukkah is a Chag. It's a holiday for the most stringent of all Jews. That's the foundation of the entire holiday. It's not like what people think today where it's a holiday that's universal—whether you're religious or not religious, Jewish or not Jewish, just eat some doughnuts and enjoy.

3:42Light some candles, everything is good. Actually, the whole foundation of Hanukkah is based on the war that a handful of extra zealous, extra religious, the ultimate most religious people in history fought for a mitzvah. That's the real foundation—not only against the Greeks, as most people think, but also against the Mityavnim, the Hellenists, the Jews that went against the rest of the Jews. So we'll talk a little bit more about that. As far as the holiday, again, since we know the whole foundation of it is because people are zealous for the mitzvot, they're zealous for Hashem, at the very least, we can do the same for a half-hour. We really should do the same for 24 hours a day. But at the very least, do for a half-hour, stop everything—stop your TV, stop your computers, stop your phone, stop your business deals, stop your mundane conversations.

4:44Half-hour, that's it, half-hour. I know it's hard sometimes, especially in today's technological world. It's like a half-hour without a phone, it's like a part of us is not... Like, wow, who's calling me? Who's texting me? Maybe I'm missing a text, chas v'shalom, a new video came out on YouTube. Are you guys watching that? Oh, maybe Steve is posting something on Facebook right now. I'm missing out. Is there a leniency, Steve? That's my best friend, Steve. Maybe he's putting up his daughter's pictures, and I'm gonna miss it. I'm not gonna put a like. So, half-hour, guys, half-hour in reality. Should be much more than that in reality. We should all, myself included, put our phones on timeout for a certain part of the day because the phone has become mamash like a little Amalek in our pockets. Even though there's a lot of Torah that can be taught and learned through this technology that we have, Baruch Hashem, one of the main reasons we have thousands and thousands of people all over the world watching shiurim is because of technology.

5:49...but by the same token, it's a very, very addictive situation where every five seconds you're checking an email, every five seconds you're checking a WhatsApp, every five seconds you're checking a Facebook and this and that. It's like you get to a point where you can't just sit there and just read. Unless you shut off everything, you put the phone somewhere else, it's impossible. So it's something that all of us have to train ourselves because you'll know if you're sick... If you can't do it for a half-hour, this Chag is eight days of diagnosis. You have eight days to diagnose yourself. If you can't do it for eight days in a row, well, now you have seven left. If you can't do it for seven days in a row, a half-hour without the phone, you're very sick. If it's six days, you're still sick. Five, you're sick. And it goes lower and lower. If you did it for all seven days, you're not as sick as we thought, but you're still sick, probably. So that's the thing. We have to realize that our phones, there's good that can be done, and there's bad that can be done.

6:56There's plenty of questions that I'm sure you guys have. If you have anything specific, please ask. Otherwise, I'll start some other things and we'll go on. And by the way, before I finish, before you start with the questions, we spent about a hundred and thirty dollars on doughnuts—specialty sufganiyot. So please feel free to eat because if you don't eat them, I'm going to have to eat all of them, and I'm already growing. So please, it's a specialty sufganiyot for the Chag. Enjoy. Don't worry, you're not insulting or being disrespectful if you get up in the middle and have your third doughnut. I don't care. Enjoy. Somebody has to eat it, so enjoy it. B'ezrat Hashem, we'll learn some Torah, have some sufganiyot, laugh a little bit, B'ezrat Hashem, and also get some mussar that B'ezrat Hashem will actually wake all of us up. So b'chavod. Yeah, the first candle is on the right if you're facing it. If you're facing the menorah, the first candle is on the right. And then the second one is to the left, the next one. No, no, no, but I meant the first candle is on the right side; that's what I'm referring to, not the left side.

8:15That's what I'm referring to. I'm referring to that the first candle is the one on the right. As far as the following days, you have to start with the newest candle and so on and so forth. But as far as the candles, the first one is on the right side. That's what I'm trying to say. So go ahead, next question. But thank you for making sure. Anyone else have any other questions? Everything good? Okay. If you have anything else, let me know. So we had a few chidushim, Baruch Hashem, with your zechut and other people that have showed up to the shiurim during this holiday that I think some of them are worth repeating. Number one, because I think they're very good. To me, each one of them is worth a million bucks. And two, you know, your chidushim are like babies. But two, even more so, they're relevant to what we're talking about today again. As we mentioned, the chag, most people know the basics of the story. There were Greeks that tried to go against Am Yisrael. The Maccabees fought them and won. After that, they wanted to sanctify His name. They cleaned up the Beit HaMikdash. They wanted to light the menorah again. By the way, does anyone know how many times it's mentioned in the Torah?

9:38How many times is it mentioned in the Torah to actually build a menorah? It's mentioned three times. Three times it's mentioned in the Torah. Now the question is, why is it mentioned three times to make the menorah? Once should be enough: "Moshe Rabbeinu, please make the menorah." Why is it mentioned three times? You'll notice that in the whole issue of the menorah, it's very unusual. And the reason why is because the mitzvah of building the Menorah was given to Moshe Rabbeinu, but Hashem told him to build it in a way that's really impossible. In Parashat Terumah, He says to make sure that it's out of one piece of gold. One piece—you’re not allowed to put the pieces together. You can't glue, you can't screw; it has to be one piece. Now, to make jewelry—anyone that knows, many Jews are in the jewelry business—they’ll tell you, listen, making jewelry is not an easy business. It's much easier with advanced technology. You want to make a little necklace, you know, you want to make a piece, you want to make a ring, and so on. There are some videos online that show you how they make a ring. To make one simple, little, tiny ring, it's a five-minute video of probably a five-day process. They show how they make the mold, and after the mold, they put another piece, and after the piece, they put another piece. They saw it, they grind it, and they do this and that. I saw this video one time a long time ago; it was very interesting. This one little, tiny ring took the guy a long time.

11:06Imagine a menorah that's about my height. Imagine a menorah that's huge. According to something I read some time ago, at least two or three years ago, so don't quote me on it, it was two and a half tons. Two and a half tons of gold, two and a half tons—huge. A little bigger than a ring, a little bigger than a ring. So, a huge, giant, one-piece menorah... screwing, no gluing, one piece even with today's technology. You can't do it. So, what do we learn from here? Moshe Rabbeinu told Hashem, "Hashem, okay, you told me the mitzvah of making the menorah three times—not once, three times you mentioned it to me to go make this. I'm sorry. I couldn't do it the first time, the second time, or the third time. I can't do it. Why? It's impossible for you and me to do it." Hashem Yitbarach told Moshe Rabbeinu a rule. Rule that was supposed to be learned over and over again three times a day. Just like it's mentioned three times in the Torah, we are supposed to learn this rule three times a day. What's the rule? The rule is that you really can't do all of it by yourself. You really can't do all of it by yourself, but what Hashem is trying to tell you with the menorah is to try. Try to wake up in the morning, go to...

12:27Try to do tefillin the right way without talking. Try to go pray the whole prayer without socializing, without doing shtuyot. Try to learn for an hour straight without, you know, doing nonsense, playing with your phone, checking email, checking this. Try keeping Shabbat mamash like you're supposed to, not sleeping half the day, and... To be nice to your wife because she obviously cares about you. She gave you kids. She takes care of the house. Try to be generous because it's not your money anyway, it's God's money. Li hakesef v'li hazahav. Hashem says, "Mine is the money, Mine is the gold." So it's not your money. So be generous. It's not your money anyway. Most important thing, try to remind yourself that you live in God's world, not that God lives in your world. Try to remember that everything is in His power anyway. Try, try—if you try, I'll do it all for you. If you try to do just throw the gold, Moshe, throw the gold in there, throw the gold into the fire. I'll do it. Just throw the gold in there. Yeah, I know you can't do it. I know I gave you the mitzvah. I know I created you. I know you can't do it.

13:38Try throwing the gold in the fire. I'll do the rest. Same thing with all of your mitzvot, same thing with your entire teshuva, same thing with all of the kaparah you have to go through. Sometimes you have to convince this one and that one; you have to do a lot. Try taking off the wig, try it, and I'll give you special merit, b'ezrat Hashem, in Shamayim. Why are we giving you merits? Because you're doing something that three million women are not willing to do. Try. Doing it, try doing real teshuva, try being modest. I'll do it for you, but at least try. I can't do everything; try. So that's the first thing we learned from them in the law. It's mentioned three times in the Torah. Now, aside from that, we learned that during this chag, the Chashmonaim wanted to sanctify Hashem's name. They wanted to light this menorah and... But they saw that the cans of oil that were there were open, meaning that the Greeks probably tainted them, they touched them, they did something there. Now, even though there's actually no halacha that forbids us from using the oil of the goyim, there's no halacha for that, there's halacha that we're not allowed to use the wine of the goyim, there's halacha that we're not allowed to use the bread of the goyim, milk of the goyim, but oil, no problem, enjoy.

15:03The Chashmonaim said, "No, we can't do it." Why this way? Because the whole thing, the whole battle with the Greeks, was not about the Greeks wanting to kill the bodies of the Jews, like the Buchanites and the Babylonians did, like the Assyrians did, like Pharaoh did. It's not like them. The only thing the Greeks wanted to do was kill the Torah. That's it. No bodies. They just wanted to kill the Torah. They wanted to change the rules and do what they wanted to do. They said, "Listen, we like your Torah. It's very interesting." The Greeks were very smart people. Some of them, you could even say, were brilliant as far as their own secular knowledge. It's actually very, very interesting. I read in Rav Hutner's book, Pachad Yitzchak, about a very unusual mitzvah that... Hiddush, but he knows it's unusual. It says you're not allowed to write a Torah scroll in any other language other than Hebrew and Greek. Not to write in English, not to write in French, not to write it in Bukharian. Not to write in any other language. You have to only write it in Hebrew or Greek. Obviously, it's not common to write in Greek, but you're allowed to write it in Greek. Why? Because of Chanukah.

16:29In essence, it was done at that time because of the commandments that they actually instilled on Am Yisrael. It was a dark day for Am Yisrael, but it was done that day. The reason why it's still allowed to this day is, in essence, paying respect to the intellect of some of the Greeks, believe it or not. We're not saying they were stupid; we're just saying they're dumb. Why dumb? Because they said, "Listen, your Torah is very interesting. It's interesting like our math. It's interesting like our history. It's interesting like our architecture. It's interesting like our science. So let's learn. Let's put the Torah next to all the other books in the library. Just remove God from it, remove the obligation part. You have to do this, remove all that stuff. Let's just study the Torah for intellectual purposes. It's to stimulate our minds." That's what the Greeks wanted. That's it. It wasn't about killing Jews. It wasn't about, "Listen, we care if you keep kosher." No, no, no. Just remove this God thing—this God thing you guys believe in that obligates you. And if you don't do it, He kills you. Remove that stuff. Remove the God part. It's a very interesting book otherwise. They tell you it's very interesting. That's what the Greeks wanted. So the Hasmoneans said, "Listen, this little thing that's really big. It's little, but it's really big."

17:55It has to do with the oil. Why? All they want to do is something a little different. It's a little different—open the cans of the oil. They know, they were smart. They know we're not allowed to use non-Jewish wine, so they didn't bother with the wine. They didn't bother with the milk. They didn't bother with the bread. They didn't bother with all of that stuff. But the oil—they know that we can let it pass. But if we let it pass, what's next? Somebody can look and say, "Look, they're not so religious. They're making new rules. Maybe he doesn't know, maybe he does. Maybe melita." Even for this, we're not. Why? Because the Torah says that there are three things that you're obligated to die and not do—one of them is idol worship. And which we'll talk about maybe later today in regards to this whole wig development and what's happening today. Because that's idol worship today. And most people are denying it and fighting me for it as if I created idol worship or something. Or I created the wigs or I have some hat stores on the side. I don't know why everyone's fighting me like I created this whole thing. I'm just reminding people of something they're supposed to know already.

19:11But anyway, idol worship—if someone tells you to go worship Yoshke, go worship an idol, go do anything—it's better off you die and not do it. That's one. Two, if someone says go kill someone, go kill this guy or I kill you—not allowed, not allowed, you should die, your family has to die. Third thing is a sex crime. With this woman, you're not allowed to have sex with her—she's a nida. She's your wife, she's a nida—not allowed. She's not Jewish—not allowed. She's somebody else's wife—not allowed. Die and not have intimacy with another woman. She may be perfectly fine; she may be a very nice person—not allowed, not allowed. Better off to die than to do it. These are the three things that everyone knows, really, and... There is one thing that I personally was astonished when I first learned it. Oh, it's been a while, but first, every time I go over it, it always astonishes me. This is one of the things we actually learn from Chanukah. Chanukah taught us...

20:21Those three things I just mentioned—that's in a time where it's one-on-one. Someone says go have intimacy with this one. You're not allowed to; you have to die. But if it's in public, if there are other people watching, not just him—if there are people watching, Jews or non-Jews—he says, "Listen, you have a minhag. You have a minhag in your custom. You come from some place where they had a lot of Jews in the past, and..." And you guys had a minhag to wear red shoelaces. Cancel that minhag and just put a white shoelace right in front of us. White shoelace. Now, a shoelace is not part of the mitzvot of Am Yisrael. It's not a Shulchan Aruch. It's not a Shulchan Aruch, so you don't have to worry about shoelaces. Don't want to look at your shoes. Shoelaces, you're good. You're all good. I watched your shoelaces before you came in. But if the Goyim tell us, "Listen, you have a minhag in your custom—not all of the Jews, but your custom has a minhag that you are keeping for all these generations and generations. You wear red shoelaces, and we say cancel it—you have to die and not change the shoelace." That's what we learn from Chanukah. Why? You change one small, tiny rule in public, and the whole Torah loses value. It becomes chilul Hashem, becomes chilul Hashem.

21:44So this is one of the things that the Chashmonaim understood. That in the eyes of the public, if they used the oil that was open and maybe yes, and maybe not pure—maybe, maybe, maybe it's not good. We have to find something else. We have to find something else because chas v'shalom, we desecrate Hashem's name. We're all here for Him. We're all here to serve Him. We're gonna desecrate His name. So someone with the screws in the right place is obviously not going to do it. Don't be cheap. Bring her one too. Guys, enjoy it. It's okay. It doesn't bother me. It's going to bother me if I have 40 donuts to take home. That's what's going to bother me. Because somebody has to eat them. Homeless? Who has time? So anyway, so the Chashmonaim said we have to keep every one of these rules, the big ones, the small ones, the ones that seem like they're significant, and the ones that seem like they're insignificant. That's the whole holiday. That's Chanukah. Chanukah is for the ultra-religious, the ultra-zealous, the ultra-lovers of Hashem, the ones that fear Hashem, the ones that have only Hashem. That's what Chanukah is for.

23:06so we have to check: can we sit for half an hour looking at the candles? If we can't, we should question how much we love Hashem. So now the story goes, they found a can miraculously that Shimon HaTzadik... The second Mishnah in Avot, remember Shimon HaTzadik? The second Mishnah in Avot comes from Shimon HaTzadik. He hid, he had, he saw there's gonna be a need for oil somewhere down the road. He hid a can of oil in the Beit HaMikdash. He said this oil will affect Am Yisrael forever. He hid the oil, the Chashmonaim found it. Hundreds of years before, during the first Beit HaMikdash, Shimon HaTzadik hid the oil. Now, Baruch Hashem, they found the oil and we have a miracle. We have oil now for one day, but we need it for eight days. We go look, but somehow Hashem Yitbarach makes it so that this oil lasts for eight days. So far, very few Hiddushim other than maybe from Shimon HaTzadik. The shoelaces, the fact that you all have kosher shoelaces, all of that is good so far. So now, so far so good, that's the holiday. But we discovered here that to be a Yehudi, to be a Jew is...

24:24makes it so that this oil lasts for eight days. So far, very few chiddushim other than maybe from Shimon HaTzadik. The shoelaces, the fact that you all have kosher shoelaces, all of that is good so far. So now, so far so good, that's the holiday. But we discovered here that to be a Yehudi, to be a Jew is To be like Yehuda Maccabee, the leader of the Maccabees, it's more than just muscles. It's more than a big budget for tanks. Because Yehuda Maccabee, he was the gilgul of Yehuda from this week's parasha. He was the gilgul of Yehuda, from Shevet Yehuda, the leader, ben Yaakov. In Sefer HaGilgulim, it says that he reincarnated. That's why in the wars, you see some of the Midrashim talk about how Yehuda ben Yaakov had special powers. He would kill literally 30,000 people at a time in one battle by himself, and Yehuda Maccabee also had great numbers—8,000, 20,000, 5,000 each battle by himself. Obviously, you can't do it, you know, even with a weapon; you can't do it, let alone without one.

25:51So, Yehuda Maccabee had special powers, but why did he have these special powers? Did he go to a special school? Did he get a special blessing? What happened? How did he get all this? Yehuda Maccabee knew what it means to be a Jew. Now, when we read in Amidah, modim anachnu lach, we read modim. Modim means, it comes from the word hoda'ah, which means to acknowledge or to thank. Now, most of us, myself included, believe that when you say "modim anachnu lach" in Amidah, we're saying, "Thank you, Hashem. Thank you, Hashem." And then it says again, the first of the first verse is "modim." And then after that, it says "nodeh." Modim, nodeh. And both of them come from the root of the same word. So, in essence, it seems like we're saying, "Thank you, Hashem, for being Hashem. And thank you, Hashem, for giving us all that you give us." So, Rav Hutner says, that's the mistake. That's the mistake that distinguishes us from you. That's the mistake that distinguishes us from being Maccabees. You know, Maccabee knew exactly what Yehudah ben Yaakov knew. He knew that we're not saying thank you twice. We're not saying thank you twice in Amidah. The first "modim" we're acknowledging Hashem. We're saying, Hashem, I am accepting that you are Hashem. I...

27:19...and You run the world, and You run my world, and His world, and His world. And You are my King, and I am obligated to do everything You say, whether I like it or I don't like it, whether I agree with it or I disagree with it, whether it makes sense or it doesn't make sense. Whether it's something else that's red makes no difference. You are God... first acknowledge God, acknowledge you are below God. Acknowledge He is God, acknowledge what it is to be God, acknowledge the infinite distance between the two. The Sefarim HaKedoshim and the Gemara say that Nebuchadnezzar, the leader of the Babylonians, wanted to go to war with Hashem. He knew Hashem was real He knew Hashem was powerful, but after he beat the whole world and everyone was practically a slave, and he got a prophecy from Daniel that he's going to be the strongest king ever until the Mashiach comes, everyone's going to serve him, everyone's going to be below him, and so on and so forth. He says, why should this stop? I'm going to go to war with Hashem. So they told him, "Good luck."

28:43You want to go to war with Hashem? Apparently, he had some merits. What are the merits that he had? Apparently, a bat kol came out from Shamayim and said, "Rasha ben Rasha, wicked son of wicked, you want to go to battle with Me? To get from where you are to the first level of the rakia takes 500 years. To get from that to the next level of the rakia, it's another 500 years." Another 500 years, and to get to the bottom of the throne, it's another few thousand years. To get to the next level of the throne is a few thousand years. To even get to the chair you're talking about, thousands and thousands of years just to get to the chair of where I am, and you want to fight Me. How long are you going to live? How long are you going to live from there? We learned from the Gemara that the Torah already knew about light years, by the way. But apparently that's the merit that a bat kol came out from. We don't have any bat kol yet waiting. But Hashem punished him and turned him into a little animal. He thought he was an animal for a few years. But nonetheless, the Jews don't always understand that they're not animals. The Jews don't always understand that they are Yehudim. The Jews don't always understand that the first mitzvah...

30:03Whether you look at the Ten Commandments or the 613 mitzvot that the Rambam put in Mishneh Torah, all sourced from the Torah, it is to acknowledge God. Acknowledge He is God. After you acknowledge that responsibility... You have that now. You know that God exists now. You know that God gave us the Torah now. You know the Torah is divine. Now that you know the Torah is obligatory, it's not if you like it. It's not if you feel like it. It's not if it's popular. It's not if it fits into your life. First, when we say Modim, we're acknowledging all of that and After that, we’ll say Modim. What’s Modim? Thank you, Hashem, for helping me do the mitzvah that I really can’t do by myself, but I tried hard enough—like Moshe Rabbeinu with the menorah. I tried hard enough that You helped me do it. So first, I acknowledge, then I thank You for actually letting me achieve it. So when someone is saying, “I’m a Jew,” whether they were born a Jew because their mother’s a Jew or they converted to be Jews, or...

31:09They're really saying, for all those people who are debating who's a Jew and who's not—is a Reform conversion valid? Is a Conservative conversion valid? Is no conversion valid? Is this one valid or that one valid? Everyone, please keep in mind: this is the first time in history that people are debating who is a Jew. Throughout all of history, to be a Jew was something that, in the eyes of the world, was considered despicable. Nazis, yemach shemam. One of the main reasons why they hated the Jews was because their idea—the Nazis' idea—to be anti-Semites and to hate the Jews and to separate them worked against them. How so? He said, listen, we hate these Jews. They've always hated the Jews. There was never a time where they actually liked the Jews. They tolerated the Jews because many of the Jews in Germany specifically converted to their religion. They converted outside of Judaism. But nonetheless, they tolerated them. Why did they tolerate them? He said, listen, we give them different businesses. They're in an awful, lowly business. Terrible business. What business did they give the Jews? Accountants.

32:27counting money is beneath us. You know, bourgeoisie, the special people, the chashuvim, important people. We don't deal with counting money. That's for lowly people. That's for poor people. Little do they know that just a couple of generations later, who's running corporate Germany? Who's running the world? The accountants. They didn't like it. They didn't like it so far. But throughout all of history, it was frowned upon to be a Jew. They would put symbols on us. They would throw us out. types of things. But he makes the Midrash on Megillat Esther. The last Mamar says there was a prophecy, a prophecy unlike any other prophecy. Remember, I did a shiur about the end of days and... What's going to happen in the end of days? All these different unusual things where the daughter-in-law is going to have fights with the mother-in-law, which until this generation was unusual. The daughter-in-law considered the mother-in-law like her mother. That's why it's called mother-in-law. She was considered like a second mother. Chas v'Shalom, there would be a fight.

33:38Even the Vilna Gaon, when he writes a letter to his wife, he says, if you get into a disagreement with my mom, just let her win. Let her win. It's okay. And then I'll tell her, and he wrote his mom, Ima, if she gets into an argument with you, just let her win. Meaning there's no such thing as an argument. There's no like, oh, I hate her, I hate her, I'm moving, I'm going over there. No, you're going to divorce her. There's no such thing. The previous generation had no such thing as "we can't stand each other." It only happens now that the mother-in-law and the daughter-in-law are enemies. This was as far as anything else. Yeah, I don't care if the face of a generation will be the face of a dog, both physically as well as spiritually. A dog is a very chutzpahdik animal, an animal with no shame, doing its things everywhere. Generation today, we see also do that thing everywhere, regardless of what thing you're referring to, and so on and so forth. But one of the prophecies that I didn't see in Gemara Masechet Sotah page 49b is this prophecy, and a prophecy from Midrash Tanchuma Parashat Vayeira. It says in the future...

35:02Nations of the world will assert the Torah and proclaim, "We are the true Israel." If you think about this right now, this makes zero sense. To be said a thousand years ago, zero sense. Everyone hates you. Why would they say they are you? Why would all of the goyim say, "We are true Israel, not you? We're the true Israel." Everyone's trying to kill you. Why would they say they are you? You want to kill yourself? Go get something, leave us alone. Go. Good luck. Hey, there's a bridge over there. Go make a left, make a right, right there, jump. All your money back. No, like what's the problem? Why would you say that in the future all of the nations are gonna say, "We are true Israel?" It doesn't make any sense. That's how you know it's a prophecy. A prophecy doesn't make sense. It's not something that could ever be logical. Logic is logic. logic is logic. Logic is not a prophecy. Prophecy is something that goes against logic. It's something that doesn't make any sense whatsoever. It's the opposite of what you think is true at that moment. It's like as if saying in the future the sky will turn purple. Everyone knows it's not possible for multiple reasons and

36:24One day, if tomorrow the skies turn purple, you guys are going to start calling me a prophet. I'm not; it's just a guess. I'm telling you now, don't call me a navi sheker either. So anyway, here we're talking about a prophecy. Why? Because right now, unfortunately, most of Am Yisrael is not aware that we are facing the biggest war we've ever had in the history of the nation, and... bigger than a book in itself, bigger than Paul, bigger than the Greeks, bigger than the Romans, bigger than the Spaniards, bigger than the Turks, bigger than the Nazis, bigger than anything in history. The war today is: Who is a Jew? That's the war today. The word today is that most people don't understand what it means to be a Jew, and the reason why is because there are more goyim that want to be Jews than sometimes there are Jews that want to be Jews, and... You look at the nations that hated us when this prophecy was made. They wanted to kill us. Today, let's look at the accounting. We have a group of people who call themselves Israelites. Usually, they're dark, very tall, and have very good voices. They're very loud and very scary and they wear cool clothes. But they know nothing about nothing, yet they claim they know everything and they hate Jews with a passion and...

37:42We're the true Israelites. You guys look at yourselves; you're from Europe. You're white. Look, Moshe was black like me. And they think just because somebody's black, he's doing nonsense. But you see them on every corner in New York and different places around the country, screaming their lungs out with zealousness. I wish I had that much zealousness to go in the middle of the street and proclaim the truth. Unfortunately, they're wrong. Unfortunately, they're wrong. Nonetheless, they're screaming. They're Jews. They're the truth. Not only the Jews, exactly as the prophecy says, we're the true ones. Word for word, the prophecy. Okay, so that's Israelites. It's a few thousand people, big deal. It's gone. We have now the Messianic... There's a whole movement that calls themselves Messianic Jews. In reality, it's Christianity 100%, but nonetheless, they still call themselves Messianic Jews. They implement some of the rabbinical mitzvot that make them look like Jews on the exterior, such as the tallit, the tzitzit, the kippah, the...

38:56so on, and they mention a few verses from the Torah and then they destroy it by adding JC Penny to it. But nonetheless, you have huge amounts of money, huge amounts of money, going from Christianity to these Messianic groups that call themselves Jews. And now Jews that are ignorant don't know, like, "Oh wow, look at this nice Jewish guy, so what if you believe some guys," and it looks like it's... and you don't even realize they're not even Jews. You go to all of these different Messianic synagogues. They call it or churches or whatever. Ninety-nine point nine nine nine nine percent of the people are not Jews whatsoever in any shape, way, or form. But they call themselves Messianic Jews. Then you have the Christians. The Christians believed 2,000 years ago that they had to come up with this New Testament. They said, "Listen, the Torah is real. No one is going against the Torah." Everyone agrees that Hashem gave the Torah to Am Yisrael at Mount Sinai. What's the difference between Judaism and Christianity according to them? That 2,000 years ago, some guy died and he said, "Listen, you guys can't keep the mitzvot anyway. I'll just get beat up and you don't have to do any mitzvot anymore."

40:16I'll get beat up. I'll get tortured. I'll get this, I'll get that, and that allows you guys to forevermore be criminals, losers, thieves, prostitutes, gamblers, and violate the Torah in every way, shape, or form that you want just because I died 2,000 years ago and gave a get out of jail free card. And all real zealous Christians believe they are the chosen ones. None of the Christians wake up in the morning and say, "Wow." Look at Am Yisrael. Such great people. No, even the ones that say that they're lovers of Israel, like this one company that sends me emails, and it doesn't matter how many times I block them. send me emails. Apparently, I need to stay in the news. Apparently, it's like Friends of Israel, Christian Friends of Israel, something like that. They send me emails at least two or three times a week. They have a huge budget, hundreds of millions of dollars, and they say that their love is for Israel. They donate to Israel, they vote for Israel, they do this, they do that. In reality, why? Because their ultimate goal is to convert Israel to be Christians and

41:25That's the goal. Why? Because Israel is not Israel; it is a little sign. You know they're wrong, but since we're kind of related, we'll fix them. So all the Christians believe that it's their duty to fix Israel. Why? Because they're the real Israel. Then you go on, you have the Arabs. The Arabs have the same exact argument as the Christians, no different. Islam was founded about 1400 years ago, somewhere around 600 years after Christianity, maybe a little less, and... I said, listen, Israel was right until Muhammad came. Muhammad continued it. We have a book called the Quran. We have about seven or eight thousand versions of it, but no one needs to know that, and... The fact that he couldn't read or write is irrelevant, and the fact that there are no witnesses to anything that he said is irrelevant, and the fact that the book contradicts itself on every single page is irrelevant. Nonetheless, we are the real Israel. We're the real Israel. That's what the Arabs claim. No Arab wakes up in the morning and says, "Ah, I'm going to go kill a Jew because they're right." No, they believe that the Jew went against Hashem, so I'm going to defend Hashem's honor for this. Then you have the Reform.

42:41the Conservative Jews, some of them, many of them, are actually born Jewish. Many of them were born to Jewish mothers according to Halacha, but they decided to change the Torah. They decided to do something very similar to what the Greeks did. They took the Torah and they removed God from it. They decided they're going to listen to certain things and not listen to certain things, meaning the Torah became subjective. it's up to them, or subjective, up to them. Whatever they decide to keep, whatever they don't like to keep, they don't have to believe in everything, especially the 13 principles of faith. They don't have to believe in it, and the foundation of both Reform and Conservative Jewish movements, in essence, started with this principle and little by little deteriorated from there to the extent where it's identifiably not Jewish and such an extent that you're not allowed to even walk in. As a kosher Jew, you're not allowed to even walk into a Conservative or Reform shul, just like you're not allowed to walk into a church. It's the same level, the same level. Then you have...

44:01People telling us they're the real Israel. They want to go to the Kotel, they want the women to be at the Kotel. They want the women to wear tefillin, no clothes but tefillin. "We're the real Israel. We're the real Israel. We'll put tefillin on, look, our women put tefillin on. They can't put clothes on, but they put tefillin on. We're the real Israel." That's what they think. "You're the real Israel? Great, you're out of your mind. You think you're the real Israel also." They also think the same thing. Then you have the people that like the conspiracy theories. The people that like to base their religion on the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered somewhere around 70 years ago. I mean, even before that, but they came to light to a much higher extent in the 1940s and... People pretty much just decide to create their own religion from it. They decide, "Okay, you know what? It says this, it says this, it says this—that's the truth. That's Am Yisrael. I'm following this truth. I'm Am Yisrael." Yeah, but you're not even Jewish. "No, no, I'm Am Yisrael. Not only Jewish, I'm more Jewish than you."

45:04Because I follow this now, but you know there are mistakes. What he means is that the Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as all these documents we have, verify that there are mistakes in the Dead Sea Scrolls. It was pointed out with one example that I learned about recently; it includes Tehillim. Tehillim is Psalms, the oldest book of Psalms. It's part of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and many people are like, "Wow, it's amazing. It's 2,000 years old." He leaves the bushing. Well, I don't know, wait. I... Change: There's a mistake. Tehillim 145 has an extra verse. That's one extra verse, verse 13. None of our books have it. If you look at your Tehillim, none of your books have it. It's skipped. Look, the Dead Sea Scrolls have an extra verse. Look, Torah has been moved, changed. It's not real. Am Yisrael, you're not Yisrael. This is Yisrael. Anyone that knows a little bit of Torah, I originally heard this from Rabbi Tovia Singer, and he showed it beautifully. He says you can see it in a matter of five seconds, five seconds, just from reading the same Tehillim, that it's fake.

46:13He took a verse from a few lines ahead, and he put it there and just changed one word. So, it's identifiable that it's a copy. It's not legitimate because there's a certain pattern that that specific perek follows, and that one verse does not follow it. One verse is plagiarized from another verse, so he just took it and put it in another place to fill it in. Because he thought, "Now let me put my finishing touch on it, you know, like a painter painting a Picasso. There's a painting, and he signs his name at the bottom. This guy wants to be smart. He put a little extra version there. He's like, 'I don't need a minute, forgot. I'm gonna help him out. The Navi forgot. I'm gonna help him out. He forgot to pull one.' So all those people say, 'Am Yisrael, Am Yisrael, Dead Sea Scrolls, Dead Sea Scrolls, Dead Sea Scrolls.' Scroll somewhere else." Plenty of things are right in the Dead Sea Scrolls, but that one particular thing shows that the Dead Sea Scrolls are not exactly foolproof like people think they are. Last but not least, another painful one is the fake converts. Baruch Hashem, the mitzvah of loving a convert is an easy mitzvah for me. I'm married to one. Baruch Hashem, she makes it easy. She's the most righteous person on earth and

47:32So that's an easy mitzvah for me, but nonetheless, we can't deny the truth: that there are many problems in the conversion world. There are many problems for righteous people to convert to Judaism. There are many problems with people who are wicked and have already converted. It's many problems to deal with them. The Gemara says that the converts are like a skin disease to Am Yisrael and Mefarshim, the commentary, say why. Why is it a skin disease on one end? The righteous converts, they're so righteous. They're so good. They're so zealous. They love Hashem so much, and it makes the rest of us look terrible. They don't have to wake up. They don't fight tooth and nail to wake up at five o'clock in the morning to go to Netz. They're up at four o'clock studying. You don't have to argue with them. Yo, you have to be modest. You have to be modest. They're more modest than you. You have to argue with them to learn Torah. They're learning Torah like Rabbi Akiva. They love it. The zealous ones are unbelievable. Mamash, unbelievable. They make the rest of us double-check ourselves, which is good. To be better, you have to be surrounded by better people. That's why it's very healthy for every single person that wants to stay strong to surround themselves with Baalei Teshuva and converts. Why? They're going to be much more zealous than your average Frum Jew. Much more fire.

49:02So that's the good side. The bad side is that sometimes these converts, they get bad history, bad this, bad that, bad community, bad experience. They don't like certain things. They can't deal with something. They haven't picked a rabbi or the rabbi they picked wasn't exactly a rabbi, and they lose their mind. They start missing their old non-Jewish self, they start hanging out with their old non-Jewish friends, and they start doing some of their old non-Jewish things. I had an email that was very sad just a day or two ago. One was a very happy email where a woman told me that she found my CD in London somewhere. She put it in—it looked interesting. Our car, she started listening to it. She became addicted to Torah, and now she's in the process of converting to Orthodox Judaism. She has no Jewish friends, no Jewish connection whatsoever, but apparently the Torah dug deep down into her heart from our learning, and, Baruch Hashem, she's in the process of becoming a righteous Jew. On the other hand, I had another email from another person. He said to me, "I converted X amount of years ago and..."

50:21I was learning in yeshiva for a couple of years. I did this, I did that, and thought everything was good, but then I decided I needed to make some money. I left the yeshiva and went to work. Little by little, I was surrounded by people that weren't exactly the most religious, and I said maybe I'll help them. Little by little, they helped me be not religious. They helped me become less religious, and little by little I became more and more non-religious to the point where I married a non-Jew and I have a child with a non-Jew. So now he's not a non-Jew with a non-Jew. He's a Jew—100% a Jew that's intermarried now. Instead of being a decent person who has Olam HaBa by keeping the Sheva Mitzvot Bnei Noach, now he has Gehenom forever if he doesn't do teshuva. Understand the craziness here—why something happened, something happened, something happened, and you have this problem. There are at least a few of them that love to torture me, write stuff about me on the internet, love to make movies or films about me, and unfortunately, they're converts and

51:37I'm like the biggest advocate for converts, but they were at war with me for some strange reason. Why? Because they don't like some of these things that we say because they don't want to keep them. So, unfortunately, there's some of that, and then there are some people that are truly fake converts. What's the truth about a convert? When I talk about this, the first way I talked about right now is problematic converts—the fake convert. Person that started learning, discovered that the Torah is true, and wants to convert reached out to either myself or somebody else to help them convert. The person told them, "You can't convert. Why? You live in Montana, and your next-door neighbor is a cow, and..." The next-door neighbor to that cow is another cow, and the next-door neighbor to that cow is a cow, is a cow, is a cow. The closest human being, forget it, a non-Jew, is 30 miles away, and the closest Jew is 250 miles away. You cannot be a Jew by yourself on a farm in the middle of Montana. You have to go to a Jewish community. "I can't afford these things." Can't afford? Don't be a Jew. "No, but I keep, but I do, and I thought..." You can't be a Jew by yourself. One of the main things you need to do is you have to be part of a Jewish community.

52:54So, these people don't like it or perhaps they said, "Listen, I want to convert, but my wife doesn't want to convert." Okay, well, you can't. According to Halacha, you cannot convert if your spouse is not Jewish. "Yeah, but we're separate. We're living in two different bedrooms. We're not going to be together, I promise." Then all these different things that they want. So, you can't, you can't, you can't pretend. decide, "No, I'm more Jewish than you. I learn ideas and they start living a Jewish life exterior-wise. They start reading books they're not allowed to read. They start looking more Jewish than the average Jew. They put on all the exterior stuff. They all look like a Sefardi Breslover, all of them. They look like they have this one guy who actually has a turban on. My mouse looks like a little Rambam. If he wasn't black, he would be Rambam." There's a thing as a turban on my eyes. It's a cap. I caught it. By the way, you should know, according to Halacha, that's actually how you're supposed to wear a kippah—it's supposed to be like a turban on your head. That's the root. That's why a big kippah should ideally cover your entire head. The little quarter kippahs that some of us wear are not kosher according to Halacha. But anyway, because kippahs are d'Rabbanan, there's more leniency on it. Nonetheless, the real kisui should cover your entire head.

54:08That's why the Rambam and many of the Gedolei HaDor covered their entire head with a turban or something like that. But anyway, some of these people, exterior-wise, they wear the tzitzit, they wear the tallit, they wear this, they wear that. The beard sweeps the floor, it sweeps the next-door neighbor, it sweeps the cows, everything. The beard grows for free, pays them rent. They look Jewish. On the internet, they write the Divrei Torah. They write this, "Oh, Rambam says this," "the Poskim said this," and they start debating with different people. Is it Mamash? You would think, "Wow, this guy!" Unfortunately, they're not Jews, and not only are they not Jews, they're problematic people. Baruch Hashem, they didn't become Jews because they don't realize the damage that they're causing to themselves and the people around them with the fact that they do not have a Rabbi and they decide to create halachot by themselves. Aside from that, no, I don't agree with this. I don't agree with this, and I remember one guy, God bless him. Honestly, I wish I could help him. But this one particular guy was a fan for a while. I told him he can't convert; he didn't like it. I told him he can't keep Shabbat; he didn't like it. He decided to do things against, and the funny thing is that once in a while, he makes a comment on different videos that I have, and he says, "I think I said one story about a..."

55:31I said a story. Oh, I said a story from the Gemara where it says that anyone who says the real name of Hashem the way it's actually pronounced loses their Olam HaBa. To that extent, you're not allowed to say the name of Hashem the way that it's spelled. So what the goyim do on a daily basis, where they spell the name with the Y and so on and Essence that they're creating a special place in Gehenom for themselves. They don't realize this. You're not allowed to do this—Jew, non-Jew, etc. And I said this in a lecture. He's like, "Ah, I never heard that." So I'm thinking to myself, "So what? You discovered Judaism a year ago, two years ago, three years ago. You covered the entire Torah, you know everything? If I say something you never heard, that's it? It has to be wrong with me? There's no way that if you don't know it..." And that's the attitude these people have. That's the attitude of the fake. They can't tolerate anything that contradicts their truth. And that's the common denominator with all of the problematic "Am Yisrael." Last but not least is the secular Jew. The secular Jew is not secular because he doesn't know; he's secular because he doesn't feel like doing it. I

56:55So, these people, unfortunately, are fulfilling a prophecy. They're saying "Am Yisrael," but according to Halacha, in order to be Yisrael, you have to accept the Torah and everything in it. Everything in it, no exceptions. Now, the Ramban... Ramban in Parashat Bo says that Hashem made the big miracles, the famous miracles: split the ocean, destroyed Egypt, all these giant miracles, a pillar of fire, a pillar of cloud. We didn't have to change our clothes for 40 years, the manna, Mount Sinai, words in the sky, and so on. I mean, amazing. When you read the Midrashim, it's like Gan Eden. Amazing, amazing stories. You're never going to have to waste a minute watching any movie or anything. It's the greatest thing in the world. In the Midrashim and Ramban, and so on, it says that the Ramban says that the big one—Hashem makes these big miracles. Even just take Am Yisrael, snap His fingers—not the other fingers, but a snap of fingers—and they're already in Israel, finished. Just taking them out or just killing Egyptians, make Egypt Israel.

58:26That's it, put up a new flag, finished. What's the problem for Hashem? It's different. The Ramban says Hashem made the big miracles so that you would acknowledge the big miracles, remember the big miracles, and have a much easier time accepting the small miracles. What's the small miracles? The Ramban says everything. What's everything? Literally everything. You're thinking a miracle is if it's going to rain blue tomorrow or it's going to rain green. Probably scary for the first few days. Or if somebody just starts levitating in the middle of the shul or something that's beyond nature is a miracle. Wrong. That's the failure of our generation. Don't know what it means to a miracle. We don't know what a miracle means, as a matter of fact. There was a rabbi, hopefully just a yachid, who made a short clip, a three-minute clip, saying that there's no such thing as miracles. The Torah doesn't actually say anything about miracles, and the word "nes," which means miracle, he says doesn't mean miracle; actually, it means flag.

59:55flag. Now, yes, "nes" also means flag, but it also means miracle. And he made a whole thing about how there's no such thing as miracles. Hashem didn't really split the ocean; it was a tsunami that came at the right time and at the right place, like the Discovery Channel had a program about it. He's agreeing with the scientists, and he's a rabbi of a school, some rabbi of a school, and... According to him, it's Orthodox. According to him, it's Orthodox. It's not Orthodox, but according to him, the website says Orthodox, Orthodox. It says Orthodox teaching at the Orthodox school. It's Orthodox teaching style. We have a problem. Because the same rabbi said there's no such thing as miracles. Now, the Ramban came before him. This rabbi is here. The Ramban, 900 years ago, says, if you do not acknowledge—remember this, this is mamash halacha—if you do not acknowledge that everything is a miracle,

1:00:58Everything—the fact that you are blinking your eyes, the fact that you can see, the fact that you can hear, the fact that you moved your finger, the fact that if you have a little tiny infection on your finger—that's it, that's a miracle. Also, if you have a nail, if you don't have a nail, if you can hear me, if you can understand me, if you can speak, if you can write, if you have money in your pocket, if you don't have money in your pocket, if you have shoes, if you have shoelaces, if there's a room, if there's a building, if there's a candle and the candle's lit and then it shuts off, and... Everything is a miracle. The Ramban says if you do not believe that everything is a miracle, you do not have a share in Olam Haba or his Torah. I asked my Rav for a clarification. What does it mean that you don't have a share in God and His Torah? Is that the same thing as having no share in the world to come? He answered, "No, it's worse." World to come. Maybe someone can fix it, do it. You raise kids, his descendants. Maybe they can help him by doing a serious amount of teshuva. Someone maybe can help him if he has no share in the world to come. Someone could possibly help him. It's a small remote chance, but it's possible. It says that someone who has no share in Olam Haba has no share in God, no share in His Torah, nothing. It's as if he didn't exist.

1:02:23We have a problem because most of us don't believe everything is a miracle. Most of us think that it's nature. Most of us think that we did something. I worked, so I made money. I studied, so I gained knowledge. I dated, so I got married. I was intimate, and therefore I had kids. I said, and words came out, and they made sense, and therefore they paid me. So on and so forth, Ramban says if you think anything that you're doing is not a miracle, you have a serious problem. The Gemara in Masechet Ta'anit, page 25a, tells a story about Rabbi Chanina ben Dosa, whose life was full of countless miracles and... Daughter comes to him crying one day. He sees her crying in the house, and he says, "Honey, why are you crying? Shabbat is about to come in. Why would you be crying right before Shabbat?" She says, "Abba, I made a very big mistake. Instead of buying oil for the candles of Shabbat, I bought vinegar. Now, anyone who knows basic science knows you can't light candles with vinegar."

1:03:51So, my dear, the same One who decided that oil will light the candles will simply decide to make the vinegar light the candles. And such it was. She put the candles, she put the little things, she turned it on, and it was as if it was oil. Why? Because oil is a miracle, and so it The One who decided that the oil should be something you could light is simply going to decide that the vinegar will light as well because, for Him, it's the same. For you, it may not be because you're a limited human who's used to certain things. You think that if it's beyond your understanding, beyond what you know, it's a miracle. That's where we go wrong. Whether you understand it, think you understand it, want to understand it, or not, it's all a miracle. And the significance of a miracle is that understanding what a miracle is, is the difference between a tzaddik and a rasha. It's not simply believing the stories that I tell you guys once in a while.

1:05:12about how these Tannaim, Kedoshim in the Gemara would revive the dead. Like the story between Rebbe and Antoninus. They used to study chavruta. Antoninus was the Roman emperor and Rebbe was the prince of Am Yisrael. But Antoninus knew that the Torah was holy. And he wanted to study Torah and he studied Torah with the best of them, with Rebbe, Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi. But he knew that if his people, the Romans, would actually find out that he's studying Torah, they'd kill him. Not only would they want to remove him from office, they wouldn't impeach him. It's not like today. They would just kill him. There's no democracy. So he built himself a tunnel from his house underground all the way to Rebbe. The tunnel was built, and he would go with two soldiers from his house, through the tunnel, all the way to Rebbe. Every night to study Torah, one soldier he would kill at the beginning of the tunnel on the first trip, and the other one he would kill on the way home. Why? So there would be no witnesses. Because he knew that if the soldiers knew what he was doing, they would tell someone, and they would kill him. So it's justified, meaning if they're going to kill him, he has to kill them first. There's even a permission for that. But nonetheless, he told Rebbe, "Listen, no one can know. Make sure you don't have any of your students here."

1:06:40Nobody here. No problem. One day, he says there's a student there. He sees the student and says with a love, "I told you not to have anybody here." The Rebbe responds, "Don't worry. He's not a person; he's like an angel, kodesh kodeshim. So he's like an angel." He goes, "Okay. Do me a favor. Go tell my soldier that's outside to come in." Now he goes outside and sees that the soldier is dead because Antoninus killed him already—no witnesses, remember? Now, the Gemara says only a fool gives bad news, only a fool brings bad news. You heard something bad? Only a fool would tell somebody else, "Oh, you heard something bad happened? This one got..." Only a fool does that. So now it is kal vachomer—needless to say—to bring bad news to the Roman Emperor. So, what does he do? The Tanna put him back to life and he brought him back. "Dr. News." Oh, he's a soldier. Antoninus says, "Ah, really? Only your students are mal'achim, are really like angels like this. That's how you know it's your student who revives the dead. But please, next time, not even them. Not even them."

1:08:00A story like this is a wonderful story. It's in the Gemara. There are plenty of stories like this. Not believing that story is kefirah in the Torah. Not believing that story because it doesn't make sense to you that a human being could make another human being that died come back to life doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense that the Tannaim would pray and rain would come down. It doesn't make sense that one of them, Rabbi Ḥanina... His wife complained about money. They didn't have any money, and I don't mean they had five or ten thousand dollars in the bank. They didn't have money like my mother didn't have food to eat for days. She said, "Abba, please, why don't you go pray to Hashem to give us some parnasah?" He goes outside, prays to Hashem, and they said a hand from Shamayim came and gave him a pillar of gold, a leg of a table full of gold. Beautiful story. He gives it to her. She says, "No, it comes from Shamayim. Give it back," and so on and so forth. The point I'm trying to make is that not believing the story because it doesn't make sense to you is kefirah. It's considered 100% heresy in the Torah. Why? Because you're thinking that only things that are logical are in the Torah. One of the talmidim...

1:09:22There was himself Kodesh. Went to Yeshiva. I believe it was Rabban Gamliel or Rabbi Yochanan—don't quote me—one of the two. I believe it was Rabban Gamliel. Rabban Gamliel said in Yeshiva that in the end of days, after Mashiach comes and Hashem builds the third Beit HaMikdash and... Beit HaMikdash is going to have huge doors. Huge, giant doors, but unlike any other doors anyone has ever seen. Now we're thinking, maybe it's from the doors of the Beit HaMikdash like Shlomo HaMelech. They wouldn't open until they said a verse about David HaMelech. Like that, gold, beautiful, giant doors. Maybe it's the doors like the second Beit HaMikdash after they fixed it. They said if you didn't see the Beit HaMikdash that Herod fixed, you never saw anything beautiful. Beauty was defined by how beautiful this building was. Maybe it's like that. So, what is it going to be like? The doors are going to be huge, giant diamonds.

1:10:40One of the students himself was holy. You can't be a student of one of these giants and not be holy. You know, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan, he's like exaggerating a little bit. Yeah, when Mashiach comes, it's going to be nice doors. Nice, but the Beit HaMikdash, come on. All of us in the whole world are fighting over a little diamond that maybe you could hold in two fingers. Two fingers! If you have a diamond, you're already rich. Oh... You have a diamond. If you have a diamond, that's something you could hold in a little palm. You're the richest guy in the world. A door to not only one—two doors, two doors that are diamonds. No, come on. I’ve said so myself. He didn’t say it to the Rav Chatzkel. He’s not like us where we say, "I think you made a mistake. I think you made a mistake. I think you made a mistake," like this guy from the shiur a couple of days ago. Ah, you don’t know what you’re talking about.

1:11:41It wasn't a bit. It wasn't a bank on Leo. It's a bishamon next time. You should know what you're talking about before you say it. I said, "Right book." Aside from insulting me in public by writing a comment like this, was it a bishamon? Did it change the content of the story? Did the story change whether it's this one or that one? No. Other than you gaining a sin, nothing changed. But no, they have to speak for three hours. You talk, and they find one word you made up. You know what you're talking about. You know what you're talking about, as if I have a prepared speech in front of me. Oh, Hashem, Hashem sends them to give them an opportunity to do teshuva, gives me an opportunity to get kapparah. So anyway, the student didn't say this out loud. He kept it to himself. says that one day he took a trip, and Hashem made it so that the ship he was on sank. It collapsed; sunk. Everyone's in the water. He's swimming under the water, and he sees at the bottom of the ocean two angels working on two giant doors made of diamonds. He says to them, "What are you doing?" and they say, "We're preparing the doors and..."

1:13:04Now, as Hashem would have it, He saved him, and he goes back to the shul. The rabbi says the same thing again, mentions in another shul, "For the love, your rabbanut, your honest rav, what you say is true. Thank you. Why do you say that?" It was true anyway before you said it, but now tell me, London II, why do you say it? Because you told the story about the diamonds, and you know what? I didn't believe it—big diamonds like this, and we have a little diamond already, a rich diamond the size of doors, two of them. Nonetheless, I saw it with my own eyes. I saw it with my own eyes. For the love, he says, you needed to see what I said. Didn't think that what I said was true. He looked at him and he died on the spot, turned into bones. Why do we need to see for doubt? The Rabbi Tanakh says, "Do you think we're making a fairy tale? Waiting is a Christian thing. Waiting is like Harry Potter." So these stories are extraordinary and...

1:14:29Diamonds big, this, that, and even there's a common saying: one shouldn't necessarily take everything figuratively. It's not always this, it's sometimes that. But nonetheless, not believing it, according to the Ramban, is kefira. Why? You're not believing it because there's a proof that it's wrong. You're not believing it because it doesn't make sense to you. If you're not going to believe anything that doesn't make sense to you, you might as well cancel the entire Torah. You might as well cancel out the entire Am Yisrael because to be a Yehudi doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense that somebody would want to wake up in the morning and convert to Judaism. It doesn't make sense. Why would you want to put such an onus on yourself, where if you drive on Shabbat one more time, you get the death penalty from heaven? Why would you want to put an onus on yourself where, if you eat certain food, you get the death penalty from heaven? Food you eat, food that's not allowed, you get the death penalty from heaven. Why would you want that? Kal Vachomer, why would you do that to yourself? If you eat certain food, you get the death penalty from heaven. Why would you do something like that if you go out with the wrong guy or the wrong girl? I...

1:15:48go to Gehenom for an infinite amount of time. Why would you do that when anybody else is a goy? Why would you? It doesn't make sense for anyone to want to convert to Judaism. Yet the Torah says to love the convert more than a natural-born Jew because of that very same reason. Because they chose something that doesn't make sense, that makes Hashem love them even more, and... The hub, the hub, the hub, the hub, the hub was the wife of Yehoshua Bin Nun. Before she became the wife of Yehoshua Bin Nun, she was the top prostitute in the world. And the Gemara in Masechet Megillah says she was one of the top four most beautiful women that ever lived. "Ever lived" meaning from the beginning of the world until the end, not just in our time. To such an extent, to such an extent. These are the words of the Gemara. It's not me. I such an extent that there's no such person that lived and can say her name three times without wasting seed. Not talking about being without name, simply saying the name. So, Rabban Yochanan says, "I said nothing happened because you never saw her." To that extent, to that extent. Now, how did she become

1:17:12That's kodesh kodashim. Was a mother who had eight descendants. They were all prophets. You don't become prophets from wicked people. When she met Am Yisrael, she said, "We heard about your God. We heard He is the God of everything, of shamayim (heaven) and aretz (earth). So my father, we heard He runs the world here and up there." Shem says, "You saw that I run the world here from Egypt. Everything you heard over here, but you never saw what I do up there. The fact that you believed without seeing, I'll make you a hub. I'll make you the wife of the gedol. I'll make your descendants become prophets. Why? The mehalech is simple. You believe in miracles. You believe that it doesn't have to make sense to you."

1:18:13When someone wants everything to make sense to them, they're putting everything in jeopardy. They're putting the entire Torah in jeopardy because the reality is that what makes sense to you today may not make sense tomorrow. The whole holiday of Chanukah is one of the reminders about miracles and the significance of miracles in Judaism. When you say the bracha As one can see, by the way, we say, "She'asah nissim ba'yamim ha'hem bazman hazeh." He made miracles in those days and at this time. The pshat is that He made miracles in those days and at this time, meaning the same date, the same time of year. Hashem made miracles. That's the pshat. What's the reality? What do the mefarshim really say? This is no, no, no. He made miracles in those days, and He's still doing them right now. You're here. You have a nail. You don't have a nail. You have money. You don't have money. You have vision. You don't have vision. You have glasses. You don't have glasses. You have whatever you have. Everything is a miracle. Everything. There's no exception. Now, a tzaddik understands that...

1:19:37A tzaddik understands that Hashem runs the world regardless of whether it makes sense to him or not, regardless of whether it makes sense to her or not. When you understand that you're not going to understand God, it becomes much easier to keep the Torah. Much easier. You submit to become a full ba'al teshuvah, to become really religious, to become a Maccabee. Maccabee. Submit to Hashem. Modeh ani, I acknowledge Your God. I acknowledge Your God meaning. I have no idea what makes sense. What doesn't make sense if it's from You. Finished. I don't have any money in the bank, but I'm still going shopping. I need to buy groceries for Shabbat. I don't have any money in the bank, but I'm going shopping. I need to go eat. I need to go eat. Shabbat, You gave a commandment to eat on Shabbat. I'm going to eat. We don't have any money; it doesn't make a difference. That's your problem. My problem is I have to go up to the supermarket. It doesn't have to make sense. When you're a Maccabee, you stop trying to make sense of everything. I'm 30 years old; I'm gonna find a zivug? No such thing. I'm 40 years old; I'm gonna find a zivug? No such thing. I'm this; I'm that; doesn't make sense.

1:21:02It's not supposed to make sense. It's God. If you're looking for it to make sense, you have a problem. You have a serious, serious problem in your neshama. You have to fix it really, really quickly. Why? Because if you don't fix it, Shabbat is the least of your problems. The problem you think is the problem is the least of your problems because you haven't done teshuva. Doesn't matter if you have a shtreimel this big. It doesn't matter if your beard is this long. It doesn't matter if you're modest. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you think you are in control of anything other than your own mind. You have not begun to do teshuva. This is relevant to everyone, religious from birth to new converts, old converts, new baalei teshuva, you are all baalei teshuva, rabbis, students, women, men, everyone. Until you understand the first commandment, "I am Hashem," and what it actually means when you say "Modeh Ani," you haven't begun anything. Because as long as you're looking for it to make sense, as long as you're looking for the miracles that are your life to make sense, and

1:22:25Nothing makes sense now. In order for it to work, you have to submit; you have to say Hashem. The Gemara in Masechet Berachot tells a story about a few of Hashem's very loyal sons. There was one named Nachum Ish Gamzu. His name wasn't really Gamzu, but they called him Gamzu because "Gam zu" means "this too." What's "this too?" This too is for the good. Nachum Ish Gamzu said, "Everything is for the good. Why? Because it's from God. If it's from God, it's for the good. What's from God? Everything. Everything is from God, and everything is for the good." Okay, but what happens if something bad happens? There's no such thing. So, one time, the Chachamim had a serious problem. The foreign king wanted to pass a decree and... That was against Am Yisrael, and they told Nachum Ish Gamzu, "You're a man of miracles. You're used to miracles; your whole life is miracles. Please take all of our money. The entire town raised a million dollars' worth of jewelry, gold, and diamonds. All of our money is in this case. Go take it to the king. That's all we have. Try to save us."

1:23:46Journey is tough. So we need a man of miracles. Why me? Someone's gonna rob you, someone's gonna kill you—lions, tigers. You know, it's not like traffic today; you go in a car, you get from point A to point B. You go JetBlue, you go to this one, you go to it. Not like that. You go on a journey, you may not come back. That's why every time somebody would go away, they'd write a letter, a last will and testament to their family. Even in the time of the Vilna Gaon, he said it to his family: "I'm going to Israel and..." may not come back. So here's a letter you write. He wrote his family a whole letter of what to do, how to act, what to do with everything. Just a few hundred years ago. Imagine 2,000 years ago. Traveling is dangerous. It says, "But Nachum Ish Gamzu, are you a man of miracles? Go travel." Nachum Ish Gamzu travels and he gets to right outside of where the castle was. There was a motel, and he stops over there and

1:24:46the rest the night before. Little does he know that the ba'alei batim, the owners of the little motel, are criminals, thieves. So when he fell asleep, they looked into his stuff. They saw his big, little, big ken of case. They opened it up, they saw a bunch of jewelry. They took all the jewelry and replaced it with sand and He doesn't notice and leaves the next day. No, no, it's the same weight. So the next day, Nachum Ish Gamzu, who is a tzaddik, says, "Hashem Yitbarach gave me back the neshamah. That's already good news." He gets to the castle. The servant of the king brings the case to the king, opens it up in front of the king. Everyone is waiting to see what Am Yisrael offered the king. must be something very valuable. They open it up, and voila! The king becomes furious. "Not only are they not listening, but they send this to mock me!" Nachum Ish Gamzu is asked, "What is this?" He says, "Gam zu l'tova."

1:26:10This too, when you have this, tovah also, it's good. They thought maybe he's crazy. What do you mean this is good? What is this? Sand. He brought the king sand? Because of his emunah. At a time it didn't make sense to have emunah. At the very least, you say, "I'm sorry. Somebody stole it. I didn't mean to. I'll bring you more. I'll go rob somebody else. I'll go kill somebody. I'll sue them. I know what happened. I don't know what happened." Say something. It didn't make sense to say, at that moment. The only thing that made sense to say is, "Help me. Do something." My side, a shaman, said, "Okay, who saved me from this way says this truth. We're good. This is what you have to send. This sand is good." At the moment, it didn't make sense for it to be good. He said, "This is good. It is from Hashem. Hashem sent Eliyahu HaNavi, who was dressed like one of the servants of the king, and came up to the king and whispered in his ear."

1:27:19you know, your honor, these Jews told the descendants of Avraham, you know the stories we read about Avraham. Yeah, yeah, what does that mean? You know, Avraham, he fought four kingdoms at once by himself and he beat all of them. The story goes that he threw sand in the air and all of the sand turned into spears and killed all of those people and You didn't have to fight him with swords. You just threw sand in the air, and his God loved him so much that all of the sand magically turned into spears, and it shot and killed everyone. That's all he had to do. Maybe this is the same. The only one of these telling the king. The king's like, let's try it. They go outside, they throw a little sand. It's all spears. The king is as excited as you can possibly be. This is great. He's officially the king of the world now. Such sand! He says, "Bring him cases full of the best jewelry money can buy, the best diamonds, the best gold, and give him that as a present to his people. Cancel any decrees against his people. These are special people; give them special protection." He gives them a case much, much more valuable than the case he originally had and...

1:28:47He goes back to, the Gemara says, he goes back to the same hotel. That's Eish Emunah, by the way. Why? Because you realize it's not the thieves that did it to you. It's Hashem that did it to you. He goes to the same hotel with the same robbers, and they start laughing. They're like, "You're still here? How are you still alive?" He goes, "Oh, look, they gave me a case full of diamonds and jewels and so on." They go, "For what, for the sand?" He goes, "Yeah, of course, the sand you gave me." They gave me just the same weight in gold. These people got so upset. They had this measly jewelry, a million dollars’ worth of jewelry. They took it from him, threw it out, filled it up with sand, and went to the king. Unfortunately for them, Eliyahu HaNavi wasn't there to help them, so they hung all of them. Gam zu l'tova. Gam zu l'tova. When someone understands that Hashem Yitbarach runs the world, he understands Gam zu l'tova. In this very same Gemara, just a few dapim later, at the end of Gemara Masechet Berachot, it talks about one of the students of Nachum Ish Gamzu. His name was Rabbi Akiva. Rabbi Akiva had a different saying. He said, everything that the Merciful One does

1:30:10Everything that God does is always the best, not the same as Nachum Ish Gamzu, who said that everything is for the good. Rabbi Akiva says everything He does is the best. So there's a debate between the chachamim about which one's higher: everything is for the good or everything is the best. One time, Rabbi Akiva goes with his students. He's traveling, and all he has in his possession is a donkey, a rooster, and a candle, and a Sefer Torah. rooster, a candle, and a Sefer Torah. And they go to a city, and the people of the city hated Jews, which is very normal. They didn't let him in. They said, "No, no, no, not for you. Go with your students somewhere else. We're not interested." Students are very tired and very sad. They want food. They want something that could revive them. He says, "Everything the Merciful One does is always for the best." How could this be for the best? They kicked us out. We have to sleep on the floor in this state. Maybe a lion's gonna eat us, or a tiger, or a snake. Oh, it's not like today where those things are only on television, on the Discovery Channel. This is for the best. Why? It's from God. From God, it's the best. And...

1:31:28They go and camp outside of the city, next to the lions, the tigers, the scorpions, the snakes, and all the creatures of the world. And what does Rabbi Akiva want to do? He wants to learn. So he uses his little candle and parks his donkey. He puts his rooster where it's supposed to be, ties it up where it is, and starts learning Torah. All of a sudden, moments later, Lion shows up and instead of jumping on Rabbi Akiva, he jumps on his donkey and kills him. The students are terrified. Maybe he's gonna come back. What are we gonna do? How are we gonna travel without a donkey? Rabbi Akiva says, "Everything that the Merciful One does is always for the best." What do you mean? He just killed the donkey! How are we gonna go from place to place? It's for the best; why? It's from God. A little while later...

1:32:29Cat comes and eats the rooster. How are we going to wake up? We have nitz. We have to wake up in the morning. How are we going to wake up on time? We need a rooster. Hashem created the rooster with mamash, a power, where it knows exactly when to kukuriku. It knows exactly when the sun comes up. It doesn't need a clock like us. One o'clock, two o'clock, three o'clock, four o'clock, you still wake up. Don't wake up. The clock goes to sleep. Rooster, you could put him inside in a dark room. He knows "Kukuriku." Now he died. Come, idiom of a Rebbi. This is for the love. No, if it's from God, it's good. Everything that God does is merciful. Everything is for the best, the best. Not just good, the best. All he wants to do is learn his little Torah, the Gemara, or Mishnah. Death, mishnah, you know, Midrash. It's too long. Yes, the candle. A little while later, a strong wind comes and kills this candle. Now you can't learn Torah. How could this be for the best? Hashem doesn't want you to learn Torah? How could this be for the best if it's from God? It's the best. It's the best, not just good. It's the best. Okay, good night. We don't understand anything. We learned that we don't know anything. They go to sleep. They wake up in the morning.

1:33:58They see from a distance that the city they were supposed to stay in has smoke. They go to the city. They see almost everyone is dead. Almost everyone is dead. A few people are alive and say what happened. They said a bunch of mercenaries and different enemies came in here overnight and killed everyone. They took everything we have: the wives, the kids, this or that, all the goods. We're the only ones here to tell the story that's still alive. Rabbi Akiva said to his students, "Just like Hashem taught my Rav, I tell you: Everything that the Merciful One does is always for the best. Had we slept here in the city and not been kicked out, we'd be one of the slaughtered people. Had the donkey not died, donkeys are known to make noise at night." Eon eon, they don't know what's going on. They make noise, and the mercenaries would come, saying there's people out there. They would have come to us over there. Had the little kukuriku been done, they would have found us. Hashem did everything that He had to do to protect us. Why? It's always for the best.

1:35:17So what does it mean in our world? We're not going around parks. We don't have roosters. We don't have donkeys, and we don't have cities that are kicking us out as long as you have money or cash. Well, how is it relevant to us, my friends? It's relevant to us to understand that everything that Hashem does is for the best, meaning you have an infinite amount of ways to get from point A to point B. Hashem doesn't have a limitation on how to get you from point A to point B. you want to go, let's say for example, hypothetically, you want to fly from Florida New York. For some reason, you want to torture yourself and go to the snow. Fine. There are many ways you can get there. You can get there by plane, but even the plane has multiple options. You have different airline companies. If you want to torture yourself with an extra small seat, you have Spirit. If you want to watch TV and waste your life, there's JetBlue. If you want to pay extra, there's American Airlines. You have all these different options.

1:36:18go on a plane. Now, if you have money to burn and time as well, you can go with a helicopter. It's another option. You have multiple types of helicopters. You could even fly your own plane if you know how to fly. If that's not good enough, you can actually drive there. You could drive in a car; you could drive in a fancy car, a big car, a small car, a trailer, or a tank. You could also ride a bicycle. I have a friend that went coast to coast from California all the way to New York on a bicycle, and he actually now does it, like, I think, once a year or something like that. I don't know; he has a lot of time on his hands. But the point is that you could go there with a bicycle, and if you want to be like Forrest Gump, you can walk there too, or run. The point being is that this is just to show you an example. You can get there in a number of ways. Hashem, even more so, multiply that to infinity—He can get you from point A to point B in an infinite number of ways because, unlike you, He's not limited, and Whatever way Rabbi Akiva is trying to tell you, whatever way you get from point A to point B, is always going to be the best possible option that could have ever been. Meaning any time you arrive at your destination, whether your destination is pain or your destination is pleasure, whether your destination is good or you view it as bad, and

1:37:46Whether it's marriage or shalom bayit, divorce, wealth, or poverty, whether it's life or death, it's always the best. That's what Rabbi Akiva is teaching us. That's the chiddush. There is no bad. The only reason you think there is bad is because you have a problem believing in miracles and... You have a problem believing in things that don't make sense to you. You lost a hundred thousand in the market overnight. How could this be good? Little do you know that a hundred thousand dollars just covered you for one of the issurei karet you did last week. You did an issur karet. You made a big sin. Hashem was supposed to kill you. You turned on the light on Shabbat. He's supposed to kill you. Zardin. Malach HaMavet came to Hashem and says, look, look what he did. Kill him. No, no, I'll take money instead. Like Ma says, money is the means, money is the equivalent of life. I'll take his money instead. You lost a hundred thousand? You think, "It works out for my money." Little do you know, you just got life. You just got life. If I told you, "100,000 or your life," if I told you, "a billion or your life," get the richest guy in the world, whoever it is today, and...

1:39:14If he's on his deathbed, you tell him, "Listen, you have a hundred billion dollars. I'll give you another hour—not another life, not another hundred years—another hour to live. One hour. Or you die now, or you give me all hundred billion dollars." Does he give it or not? "Where can I make the check payable to?" There's no problem. Problem: Why do I need another hour? Why does everyone want to live? Everyone wants to live; no one wants to die. So when a person understands this, that the destination point is the best thing for you, everything changes. Everything changes. Difficulty is no longer difficulty. Difficulty is just another stepping stone before you arrive at better times. I This is what saved me. Everyone always asks, "Oh, what is this? What is this?" There was one secret that's very hard to understand unless you've been watching my shiur for at least the last year. I could tell you about Rabbi Ephraim. I could tell you about learning Torah. I could tell you about Kiruv. I could tell you about a lot of things.

1:40:31but until you get to know me and you get to know the story and you get to know at least the style of what we're doing and how we're doing it and why nothing in the world that's material means anything to me and so on, until you understand that, you're not going to understand this point. But, Hashem, what saved me was that nothing went away when I started doing teshuva. Nothing worked. It didn't fix itself. As a matter of fact, it got worse. I Lost a lot of money. I continued losing even more. I thought initially, what do you mean? What's going on? I made you, Mom, keeping Shabbat. I'm the biggest tzaddik in the world on the 35th floor. My Shabbat is kodesh kodashim. Moshe Rabbeinu shukran vir zayt. I thought, why is the money going down even worse? Even worse, the pain that I had got worse. More hospital, more this, more pain, more that. It didn't make sense. It was going the opposite. When did the teshuva really begin? When did the teshuva really take off? When one day I had an enormous, enormous infection. The type of infection that required surgery. The type of infection that, to explain the pain to you, would do nothing. You wouldn't understand. It's like a little preview of the Gehenom shiur I'm going to do.

1:42:02Decided that I don't want to go to a doctor. I decided that doctors have caused more problems than good. There's only one doctor left. It's God. That's it. But nonetheless, I still have this infection. Nonetheless, I still have this pain. Nonetheless, I have a nightmare. Something has to happen. I decided that I'm gonna give myself the surgery. Decided I'm gonna cut myself. I'm gonna open it up. I'm gonna do all this. Yes, as crazy as all of that sounds, yes, and teshuva began. Went throughout this nightmare of pain that I was going through, I blessed Hashem. I said, Baruch Hashem. This is the greatest thing in the world because I understood that the suffering I was dealing with, which was reaching a new level now that I've become officially my own doctor, is serving a purpose. It's fixing something in Shamayim. Surgery was terribly painful. Baruch Hashem, I worked until the next one, but nonetheless, the part that changed everything and

1:43:22was accepting and acknowledging God as the one and only entity that could provide good, even when the good is painful, even when you think the good is bad, even when it doesn't make sense, even when all of you are looking at me like I have six heads right now. When you acknowledge that the bad is good, you're doing teshuva. Everything changed. My mind changed, my brain changed, my neshama changed, everything changed. Everything changed from that moment on. Everything changed. When you officially submit to the Creator and you realize, Hashem, You're the Boss, the only one. Whether I like it or not, You run the show. Whether I like it or not, You're going to decide everything. Whether I like it or not, agree with it or not, it's irrelevant. I... The choice of pain is up to me. Suffering is a choice. Yes, it's a painful thing. Your body, your flesh, your nefesh, and so on. You don't have money. You have money. You have this. Yes, but suffering from it is your choice. It's your choice because it's based on whether you understand who's causing it. Who's slapping you in the head? Who's doing it? Who's waking you up? Does it have a purpose? Does it have a purpose in the grand scheme of things?

1:44:51If it doesn't, it's very easy to become an atheist. Why? Why would a loving God do such a thing? But if it does, it just means you don't understand it yet. And that's good too. Because that means you've acknowledged that miracles do not need to make sense. In fact, most of the time, they don't. In fact, it's clear that it's a miracle when it doesn't. That's one of the things that a lot of people have a problem with. They are constantly trying to make everything make sense. Of Steipler Gaon, alav ha-shalom, that earlier today my son mentioned. It's extraordinary how a man of a hundred and four years old lived a full life of miracles in our time. For anyone who doesn't know, he was one of the Gedolei HaDor and

1:45:52Someone that was, there's no words to describe how amazing he was, how holy he was. He sanctified his body to such an extent that for 80 years, 80 years, he did not eat bread during the week. He only ate it on Shabbat, and even on Shabbat, how much could he possibly eat? He was this thin. His whole life, he slept on a bed made out of cartons, made out of nothing, made out of milk crates and... You have some videos of him. People coming to visit him, you see his bed, his little table, the whole thing, the whole house. Maybe five bucks. People would give him millions. He had a yeshiva. He had a kollel of 4,000 students. 4,000 students in his kollel, not somebody else's. Just the salaries, just the salaries alone, amounted to a minimum of four to five million shekels a month.

1:46:54He paid more than the average kollel. He paid more than the average salary, but he himself removed his life away from materialism to such an extent it was beyond anyone else's comprehension. Just weeks before he died, he went to a doctor. Months before he died, he went to a doctor and... It said that the doctor was checking him. Checking a 104-year-old man is not exactly easy. Maybe this hurts, maybe that hurts. And the doctor checks him, and he says, "For the love, the fact that you're alive is a miracle." And then he saw that the Rav mumbled something. He says, "Hold on, what'd you say?" He says, "You too." The fact that you're alive is also a miracle. He says, what do you mean? I'm healthy. I work out. I'm this and I'm that and I'm this. He goes, you can eat whatever you want. You can eat bananas. You can eat a banana peel with poison on it. You can run. You can jog. You can sleep all day. None of that matters. There is no such thing as anything that's other than Hashem. The fact that you're alive is purely a miracle.

1:48:21Hashem decides each day whether you're going to exist or not. That's a miracle. The fact that the Creator of the world, the King of Kings, the Creator of all creation, decided to even think about you in order for you to exist each day, each moment, each second—past, present, and future—is a miracle. That's an Ish Kadosh. That's a person who has removed himself from this world to the highest extent you can and... For him, living to 104 years old or living to 10, it was the same. It's all a miracle. How do you become an Ish Kadosh? You start understanding you need to spend more time learning about Hashem's Torah, learning about the One that creates all miracles, the One that creates everything. Whether you acknowledge it's a miracle or not, then other things. I spoke to an Ish Kadosh just today, it's my Rav, and he asked me a question.

1:49:25He asked me, "When is the shipping date of something we sent out?" and I told him, "It's going to be on January 2nd." January 2nd. Now, when I said January 2nd, all of you understood what I meant, right? What did the Ish Kadosh say? "What's January?" In his mind, there's no such thing as January. Why? That belongs to the Christians and... Never spent any time learning that stuff. It's only Jewish months. January is not in his vocabulary. Why? He's a tzaddik. So, my dear friends, you have to understand that all of these things, they're not far from you. As far as it seems that they are, it's not far from you. It's not impossible for you. The Greeks, yimach shemam, come and... wanted to remove this concept from your life. They said, "Listen, the Torah is wonderful. It has good stories. It has intellect. It talks about different subjects. It can help character development. It's intellectually stimulating. Great! Let's just study it with history, with architecture, with math, with science, like all the other subjects." Which means, take the Torah and remove God from it. And

1:50:57That's what we do each time. We don't believe in a miracle. That's what the modern Orthodox way is. Also, they're trying to humanize God. They're trying to personify Him. They're trying to make sense of Him. It needs to make sense. Many of these modern Orthodox types of teachers, not all of them obviously, but many of them that I've seen are Yeah, you know, when they talk about things that are miraculous, that are beyond nature, beyond the norm, beyond our understanding, if you want to believe that type of Kabbalah stuff, sometimes they even go to the extent of making fun of it. There are some who call themselves rabbis that make fun of things like this, whether it be the Zohar or other types of mystical teachings. Trying to understand today is that there is no such thing as mystical. It's all the same in the eyes of the same Creator. If you doubt it, you have a problem. Any questions?

1:52:14exists. That's not logical. That's not something that you need too much logic for. You have to understand that everything came from something, just like you understand that before I was here, I was somewhere else, just like you understand that this book didn't just explode and become a book. It doesn't require too much thinking to understand that everything has to have a source, except the Source itself. So the easiest way to understand the Creator is that the Creator doesn't have a creator is the fact that you look at something called your DNA. Now, if you look at this sefer, for example, or sefer Torah, or any book for that matter, if I told you that there was a certain explosion or some lightning or something happened and exploded a bunch of ink, somehow it made ink come together Made all different colors come together, different oils come together, water, oil, this and that. Made a bunch of ink. And then it cut a bunch of trees. Cut a bunch of trees. You'd say, ah, I don't know, maybe it's possible. Who knows if you do it enough times? But if I told you, it's not. But let's say it is.

1:53:27I'm sure some statistician is going to tell me, "Yeah, it's one in a zillion and a half chances." Fine. Let's say it's possible. If I told you that all of that just happened—that the tree became paper and the ink became ink and they came together—you'd say, "Maybe it's a little more difficult, but nonetheless, let's say it's possible." If I told you they didn't only come together, they actually ended up drawing certain things and creating comprehensive words, it becomes less and less possible. Not only comprehensive words—comprehensive words that make sense, one after another, and actually paragraphs that make sense and fit each other, with exclamation points and beginnings and ends, and so on. Little by little, you realize that this is beyond... anything that you can imagine as far as the remote possibility. Now, why do I mention all of this? It's because your DNA, which is the instruction set inside your body, has much more information that's more precise than the siddur. How much more information? If you took the information that's written on the DNA and

1:54:52you stretched it out with the same letter size as a siddur, same size—not the big letters, not small. You know, same normal readable size. And you stretched out all of the DNA words. The words would reach from here all the way to the outside of our galaxy, meaning it's a little more than the siddur. And all of that DNA, if it has one tiny error and ...you and I cannot exist with even one error. When I talk about hundreds of errors, one error—that's all written inside your DNA. And your DNA is part of other things that also have instructions. So, in essence, you have an enormous instruction set inside you that is beyond comprehension, really. It's beyond comprehension to really understand it. It's not possible because to understand something that can stretch that long, all the way beyond our galaxy, to even understand how big our galaxy is. To understand that something like this could even happen, you realize it cannot happen by happenstance, cannot happen in a logical way. But that makes you just one of the tiny creations that this Creator made, so you don't need to understand the Creator per se and...

1:56:04You can understand the creation and already realize that the creation itself is so extraordinary, it speaks very highly of the Creator, right? You are obligated to know that God exists, and this is one of the ways that you could actually know that God exists. You believe that God exists simply because you know that everything came from nothing. But to know that God exists, you could know that God exists through His creation. For example, in Parashat Beshalach, it actually tells you exactly what you just said. To know and to believe, how do you get there? It's actually an instruction set. how to get there, how to get from believing to knowing, and to boot into having faith in all of it. After Am Yisrael crossed the Sea of Reeds miraculously, Hashem split the ocean. This was one of the big miracles we talked about at the beginning of this shiur and...

1:57:21After they crossed the ocean, Hashem made it so that it's not only beyond logic to explain the miracle, but it's beyond logic to give it any other justification other than it being a huge miracle. Why? Because, first and foremost, He split the ocean. That itself doesn't make any sense. It's obviously something beyond nature, unlike what this other rabbi said when he thought there was a tsunami or something. Anyway, after that, He allowed the Jews to cross, but the floor of the ocean—the Midrash and several other sources mention this—was not exactly flat. It goes down, so it's like an upside-down mountain. Hashem knew that this would be difficult for them, and on top of that, it was wet and very hard to travel with millions of people. So He made it all flat and He made it all hard. they all crossed, and on top of it, since it was a long road—it wasn't like five minutes—it was a long road. He made special fruit trees come out of the ground, and they were eating and drinking. Actually, pure water came out of the ocean; the sea salt became pure.

1:58:35and if you read the midrashim in Me'am Loez and also in the midrashim about Pesach, the Haggadah, it's very beautiful stuff. Anyway, you see that they saw miracles, but even more so what made them convinced that the God of Israel is not only God, but He's the God of Israel. The fact that they all crossed that way. But as soon as the Egyptians came, some collapsed entirely. On top of that, to make sure that they're all at rest and not worried, that they're never going to have to experience this again, He made sure that all of the Egyptians, with the exception of Paroh, drowned. All of their jewels came up to shore, so they took all of their money. Everyone became very wealthy and and all of the Egyptians died. So to show that this is obviously by design. So after all of this happened, this is the pasuk, what it says. So first and foremost it says, and Am Yisrael saw. Am Yisrael saw the hand of Hashem.

1:59:50how it inflicted upon Egypt and the people feared Hashem, and they believed in Hashem and in Moshe, His servant. So here is a secret instruction set of how to get from nothing to everything. First and foremost, it says that Am Yisrael saw, meaning first acknowledge that God exists. Acknowledge that God is in control. acknowledged that God runs the world, runs the universe, runs our life, runs our neighbor's life, runs our parnassah, runs our zivug, runs our chochmah, runs everything. Everything is God; there's nothing outside of God. There is no other creation other than God. Nothing else. The Zohar HaKadosh says before there was the world, there was just God, nothing else. He had to minimize Himself to make room for anything else. But in reality, nothing else exists other than God. So first it says they saw, they saw the hand of God, meaning they acknowledged that God runs the world. So first and foremost, we realize DNA is a perfect example that God exists. The fact that your eye is so miraculous that everything it sees, it records and never forgets it. It's always in your subconscious. It's always there. It's always recorded. There is actually a lubricant system that cleans your eye and

2:01:06Every time a little speck of dust comes in, it never goes dry and never runs out. It always regenerates. There is also protection of different things to close your eye, and a reflex that's faster than you can think. Something like a little bug that you can't even see, you can't even acknowledge. If you're running or jogging, you can't even acknowledge this bug flying straight toward your eye, but your eye knows, your eye knows, and your eye closes itself right in time. So, this special camera that you have two of is a miracle of its own. You acknowledge the Creator's creation and realize how great the Creator is. We see the hand of God. After you see that the hand of God runs the world, after you see how much you depend on Him, it says you should immediately be afraid. Why should you be afraid? Why should acknowledgement of God lead to fear immediately and not love? The reason why is because as soon as you realize that everything that you have depends on God, including the air you breathe, including the food you eat, including those donuts for $3.50 each, including all of that depends on Him. If you're not afraid, you're either crazy or you're not realizing what just happened. If you're not afraid, you're either crazy...

2:02:35Which means you're either put in a situation where you don't have to do any mitzvot, which would take you to a crazy house and leave you there, or you don't realize what just happened. And the reason why, my friends, is because when you realize what it means to be starving, you'll understand the pain that you are avoiding by eating. Shema Yisrael we say every day. We say it every day twice and then sometimes before we go to sleep, right? So now it's a little mini version of Gehinnom. A little mini version of Gehinnom. How is it a mini version of Gehinnom? It says what happens when Hashem gets upset? What happens when Hashem gets upset? Hashem says He stops bringing you food and everyone starts starving, and there's no food. So, imagine the last time you fasted, and... Hashem went against you. He got upset. He got angry. What does it mean? He stops the Shamayim. He stops the rain. And there's not going to be anything growing. Everything will perish. Everything will die. And we get to starve. You know what it feels like to starve? Fast for two days. Fast for two days. See what happens. Fast for a day and a half.

2:04:03You used to, one day, probably do it a few times a year, young people. Try it now, and a few others do it for a day and a half, do it for two. Someone that says, "I'm gonna fast for three days," they punch him in the face and they force him indeed. Why? You can't survive normally. But the biggest thing is, you can and if you are a... that level. But you're obligated, you're obligated to force the person to do it. If someone says, "I'm not going to sleep for three days," you hit him hard enough to make him go to sleep. Why? Because it says if you don't sleep for three days, you die. The point is, if you want to know what it means, what you read every single day, what it means to starve. And see how hard it is. So the fact that you depend on this hand of God to feed you should make you afraid. Because if it didn't come, if it didn't work, if it didn't rain, if the bugs ate all of it, if the bugs ruined all of it, and so on and so forth, and

2:05:14Won't have food, a basic requirement of life, even more. So you don't even have to wait for food. Hold your breath for a minute and a half. That's what it feels like not to breathe. Imagine every single breath you have depends on the same hand. You want to see what it feels like to not have God? Okay, hold your breath until you pass out. Hold it, don't breathe. You don't want Him? You don't like Him? Fine. Don't breathe. Stop using it. There, it's free. Don't use it. You don't believe in Him? Stop breathing. We'll see how fast you believe in God. You don't need to see God to believe in Him. You just see His creation and see how much you depend on Him. So, the first time it says we saw God, we saw the hand of God, and we immediately became scared. Why? Because we realized how much we depend on this big hand. And... and then it says, after we saw His hand and we got scared, then we can say we believe in Him. Why does it have to be see Him, then fear Him, then believe in Him? Because if we believed before we feared, we're not believing in the same God. Without Yirat Shamayim, there is no God of Israel. If you're not afraid of God,

2:06:33You don't believe in Him. If you're not afraid, you don't believe. You believe in something else. You have the yirat Hashem, the fear of Hashem; that's His treasure. So... It says here they believed in God after they acknowledged Him, after they feared, and they believed. And then it says they believed in Moshe. Why did they believe in Moshe? Why is Moshe even in this facility? He says because you're not gonna speak to Me, but you are gonna speak to My rabbis. In order to understand My message as the Creator, you have to have the rabbis, you have to have the sages, you have to have the messengers that are going to tell you what's right and what's wrong. And sometimes you're not gonna like what they say, but all they're doing is repeating what I said. So when we acknowledge that God is the Creator, God is everything, God is good, and nothing else can come in between that, then that's all the logic you need. Now, as far as seeing the Creator, again, like I said, if He had an image, He wouldn't be God... what's right and what's wrong. And sometimes you're not going to like what they say, but all they're doing is repeating what I said. So when we acknowledge that God is the Creator, God is everything, God is good, and nothing else can come in between that, then that's all the logic you need. Now, as far as seeing the Creator, again, like I said, if He had an image, He wouldn't be God, and

2:07:50Because the image would limit Him. It's one of the 13 principles of faith. These are the 13 principles of faith that the Rambam wrote—13 foundational principles that must be believed in order for you to believe in the God of Israel. Anything otherwise makes a person a kofer be'ikar, a heretic in Torah. One of them is the belief that there's reward and punishment. Meaning that if you're righteous, you get rewarded, and if you do bad in the eyes of Hashem, you get punished. Anyone that believes otherwise, like the Reform, the Conservative, and sometimes the Modern Orthodox, it's kefirah in Hashem. To believe that you can dress the way you feel like because everyone else is not modest, it's kefirah in Hashem. To believe you can violate Shabbat because it's not so comfortable for you, it's kefirah in Hashem. The difference between a tzaddik and a rasha... Small, it's very small. They both may be nice people in the eyes of men, but one's a tzaddik and one's a rasha in the eyes of Hashem. One believes that Hashem runs the world, and one believes that he needs to help Hashem and needs to work on Shabbat to make extra money. That's the difference. That's the only difference. One thinks that he needs to get special leniency to do special things that are not allowed for the rest of the Jews, and...

2:09:16That's the difference. So when you understand what the Torah says, the basics of it, you understand that it's not all going to make sense. It's going to make some sense. Of course, it's a very intellectually stimulating document, and it's never-ending. But don't expect it to make perfect sense to a point where you have it all in a box and it never changes. It's constantly growing. The more you learn, the more your understanding expands. It becomes part of you. And that was what the Maccabees were all about. The Maccabees knew that some of the things that were happening then didn't necessarily make sense. That the Resha'im were taking over, that people who used to be religious became atheists, became Yevanim. None of it really made sense. They said, it doesn't need to make sense. We have the Torah, we have five people, we're going to go fight the millions. Why? That's the truth. Next question. Yeah. How do they communicate? Obviously, it's not through messages, through prophets, or is it different now than it was back then?

2:10:42so it's the God of Israel never changed. In chapter 3 of Malachi, the Navi Malachi, who was one of the last prophets, says, "I am God, I didn't change," meaning God didn't change. Now, as far as the prophets though, the prophets did change. Not only to change people, but it changed the level of prophecy. The Rambam in Shemonah Perakim, chapter 7, talks about the difference in levels of prophecy between all of the prophets and Moshe Rabbeinu. The Rambam says that one of the 13 principles of faith that he wrote was that Moses was the prophet of all prophets, meaning top of the top, higher than everyone else. What's the difference between him and everyone else? So first and foremost, we need to understand that Moses was the only one that spoke to God like you and I speak. What does that mean? It means that he spoke to God while he was awake.

2:11:43He spoke to God anytime he wanted. He didn't have to do any special ritual. He didn't have to wait. He didn't have to call Him back later, leave a message. Simple. You and I speak, he spoke. That's it. That's how it says, Hashem Yitbarach Himself testified to this in the Torah. Everyone else, on the other hand, whether it be Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, Yehoshua Bin-Nun, Yeshayahu, Zechariah, all of the prophets, everyone else had a different level of prophecy, which meant that they were not awake. ...so the different levels could be a dream-like state. Also, Yosef was a prophet, so he spoke to Hashem through dreams. Prophets spoke to God through meditation; they would meditate, and their soul would leave their body, in essence, or would get to such a high level that they would speak to God that way. They still weren't awake. They were all sitting or laying down, but they would meditate to a level that's beyond what we can do, obviously. They would meditate; some would actually have epilepsy, and...

2:12:47Which means that, in essence, to the average person, it would look like they lost their mind. They seemed to be having some sort of seizure, but in reality, their neshama was going to a different state. So, it was a different level of speaking to Hashem when they were not awake. In so many words, the common denominator between all of them was that they were not awake. They were either sleeping or not as alert as we are in our day-to-day lives. But also, the level of prophecy... was different. Meaning, if you look at the prophecy that Moshe Rabbeinu got versus the prophecy of Yechezkel, one of the last prophets, it's very different. How do we know it's different? If you see the words of the Five Books of Moses, what Moshe wrote, it's relatively clear language. Whatever he says could be understood without too much difficulty. But if you look at what Yechezkel wrote Some of the other prophets wrote in a way that's very difficult to understand, and without commentary, it's impossible to comprehend. It doesn't mean that to them it wasn't clear. To us, it's not clear what they got. What they saw is not clear to the rest of us. It's not clear, and the reason why is because the Rambam writes in the Shemoneh Perakim, it says because it was the level of middot (character traits). The more someone perfected their character traits, the less separation they have between them and God, and...

2:14:13Each time someone has a flaw in his character traits, Creates a separation—hypothetically, a wall—between him and God. If he's angry, there's one wall. If he's cheap, there's another wall. If he's, I don't know, whatever—aggressive, another wall. If he's, you know, something, if he says so on and so forth, his walls, his walls, his walls, his walls. So each one of the prophets, obviously, they're all holy, and they still had certain things; they weren't perfect, but each one of them... If you go from Moshe Rabbeinu all the way to the last prophets, there was more separation between them and Hashem, and therefore the prophecy was more difficult to understand. Moshe Rabbeinu, on the other hand, perfected himself. He became the most perfect human being that ever existed, and that's why he felt, even though he was the most humble man that ever lived, he still felt comfortable asking Hashem. To show him His glory. What does it mean, "Show me Your glory?" Show me everything. Because I got to the highest level, and really what's separating us is the equivalent of a glass wall. I can see through it. Show me everything. Hashem says, this is the highest level that you can get to as a human. To see any more, you have to leave the world. Okay. I'm not a prophet. I know that.

2:15:43Maybe he's a prophet. No, no, go ahead. No. Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, so it's all the prophets. It Okay, let's break it down. Let's break it down. There are two possible options as far as good and bad, but there are multiple ways to get to the bad or the good. Meaning the... There are two possible options as far as good and bad, but there are multiple ways to get to the bad or the good, meaning the good being, you know, Michelle comes in a nice way, bad being problems. But how the problems are going to be and how the good is going to be, that's obviously has countless options. Like I explained before, Hashem has an infinite amount of ways. Now, the problem is that for the good to be, we've run out of time, because for the good to be, everyone has to do teshuva and...

2:16:52and bad, good being, you know, Moshiach comes in a nice way, bad being problems. But how the problems are going to be and how the good is going to be, that obviously has countless options. Like I explained before, Hashem has an infinite amount of ways. Now, the problem is that for the good to be, we've run out of time. Because for the good to be, everyone has to do teshuva and The vast majority of Am Yisrael has to do teshuva, and we've run out of time for all that. So even though, of course, there are always miracles that are available, and I'm not doing God's math, I'm not limiting God, chas v'shalom. But according to everything that I understood, everything that I've learned from much, much greater rabbis than I, like the Vilna Gaon and all of the people that have talked about the end of days...

2:17:54Outside of something that's beyond anything I've ever heard, good is not possible. A good way is not possible, meaning Moshiach shows up and everyone sings kumbaya. That's not possible now. So that's it, we've run out of time. We're out of time now. The bad part is the bad could happen in multiple ways. There are multiple prophecies of the end of days regarding what the bad could be. The most common prophecy is the one that talks about Gog U'Magog, the war of all wars, the war that was already talked about during creation. When Hashem created the world, this war was mentioned. Only one other war in history was bigger, and that’s the war between Amalek and Am Yisrael in the desert. Because that was unlike what most people believe. If you read the Midrash, it says that it was a spiritual war. It wasn't just swords and spears. Anyway, the sun stopped in the sky, all types of amazing things.

2:19:05War that's bigger is gonna is that other than that Gog u'Magog is a big war, and that war, according to the Sages, will last a very short period of time—only nine minutes. Some say a few minutes longer, some say a minute less. But nonetheless, nine minutes, I think, is the common opinion, which back then didn't make any sense. Now it makes all the sense in the world because that means a nuclear war. If you read chapter 14 of Zechariah, the Prophet Zechariah, you'll see that it defines exactly what it says about defines what happens to people in a nuclear war. Their skin melts, their eyes pour out like liquid, and so on and so forth—a lot of really, really horrible things. Just read it yourself. You don't have to listen to me; read it yourself. It will take you a few minutes and probably a few nights of nightmares. But nonetheless, it's there. You could read it and read it with some commentary so you understand what's happening and... That's one of the commentaries. Another possibility that I'm aware of, again, I don't know all the options, but another possibility is an earthquake. No, no, no, an earthquake. Earthquake, earthquake, earthquake. All of these options involve a lot of people dying, like watching two-thirds of the world.

2:20:25At the end, even more so, right in the office, if you're talking about eight billion people in the world, right off the top, six billion people die. So that's already a nightmare of nightmares, and then the two billion that are left, not all of them will survive. So again, this is not exactly good news. It's like, again, I'm sure, already starting at the end. So that's option two: an earthquake, go, go, go, or earthquakes. That's another one. Some people say it's also a star colliding, which is what these Nibiru people talk about, and... there's been a star that entered our galaxy, and they're saying, this is it, it doesn't make sense, whatever. So there are several different types of natural disasters that can be. But the most common prophecy, the one with the most amount of information available, the one I’m most aware of at least, is the war. To get about that, it makes the most amount of sense because we just had a whole shiur about how things don’t necessarily have to make sense, but nonetheless, the...

2:21:25The war is here. It started already a while ago. It's not something that's not happening. It has happened. It could very well be that Hashem does many things. One thing that I do know is that we don't have to worry about Gog uMagog, we don't have to worry about earthquakes, we don't have to worry about planets, and... None of it. The reason why I don't do too many shiurim about the details of all the prophecies of the end of days is because the Rambam said that those types of things don't necessarily create yirat shamayim or ahavat Hashem. To talk about all those things doesn't help you with yirat shamayim or with love of Hashem. And the reason why... Yeah, of course, some people like the urgency, some people like the, you know, different possibilities and so on. But the problem is that the common denominator with a lot of people who love to talk about the Mashiach on a regular basis is that it may not happen in the time frame that they insert into their mind. Everyone who talks about the Mashiach on a regular basis puts a time frame...

2:22:35That's logical to them. They say Mashiach is coming next week, Mashiach is coming next month, Mashiach is coming next year, Mashiach is coming five years from now, Mashiach is coming by 2000. They put in their mind a certain time frame, which is a very dangerous thing. And the reason why it's dangerous is because if it doesn't happen according to your logic, it could destroy your whole system. So that's why the Rambam says you shouldn't necessarily focus too much on it. Now, same token, one of the 13 principles of faith that the Rambam wrote is that you're obligated to believe that the Mashiach will come any day. So while you're obligated to believe that he's going to come any day, he's also telling you not to spend too much time discussing what will be when the Mashiach comes. Why? Because it's irrelevant when he comes. It's irrelevant; the fact that he's coming, you should be ready and But it's irrelevant. Why is it irrelevant? Because you could also have the real Mashiach that we've been waiting for since creation, or you could have your own personal one. Your own personal one means death. Your own personal one means that you die and you go up to Shamayim, and you have to pay the bill. The same bill you would have to pay if the Mashiach showed up. Same bill.

2:23:53Teshuvah. No, the reality is you have to pay. You did teshuvah, you didn't do teshuvah. What did you do? Are you ready? Are you learning Torah every day or once a week? Are you modest, or are you not modest? Are you still wearing a wig? Okay, we'll show you what we do with the wig. Are you still not keeping Shabbat? Okay, well, come, come. We'll show you what we do with people who don't keep Shabbat. "But the rabbi said this." Good, good. He said it. Good. Come on. So, you come. You want to argue with him? Fine, go ahead. We'll show you. Mashiach is here, call it whatever you want. It's Beit Din of Shamayim. That's why it doesn't matter. Mashiach comes, doesn't come, doesn't make a difference. The reality is the Gemara says that most people will not be happy. The Gemara says most people will not be happy when the Mashiach arrives. Most people will not be saved. Most people will not be in a good condition. Why? Because most people are still in Greece. Most people are celebrating Chanukah just by lighting candles, not by doing teshuvah. Most people, including you and me, are so materialistic. They prefer Mashiach not come, and

2:24:59Most people are still teaching you that it's okay to drive on Shabbat. Most people are still telling you that it's okay to not be modest because no one else is modest. Most people are telling you that it's okay to wear a wig even if there's avodah zarah on it because, don't worry, everybody does it, it's okay. Most people are telling you that you should spend a lot of time chasing money because, yeah, you'll give some tzedakah once in a while. Most people are telling you that if you show up to shiur once or twice a week, you're doing great. Most people are telling you you... You are wonderful. You don't have to do anything. Who's this rabbi? I told you, you need to be truthful about what you're talking about. You're great. You're a wonderful person. You're the leader of our kehillah. Most people are lying to your face. Most people hate you; you just don't know it. They pretend like they like you because they tell you it's tzedakah. They tell you you're wonderful, but in reality, they're lying to you. Because you have work to do, I'm not saying you're not wonderful. You may very well be wonderful, but still, that doesn't mean you have to think you're finished. If you were finished, you wouldn't be here. Rav Steinman was finished; he's not here. He was a tzaddik. We should only feel bad for ourselves; we lost a living Sefer Torah. We're not feeling bad for him. He's in Gan Eden. He's enjoying himself with the rest of the tzaddikim.

2:26:25He's in a great situation right now. All the work that he did for 104 years is finally paying off. He paid off in this world and is paying off in the next world eternally. For him, we don't feel bad. We feel bad for us. We just lost a Sefer Torah, a living Torah. Why? I'm gonna be a person... Mashiach is a person. Mashiach is a living person just like you and me. It's kidai he's among us. He's a living person. He's not a god. He's not a deity. He's not an angel. He's a living person of flesh and blood just like you and me, no different. Differences is holy difference is he's a descendant of King David which none of us know if we are if we're not. Difference is he's chosen by Hashem to be the Messiah. Difference is that Eliyahu HaNavi is gonna come three days before he comes and say he's the Messiah. He doesn't know he's the Messiah until Hashem decides to let him know.

2:27:30So the person that's gonna be the Mashiach of the generation is not gonna know he's the Mashiach until he's the Mashiach. Just like we don't know he's the Mashiach, he doesn't know he's the Mashiach, but he's a hundred percent a living person. He's a hundred percent a regular human being. He does not have any special powers right now. He does not have anything extraordinary. He's a regular person, but a tzaddik obviously. Obviously, he's fulfilling the will of Hashem. He's an extraordinary talmid chacham. He's not coming from the clubs. He's not coming from, you know, Harlem, you know, from selling t-shirts. Obviously, he's a tzaddik. Yes, so the line is obviously very holy. He's following the entire Torah. I'm sure he's, you know, one of the giants of the generation and so on. But as far as flesh and blood, he's a hundred percent flesh and blood. There is nothing, nothing, zero different. Chazal specifically say he's a regular person. Only the Christians made the Messiah divine. a god. Judaism says nothing about that. Yeah, no, that's Christianity. Judaism believes it's a regular person. Also, another, I believe, I saw a lecture with Rabbi Mizrachi about a year ago, where he basically said somebody from a great community in Long Island arranged to get a menorah which was stolen from... The Vatican. Yes, the Vatican. Okay. And they arranged... and it didn't work. Maybe...

2:28:56didn't work. It didn't work. Hashem didn't want it to work. There was one guy that had a lot of money and a few connections, and he tried to negotiate with the Vatican, with somebody that worked in the Vatican, to steal the menorah that they stole from the Beit HaMikdash and is hidden in their basements with the rest of the things from the Beit HaMikdash. It almost went through, but a few people opened their mouths and... I didn't go through, so logically it didn't go through because people did a few things that were wrong. The State of Israel got involved and ruined the whole plan. That's logically. Realistically, the real part is that Hashem didn't want it to happen. That's the real part: Hashem didn't want it to happen. Why? This business. This business—the more we understand what God is, the fewer questions we have. So when someone really, truly understands that God is everything and you'll have fewer questions. It doesn't mean you become a piece of stone. It doesn't mean you become stupid. It doesn't mean you become Christian, where you're not allowed to ask questions. You can ask a million questions. But there are certain questions where if you don't know the answer, you automatically know that it's not the Torah's fault, it's yours. The Torah is not lacking. God is not lacking. You are.

2:30:20So most people look for shortcuts. They want some people to sometimes text message me, asking, "What was Noach's wife's name? What was the language that Adam HaRishon spoke? What was Moshe Rabbeinu's wife's name? How many kids did he have?" Like, what? You can't just look it up? Buy a book. Buy a book and read it. Why do you want everything to be easy? Everyone wants everything easy. They want Google to wrap everything up for them. Everyone wants everything easy. Why can't you read a book? Why can't you open a Midrash, read a few pages, and get the answer? That's toiling in Torah. If you're looking for easy Torah, you still didn't get anything. You still don't know anything. If you're looking for easy answers, you still have no clue what's happening. You're supposed to toil with Torah, meaning dig, dig, dig, dig. If you didn't get it, you're not done. Keep going. I'll give you a huge... He does so much; he is worth a million dollars. I heard it from Rav Matisyahu Salomon, but the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch says that Moshe Rabbeinu, when he came down from Mount Sinai, Hashem gave him the Torah. What does it mean "Hashem gave the Torah"? It was like a download. What does it mean?

2:31:37Midrash says that Moshe Rabbeinu was on Mount Sinai for 40 days and 40 nights. Every day and every night, he learned Torah. He forgot everything. You learn the whole day with whose chavruta? Hashem. You learn the whole day with Hashem. No sleeping, no eating, no drinking, nothing. You learn the whole day. Rabbi Akiva said this. Everybody said this. Right, no, right, Shabbat, no. Everything. You learn everything the whole day. Imagine. I can't even imagine such a thing. That's why I'm not Moshe Rabbeinu. But anyway, Moshe Rabbeinu studied chavruta with Hashem. Next morning, forgot everything. Okay, start again. Again. Gemara, Mishnah, Halachot, Shulchan Aruch. Stories. Next morning, forgot. After 40 days, he tells, the Midrash says, Moshe Rabbeinu says to Hashem, I know nothing. I don't know anything. I learned 40 days, 40 nights, I don't know anything. I forgot everything. I don't know anything. And Hashem gives him the Torah, gives it to him.

2:32:50So why give it to her? You tried. You tried. You tried for 40 days and 40 nights. You tried. Now, I'm gonna give it to you. That completes what we started in the beginning of this. All your mitzvot, all the things you're supposed to do, your teshuva, your conversion, your marriage, your raising kids, your aliyah, all the things you need to do. You really can't do it. That's what the Yehudi in you says. I can't do all of it. I know I can't do it. It's too big. You're God. I'm nothing. I'm nothing. If Moshe Rabbeinu says I'm nothing, I'm even less than nothing. I know I can't do it. You're God. Thank you. What? Thank you. Thank you for letting me do it. Yeah, I know I can't do it. But thank you for letting me do it. Why thank you? Because I tried. I thought I did. All I did is I tried. All you get judged for is how much you tried. If you try, you'll succeed. Why? Because Hashem was doing it anyway.

2:33:58Hashem's doing it anyway. But also, no, you get up to shamayim and you can't tell them, "No, no, I tried." They'll say, "You liar. You didn't try. You were driving on Shabbat every Shabbat. We're trying? We're trying? No, no, I tried. I tried learning." What tried? You were watching the game every day instead of learning. "No, no, I tried." For what? "I tried." Wait, you tried? You slept nine hours a day. The kids sleep less. You slept nine hours a day. Dead people sleep less than you. You tried what? Tried? what'd you try? Where'd you try the enchantment at that? What'd you try? Wait, when did you try? So, here's your whole life? Five seconds, I'm gonna show your whole life. Where'd you try exactly? Show us. Show us. Where'd you try? I tried. There's no lying in Shamayim. That's why I keep telling you guys, you don't have to worry about Mashiach. You still worry about right now. Right now, you have to worry about teshuva. Right now. What are you doing now? Are you really trying? If Shamayim called you right now, baby? Shamayim called you right now. Me just saying it. I'm scared. Don't call me. But if they called. If they called. And I said, show us what you're trying. Can you say, I tried everything? Can you say it? Can you sign? You have to sign, by the way. You don't have to sign in Shamayim. You have to sign. You have to sign on your own decree. You have to sign. I agree. Send me over here. Send me over here. Can you sign? I tried everything.

2:35:22Right now, right now, if you think about it, you go home tonight. If you might say, "Hashem, look in Olam Habah, I tried everything." Can you say, "I tried as much as I tried chasing the million dollars. I tried honoring Hashem as much as I tried chasing the two million dollars. I tried learning Torah." Much as I tried chasing the three million dollars, I tried working on shalom bayit, serving Hashem, sanctifying Hashem, kavod Hashem, honor of Hashem, everything Hashem, as much as I tried chasing the four million dollars. I tried working on Kiddush Hashem as much as I tried chasing the five million dollars. I honored Hashem and I believed in Him and I said Modeh Ani when I said Modeh Ani. I actually acknowledge that it's a shame. I'm with Danny, too. Can anyone sign off? I know I don't. I don't think I can. I'm trying really hard, guys, but I'm scared. Because I'm trying so hard. I'm scared. I don't know. Don't call me yet. I need a little, few more minutes.

2:36:44No, not at all. Not at all. Goyim also have a major purpose in the world. Obviously, everyone's purpose is to honor Hashem. Everyone's purpose is to serve Hashem. Some people serve Hashem by doing good. Some people serve Hashem by doing bad. Either way, everyone is serving Hashem. So as far as the Goyim, some of them, their mission is to become Jews. Some of them, their mission is to become Jews, to become holy Jews. Some of them, their mission is to become holy Goyim, to become holy non-Jews that are also going to have a share in the World to Come. The Prophet says that those holy Goyim, those people that are considered "chasidei umot ha'olam," are going to each have a share in the World to Come. When the Messiah comes, each tzaddik, each righteous Jew, is going to have 2,800 of them. 700 for each corner of tzitzit that he wore because if he didn't wear tzitzit, he should question whether he's going to actually see much. Yeah, but he wore tzitzit, so he's going to have 700 for each corner, as it says in the Prophets, ten representatives of each of the 70 nations. So that's 700 out of each; they are going to grab his tzitzit, the corner of tzitzit. For this, four tzitzit, that's 2,800 for each person, each righteous Jew.

2:38:10survives the Messiah because he's righteous, obviously not because he has money, not because he's good-looking, not because he's smart, not because he's funny, but because he's righteous. He survives and can have 2,800 goyim as students set to teach him. It says in the verse, "Our fathers and our forefathers, the goyim, went on; our fathers and our forefathers lied to us. Now that we know that your God and your Torah are real, and..." This is, by the way, a verse in the Torah that the goyim can't explain, that Christianity can't explain. How can you explain that the goyim are prophesized to say that their fathers lied to them and the Jews are right? They don't explain that verse. They skip that one. But the point is, the point is, it says in the Torah and the Tanach, So, it says in the Prophets that 2,800 goyim are going to come to the righteous Jews, at least for each tzitzit. If you wear more than one tzitzit, you'll have more. But the point is, you're going to have to teach them. You have to teach them everything you know. Now, if you don't know anything, if all you know is what you learned today and that's it, and...

2:39:18You have to be a problem. You have to learn a lot more than just today. You have to learn yesterday and the day before and the day before and the day before and tomorrow and the next day and the next day and the next day. You have to keep learning. Also, you should know, one thing that's very scary—I'm very scared of it—is that when you go up to Shamayim, I know you guys think I talk a lot, but I'm very scared of this. When you go up to Shamayim, you have to say Divrei Torah for 40 days straight. No jokes. Joking, no jokes. 40 days. No time, no time in this world relevant to that word, but you have to say 40 days' worth of Torah, meaning continuously new things. You can't repeat the same story. "Oh, I'll be a kippah. Oh, yeah, I told you guys this story already. Let me think about another one. I told you guys that story already. Ah, I said six times I said that story. Ah, I don't know that many stories." So let me finish off with something to cheer you guys up a little bit and... explain to you the difference between a tzaddik and a rasha, because today it's hard to tell. It's hard to tell. So, one time there was a guy that was so stingy, so stingy, it was like when $100 would leave his pocket, the Benjamin Franklin would rub his eyes, much like, "Oh wow, I'm out. I'm out." So anyway, this guy was extra, extra stingy, but he had a ton of money. So, anyway, one day...

2:40:46He sees that from Shabbat, it's Thursday. There was some fish that had gone bad already. From Shabbat, it went bad. And his wife wanted to throw it out. "Hey, we don't throw out anything. Bal tashchit. Bal tashchit means you're not allowed to waste." "But it's bad. You have to throw it out." "No, no, no, no, no. Come on, come on. We can't throw it out. I could give it to somebody." "It's bad. It's poisonous." "I'll give it to somebody. Don't worry about it. There's a guy that lives downstairs from us, a homeless guy. He'll be happy to have it." His wife, she's been living with this miser for a few years already, so she knows this guy is so cheap, you know, he's scared to go to the bathroom. She has to buy a new sandwich. So anyway, this guy, Takes the fish and he gives it to the homeless guy. The poor guy doesn't even have a refrigerator. He doesn't have any cabinets or anything. He puts the little fish away. He's used to bad smells. He doesn't know if it's him or the fish. Poor guy, he eats the fish, and you know, later on that day, he eats the fish and dies on the spot.

2:41:55Now this rasha goes downstairs. Oh, he died. Oh, I gotta go to the funeral. He goes to the funeral, he says Kaddish. Then he also does shiva. He says, shiva, seven days. Shiva, da, da, da. After the shiva, he says, look at you. What kind of wife do I have? He tells his wife. What'd I do? Look, look how many mitzvot I did. And you wanted to throw out the fish. Look how many mitzvot I did. I went to the yeshiva. I went to the cemetery. Instead, that's the difference between a tzaddik and a rasha. A tzaddik gives what he would want for himself. He gives what he wants for himself. He wants the truth, he gives the truth. He wants good, he gives good. He understands that God runs the world in a perfect way regardless of whether it makes sense or not. A rasha looks for excuses, ways to get around the system. "Oh, no, no, I don't have mitzvot of this one and that one and this one and that one, so I'm going to make no mitzvot. How? I'm going to give people poison and claim it's kosher. I'm going to give people this and I'm going to make — no, I made a mitzvah, I went to the yeshiva." Yeah, but you killed them. You're the murderer. "No, no, I don't know." They don't see. They don't see the wrong in themselves.

2:43:22They don't see the wrong in themselves. This is Gemara also, Gemara Masechet Yoma. It says a person doesn't see the wrong in himself unless they learn Mussar, unless they do Teshuva on a daily basis. So it all starts with understanding our limitations. It all starts with understanding that miracle is everything. So the end of all of what you need to know is that the biggest miracle of Chanukah is you. You! You're still around. Baruch Hashem. Baruch Adonai l'olam. Amen v'Amen.