Happiness During CORONAVIRUS, SWIMMING NAKED, Holy Child, OPEN MIRACLE - STUMP THE RABBI (44)

0:17I like this song. It makes me think of my kids. ... gonna be happy, son. You gotta be happy. I was so serious, huh? Yeah, yeah... Oh, yeah. You gotta be happy, son. You gotta be happy. I was so serious, huh? Yeah, yeah... What? What? What is that music? A song. A happy song. Don't worry. We'll talk about it too. It's not a show.

1:41What? What? What is that music? A song. A happy song. Don't worry. We'll talk about it too. It's not a show. i'm going to daven. i'm going to daven.

2:45You guys have questions today or is it all me? I have the questions and the answers. Gevalt. What time is it? Wait one minute and we'll start. Let the song finish. Oh yeah, where is it? Where is it? Where is it? Where is it?

3:46Don't be afraid, don't be afraid, people of Israel, don't be afraid. Come on. Okay, you want to get started? Come on. Is it on? The camera? It's okay. We have our weekly shiur of "Stump the Rabbi." Without corona, Yishtabach Shemo, the Kadosh Baruch Hu loves our Torah, so He wants us to continue teaching. Yishtabach Shemo. Today's shiur will be for Refuah Shlema for Rabbanit Levana Bat Sara, Rav Efraim Ben Shulamit, Rabbanit Sara Bat Anat, David Ben Esriah, Doris Bat Jorah, Dvora Bat Mercedes, Esther Bat Zipora, Serach Batya Bat Sara, the community of New Rochelle,

4:55the community in Brooklyn right now that's struggling with this coronavirus. And all of Am Yisrael will have Refuah Shlema, Refuah HaNefesh, Refuah HaGuf. So, uh, the reason why I, uh, played the song is, uh, two reasons. Number one, it's mitzvah mitzvah. Hold on a second, now you're picking to be... So, uh, the reason why I, uh, played the song is, uh, two reasons. Number one, it's mitzvah, mitzvah. Hold on a second, now you're picking to be... Six years you're scaring the lights out of us, now you're gonna be in simcha. And that's the mistake that people make. People make the mistake where they think that just because you talk about yirat shamayim, then you do not have simcha, you don't have happiness. And that's a mistake that a lot of people make. It's the idea of learning Torah, learning about Yirat Shamayim, learning about punishments, learning about rewards once in a while, learning about tzaddikim, learning about Moshe Rabbeinu and Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov. It's all the same Torah. It's all the same Torah, whether it's the issues of Kaf HaKela,

6:06or it's the issues of Moshe Rabbeinu splitting the sea for Am Yisrael after Am Yisrael finally passed the test and had their leader of the tribe of Yehuda, Nachshon ben Aminadav, jump into the sea and put his life in danger to show that he has Emunah and the rest followed. Point being, Rabotai Ikareem, when you're learning Torah, you're supposed to be b'simcha, meaning that it doesn't matter what you're learning when you know this is the word of HaKadosh Baruch Hu. You have the privilege to learn the words of HaKadosh Baruch Hu. That alone, that alone should put you b'simcha, meaning that the whole world could explode for all you care. You have the words of HaKadosh Baruch Hu in front of you. You're already happy. Now you're going to say, wait a minute, okay, but why now? Why now? You know, it could have been last month, two months ago, three months ago, before the disaster struck. And that's exactly the point. You see, the words in this song touched my heart quite a bit. And one of the reasons is because he says, don't be scared. Wait a minute, but we talk about Yirat Shamayim, you're supposed to be scared. Reishit Chochmah, Yirat Hashem.

7:28The beginning of wisdom is fear of Hashem. You're supposed to be scared, right? Yes, you're supposed to be scared, but only from HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Only from HaKadosh Baruch Hu are you supposed to be scared. That's it. Nothing else. You are forbidden from being scared of anything else. It's a sin to be scared of anything else. If Am Yisrael understands that we are supposed to be only scared of HaKadosh Baruch Hu, then surely we're not going to be scared of Corona or Barona or anything else. We're not going to be scared of anything else that's going on in the world, whether the market's up, the market's down, your stocks are up, your stocks are down, your money is up, your money is down, you are this, you are that. It doesn't make a difference. When HaKadosh Baruch Hu tells us, meaning, the beginning of wisdom is fear of HaKadosh Baruch Hu, He also means, it is the most important.

8:31The most important fear, the key fear, the only fear you're supposed to have is the fear of HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Why? Bereishit is how we started the Torah. And the Ramban says over there, "In the beginning" also means with wisdom. With wisdom, the ultimate wisdom. The ultimate wisdom is what He used to create the world. The ultimate wisdom of a person is to show that he is only scared of HaKadosh Baruch Hu and HaKadosh Baruch Hu only. That is the most important message that you're supposed to get from the Torah, and needless to say, from the song itself, where he says, don't be scared. He doesn't mean don't be scared of Hashem. The opposite. Don't be scared of anything else other than HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Because fearing HaKadosh Baruch Hu shows you are wise. Fearing HaKadosh Baruch Hu is fulfilling a mitzvah in the Torah.

9:36Fearing HaKadosh Baruch Hu is the key to understanding the Torah, understanding the purpose of this world. If you are only scared of HaKadosh Baruch Hu, then surely you're going to do His will. Surely you're going to do what He wants you to do, and in essence, you're going to end up getting all of the benefits and the rewards that He has to offer both in this world and the next. Now, when we do not have the right amount of fear in HaKadosh Baruch Hu, it hurts everything else. It's like a domino effect. Suddenly, that emunah that you thought you had is tested. It's tested. Why? Coronavirus. Coronavirus is here. The news is saying it's an epidemic, pandemic, demicdemic, all types of demics. Okay, no, so what are we going to do? Oh, I'm scared, stay in the house, do this, do that. Okay, fine, stay in the house. But what are you going to do with that time? Oh, you know, we're going to stock up with food. Okay, no problem, you're going to stock up with food. Then what are you going to do? Then what are you going to do? Okay, so you stocked up with food, Baruch Hashem, everybody needs to eat. No problem. No, it's not a sin to stock up with food.

10:40want to be home, to be, to be, to be a, uh, uh, careful. That's your—no problem. Let's say your Rav says you have to stay home, your community says you have to stay home, the government says you have to stay home. No problem, fine. What are you going to do with that time? You're going to make more crying videos? Crying to people, stay home, stay home. This is pikuach nefesh. When did you mention HaKadosh Baruch Hu? What are you doing at home? You're watching the news all day. If you're watching the news, it's better off you go outside because corona is much less dangerous than the news. If you're reading the papers and all day you're reading the internet. And all the things that are happening. Oh, you know everything that's happening here. It's happening there. It's happening. When did you have time to study? When did you have time to study about HaKadosh Baruch Hu, the one and only who is in control of this virus, this epidemic, the economic crisis that's happening in front of our eyes? When did you have time? When did you make time to study about HaKadosh Baruch Hu? What? So the minute that He tested your emunah, all of a sudden...

11:55You forgot about HaKadosh Baruch Hu. So did you have emunah? You didn't have emunah. Oh, you had emunah when everything was going okay. And that, Rabotai, is not emunah. It's not emunah. That's make-believe. Fairy tale, like the unicorn. We have to understand that when HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, "The beginning of wisdom is the fear of Hashem," He's telling you that this is the first domino. If you have this, you can build on it as much as you want, but if you don't have it, everything else collapses. The emunah that you thought you had, surely you don't have. The bitachon that you have collapses completely. Because now you have no emunah in HaKadosh Baruch Hu that He's running the world. He's not running the world. One so-called religious person sends me a message, says to me, how do we know this is Hashem doing it? Hashem Yishmor V'Yatzil. Where did you learn? In Manis Friedman University? What do you mean, how do we know Hashem is doing this? Who else is doing it? Hamas? Bibi Netanyahu? Or Benny Gantz? Who's doing this?

13:10Maybe it's the weather, or it's nature. When you have Emunah in HaKadosh Baruch Hu, you understand that HaKadosh Baruch Hu is doing it, but you cannot have Emunah without HaKadosh Baruch Hu, without fearing HaKadosh Baruch Hu, and that's why we read the pasuk every single day in our Tefillat Shacharit, that Am Yisrael, after they Kriyat Yam Suf, they crossed the ocean, they saw the hand of Hashem, and they feared Him, and they believed in Him, and in Moshe Rabbeinu. meaning that there's a map. First, we have to understand who is the one and only in control of everything that's happening in the world. It's His hand. His hand is pressing the button to turn on Corona. His hand is going to be the one that turns off Corona. His hand is the one that's controlling the economy, which means that He could destroy it or build it however He wants; it's just as easy for Him. He's the one that's responsible for all of it. We recognize His hand. Secondly, after you recognize His hand, surely you're going to become scared because now that you realize that HaKadosh Baruch Hu is the one that's controlling everything that everybody else is scared of, why should I waste any time being scared of everybody else and everything else? I should just be scared of the Source that controls all of it and stop wasting any feelings.

14:29figure out what it is that He wants from me and make sure that I do what He wants, and that's it. I'll be protected. I'll be in my own little vessel, my own little bubble in the world. And after a person recognizes the hand of HaKadosh Baruch Hu and he fears HaKadosh Baruch Hu, then he can say, "I now believe in HaKadosh Baruch Hu. I have emunah in HaKadosh Baruch Hu." But when we do not have yirat Shamayim, we do not have any type of bitachon, any type of emunah, and surely we do not have any ahavat Hashem. recognizes the hand of HaKadosh Baruch Hu, and he fears HaKadosh Baruch Hu, then he can say, "I now believe in HaKadosh Baruch Hu. I have emunah in HaKadosh Baruch Hu." But when we do not have yirat Shamayim, we do not have any type of bitachon, any type of emunah, and surely we do not have any ahavat Hashem. we don't have any ahavat Hashem. We have no love of HaKadosh Baruch Hu whatsoever. Why? We don't even know who He is. We're not afraid of Him. Of course, you don't know who He is. So this is a time, Rabotai, where the tide is coming in and we're seeing who is swimming naked. You know, it's an interesting example, analogy that, remember we used it in the stock market days, but it's used in many things in the English language.

15:38and others as well, is that when there is a lot, when there's a surplus, you don't look for anything that's wrong. Because there's so much water there, you're not looking at what, who's, what are they wearing under, everybody's swimming, there's so much water, it covers their whole body. When there's a surplus of money, a surplus of food, a surplus of all types of things, you're not really looking at anything else. But then, when the tide starts returning and going back to the ocean, everyone stays in place, and you start realizing who is the one that's not wearing any clothes. and that's what's happening right now, not only in the economic world, not only in the government and politics, but also in the Jewish world. Right now we're seeing in the economic world how many of these companies that were being valued at billions and billions of dollars are losing their value as if they're worth nothing. And as I've told you before,

16:43The reality of what we've seen in the last month in the stock market is only the beginning. It's only the beginning. The longer they continue this extended, these measures, these heavy measures of pretty much secluding the whole world into their own homes and thinking that that's going to solve the problem, shutting down industries... you're going to see the economy plummet to worse levels than before. The stock market is now people thinking, yeah, maybe 15,000 is the bottom. You know, today it went down another 2,000 points. So now we're at 19,000 from 30,000. So already down over 30%. So they figure, okay, so the bottom is 15,000. The bottom is not 15,000. The bottom is going to stop once the government stops reacting like there's no God running the world. That's when the bottom is going to stop. Now surely HaKadosh Baruch Hu also is not going to let them...

17:46things He doesn't want them to do, so He may just cause them to stop it with different things, whether it be a cure that we already have and we don't need to make, like somebody said recently today: that there is a possibility there is a medicine in Japan that they treat all types of lung disorders and lung disease with. that actually could work for this coronavirus, which means that it's not going to be difficult to manufacture it, since it already exists, there's already a system for it, you just got to pretty much scale it to much bigger levels. Or it could be a lot of other miracles that HaKadosh Baruch Hu could bring, and He could just stop everything because the people are not stopping, and they're not doing teshuva, and they're not realizing whose hand is pressing the button to make everything go bad. He could do it. Or He could just let it continue until He decides otherwise, or until people do teshuva. So the point being, Rabotai, is that right now you have a stock market that could literally go to almost nothing.

18:49almost nothing. The reason why is not because the companies are worth nothing, but because we are seeing right now that the valuations of the market today are not what they were a month ago. They were not ever that; they were not going to be that. The reality is we're seeing who's swimming naked. We're seeing that what was holding up This market was simply a bunch of sticks, a bunch of little wooden sticks, toothpicks. Because the second they got second-guessed, we're seeing how they're plummeting. You're not seeing anybody out there holding up strong just because they're a strong company, whether it be Boeing or General Electric or any of these major corporations that are multi-billion dollar companies. You're not seeing anyone hold up with the exception of the companies that are actually benefiting from this, like Clorox. Because people are insane, and they're literally buying enough materials from Clorox to recreate a new civilization.

19:56The point being is that we're seeing that the whole thing is held up on sticks, and it's going down. And what's going to happen, I'm going to give you a little insight, is that as these strong measures by the governments continue, the economy will continue to deteriorate, but then there's going to be a boom. And that boom is coming soon, no more than a month from now, possibly within the next two weeks. The reason why is because in the market, there's something called earnings season. Every three months, major corporations around the world announce what they've done, what they've achieved in the last three months, but more importantly, what their expectations are for the coming three months and the coming year. Now during this time, stocks go crazy. because aside from what companies have done and people decide whether they've met their expectations or not, they're much more concentrated on what the projections are because the market, as I've told you, is an anticipatory vehicle. It reacts to what people anticipate in the future.

21:05In the next couple of weeks, if these measures are not tamed and put under control and the economy put back on its feet, you're gonna see one company after another announce something called an earnings warning, meaning not only did they miss all projections that they had made last year for this first quarter. made last year for this first quarter. But worse yet, all projections for the remainder of the year are something that you cannot rely on because there's no business. Our business is down. One guy that I have, a talmid (student) of mine, tells me his business is down 50%. There's one major company, a billion-dollar company, that sent me an email. What was the email for? Please donate some money so we can stay in business. Three months ago, they were a multi-billion-dollar company. They're asking their customers to send them donations so they can stay in business. So you're seeing how a matter of a few weeks not being in business causes a whole domino effect. The longer it continues, the more difficult it is going to be to undo it.

22:19Because there's already going to be some dead bodies in the corporate world. And there's already companies making major layoffs. They're firing people, which means that anyone that's disposable and not considered a key employee is getting thrown out. This is a time where people should not play around. If you still have a job, don't play around. This is a time where you become a superstar employee. Don't call in sick if you don't need to. Don't play around with the, uh, with the stapler. Do work. Why? They'll fire you in a second because everyone's scared. Another student of mine sent me an email saying, "Listen, they just announced in my company that everybody's hours are down 50%, meaning we work half the time." Okay, I don't mind working half the time. Do I get the same salary? Obviously not. Yeah, but I don't have half the bills. i don't have half the bills. okay, you want to give me half the salary, half the time. fine, but what am i going to do with the other half of my bills? oh, that's your problem. that shows you how much companies care about their employees. or better said, care less. business is business.

23:35And that's what's happening right now, and the longer it continues, the worse the impact is going to be. And in these next couple of weeks, you're going to have some companies, some major companies, start announcing earnings warnings. And when that happens and the market gets the next shock effect like it did two weeks ago, you could easily see the market cut in half in a matter of an hour. And when I said this a month and a half ago, a few people said, "Ah, you're exaggerating. Maybe you're pessimistic." It's not pessimistic. I've been in the business for 20 years. I know more than probably any other rabbi in the world about this, to say the least, and probably more than a lot of other people who are even still in the business. Better said, I understand what HaKadosh Baruch Hu said at the end of days about what's going to happen. And if this is indeed the last chapter before Mashiach, which some people are saying, some people are not. I have no idea. I'm not a prophet to tell you when Mashiach is going to come. We're not supposed to put a time on it.

24:40What I do know for sure is that this is definitely a sign from HaKadosh Baruch Hu that we have to pick up our game. Every single time you watch one of these shiurim, whether it's live or it's online, at the end of that shiur, you have to say, okay, from now on, I'm going to add this to my life, this mitzvah to my life, this amount of time to my learning Torah, this midah I'm going to start working on. No more time wasted. Why? HaKadosh Baruch Hu is telling you the pressure is on. And as it says in the Mishnah in Pirkei Avot, the boss is stringent and is running out of patience, but the employees are lazy. The employees are lazy. They don't want to take their time. HaKadosh Baruch Hu says you had your time. So now, with all of this economic effect that's practically affecting almost everyone at this point - not yet everyone, but almost everyone - more is going to happen in these next couple of weeks. There are certain industries that will benefit greatly from this economic decline.

25:51People that are in the gold buying business, a lot of Jewish people, will do extremely well over the next month or so if the economic decline continues, assuming they do not own much inventory. If they own a lot of inventory, unfortunately, they're going to lose a lot of money too because their inventory will lose value. But there's going to be a lot of people who are going to want to come up with cash since there's no work and no business. So they're going to sell all their extras, all their extra gold, all their extra jewelry that they don't need. And they'll be willing to take lower prices for it because the market adjusted. So people who are in that business will do extremely well. People who are in pharmaceuticals, people who have some type of connection to coronavirus will also do extremely well. People who are in all types of medical supplies and cleaning and things of that nature will do well. But the vast majority of the world will decline in a very big way. Now, once the market takes that next shock, which again, this is not 100%, this all depends on whether or not they're gonna continue these crazy measures. Once the market does that, the next big impact is gonna take, the next big shock is gonna take, which is what I spoke to you guys a little bit about yesterday, which is the exposure of who is really naked in the market, which is these exchange-traded funds and also these so-called registered investment advisors that manage people’s money.

27:18The faster the market goes down, the more people panic, and the more they want their money back. They don't even care if it's down; they just want it back. And they're gonna want to liquidate things even faster than they're going down, and that's what's gonna happen, that these ETFs are gonna start selling at fire sales, these illiquid assets, which will create a secondary aftershock effect. A lot of these registered investment advisors that are holding people's money as so-called advisors are going to expose that they are actually a complete fraud. They never invested the money. They were using it to buy beach houses. But they were able to provide you with statements because they can make it on Adobe Acrobat. They can make it on the internet for free. They can do it, and they can lie to people for years. But no one asked any questions. No one asked any questions. Why? Because the tide was high. The portfolio looked like it was going up every few months. So you didn't want it back. You wanted to add even more money. And that's what's going to happen. The economic decline can magnify much, much more than what it's done already. Now, that's one aspect of it.

28:27The second aspect is that HaKadosh Baruch Hu is also going to, if we do not start taking on some more serious mitzvot and learning of Torah, and start learning Mussar every single day to fix ourselves, at least to show some signs of life. He could change the world in a very quick second to start doing what was happening a few months ago in New York and a few other places in the world with anti-Semitism much, much higher. and start learning Mussar every single day to fix ourselves, at least to show some signs of life. He could change the world in a very quick second to start doing what was happening a few months ago in New York and a few other places in the world with anti-Semitism much, much higher. Already for the last month and a half, maybe you guys have heard, maybe you haven't, but many of these anti-Semitic publications and anti-Semitic people and leaders have been saying that this coronavirus is the Jewish people's invention. They invented this virus in order to get rid of the world because they have a plan to be the only people in the world and turn everyone else into slaves.

29:28So this already, the Israeli Times wrote an article about it some time ago, and there are many other places, news outlets, that have discussed this briefly. But that's because it's still under the radar. This could happen very, very quickly. Anti-Semitism can flourish in a quick second. Anywhere you live can turn into Nazi Germany in a matter of hours. Why? They have to blame somebody. That's what the Torah says. It's going to happen before Mashiach is going to come. The whole world is going to turn against Am Yisrael. Nowhere is going to be safe. Nowhere is going to be safe. So you can see that Donald Trump, just as likely as Putin, just as likely as anybody else, can turn into Hamas in two seconds. Why? Suddenly, they have an idea of whom to blame. This could happen in a second. Just an hour ago, I got a message from someone telling me that Peru decided not to allow 600 Israelis to board a flight to Israel and leave the country to go back to Israel. You know, this is not a happenstance. This is not. And you're going to say, yeah, but they're not letting anybody else out. Okay, let's say that it's not anybody else out. Let's say.

30:47If you notice, there are strange measures happening in Jewish communities. For example, the community here in Florida, here in South Florida, the only community that's forced to stay under a curfew is the Jewish community. North Miami Beach, they have a law now. What? You're not allowed to leave the house past 10 o'clock at night. Hence, the reason why most people didn't come tonight. Past 10 o'clock at night, not allowed to leave the house. How come you didn't do it in Hollywood? How come you didn't do it in Boca Raton? How come you didn't do it in all the other areas of Florida? How come only North Miami Beach? Because North Miami Beach has a lot of Jewish people there, Baruch Hashem. Now, people say, no, it's not anti-Semitic, it's protective measures. Okay, so protective measures for everybody else too then. What? They're not alive? So you see here, HaKadosh Baruch Hu is manipulating the leaders to wake us up. That's what we have as an example in the Torah in at least three places where HaKadosh Baruch Hu takes away the free choice of leaders in order to instill His will. We have Paro, where it says that HaKadosh Baruch Hu hardened his heart, meaning He took away his free choice in order for him to continue saying no to Moshe Rabbeinu, "I'm not going to free Am Yisrael."

32:14In order for Hashem to magnify the effect of all of the plagues and to show more and more miracles, to make it more majestic, more extraordinary, so people understand once and for all that God is the only God of the world. This also happened with Sichon. Sichon was another leader that went against Am Yisrael. The Torah says that HaKadosh Baruch Hu took away his free choice. Another time it happened was with Nevuchadnetzar. But who took away his free choice? HaKadosh Baruch Hu, who takes away the free choice of all leaders when and if He chooses to. Not at all times. He's not going to, you know, micromanage to the point where He's going to make them use Colgate instead of Total toothpaste. That's not what I mean. He's not going to make them drink tea instead of coffee. That's not what I mean. What I mean is He's going to manipulate their free choice when it comes to major decisions that impact Am Yisrael. Where that person would have normally done X, He's going to make them do Y. Why? Because that's how HaKadosh Baruch Hu pulls the strings in humanity in order to affect and impact Am Yisrael. So although there are certain current leaders in the world that may like Am Yisrael or at least pretend like they do, in a second HaKadosh Baruch Hu could just pull the string and all of a sudden they become Hitler. In a second. Why? That's what HaKadosh Baruch Hu does.

33:39That's what HaKadosh Baruch Hu does. And you're seeing it happening everywhere. It's happening in New York also. It's happening in Florida. It's happening in other areas. This is not a... For anyone that learns Torah and believes in the Written and the Oral Torah, nothing is new. There are no chiddushim whatsoever in what's happening in the world. This is simply the prophecies of HaKadosh Baruch Hu being fulfilled. He promised that He will do it and He's doing it. He is emet. Always was and always will be. Now, so the second major issue is that you have antisemitism as a major issue that's in the air right now. You have an economic decline that's in the air right now. You have a lot of things that are happening in the Jewish world that are exposing certain things and certain people and certain communities to show their true colors. Many times we tell people that if you're a teacher, you're a rabbi, you're a kehillah,

34:44is only talking about one aspect of the Torah that's just, you know, love Hashem, love Hashem, but never tells you about the magnitude of sin, and what it does to your neshama, and what it does to your olam haba, and doesn't mind that, you know, a good part of the kehillah is driving to shul on Shabbat, is eating chametz on Pesach, is intermarried, and they don't say a thing about it, or whatever they say is almost supporting it rather than going against it, then guess what? Those kehillot will be hurt the most. Those kehillot will be hurt the most, and you'll see them shutting down as if they never existed. Why? Because they have nothing to stand on. They don't have any real chochmah, they don't have any real yirat Shamayim, they don't have any real emunah in HaKadosh Baruch Hu, and therefore they're acting as if there's no God right now, as if everything is up to them. to save themselves like the goyim. For example, if you've ever been to one of these places, you know, whether it be basements or sometimes, unfortunately, restaurants—you know, they turn on the light, and there's a bunch of cockroaches running away. The cockroaches were having a good time in the dark, and all of a sudden, you turn on the light, and they all run away. What is the state of light?

36:06No, they're not scared of light. They can walk fine in light. I've seen cockroaches in light. They're not scared of light. Why are they running away? Because you're there. Because you're there, and that's it. Party's over. The problem is, without having real emunah and bitachon in HaKadosh Baruch Hu, we start acting like cockroaches. As soon as a test comes, we start running away. Instead of running to Hashem, we're running away from Him. Save yourself. Okay, save yourself. With what? What are you doing? What are you doing with your time? Are you watching some shiur Torah to get chizuk? Are you learning more Gemara? Are you learning the daf yomi? Are you learning the Chumash? Are you learning some halachot every day? You're home, right? working less, right? Okay, so what are you doing with that time? If you're watching the news, or you're watching movies, or you're watching sports, or you're playing sports, or you're playing video games, or you're using all of this time that you would have spent working, you're using it to do things that are not Torah. The rebuke will get more difficult. Why? Because Hakadosh Baruch Hu secluded you at a certain point...

37:23in order for you to reflect and start realizing that there is a life after this life. This life is simply a corridor. It's a short-term stay. It's like renting a room where eventually the lease is up, whether you like it or not. Every year we renew the lease, but after a while, at some point, the Landlord wants to sell the property. He doesn't want to renew the lease anymore. At some point, He wants to get you out of there and do something else. At some point, HaKadosh Baruch Hu does not want to renew the lease with us. He says, enough, you've had enough time in this world. Move on. Where am I moving on? To the eternal world. In that eternal world, there are only a couple of options. I don't have many options. There's a good option, and there's a bad option. good option, meaning there's the Gan Eden. The bad option means there's the bad part; there's the Kaf HaKela, there's the Gehinnom, or it could even be reincarnation. But the Steipler Gaon said almost a hundred years ago that there are no more reincarnations, meaning for anyone that dies now, there's not going to be enough time for them to be reincarnated again.

38:43before Mashiach comes because there's already enough neshamot in the heavenly body called Guf that are waiting in line for a long time to get another last chance to do teshuva by coming back to this world, so anyone that dies now can't rely on the fact that they're going to be given another chance. The point being is that if a person is claiming that he was too busy working, too busy, you know, making ends meet, doing all these different things, HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, no problem, you're too busy for My mitzvot because of work? Okay, so now you're not going to work. You're too busy with all types of stuff, your mind was not in the right place, you couldn't keep Shabbat? Okay, so now you have to keep Shabbat. Why? There's nothing else to do. And if we reflect and we do teshuva, but real teshuva, where we're not only going to make a temporary change, we're committing to making this a permanent change. From now on, I'm going to be modest. From now on, I'm going to keep Shabbat. From now on, I'm going to learn Torah every day, with or without work, even when I go back to work. And HaKadosh Baruch Hu knows what's in our heart.

39:56people take a stand and start doing what HaKadosh Baruch Hu wants. No corona, no barona, no nothing is going to be able to touch you—nothing. But anyone who does not take, with no exceptions, whether you're religious or not, anyone who does not take more on themselves at this point is living on borrowed time, not from corona. Because now is the opportunity where HaKadosh Baruch Hu is pretty much shaking up the world in order to get you away from everything else and start reflecting on what's going to happen after. Why? Because the older you get, the more you get to know certain people that are no longer here. The older you get, the more fragile you become and start realizing that your physicality is not what it was when you were 20 years old and 15 years old. The older you get, the more stuff you see in life. But sometimes HaKadosh Baruch Hu doesn't want to wait for you to get older. he just wants you to do it now. So whether you're 60 years old right now and you've seen life or you're 15 or 16 years old and you haven't seen life yet, both of you are seeing the same thing right now. The whole world is pretty much at a standstill, on the verge of complete collapse. Why? He wants you to think about the future—not the future in this world only, but the future of eternity. He wants you to start taking things seriously.

41:19And that's something that every single person needs to take into account. Why? Because if they do it, and they do it right, nothing can touch them. Nothing can touch them. They'll be okay. No one should look in the mirror and say, I'm doing enough. Mistake. Mistake. Every one of us has to do more. So, the point being, Rabotai, is that when you have a God that loves you... He's going to give you many, many chances. He gave me many chances, He gave you many chances, and He's given all of us a chance right now to seriously reconsider our lives, reconsider our priorities, and start making some serious decisions. Because if we make certain changes, then this was all worth it for Him. It's worth it for Him and He can stop it. But if not, certain things can change and get much worse. God doesn't want it to get worse, unless we force His hand. And I can tell you that surely, out of all the options that were available to us, this was surely the best one. What we have right now, a coronavirus, is much, much better than a Holocaust.

42:45Because it's still in our control to do teshuva. It's still in our control to live a Jewish life. It's still in our control to reconsider which rabbis we're listening to and what we're going to follow and what we're going to do about life. we're not turned into slaves. But things can change very quickly. If you notice right now, there are certain interesting things that are following what happened in the Torah as part of the plan of Pharaoh. Pharaoh didn't make Am Yisrael into slaves overnight. It was a process. How was the process? First, they used Yosef HaTzaddik to make them rich. Build the economy. First, America used the Jewish people to build the economy. All types of inventions, all types of industries, baruch Hashem. Even though we've benefited from America, America benefited from Am Yisrael, and any country that had a large Jewish population always benefited from Am Yisrael.

43:53Hashem says to Avraham Avinu in Genesis chapter 12, verse number 3: "I will bless those that bless thee, and I will curse those that curse thee," meaning anyone that gives you a blessing, gives you peace, and lets you live your Jewish life, I'll give them a blessing. But anyone that goes against you, I'll destroy them. Nazis... They still exist in the world, but they're like little barbarians, you know, roaming around, nomads. There's no Nazi Germany anymore. There are Nazis, but there's no Nazi Germany. Greeks, there's no Greek Empire. Most people have never been to Greece. It's a vacation resort. The empire turned into a vacation resort—a bankrupt one too. The Spanish Empire is not an empire at all. There's nothing imperial about it. The Roman Empire is no empire at all. The Babylonian Empire, it's not even called Babylon, it's called Iraq. And only bad memories about it, including from its own citizens.

45:09All of these empires, Persian empires, are in a revolution every day. That's Iran. All of these so-called empires that went against Am Yisrael, they're nothing now. They're nothing. But there are large communities of Jewish people around the world that can choose whether they are going to be the blesser or the curser. Unfortunately, that also has a lot to do with us. If we bless Hashem and thank Hashem and have emunah and bitachon in Hashem, When we do good, Hashem will continue giving us good. The problem is, we didn't do enough. Things were good for a long period of time. We reached a status of being the richest we've ever been, the most successful we've ever been, the best status for the Jewish people since the time of Shlomo HaMelech. But unfortunately, the religiosity of Am Yisrael continued to deteriorate.

46:16The lovey-dovey strategy of teaching people Torah apparently didn't work because people became less religious. People became less religious. So we did not bless Hashem when things were good. And that's why the Gemara in Masechet Avodah Zarah says, Hashem says to Am Yisrael, there's nothing better than when you are suffering. Why? He says, there's no better time than when you're suffering. He says, why? Because when you're suffering, you're close to Me. Meaning that this is something, unfortunately, we've repeated time and time again. He gives us the blessings, we forget about them. That's why the Sefer Devarim, the book of Deuteronomy, has a specific mitzvah: When Hashem gives you prosperity, don't forget Him. Unfortunately, we forgot Him. Whether it's the religious world or the non-religious world, everyone is at fault. But unfortunately, more fault lies with the religious world. And the reason why is because the religious world doesn't care so much about the non-religious world. They don't care enough about them to let them know that if they continue being not religious, we're all going to suffer. Everyone just wants to take care of themselves, just like this coronavirus.

47:33Seclude yourself, seclude yourself, take yourself, stay in your house, in your house, alone. Okay, fine, alone. What are you doing alone now? How are we moving forward with being alone? What's the being, how is that alone treating you now? People are losing their minds, they're making all types of stupid videos in their houses. Singing, dancing, putting costumes on, all types of nonsense all day, they have nothing to do. Why? Because they're not learning Torah, which is really what this seclusion is for. Instead of learning Torah, people are sending each other videos of themselves rapping. The construction worker becomes a rapper. The lawyer becomes a dancer. People are crazy. Anything but learning Torah. This is a problem. And HaKadosh Baruch Hu obviously doesn't like it. We didn't bless Him when things were good, so He's making things bad.

48:43Or at least the beginning of bad. Why? To see if we get the message. If we get the message, it stops. But unfortunately, if we don't, start taking Teshuvah seriously. If you are a woman that's watching this shiur, and you are not modest yet, you are insane also. You should be putting yourself, not into a coronavirus hospital, but into a mental ward. If you are a woman and are not modest right now, you have to seriously do what this tzaddeket sent me in a letter yesterday. There's nothing better than Am Yisrael that sees the truth. Nothing better than it. A billion dollars is not enough to pay for one Jew that actually sees the truth. This woman has been watching shiurei Torah for years, for years. Not like one of these people who just discovered the truth a month ago. For years she's been watching shiurei Torah, all types of speakers, all types of things. She keeps Shabbat, she kept kosher, she kept mitzvot. But she had an impossible time dealing with modesty. Impossible.

50:02Could never be modest. All types of immodest clothes. Shabbat, kashrut, chagim, fasting, Sukkot, all the times she kept everything. Modesty, Hashem yishmor v'yatzil. She sends me a letter yesterday. She says, I want to let you know at two o'clock in the morning. I want to let you know, Rabbi, I finally bought my first wardrobe of completely modest clothes. Yishtabach Shemo la'ad. And this is not a woman that's now in her, you know, 75 years old and has nothing to look at. Young woman, young woman that's, you know, still at the prime of her life. Says, Rabbi, that's it, I'm finished. I'm going to only wear modest clothes, and I want to let you know, it's because of the shiurim you made about what a Bat Yisrael really is, being a Jewish princess. Because my Father in Heaven is the King. I got to look like the princess. Stop looking like these zonot in the streets that don't know how to wear clothes. I want to look like a Bat Yisrael, a princess. The shiurim helped me. And you have to understand, this has been my tikkun my entire life.

51:16And you know what the answer is, Rabotai? I told this woman, and I'll tell anyone, any woman who takes on this mitzvah of serious modesty, not fake modesty—serious modesty, which means not just modest clothes, but also modest behavior. And if you're married, also a kisui rosh. A married woman must have a kisui rosh, unless she doesn't have a rosh. If you do not have a head, you don't have to cover your head. But if you have a head and you're married, you have to cover your head. Point is, modesty. That's the Akeidat Yitzchak, Rabotai. That's the Akeidat Yitzchak of this generation for women. That's the biggest tikkun in the world for a woman. That's what the Torah says. The Zohar HaKadosh says, a tikkun for men is zera levatalah, wasting seed, and learning Torah. A tikkun for women is modesty. Before Mashiach comes. That's the tikkun. Previous generations had all other tikkunim, like idol worship and all types of other issues. The tikkun before Mashiach comes is modesty for women and wasting seed for men, obviously promiscuity for both of them, and Torah for men. When a woman overcomes her yetzer hara and buys herself a modest wardrobe, she throws out all of the immodest clothes.

52:43...doesn't sell them so somebody else is going to be immodest and make more sins. She throws them in the garbage or burns them. She didn't even make a video about it for Kiddush Hashem. Rabotai, that's the Akeidat Yitzchak. That person, I'm telling you, and any woman that's listening to me, I'm not a prophet or the son of a prophet, but I can tell you something that I learned from experience, and I learned from the Torah. That woman is going to see some major miracles in these next 12 months. I'm not just talking about Olam HaBa. In the next 12 months, she's going to see more miracles than she's seen in her entire life combined. Surely it's going to be difficult. Surely it's going to be all types of tests. But a woman who takes on modesty when it's difficult for her—it's the greatest thing in the world. It's the greatest thing in the world. There's nothing greater than that. Not talking about a woman that's 75, 80 years old and finally she's going to be modest—okay, it's good for her too. But if a 20, 30-year-old woman, 15-year-old woman, young woman takes on modesty when she's pretty much used to a pleated suit, I'm telling you, who says you just did the same sacrifice to Me as Avraham Avinu when he brought Me his son.

54:07That's how you get it. When a guy takes on tikkun HaBrit and learns Torah seriously, rabotai yekarim, there's nothing greater in the world than that. Nothing greater in the world than that. A person needs to understand if he does not keep his brit, he's not going to be able to do teshuva. Even Shabbat, he's not going to be able to keep completely. Why? Because they're both Brit. One Brit depends on the other. When a guy is a Shomer Brit, he's going to have the power to overcome all obstacles. When he's not a Shomer Brit, rabotai, he's simply on borrowed time. He's in danger at all times. If he doesn't learn Torah every day, he's not going to be able to know how to be a Jew. He's not going to be able to. You don't need sources of Torah to explain to you that without learning Torah, there's no Olam Haba. And the reason why is because the only way you learn how to be a Jew is by learning Torah. If you don't learn Torah, how are you going to know how to be a Jew? How do you know how to keep Shabbat? How do you know how to put on tefillin? How do you know how to pray? How do you know how to say the blessings? How do you know how to do anything? You don't know if you don't learn Torah.

55:28You put in a couple of hours every day, you learn some Mussar, you learn Chumash, you learn a little Gemara when you get to that point, to start learning Gemara. And the point is you start learning Torah every day, every day a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more, a couple of hours every day. If you have more time, especially now, it has to be a lot more than a couple of hours. And little by little, you start seeing your life change, your neshama change, your joy in life change. And you start understanding that there's a time to be scared, and there's a time not to be scared. If it's Hashem, be scared. If it's other things, there's no fear. There's no reason to be scared of anything else other than HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Which means, that if you're doing the right thing, if you're really doing your best, you should be happy as can be. You should be singing and dancing, no problem. Why? You're doing everything right. You're doing everything you're supposed to do. You're trying your best. You're seriously trying your best. If you're a Shomer Brit in this generation, you're like a prophet. Why? There's not that many.

56:44And it's good news for Klal Yisrael and the world. I got news today that, Baruch Hashem, our CDs are ready, the USBs are ready, and Be'ezrat Hashem, they're going onto a shipment now, as we speak. Be'ezrat Hashem, they'll be in the next month. So it's officially being shipped. Be'ezrat Hashem, that's the real cure for a virus much, much worse than Corona. It's called Pegam HaBrit. When people are not Shomer HaBrit, nothing's going to work. And this is really important for people to understand. Torah talks to us a lot about HaKadosh Baruch Hu wanting His nation, wanting His firstborn, loving His firstborn. But Torah also talks to us about Hashem rebuking us, telling us that when we do wrong, He has to punish us. Not because He wants to punish us, but sometimes you have to punish your child in order to get him back in the right direction so you don't lose him.

57:46It's time that we all start acting like good kids. There's no more 50-50 teshuva. If you're not learning Torah every single day, your teshuva hasn't even started. If you're a woman that's not modest, your teshuva hasn't even started. If you're going to a beit knesset or listening to shiurim by people that are not telling you strong mussar, strong things to change your life, you're listening to the wrong speakers. You're wasting your time. It's not even considered Torah. And I'll finish this off before you guys start with some questions. Rav Elyashiv, zt"l, studied Torah in a way that's beyond our imagination. Things that are hard for us to comprehend. The only thing he wanted in life was Torah. He would sleep three hours, three and a half hours a day. He'd wake up at 2:30 in the morning,

58:47and start his first seder of learning Torah until Netz Minyan. After that, go back to learning. All day, all night learning Torah. Now, of course, because he was one of the Gedolei HaDor, the tzibur, the community, needed him. Needed him to make psak halakha, get involved in certain things. Sometimes they would invite him to events, which most of the time he would not attend, because it would disturb his learning. One guy came to him and begged him to come to the Brit Milah of his child. And he told him, no, I can't, I have obligations. What are obligations? It's obligations to learn. Those are obligations. Yeah, but you can do another. No, no, no, I have obligations. The guy was a close student. He begged him to come. He said, okay, fine, I'll come. Why is he agreeing to come? He says, listen, Rabbi, I understand your time is valuable. That's why we set it up that as soon as you come in, within 20 minutes, you're out of there. Meaning there's no singing, dancing, food, this, DJ, all that stuff. No, no, Rabbi, we just want you to come over there, give us a blessing, hold the baby, be the sandak. 20 minutes, you're out of the whole thing. He said to him, okay, fine, I'll come. So, the day before,

1:00:16The Rabbi Elyashiv tells his helper, his gabbai, tell him, listen, call him, tell him, I can't come tomorrow. I won't call the Rabbi, he's waiting, I can't, I have obligations, I have things I have to catch up on. I only studied 20 hours instead of 21, you know, it's obligations. No, no, no, Rabbi, the guy cries again, long story short, he ends up going. They go to a place, everything is like military. Gets there, baby. Finished? Okay, bye-bye. Now, on the way home, the driver is happy. Why? They’re out of there quickly. But then the driver, right, it’s in the book. It’s in the book. And he says, I learned a lesson about how Rav Elyashiv looks at the world from that day. It took me to a different world. What happened? He's happy as can be. Why? They were at the party and made the people happy. Great, right? And got out of there in 20 minutes. Everything worked as planned. So he's proud. So the Rabbi is going to be happy with me. So, Rabbi, everything worked out great. You were out of there in 20 minutes. And Rav Elyashiv

1:01:43Waited for a moment and looked at him and said, "22 minutes. 22 minutes." He calculated every second of his day. Now you may think, wow, he's exaggerating. No, no, no, you don't understand. He looks at those two minutes as, now I just lost two minutes of Torah. I'm never going to be able to get them back unless I make it up. I have to learn two more minutes of Torah today. I can't just let two minutes fly by. Why do you want me to be ignorant? I've been studying Torah for 90 years. It's two minutes I have to make up. Where do the two minutes come from? No one knew. He already studied 20 hours a day. Where are the two minutes going to come from? And that's another story. A guy comes to him and says, "Rabbi, we have this guy who has some halachot, things to learn, this, that, and there's a psak, and we need your help. So he wants to meet you." Okay, he's a rabbi, he's a talmid chacham. So the guy comes,

1:02:57He sits down with him for a half hour. Now, it's not a half hour of socializing, you know, just talking about baseball or basketball. He's talking about Torah. They talk about Torah for half an hour. After he finishes, the guy stops talking, finishes, okay, he leaves. Rabbi Yassir says, everything he says is shtuyot. Everything he would say was mistakes. What he was saying was mistakes, the guy. He has all these things, it's all full of mistakes. Okay, but you know, well, the rest of us will say, oh, well, at least we learned from the mistakes, right? Rabbi Yassir says, I have to make it up. What do you mean? It's learning. Okay, there's a mistake. You're going to make mistakes once in a while. He's learning. He's telling you his mistakes. And you're correcting them. So, in essence, that's actually learning. For the rest of us humans, that's learning Torah. We thought that we were allowed to do something and we found out through the learning that we're not allowed to do it. Or vice versa. That's learning. That wasn't learning. That, I felt, wasn't learning. Because I have to make it up. So this talmid saw this. When does he make it up? You know, when does he make it up? The next day, there was a

1:04:28major event, I think it was a holiday, it was Purim or something, it was some type of holiday or something. There were a lot of people in the Beit Knesset, and the helper lost touch with where Rav Elyashiv was. He thought that maybe he went to learn somewhere, wherever he was, he didn't know where he was. But then eventually, after the whole thing, the whole fiasco was over, he went to the house. And he says he saw the Rebbetzin furious at him. The Rebbetzin saw him, saw this helper. Furious at him. "Where were you?" He says, "Oh no, I was at the place." She goes, "How come you weren't with the Rav? How come you weren't with the Rav? You're supposed to be next to the Rav all the time. Where were you today?" He goes, "No, I looked for the Rav. I thought he left." He says, she rebukes him. How could you not pay attention to the Rav and not know where he is, especially on a day like today? He says, "What? What happened today?" He says, "Today he was making up for those missing times that he missed over the last few days. There was the meeting, there was Torah, there wasn't Torah, it was this and that. He was making it up." So he says, "Rebbetzin, what does it mean he's making it up?" He says, "When he makes up Torah, that means that he takes away that time from sleeping. Meaning, instead of the normal three hours he's sleeping, he only slept for an hour."

1:05:55Why? He has to make up the 2 minutes, the 30 minutes, the 50 minutes. So he tried to make up all that Torah, 2 hours of Torah, today. So he's a lot more fragile today. He's already 100 years old. How come you weren't careful to know where he is and take care of him? 100 years old. Over 100 years old. What do you think he was, 20? He had to make up his Torah. Where do you make up his Torah? Not from family time. Not from other Torah. Not from, no, where? From sleep. That's a person who understands that without Torah, there is no life. There is simply no life. I'm telling you this seriously. I'm telling you this seriously. Right now, HaKadosh Baruch Hu is simply testing all of us. He wants us to understand that if we do not start taking His mitzvot seriously, He is going to become a lot more serious.

1:07:12if you treat me with casualness, just say this is nature, this happens every so often, this is just gonna go away, this is just gonna wash away, and treat the global rebuke as if it's nothing, and continue our behavior of forgetting God, continue our behavior of not learning His Torah like we're supposed to, continue listening to false speakers, fakers, and losers, continue to say all types of heretical things, continue living by heresy, continue being immodest whether you're male or female, continue making major sins like Shabbat desecration or wasting seed. You continue acting as if there's no God in the world who says That is the most important thing that we need to know. If a person knows all of this, and is doing something about it, then the song that we were listening to before the shiur should be in his mind at all times. Don't be scared. Why? You're doing everything you're supposed to be doing.

1:08:19You're doing it, you're learning Torah, you're modest, you're watching your brit, you're watching your eyes, you're honest in business, you're doing everything you're supposed to, you're okay. You're okay, nothing's going to touch you. Nothing's going to touch you, nothing. But if we're not doing everything, then we have a lot to be scared of. If you're a Bat Yisrael, you have to take on modesty right now. If you're a guy, you have to take on learning Torah, you have to watch your brit. And if you're alive, you have to take on kiruv. You have to help Klal Yisrael do teshuva. Why? Kol Yisrael arevim zeh lazeh. Everybody is responsible for each other. We have to start helping the rest of the people that are blind. Yesterday after the shiur, You guys probably all went home to sleep. I had almost a two-hour conversation with somebody that I know for a long time to try to get him to do teshuva. Baruch Hashem, we got somewhere. The point is, rabotai, that you have to take the chances when you can. If you have money, this is the time to donate money for kiruv.

1:09:37More than you do normally. Why? You have to do something about it. You have to show HaKadosh Baruch Hu, Hashem, I get the message. Don't worry about investments in stocks, bonds, and real estate. Worry about investments in Klal Yisrael. This is the time to increase tzedakah in kiruv. If you take that seriously, if you take the mitzvot seriously, you take the Torah seriously, you have nothing to be scared of. You're going to be fine. More than fine. You're going to be in Gan Eden, in this world and the next. And that's hopefully the message that all of Klal Yisrael gets. Instead of just thinking that if they stay behind closed doors, it's all going to go away somehow. I'm just trying to figure out also, just to ask you guys this question. I'm going to start with a question for you guys. All these people that are secluding themselves and the plan that this government has, seclude yourself for two weeks and so on. What happens after two weeks?

1:10:37Anybody ask themselves? Like, they said that they don't believe this virus is going to go away for at least a few months. Two weeks is less than a few months. My calculation is okay? A few months usually means more than two weeks, right? A month usually has about four weeks, right? So I'm okay, right? Okay. So now, what happens after two weeks? Oh. You understand what's going on here? That's what happens when people use a human plan and not a God plan. It fails already from the beginning. If you fear HaKadosh Baruch Hu, which means that you follow what He said, you'll have emunah, you'll have bitachon, you'll have bracha, you'll have hatzlacha, you'll have refuah shlema, you'll have Gan Eden, you'll have olam haba, you'll have everything. If you don't, you start picking and choosing. Like people buy in the supermarket, now most of the aisles are empty, so they pretty much just take whatever they have left. You start taking mitzvot like that, you just pick whatever you like. That's not teshuvah, Rabotai. You have to take things seriously. And you know it, you gotta do it.

1:11:54Hard, no hard, doesn't make a difference. This woman told me last night at 2 o'clock in the morning, the most difficult time in our life is to make a commitment to be modest. But she overcame it. She bought an entire wardrobe. Not one outfit. An entire wardrobe, not one to be immodest. A woman that takes on mitzvot seriously, she's going to see miracles. And I'm going to tell you guys a story in a little while of another woman after the fact. One of the examples of the miracle. One of the examples. So, who wants to ask me some questions? Or do you guys want me to tell you more stuff? No? Moshe. So, in taking into account everything that's happening in the world, no, no, just tell me. Taking into account everything that's happening in the world without mageifah, Still possible to get married? Still possible to considering everything that's happening in the world. Is it still possible to get married? As long as you have a boy and a girl and they're both alive. Sure. Why not get married? What's the question? I don't understand. Why wouldn't you get married? Well, maybe the paranoia. So, your paranoia won't eat

1:13:24Paranoid, you won't breathe. If a person has someone willing to tolerate him for the next million years, then surely he should get married to her. If she found someone willing to tolerate her, and love her for the next million years, surely he should get married to her. This is now all you need to get married. You don't need a big hall with a bunch of strangers that your parents know and have all types of problems of, you know, whether to have a kosher party or a non-kosher party, because a lot of people are kosher and a lot of people are not kosher. You don't need that. All you need is a rabbi that's b'ki b'halacha, Two witnesses. Finished. You got a minyan of people. Finished. They don't need to hug each other. Everybody needs to be there. See the ring. See the chatan v'kallah. Hear what the rabbi is saying. Say amen. Finished. You're married.

1:14:27I got married in a big knesset, Rabotai. Even though it was the holiest wedding, I think, in a century. At least for us, it was. We weren't planning some big party or some big thing. Baruch Hashem, it ended up being a fantastic event. And it was very, very happy. A lot of simcha. But all of these people that are wasting a fortune making these wedding parties. It's like putting a down payment on a house. Aside from it being a complete waste of money. It's also a complete waste of time. It delays the wedding a lot of the time, which usually leads people to sin because the longer the guy is single, the longer the girl is single, the more likely they are to sin. But aside from that, it also creates a lot of big questions because when you have these parties, everybody that's paying for the party has their ideas of how they want the party to be because they're the ones that are writing the check. for the party, so they're going to want to do sometimes things that the chatan doesn't want to do, and that creates a lot of problems. My recommendation for people is to have a party only if you're going to have a one hundred percent kosher party with a mechitza: men on one side, women on the other side; men dancing on one side, women dancing on the other side; or no dancing at all, like the holy wedding we had for our two talmidim, Michal and Elhanan, just some time ago. But...

1:15:49If people are not going to do a kosher party, it's better to not have a party at all. It's better to just have a rabbi, witnesses, finished. Finished. There's no obligation to have a party. If you're going to have one, it has to be a kosher one. So the key is to find someone that you can grow with. has a similar ideology to you. Wants similar things to you. You're attracted to this person. That's it. Finished. They don't need to be the king of beauty or the queen of beauty. They just need to be attractive to you. No one else. Doesn't matter if your friends like her or don't like her. In fact, it doesn't even matter if your parents like them. As long as they're a kosher Jew, a Jewish woman, a Jewish man, you guys have similar ideology, you're both willing to build a kosher Jewish home, You don't need much more than that. So if you can find somebody today that's willing to get married, there's no reason to delay it. All the people that delay their wedding say, "Oh yeah, my wedding is going to be in the summer," or "Oh, my wedding is going to be in the winter." And this is already in the previous summer. You know, in like six months from now, a year from now, we're going to get married. Many, many of those marriages start off with a lot of problems.

1:17:08They start off with a lot of problems. Why? Because it's a lot of time to make mistakes. So the idea is to make sure that you get married as soon as you possibly can. Don't waste any time. If you find somebody, go on as many dates as you need to go. You need to go on five dates, ten dates, a hundred dates, whatever dates you need to go on in order to decide, "This is right for me," and you're both happy to do it, and that's it. Get married. You know, the problems with marriages usually start when people start thinking too much. Details, party, da, da, da. You have to understand, it's a mitzvah from the Torah for people to get married, not to be alone, but even more so to bring Jewish children into the world if possible. But the key is to make sure that you go with God's plan and not your friend's plan or other people's plans. Go with that plan, and you'll start on the right foot. Next question. I have a question about the Haftarah.

1:18:27What are they talking about? Who is this prince? This sounds like more of a specific question. They say here that the prince is responsible to bring offerings and they talk about a prince of Israel. Is it like a prince type? Both, both, both. The Gemara in Masechet Megillah says that Am Yisrael had at least double the number of prophets in history as they had Jewish males that left Egypt. And by Jewish males, they mean any man who was between the age of 20 and 60. So there were 600,000 men between the age of 20 and 60 that left Egypt. And the Gemara says there were at least 1.2 million prophets. And we learn many lessons from this particular Gemara. Because the Gemara says, okay, but if we had 1.2 million prophets, how come there are only 55 of them that are mentioned in the Tanakh? So the Gemara says, because the only ones that are mentioned in the Tanakh are the ones whose prophecy is for eternity.

1:19:51that whatever they said is relevant for every single generation, while the other prophets, what they said was only relevant to their generation. Meaning that no matter what verse you look at, in the entire Tanach, every single verse is relevant to every single generation until the end of the world. So if they're talking about a king, they're talking about not only a king that's specifically mentioned by name or sometimes not mentioned by name, but they're also talking about a king in the future. If they're talking about Brit Milah, it's not only talking about the Brit Milah of Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov and Am Yisrael and so on, it's also talking about the Brit Milah that you, b'ezrat Hashem, will do for your son. If it's talking about Shabbat, it's not only talking about the Shabbat that Am Yisrael kept even in the desert, but also the Shabbat that you have to keep now, today, 3,300 years later. Every single verse is relevant to every single generation until the end of the world. That's one of the key things. So if you study the Tanach, whether it's the five books of Moses or it's the rest of the Nevi'im,

1:21:07You have to study it with Jewish commentary. You have to study with Jewish commentary, or else you're not going to understand who, what, when, and how. You're not going to understand. And you have to read it with Jewish commentary by Rashi. And if you want to go even deeper, you go to the Radak, you go to the other Mefarshim, the Ramban, and so on. And try to see the behind-the-scenes of everything. Without reading it, you're not going to understand anything. That Chumash that you're using, which is the same Chumash that I'm using, doesn't have commentary on the Haftarah. It just has the Haftarah for reading purposes. So if you want to study them, then you have to study them in different books. In different books, they'll offer you some commentary that will give you some more light on... of what's going on. I can give you guys an example of how this happens. For example, there is... I learned this today for you guys.

1:22:26In the book of Kings 2, in chapter 9, you have a very unusual situation. Time comes, Elisha the prophet of the generation, and it says, at the time of Elisha the prophet, at that time Elisha the prophet called one of the prophet's disciples, and said to him, "Gird your loins, take this jar of oil in your hand, and go to Ramot Gilad. When you arrive there, find Yehu, in English it's Jehu, son of Yehoshafat, son of Nimshi." and said to him, "Gird your loins, take this jar of oil in your hand, and go to Ramot Gilad. When you arrive there, find Yehu, in English it's Jehu, son of Yehoshafat, son of Nimshi," tell him to arise from among his colleagues and bring him into the inner chamber, take the jar of oil and pour it on his head and say, "Thus said Hashem, I have anointed you king over Israel." Then open the door, flee, and do not delay. So here, the prophet Elisha sends another prophet, a young prophet,

1:23:55And he tells him, go make Jehu, go make him a king. Meaning, he is now king of Am Yisrael. Not like a king who won the elections. He's king. Meaning, everybody has to obey whatever he says from now on. Yeah, there's a problem though. Why? There's another king, Achav, an evil king, a very powerful king. How are you going to make him king when there's already another king? But HaKadosh Baruch Hu decides who's king. And Hashem has had it with him. So you're going to be king. How are you making me king? Go to the guy, put him to the side, take this oil that we have from the time of Moshe Rabbeinu, put this oil on him, and he's king. He's enough. No elections. No votes. He got the only vote that matters from HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Okay? Fast forward. He does this. This young prophet. Doesn't say his name. Young prophet. He's the disciple of Elisha HaNavi. Follows the orders of his master, of his Rebbe, Elisha.

1:25:19And he goes to him, and he does it, he takes him to the room, come over here, put some oil on him, okay, you're the king. So far so good, right? Now, in verse 11, it says, Yehu yatza la'avadim adonav, v'yomer lo ha-shalom madua ba ha-meshuggah hazeh eilecha? Yehu went out to his master's servants, and one of them said to him, Shalom, how are you doing? Is everything well? Why did this lunatic, this meshugah, come to you? Meaning this prophet, who did they call meshugah? This prophet, they called him meshugah. Who is this religious fanatic, this meshugah, who came to you? What do you want? Why did he come to you? And he said to them, you know that man and his prattle. But they said, it's a lie. Tell us now. Meaning he tried to get away with it by not telling them what he said, what happened. Why? He just became king. And as a king that they're serving.

1:26:42It's not like they're in a different place, different city. They're in the castle. They're in the place. There's a king in there. They work for the king. He works for the king. Now he's become the king. He said, you are the king. I'm going to kill you. A moment ago, you called the guy meshuggah, this crazy guy. Now he's saying this, you know, so according to them, he's a meshuggah. He's crazy. In reality, he knows that HaKadosh Baruch Hu just made him king. He doesn't know how they're going to react to it. Not only are they already insulting this guy, but on top of it, if somebody says, "I'm king," while there's a king, what is that called? You're going against the king; they kill you. But he knows that this is a tzaddik. He knows that there's no getting away with it. So what does he say? He replied to them after they said, "No, you're a liar. Tell us what happened." Like he said to them in the beginning, "No, no, it's nothing. It's nothing. Nothing happened." And he said, "You're a liar." Now, question is, hold on a second. If some crazy guy, somebody that has some serious problems, mental problems, comes and says something, is anybody going to care what he said? No. Oh, he's a liar? What liar? He's crazy.

1:28:01So how come they care? How come they say, no, no, he's a liar, you're a liar? You just said he's crazy, you say he's a lunatic. Why do you suddenly care about what he's saying? Put the battery on; the phone's dying. And also connect the thing to it, please. Why do you suddenly care? A moment ago, you said he's a meshuggah. Why do you care what he said? So Chazal over there, if you look at the commentary, says... The reality is, when someone, when Am Yisrael, when people call someone that tells the truth a meshuggah, they call him crazy. Why do they call him crazy? Why do they call him a fanatic? Because in reality, his words affect them, bother them. They know it's true, but they don't want to accept it, so they call him crazy. That's why they care. Because if he was really crazy, why would they care what he said? If some crazy guy came over here and said something to you like that, are you going to care? What did he mean? What did he mean? What is he saying? No one's going to say that. No one's going to say, "What is he saying, Rabbi?" No one's going to say that. Why is he meshuggah? So how come they care enough to say, "No, no, you're a liar. We want to know what he said to you."

1:29:23because you read the commentary, it says, "Commentary says, ah, because he didn't really mean 'meshuggah' like that. They meant like he's a fanatic, a religious fanatic." And then now it explains what happens next. He says, once he sees that they care, and it's not that they're just insulting him, he replied to them, Yehu replied to them, saying, such and such did he say to me, thus said Hashem, "I have anointed you king over Israel." He tells them the truth. What did they do? Hurriedly, each of them took his garments and put them underneath him, on top of the steps. They sounded the shofar and said, "Yehu has become king." Wait a minute, two minutes ago, not even two minutes, 30 seconds ago, you called the guy a meshuggah? and put them underneath him, on top of the steps. They sounded the shofar and said, "Yehu has become king." Wait a minute, two minutes ago, not even two minutes, 30 seconds ago, you called the guy a meshugeneh?

1:30:27He didn't care what he said. You were insulting anything. You're all working for the king. Now, not only are you listening to what this meshugeneh says, but you're listening to the extent where you're putting your life in danger. Everybody took off their clothes, their fancy clothes, because they work for the king. These are generals. These are not like some avadim, some slaves. These are the top officials. They take off their things to make him like a stage so he can stand on top of it because he's the king. Take off their clothes. Please, please, stand on my $5,000 suit. Please, stand on my $10,000 suit. Please, please. You're a king. It's beneath you to stand on the same ground as us fools. Stand on top of it. Take out a Sefer Torah. God made this guy king. What? What, you think they're crazy? No. They knew it was true the whole time. They didn't want to accept it, but they realized time's up. now, without commentary, you would not understand anything I just said. Without commentary, I wouldn't understand it to tell you the story because it doesn't make any sense. First, he tells someone to send some guy. Why is he sending some guy? Why didn't he go himself? Then it says they call the guy crazy. Then the next thing you know, he's king. It doesn't make any sense. That's why...

1:31:51When we read Torah, if we're not reading commentary, it's like a blind person trying to read without Braille, without any type of sound, without anything. It's not going to work. You ask a blind person to describe the sky to you, it's not going to work out. Why? He doesn't know what blue means. He doesn't know what green means. But it's blue, but it's like purple, it's like blue. He has no idea what you're talking about. That's us when we read the Torah without commentary. Same thing with Gemara. Without commentary, you won't know what's going on. So the point is that when you learn Torah, make it a clear understanding in your mind that if you're not going to read the commentary, it's better off you don't read it. you're not going to understand anything. Better off you don't read it. It'll just confuse you. You're going to start coming up with your own wrong conclusions and build on top of them. That's why a lot of times I meet people

1:32:57where they learned Gemara for a little while, but they still don't know anything. And they say, "How come? What are you learning now?" "I'm learning such and such." "So, okay, this page, what do you get out of it?" And they get the wrong conclusion. "So, how come? How did you get that?" "Oh, that's what I understood from it." I said, "Yeah, but Rashi says the opposite." "Oh, I didn't read Rashi." He didn't read Rashi. So what, you decide to come up with your own conclusion by yourself? You can't. Rabotai, we're not at that level. We're not at that level. Everybody. Rav Kanievsky reads commentary. Without commentary, you're simply a blind person trying to describe the colors of the sky. Not going to work. So you have to make it a clear understanding in your mind. You have to, when you read Torah, whether it's the Chumash or it's the rest of the Tanach, you have to read commentary. That's the only way you're going to get an understanding. Joshua, please. What's the question? What happens to the children of converts who haven't reached the age to choose conversion themselves now when Mashiach comes? So, the beautiful part is, for a child of a convert...

1:34:25is that if the mother or the father or both converted and the child converted with them, they, in essence, made the choice for him or her because they were little, they were a baby, or they were still below Bar Mitzvah or Bat Mitzvah age. And they made the choice for them. But there has to be a secondary meeting with the rabbis when they reach that age, or at least with some Talmidei Chachamim, some people where it's known that this kid, once he becomes an adult, which, for Judaism, is considered bar mitzvah for a boy, which is 13, and bat mitzvah for a girl, which is 12, they have to, in essence, recertify themselves. Recertify themselves that they want to stay Jewish and to continue a Jewish life. Now, if, let's say, for example, Mashiach comes tomorrow and a 7, 8, 9, 10-year-old child that, you know, is technically under the umbrella of the parent that converted them, what happens? Nothing happens, they're considered 100% Jewish. But even better, why? Why even better? Because once you become an adult, your sins count 100%. It doesn't matter. Once you're 13 years old, if you make a sin, it goes on your account.

1:35:28child that, you know, is technically under the umbrella of the parent that converted them, what happens? Nothing happens. They're considered 100% Jewish. But even better. But even better. Why? Why even better? Because once you become an adult, your sins count 100%. It doesn't matter. Once you're 13 years old, if you make a sin, it goes on your account. whether it's a sin of stealing, or it's a sin of violating Shabbat, or a sin of not keeping kosher, or anything else. When you're below adult age, when you're below 13 for a boy, you're not obligated to mitzvot the same way as an adult is. The only sin that's considered in your account is if you waste seed. Meaning if an 11-year-old boy or 10-year-old boy wastes seed, HaKadosh Baruch Hu counts it as a 100% sin. Everything else is not.

1:36:29Which means that that boy, or that girl, if let's say they're 10 years old, Mashiach comes, they're going to Olam HaBa clean. Like a perfect neshama that came to the world. They're in a much better shape than all of us here. Except Yehoshua. Why? You've got a Gan Eden standing alive. Like Yehoshua ben Levi. Like Moshe Rabbeinu. No sins. You have nothing. imagine living alone with sins, no sins. We have a custom, that's a very smart custom, which is any time we convert someone, take him to the Beit Din. A righteous convert, after the conversion is over, immediately after it's over, after it's done, everybody's done, settled, what's the custom? Please give me a blessing. Please give me a blessing. Why? Why do I ask for the blessing? You're getting a blessing from someone who doesn't have any sins. Because the day someone converts, they get a brand new neshama. The neshama starts at zero. There are no sins. There's no sins. Imagine getting a blessing from someone who doesn't have any sins. Same thing with a chatan ve'kallah. Chatan ve'kallah, if they have a kosher wedding, HaKadosh Baruch Hu wipes out their sins.

1:37:57wipes out their sins. So that's why we have a custom. Someone that we, one of our students that gets married, immediately—not wait till the next day. The next day they already made some sins. I'm talking right after the chuppah, immediately, as soon as you can, ask for a blessing from the chatan and kallah if they had a kosher wedding. Kosher chuppah, kosher everything. They're not planning on any type of mixed dancing, nothing like that. They're kosher people. Ask for a blessing right away. Why? They have no sins. Now, let me ask you guys a question. If you're going to ask for a blessing from, let's say, someone that's a really nice person, but he has sins like the rest of society. Maybe he's not a rasha, but he has some sins. He has. And then you ask for a blessing from a chatan. He doesn't have any sins. He doesn't have any sins. What do you think Hashem is going to listen to? You understand what I'm saying here? That's why the Gemara says, the Gemara says, HaKadosh Baruch Hu will only send the Mashiach because of the prayers of Tinokot Shel Beit Rabban. Because of the children of Am Yisrael who did not make any sins. Why? Their prayers are elevated to a point that there is no comparison to it.

1:39:06When Joshua prays, I'm sorry for myself, but it's much better than my prayer. Why? HaKadosh Baruch Hu sees me. I'm not trying to make any sins, but once in a while, you mess up. You mess up, you yell here, you do this, you do that, you mess up. It's clean. When little Ovadia, little Ovadia prays to Hashem, says Shema Yisrael. When little Sarah says Shema Yisrael, when they tell their grandparents, "Hashem is One, Hashem is One," don't touch, all types of things like this. They pray all types of things. Guess what? When they pray, it's like I'm looking like I'm limping. Like my prayer is limping and they're running. Why? They didn't sin. They didn't sin. This is why it's very important for parents to teach their kids to pray and encourage them as much as possible to pray and learn Torah. Why? You will benefit from it in such a way you have no understanding. I'll give you a story of how much HaKadosh Baruch Hu loves children to learn Torah. A real story I heard from Rabbi Avigdor Miller, a"h.

1:40:16There was a woman named Sima. And Sima lived a secular life. Husband, two kids, and no mitzvot. No, nothing. They weren't learning Torah. Well, as you would have it, HaKadosh Baruch Hu knocks on the door a few times. You don't get the message, things get worse. Now, one day they went on vacation or driving. They went on vacation and the husband said, "Okay, yeah, let's go. Let's go back home. Let's drive back home." But Sima says, no, I don't feel good about going. I don't feel like going right now. Let's go Motzei Shabbat. It was Shabbat morning. They didn't keep Shabbat. You want to drive on Shabbat? She said, no, I don't feel good about driving right now. Let's just go tonight. Let's leave at Motzei Shabbat. Let's stay through the day. We'll drive home tonight. Okay, no problem. She felt like there's something not good. She doesn't know why, but she didn't want to leave at that time.

1:41:29Well, as you would have it, they continued doing whatever they were doing on vacation. They weren't keeping Shabbat. Motzei Shabbat comes. And Sima and her husband and the two kids, one child is four or five years old and the other one is a baby. And they get in the car down the road, and suddenly... she notices that her husband dozed off for a second, lost control of the steering wheel, hit the wall, and the car happened to be on a mountain. The car just dropped 200 meters down the mountain. It's freezing outside. They hit a stone. Sima's head. Sima flew out of the car, she says. She has no idea how and what. She flew out of the car, hit a rock, and blood started pouring from her face. Then she realized that it's freezing outside. She has to do something, or else they're all going to die.

1:42:59She miraculously climbs a little bit, a little bit, and gets back to the car. She opens the door and sees her husband died on the spot. But now she has two kids. She opens the door, and one kid comes out. But the other one is stuck in the back; it's the baby. she can't get to him. The back is crushed; she can't get to him. She says at that moment she understood when the whole thing was happening. She actually miraculously said, "Please save us. You're the only one that can save us. You already helped me." At this moment, when she saw that the baby is crying hysterically, and there is blood everywhere... She knows if she doesn't get to this baby, that's it, it's going to be finished, and the car is hanging. It's not the bottom of the mountain. If the thing moves, that's it, the car goes and it's finished. She says, "Hashem, Hashem, You've already helped me. You've already helped me enough. Please, if You are real, please, please give me my baby."

1:44:21Please help me get my baby. She says, "To this day, I have no idea, but somebody came, took the baby out, and put it in my hand. I don't know who, what, when, or how. There was nobody else there. Somebody put the baby in her hands. She has no idea. The doors closed, everything. Someone took the baby, put it in her hands, and finished." As this is happening, somebody else... lost control on top. And I forgot to tell you one miracle that happened. As soon as she opened the door and saw her husband dead, she immediately pressed the horn, and the horn got stuck. So it just kept going permanently. That was one of the greatest miracles that happened. Why? Because somebody else got stuck, but heard there's a horn somewhere. Where's the horn? Looked down, saw that there's a car with people down there. They called the police, the ambulance, and they had to bring a chopper to get them out of there. Long story short, as soon as they put her in the hospital, she lost consciousness. She went up to Shamayim, she understood this is from HaKadosh Baruch Hu; she understood the message.

1:45:46As soon as she realized all of this, she said, okay, it's time for us to change our lives. But how? Okay, so we're not going to drive at night anymore. Okay, so we're not going to do this anymore. Okay, we're not going to do that anymore. But that's it. She didn't understand. What do you do? Okay, you understand there's a God in the world, but what do you do? She didn't know what to do. So she was encouraged to do something, but she had no clue what to do. One day she was walking around the streets, depressed, thinking about suicide. And a religious guy pulls over and says, "Excuse me, ma'am, do you know where the yeshiva such and such is?" She says, "I'm sorry, I think you're in the wrong neighborhood. I've lived here for 20 years. This is a secular neighborhood. There are no yeshivot here." He goes, "No, no, there's a yeshiva here. Yeshiva here named such and such. It's on street such and such." She says, "Honestly, I know the street, but I never knew there's a yeshiva here. And if you want, I can show you where it is." Okay, so she goes with him, and she sees the yeshiva. She has lived here for 20 years and never knew there's a yeshiva five minutes from her house. She goes, "What do you do here?"

1:47:02Come in, see it. So the guy comes in, she comes in, she starts seeing a bunch of people learning Torah. People are learning, learning, learning a book, book, everybody has a book, books, another book, piles of books, books, all types of people learning, learning. She doesn't know what they're doing. The Rabbi sees someone not familiar, a woman in the yeshiva. He comes up to her, he goes, "Yeah, can I help you?" And she says, "Yeah, what is this?" Because it's yeshiva. Midrash. But Midrash, what are they doing? They're learning Torah. Oh. What are they learning? Because, you know, you're learning that God runs the world. You know, there's Gan Eden, there's Gehinnom, there's reward, there's punishment. What? What do you mean there's reward and punishment? Why would God punish me? If you don't follow what it says in the Torah. She goes, what does it say in the Torah? Oh, it says a lot of things in the Torah. I need to know what to do with the Torah. I don't want to get punished. He says, okay, you want to come to my house for Shabbat? Yeah, sure. She goes to his house for Shabbat. She brings her two little kids. They sit for Shabbat. She sees Shabbat for the first time in her life. She grew up in a kibbutz, you know, a communist over there.

1:48:20She sits over there, she sees Shabbat, all the kids singing, the parents singing, all types of songs, there's food, there's this. She's like, wow, I want this. How do I have more of this? Can I do more? He goes, yeah, why don't you come by us? Little by little, this woman realizes that her whole life is a mistake. She goes, "Okay, I want my kids to be like your kids. What do I need to do?" He says, "You have to send them to yeshiva." "Oh, yeah, that place?" "No, not that one. That's for older people. You have to send them to yeshiva for younger ones." She takes her kids out of secular school that teaches people they come from monkeys and puts them in a school that teaches them they come from HaKadosh Baruch Hu. The kids, the rabbi comes to the woman. He says, "Listen, I've never seen in my life that two kids who come from a Baal Teshuva family become the best in the entire yeshiva. Your kids are the best in the yeshiva. It's unbelievable. I've never seen anything like it. Your kids are geniuses. Okay. Kids are geniuses. Fine. Kids start growing up little by little."

1:49:34One of the kids starts learning Gemara already. He's already a teenager. He starts learning Gemara at 12, 13 years old, 14 years old, and he comes home one day crying. He says, "Honey, what happened?" She says, "Ima, I don't know what to do." "What happened?" She goes, "I don't know what to do. I have a test in my Gemara, but I don't know enough. I don't know what to do. I'm used to getting hundreds in everything, but I don't know enough about this Gemara. I'm going to fail. I don't know what to do. Everybody else has an Abba. I don't have an Abba that can teach me. How come I don't have an Abba, Ima?" And the kid starts crying, and the Ima starts crying. She says, "Honey, what can we do?" test, it's okay. No, it's not okay. I want to get 100 on the test. I don't want to not know. I want to know. Poor woman, what can she do? The husband died. That's it. There's nothing. And anyway, he didn't know anything. He wasn't religious. The kid went to sleep crying on his Gemara. He wakes up in the morning.

1:50:51Happiest can be. He says, "Ima, I'm gonna get a hundred on the test, Ima." "Just how are you gonna do well on the test?" He says, "Abba taught me Din Taga Mahara. I know." By the way, he says, "Thank you." "Huh, Abba?" When you see Abba, he goes, "I went to sleep. Abba came to me in a dream." And he says to me, "I'm here. Let's learn." He says, "Abba, how do you know the Gemara?" He says, "I heard what's going on. I'm learning Gemara in Shamayim. I'm learning Gemara in Shamayim. I learned enough that you want to learn. I learned it for you. So let's study. I'm going to get you ready for the test." He says, Abba, you didn't keep mitzvot. How come you look so good? He says, tell Ima, thank you. Why? The second she took you out of the secular school and put you in yeshivot, my punishment started ending and eventually, right now, I'm not in Gehinom. I'm in Gan Eden because you're learning Gemara, because you're learning Torah, because you're going to be a Talmid Chacham Gadol. I'm in Gan Eden. He says, Ima, Abba says, thank you.

1:51:56That's how much HaKadosh Baruch Hu loves children that learn Torah. If the child learns Torah, the parents go to Gan Eden. If the child doesn't learn Torah, the parents go to Gehinom. Understand that. Why? It's your product. Your product. You did it. You brought it. When parents send their kids to public school, forget about Gan Eden. Throw it in the garbage. That's what Rabbi Yagen was saying. That's what he said in this story and many other places. Why? Because we have sources in the Torah. We have sources in the Torah. One of the sources in the Torah is the book of Yechezkel. The book of Yechezkel in chapter 23, verse number 37. says, "For they have committed adultery and there is blood on their hands. They have committed adultery with their idols, and even their children whom they had borne for Me, they passed before them to be consumed." Yechezkel rebukes the people. He says, "Look at this! Look at these people! They committed adultery, have blood on their hands, and their children follow them."

1:53:20Children did the same thing. What blood on their hands? What adultery? He says they were promiscuous because of their promiscuity by themselves and with others. There's blood on their hands. Blood on their hands because of wasting seed. Blood on their hands also because it led them to become criminals, to become the Ted Bundys of the world. I saw an interview that shocked my life. Someone recommended it. I had to watch it. one of the most notorious, vicious killers in history, a guy by the name of Ted Bundy, murdered and raped many women. Before they gave him the death penalty, they interviewed him, and they asked him, "What happened to you? How did you get to become such a vicious person?" He says, "I want you to understand..." I was brought up normal, in a religious Christian family. We didn't have pornography in the house. We didn't have cigarettes and drinking in the house. We didn't have anything bad in the house. I grew up a normal kid. But I was a curious kid, so I would look into the garbage pails of the neighbors and other places, and one day I found pornographic books in there.

1:54:39and I started looking at them, and I started looking more and more. I became addicted to it, and he says, "I don't want you to think that the pornography I looked at is the same stuff they have on cable today. My stuff was much less than what they have on standard TV today," he says. "But I got addicted to it, and I wanted more. But eventually, it wasn't enough. So I started looking for stuff that's called hard pornography, stuff where it's the pornography that's with violence." which the research that I told you guys about last week says that that's where it culminates. He says, once I started becoming addicted to it, I started imagining it in my head and eventually I wanted to do it. It was almost like I became two different people. After I murdered the person, I felt bad about it. But before, I was in such a high doing it. What happened to Ted Bundy? Pornography came out of Ted Bundy. That's what he says. That's what the Torah says also. The Torah says here, these parents that commit adultery and they have blood on their hands because they watch pornography and because they're promiscuous. They don't do teshuva for it. Not only is it blood on their hands for their own sins, but their children will do the same thing.

1:56:04Their children will do the same thing. Why? Because that's what they learn. They see the parents act a certain way, behave a certain way, do certain things, care for certain things, the kids end up doing the same thing, Hashem yishmor. And that's why, rabotai yekarim, if a parent sends their child to public school, they're simply murdering their own kid. They're murdering their own kid. And that's why the Midrash says that parents who send their kids to schools that are not Jewish schools, that are not yeshiva, are committing a sin of idol worship. Because that's what they teach at public school—idol worship. Either idol worship by telling you that you came from a monkey, or you came from nothing, or you came from Yoshke, or some other form of idol worship. They don't teach you about God. Everything else is idol worship. When a parent sends their kid to yeshiva to teach, to learn Torah, they go to Gan Eden. They go to Gan Eden. How much should a parent invest to make sure that their kid goes to yeshiva? It all depends. How much do you want to go to Gan Eden? You want to go to Gan Eden, you invest everything. Everything you have. That means if you have to sell your house, sell your house.

1:57:26You don't need five watches. You don't even need one watch. Make sure the kid goes to yeshiva. That's what it means. Why? You want to go to Gan Eden. It's very important for parents to know that. Now, sometimes there are situations where the parent can't. They live in certain places where there's no yeshivot or the yeshivot that are over there are problematic and so on. Does that mean they're absolved from the mitzvah? No. What does that mean they have to do? They have to get someone to come teach the kid Torah one-on-one. Private tutor. Go to school, learn math, learn science, learn whatever it is, but after school, they learn Torah. Why do they have to learn Torah? Because they have to get their Torah. They have to get their Torah one way or the other. You don't have any good yeshivot next to you or a kosher yeshiva, whatever it is, no problem. You have to bring a tutor to the house to teach the kid. Yeah, but I'm not rich. Who says you have to be rich in life? Find a way, find a sponsor, find money, find a loan, find something. Get this kid someone to teach him Torah. Why? You want to go to Gan Eden, no? HaKadosh Baruch Hu understands that there are problems and obstacles that people have. What we have to understand is that we're obligated to overcome them. If we love the Torah, our kids will eventually love the Torah.

1:58:48If we don't love the Torah, our kids won't love the Torah. How do we show that we love the Torah? By doing everything for it. If that means working more, if that means sometimes asking for a favor, if that means whatever it means, you've got to get your kids to learn Torah. Why? That's how you get to Gan Eden. Next question. Yes? What are the questions... You should ask before checking out a yeshiva. What do you want to know about the yeshiva to make it the right kind of yeshiva? Because not all of them are... Questions that you should ask about the yeshiva are: Number one, who is the head rabbi there? Learn a little bit more about the head rabbi there, his shita, his mentality. What is his system? Ask about the curriculum. Do they teach them about reward and punishment? Or do they just teach them that everybody is tzaddikim and go to Gan Eden automatically? Some yeshivot over there... Who is the head rabbi there? Learn a little bit more about the head rabbi there, his shita, his mentality. What is his system? Ask about the curriculum. Do they teach them about reward and punishment? Or do they just teach them that everybody is tzaddikim and go to Gan Eden automatically? Some yeshivot over there...

1:59:54So, if they teach everybody to just go to Gan Eden no matter what they do, that's not a yeshiva. That's simply going to destroy your kid. The other thing is you have to ask if they have any goyim teaching in the school. Any goyim teaching in the school, doesn't matter what subject. Doesn't matter what subject. Even if there's goyim teaching history or math or science, I would not recommend you send your kid to the yeshiva. Why? Because many times the church sends their missionaries to yeshivot to teach neutral subjects in order to missionize with the kids, and I've witnessed this with my own eyes. I've witnessed this. I've seen situations where you have missionaries inside yeshivot. I gave you guys a whole shiur about it about three, four, or five months ago. Unfortunately, there are many Christians who are missionizing, or even atheists who are missionizing for their atheism in different yeshivot. So if you have a goy teaching in any yeshiva, that already tells you that the leaders there are very weak. And if the leaders are weak, then the fruits they bear are going to be weak. So you have to be knowledgeable about this yourself. You cannot be an ignoramus and expect that you're going to know what you're talking about.

2:01:18You have to, obviously, have some type of understanding of what to ask, who to ask, when to ask, and so on. Usually, it's a good idea for your rabbi to double-check certain things to make sure that things are okay. But again, at the same token, most of the work you have to do yourself. Don't just say, "Listen, Rabbi, here's a phone number, call the yeshiva, let me know what you think." Your rabbi doesn't work for you. You have to do a lot of work before you ever get to the issue. The rabbi is usually the last thing that you do after you've done everything else. When you get to the rabbi, you have to give him a report. This is what I've done. This is who I met. This is the conversation I had. This is that. This is this. Like you've investigated a house. Before you buy a house, you see comps. What's with the neighbors? What did they sell for? Where are their shuls? Are there parks there? You know, and so on and so forth. Like, you're not going to come and just say, "Okay, this is the house. I'm going to buy it," without looking at anything else. The same thing, even more so, with the yeshiva.

2:02:22You have to do research. You have to meet with the school. You have to see what the curriculum is. Meet with the rabbi. Get some references, some existing students, some alumni. You have to do some work to make sure. And today, it's not impossible to do it, but it requires work. The problem is that most parents don't want to do the work. Most parents just assume that every yeshiva is good as long as it's a good price and the kids are accepted into it, they send them there. But unfortunately, many times you cannot rely on that. There are many people that go to yeshiva, and some of these yeshivot ruin kids. They don't help the kids. So what subjects are allowed and not allowed? Subjects like what? Mathematics, for example. What about mathematics? To learn mathematics? Sure, it just depends on who you're learning from. History? All subjects are good to learn. No, no, all subjects are good to learn. You just don't learn from goyim. Right, that's the point. You should learn a little bit of history to understand certain things that happen in the world. You can't come out completely ignorant. You have to learn math. You have to learn language. Some of these yeshivot that don't have enough secular studies, the kids come out of there completely ignorant. They don't know how to write. I had a few kids work for me in the past, and they were graduates of yeshivot. They didn't know how to write.

2:03:48They don't write. They write like a three-year-old. They have the handwriting of a three-year-old. No one ever taught them how to write. It's ridiculous. You have to learn, you have to learn how to write, you have to learn how to read, and so on. There's a certain amount of secular studies that is necessary for whatever country you live in. So it needs to exist to a certain extent, but at the same token, you know, you live in a country, you need to speak the language of the country. You know, people that, for example, come to this country and only speak their native language, it's not good. It's not good. Why? Because you're not always going to be around people that only speak your language. Whether it be Spanish, Yiddish, Hebrew, or whatever it is, you need to learn how to speak the language of the place you live in. You cannot be an ignorant person and not know how to fill out a form 20 years after you live in the place. 20 years in America and still not knowing how to fill out a form—something is wrong with you. Now again, if you came to the country already grown up and you had to work and so on, that's one thing. But the kid should not follow suit. If the kid is going to school, he needs to learn how to read and write. The point is that people need to be educated.

2:04:50But that means that the parents need to make learning a priority in life because there's only a certain amount that the kid's going to learn in school. The main learning a child is going to get is from the house. They're going to learn their priorities in life from the house. If Ima and Abba make Torah priority number one in their life, the kid is going to make Torah a priority in their life. If sports, soup, baseball, football, hamburgers, potatoes, and video games are a priority in their life, that's what the kid is going to like. So it's all about what the parents like. If the parents study Torah and do what they're supposed to, the kids are gonna do it. But that's also a reason why the parents need to make the religion fun. There are many people that are so dry that they make Judaism seem like a concentration camp. You know, it's like when they do mitzvot, it's almost like they're doing somebody a favor. Oh, it's Shabbat, yeah, I have to cook again. Like, if that's that, don't cook. Order. Don't cook. No one needs your favors. If you have Tisha B'Av, because you have to cook for Shabbat, you have to clean for Shabbat, don't cook, don't clean. Order it, or go somewhere. Why? If that's what you're going to teach your kids, that every time Shabbat comes up, you're depressed because you have to cook for two days, don't cook.

2:06:16Make them cheese and bread, but just have a smile on your face. When the holidays come, if you're not excited for the holiday to come two weeks, three weeks before it happens, your kids are not going to like it. The whole house has to be excited for Pesach, for Purim, for Lag BaOmer, for Yom Kippur, for Rosh Hashanah, all the holidays; they have to be excited for them. Excited for the mitzvot. If you're doing the mitzvot as a parent, like you're doing somebody a favor, your kids are going to hate it. You have to make the mitzvot fun. How do you make them fun? Every day. Shabbat has to be like a holiday. Every week. Every week your Shabbat needs to be a holiday. There's food, there's dancing, there's singing, there's a good time. Not like, oh, there's time for you to sleep for 25 hours. or a time for you to yell at everybody because they made some mess in the living room. Make a mess. Whatever it is. Who cares? The point is, have a good time with Torah. If your Torah is not fun, guess what? Your kids are not going to follow suit.

2:07:25They're not going to want to do it. That's what happens a lot of times. People who are too strict with their kids, where it's like you can't move, you can't see, you can't, can't, can't. Everything is can't, can't, can't. They don't teach them why you can't or if you can't. They don't tell them anything. The kids end up hating Torah. I have one guy that I spoke to yesterday. I spoke to him for almost two hours. All he knows is the bad stuff about Judaism. That's all he knows. He went to Yeshiva. All he knows is the bad stuff that people do. Why? Because that's what he saw growing up. People acting terrible, with horrible manners, terrible behavior, cheating, lying, pretending to be something that they're really not, and so on and so forth. But real Torah he doesn't know anything about. If the parents don't know Torah, the kids are not going to know Torah. If the parents don't learn, the kids are not going to want to learn. You know, so if the parents are not making Shabbat fun, the kids are not going to want to keep Shabbat. There's a very famous story by Rav Shach. Rav Shach, alav haShalom, was one of the Gedolei HaDor. When he was younger, he went to a very big Rav. I forgot the other Rav's name. And the other Rav asked him an unusual question. He said, what songs do you sing on Shabbat? Songs? He said, no, Shabbat is a time for me to learn more Torah than I usually learn the rest of the week, because no one's bothering me, so I learn. Especially...

2:08:53You know, during times when Shabbat starts early, I learn the most. All night, no sleeping. What songs do you sing on Shabbat after you eat? What songs do you sing? He says, I don't sing any songs. So this big mekubal says to him, no, no, you need to sing songs on Shabbat. Sing songs on Shabbat. He says, years later, 50 years later, I didn't listen to him. And it was one of the biggest mistakes of my life. Rav Shach, he became one of the biggest rabbis in the world. What do you mean? You made a mistake. What mistake? Because you didn't sing a song on Shabbat? He says, yes. He says, why? Why is it a mistake? Because I didn't sing songs on Shabbat. My kids did not love the Torah like I do. Why? It wasn't fun. It wasn't fun for them. They didn't have the sweetness of Torah like I did. They needed the songs. They needed the songs to sweeten the Torah, to give them strength for the rest of the week. They needed a good time once a week. They needed the sweetness of Torah. I didn't give it to them. So they grew up, and they didn't want to be. They didn't like the Torah so much. So yeah, I learned a lot of Torah, but I lost my kids. Rabotai yekarim.

2:10:14Part of the Torah is to enjoy, to do the mitzvot b'simcha. Parashat Ki Tavo, one of the scariest parashot, if not the scariest parasha in the entire Torah. It's a parasha that talks about all of the punishments. Hashem yishmor v'yatzil. Diseases, plagues, poverty, and even to the extent of famine, to the extent where the parents eat the kids. That's how much punishment is in this parasha. Why, HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, why all the sins? Because we did not do the mitzvot b'simcha. Lo avadtem et Hashem b'simcha. Yeah, you kept a few mitzvot, but you weren't happy about it. You weren't happy about it. So you were doing me a favor? Who needs your mitzvot? It's very important to do mitzvot b'simcha, to understand that HaKadosh Baruch Hu doesn't need our mitzvot. Doesn't need anything, like Maimonides says. If we're going to do it, we have to do it in a good way. Shabbat has to be a celebration. If you're cooking and cleaning, and you're in a Tisha B'Av mood, you're depressed, don't cook. Get somebody else to cook. Cleaning. Cleaning.

2:11:31makes you depressed, don't clean; leave it dirty or get a cleaning lady. Just be happy. Be happy. But just so you know, cooking and cleaning is your Avodat Hashem. That's your Avodat Hashem. If you're not happy about your Avodat Hashem, guess what? Hashem is going to send somebody else to do it. Ameivin yavin. It's important for us to do the mitzvot b'simcha, not be depressed. That's also what happens to a lot of people that focus too much on Mashiach. They're always tense. Tense, Mashiach is going to come now, Mashiach is going to come now. Okay, Mashiach is going to come now, or tomorrow, or a year from now, or ten years from now. What about doing the mitzvot though? What about that? What about doing the mitzvot b'simcha? What about learning Torah? What about learning halachot Shabbat? What about halachot kashrut? What about halachot every day? How about that? Everyday life. No, they're so focused on Mashiach coming in five minutes from now, they forget to be happy. They're always tense, they're always stressed out, and they don't realize when Mashiach comes, the first one he's going to kill. Why? He didn't serve him with happiness.

2:12:43In the sermon, happiness. You have to learn how to be happy with your Judaism. You have to. Sometimes it's not easy. Sometimes it's even hard. You have to do it. Why? Remember, you're serving the King. You're serving the King. You better have a smile on. Next question. Yes, short question. No, long one. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. It's like a strawberry? Peach. High end. Corona? No? Go ahead. Where does it say in the Written Torah that there is an Oral Torah? There are many places that it says in the Torah where HaKadosh Baruch Hu says that I gave Am Yisrael the Torah. Torot is plural for Torah. It's like saying Torahs. Torah is singular. Torot is plural. It's more than one. You're not understanding what I'm saying. You're listening to yourself right now. Listen to the words coming out of my mouth, not the ones that are in your head. Okay? Torah is one. One. Singular. Okay?

2:14:02Torot, like with an "ot" at the end, is plural. That means more than one. So HaKadosh Baruch Hu says that He gave us at Mount Sinai Torot. Torot is more than one Torah, which means Written Torah and Oral Torah. What does Torah mean? You asked one question, I'm answering one question. Now you're asking another question. In my head, or from what I read... is that Torot are instructions. So, the Torah is filled with instructions. Yes. Therefore, when He says He gave the Torot, it means all the Torah in the Chumash. No. The Torah is an entire set. What's in the Chumash is Parashiyot, not Torot. Parashiyot, these are sections, like saying chapters. Torah is an entire set of instructions. There's a written Torah, and there's an oral Torah.

2:15:09The written Torah is the Chumash, the five books of Moses. Then you also have the Nevi'im and Ketuvim, which is the entire Tanakh, but the core part of the written Torah is the five books of Moses. The oral Torah is the commentary on the written Torah: the Gemara, the Mishnah, the Shulchan Aruch, the Poskim, the Sifrei Chazal, and so on and so forth. The oral Torah is much more significant in size than the oral Torah because the oral Torah explains everything that you can get from the written Torah which has no end. in size than the written Torah because the oral Torah explains everything that you can get from the written Torah, which has no end. It has no end. But if HaKadosh Baruch Hu made everything in the written Torah, the book would start here and end at the end of the universe. It would be too big of a book for you to take to school. So He wrote in two ways. One is the written Torah, which is a relatively small book you can take with you wherever you go. And the oral Torah is an infinite amount of books.

2:16:17There are websites that have literally hundreds of thousands of books that you can download for free or sometimes for an annual fee. And even those, that's not the entire Torah. That's just what they have. And there are many websites like this that have hundreds of thousands of books of Torah. When you go, for example, if anyone went to Rav Ovadia's house, alav ha-shalom, they would see he had no walls. All he had were books. He had somewhere between 40 to 60,000 books. And he knew all of them by heart. to Rav Ovadia's house, alav ha-shalom, they would see he had no walls. All he had were books. He had somewhere between 40 to 60,000 books. And he knew all of them by heart. No exaggeration. The only reason we know it is because it was tested once. There was a wicked Israeli journalist who wrote an article about Rav Ovadia without checking with him, without asking any questions. He just assumed things because Rav Ovadia was already in his 80s. The journalist's article questioned, "I don't understand why anybody listens to Rav Ovadia. He's very forgetful. Why would anybody listen to this senile person?"

2:17:20So Rav Ovadia, who usually didn't pay attention to journalists, had this article come across his desk, and he said, "Invite the journalist to my house." So he invited the journalist and said, "You wrote here that I'm very forgetful. What did I do to make you think that I'm forgetful? What proof do you have that I'm forgetful?" The journalist replied, "With all due respect, Rabbi, you're already in your 80s. Everybody loses their memory." Even before 80 years old. He says, yeah, but what did I do that made you think I'm forgetful? He goes, you didn't do anything particular. I'm just, this is logic. You're 80-something years old. You're forgetful. He says, well, let's test it. Let's test if I'm forgetful. He said, how can we test it? He said, you see these books? The whole house is full of books. There are walls and walls of books. Bigger than libraries. Libraries usually have 10,000 books. Bigger than libraries. says 40, 60,000 books there, whatever there was. If there's 500 books there, it's already enough. But the point is, tens of thousands of books. He says, pick any book you want. Any book you want. Tell me the name of the book. Who wrote it? What's the name of the author? Open any page and just tell me the first few words. First three, four words.

2:18:52Why? Let's just do it. Now I'll tell you what's on the page. He says, Rebbe, is it a joke? No, no, he goes, pick anything. He goes, but Rebbe, you realize I'm going to have to report this, right? Like if you fail, it's going to make my article much better. He goes, all right, no problem. So the guy says, "Oh, you know what, let's maybe do a trick or something." So what did he do? He climbed the ladder, you know, because it's a huge library. He climbed the ladder to go to the books that are all the way in the back. Even if he read it, it's been a long time. There's dust on the thing. It's been a long time since he reviewed it. So he went all the way to the back, climbed everything, picked one book from a long time ago, full of dust. And he took it out, told them the name of the book, told them who the... Who's the Rav that wrote it? Open it anywhere that you want. Read him the first few words, and Rav Ovadia continued telling him every single word on the page, better than the book. The guy couldn't believe his ears. He said, no, no, we have to do this again. He went, got another book, did the same thing again. First few words, told him every single word, word for word, like he's reading it better than him.

2:20:03Word for word. He's not looking at the book. He's sitting over here. He's over there with the book. He's telling him the first three lines. He's telling him every single word in the book. Again, again, again. Eventually, the guy saw this is something that's beyond human. He ended up writing an article. It says, not only was I wrong, but the memory that Rabbi Ovadia has in his 80s is better than any human being on earth. It's not human. It's not human. So when people talk about Rabbi Ovadia, really we have no idea how much of a giant he was in Torah. How much of a giant he was in Torah. But also how much of a giant he was in the world of Kiruv. He would go to people's houses and convince the parents to put the kids in school. One of our dear friends, there's actually one guy that's a famous rabbi in Eretz Yisrael,

2:21:04I have an eagle coin. He said it himself. He says, one of the reasons that I love Rabbi Ovadia and always loved him is not only because of all the Torah that he taught, but also because Rabbi Ovadia saved my life. How did he save your life? This rabbi is one of the most famous speakers out there. How did he save your life? He says, when I was a kid, Rabbi Ovadia would come to my community and give a shiur locally. And When he found out that I was going to a secular school, he went to my parents' house and he sat with them until he convinced them to send me to yeshiva. It wasn't his yeshiva, it was somebody else's yeshiva, but he insisted, "Just send the kid to yeshiva." He would sit at people's houses until he convinced them to send their children to yeshiva. And he says, because of him, I went to yeshiva. I became a rabbi. He saved my life. Also, what is a scientist telling you that you came from a monkey? Same thing happened to a dear friend of mine, Rabbi Bar Kokhba. Rabbi Bar Kokhba, you guys have seen him on my website, one of the Talmidei Chachamim that not only gave us a strong recommendation, but he's the tzaddik that goes to Kever Rachel. He's a huge Talmid Chacham. He goes to Kever Rachel and prays for all the people that buy the prayers to go to Kever Rachel. He's the tzaddik.

2:22:26It's a very serious Talmid Chacham. How did he become such a big Talmid Chacham? Rav Ovadia went to his parents 30 something years ago, 40 years ago, whatever it was. The little boy sat in their house in the middle of the night until he convinced them to send him to Yeshiva. They were secular people, secular everything. He persuaded them to send the kid to Yeshiva. They sent him to Yeshiva. The kid became a serious Talmid Chacham and a tzaddik. So, Rabbi Ovadia, Rabbi Shalom, was somebody that was second to none. And the more people know about him, you learn from his bio, you learn from his sefarim and so on. He was a giant among giants. Not only a giant in his generation, but even a giant considering and comparing him to previous generations. Last question. Anybody? Chabibi? Yeah, you mentioned commentaries with the Tanakh. You just hit the nail. Because the last eight months, I bought a Tanakh, and it has no commentaries. A lot of pages, I'm not getting. I'm not getting. I went on Amazon, and I thought this one had commentary. It didn't. I read about 20 minutes each day. And it just blows my mind how the prophets, when Hashem gives them the prophecies,

2:23:47just keeps going and going and going and going in the Bible. When you speak to Moses, it's a sentence here, a sentence there, and a sentence here. Over here, it just keeps going, page after page after page. Right. So you have to understand two things. Number one... We said it in last night's shiur, the reason why the written Torah, the five books of Moses, is much easier to understand than the prophets is because Moshe's level of prophecy was much higher than any other prophet. So he was like someone that can see walking in daylight. In comparison, the prophets were lesser prophets. lesser prophets to him, and the Rambam writes in Shemonah Perakim chapter 7, explaining the different levels of prophecy. He says that if the prophecy of each one of them was, let's say, the closer they were to Hashem, the smaller the separation was between them, and the clearer their prophecy was. The clearer it is, the easier it is to understand it simply.

2:24:57So, if let's say one prophet, when he would speak to Hashem, it would be like him speaking to Hashem with there being a wall between them. There's a wall between them, but let's say Hashem is speaking loudly so you could hear it, but it's not like me speaking to you right now. And then there's another prophet that's, let's say, closer to Hashem because he's perfected himself even higher, and the wall is thinner. It's more like a wooden wall instead of a wall like cement. So it's clearer to understand: if you speak to a wall, you can understand it easier if it’s a wall of wood versus cement. But then there was Moshe Rabbeinu. Moshe Rabbeinu's prophecy was as if there was a piece of glass between him and Hashem. That's why he said to Hashem, "Show me Your glory." When he said, "Show me Your glory," he had reached the highest level that you could possibly reach. It's like, "I'm just right next to You; there's nothing else that separates us. It's glass; I can see already." Hashem says, "This is the highest level you can get to while still being a human being. Any more than this, and you're already a neshama in Shamayim."

2:26:09So, the prophets were huge, but in comparison to Moshe Rabbeinu, they were lesser. Hence, the reason why the Five Books of Moses are much easier to understand than the prophets. But that doesn't mean that you should read the Five Books of Moses without commentary, because to us, nothing is clear. Whether you read the Five Books of Moses or you read the prophets, if you read it without commentary, you are reading it all like a Christian. And that's why the Christians have a different religion. Why? Because they read it without commentary and they, in essence, decide what happened. Instead of listening to the Chachamim who know for sure what happened. Why? Because we have an Oral Torah that tells us what happened. So if you, for example, read Kriyat Yam Suf in the Agadah, you're going to go with the Agadah. You're going to say, "Oh, Am Yisrael went to the Sea of Reeds, and Hashem split the ocean, and they all went through like in the movies. One wave went that way, one wave went that way, and everybody went kumbaya in the middle." Wrong. Even Kriyat Yam Suf you won't know. First of all, you have to know. if you, for example, read Kriyat Yam Suf in the Aggadah, you're going to go with the Aggadah. You're going to say, "Oh, Am Yisrael went to the Sea of Reeds, and Hashem split the ocean, and they all went through like in the movies. One wave went that way, one wave went that way, and everybody went kumbaya in the middle." Wrong. Even Kriyat Yam Suf you won't know. First of all, you have to know

2:27:25The Rambam writes it, the Me'am Lo'ez writes it, the Gemara writes it. Everywhere it says, the whole Torah. First of all, you should know, the Yam Suf was not split in half. It was split into 12, one tunnel for each tribe. Number two, it didn't go to the other side. It came back to the same side, meaning it was like a rainbow. Without reading the commentary, you would never arrive at that conclusion. Meaning that even something basic, like Kriyat Yam Suf, that every Jew knows about, every guy knows about Kriyat Yam Suf. You wouldn't even know that. You wouldn't even know that. Why? There's no commentary. No commentary. So, without commentary, we're simply creating a new religion in our mind. We're not going to understand one verse in the Torah—one verse in the Torah without commentary. Do not read the Torah without commentary. You do not know enough. You don't know more than Rav Chaim Kanievsky. I promise you. And he reads commentary. He reads commentary. He doesn't read Torah without commentary. I promise you that. You don't know more than Rav Ephraim. He reads commentary.

2:28:38You don't know more than Rav Ovadia. He reads commentary. All of his drashot to the people for decades were about the commentary, the midrashim. Why? Without commentary, we're blind people. We're blind people walking in darkness. We're not like the second prophets that were less. That's what happens. We think that Chazal was like Moshe Rabbeinu and we are like the second prophets that, yeah, we can get it if we think about it long enough. No, no, no, no. Moshe Rabbeinu, prophets, sages, donkeys. We're a little less than a donkey. That's the truth. How do I know? Gemara, Masechet Shabbat. Chazal says, if the Chachamim from the previous generation were like angels, then we are like men. if the generation of Chachamim they're not even talking about the prophets, they're talking about from 2,000 years ago. But if the generation before us was like humans, then we are like donkeys, but not the donkeys of the tzaddikim that know how to keep Shabbat. We're like the donkeys of the goyim that don't know the difference between Shabbat or any other day.

2:30:03If the Chachamim that wrote the Gemara call themselves donkeys, what are we 2,000 years later? We barely know Aleph Bet. Without commentary, rabotai yikarim, you'll never know anything. Never read the Torah, any part of it. Without commentary. Never. So that means you have to go to artscroll.com if you're an English speaker. Artscroll.com and buy yourself a Chumash with commentary. Now, the more commentary, the more books. So, for example, if you want to know all the details, like you want to know a lot of stuff, you buy Midrash Me'am Lo'ez. Go to Midrash Me'am Lo'ez. There's a website called Moznaim, that's the publisher, moznaim.com, M-O-Z-N-A-I-M dot com. You, there's a series of 45 books. You don't necessarily need to buy the whole series at once. You could buy one book at a time. Start with Bereishit, and you'll see just Bereishit. Just Bereishit, the first part of Bereishit, not the whole Bereishit. The first part is a giant book of 700 pages. All of Bereishit, I believe, is four or five books. Just Bereishit, Sefer Bereishit. By the time you finish the first book...

2:31:27You are a new type of Jew. Why? Your whole mind just woke up. I used to read this Midrash for 14 hours straight, and the only reason I would stop is because I had to work. You get high. You look at a different world. You just read stuff you never imagined. It's like, wow, that happened? Now it makes sense. Wow, that happened? Now it makes sense. Wow, now it makes sense. Now everything makes sense. But when you read it without commentary, nothing makes any sense. And even the things that you think make sense, you're wrong 99% of the time. You're wrong 99% of the time. You still think the Kriyat Yam Suf was a little hallway, just pass by it. You don't realize that Kriyat Yam Suf was a miracle inside a miracle inside a miracle. When you read the Haggadah, it says there were miracles, there were hundreds of miracles, and so on. What are the miracles? You don't understand. When they went through Yam Suf, the ocean wasn't open and then closed. It was closing as they were taking steps. They took a step, it closed right behind them. They took another step, it closed right behind them. They took another step, it closed right behind them. Meaning they never saw the Egyptians.

2:32:40Why? They have to have more emunah, more emunah, more emunah, another step of emunah in Hashem, another step of emunah in Hashem. You're never going to get this on your own. Never in a million years. When you read the Gemara, you simply understand how little you know. Even if you read a lot of commentaries, the more you know Torah, the more you understand that you don't know anything. Which makes it sound more foolish that people contradict the sages. When they say, no, no, I don't agree with the Rambam here. It's the funniest thing in the world. It's like someone that just graduated first grade saying, I don't agree with the top surgeon in the world and what he's going to do with this guy's heart. I don't agree with it. That's definitely... What do you know? ABC. What about after ABC? I don't know yet. We didn't get to it yet. What about D maybe? Never heard of it. What is that? Food? Is that food? No, D is a letter. It goes after C. I don't know if I'm going to trust you on that one. I'm going to wait for my teacher to say it. Oh, so you don't know if there's a D yet, if it's a letter, but you're going to criticize the top surgeon in the world. Ridiculous, right? Guess what? Reading the Torah...

2:33:52In our own way, in our own logic, it's worse. Why? Because we don't know enough. The biggest sages in the world read it with commentary. But that's what happens sometimes when we don't know what we don't know. So we do. It's a mistake. I made it also. Everybody makes it. So it's important for you to know. Without our sages, we cannot walk two steps. This is why the Gemara says, Rabbi Akiva says, Am Yisrael is like a bird. It's like a yonah. Why is it like a yonah? Why is it an analogy of using Am Yisrael as a yonah? He says because Am Yisrael depends on its chachamim. If they use the chachamim, they can fly in the heavens. But if they don't use the Chachamim, it's like a bird without wings that falls all the way to the ground and dies. Am Yisrael without Chachamim is not Am Yisrael. Why? We don't know anything. We don't know right, we don't know left, we don't know anything. Anyone that starts delving into the Torah without commentary is going to arrive at a different religion. My proof? Christianity.

2:35:06Christians, their whole religion is based on Torah without commentary by the sages. Torah without Oral Torah. Just written Torah. That's how they arrived at a different religion that does not know what Shabbat is. Their Shabbat is Sunday. It's not the seventh day. It's the first day. Even though it says "Bereshit," seventh day. Their Brit Milah is Brit Milah of the heart. Even though it says that Avraham Avinu's Brit Milah was a foreskin of the male member, no, their Brit Milah is the heart. You have to circumcise your heart. That's what happens when you have no commentary. Nothing. It means nothing. It means you have to do nothing. It means you can walk around like a goy with the orlah and that's it. Nothing. It means nothing. That's the point. The whole religion is based on nothing. Yeah, the baptism and all types of things. They do all types of things that they created because they wanted to create some type of mitzvot for themselves, as if they're doing something. Because... So just tidbits in the ArtScroll, just tidbits of Rashi.

2:36:19The ArtScroll, it depends. There is an ArtScroll that has tidbits of Rashi, Rambam, and a few other commentaries. But then there's an ArtScroll that has only Rashi on it, which is a lot more comprehensive. And then there are other books, other publishers that have other commentaries. There's the Ramban's commentary. There are many, many other ones, many other sages. Abarbanel, there are many, many commentaries. Rashi is the one that's accepted among all of Klal Yisrael as the first and foundational commentary on the entire Torah, because Rashi focused on the pshat, on the simple meaning of the Torah, which is always valid. That's the main one. Whereas other commentaries, like Chizkuni, Ramban or others, they delved sometimes into other aspects of the Torah, such as the secret parts of the Torah and others. Which again, is good and important, but it's not more important than the pshat. Additionally, Rashi covered more ground than everybody else. He gave a commentary on every verse in the Torah, whereas the other sages did not give a commentary on every verse; they just gave on some of them and...

2:37:42So with Rashi, if you read Rashi, you'll understand every verse in the entire Torah and the Gemara. If you read other commentaries, you'll understand some of them and not enough. So the first thing in the obligation of a Jew to learn is the commentary by Rashi or Onkelos. If you know how to read Onkelos, then Onkelos is even higher. But the point is that you have to read Torah with commentary, Jewish commentary. not local rabbi commentary, not website commentary; we first go to the commentary of our sages from centuries ago. That's how we know that it's right—the closer it is to the time of Moshe Rabbeinu. The more, the closer it is to the source. So, the first commentary is Onkelos. I don't know if they have Onkelos in English, but if you have Onkelos, that's the highest level of commentary. After that, it's Rashi. But the point is that Onkelos is from 2,500 years ago. He's the first one to make commentary. The commentary by Rashi is based on Onkelos and others. It's Aramaic.

2:39:03I think they're starting to come out with an English version of Onkelos. I don't think online. I think you have to buy the books. But the point is that you should start with Rashi's commentary. You'll get a good understanding of what's going on, a very good understanding. And then move on to other things from there. But it's very important for people to learn how to learn. And don't just make decisions about what to do because it makes sense to you. Always double-check with a rabbi, with a Talmid Chacham. What's the right way to do this? Don't say, listen, I'm doing this. Is this okay? Don't ask questions like that. Ask questions like you don't know anything. Because sometimes people ask questions like, "Listen, I'm doing this. Is this okay?" That person doesn't know what you know and what you don't know. And he's assuming that you know a lot more than you do. So sometimes they'll say, "Yeah, it's okay," because they're assuming that you're a Talmid Chacham, a scholar, who thinks that you can do such and such. So don't ask questions like that. Ask, "What do I do if I'm brand new? What do I do if I want to learn Chumash? What do I do if I want to learn this and that?" Ask the question, and you'll get the answer. Shas is the Talmud. It's a short name; it's an acronym for the Talmud, which is the foundation of our Oral Torah.

2:40:26Once a person has gone through the Chumash, where they know the basics of the Five Books of Moses, and has at least gone through it a couple of times, they have to start learning also the Gemara, also called the Shas. There's a good program called Daf Yomi, which is learning one page of Gemara per day. per day, it’s not the entire page, meaning it’s a basic understanding of each page. But that's usually either done with a chavruta, with another person, or you do it with ArtScroll, meaning there's a lot of commentary there to explain to you the basic meaning of it. But that's very, very important for a person to learn at some point. But aside from all this, it's understanding that we have an obligation to learn every single day, but we also have to make sure that we learn the right way and learn the right things. For example, if somebody watches a lecture by a wicked speaker for two hours, it's not a mitzvah, and it's not even considered learning Torah.

2:41:33Meaning, if somebody learns from one of these heretics that we spoke against, if you learn their lectures for two hours, don't think that you've learned Torah for two hours. You've learned the opposite. It's actually a sin because you're supporting a wicked person. So, if somebody learns, let's say, the New Testament because they want to know what to say to the Christians, that's also not a mitzvah. It's also not a mitzvah. Or the Quran, it's also not a mitzvah. Or a book about the Torah, meaning some modern-day author wrote a book about what he thinks of the Torah. That's not considered Torah. You know, Torah is things that sages wrote. Either the Five Books of Moses that HaKadosh Baruch Hu wrote, or you have a Tanach commentary, or the Midrashim, or the Gemara, or Sifrei Mussar, or Halacha, that's Torah. That's Torah. That's the most critical part. Anything else? Okay. Chavrutah. I think the battery is dying again. Yeah. What if you don't have a chavrutah? It depends on what you're learning. If you're learning Chumash, or you're learning a...

2:42:56a midrash or you're learning mussar, you don't need a chavruta for that. If you want to learn Gemara, then you should have a chavruta. But if you don't have one, then get yourself an ArtScroll Gemara that has English translation and just make sure to read the entire page. That's like having a chavruta. That's like having a chavruta. Because what happens with chavrutot is that first of all, you need to make sure that the chavruta is a talmid chacham. You know, it can't be like you. It can't be, you know, so it can't be like two beginners learning together from the Gemara. It has to be, you know, one scholar and one new guy or lesser. Or two scholars. But if it's going to be two people that are brand new or one person brand new, then they need to learn ArtScroll. That gives a lot of commentary, that gives a lot of details, that you're going to arrive at the right conclusion as a result of it. Because the Gemara is very important for you to understand what's being said. Not necessarily understand the language, but understand what's being said. A lot of people spend a lot of time learning the language, learning Hebrew, learning Aramaic. That's not the ikar, that's not critical. The critical part is to learn what's being said and to learn how to think like a Jew.

2:44:19In the beginning, it's hard because you have no idea why they're even arguing and why they can't just tell you yes or no and get on with it. But that's not the point. The point of Gemara is to know how to think like a Jew, how to arrive at a conclusion. And that takes some time. But again, that's assuming that you've already done all the other basics beforehand. You know how to keep Shabbat, you know, you learned halachot Shabbat, you learned the Chumash, you learned some mussar every day, learning has become a part of your day-to-day life, and your rabbi has said that you are ready to learn Gemara. You know, if you're ready to learn Gemara, then you should do it. But to just jump into certain things too fast sometimes can cause more damage than good. Like many times people jump into the Zohar. early on, without even knowing anything about Chumash, or Gemara, or Shulchan Aruch, or anything else, but they want to learn the Zohar. That's like a fool trying to teach people, or a blind person trying to tell people the color of the sky.

2:45:21The Zohar is specifically meant for people that are serious Talmidei Chachamim, who are already experts in all the other basics: the Shulchan Aruch, the Gemara, the Chumash, the Tanakh, the Mussar, and so on. People that jump through and go to learn Zohar and Kabbalah without this foundation are simply fools. simply fools. Unless they're Talmidei Chachamim and they got permission to do it and so on. But again, when people don't know what they don't know, they just assume they can do whatever they want. Which technically they can, but they're not going to become anything as a result of it. They could be learning for 5-10 years and still know nothing. They just know a little bit of a lot of things, but they don't know anything substantial. They don't have a full thought. You ask them to give me a chiddush. Give me some type of insight. Give me parashat hashavua. What happened this week? Five minutes. Can't give you, and don't know what to say. Oh yeah, it was Moshe. Okay, Moshe, thank you. Aharon also. Okay, thank you. They were in the desert. Wow, amazing. What else? Those people were there too. If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't know what else happened. Oh, I remember, I remember, I remember. Why? You're not learning in your own way, in your own world. It doesn't work that way. A person needs to know

2:46:41that there's a system you have to follow. It starts with Aleph, then Bet, then Gimel, then Dalet, Le'at, Le'at, A, B, C. Don't jump and think that you're Rashi after two months of learning. It doesn't work that way. It doesn't work that way. I'll leave you guys with a story that will hopefully give you some bitachon over these next few days. Because right now, we have to insert a little bitachon in every lecture. And the reason why is because every week so much happens, it's like a year. So I don't want to lose you guys. I don't want you guys to get crazy because a lot's going to happen in the next few days. Corona, Barona, and government, communities, all types of things. A lot of stuff happens every day. So, you guys, this is a time where there's not enough bitachon. So, I'm going to give you a real-life story. A real-life story, I got this email a couple of days ago, March 16th. A student of mine named Shoshana. She lives in Eretz Yisrael. And I'm going to read you her letter.

2:48:02She says, "Remember I sent you a letter to say thank you for the bitachon shiurim a year ago? Well, after a year of listening to your shiurim, I built my bitachon with Hashem. I had to, because I support my husband to learn full-time. And he learns from morning to midnight, while I'm taking care of everything." I gave up an operations manager position in Karmiel, Israel this year so my husband can stay in Yerushalayim. He did not want to leave Yerushalayim, no matter how big of an income I would make. Instead, I took an average pay job in a biochemistry role in Yerushalayim. I struggled to come home to juggle all the cleaning, cooking, shopping, and homework with the kids and just spending time with each child. But I didn't let go of working on myself and getting closer to Hashem. Every day I heard a new shiur from you, and it kept me strong. The last three to four months, I just wanted to cry because it got so overwhelming, but I just kept praying harder for Hashem to help me.

2:49:22Today, Jerusalem looks half shut down. Most mothers are struggling in their homes with the kids due to no school and jobs closing because of the virus. Either people are becoming very paranoid or beyond stressed. Then there's me. I gave up everything that I wanted so my husband could learn, and now I realize what Hashem did for me. This biochemistry company is the leading supplier for the coronavirus research. It's the one company in Israel that's booming. And because they work so much, the company accommodated me by bringing me to work and giving me a huge office for myself, so I can bring my kids with me. They can be with me while I work, and I absolutely love it. I get to spend more time with my kids than ever. They help me with the job, and they listen to the Torah that you teach in Hebrew now.

2:50:36I can't get over how Hashem set me up to not feel this plague around me. If I took the job at Carmel, that jet engine company, I'd probably be out of a job right now because of the airline issues that are happening. I always make sure to say to Hashem, "You know better than me; put me where it's best." May everyone have the bitachon to see each day as a gift the way I'm seeing it now. Keep doing what you're doing. My husband wanted me to write you this to say thank you for helping us to see how amazing Hashem is. Real-life story, Rabotai, of anybody that listens to HaKadosh Baruch Hu and the Chachamim. That's what happens in real life. The story you heard about the girl at the Teshuva two days ago, That happened a couple of days ago. That's the beginning. This one is a year later. I'm a different person. A year from now, I'll tell you the story of the one I told you today. That's how it works.

2:51:41Someone that trusts in Hashem, HaKadosh Baruch Hu will give him everything. Why? It says in the Torah, "Someone that has bitachon in Hashem, only kindness will surround them." But having bitachon in Hashem is not just saying blindly, "Yeah, I trust Hashem, I trust Hashem." You have to trust the advice of the chachamim. If they tell you right, even if left looks good, you still go right. Why? Hashem will change nature just to make the Chacham right. That's what we have to understand, Rabbotai HaKedoshim. It's important for us to know that HaKadosh Baruch Hu loves us, but He's also obligating Himself to test us. To see, do we have Bitachon? Do we have Emunah? But even before that, do we have Yirat Shamayim or Yirat HaCorona? Are we afraid of Hashem or afraid of Corona? If you're afraid of Corona, that means you're not afraid of Hashem. You have to be afraid of Hashem. If you're afraid of Hashem, you'll have emunah, you'll have bitachon, you'll have ahavah, you'll have everything good. If you're not afraid of Hashem, you don't have anything. You have nothing; you're homeless.

2:52:54Please, let's not stay homeless. HaKadosh Baruch Hu has a big house for us. We just have to listen to Him. Listen to Him, listen to the Chachamim. Baruch Adonai le'olam. Amen ve'amen.