How To Build Your Emunah? (10 Minutes)

0:00without realizing that it's our last opportunity. Now, how do we get to a point of building this emunah? Chazal say that there are two things, there are only two things that are going to help someone at the end of times: Torah and Gemilut Chassadim. The Torah, meaning not only learning Torah every day, but practicing Torah. You can't just say, listen, yeah, you know what?

1:24But most importantly, it's something that involves your time, where you are donating your time and your effort. You're doing something above and beyond what you would normally do. One of the best mitzvot of chesed that you can possibly do, especially now, is, as we were saying right before we pressed the button to turn on, is kiruv - getting other Jews to become religious. Now, if you're a good speaker, you can give, you know, if you know Torah, you're a good speaker, you could teach Torah. If not, you give him a disc of somebody else that speaks. If you don't have a disc, bring him to a lecture. There are all types of ways of doing kiruv. It doesn't all require money. If you already have a Facebook account or a Twitter account, instead of tweeting about what Paris Hilton ate last week on Tuesday at 3 a.m., Tweet a shiur Torah by Rabbi Mizrachi or Rabbi Zamir Cohen or one of these rabbis. Stop wasting your time with nonsense. If you're on Facebook, and you see a nice shiur, or you see one of these short clips that we've been putting up over the last week, or anything else that's out there, press like and share it with your friends. Don't be so selfish. Spread the words of Torah. Some of it requires money, but it doesn't necessarily need to. Why is kiruv so powerful?

2:53Because the Gemara in Masechet Bava Metzia says that someone who brings other Jews closer to Torah observance and makes them religious is given the power to override Hashem's decrees. This is mind-boggling when you think about it. Someone who helps other Jews become more observant, Hashem grants him the power. To tell Hashem, no, I disagree, I want this person to live. Hashem decides, listen, I need to punish this person, chas v'shalom, I'm going to give him a disease. And he's only going to have a week to live. If that person is lucky enough to know a righteous Jew that does kiruv, and that person comes, and cares enough about this Jew, he starts praying to Hashem and says, "Hashem, no. I don't want you to kill him. He's going to do better. Give him another chance." According to Chazal (our sages) in the Gemara, which is part of the oral Torah and not some hidden book that no one knows about, this is in the core part of the foundation of the Torah. In essence, Hashem can say yes to something that was already decided.

3:54and cares enough about this Jew, and he starts praying to Hashem, and he says, Hashem, no. I don't want You to kill him. He's going to do better. Give him another chance. According to Chazal in the Gemara, this is the Oral Torah, this is not some hidden book that no one knows about. This is in the core part of the foundation of the Torah. Hashem, in essence, can say yes to something that was already decided. Even if it's a death penalty. Obviously, if we can do something like that for others, we can do things like that for ourselves. Why does Hashem care so much about people that do Kiruv? Why does Hashem consider them something beyond just righteous? There was a shiur by Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, Zecher Tzadik Livracha, and he was talking about this tract within Bava Metzia, but also...

4:55Describing a Kiruv person or a Kiruv rabbi's afterlife, he says the highest level that a righteous person can reach is where they become malachai sharet, the angels of G-d. The righteous person reaches that level of heaven. He's going to be with them. He's going to be directly with the servants of G-d. There's only one level above them. That's literally above the angels of G-d. And there's only one kind of person that goes there: someone that does kiruv. So even if someone is the Gadol HaDor, someone who knows Torah, you know, like it's flowing out of his mouth, it's something amazing. He knows everything by heart—the whole Gemara, the whole Zohar, the whole Mishnah, the whole Chumash, Tanakh, hundreds of thousands of books. His whole life he's been in a room, closed off, just with Torah. Never made a sin in his life.

5:56But he didn't do kiruv. Okay, so he gets to a higher level in Heaven, b'ezrat Hashem. Some little guy doesn't know even a quarter of what this tzaddik knows, but he brings Jews back. He brings Jews back to Hashem and gets to a higher level. Why? Because if you think about it, At the end of Masechet Sotah, when it talks about the end of times, Hashem is giving us a very, very critical message. He's telling us that after all of these prophecies come true, which we talked about, whether it's promiscuity, inflation, war, all bad stuff, I'm going to put Am Yisrael in a situation where you will have nothing to rely on other than our Father in Heaven. So whether you have money, your money is going to be worthless. You thought you had power, you're not going to be a peasant. You thought that your looks are going to get you somewhere, your looks are going to be worthless. Everything you thought was meaningful, I'm going to put you in a position where it's completely worthless, and there's only one thing that you can rely on. Me. Hashem. That's it. other than our Father in Heaven. So whether you have money, your money is going to be worthless. You thought you had power, you're not going to be able to use it. You thought that your looks were going to get you somewhere, your looks are going to be worthless. Everything you thought was meaningful, I'm going to put you in a position where it's completely worthless, and there's only one thing that you can rely on: Me. God. That's it. Our Father in Heaven.

7:23So when he's saying that the ultimate purpose, in essence, of the ultimate climax of this world is for us to get to a point where we can only rely on our Father in Heaven, what is it telling us here? It's telling us that no matter what we do, we're still His children. So if one of my children is not only righteous with Me, but they're so worried about My other children, their brothers and sisters, to bring them back to Me. Them I love extra. Because not only are they doing the right thing already, okay, they're keeping mitzvot, they're keeping Shabbat, they're keeping kosher, they're doing all the things they can. Whatever they're supposed to do, they're doing it, it's fine. But they're doing chesed. with Hashem. You can even say, you're almost, in essence, you're doing a favor, not just, obviously, you're the ones that benefit, Hashem is perfect, but in essence, it's almost like you're doing a favor for Hashem. You're doing chesed for Hashem because He has a lost child somewhere. Completely lost, has no concept of what God is, has no concept of what's happening in the world around him.

8:48You're getting this boy or girl to open a Torah every day for a little bit of time to learn some Torah, to do a mitzvah, to do something to connect them with God—it doesn't get better than that. It doesn't get better than that. So, someone who really wants to connect to Hashem on a bigger level should spend as much energy as they can doing it. Again, like I said, not everybody's a speaker, not everybody's a scholar, but there are ways to do it for very, very cheap and very, very simple. Whether it's pressing like, or sharing videos, or bringing people to Shiurei Torah, getting people to a point where it's not you just pressing like, like, like all day like a robot. Obviously, have some purpose. Send it to people. Do something beyond just being a robot. If Hashem wanted robots, He would have created only angels. He doesn't need humans. So, obviously, go out of your way to do chesed with Hashem. When you go out of your way to do chesed with Hashem, He will go out of His way to do chesed with you. In this world and the next.