How To Do Real TeShuva by Rabbi Yaron Reuven

0:13Good to be back. We've had a couple of really good shiurim over here. Usually, your questions are better than my shiurim. But you had a couple of questions, a couple of interesting things. The month of Elul is a time, as I was saying in a shiur we just did now in Queens, for reflection. It's a time for us to reevaluate where we stand. The pasuk says, "Ani l'dodi v'dodi li," representing that Shlomo HaMelech is indicating that Hashem is for me and I am for Hashem. If you look at the first letter of each one of those words, it spells out Aleph, Lamed, Vav, Lamed, spelling Elul. The month of Elul is a time of reflection. It's a time for us to reevaluate where we stand. The pasuk says, "Ani l'dodi v'dodi li," representing that Shlomo HaMelech is indicating that Hashem is for me, and I am for Hashem. If you look at the first letter of each one of those words, it spells out Aleph, Lamed, Vav, Lamed, spelling Elul. Symbolizing that Hashem is closer to Am Yisrael during the month of Elul than He is during the rest of the year, meaning that right now, if anybody wants to, you know, if anyone ever thought about doing teshuvah, this would be the time. If anybody ever wanted to get stronger with learning Torah, this would be the time. If anybody wanted to take on another mitzvah, become modest, watch their brit, watch their eyes, donate money...

1:38have extra kavanah in their prayer, this would be the time. Why would this be the time? Because anyone that ever experienced the nightmare of having a trial, going to court, knows that a court case—it doesn't matter what it is—is always scary. Even if it's only for a parking ticket, everybody that's a normal human being is scared to lose and Because he knows that if he loses this case, then instead of it being a $25 or a $75 fine, it's $500. Instead of it being, you know, a $100 ticket, it's $1,000, plus you lose your license. Instead of this, it ends up, meaning the trial is always scary. Everybody's scared to lose a trial. Obviously, if you even go through a bankruptcy trial, for example, I remember when we went through bankruptcy, one thing that I never thought was even possible for somebody that had so much money at some point, but I remember the biggest surprise that I had dealing with bankruptcy was that someone can go against it, meaning one of the debtors lets you have, for example, you have five people or five companies you owe money to.

2:53$5, $10, $15, $20, whatever the amount of money is. And you don't have the money to serve the debt. You have no money. There's no possibility for you to pay the money. Now, if you have the money, you should know, if you have the money, but no one knows, except Hashem and you, you're not allowed to declare bankruptcy. It's gezel. It's considered stealing. Even though the government is full of fools, they're going to allow every average Jew to declare bankruptcy, you're not allowed to declare bankruptcy if you have money. Even if the money is in your wife's account or in some foreign account, if it's your money, you're not allowed to declare bankruptcy if you have the money. That's considered stealing. Now, if, on the other hand, you really don't have the money, I know you had a business and it collapsed to zero, or you had this and it went to nothing, you lost what you have, and there's no way you're ever going to have the money based on logic and in reality... amount of interest that's being charged and debt and lawyers that you have to deal with, it gets to a point where you can't even pay your bills and you're not even able to live. Then there are certain rules that the government has; different countries have different rules, of course. There is a leniency regarding declaring bankruptcy, but a person always needs to go ask their rabbi if they're allowed or not allowed to declare bankruptcy. Don't just assume just because the government allows you to declare bankruptcy.

4:10you're allowed to do it. A lot of people do it in real estate transactions. They make a couple of deals; one or two deals don't go well, so they declare bankruptcy on that company. They own the real estate under even though they have 18 other companies that are fully liquid, fully good, everything is wonderful. They're all printing money, but this one had a bad deal. They think, "Let's just close this one down and let everybody else suffer the pain that we're suffering. We're not paying anybody." That's stealing. That's gezel. You have to come back and give gehula and pay back the money. So, you have to understand that you have to be very, very careful. But I remember going to bankruptcy, and one of the things that was a very big surprise is that I thought that you declare bankruptcy, you prove, "Listen, yeah, there's a million dollars in debt, there is zero in assets, and..." Can't pay the debt. There's zero income, zero assets, zero this, zero that. There's nothing. There's nothing I can do. I'm sorry. I can't pay it back. There's nothing I can do about it. Now, one of the things that surprised me was that one of the, one of the, somebody go outside and get those kids to come to this shiur. It's better than going in the streets.

5:28So one of the things that surprised me was that one of the people, let's say one of the companies you owe money to, can decide they don't want to agree with the bankruptcy. They want to be excluded from the bankruptcy, and they want to fight. They want to prove that you don't have any money. This was a surprise because I thought this was just a simple thing. I... So a person that goes through that experience where you realize, okay, so now somebody is rejecting the bankruptcy. He's rejecting the trial. Now you have to fight them. You have to have a, there's a separate trial. It's called an adversary hearing. You have to prove to them, I don't have the money. To provide and they think they could ask you for every piece of paperwork from now until I'm ashamed of it. Everything that's relevant, everything that's not relevant—who you're related to, who you're not related to. They look at your phone numbers. It's a little like an FBI investigation. It's much worse than an IRS audit.

6:32And it's a big surprise because now you're worried. What if I forgot? What if I did? You start worrying. Even though you know you don't have any money, you're still worried. What's going on? Why are they asking for my fingerprints? What do my fingerprints have anything to do with it? Why are they asking for my dad's phone number? What does he have to do with it? We haven't talked in a week. You start asking yourself questions even though you know you're innocent. Still, why are they asking these questions? Do they know something? I don't know, maybe I missed a law, maybe I missed something. The point being about time is that anyone who goes to a trial, a normal person, gets worried. Why? There's a lot on the line. Even if you know you're innocent, even though you know you didn't murder the guy, you know that if something happens, and they decide, "You know what, we don't believe you. We think you did murder," you know you're going to end up spending 25 years behind bars. There's plenty of people that are sitting in jail today that didn't do it. They didn't do it, but they couldn't prove they didn't do it. They couldn't prove they didn't do it or there was enough proof to say they did do it because the guy looked like them or acted like them or whatever it was. Hashem wanted it to be that way. I believe it was the Ben Ish Chai that one time went to jail. One of the Gedolei Yisrael went to jail. A lot of Gedolei Yisrael went to jail, by the way, and...

7:54Part of the tikkun and Ben Ish Chai suffered. He asked himself, he said to his talmidim when he finally got out, "I was crying in the cell, asking Hashem: 'Why, why, why am I in this filthy place? This one's a murderer, this one's a rapist, this one's a pedophile, this one is a torturer. All these are the garbage of the world. Why am I surrounded by these people?'" then Baruch Hashem, Hashem felt bad for me, all the tears that I spent, and something happened to me in a dream. It told me that there are neshamot in the walls. There are neshamot in the walls that came in a gilgul because they didn't want to go to shiurei Torah. They didn't want to go to shiurei Torah. They wanted to go hang out in the streets. They wanted to go hang out with their girlfriends and boyfriends. They wanted to waste their lives. So Hashem gave them several chances, and each time you get worse and worse. So first you're a human being, then you come back as something living, like a cow or something, and then a plant, and eventually, Hashem, a person comes back as a rock. As a rock. It's a very, very scary thing.

9:08But in the book of Chavakuk, Chavakuk says, it says that the rock screams. What rock is screaming? A rock that has a neshamah in it. There's a rock that has a neshamah in it. So the Ben Ish Chai says, in my dream it showed me there's several neshamot in the walls. And the only way they could ever rectify, the only way they could do teshuvah is if I learn Torah and they're forced to listen. Now they have to listen. They can't go anywhere. They're a rock. We never become rocks. So the truth is, Rabotai, that when a person goes to trial, he's scared, he's terrified because something is on the line. Even if he's right, even if he's innocent, even if he has a clear-cut case. I told somebody a story the other day. I one time had a case.

10:08The other party didn't show up, which usually means you win by default. I had a lawyer, they had a lawyer, but the actual person never showed up. We still lost. Why? Hashem wanted us to lose, meaning that... All the things can be planned, and you can organize, and you can pay a thousand dollars an hour, like I used to for my lawyers, and all the stuff can work out, and you think, no, no, I have the best lawyer. I have the best lawyer you could ever have, and I have the best money, and I have the best brain, and I have the best case, and I'm right, and I have proofs, and I have emails, and I have this and I have that, and Hashem decides, "Hey buddy, you're losing." Why? I decided. I decided on the show. So now, A person has a trial every year, Jew or non-Jew. Rosh Hashanah is for everyone, by the way. Rosh Hashanah is a trial for every single species on earth. Even the rocks that have neshamot in them have a trial. Even the dead that left 300 years ago have a trial. Some can actually be in Gan Eden right now, but they're on trial. Why?

11:26Why is there a trial for everyone, whether they are a Jew or a non-Jew, whether they are alive or dead? Why is there a trial on Rosh Hashanah? Trial is based on what you do in the last year. Now, it says that Hashem opens the book of the living. That we understand—in the last year you did feeling, you did this. You looked, you didn't look, you did a lot. We understand why someone that's alive has a trial. Hashem has to assess: What has he done in the last year? But what about the dead? What did he do? He died. He's not here anymore. Every year, Hashem assesses what did he leave in the world and... Trial is based on what you do in the last year. Now, it says that Hashem opens the book of the living. That we understand—in the last year you did tefillin, you did this. You looked, you didn't look, you did a lot. We understand why someone that's alive has a trial. Hashem has to assess: What has he done in the last year? But what about the dead? What did he do? He died. He's not here anymore. Every year, Hashem assesses what did he leave in the world and... What did he leave in the world? Did he leave kids that didn't believe in God because he wasn't exactly so religious, so he didn't send them to yeshiva? So his kids married goyot, and now his grandkids also married goyot, and now Judaism has been destroyed in that family. His seed is gone and... They became thieves, or they became Ponzi schemers, or they became criminals of some kind, or they violate Shabbat every week now. He left us in the world, or maybe he wrote a book. But the book, instead of being a sefer Torah, instead of being chiddushim on the Torah, he wrote a book about, you know, maybe about things against God. Maybe he wrote about what if God doesn't exist. People write such stupid books.

12:51People read this book not just during his life, but even after he dies, people still read this book. People think that if the book is 300 years old, it must be true. It must be true; people still believe Darwin. "Oh look, Darwin wrote it so many years ago, it must be true," even though Darwin's students, by the way, contradict him, and even though Darwin himself contradicted himself and said in the end, "By the way, I'm full of it." The reality is, rabotai, that when somebody writes a book, that book is there and someone's going to read it. And Rosh Hashanah, one second, Rosh Hashanah, they're going to evaluate and see what kind of results your work that you had while you were alive left. If you left people that were religious... They're keeping mitzvot and you have grandkids that are keeping mitzvot and you have great-grandkids who are keeping mitzvot. One became a rabbi, one became a talmid chacham, and one this and one that, and the mitzvot they do are going to elevate you to an even higher level in Gan Eden. You are in this level, we're going to get you even higher. How high? There's no limit. There's no limit to the pleasure in Olam Haba.

14:00There's no limit. One moment of Olam HaBa of the good parts—even if you had all of the good of all of the people that ever existed and you put it all into a box—it wouldn't be worth that one minute of Olam HaBa in heaven. On the other hand, The guy wrote atheist books, Zionist books, or Christian books—if he wrote all types of nonsense that's against God, then he has a problem because every year he goes into a deeper level of Gehenom. Sometimes a person can get to a point where, initially, he got to Gan Eden. initially, he got to Gan Eden. Why? Because he left this world young and his kids were still kids. They were going to public school, but they didn't become criminals yet. So he did a few mitzvot and he just slipped into Gan Eden. He kept Shabbat. He kept this. But his kids, he left them in public school. He said, no, it's not so important. Let them figure it out. Let's just save the $500, $1,000 a month.

15:04Now, when he got in there, he went to Gan Eden because the kids—they're little, eight, nine, ten years old. After he died, they continued going to public school, but now they're bar mitzvah, now they're bat mitzvah. Now his cute little eight-year-old daughter is now a Mrs., but she's a Mrs. Brown because she married some guy from public school. She married some guy from public school and... And little Stevie, cute little Stevie, with the little peyos when he was three years old. But they cut it because he goes to public school now. Little Stevie married Destiny from the strip club. Now their child is born. He has to pay. He has to pay. He has to pay. They take him out of Gan Eden and they put him in Gehinnom. That's a trial. Even in Shamayim, they're scared. Even in Shamayim, they're scared. So a person needs to know, if you're going to be in this world, at least do a good job. Because it doesn't go away. Whatever you do doesn't go away. It's not like a stomachache; if you just sleep for a little while, it goes away. It lasts. It has longevity. So every single person that understands, we have a trial coming up.

16:21Few weeks has to get prepared, has to start understanding. Okay, I have a trial. This is very scary. The people that already left the world are scared; at least I should be scared. I should get prepared. I should show up with something. So what do you do? You prepare for the case. You prepare for the case. Okay, what could I show up with? Okay, I'm gonna show up. You know what? I didn't really learn that much this year. I learned maybe once or twice a week. So at least for the next few weeks, let me learn every day and start making it a thing. I'm learning every day. Every day, a little Chumash, every day a little Gemara, every day a few halachot, every day something. I only learned ten minutes a day for the last year. Okay, let me do 50 minutes now. Let me do an hour now. Let me do more. Why? Show up with something in your hand. Give Hashem a reason to let you win and... Yes, you had a question. Excuse me? Because the inanimate object has a neshama in it. Yes, the inanimate object has a neshama in it, and they judge it based on whether it was aware and whether it fixed its tikkun or not. So, for example, if something is a cow, then that cow, if it's still alive...

17:38If it's still alive, then, thank you. If it's still alive, then most likely it hasn't fixed its tikkun. If it's not, then it's not. They re-evaluate the person, or the neshama, based on where, you know, what is its actual tikkun. Hashem put it in a rock for a certain reason. Maybe the tikkun for the rock was that the rock would have to move six feet somehow. Some people say we mean the rock had to move. Rocks don't move, but rocks do move, by the way. There's actually scientific evidence that there are rocks that do move. They're in a desert and... And you can see it on the internet if you'd like. You see there's certain parts of the desert, these huge rocks. Rocks, I'm not talking about rocks like a little pebble. I'm talking about rocks that are boulders. Rocks that you can build something on top of. Huge, giant rocks. They're literally in the middle of just pure desert. There's nothing next to them. It's not like another rock that ran into it. Nothing.

18:39Nothing next to it, but then you see that the rock literally moved over a period of a year, a half a mile. Why? Because you see there's a streak, and they actually documented this with cameras and they see the rock moving a little bit every day. So rocks do move. They're not so inanimate like people think, and you can see this on the internet. It also, you could find in a few books. Rabbi Zecharia Wallerstein, I believe, has it in one of his books, and there are several other places. Yes. I'll answer this way. I don't usually talk about love because, for the most part, it confuses people and And in some cases, it gets to a much worse case and it turns Judaism into idolatry. There are more people attending the Kabbalah Center than they are attending synagogue because people are looking for a quick fix. So they buy these red strings, and they think that that makes them a tzaddik or that makes her righteous because she bought a red string for $50. So I don't usually talk about Kabbalah because I think that most people are barely at the level of learning the pshat.

20:03In our generation, at the basic level, talking to the general public about Kabbalah, I think, is doing the general public a disservice. Most people need basic day-to-day survival. Day-to-day, how do I get to Gan Eden? Day-to-day, how do I get to a good marriage? Day-to-day, how do I survive if Mashiach shows up now? That's what we need to know in reality. Kabbalah stuff, once we become experts in the basics, then we can talk about that. No, I don't think you should think about it, but in general, I could tell you this: every single thing in creation, everything. Every single thing in creation, looking in the kabbalistic world, if you're looking at the world of neshamos and things of that nature. Every single thing in creation, whether it's the chair that you're sitting on, the ceiling that's on top of you, the building that you're in. Every single thing must have a purpose because the Designer... All he does is provide a purpose. He's providing the ultimate purpose which is told to you in the Torah. Meaning that there cannot be a single creation in the world that's purposeless. To such an extent that even His creation, you and me, know that you cannot do anything for no purpose. No one ever does something for no purpose. No one ever built a chair for no reason.

21:28You build a chair because someone's going to sit on it. No one ever built a house and said, "What did you build it for?" "Eh, no reason." "Are you going to sell it?" "No." "Are you going to buy it?" "No." "Are you going to live in it?" "No." "What did you do it for?" "I don't know, I just wanted to look at it." Okay, so the purpose is for you to be a little crazy; you want to look at it, but at least there's a purpose. There's nothing for no reason. So just like it is for the creation, such as for the Creator, even more so for the Creator. So yes, there are certain things that have little nitzotzim, little certain aspects of a neshama, not very much like ours, but different. There is to such an extent that there were six worlds before this one. This is the seventh and last world. Some of those people, like us, didn't exactly do teshuvah. they had to come back to fulfill their purpose in a different way, and some of them had to fulfill their way by being your chair and being your wall by being something else. This is very, very deep Kabbalah, very, very high and above and beyond. The purpose of me telling you is not for you to look into it deeper. The purpose of me telling you is for you to stop here and realize there's much more to the world than meets the eye. There's much more to the Creator than the things you see as His creations. There's a lot to everything, meaning that if Hashem put that much

22:49reasoning, rationale, purpose into even something that's inanimate like a rock in the middle of a desert. Don't you think that when He said keep Shabbat, He meant it? Don't you think when He said be a kosher person and be honest in your business, He meant it? If He wrote it, if there are things that have meaning that you never heard about, but they have a lot of meaning, they have a lot of significance in the world and... But He never said it plainly. Don't you think that the things that He did say plainly have even more significant meaning? So the good news is that everything that's written in the Torah is what's relevant to you. Whatever is written in the Torah is relevant to you. That's what you have to do. Everything that's not written in the Torah, you don't have to worry about. Meaning, somebody that wants to believe in aliens. Are there aliens? Are there not aliens? Why doesn't the Torah talk about aliens? The reason why the Torah does not talk about aliens is not necessarily because there are or there aren't. Chazal never said there are, Chazal never said there aren't. But what they did say is that if it mattered to you, you'd know. Do you know?

24:00Is it said in the Torah? No. So that means it doesn't matter to you. That means it's never going to be like that movie that I saw before, called Independence Day, where a bunch of aliens show up to Earth and start killing people. That's never going to happen. That's only in the movies. That's only somebody that wants to waste two and a half hours of their life. That you can live in the movie. In reality, no alien is coming over here and is going to join your minyan. That's never happening. He's never going to happen. He's not converting. He's not going to become the next president. He's not the president now. He wasn't the one before. He's not coming. There's no aliens here. Yes? Alien ideology, meaning? Oh, that's another word. That's another word for another way to describe foreign worship. Hashem says... Don't have any other gods other than Me. What does it mean? What does it mean? We have one of the commandments. Number two commandments. Hashem says don't have another god. Obviously, if Hashem is talking to us at Mount Sinai, we're all there. All of you. Me, I was there. You were there. Everybody was there. Just different neshamos. You looked a little different. I think you didn't wear glasses back then, by the way.

25:17The point is that you're all there. Hashem is telling you, don't have another god. What are you going to say, no? What's the point of Him saying, don't have another god? What's the point? God, we get it, You're talking to us. We're going to cheat on You in front of You? Of course we're not going to have another god. Where's even the commandment? Why is it even a commandment? The reason it's a commandment, Rabotai, is because "don't have another god" is not just something that pertains to physicality. Do you go and pray to something else, to Buddha, to JC Penny, to the ones in between, to the cow, to the horse, to the donkey, to the motorcycle in India? There's a religion where they all pray to a motorcycle. Some of them pray to rats. All types of wonderfully stupid levels of stupidity are found in the world today. Hashem is not talking about them only—that's obvious. It's obvious even the rat that they're praying to is saying, "These people must be crazy. I'm not God, but they don't understand the rat language." But God is not only talking about that. He's not just talking about "lo yihyeh lecha elohim acheirim al panay" (you shall not have other gods before Me). He's not just talking about you worshiping another god when it's obvious you went to some Indian temple or...

26:40And you worship some foreign idol. He's not just talking about that. What he's talking about is that each person has a yetzer hara. And the yetzer hara is trying to convince him of a different god, of his own god. Which god? The god of money, and any other desire. The Gemara in Masechet Shabbat, I believe it's 105b. It says, if a person gets angry and he acts out his anger, instead of keeping it to himself and working on himself, and understanding that everything is run by Hashem, he is like a little gremlin, and he decides to throw something. He's angry, so he decides to start punching the walls, or his wife, or her husband, or the kids, or the neighbor, or the employee. The poor table, like what did the table do? He starts smashing a table or the monitor. Or he takes the remote and throws it against the wall. He thinks that's going to help his anger. The Gemara says that person is over avoda zara. That person is an idol worshiper. You should judge him as an idol worshiper. Why an idol worshiper? The Gemara explains that if he got to a point where he's acting out his anger, he's not only angry, but he's acting out his frustrations with physical and

28:08physicality to such an extent that he's breaking something, throwing something. Even if he just takes a bunch of money and throws it in the air, you know, sometimes you get really, really upset and you have something in your hand, you don't realize what it is, you just throw it, and then you realize it's money. Then you and everybody else start grabbing the money. It happens sometimes. Now, the Gemara says if he throws his money in the air, he's an idol worshiper. Why is he an idol worshiper? Because if he got to that low level of acting out his anger like that, that means that he's become a permanent full-time employee of the Yetzer Hara. Why? Because the Yetzer Hara doesn't start with, "Hey, listen, go worship an idol." It doesn't start like that. First, the Yetzer Hara says, "You know what? Why don't you sleep another hour? Who needs to go to Selichot? Who needs to go to Minyan? Who needs to go to Shul? Pray at home." Who needs to keep this? Who needs to keep these? Start small. Who needs to wear tzitzit? Nah, no one sees it anyway. Tell them you wear tzitzit. Tell them, tell them you wear tzitzit. No one has to wear it, really. Who wears a kippah? Come on, in today's age, you wear a kippah, they'll kill you. You know, starts putting shtuyot in his head that if you wear a kippah, some Arab is going to kill you. The Arab is not scared about wearing a turban, but the Jew is scared about wearing a kippah. So now, the Yetzer Hara starts planting little poison seeds in his head.

29:38falls for it yet, so he continues. Then he says, "Okay, since you're not doing tefillin anymore, I don't have to bother you about that anymore. You're not praying anymore, so I don't have to bother you about that. I have to do something else. By the way, do you see that girl? Go, go say something to her. She's not Jewish, who cares? It's modern society, convert her, you'll convert her, you'll convert her later," like Zimri said to Moshe Rabbeinu. Zimri said in Parashat Balak, Zimri comes to Moshe Rabbeinu and he says, "Moshe, isn't your wife a convert? I'll convert Kozbi. I'll convert her." Baruch Hashem, Pinchas killed them. But anyway... ...person as he hits a line in his head is telling him today to do this, the next day to do that, the next day to do another thing. Every day it's something else. Eventually, the Gemara says he’s going to tell him he's such a full-time, such a loyal employee. He started with no tefillin, no synagogue, no this, no that. Then he's looking at the girl, then he's marrying the girl, then he's stealing, then he's doing this. Eventually, the Yetzer Hara says, "Why don't you go to church for Christmas?" and...

30:44Your girlfriend is a she's Christian. Our family's Christian. You have to risk. It's it's shalom bayit. He starts giving me tzedakah, creating peace. So it's shalom bayit. I have to have shalom bayit; it's a mitzvah. You saw, you listened, you married a Christian, go to church. And he goes to church. He goes to a church where there's idolatry 100% of the day, and he has no idea how he got here. He looks around, he sees everyone's an idol worshiper. He has no idea, how did I get here? How did I get here? That's the Yetzer Hara. That's the Yetzer Hara, says the Gemara. The Yetzer Hara has become his idol. He follows everything it says. So when Hashem says don't have another god, it's not just talking about the physical aspect of an actual image of something, but literally listening to your own desire. For trying to fulfill every desire you have, every time you have a physical desire, you say, "Oh, I must fulfill this desire." You're hungry; you have to eat. "I have to eat. An hour ago, I have to eat. I have to eat. An hour ago, enough. Chalas! One, two, three times a day, you ate 18 times! Too much! You're going to become an elephant. Relax. Eat. It's enough." "No, no, but it's good. It's a restaurant with a discount. It's 'buy one burger, get three free.' I have to eat."

32:11Every time, if you're one of those people who fulfill every one of your desires, eventually, rabotai yekarim, you become a slave to who? Yetzer Hara. This is more obvious in money than anything else because people are willing to go to synagogue. They're willing to give tzedakah. They're willing to lay tefillin. They're willing to be modest. They won't do a lot of things. They're not willing to leave their god of money. Sometimes you're going to see a person who looks and acts like a tzaddik in every other aspect. He comes to the shul, he donates money here and there, he does a lot of good things. But as soon as his partner or his employee or somebody messes with his money, as soon as somebody doesn't pay him back a day late, and an hour late or just doesn't feel like doing it. As soon as his pocket is touched, all of a sudden, Amalek comes out. All of a sudden, his mouth turns into a sewer, and he starts cursing and yelling and this and that, and he starts acting like somebody just killed his whole family. What is that? Okay, so the guy shortchanged you $15—relax. Or $500, or $5—it doesn't make a difference. Why are you acting like this?

33:33I thought you learned Torah. I thought you did mitzvot. Yeah, but he's messing with my money. No, no, he's not messing with your money. Hashem is. And that's one of the most important things that a person needs to know. Anything and everything that happens to you in the world is coming from Hashem. There's no power outside of Hashem. Nothing happens in the world unless Hashem signs off on it. So, When a person wants to fulfill the mitzvah that's in the Ten Commandments, not to have another god, that mitzvah is the root of teshuva. What teshuva? Teshuva to start making your yetzer hara come under control. Yes, of course, we all fall here and there. Yes, of course, we're all going to sin here and there. But there's sin, and then there's "I don't care." Since you made a mistake, a word came out that shouldn't have come out, a yell came out that shouldn't have; certain things happen in life. Until we all become perfect, certain things happen. You look where you shouldn't look; you did certain things that happen along the journey of teshuva. There's a lot of sins also. But then there's something that's not good, but what's really terrible. What's really terrible is when you just don't care and

34:53One of these people that's on tilt. We just get to a point where we say, "You know what, since I already looked at her, let me go date her too. If I already went into this restaurant and I realize it's not kosher, but you know what, this rabbi saw me in a restaurant. He probably thinks that I ate here. So, since he thinks I ate here, I might as well eat here anyway." One time there was a Jewish guy who worked for a king. non-Jewish king and a king like this Jewish guy, and he said, "Listen, why don't you come over and join me?" He came over and asked, "Yes, how can I help you?" "Listen, I want you to have dinner with me." "Oh, I'm sorry, Your Highness, I can't eat. It's not kosher." You Jews seriously see what kind of steak I have. It's the best cow in town. So we are blessed for you. I'll bless it for you. No, no, no, Your Highness, it doesn't work like that. You know, the Italians used to always tell me, "What, you want me to bless it for you? I'll bless the burger for you." They think that it's just a blessing on the cow that makes it kosher. They don't have any idea. They want to bless the cow, bless the pig, bless the turtle, bless the donkey—everything. They think you just bless it because that's how their religion works.

36:15Their religion works on us. You bless somebody, that makes them righteous. Complete nonsense. So the Jew said, no, no, it's not about blessing. I can't eat the steak. He said, okay, you know what? Don't have the steak, fine. But at least have a glass of wine with me. I don't mean to disrespect you, Your Highness. I'm really sorry. But once you touch the wine, I can't drink it. no, no, it's not just you. It's anybody that's not Jewish. Once you're a Christian, an idol worshiper of some kind according to our laws, if you touch my wine, I can't touch it. Even if you're an Arab, I can't drink it, but I could sell it. Either way, I'm sorry. There's only one way that I would be forced to do it. He goes, what? What do you mean, one way? He goes, no, I mean, if it's pikuach nefesh, you put a gun to my head and say drink it, then I have to drink it because my life is worth more than this sin of drinking your wine. The king says, oh yeah? Takes out a gun and goes, drink it. Give me the wine. He takes the wine. He has a sip.

37:37Okay, I drank it. He goes, drink another one. Drinks another one. He goes, no. You like it? Yeah, yeah, it's good, it's good. You're not really upset with me. I was just joking with you. I didn't really mean to kill you. I was just joking. Why don't you have a drink with me? I like you. He goes, I'm not upset. Well, you look mad at me. Why are you mad at me? He goes, I don't know. I don't know. To be honest with you, I'm actually very disappointed in you, Your Highness. Why are you whining? No, I'm just your friend. I like you. Why don't you have a drink with me? Because now I'm disappointed. He goes, why are you disappointed with me? You don't like the wine? No, I like the wine. Then why are you disappointed? Why didn't you do what the shtick do? Why didn't you put the gun to my head with the shtick? Sometimes the Jew is a faker and he really wants to be a goy. He's just looking for an excuse. We cannot be those people. Cannot be the meat you have name you have to have Jewish pride. You have to have Jewish pride. You have to be proud of the fact that you're a Jew. You look like a Jew, you act like a Jew, you pray like a Jew, you talk to Hashem like a Jew, and you let the world know, Baruch Hashem, I'm a Jew. We don't have much of that today.

38:54We don't have much of that today. Young kids today grow up thinking that maybe they're gonna be the next rapper, the next basketball player, or the next football player. Their role models are gone. Very rarely do you see a young kid, even if they're coming from a religious house, saying, "Oh, I want to be like Rabbi Akiva." No, they want to be like LeBron James. They want to be like Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan from the 1990s. They want to be like these people. They don't want to be like Rabbi Akiva. They want to be like Eminem, and they want to start rapping and talking about their mom and their kid and this and that. That's what people want to do today. Why? Because we don't have a concept of what it means to be a Jew. We don't understand how special we are to be Jews. As I said in the previous shiur, there are about eight billion people in the world today, some say seven and a half; either way, it's a lot of people. In the 1960s, a few scientists came out and said that if the population continues to grow, we're all going to starve to death. At the time, in 1964, the population hit 3 billion. Baruch Hashem, 60 years later, approximately, not only are we not starving, but we have the most overweight population in the history of man. No one is starving. Those scientists, all they know how to do is make stupid predictions. Hashem is the one who knows how to run the world.

40:19But anyway, Rabotai, at this point, there are almost 8 billion people. Out of the 8 billion people, in reality, when they say 8 billion, it's not really 8 billion. It's really more like 7.96 or 7.95, meaning that they round. They round 40 or 50 million. If you ever took any type of algebra classes or basic elementary school math, they teach you how to round numbers. So if they say round to the nearest 10 or nearest 100, so 18 becomes 20. 90 becomes 100 and so on and so forth. So when they give actual numbers, no one is actually giving you exact numbers. It's all rounding. It's all theoretical. So when they say eight billion, in reality, maybe it's 7.96. It may even be 7.92, but they're just rounding 80 million. Now at this point, there are approximately between fourteen to twenty million known Jews. Let's say there's twenty million and That means that the 20 million is not even a rounding error. They rounded 40 million, which means the 20 million is not even a rounding error. Out of the 20 million, what's known to me is maybe around 3 million of them keep Shabbat. Unfortunately, 17 million don't. This is a horrible, terrible, nightmarish statistic, but it's a reality check.

41:41America: Only 10% of American Jews keep Shabbat according to a Pew Research study in 2013. That means 90% do not keep Shabbat, which is about 6 million Jews; 5.4 million don't keep Shabbat. So this means about... When Hashem wrote the Torah, who did He write it for? Did He write it for Moshe Rabbeinu and all the Chareidim, all the people that learn Torah every day, all the people that fulfill mitzvot, all the people that do what He says in the Torah, or did He write it for the people that are not doing it? Did He write the Torah and say you're gonna get all these wonderful blessings... to the people that are fulfilling the Torah or those who are going against the Torah, having gay parades, and marrying their donkeys like this guy from Spain announced today, or all types of things that, in the old days, you wouldn't even imagine such crazy things. Today, it's become the norm. Who is the Torah for? Are the blessings of the Torah for the guy that's actually keeping mitzvot, or for the one that's making aveirot? Who are the blessings for?

42:52For the one that's keeping mitzvot, that's what Hashem says. It's for Moshe Rabbeinu and all the people that follow him. So that means, rabotai, that out of the 20 million Jews, the Torah is not for the 20 million. The Torah, the blessings, are for the 3 million. Aleinu v'aleichem it will become for the 20 million, when every yid does teshuva. But so far, right now, we have three. It's better a bird in your hand than two in the bush, in so many words. The point is, right now, three million are guaranteed to have blessings. This world, next world, and so on. B'ezrat Hashem, many more join us. But the point is, is that Torah is telling you blessings if you keep my mitzvot. That means that Hashem is running the world. He's letting the world continue to rotate at 1,700 miles per hour. He's letting it rotate in space. Nothing's holding up the earth in space. You ever look at outer space pictures? Outside of the conspiracy theory files, you see outer space pictures and you'll see nothing's holding up the globe. It's a huge, trillions and trillions of tons, a ball that's trillions and trillions of tons, spinning in the same place. It doesn't go right, it doesn't go left. If it goes right and a little closer to the sun, everyone burns. If it goes to the left, everyone freezes, and it's spinning in the same spot at almost 1,700 miles per hour.

44:19Nothing's holding it. V'alamot medalimah. Iyov, probably Iyov, says the world stands on what? On nothing. What's nothing? That says nothing. It’s when a person keeps quiet in the time of an argument. If someone insults you and you stay quiet, you're holding up the world. So now this world is spinning in place and So fast that 1% right or 1% left means life or death. For whom? For the 17 million sinners or the 3 million tzaddikim? In reality, it's for the 3 million tzaddikim. As much as we would like to say it's for everyone, it's not. Halvai, it would be for the 20 million. We'd like for it to be for the 20 million. We'd even like it to be for the 8 billion. But it's not. It's for the 3 million that are keeping Shabbat. That means, Rabotai, if you're keeping Shabbat right now, or if you start keeping Shabbat this weekend, b'ezrat Hashem,

45:23The world exists for you. You being a Shomer Shabbat is a statistical impossibility. It's not even a probability. Why? You're one of three million people that the world actually exists for. Out of eight billion. You're one of eight billion. Do you understand what the chances are? This is less than a percent of a percent. There are better odds in a casino. It's less of a chance of you being a Shomer Shabbat. You being a Shomer Shabbat, there's more of a chance of you winning the lottery five times. You getting hit in the face by a plane is more likely. you being a Jew that keeps Shabbat, do you understand? These—these—and now I'm giving you extreme examples, but somebody actually did research. He said the likelihood of you getting hit in the face by a plane is higher, and you're more likely to win the lottery. Now this other—this is five times winning the lottery. That makes you already much more special than the role model we look for.

46:32LeBron James and the 50 Cents and the M&Ms and the Kit Kats—all of those things, there's nothing special about them. You are the one that's special. Why? Because the world exists for you. That's enough of a reason. Once I know it makes me special, once I know it means something... Now, most people... Most people don't believe that they're special until they hear this, until they see, they look at the numbers. That's what Elul is for. Elul is a time for you to do cheshbon hanefesh, to do cheshbon in general, to do accounting. Accounting of our sins, accounting of our mitzvot, accounting of the times I say I don't care. Accounting of the times I say I do care. Accounting of the times that I fail. Accounting of the times that I succeeded. What can I do to succeed more? What can I do to fail less? Like I said, sins happen. But don't get to a point where you just don't care. Don't get to a point like, ah, you know what, I already did this, might as well do more. Why? Because that person...

48:37puts us in serious trouble. Now, the prophet Jeremiah tells Am Yisrael that he saw a lot of destruction. He saw a lot of destruction that if you look at the first verse in chapter 4 of the book of Eicha (Lamentations), he says I saw Prophet Jeremiah says, "I saw that the gold melted to nothing; everything looked ugly. Gold even became ugly. The gold of the Beit HaMikdash became ugly from all the destruction, and so on. Something so beautiful became ugly. Why? Destruction. Destruction causes ugliness to exist. Usually, you see women who have lost their looks." Because of poverty or because of a cheap husband, one or the other, women don't lose their looks if their husbands are generous. But if their husbands are cheap, usually the woman loses her looks. Why? Because he's too cheap even for his own good. It's a sin to be cheap. It's a sin against Hashem to be cheap. It's also a sin against your wife to be cheap. You're obligated to give your wife whatever she wants as long as it's within reason. Yes, I...

50:04um, she is like the father so she's not Jewish. If her mom's not Jewish, she's not Jewish. So anyway, the prophet Jeremiah says, the prophet Jeremiah says, I saw destruction. I know what the destruction looks like, but in Jeremiah, chapter 2, verse 35, the prophet says, Hashem, Merciful God, He loves you. He's your Father in Heaven. He wants you to win. He's rooting for you. He wants all good for you, but He has rules. The rules are for you to follow, and the rules are for Him to fulfill. Why? If He didn't have rules and He made an exception to every case and

51:10Because you're cute and because you're funny and because you're nice and because of this and because of that, then all of the tzaddikim that have sacrificed their lives in order to get to Gan Eden don't want to complain to Hashem. "Hashem, You told us to fulfill mitzvot. That's how we get to Gan Eden. Now You're telling this guy that he's coming to Gan Eden without keeping mitzvot? There's something wrong! That cannot be!" So the rules are not only for us; they're also for Hashem Himself. Also, the prophet says... Hashem has to judge us, but what's the worst judgment? What's the judgment that makes Him really, really upset? What's the judgment that Hashem puts us in a situation of danger of double punishment? The judgment of when a person says, "Ani lo chata'ti, I didn't sin, I didn't do anything, I didn't do anything." plays like he's innocent. You know how much I give? You know, I tell somebody, "You have to keep this." "Yep, you know how much I do? You know how much I give? You know I helped this guy. You know I helped that guy." Okay, I'm not saying you didn't. What I'm saying is there are other things to do. You have to keep Shabbat. You have to keep taharat hamishpacha. You have to keep kosher.

52:22You have to have a kosher haircut. You have to be kosher in the way you shave. Everything has to be kosher. It's not just that you did one good thing, and that's where you are patur from here on out. You gave, you helped a homeless guy one time in your life, that means you're a Moshe Rabbeinu all of a sudden? There's a lot of stuff to do. You can't just pretend, "Oh, I'm going to do one thing and everything else is good." There's no get out of jail free card. The problem is that sometimes a person doesn't see the obligation himself. thinks that because he arranged the shul, he doesn't have to attend it. He thinks that because he donated, he doesn't have to listen. He thinks that because he donated to the synagogue, he doesn't have to attend. So when he comes up on Yom HaDin and Rosh Hashanah and I just donated these doors. Oh, I just donated $50,000, so I did my teshuvah. And then look at that, I didn't even sin, but I donated anyway because I'm a nice guy. That's what he says. He thinks because he donated or he did something good in his life, he didn't sin. And the Prophet says this makes the situation much worse. Why? Because now a person gets to such a situation...

53:34where he literally does not see any sin in himself, which puts him in a place where he doesn't have a chance to do teshuvah. Why? Who's going to do teshuvah for something they didn't do? If you believe you didn't do it, why are you going to do teshuvah for it? Yes? How, how, okay, so there are certain things that a person knows that he did wrong. Every single person, whether he was born religious or not, is irrelevant. Every single person that's a righteous Jew wants to have a chance of being a righteous Jew, and has to classify themselves as a Baal Teshuva. Why? Because to be righteous, that means you have to do Teshuva every day. For what? For sins you've made. You may not have made, if you're religious from birth, you may not have made the obvious sins like Chilul Shabbat or other things, like not eating kosher, but there are other things you did sin on. Whether you looked at a girl that's not your wife, or you ate something that's not appropriate, or you didn't double-check, or you didn't learn. There are a million and a half different things you can double-check.

54:58Everybody sins. That's what we have to do every day. So, there are obvious ones. Now, in the book of Deuteronomy, Sefer Devarim, chapter 4, it says that in the end of days, Hashem is going to give everyone an opportunity to find Him. "If you look for Me, you will find Me, only if you look for Me with all of your heart and all of your soul." What does it mean if you look for Me with all of your heart and all of your soul? It means if you're looking for the emet regardless of what it costs. Regardless if the emet means you have to get a divorce because your wife is not Jewish, you're still going to look for it because you're looking for the emet. Regardless if the emet means you have to leave your job because your job is not a kosher job, you're going to leave your job because you're looking for the emet. Hashem says if you look for Me, you'll find Me. You'll find the emet. You'll have the opportunity to do teshuva. Which means, to our question, is that if a person is constantly living teshuva,

56:01Every day, he does a little cheshbon hanefesh. He says, okay, I'm working on this, I'm working on this, I'm working on this, and then he continues to learn. As he continues to learn Torah, he learns some more Gemara, he learns some more Shulchan Aruch, he learns some more Yalkut Yosef, he learns some more, you know, Mussar, and so on and so forth. Hashem sees, oh, my son wants to do teshuva. He wants to do teshuva, this is good. So what am I going to do? I'm going to open up his mind to make him realize and make him see something on the page he didn't see last year when he read the same thing. Sometimes you could read the same parasha twice in the same week, and it's almost like you read two different parashot, but it's the same thing. Why? Because the first time Hashem wanted you to do teshuva on one thing, understand one thing. The second time you read the parasha, He wanted you to understand something different. It's the same story, if you will, but there's a specific chiddush you had the second time that you didn't get the first time. That's why we read parashat hashavua every year. It doesn't matter how many times you read it; you're still obligated, according to the Shulchan Aruch, to read it three times.

57:07you have to read at least the basics and also with commentary. Why? Because you need to be an expert in what happened, who is telling the story, who is talking, and the what, when, and why. Why are you a Jew? Why are you so special? You have to know why. That's the Five Books of Moses. You have to know what's going on and If you don't read Chumash, you don't read the Parashat HaShavua, it's very, very difficult to get to any level of Yirat Shamayim, any level of religiosity, any level of any knowledge whatsoever. If your entire Torah is dependent on you watching a shiur once or twice a week, it's not going to be enough. You'll learn a lot from the shiur, but you're not going to get to full teshuva that way. And the reason why is because Hashem wants to give you more knowledge. But He only gives knowledge, the Gemara Masechet Berachot says, He only gives knowledge to those who love knowledge. What do you mean those who love knowledge? The Chachamim, they love knowledge. Why? Why does He give it to them? Why doesn't He give it to the fools? If you give it to the fools, everyone won't have knowledge. He says, no.

58:10Says no, if you give the fools knowledge, they won't know what to do with it; it will be a waste, nonsense. But if you give someone who is a chacham knowledge, he'll know what to do with it. Why? Because to get knowledge requires hard work, requires toil, requires effort. If I give him knowledge, he'll know what to do with it. So if the person is constantly reading, he's constantly learning, he's constantly listening. Even if he knows the story, if the rabbi said a story, started a story, but he heard the story. If Even if your friend just started doing teshuvah, you have to support him in his journey. Listen to Rabbi Yaron Reuven, Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi, or Rabbi Eliyahu Ben Haim—whichever good rabbi you follow. If you give him a CD and he listens to it, he might start doing teshuvah. Now, you've already been in teshuvah for two, three, four, five, six, seven years, but you got this guy to start his teshuvah. If he comes to you three, four, five months later and... He says, "You're never gonna believe the story I just heard." Oh, what story? And he starts telling you the story you've heard at least no less than 10 times. He starts the story, you're not allowed to interrupt him. In fact, it's the opposite. You should actually listen to his story and act like you've never heard it before. Why? Him telling the story is part of his teshuvah.

59:34But a lot of people have too much ga'avah. They have too much ego, saying, "No, no, I know that story. I know." So he starts another story. The poor guy just started doing teshuvah. Poor guy. Well, okay, I want to give him a kiddush. There's nothing. I don't have anything. So he starts another story. "No, I heard that one also." You can kill the guy's teshuvah. You can destroy the guy's teshuvah that way. Why? Because the guy felt good, he felt excited, he learned something finally in his life. You want to share with somebody. You have something good. What do you want to do? You want to share it. So you wanted to share it, but now you know everything. So he's like, "I have nobody to share it with. I'm so behind. He already knows all my stories. By the time I catch up to him, it's seven years from now. I don't have that much energy. I don't have that. I'm going back." You can literally kill a person's teshuva by not listening to his story. You're never allowed to interrupt somebody. Not your rabbi, not your talmid, no one. Listen to the story, even if you know it. Why? Because you have to be careful with the Jewish neshama. You have to be careful with it. If the guy finally got a chance to do teshuva, he wants to do teshuva, you have to tread carefully. Why? His whole world is in your hands right now.

1:00:46These are certain things that a person is not going to think about naturally. Why? We're full of ego. We're full of showing off. We want to tell everybody we know everything and show everybody that we are perfect. But the reality is, we're not. So when a person is really seeking to do teshuva and... That means he's constantly seeking to become more and more humble because the Torah is only gifted to a humble person. The Gemara says the Torah is like water. Why is the Torah like water? Because water naturally goes to the lowest level. It constantly goes to the bottom. Even if it starts at the top of the mountain, it’ll eventually end at the bottom of the mountain. Same thing with the Torah. Torah goes to the person that's the lowest, that's the most modest. That's why the highest, the biggest talmid chacham in history is Moshe Rabbeinu. The biggest prophet in history, Moshe Rabbeinu. Why? Humblest man of all time.

1:01:48So this, Rabotai, is something that's critical to know. Critical to know because you want to become a vessel of emet. You want to be a vessel of all the truth in the world. And Hashem wants you to be the vessel. But the only way to get to that point is by constantly chasing the truth. As you chase the truth, you learn more and more. Hashem says, okay, great. He's already been doing teshuvah for six months. Let me unfold another peel of the onion. Show him another thing. He didn't know. He didn't know that it wasn't allowed to have an abortion. He didn't know, miskin. He thought that while the kid is still in there, it's not really a kid. The doctor said it's just a piece of meat. He didn't know that after 40 days it has a hundred percent neshama. He didn't know. He didn't know that it's a hundred percent a human being, just little and... Because the doctor from Planned Parenthood told him, "No, no, it's nothing. It's nothing. It's like a pee. It's like nothing. It's like a, you know, they call it afela. Afela in Hebrew, like a drop. Like, you know, like you dropped a pen. Like it doesn't mean anything. It's meaningless. In reality, after 40 days, it's 100% neshama, it's a living, breathing human being. And anyone...

1:02:59Is ever even contemplating doing an abortion, they should go to the websites and see. You could ask me; I could show you videos of what it actually looks like. There's nothing more vicious than doing an abortion. The guy didn't know; he didn't know this information. So when his so-called girlfriend didn't feel like having the baby... After three months, she asked him, "What do you think I should do?" He said, "Just an abortion, big deal, have one. What's the big deal? It's not here, it's not alive." He says one of these foolish things, and she goes and commits murder. He's a partner in the crime. So now, he didn't know. Until now, he didn't know he committed murder. He'd know that if he goes to Shamayim, he goes to Shamayim and they say, "Oh, yeah, it's Steve. Steve the murderer." "Murderer? I never killed a fly. What murder?" "You killed eight babies last year." "What are you talking about?" They show

1:04:04They show him. So what is he going to do, this miskin (poor Steve)? What is he going to do? If he's learning the emet (truth), if he constantly learns Mussar, constantly learns Torah, and is always trying to get to the bottom line—what's the truth? What does Hashem want from me? What else can I do to become better? What else can I do to become a better person, a better Jew, a better servant of Hashem? Little by little, Hashem is going to peel the onion and show him a shiur or a page in a book that shows him, "Hey, by the way, Not only is it not allowed, but now you have to do teshuva. How do I do teshuva for murder? How do I do teshuva for murder? Somebody committed, you know, an abortion. How do you do teshuva? Now you have to spend extra effort helping any time there's an opportunity. If somebody asks you, you spread the news: not allowed, not allowed, not allowed to do an abortion. Meaning, kiruv, helping Jews do teshuva, is part of your teshuva.

1:05:04As the prophet Yechezkel (Ezekiel in English) says, so the prophet tells Am Yisrael. Shuvah, meaning do teshuvah (return) and bring others back. Do teshuvah and bring others back. Make other people do teshuvah. This is Ezekiel chapter 18, verse 30: Return and bring others back, meaning do teshuvah and get other people to do teshuvah from all of your transgressions so that they not be for you an obstacle of iniquity and... Cast off from upon yourselves all the transgressions through which you have transgressed and make for yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. Why should you die, O House of Israel? So it says in the beginning: Do teshuvah and get other people to do teshuvah. Why? Why would you let others be something that's going to continue your sin, meaning...

1:06:19That in order for a person to fix some of their sins, it's not possible for them to do it themselves. Why? Long gone. They've gone past the point of no return. There are certain things you can't undo. You can't undo murder. You can't undo it. But you can do teshuvah for it. How? If you really cry to Hashem during Chodesh Elul, during the rest of the year, during the time that you pray, instead of crying to Him for more money, Crying to Him for more material things, you cry to Him to help you do teshuvah. Then Hashem will give you the opportunity to do it. How? He's going to send someone to you who wants to have an abortion. He says, "So what do you think? Should I have the baby?" And what do you have to do at that moment? You have to take the bull by the horns and run. You have to do everything possible, everything possible, to convince this person. Not to do it. Show all the proofs, show all the videos, show everything you possibly can. But how is Hashem going to determine whether to send you somebody or not? If you spend time learning and being prepared for when the time comes, because if He sends you somebody and you don't know anything, then it's just a waste. Because the guy asks, "Do you think I should have it?" and you don't know anything, so you can say, "I don't know." It's okay, you missed an opportunity for teshuvah. So when a person learns...

1:07:47Something that he did is a sin, and what he needs to do for teshuvah is to learn a lot about that sin. He needs to become an expert on that sin and start telling people about it, start sharing the information. Why? Because that is part of your teshuvah. That is part of your teshuvah. Getting other people to do teshuvah. Because there are certain things you just can't fix. Violating Shabbat in the past, you can't fix. You can't bring back that Shabbat. You violated it. So what do you do? You get other people to keep Shabbat. Wasting seed is not something that you can fix. It's gone. It's wasted. So what do you do? You get other people to stop wasting seed. Now some people have the gift of gab. Oh, Hashem, Hashem gave me the ability to speak. Not everybody has that. The good news is you don't have to be a speaker. In fact, it's much easier to get people to do teshuvah doing what you do than me. It's much easier for you to get people to do teshuvah than for me. And the reason why is because people look at me as someone that has somewhat of a bias.

1:08:52I have something to go. He's a rabbi. He's a this, he's a that. I'm not really sure I want to listen to him. Not really sure I will listen to him unless somebody starts listening and they realize it's good. But you, they have a connection to you. They have a connection to you, be it your friend, be it your cousin. Hashem put them in your life for a certain reason. Now, the problem is that if you tell them, they're not gonna listen and... So what happens? You don't have the gift of gab, or perhaps they don't want to listen to you even if you do. So what do you do? Say, "No, you. I love you. Okay, you love me, so listen to him. You tell them to listen to me. If you tell them to listen to me, you tell them to listen to Rav Mizrachi. You tell them to listen to a kosher rabbi, then they'll listen. But if you tell them to listen to you, or they just find me out of nowhere, it's less likely. Why? Because now you become the referral network and... become the stamp of approval. You're never going to recommend somebody by saying, "Hey, listen, go buy a car from this guy. He's a real big thief." No one ever says that. No, you tell them, "Go buy a car from this guy; he's a real mensch. He's a tzaddik. He's a good guy. He'll give you a discount." So that means if you're going to recommend this guy, you say, "Go listen to this guy; he's a real tzaddik. Oh, okay, he's a real tzaddik. Good." Now,

1:10:08The ego that they have allows them to listen. Why? Because now they just listen to recommendations, just like they listen to a doctor's recommendation or a lawyer or anything else. But now their ego allows them to say, "It's still my idea." it's still my idea to listen to him. He told me he recommended it, but I still decided to listen. So they still put the yetzer hara of their ego. It's still their idea. That's what makes it much easier for you to get people to do teshuva. Those CDs are teshuva tools. Why? You give somebody a CD, you never know what's gonna end. Yesterday we did a shiur in Queens before the shiur met someone, actually I met Rabbi Mizrachi for a few minutes and we're in the street, and some guy stops in the middle of traffic and starts screaming, "Oh Rabbi Yaron! I never met the guy in my life, but all I know is he knows me because he watched the shiur. 'Rabbi Yaron, how are you?' Nice guy, cute guy. I told him, 'Come to the shiur tonight,' because, yeah, I'm like, 'Hey, come to the shiur.' He came to the shiur; he got scared, but the point is, he came to the shiur. He came to the shiur."

1:11:23So when he came to the shiur, why did he come to the shiur? Because he watched the shiur six months ago, a year ago, whenever it was, and the shiur changed his life. She'ur changed his life. I went to the lecture. I saw a bunch of people whose names sounded familiar, but I didn't know who they were. And each person was like, "Oh, you changed my life." I didn't change anything, by the way. It's only the Torah. I'm only the tuki (parrot) that says it. But people want to blame me. So I'll take the fault for now. The point is, they said, "You changed my life, changed my life, changed my life, changed my life." The Torah changed their life. But they have to put a face on the Torah. So you happen to be the face. How did they get it? One guy says, "Oh, yeah, I found your CD in the Beit Knesset. I went to the Beit Knesset, I found the CD because such-and-such happened, I had to go to the Beit Knesset. I found a CD. I found a CD in a kosher store. They were selling shawarma. I wanted shawarma, and there were CDs at the shawarma store. So I took a CD, and it sounded cool—Wall Street, Western Wall. I put the CD on. You never know what happened to me." I said, "What happened?" He goes, "I did teshuva." One woman tells me she's in Canada

1:12:29Iskina, she had cancer. The woman had cancer. She was in recovery, but just physical recovery, not emotional recovery. You should know that sickness, physical sickness—the most difficult part of the battle is the emotional battle, the mental battle, not the physical one. Physical is physical; you never necessarily get used to pain, and I'm telling you that from a lot of experience with pain, but you get much more beaten up from the emotional damage that it causes you, from the mental damage that it causes you, because you think it's never going to be over. You think that the current pain you have is never going to go away. You have a toothache, you Anybody ever have a toothache? Am I the only one? So, people have had toothaches here. Doesn't it feel like when you have a toothache, it's never, ever going to go away? Like the toothache is just there permanently, and you've arrived at Gehinom, and that's it. It's never going to end. Even though a minute after the dentist puts something in your mouth, it goes away.

1:13:37But when you have it, it feels like it's never ever going to go away. I'm going to be like this, and you get depressed. I can't believe this is happening to me. Oh my God. Oh, this. Why? Why me? Okay, it's a toothache. Relax. It's going to go away as soon as you go to the doctor. But we don't feel that way. Why? Because when you're in the fire, it still burns. Even though you realize it's going to end at some point, you don't feel it. So miskena, this woman, she was still recovering from the emotional damage. cancer. She decided to go and take a vacation. Where does someone who cries go? They go to the Kotel Maaravi, the Western Wall in Israel. She goes to the Western Wall. She has no idea who, what, when, or how to do things here, but she's there. She sees other women, and she starts crying to Hashem. After she's finished crying, she looks over to her side and sees there's a CD. One CD. Not a lot of CDs. Usually, you don't put CDs in a curtain. There's one CD there. She looks over at the CD, and it's in a language she understands. It's in English. She speaks English. That's her first language.

1:14:58sees—all from Wall Street to the Western Wall, and she looks at the CD. Maybe somebody left it there. It's odd to see a CD at the Western Wall. The Kotel doesn't have CDs. It has notes. It has people. It has Sifrei Kodesh. Finding a CD is not typical. She's looking, and it's in English. I mean, we're in Israel. It's not exactly the English capital of the world Looking, waiting for somebody to take it, and then there is some woman over there who says, "Take it. It's for you. See, this is for me. It's for you. It's for you. Take it, take it, for you. Take it." She goes, so it doesn't block. "No, it's for you," as if she knew she wanted it, as if she knew this is the language she speaks. She took the CD. Baruch Hashem, she's ba'alat teshuva. You know, the woman was looking for God. So, God sent a CD from America to Israel, to the Western Wall, somehow to stay there at the time the woman that's crying and looking for Him goes there. If that's not a miracle, what is? You understand, rabotai, these CDs. People tell me, "Yeah, but listen, people don't have CD players in their new cars." I said, "I don't care. I don't care. I don't have CD players. The CD is just an introduction."

1:16:17I don't care if you listen to the CD. I care if you go to the website. I care if you look up the rabbi's name. You look up Yaron Reuven. You go on YouTube and skip the duck videos that people have and go to my video instead. Why? Because now you're going to press play and your life's going to change. Because for the first time in your life, you're going to actually hear emet. It's a myth. It's truth that you can relate to; it doesn't matter who you are—religious, not religious, Jew, non-Jew. Everyone can relate to this like it's Mussar. It's practical living advice—advice with a purpose. But the point is, over time, that some people have a CD and they put it in, some people just go to the website. But they use this as a business card. They see the name, they like it, they take the CD, and they're not gonna throw it away. Why? Because it's still something physical. It's tangible and So now they're going to put it in their room. They're not going to throw it out. And it's going to constantly remind them to go to the website, to go to bezratashem.org, to go to the app that we have now on the App Store, to go onto YouTube, to look up the name, to go to... Now you have a destination.

1:17:24You have a destination to go to, and once you start going to that destination, nothing is ever going to be the same again. This, Rabotai, is helping me do teshuva, not just you, because there are plenty of things that I know I did and I'm trying to fix them. And there are plenty of things I don't remember that I did. I don't remember; I simply don't remember. So Hashem said, "Okay, you want to dedicate your life to Am Yisrael? Fine, I'll get other people to do teshuva for those things." Is it even more possible for you to take a few CDs? You give them to a few friends, a few enemies, a few neighbors, a few people far away. You give them to anyone that's willing to take them. You give them and you spread them around. You invest in it and you make sure that you realize this is your Gan Eden's investment. It's not, "Oh yeah, I don't know if they're going to listen or not listen." That's not your business. The results are not your business. You just make the investment. You just put the effort in. If you have money, you invest money. If you have time, you invest time by giving out the CDs. If you have both, do both. Invest money and time.

1:18:35The point is, do something. Why? Because you need kiruv in order to do teshuvah. Because there are certain things you just simply don't remember yet. But if you get somebody else to do teshuvah, and they do teshuvah for that specific thing, it's like you did teshuvah for it. And eventually, Hashem is going to help you do teshuvah for it as well. But the point is, Rabotai, is that kiruv is not just something nice to do. Kiruv is a critical part of our teshuvah. Kiruv is a critical part of our avodat Hashem, our serving of Hashem. Every single Jew is obligated to do it, especially in the generation that we live in today. Right now, I don't want to bore you with more terrible statistics, but you need to know this. You need to know this. You need to know how bad the situation is so we can fix it. Right now in America, we are approaching a 90% intermarriage rate. In some places in America, it's even more. That means that 9 out of 10 Jews are marrying goyim. Certain places, it's a little less, like 70%. But the reality is that even if it was 60% or 50% or 10%, it's still terrible. That means we're losing 10% of the population. Unfortunately, it's not even 10%. It's 90%. Now, what happens when 90% of the Jews marry goyim? That means we are one generation away from them not being Jewish anymore. Why? Because their kids. Even if the guy is a...

1:20:02Non-Jew and the woman is a Jew and the kids become Jews. The kids are still Jews, right? The problem is that if a kid grows up in a household where his father is not Jewish, what's gonna happen? The kid is either gonna become an atheist or a Christian or something that's, you know, what they call neutral. He just doesn't care about anything. So now this guy—he's gonna marry anyone, even though technically he's Jewish. He's not gonna consider himself religious, so he's gonna marry a goya. Now, what happens when he marries a goya? Other than Hashem crying, what's gonna happen? His kids are going—one generation, no more Jews. Do you understand where we're at right now, b'ezrat Hashem? If we don't do kiruv (outreach), there won't be anyone to save by the Messiah. It's an obligation not just because you're doing teshuva, not because You owe this to your people, but because you owe this to your Father in Heaven. You owe this to Hashem. You want parnassah, you want a zivug, you want good things. One day, the Mashiach is going to arrive and say, "What did you do for Me to come?" He said, "I went to the shiur." You went to the shiur for you. You needed to learn anyway what to do. So you went to the shiur for you. "I prayed." What did you pray for? You prayed for money, you prayed for a zivug, you prayed for stuff for you. You didn't pray for Me. What did you do for Me?

1:21:29What did you do to bring the Geulah? What did you do to bring Mashiach? What did you do to make Hashem happy? What are you going to say? There’s only one answer. There’s only one answer that you can say that's positive: "I made Jews religious." That's it. That's the only answer that's possible. Anything else is not good. Everything else is for ourselves. This is why, rabotai, kiruv is a critical component of your life. It needs to be, if it hasn't become, even if you haven't done teshuva yet. Even if you still don't keep Shabbat, you still have to do it. Why? It'll help you do it. It'll help you overcome the yetzer hara. You see a lecture? It's good stuff. Press share. You see a rabbi who is good? Invest in him. Invest in the CDs. Give them out. Do whatever you can. You see somebody good? Invite him to come speak. Do something. Something why, because the reality is you're only here because you want to be Jewish. If you didn't want to be Jewish, if you wanted to be like these Reform people, you wouldn't come to a shiur at 11 o'clock at night. You want to be Jewish, so at least do good, at least be good at it, and get other people to join us. The next time, instead of having 50 people, we have a thousand people who are interested in becoming Jews, yes?

1:22:54Why, I mean, Jewish women, like, you know, they inherit the Jewish children. So why are there so many, why do you inherit so many Reform? Like, why do we have so many Reform on this? Like, why are there so many wicked people being born to Jewish women? Like, that, you know, proliferate all these, like, movements, all these communist reforms and movements that are completely anti-Torah. And actually, like, a lot of them are even worse, a thousand times worse, whatever. The answer is this: Of this, Zichrono Livracha, he said that a Jew is different than any other creation. If a human being is not Jewish, they can either become decent or they're bad. But in general, their status as a human being doesn't change and... An animal is either alive or it's dead. It's an animal. It's a cow. It's either going to be used to provide milk, to provide meat, or it's just a corpse. A plant is either alive or it's dead. A rock is either used or it's not used. It's used for a building, or it's just in the middle of the desert doing nothing. Well, as we learned, moving a little bit, now a Jew is different.

1:24:22A Jew is different. Why? A Jew is different in a way that a Jew either adds to humanity or he takes away. A Jew does not have the ability to be neutral. A Jew does not have the ability to stay the same. He's either going up and improving the world that's around him because of the power of Hashem Yitbarach instilled in him, or he ruins it. He either builds the world or he destroys it. Hashem said to Avraham Avinu a prophecy of what his children are going to look like. He said your children are going to be either like the stars of the heavens or they're going to be like the dust of the ground. Now if we're talking about numbers, then there are a lot of stars, and there's a lot of sand and Why would Hashem give two different examples of a lot? Just pick one. They're gonna be a lot like the stars; they're gonna be a lot like the sand. Why the sand or the stars? Here we learn that Hashem said to Avraham, "Your people, your children, are gonna have..."

1:25:38super ability, super brain, super everything, super neshamot. But those super neshamot, if they use them right by reading my manual, they'll become above all of mankind. They'll become like the stars. If they don't, they'll become worse than the Nazis, lower than everyone else. What's the proof that? Proof of what I say is not just the examples you mentioned of what's happening day to day. Some people pray for Israel to succeed and so on, and we all are supposed to, regardless of whether you're a Baal Teshuva or you're a part of Satmar Chassidus or you're part of Chabad. It doesn't make a difference; you're supposed to pray for Am Yisrael and... doesn't matter if you agree with the government or you don't agree with the government. The government is unfortunately a secular government, but unfortunately, no one who is a righteous Jew could ever agree with the Zionist mentality that's communistic, especially the founders of it. The founders of Zionism—I remember in college I learned Zionism, and they don't teach you anything that you can learn on your own because when you learn Zionism in school

1:27:05I went to Binghamton University. They personify each one of these Zionist leaders, whether it's Ben-Gurion or Herzl and all of these other reshaim. They personify them like they're these idols—they're great, they're wonderful, they're this, they're that. In reality, these people are very wicked people, not just by Torah standards but by human standards as well. It's not once or twice or three times that it was found that many of these people did things that are actually just as bad, if not worse, than the Nazis. A lot of people don't like to hear this, but this is part of the truth. And just in recent history, in just the last maybe 10 or 20 years, they found many Yemenite families that have been complaining for the last 50 years about lost babies. What happened to our babies? What happened to our babies? Mothers gave birth to babies in Israel. They moved from Yemen to the new Eretz Yisrael, and they gave birth. Then, moments later, the nurse tells them, "No, I'm sorry ma'am, your baby died."

1:28:12He died, which is still just giving him a mochah, mochah two seconds ago. I died. Show me, no, no, sorry ma’am, you have to go. What? Women give birth, go, go, go. They kick them out. Sometimes they kick them out of the ambulance, sometimes they kick them out of the hospital. So weird, so strange. And the mothers, many of the mothers, said, "I'm telling you, I don't believe the baby died." For years, decades, they would complain about this, but it fell on deaf ears. No one heard. But then some files came out and some investigations were done, showing proof that unfortunately these resha'im, yerusha'im, Zionist types of mentality, lefty liberals, took these kids and did different types of human experiments on them because the American medical public was willing to pay a fortune for it and... Types of scientists from America wanted to pay millions of dollars for research on humans. Now, you can't do it in America. So what do you do? You do it somewhere else. Where? Ah, Israel. So they paid different resha'im (wicked people) in Israel to take humans and start testing them. Hashem yerachem (God have mercy), and many, most, 80% of the time, the kids died.

1:29:30Now, how does a person get to such a low level of humanity? Forget about keeping Shabbat, not keeping Shabbat. That requires Torah; that requires you to understand who God is. But how does a person get to a point where they take a little, innocent, beautiful baby that's just born a minute ago and start cutting him up into little steak pieces? How do you get to such a point? Get to such a point when your whole life is empty of Torah. It's empty of God. It's empty of purpose. Once you're empty of purpose, God, and Torah in your life, you're worse than an animal because you were given a superpower neshama. You were given a superpower neshama, and that superpower is either sam chayim or sam mavet. It's either the portion of life or the portion of death. So this, Rabotai, these are things that happened. It's not conspiracy theory. These are things there are trials for right now, until this day, in Eretz Yisrael. They're trying to uncover these files. They're still trying to hide them and say, no, no, we're going to uncover them in 70 years when everyone dies.

1:30:40Everyone that cares dies. No, but I want to know if my sister's alive. I want to know if my brother's alive. I want to know something, and they're fighting for it, miskenim (poor people). The point I'm trying to tell you, Rabotai, is that a Jew is not like everyone else. Rav Avigdor Miller, zt"l, explained that a Jew is not like everyone else. You cannot say, "No, no, my friend Johnny, the Italian. He's like me; we're like brothers." No, you're not brothers. He's nothing like you if he converts. He's like you other than that. He's nothing like you. Why? You have a Jewish neshama, and for all of those people that don't like to talk about Jews being better or not better and so on, that's a reality that even the goyim know. Even the goyim know that the Jews are special. You look at all of these people that hated Jews. What are they? They're scared of them. Why would you hate someone that's less than you? They're not less than you. Many philosophers, writers, novelists, and so on and so forth, have written many times about Am Yisrael being special.

1:31:42Many times, even presidents of countries, including presidents of the US, have spoken positively about Am Yisrael because they say it doesn't make sense that one of the smallest civilizations, populations in the world would contribute more than any other part of humanity. It doesn't make sense. We have more Nobel Prize winners who are Jews in the world, statistically, than any other country in history. Number-wise, there are more others, but statistically percentage-wise, there is no one more than Jews. It's not possible. It's not humanly possible or rational to think that Jews are controlling the financial world in America, Jews are controlling the financial world in Israel, and in many other places, Jews are controlling Hollywood, Jews are controlling all types of media, and so on and so forth. It's not normal, but that's because you have a super neshama. There's no other way to explain it. It's not because you're smart. There's plenty of smart going around. There's plenty of smart going around. But the Jew has a certain mission in the world. Unfortunately, if that mission does not include Hashem, the mission will be against his own people. Yes? I don't know, we're the chosen people, right?

1:33:10Yes, it's in the Torah. It is a pasuk in the Torah. It tells us we are our worst enemy. We are our worst enemy. Always. We've always been. We are our worst enemy. At Mount Sinai, we just heard God tell us, keep the Torah. What do we do? We didn't listen. We let the goyim, the Erev Rav, start bringing idol worship. We didn't say anything. Hashem almost wanted to kill all of us. That wasn't enough. We started complaining against God for the manna that He's giving us. He's giving us free food, and we're still complaining. If that's not enough, we complain about not having meat. If that's not enough, we went with the non-Jewish women. Who did all this? We did it to ourselves. So that's the reality. We're doing it; it's not the goyim. The goyim are a way for Hashem to run the world, and... The goyim are different tools that Hashem uses to run the world. They also have Gan Eden if they're righteous, according to the Torah. And they have Gehenom if they don't follow the Torah.

1:34:12But the point is, rabotai, they are used as tools for Hashem to run the world. Anyone who becomes a leader, whether it's a president of Israel, or president of America, or president of whatever, or a king of something, someone in power, he officially becomes one of the main tools that Hashem uses to run the world. Somebody came to the Chafetz Chaim one time and he told him, "Kvodo Harav, I just collected some money from Africa, it was a good trip." He said, "Yes, but what about the Africans?" He said, "Excuse me." He goes, "Yeah, what about the people over there? How are they doing?" The guy wasn't sure what the Chafetz Chaim was asking. He goes, "What do you mean? Why do you care about the people in Africa?" He goes, "No, I heard that they're being abused over there and taken advantage of and so on." He says, "Well, yeah, I think the situation improved. But why does the Rabbi care about a bunch of people that are not Jewish?" He goes, "No, of course I care." Why? Because anything that happens in the world is because of a Jew. If there’s an Indian person in India suffering, it’s because some Jew did something.

1:35:21If there's a black guy in the middle of Hollywood who does something, it's because a Jew did something. Everything in the world revolves around the Jew. That's a reality that no one likes to talk about. But that's the reality. That is the reality. The Jew is the reason why the world exists. If he's righteous, it will be a good world. If he's not, it won't be. And you look at all of history. When we were really, really religious, at the time of Shlomo HaMelech, there was peace around the whole world. Peace everywhere. Everyone was at peace. Yeah, but what about these guys and these guys? They hate each other all the time. Yeah, but now there's peace. Why? Because there's peace among Am Yisrael. But when Am Yisrael hates each other, there are wars everywhere. If you notice, right now in the news, you don't have to watch the news every day. Just watch it one time; it's good for the rest of your life. Every day they tell you somebody died, somebody lived. Somebody died, somebody lived. Somebody died, somebody lived. And everyone wants to fight. Same thing now. Right now, everybody wants to fight. Europe hates each other, the Euro, the non-Euro, the different currencies, same currency, this, that, the other thing. Everyone hates each other.

1:36:25America—they hate each other. Here in Israel, they hate each other. Over there, everybody hates each other and wants to fight. America wants to fight Russia; Russia wants to fight America; North Korea, South Korea; China is considering some big fight. Everybody is considering fighting. The Syrians are killing their own people, and no one even cares. By the way, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people have been dying every month, and no one cares. And... Because Netanyahu is not Moshe Rabbeinu. Netanyahu is just a human being who is not religious. He doesn't comply with the Torah. He complies with his ego, he complies with his desires, and he complies with all the things that make sense to him logically. Problems he doesn't think he's causing problems, neither do the people that vote for him. The point being about it is that we comply with the rules of Hashem regardless of what other Jews do or don't do. Why? Because we still have to comply with them, even if you are alone on an island with your next-door neighbor being a monkey and a giraffe. You still have to be a righteous Jew, even if you are surrounded by all of the Hitlers of the world. You still have to be a Jew and

1:37:38It doesn't make a difference. Rabbi Mutzan was in the Holocaust and used to celebrate regardless of what was happening. One of the people would ask him, "Why are you happy?" He says, "What do you mean? I'm a Jew. That's already enough of a reason." The Nazis eventually murdered all of his kids, 11 kids, and his wife. The person came to him and told him that the Nazis, yimach shemam, murdered his 11th child. He initially went into shock. And then he started celebrating again. "Hey, I just told you they murdered the 11th, the last child, the baby. They murdered them." "Hey, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, oh." How? What's going on? He goes, what are you asking? He says, no, why are you celebrating? I just told you.

1:38:47But at the same time, why were you scared a minute ago? Oh, you're asking that? Oh, when you told me that the Nazis murdered my son, initially I thought to myself, who did this to me? Who did this to me? Who killed my son? Who killed my son? But then I realized, oh, it's Abba. Oh, hey, hey, hey, I know it's good. If it's from Abba, I know it's good. If it's from Abba, I know it's good. Why? He said, what is it like? It's like somebody's lost in the jungle. He doesn't know right, he doesn't know left, everything looks the same. But all of a sudden, somebody gives him a nice chapchah to the back, gives him a nice slap to the back, and he's scared immediately. And then he sees, oh, it's Abba! Oh, now I know how to get home. If Abba's doing it, I know it's good. Later on, the Nazis yemach shemam wanted to shave his beard. He refused to let them shave his beard. Even though it's midat chassidut, it's not a commandment to have a beard, he refused to let them shave his beard with a razor. They broke literally almost all of his bones. And he did not let them do it. Later on, one of the Nazis wanted to, said, what's the problem with this guy? He goes, he doesn't let us shave his beard.

1:40:02Okay, why doesn't he want with a beard? Okay, so take the what does he want with scissors? Yeah, with scissors. He goes, okay. So just take the scissors and just cut his skin with it, too. But siyata dishmaya (with help from Hashem), right when they're about to cut his face off, somebody came and interrupted, and they all left. But still, he had literally almost broken bones in all of his body. He crawled back to his barrack and... Instead of going to sleep, instead of crying himself to sleep or something, he took something from under his bed—a little piece of daf Gemara. He crawled back, grabbed the chair, stood up, and started going around the chair seven times. They asked him, "Kavod HaRav, what are you doing?" He's dancing now. He just got almost all of his bones broken. And he's dancing with a little daf Gemara. He says, why, Kavod HaRav? He says, it's Simchat Torah. It's Simchat Torah. I have to celebrate the Torah. He said, how is this for the good, Kavod HaRav? How could it be? You almost died. Your kids. Your this. How could this be good? He says, Baruch Hashem, this all happened. He goes, how could it be Baruch Hashem? He says, Baruch Hashem, I'm part of the murdered and not the murderers.

1:41:28Baruch Hashem, I'm part of the murdered and not the murderers. Why? Because the murdered have olam haba. The murderers, they don't even have olam hazeh. They don't have anything. Imagine, you've lost touch with humanity that you take somebody's life. What kind of life do you have? You don't have this world. You definitely don't have the next world. So, Baruch Hashem, even this is for the good. And he ended up surviving the Holocaust, building a whole entire empire, Baruch Hashem. Huge hospital for free in Israel, a whole new family – I think another seven kids, Baruch Hashem, a new wife, a huge chesed. Until this day, he has said he came to Hashem, attending and following and learning Gemara. The gifts they give their Rebbe – you know what gifts they give? What do they buy him? Chairs and houses? No, we don't give those. They give their Rebbe this year. "I'm gonna learn 250 pages by heart." That's the gift. That's the gift.

1:42:28I'm gonna learn a thousand pages of Gemara by heart. That's the gift they give their Rebbe. Why? Because their Rebbe was an ish kodesh, and he understood the real meaning of life, and it had nothing to do with material. But when a Jew doesn't have this, when a Jew doesn't have Torah, he has nothing. There's nothing. Unfortunately, he still has the super neshamah, he still has the special neshamah that Hashem gave him. And if he's not using it to fulfill the Torah, it has to fulfill something. And unfortunately, sometimes that something is not so good. This is why it's our obligation to help each and every single one of them. You have to help every single one of them, religious or not religious, it doesn't matter. Everybody has to do teshuvah. Everybody has to do teshuvah, whether he was born frum or he’s not frum, if he is frum, if he's a rabbi, if he's a student. Everybody needs to do teshuvah for something. It's our obligation to help them because unless you approach them, no one else will. No one else will because most people don't care or they're too busy, or the yetzer hara has them doing stuff.

1:43:38And there's not enough people doing kiruv. There's not enough people trying to get Am Yisrael to get closer and closer to Hashem. So if we take it and we take advantage of it, we take the mitzvah, and we take advantage of this mitzvah, there's no one better than you in the world. You're not only the one that Hashem continues to allow the world to revolve around, but you're also the one who's going to bring more of His kids back home. Now, who do you think He's gonna treat better? one who brings His kids back home or the one that doesn't really care. Who do you think He's gonna protect more? The one who's bringing His kids back home or the one that is just taking care of himself selfishly? These are the things we all have to consider. Why? Because it's our life; you have to do it well. Yes, technically anyone that's still alive in this world can do teshuva. Rabbi Yisrael Salanter says that a person is only alive as long as he can do teshuva. As soon as he is not able to do teshuva, Hashem takes away his life, with one exception. In Or Yisrael, he writes in one of his letters...

1:45:00A person can lose his right to do teshuva by rejecting it, meaning that even though, let's say for example, a person came to the world and Hashem decided, "I'm going to give him seventy years," and now he's 35 years old. He's halfway there. He has technically 35 years to do teshuva. Teshuva doesn't take a minute, but the point is he has 35 years, and... So, Hashem continues to let him live, even though he doesn't keep Shabbat, even though he steals, even though he does this, even though he does that, even though she's not modest; He lets him live. But Rabbi Yisrael says there's one exception. The exception is when a person rejects rebuke, meaning that somebody comes and tells him the truth and... tells him Hashem is real, the Torah is real, Moshe is real, it's all emet, you have to do teshuva, more than once, once, twice, three times, however the number is in heaven, what it's determined, the truth arrives at his door, and not only does he not listen, he rejects it, he goes against it.

1:46:02Then Rabbi Yisrael Salanter says he can lose his right to live even though technically he has 35 years left on his cheshbon in shamayim, Hashem says no more. Take him early. Why? I have to bring him back all new. Maybe I'll have a better chance. It's better for him to come back all brand new than to continue like this because the situation is only going to get worse. Now, with his decision to go against it, to go against the emet, he is on a road that's impossible for him to do teshuva. So it's very, very important for a person to love rebuke, like Shlomo HaMelech said. It's very important for a person to understand that rebuke is nothing personal. When the rabbi says something, he doesn't mean that he wants you to die; he just means he wants you to stop sinning so you don't die. When the rabbi says that it's better for a person, it's better for a person... Literally, to not come to this world and to go and attend public school. He doesn't mean that he wants your kids to suffer for shalom or something bad to happen to them. It means he's trying to get your attention to realize that if you continue letting your kids go to public school, they're gonna become goyim. So all of the things that the rabbi says are true. It's from the Torah. It's not their own rules, and a person needs to take this to heart.

1:47:22He needs to take this to heart and do something. So whether he's a Jew or he's a good one or bad one, we don't know if he's Erev Rav or not. You can't say, oh, he's Amalek, he's Erev Rav. Even the Germans, not all of them are Amalek. Some of them are, some of them are not. But as a matter of fact, even the Arabs, some of them are Jews. Some Arabs are actually Jewish because their mother is a Jew. But their mother is a Jew, but she is a Jew in hiding. Because she thought that Mustafa, the boyfriend she had when she was 16, was a nice guy, and she married him, and then he brought her back to Saudi Arabia, then he brought her back to Gaza, then he brought her back to whatever hole he's in, and he became the real Mustafa, and he started hitting her along with the rest of his other 10 wives. But the miskena, the poor 16-year-old Jewish girl, now has to marry under Sharia law. where if she speaks the wrong way, they'll kill her. So what is she going to do, say "I'm Jewish?" No, she can't say anything, but in reality, she's a Jew. And all the kids that she has are Jews. There are many terrorists that are actually Jews, believe it or not. Some of them actually end up coming back to Am Yisrael. There's actually one famous story that went online; a lot of people have watched it, of a guy who hated Am Yisrael, only to realize later on in his life, when he was, I think, maybe 25 years old,

1:48:49he's actually a Jew. So, we don't know who the Erev Rav is; we don't know who Amalek is; we don't know anything really. So we can't just point at somebody and say, "Oh, he's this or he's that." Even if sometimes the person is anti-Torah, a liberal lefty loser, we are still obligated to try to help him unless he's anti-Torah in public, meaning he's going to the point where he has a website against Hashem. He's one of these people that tries to recruit them to atheism or to Christianity, then the Rambam paskens halacha that you're not allowed to help him even if he comes. But if he's just an ignorant fool, you have to try to help him. Unfortunately, most of us are ignorant and most of us are fools, and we don't know it. So you have to try to help him. You have to try to bring him to you. You have to give him a CD; you have to share a lecture with him. You have to do something, do something. If he's in your life, if she's in your life, there's a reason for it. Just like the chair you're sitting on has a purpose, so does the friend you're friends with on Facebook. So does the guy that just started following you on Twitter. So does the guy that you see every day at the bus stop. You see him for a reason. There's a reason why he's there. There's a reason why you see them. Many times it's because you could be that opportunity, that opening for them to do teshuva.

1:50:14So, a person that rejects the truth, it's not just one time saying, "I don't feel like hearing it." First of all, it's multiple times, and second of all, it's going against it, not just rejecting it. Ninety percent of people don't want to be told what to do. Not you, not me, not anybody. Your wife tells you, "Go get milk, Dad." Okay. "Yeah, milk. Okay, I'll get milk," maybe. But your immediate reaction is you don't want to get anything. You don't listen to anybody. There's an immediate reaction for every person. No one likes to listen to anybody. Multiple times, and second of all, it's going against it, not just rejecting it. Ninety percent of people don't want to be told what to do. Not you, not me, not anybody. Your wife tells you, "Go get milk, Dad." Okay. "Yeah, milk. Okay, I'll get milk," maybe. But your immediate reaction is you don't want to get anything. You don't listen to anybody. There's an immediate reaction for every person. No one likes to listen to anybody. Even more so, we tell the person to change their life. They don't listen to you. Who are you? You just did teshuvah about six months ago. You just did teshuvah about six years ago. What are you, Moshe Rabbeinu? So naturally, people are going to reject it. That's not what I meant. What I meant is that people are going against it, not only rejecting it but going against it dafka. They want to ruin it dafka. Instead of coming to the shiur, they want to put up signs to tell people not to come to the shiur. Such people, people that are wicked for no reason. Now...

1:51:35It says in the prophet Isaiah, "Every Jew has a share in the World to Come." But it also continues and says, "All of your nation are righteous," meaning the righteous people have a share in the World to Come. So what happens to the share in the World to Come of the people that are not righteous? People are not keeping Shabbat. What happens to it? There's a share somewhere. It's a share. It's a spiritual share. It's somewhere. What happens to it? Okay, so the guy is not gonna keep Shabbat. He's not gonna keep taharat hamishpacha. He's not gonna be a kosher Jew. So he's not gonna get this share. He's gonna go up there and say, "I'm sorry, do not enter. You have a different entrance." Sorry, so what happens to that olam haba? Chazal say that since kol Yisrael yesh lahem chelek l'Olam Haba, we have to do something with the share. That share goes to the person that tried to help him do teshuvah. So if you try to help somebody do teshuvah, and they don't listen to you, you inherit their Olam Haba. Not only are you not a murderer, you just inherited a bigger part of Olam Haba, meaning that either way you win, either way you win if they don't listen to you.

1:52:50They don't want to listen; you get their Olam Haba. If they do listen to you, you have 310 Olam Haba for every Jew you get to do teshuvah. You get 310 worlds based on the Gematria of yesh. Yesh is Gematria 310. So Hashem says, "I have yesh, yesh li; I have a big reward." To give. What's this big reward that the Chachamim say? The reward for people that do Kiruv. What do you get? How much is this reward? 310 worlds based on the Gematria of Yesh. Yesh is Yud, Shin. Shin is worth 300. Yud is worth 10. 310. So if he doesn't listen, you get one world, which is good, but you better go to 310—it’s much better. The point is that either way you win for doing Kiruv; either way, there's no loss. You always win. Also, remember the Lubavitcher Rebbe, alev ha-shalom, said something very important when someone asked him, "What if people don't want to listen? I go, I try, and he doesn't want to listen?"

1:54:03He said to them, "Listen, imagine you have a roommate, and your roommate one day comes home, and he's really, really upset for no reason. He says to you, 'Listen, I'm really tired. No matter what, don't wake me up.' You don't exactly like the way he's talking to you, and you say some things in your heart that maybe you're going to regret later on, but you just leave the house." Once you get downstairs, you start smelling smoke. You smell fire. And you realize the building is on fire. You run upstairs and you wake up your friend. But the friend told you what? "Don't wake me up." Now, once he wakes up and he realizes that he's surrounded by fire and you just saved his life, is he upset at you? Obviously not, unless he's insane and suicidal. Obviously not. Why? Because you saved his life. He says that a person without Torah...

1:55:09Without Torah, he's sleeping. So he's upset at you, and he's upset at the world, and he's upset, and he doesn't even know why. But once you wake him up, and finally, after annoying him enough times with the CD, and the lecture, and the text message, and the Facebook, and the Twitter, and the email, and the pamphlet, and the newsletter, and constantly bringing him to the shiur, and taking him out, and you constantly, day after day, year after year, you constantly annoy him. To do teshuva when he finally wakes up, or you think he's gonna hate you? No, he's gonna tell you what somebody told me not too long ago. He said, you saved my life. I said, how? I don't even know you. He said, you saved my life. I said, how? He said, because you're annoying. I said, Baruch Hashem. I constantly see your lectures online. So annoying, I have to watch them. And I did teshuva. I said, Baruch Hashem. I said, Baruch Hashem. Sometimes you have to be annoying. Why? Because you try to save lives. I would die. You're not trying to be popular. I'm not looking for fans. I couldn't care less if you dislike me. I just want you to listen to what it says. And that's what you have to look at. Don’t worry if they like you or don’t like you; they’re going to listen or they’re not. Just care about being the messenger. Yes.

1:56:27There are 20 million Jews that we know of in the world today; about six million or so live in America. Pick somebody else. There are plenty of easy fish. There are plenty of people that are not connected to Hashem simply because they're ignorant, simply because they have no idea that it's an obligation. They think it's just a good thing to do, but they don't feel like doing it. There are plenty of those people. Go after them. The people that are anti, the people that are atheists, People that, you know, have joined Christianity, leave them to me. You take care of the easier ones. Why? Because the hard ones, the hard ones—even to help them, you're not really necessarily supposed to, because they're so difficult sometimes that they've actually led other people to sin. And the Rambam says you're not to help, even if they want help.

1:57:41But aside from that, people like that—the only way to truly help them is by destroying their ideology first. You have to destroy their ideology first, and that requires skill and a lot of siyata dishmaya. And it's simply a waste of time nine out of ten times. Most people that are like that are not looking for the truth; they're just looking for an excuse. There was a guy named Yaakov. He has a very holy name, but he's probably the least holy person on earth today. I met him last time I came to New York and... Somebody told me that he's an atheist. He used to be religious, used to be a yeshiva guy, and now he's this and now he's that. He has questions, and he has questions. So I said, okay, ask questions. Bring him to my lecture. The guy was surprised. "You sure? Bring him to the lecture?" I said, "Yeah, bring him to the lecture. If he has questions, the Torah has answers. We're not scared of anybody. The Torah has answers. Bring him. Sure. So what's the question? If he has a question, we have an answer. If I don't have an answer, I'll get the answer." So the guy comes and he sits, and at the end of the lecture, he came towards the end because he didn't want to listen to the lecture. He just wanted to listen to himself.

1:58:58At the end, I say, "Does anybody have any questions?" He starts asking. Yes, the first question is something about Noah's Ark, and I provide him an answer. He was surprised that I actually had evidence for it. He didn't even know that there's actual evidence—real, black-and-white evidence—that you can see with your own eyes if you want to go to Turkey and climb a mountain called Ararat. You can see there is... The finding of Noah's Ark. Apparently, he didn't know this because he only looked at comic books his whole life instead of Torah. So he's too convinced of his own case to look for the truth elsewhere. He was surprised. He asked me another question and I answered that one as well, Baruch Hashem. The crowd was getting very excited about the answers and I saw that the answers were actually making them do teshuvah. even though they didn't ask the question. So I asked him, do you have any more questions? And he didn't have any more questions because he was in shock. We actually had answers in the Torah. So I said, you know what? I'll ask the question.

2:00:05I'll give the answer to, and I started asking difficult questions. Why did they have these questions? Because I asked the same thing. Well, he thinks he's the first one to ask questions. That's the best thing about every atheist in the world. It's the best thing about every guy. They always think they're the first one to have this question. The Rambam didn't ask these questions? The Rambam didn't ask these questions? The Gaon MiVilna, called Gaon — Gaon means genius. My entire generation declared this person is a walking genius. No, he didn't ask the questions until you came. No one thought of these questions. It's the most ridiculously arrogant state of mind in history. But the reality is, all the questions you have or don't have exist, and someone has asked them before. So, Baruch Hashem, I started asking questions and providing the answers. I think that question and answer session was better than the shiur itself. After that, I told him, "Listen, if you have more questions, you could send me your questions and..." Many as you have, as long as you are willing to review the information I send you. Because you're looking for the truth. He said yes; I said yes, deal. I gave him my phone number, and we parted ways. After I got back home, he texted me to send him a follow-up. So I started providing him answers to questions and...

2:01:30But not answers based on logic, answers based on science. The first video he complained, "Yeah, but such and such disagrees with this scientist." Like he's the only scientist in the world people disagree with. Every scientist, everyone disagrees with until there are a few that agree with them. "This one is no good, this one is no good, this one is no good." And then eventually, I started realizing that it doesn't matter what I provide him, Doesn't matter. He's not looking for the truth, so I told him, "You're not really serious. Show me what books you have. What have you studied? Maybe I studied them too, and I could tell you where the mistakes are." So he shows me. I said, "Take a picture of them. Don't tell me names, take a picture of your books." So he sends me a picture of his books. I said, "Send me the picture of your best science book." You know what's his best science book? Bill Nye the Science Guy. I'm not joking. I'll show you the picture. Bill Nye the Science Guy, who's not a science guy but actually a comedian—he's an engineer. He's a comedian. That's his best science book. So I told him, "You're not serious. You're not looking for the truth. If this is your science, you're basing everything on, you're wasting your time. You're just looking for excuses." Now, his response shocked me.

2:02:53Because I expected him to say, "You know what? Maybe I'll double-check. Maybe I'll look at what you sent, be more objective. Maybe I'll read some more books and have a better case." That's what a normal human being would do. He didn't do that. What did he do? He said, "Nah, you don't know what you're talking about. I talk to people all day, all the time, and I've already convinced two people to stop keeping Shabbat." He said, "I already convinced two people that were going to yeshiva to stop keeping Shabbat." And he's proud of this. I said, "You, my friend, are mean. You are officially someone that every single day, Am Yisrael prays for three times a day for you to die. Now, thank you for helping me have kavanah." That's not nice. I said, what's not nice? What's not nice? You're in our Torah. We're supposed to pray for you to die. We pray for you to die for people like you. Why? The fact that you don't believe, that's not good. But to go out of your way and destroy neshamos, what do you get out of it? That means you're pure evil. Pure evil needs to desist, needs to leave the world. We pray for you to die.

2:04:17He didn't like the response. I said, don't talk to me anymore. I don't want to hear from you until you do teshuvah or something. But I can't help you because you, you're a min. You're a person that I can't associate with. You're dangerous to society. And apparently, a few other people that I met along the way know him. And he tried to convince them too. But they came to me. But my point is that you have to understand. Some people are beyond help. And it's not because their questions are so big. There's no question in the world we don't have an answer to. People don't want help; they want an excuse to justify their sins. They want an excuse to justify their behavior. People like that you stay away from. You move on to the easy fish. You move on to the normal people that are simply not religious because they don't know anything, simply not religious because they didn't grow up that way and... You go to those people, and there's plenty of them. That's Baruch Hashem, Baruch Hashem. That's the majority. The majority are decent human beings. The majority of Jews are decent human beings that have mercy, that are good, that are generous. They're good. Even if they're secular, they're good. They just don't know anything. Get them to know something. They're an empty vessel. Fill it up. Don't go to the Resha'im, the little Hamans. Don't go to those people. Go to the people that are just simply clueless.

2:05:38So here's the thing: unfortunately, today we live in a very, very weak generation of leadership. Not just people, the leadership, unfortunately, at some point decided that they want to... fight for the nation without helping them. How? Just declare everybody as "tinok shenishba." Every secular person is "tinok shenishba." Why? Because there were three chachamim that said that everyone's a "tinok shenishba" if they're secular, if they grew up in a secular house. And they're mistranslating what they said. The Lubavitcher Rebbe, the Chazon Ish, and I believe it was Rav Moshe Feinstein—all three said, "Oh, yeah, the secular people are 'tinok shenishba.'" They misunderstand the people that are saying, "Oh, so everybody's a tinok shenishba." They're meaning of their captured child. You know, in the Gemara, in Masechet Shabbat or Masechet Avodah Zarah, it talks about it. Actually, it's Masechet Shabbat that talks about it. It says that in the old days, if the goyim stole a Jewish baby, and he grew up, he didn't know if he was Jewish and...

2:06:47he's a tinok shenishba. So today, though, around a hundred years ago, a little less than a hundred years ago, these three chachamim said, "Oh, it's someone that grew up in a secular house, in a Zionist house, in an atheist house. He's the same thing like someone that was captured by the goyim now." Didn't mean to keep him that way. They just said that's his status now, and that is being mistranslated today. So first and foremost, we should know this. Day number one, you know, tinok shenishba is a halachic term, meaning that if someone is a mechallel Shabbat and... Purpose: If he touches your wine, you're not allowed to drink it. You have to throw it in the garbage. You're not even allowed to sell it. But if he's a tinok shenishba, he didn't know he was Jewish until now. He didn't know and he doesn't know, and so on, then you're still allowed to drink it. That's it. That's all it means. It doesn't mean he goes to Gan Eden because someone stole him. It doesn't mean he goes to Gan Eden because he didn't know that he's supposed to be religious. It just means that if he touches your wine, you're still allowed to drink it. If he says a blessing, you're still allowed to say amen. If he says Kaddish, you can say amen. Because if he's not a tinok shenishba, then you're not even allowed to say amen.

2:08:05Here it just means that it only affects this world. It doesn't mean that he's okay and he goes to Gan Eden. No one goes to Gan Eden without being a tzaddik, without being righteous. No one goes to Gan Eden; no rasha shows up to Gan Eden. Esav is not in Gan Eden right now, even though his father is Yitzchak Avinu and his grandfather is Avraham Avinu and his brother is Yaakov. Esav is not in Gan Eden. So now, a person needs to know, is this a halakhic term? It means that you could still say amen, you can still touch the wine, and so on. That's number one. Number two. Let's say if we look at it and personify it and put it in a way that you could see and visualize it. Let's say it really is a captured baby. If you saw your neighbor's baby captured by somebody else... And he was in a cage. He's in a cage down the street in Harlem. And he's in a cage, and people have him in a cage. And you saw him. Are you going to leave him there? He's a little baby. He can't defend himself. Are you going to leave him there? Are you going to leave him? No, he's a captured baby. Are you going to go up to the back of your... Oh yeah, I saw your kid today. Where? Oh, he was captured by the guy over there, the Muslim guy. He put him in a cage. It's on a street on 67th. What are you going to do? Are you going to tell him, why'd you take him out? Why'd you leave him captured?

2:09:28Why is he still captured? You saw him. Take him out. Do something. Call the cops. Something, don't leave them captured. That's the problem. The people that are constantly arguing, "No, the generation is all captured babies. They're all tinokot shenishbu. They are tinokot shenishbu." It's all nonsense. Why? Even if they are or they aren't, you're not allowed to keep them that way. Meaning, you are still obligated to tell them to keep Shabbat. You are still obligated to tell them to keep taharat hamishpacha and kosher and everything. You are still obligated. You can't keep them that way. That's the second thing. Next thing is... One person has a big heart, and he said, listen, if somebody is a tinok shenishba, he's not going to talk Lashon Hara about him. Why? Because the Chafetz Chaim says that according to his book about Lashon Hara, If somebody is not a shomer mitzvot, if he doesn't keep Shabbat, doesn't keep the basics of mitzvot, he's not considered part of amecha. He's not considered part of your people, meaning that even if you say Lashon Hara about him, it's not a sin. And Lashon Hara is a very big sin. But if you say Lashon Hara about somebody that's mechallel Shabbat, it's not a sin. Why? He's not considered part of your people. He's considered an idol worshiper. Ha? Ha?

2:10:48If he knows and doesn't keep, what? No, so that's the thing. That's the whole argument of Tinok Shenishba. point is that if he doesn't keep Shabbat, if he knows he's a Jew, he knows he's a Jew, he just doesn't feel like keeping Shabbat, you are allowed to say about him until the end of the world. Why? Because he's not considered a Jew; he's considered an idol worshiper, unfortunately. That's according to the Chazon Ish. Now, this nice guy with a big heart says, "Yeah, listen, the Since the Chazon Ish, another big Chacham, says that all the secular people are tinokot she'nishbu, we're still not allowed to say Lashon Hara about them. Why? Because they're all captured babies, so we're not allowed to say Lashon Hara about them. So that way, we are not allowed to say Lashon Hara about any secular person. And see, that's what we do. And I said, okay. Looked at what he said, and I said okay. You're trying to do a mitzvah, but in reality, you just created one of the biggest disasters in our generation. With that psak, if they listen to you in Shamayim, which baruch Hashem they probably don't, but if they listen to you in Shamayim, you just destroyed millions of people. How?

2:12:10Now the reality is that you are gonna get however many people listen to you to not talk against secular people, so let's say 500 people listen to you or 5,000 people listen to you, and 500 actually end up doing it because not everybody does what you say. But even if 5,000 do it, so 5,000 people are going to stop speaking against secular people. So you help 5,000 people not commit a sin. Good for you. Here's the problem, here's the whole bun, here's the disaster. What happens is that the reality is... Unfortunately, most people still say Lashon Hara. People that are not listening to you and the people that listen to you are still gonna say Lashon Hara. Out of the 20 million Jews, 3 million of them are religious. Most of them, unfortunately, say Lashon Hara. Unfortunately, it's part of our day-to-day. Even the Gemara says it: we're all guilty of a little bit of Lashon Hara. Now until now, the Torah and Shamayim said we listen to who? The master of Lashon Hara, the Chafetz Chaim. Why? He says if the religious guy says Lashon Hara about his cousin...

2:13:35That is not religious. There's no sin. Why? He said he's a Mechalel Shabbat. So there's no sin. So he goes up to Shamayim and they say, oh, you're a Tzadik. Why? You never said Lashon Hara. Yeah, but I said, no, no, it doesn't count. Why? Because they're all secular. So it doesn't count. But now you made a new Pesak. You made a new Pesak. Now we can't. No, now you can't say Lashon Hara. So now 3 million people that do say Lashon Hara, now you made all of them guilty. Why? You went against the Chachamim. You tried to be a new posek. So, Rabotai, there's no easy way to do teshuva. There's no easy way to get other people to do teshuva. Stop looking for excuses. Even if he is, you're not allowed to leave him that way. If he's not, stop trying to look for an excuse for him. Stop. You have to get people to do teshuva. It's the only solution. Listen, I have lectures. I have a relative who doesn't keep Shabbat. He shows up to one of my lectures, and when I said the part that Hashem kills the people that don't keep Shabbat, they get Din Karet. Karet means either Hashem kills them or He kills their kids, one or the other, whichever one comes first. That's what happens in Shamayim. You know what I did when I said it? I was looking at him.

2:15:00Because I wanted him to get it. Even though in my heart I'm crying, it breaks my heart to think he may die. Why? It's the only way he's going to listen. Sometimes the hard truth is the only thing that's going to get people to move. Some people are easier. Some people, you give them a CD, the guy does teshuva six months later. Sometimes you get a guy, listen, you should do tefillin, the guy does teshuva. Some people are easy. Unfortunately, not everybody's like that. Try the easy way. Doesn't work? You have to go hard. You have to let them know there's a din, there's a consequence. but there's not enough time. There's not enough time to just sugarcoat everything and tiptoe and walk on eggshells and I'm not sure and I can't and it isn't enough. Say the truth, Hashem will give you a blessing. Yes. This is a phenomenon that I've experienced with Lubavitchers specifically, although it may exist in other places as well, and I've never been an individual at all, at all, at all. And they say, have you ever learned what the Lubavitchers think? Tanya? Yeah, that's where they're quoting from, to say that there's no individual, and some sort of evil person is saying that it's coming their way. All right, whoever you said, those people that claim to be Lubavitchers or Chabad,

2:16:14Let's say there's no Din V'Cheshbon. First and foremost, before I say anything, you should know rule number one: they are not Chabad. They say they're Chabad; they're not Chabad. They say they're Lubavitcher; they're not Lubavitcher. They're just fakers that look like it. Some people wear a costume once a year on Purim; some people wear a costume all year round. So anyone that says that they're Lubavitcher, but they tell you that there's no Din V'Cheshbon, there's no reward and punishment, and... There is no Gehinnom. They're not Lubavitcher. They're not anything. Why? Because saying that there's no Din V'Cheshbon goes against the 13 principles of faith. The Rambam, which the Lubavitcher Rebbe made sure that all of us talmidim learn and teach. Says that there are 13 foundational beliefs for Judaism as a whole, that if you don't believe them, you're considered a kofer ba'ikar. You're considered a heretic against the entire Torah. One of them is reward and punishment. A Jew that does not believe in reward and punishment is considered 100% a heretic. You're not allowed to count him in a minyan. You're not allowed to marry him. You're not allowed to say amen to his prayers. He's considered a heretic.

2:17:25So anyone that says they're Lubavitcher or Chabad or whatever they say they are, but they say such a thing, automatically and immediately indicates this person is just a crazy person. Maybe he just ran out of a mental institution. Maybe I should call the cops. Maybe I should call Abarbanel. Maybe put him in a mental institution. He's not Lubavitcher. He's just pretending. He pretends. Same thing like the people that pretend the Rebbe is still alive. They pretend. Whatever they are, they're not normal. So we can't say this is Chabad. Chabad is founded on Kodesh. Unfortunately, some people pretend to be Chabad, and unfortunately, those people that pretend give a really, really horrible name to the people, to the Rebbe, who actually was a Tzaddik. So that's one. Number two. Same people that tell you there's no din in his born. They say, "No, no, the Tanya said it." That's the proof, number two, that they're liars, and they're also ignorant. Why? Because on page 38 of the Tanya, the Tanya says that if a person makes a sin, he is considered a rasha. He's considered wicked. But if he sees another person sinning, if he sees another person sinning...

2:18:36He doesn't say anything, which is even worse because that person's sin goes on him. There was no one more strict in the generation of the Tanya than the Baal HaTanya on rebuke, mussar, din, and punishment. No one. So does that mean they didn't quote the Tanya? They quoted themselves but attributed it to the Tanya. They quoted their own opinion. Chafetz Chaim said, a few students told him, "Listen, Kippur Dara, I want to write a book." He said, "Listen, you could write my chidushim and you could put your name on it. But don't write your chidushim and put my name on it." My chidushim, I don't care if you have your name on it. Why? I know my chidushim are good. Your chidushim, I'm not so sure. So don't put my name on yours. Sometimes people put the Lubavitcher's name on their nonsense. Or Chabad's name on their nonsense. Or Breslov's name on their nonsense. Or whatever other chassidut on their nonsense. Don't believe it. Always check the source. You know how many people told me, "Oh, Rav Kanievsky says this. Someone that has an iPhone has no share in the world to come." Who believes this nonsense?

2:19:42If a person has an iPhone and he uses it for sin, he doesn't need Rav Kanievsky to tell him. He knows it. But people say, "No, by default, if you have an iPhone, you have a smartphone, you lost Olam HaBa." This is stupidity. This is pure stupidity. People just make up rules, and they put a big rabbi's name on it. So always check the source, always check it, and again Always check who's telling you, who's providing the source, who's providing this information. If they follow the 13 principles of faith, then we could move forward. If they go against the 13 principles of faith, whatever they say, true or not, is irrelevant. They're not allowed to be counted in a minyan. If somebody tells you there's no reward and punishment, you cannot count them in a minyan. You cannot even say amen to that Kaddish. It's not physical. It's not physical. Hashem is not physical. So how could a Jew have a part of Hashem? Right. You're asking, that's your question. Okay. I know. I asked the same question.

2:21:07So here's the answer. The question is, how can you have a part of Hashem, have a chelek Eloka mimaal, and Hashem is not physical? So, even though Hashem is not physical, He put a piece of Himself, in essence, the essence of Himself, I guess you could say, into Adam HaRishon. He puts something divine, a soul. It's not a physical entity, but it is something. It's not physical. In order for something to be something, it doesn't need to be physical. We think of physical because we are physical. Because everything we think about revolves around time and matter. We think about food, it revolves around time and matter. We think about marriage, time and matter. We think about a job, time and matter. We think about everything we associate with has to have a connection to time and matter. Hashem is beyond time and matter, so the soul is part of that. Your soul is above and beyond time and matter simply because your soul does not require time or matter. If your soul leaves the world

2:22:27joins a different world that does not have any restrictions of time. Now, how could you understand this in a normal way? A dream. Once a person goes to sleep, anyone that has ever had a nightmare knows that the nightmare sometimes felt like it was for weeks or months, in some cases years, but he wakes up and realizes that he's only been asleep for 10 minutes and Now, how did he feel pain and suffering for weeks or years? But in reality, he's only been asleep for 10 minutes because the soul is what experienced that, and the soul is not bound to time. So the soul experienced something that felt like weeks or years, or so on, but the body is still here and is bound to time. So this is one way to understand, or at least have some type of concept that Hashem allowed us to have in regards to time and the absence of time. Now Hashem put a piece of Himself into Adam HaRishon that had all of the original souls. From Adam HaRishon, all the rest of the souls came, meaning that each and every single one of us has a piece of that original soul. When a Jew does teshuva, the soul that's added to him is magnified.

2:23:50Alongside the soul that is part of Hashem Himself. But if a Jew does not do teshuva, a Jew that has several tries according to Hashem's accounting and continues to ruin all of his opportunities to do teshuva, eventually that soul has to be cleaned out and destroyed. Eventually, the only thing that returns to Hashem is His original piece. So the point is that, no, it's not physical, but it doesn't have to be. It doesn't have to be physical in order for it to exist. as far as understanding all of the intricate details of how a soul works and how someone that has, let's say for example, a dream or sometimes a near-death experience, and they could feel their soul coming out of their body, and they could feel like they're floating and flying, and they see things in different places. Many times people have died and their soul came out of their body and they came back to life, and they would tell people, "Listen, I was just flying over the hospital. I saw that there was an accident, you know, three highways down. I saw that there was a pair of sneakers on a roof, and

2:24:58I saw that the nurse over there was eating lunch, and they checked this information. They see it's all true. How? Because the soul left the body. So the soul, again, is not bound to time or space, but it's very difficult for us to understand it completely. Actually, it's impossible for us to understand it completely so long as we're still within our physicality, our human body. So there's examples, but it's not 100%. Let me answer the new questions behind you. Yes. No, I mean, it depends. It depends. Right. It depends on the sin. It depends on how many times they committed the sin. It depends on the magnitude of the sin. The teshuvah for a thing is not just stopping sin; it's also regretting the sin. It's getting to a point where you're disgusted with the sin. A lot of people ask, how do I know if I'm doing teshuvah? Teshuvah first starts with stopping the sin, whatever the sin is. The second step is to make sure that you are regretting the sin. You regret the fact that you did it.

2:26:24Not that you stop it, you regret it. Oh, I can't believe I did this, I did that. Eventually, you're supposed to get to a point of being disgusted by it. Being disgusted with your old version, your old self. Even though the day you did it, you felt pleasure. After you've done teshuva and you've done real teshuva and you've learned a lot about the sin, you want to get to a point where you've actually become disgusted by it. That actually helps you facilitate doing teshuva for other things. You build on top of that teshuva to do other things. So until you've done teshuva to the point of being disgusted by it, you still have to continue, because as long as you are not disgusted by the sin, number one, most likely you're still attracted to the sin, and you may fall for it again. Number two, even more so, is that if you don't regret it and you're not disgusted by it, then the reality is that it's not full regret. It's still part of you. It's still part of you. So you want to get to a point where you build and you build and you build, and you get to a point where you're disgusted by the sin.

2:27:32Sometimes it takes a while; sometimes it takes less time. It depends on you and how serious you are. But either way, it also depends on the size of the sin. If you made a sin one time, it's much easier to do teshuvah. If you made a sin 50,000 times, doing teshuvah one time is not going to cut it. Why? Because you stole $50,000 from 50,000 different people. You can't do teshuvah by just giving one guy the money back; you have to give back to all 50,000. If you violated Shabbat... Violated Shabbat for ten years? If you start keeping Shabbat, that doesn't fix it by itself. Why? Because, okay, you're keeping Shabbat, you stop sinning, but you still have a missing balance of ten years' worth of Shabbat. So, how do you fix that deficit? You get other people to keep Shabbat. Once you get other people to keep Shabbat, every time they keep Shabbat, it's like you're keeping an extra Shabbat. So that makes up for that deficit that you have. So, yes, you're fixing the first part of the sin by you keeping Shabbat. But the stuff that you missed out on, that you can't technically do, because you can only keep one Shabbat at a time yourself, you get other people to do. That's where kiruv comes in.

2:28:46Tikkun HaBrit, Tikkun Chatzot, Tikkun Rachel, all those things. The Tikkunim are all good. They're all supposed to help you do Teshuva by themselves. They're not enough. They're supposed to be part of Teshuva. Are they necessary? Some yes, some no. It depends on the Tikkun. You have to ask me about specific Tikkunim. For example, Tikkun HaBrit, for wasting seed, there are several things that are necessary. The first one, obviously, is to stop sinning. The second one is to learn about the subject. Third is, you know, some people, it helps them to do a tikkun of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, the Tehillim that he reads. But the biggest and most important part is to get other people to stop. That's the biggest part. Meaning that if you do the first few, it's good. It's just not enough. You know, some people, they're focused on Rebbe Nachman, and they say the Tehillim every day, 500 times a day. Good. It's not enough. Why? Because you still have to make up for a deficit, a deficit balance that you have from the past. But in general, there are the tikkunim. One of the other big tikkunim for wasting seed is also tzedakah, to give money specifically for that reason.

2:29:57Some people that want to expedite their tikkun give a specific tzedakah, and you have to go to certain Chachamim who know the specific prayers. You can give this tzedakah for anything meaningful, such as kiruv or Torah. There are specific prayers that the Arizal put together that should be part of the tikkun, but this is usually the latter part of the tikkun, not usually the beginning. But you could do it anytime you want. The point I'm trying to say is that if a person is still not disgusted by the sin, he's still not even at chapter one. So, most people should start, for example, with what I think is, in my opinion, the biggest sin of the generation, which is wasting seed. For that sin, the first thing that people should do, aside from stopping obviously, is to get other people to stop. Once you get other people to stop, then you'll have the strength to do some of the other things that are necessary. But if you just focus on saying Tehillim, most likely you won't even stop yourself. Because it's just simply not enough.

2:31:06Wasting seed, in general, can be done in a few different ways. The most common way is when a male wastes seed by himself, when he's by himself, and instead of having a wife, he uses a bathroom, to be more specific. The second way is when a person acts like Onan, the son of Yehuda. He has a wife, but he doesn't want to get her pregnant, so he uses a condom or he ejaculates outside of the area that he's supposed to. That is wasting seed. That's the second thing. The third thing is they use birth control pills when they're not allowed. They don't have rabbinical permission to use birth control pills. It's also a form of wasting seed. You have to get rabbinical permission. Not everybody is allowed to be on birth control. You're not allowed to be on birth control just because you feel like it or because you feel like you can't afford a baby. That is never a permissible reason to be on birth control. Also, you're never, as a Jewish male, even as a non-Jewish male, actually, you're never ever allowed to wear a condom. Why? Because this is immediately destroying any possibility of a baby ever coming from the actual semen. And yes, you could say there's only a 99% chance, but bottom line is, halachically speaking, you're not allowed. So, wasting seed happens in multiple ways: either a person uses their sperm in the wrong place, or it's wasted in general by themselves or with somebody else. The point is that everyone understands there's only one way to have a baby. If you're doing anything else, you're wasting seed.

2:32:28Uses their sperm in the wrong place, or it's wasted in general by themselves or with somebody else. The point is that everyone understands there's only one way to have a baby. If you're doing anything else, you're wasting seed. There is only one way to have a baby. All humans, it doesn't matter if you're Muslim, Jewish, Litvish, Hasidish, Bukharian, Sephardi, or Tripolitan, it doesn't make a difference what your background is. It doesn't even matter if you're an animal or a human being. There's only one way to have a baby. If the seed goes anywhere else, you have a problem. Problem. The Shulchan Aruch calls it the biggest sin in Judaism. Now, what does it mean? There are a few things that are called the biggest sin in Judaism. Shabbat is called the biggest sin in Judaism. Wasting seed is called the biggest sin in Judaism. Avodah Zarah is called the biggest sin in Judaism. What does it mean, the biggest sin in Judaism? Does it really mean the biggest? What it means is that even if you found a way and

2:33:34fulfill all of the mitzvot. For example, you found a loophole to keep many, many mitzvot, but you still waste seed on purpose. You know you're not allowed, but you still do it. Even if you're married or not married, it makes no difference. You waste seed, and your mitzvot go into a garbage pail. Every single one of your mitzvot goes to the Satan, to the Sitra Achra, and unfortunately, that person still goes to Gehenom permanently. These are a few main things. The Torah says, the Reshit Chochmah states that there are three major sins that, if you commit them, Hashem will make your suffering eternal. It's permanent. There's no turning back. This means it's time to do teshuva. Don't play around with fire. One of them is Chilul Shabbat b'farhesya, meaning you know you have to keep Shabbat, but you still drive on Shabbat. Whether it's to the Beit Knesset or to the bar is irrelevant. You drive on Shabbat, you have a problem. Number two, if you waste seed... If you waste seed on purpose, these are things that are very, very serious, Rabotai. People think it's not a big deal. I have a lot of religious kids coming to me at 25 years old. They've gone through the entire yeshiva system. They never knew they're not allowed to waste seed.

2:34:50until they watch my shiur. This is the biggest sin in our generation because the Zohar HaKadosh says the Satan will sometimes let a person literally help him fulfill all of the other mitzvot so he could destroy him with wasting seed. Why? Because then all of the mitzvot go to the Satan. That's why it's called the biggest sin in Judaism. "Biggest sin in Judaism" means that it literally destroys all the good you do. So a person needs to know when someone says with a source, like I'm providing you, Avodah Zarah, or wasting seed, or Chilul Shabbat, these are the biggest sins. It's not a joke. It's not a figure of speech. It means that even if you do a lot of other good things, good for you, it's not good enough. Good for you. Hope you enjoy it. It's just not good enough. You have to fix yourself. And I know it's hard. And I know it's addictive. I'm a guy too. Understand it's extremely difficult, but if I could do teshuvah, anybody could do teshuvah. The donkey could do teshuvah, the horse can do teshuvah, everybody could do teshuvah. Why? I did teshuvah. I wasn't a murderer. I wasn't a rapist. I wasn't some guy that was a Nazi.

2:36:04I didn't follow the Torah. You don't follow the Torah. You make your own rules. You do a lot of stupid things. The reality is, Rabotai, where I thought I was in my life is a better situation, is a worse situation than most people that I know. Why? I thought I was perfectly fine living in intermarriage, living in a lifestyle that excluded Hashem whenever I felt like it, and including Him whenever I felt like it. I made my own rules. Most people usually have one issue, two issues, or three issues. A bunch of them. The reality is, if I can do Teshuva, anyone can. And that's the key. That's what you have to understand. I know it's difficult. There's no question that it's difficult, but you have to do it. Once you understand that literally everything is on the line for this, then the price changes. Then you're like, okay, I know it's difficult, but I have to find a way, and... I have to find a way to get to Gan Eden. How? I have to stop. So you have to find a way to stop. If you failed on purpose or you failed accidentally, do Teshuva. Do Teshuva again. Do Teshuva again. I'm sorry, Hashem, it happened and so on and so forth. Gemara Masechet Avodah Zarah says, don't look at immodesty in the morning so evil does not come to you at night. Why?

2:37:31Because if you look at girls during the day that are immodest, that are not your wife, even if they are modest and they are not your wife, then evil will come to you at night. Meaning evil, evil meaning keri, meaning wasting seed when you're sleeping. So even though wasting seed when you're sleeping is not as big of a sin as wasting seed when you're awake and you're doing it on purpose, it's still nonetheless a sin. Why is it a sin? Because it's still your fault. Why is it your fault? Because you looked at girls that are not your wife. But if you train yourself to look on the floor or at your wife, the floor of the Sefer Torah, the floor or at the rabbi, the floor or at the Gemara, You train yourself that way; you're not going to have a problem at night. Initially, it's hard. Initially, you still have a problem, and it doesn't go away right away. You destroyed your body for 30 years; it's not going to fix itself in a week. Sometimes, it's simply your body got used to it. But over time, if you continue learning, continue doing, eventually it'll stop. Yes, and...

2:38:53In order for a person to rebuke a woman, he has to first and foremost understand she's not a man, meaning that her yetzer hara is very different than his. Now, if he's her husband, he has to tread very carefully when it comes to rebuke, because his rebuke can sometimes destroy the marriage. So most of the time, for people that are very close to you, it's better that you get somebody else to do it, meaning the rabbi or the shiur or the CD. You get somebody else. If you want your wife to do teshuva for immodesty, join her for a lecture that you're going to watch with her and sit down with her and learn about modesty together. Try to support her mentally, physically, in every way possible to become modest. Buy her new clothes, and all the clothes you're buying her are modest. Borrow money if you have to. Buy her a whole new wardrobe. Every woman likes a new wardrobe. Tell her, "I'm going to buy you a whole new wardrobe. Okay, fine, but it has to be my pick. It has to be modest clothes." Once she knows it's a new wardrobe, she'll go for it. Why? Why not? Spend money if you have to. Beg and plead if you have to. If she loves you, she'll do it. Now, if she's not your wife...

2:40:08If she's your sister, if she's your cousin, if she's a colleague, then it's a little more difficult. Why? She'll feel that you are crossing the line. because why are you looking at me that way? If you don't like it, don't look. If it is, you should always take it the wrong way. So again, same principle is used here. Unless you have a very close relationship with this person, where you are comfortable enough that you can speak truth to each other, the best thing to do is bring her to a lecture or send her a lecture that talks about modesty. Why? She's much more likely to listen to me, a stranger, than to listen to you, someone she knows. Because she's not embarrassed in front of me. she doesn't know me, but she is embarrassed in front of you. So, you have to be smart. You have to use your intellect. And you also have to know the time. The Torah says, "You must rebuke your brother, but don't come to sin." What does it mean, don't come to sin? Meaning, use your brain and know when's the time and place to rebuke somebody. If, let's say, for example, you are at a gathering,

2:41:16You know, half the women over there are modest, and if your friend, your girlfriend, or whoever comes out to go yell at her and embarrass her in public, it's not exactly going to help. But do... do you have to pretend like you're sick, pretend that you need help, and leave the place with them? Go and leave, and then try to start the conversation when it's one-on-one and not in front of 300 people, embarrassing them. So you have to use your wisdom, and you also have to put yourself in their place. How would you feel if somebody told you what you're saying? And again, remember, a woman is not a man. You can't talk to a woman like a man. Some guys talk to their wives like they're buddies. Your wife is not your buddy. She's your wife. A woman is a woman. You cannot talk to her in the way you talk to a guy. You can't give her a high-five. You can't give her a pound. You can't give her a hug. That's not the way it works. You can't talk to them like a rough guy. That's not the way you talk to women. Women, you have to tread carefully. You have to make sure you realize that they are literally, if you can draw a woman in a kosher way, she would just be the shape of a heart. That's it. There's nothing else to a woman. She's a hundred percent heart. If you touch that heart in a bad way, it doesn't matter what you say. All of it is canceled, all of it is deleted. So you have to be careful. Yes, I...

2:42:37Again, like I said, people like that... Again, that'll be not only by stuff talks, we talk to people about people like that, that he calls them snakes. The reality is that you should go for easier fish; you should go for normal people. Don't go after liberal lefties that are anti-Torah and... Returning the aggressive women that you know they're feminists and women's rights, don't bother with those people. You can, but 100% that's what I try to do all the time, but the thing is though, is that you have to pick your battles. You have to pick your battles, and you have to know rule number one of rebuke: if it's coming from anger, it's a sin. If it's coming from ego, it's a sin. It's not a mitzvah. Even if you don't keep Shabbat, but you're saying it, yelling and screaming and throwing rocks at people, it's a sin. It's not a mitzvah.

2:44:05But if it's coming from love, where you're saying to them, listen, I want you to keep Shabbat because it's good for you. I want you to keep Shabbat because I don't want to go to your funeral. I want you to keep Shabbat because I love you, because you're my brother, you're my sister, you're my this, you're my that. If it's coming from love and not from ego, then you're doing something right. But if your rebuke is coming from a place of ego, "I know and you don't know. I'm good and you're not good. I'm Moshe and you're Korach." Then it's not rebuke; then it's just you trying to push your way around as if you're a genius. You're the best, and it's not rebuke. So that's the thing—you have to be truthful with yourself, not just truthful with other people. First, be truthful with yourself. Why are you rebuking? Are you rebuking because you want to tell people what to do? Or are you rebuking because you care? If you care, then whatever will come out of your mouth will work. If you don't care, nothing that will come out of your mouth will work. Nothing. Why? You have no Yirat Shamayim. And that's why a lot of people say, no, no, there's no one actually, there's a... Chachamim say, oh, there's no one out there in a generation to rebuke. And people mistranslate to make it seem as if you're not allowed to rebuke anymore, like we canceled the mitzvah. No, what it means is that this actual statement is a rebuke to the rebukers.

2:45:25Letting them know that if you're gonna rebuke, make sure you start with yourself. Don't tell people to keep Shabbat if you're driving on Shabbat in front of them. Hey guys, you really should keep Shabbat—you’re driving! Don't be one of these people. If you're gonna rebuke, make sure you rebuke yourself first. Talk to people about things that you're doing. Don't talk to me about something that you're not doing. If you're the cheapest guy in the street, don't tell people to give tzedakah. First, work on yourself. And that's the key. That's the reality. Make sure it's coming from a good place. If it's coming from ego, you've already failed. Yes? Eighty-four times. Yeah. Yeah.

2:46:26So the teshuvah that the Arizal writes about wasting seed, he wrote a list of things, a list of fasts you would do for every single sin. So, for example, for wasting seed, every time you wasted seed, you have to fast 84 times. In his generation, people were much stronger physically than we are today, and they were able to fast 84 times. They would fast twice a week over a period of many weeks. They would fast five times a week. Some people were big tzaddikim. They were able to fast for several days in a row. Today, we don't have that strength. Today, even if you tell people to fast for Yom Kippur, they already start trying to figure out, is there another way? I'm a little sick. I'm a little sick. Am I patur from Yom Kippur? Is this one of the real fasts or is this like the 50-50 fasts? So how do you do teshuva without fasting? The replacement for it, the Chachamim explain, is replacing each fast with the cost of a meal, giving the cost of a meal as tzedaka for the purpose of Torah. So if the cost of a meal is, let's say, $5, it doesn't have to be a steakhouse meal in New York where just the steak itself is $100. I'm talking about a meal for somebody to just simply eat a sandwich, these basic meals, it's $5, let's say.

2:47:46$10 you can say, but it should be, let's say, $5. $5 times the 84 fasts is $420. That's for each time a person wasted seed, which means that a person needs to make it a... If he has a lot of money, then start writing big checks. Write $42,000. It'll solve a lot of problems. If you don't have a lot of money, then start gathering together. $420, give. Gather $420, give. However long it takes you. A week, a month, a year, whatever it takes you. Gather $420, give. And don't say, "Oh yeah, but I'm never going to." I was 16 years old. I understand. Little teenagers, by the time they finish a week, they have destroyed a civilization. I get it. But you're not obligated to fix everything in the world. You're obligated to try. obligated to try. So you do the best you can. You gather 420 bucks, you fix one time. If Hashem gives you a lot of parnassah and you can do 840 bucks, if Hashem gives you even more, you can do 1200 and so on and so forth. But the best thing to do is to use that money to help other people stop. How? By supporting lectures like this.

2:48:55are going to help 10, 20, 30, 50, a thousand people stop this. Why? Because now, instead of teshuva for one thing, you've done teshuva a thousand times. If each person does teshuva for this, every time he would have done it, it goes to your account that you've done teshuva for it. So that's why you use that money wisely. The point is that part of the teshuva is usually the most difficult for people because people like their money more than their own life. So that's why I say: first, stop. Second, do kiruv. Kiruv can be done for free. Third, give the money. I haven't mentioned the money yet because I don't want anyone to think that I'm here for money. Number one. Number two is because this is usually the hard part that only the real serious people do. Only the real serious people do that already the first two steps, but people that haven't done the first two steps don't ever get to step number three and because step number three is very expensive. Because, unfortunately, guys that don't grow up with yirat shamayim, unfortunately, just their teenage years is a mass murder of a human population. So we have to do a lot of 420 bucks. Which means you have to make it part of your monthly tzedakah. Every month another 400. Every month another 400. Every week another 400. Whatever you can. Why? It's the only way. It's the only way you go up to shamayim clean.

2:50:15Now, what happens if you die before you fixed every single thing? You did everything you can. You did everything you can, you'll be judged accordingly. You'll be judged accordingly. There was one time a guy that stole from his customers. He had a toilet paper company. And he went to the rabbi and he saw a lecture, and the rabbi said that... If you steal, you have to come back in a gilgul. You have to come back reincarnate. So he came to the rabbi and he said, "Listen, Rav, I stole from my customers already for the last 10 years. It was gezel. I said, well, we advertise like industry standard that every roll is 100 feet. But in reality, no one actually counts. So I started lowering it to 95 to see if anyone noticed." After I realized no one noticed, I lowered it to 90. And no one noticed. Then I lowered it to 75. Some people started complaining, saying something was wrong. So I increased it to 85. And 85 has been the level I've been at for 10 years. So for 10 years, I've been stealing 15 feet per roll from every one of my customers.

2:51:30According to you, you have to return this money. The problem is if I call my customer and say, "Tom, listen, I've been stealing from you for ten years," number one, they're all gonna sue me, so I'm gonna go bankrupt and I won't be able to pay them back anyway. Number two, they'll stop doing business with me, so I can't even pay them back even if I want to. So what do I do? So the rabbi, who was a talmid chacham and had help from Hashem, gave him a good answer. He said, "Listen, just like you stole and they didn’t realize..." Without them realizing, can you make enough money? By giving them extra, he goes, "How? Instead of giving them 85, and instead of even giving them the hundred that they're buying, give them a hundred and fifteen. So that way, each time you're making up for an old one." He said, "Yeah, actually there's enough profit, Baruch Hashem, in the toilet paper business that I can do both. I could give them 115." Okay, do that. The guy started doing it, and... Shem would have it a sham when someone wants to do good. Baruch Hashem likes it, likes it a lot. About six months later, it's a famous story that happened in New York. I think maybe it was 30 years ago. Six months later, breaking news, breaking news: watch breaking news! Investigative journalists did research into the toilet paper business and...

2:52:51And ladies and gentlemen, we've researched all these companies, and this company, that company, and they list 10 different companies. Every single one of them advertises 100 feet per roll. We actually looked at every roll. This one is selling 100, but in reality, they're advertising 100, but in reality, they're selling 70. This one, 60. This one, 82. This one, 91. No one is selling 100, except this one company. Well, right here, ladies and gentlemen, Well, right here outside of this guy's office, we're gonna talk to him right now and ask him, how come he's giving 115? Why is he giving so much extra to his customers? the guy comes out, he sees on TV. "Yes sir, can you explain yourself? Why do you give 115 feet? Everyone else doesn't even give a hundred." "Oh, you know, I love my customers," he says. "Look at how I've been stealing from them for 10 years. Oh, I love my customers." And you know what happened? The guy's business boomed. All of a sudden everybody came, parnasa. He ended up succeeding. Why? He sanctified Hashem's name in secret.

2:53:59He did a Kiddush Hashem in secret. Hashem says I'll do Kiddush Hashem in big. Why? Because you want to do teshuva. So the point is, rabotai, don't ever be discouraged that you made too many sins. If you're still alive, you can still do teshuva. The point is to take it seriously. I heard this story originally from Rabbi Zamir Cohen. It's a very good and real story. The article came out about 30 years ago. The point is that anyone who ever wanted to do teshuva has an opportunity. Hashem wants your teshuva. He is yearning for teshuva. He wanted your teshuva already 3,000 years ago. But we keep going wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. It's time to go right. Elul is a time for us to go right. Elul is a time for us to do teshuva. B'ezrat Hashem, this year will give us all enough strength to do full teshuva, to arrive at Rosh Hashanah clean of our past and ready for our future. Baruch Adonai l'olam. Amen ve'amen.