If It's Not Kosher There's A Reason For It (5 Minutes)

0:02And that's one of the things I didn't know. Also, when I first started doing teshuva, I kept kosher. I thought I kept kosher my whole life with a couple of breaks from time to time. And my exceptions were I'm never going to eat meat. I'm never going to eat pig. I'm never going to eat milk and meat together. The only thing I'm going to do, I'm going to eat non-meat outside. I'll eat pizza. I'll eat salad. I'll eat pasta. No problem.

1:26So if something doesn't have a hechsher, I have a whole list; my wife made a list of different ingredients they use in food that, even if you don't care for kosher, you still wouldn't want to eat them. And they're only found in food that's not kosher. Meaning that it's so easy to make food kosher today because the system is big, the kosher industry is huge, that if something doesn't have a hechsher, there's a real reason for it. For example, there was an orange juice named Sunny Delight that for many, many years was not kosher, and only in the last five or six years did it become kosher. Now, people thought this is a scam by the rabbis. Why would orange juice not be kosher? What's wrong with orange juice? It comes from oranges. Rabbis are trying to milk the orange company, right? Greedy, no. You'd find out that if you investigated, Sunny Delight wanted a special ingredient to make their orange juice extra yellow because it's more marketable when it's extra yellow. So, that extra ingredient wasn't kosher. The reason why is because it was crushed beetles. Now, whether you like kosher or you don't like kosher, I still wouldn't want to eat beetles. And if you see this ingredient list that we have...

2:48It's all real. It's also publicly available. You can see this stuff. You see some of these ingredients they use in food. It's very disgusting. Even if you're not Jewish, you wouldn't want to eat non-kosher food. They don't just buy crushed beetles. Instead, they use formulas like E320 or Red 14 or other different types of code names that you have to be in the industry to understand. So, if it's not kosher, there's a reason for it. Now, in regards to... Food, it's very, very easy because you know what's kosher and what's not. But the Torah also says something very special about kosher. Hashem says when you eat non-kosher food, your soul becomes impure. Now, the sages say that the word Netamtem, which is the one that's used in this verse, is spelled differently than it's spelled usually. It's missing a vowel, which could be read in a different way, meaning Netamtem. Netamtem means stupefied.

3:53Meaning that when a Jew eats non-kosher food, his soul becomes spiritually dulled. Now, not dulled in the sense that they can't build a building or a rocket ship, but it becomes very difficult and virtually impossible for them to learn Torah. Because their neshama has so many klipot, if you will, getting in the way that it's hard for them to accept it at face value. And you have to get rid of those pills, and it becomes very, very difficult. That's why you sometimes see people go to seminars completely secular. In many cases, some of the people don't even attend the actual lectures. And this is a proven method many, many times. Rabbi Mizrachi has told me about it several times. Rabbi Zamir Cohen has said it several times. Many people who have experience with seminars have said this several times. It's proof. Usually, they have these three or four-day seminars. You know, where they have lecture after lecture of different Torah proofs and so on. And obviously, it's in a hotel, a nice hotel. There's kosher food. And the people that come to these lectures, sometimes some of them don't even attend the lectures. Yet, at the end of the seminar, after four days...

5:06They do teshuva anyway. They're excited about Torah. They want to learn. They want to go to the next seminar. They start doing tefillin. They start doing other mitzvot. So they asked the rabbis, how do you explain this? Because for the first time in their life, they actually ate kosher food for four days in a row. And the food had enough time to turn into blood. Because all the food that you eat turns into blood. It becomes a part of your nefesh. The food that you ate on the first day finally had enough time to turn into the blood that you're using. Finally, your neshama started becoming purified. So just the food that you're eating is going to affect your learning, and your mitzvot are going to be a little easier to do. You've just experienced another Torah class.