Is This The Last Tisha B’Av (5 hour Torah Marathon)

0:15Hashem, Hashem, Na'aseh v'Natzliach. The shiur today will be for an easy birth and Refuah Shlema for Rachel bat Yeshua. Also for David ben Nesria, Doris bat Jorah, Levana bat Sara, Elisheva Chaya bat Sara, Yochevet bat Vatya, Batya bat Sara, And all of Am Yisrael, Be'ezrat HaShem, Refuah Shlema, Refuah HaNefesh, Refuah HaGuf. Be'ezrat HaShem, today we will go over some things that will give us a better understanding of where we came from, why we are here, and Be'ezrat HaShem, Where to go from here? I said the other day in passing, but I meant it wholeheartedly, that today is Tisha B'Av, or today we're observing the fast of Tisha B'Av. Yesterday was really Tisha B'Av. But since you don't fast on Shabbat, the...

1:37The takana is to move it to the next day. But nonetheless, it is still observed. You are still supposed to fast all day, starting from last night. We'll be doing Havdalah after the fast. B'ezrat Hashem, we're going to go straight until about 7 o'clock, so about 5 hours. I miscalculated the times in the post, so we'll try B'ezrat Hashem to do 5 hours. of learning. If there are any relevant questions, you can ask, but only relevant questions. Don't ask me anything irrelevant, at least not in the beginning. Let us get through some of the material first because if you don't learn it here, most likely you're not going to learn it. The reason why brings me back to my first point, which is that there is a...

2:37There is a bilbul (confusion) among our people today that you're supposed to cheer people on, you know, and focus on the future. You know, what happened, happened. Let's be positive, let's be optimistic, let's move forward. Ma shehaya haya—you know, whatever happened, happened. The key is to move forward from here. I Now, although it's very commendable to have an optimistic personality and have an optimistic mindset, if applied incorrectly, it's poison. What does it mean if applied incorrectly? In regards to optimism and moving on beyond the problem, that is something you are obligated to do for yourself. so let's say, for example, you messed up, something bad happened. Oh, and by the way, for anyone that's watching who doesn't know, once the afternoon comes, there's a heter to sit down on chairs. So that's why I'm sitting on a chair. Of course, anyone that comes, tell them to sit on chairs. You don't need to sit on the floor anymore starting the afternoon, but

4:03The key is that if a person falls, which he will—everybody falls, there's no such thing as a righteous person who doesn't sin—the one that put you in this situation in the first place, or at least enticed you to do what it is that you did, his goal after he made you fall is to keep you there. You fell, you made a sin, whatever that sin is. The goal is to keep you there. Why? Because now that you realize that you sinned, he's going to tell you, ah, see, you're a loser anyway. Why even try to do teshuva? You're a loser anyway. Why even try to get out of the situation? Just stay as you are. So on and so forth. The Yetzer Hara is going to tell you, "stay a loser." It's going to tell you, "stay down." You already made a sin. Why even do teshuva? Might as well go eat pig. Might as well go eat shrimp. Might as well go out with the goya anyway. Just do one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine hundred times. And then maybe you can do teshuva once you're old and gray, and no one really wants your teshuva anymore.

5:08Yetzer Hara is going to try to entice you to stay exactly where you are after the sin—depressed, down, and miserable. That's the Yetzer Hara. A smart person is going to not listen to the Yetzer Hara. He's going to be a kofer b'Yetzer Hara. And he's going to say, no, no, no, I have to be optimistic. I have to get out of my own way. Okay, I fell. Okay, the Yetzer Hara fooled me. Okay, I fooled myself. Sometimes the Yetzer Hara doesn't even have to do anything. We like to sin so much, we sin by ourselves, without the Yetzer Hara. I fell, I did, whatever happened, happened. I have to be optimistic that I won't do it again. I have to be optimistic that things will improve and I will move forward. And that is an obligation that you have as an individual. But as a klal, as a nation, as a people, you're forbidden from doing such things. You're forbidden from telling everybody, "Listen, Beit HaMikdash was 2,000 years ago. Okay, so it was destroyed. B'ezrat Hashem, Hashem will build a new one. No, what's the big deal? What can happen? No, yalla, guys, let's be optimistic. Let's, no, come on, let's dance a little bit. Let's this, let's that. Be optimistic. Give us some simcha on Tisha B'Av."

6:32Let's talk about good things. Let's talk about nice things. A person that does this for himself is doing a mitzvah. A person that does this for the klal is doing an aveirah. Why? If you stay and you sin by yourself, you'll stay sinning and you'll never improve. But if you do not remember the sin, if you do not remember the mistake that was made as a nation, You will never do teshuva. You will never get out of your own way. You'll never rebuild the Beit HaMikdash. A nation that does not know its past certainly does not have a good future. This, Rabotai, even a goy, a rasha, a murderer, knew this. Years ago, There was a rasha merusha terrorist. His name was Salah Taomri, an Arab terrorist that was in an Israeli jail. Now, Salah Taomri told this story himself: He was sitting in jail and he got depressed. He said, "Listen, we tried what we tried as Palestinian terrorists and..."

7:56We tried. He obviously doesn't call himself a terrorist. We tried what we tried, but it didn't work. We're not going to get the land. The Israelis are stronger. They have jets. They have tanks. They have this. They have that. We're not going to win. So I don't know. It is what it is. What can we do? And he got really upset about it. And then he says, I saw that the Israeli soldier who was watching the cell was eating a pita with hummus. By the way, only Israelis eat pita with hummus in the afternoon. Arabs eat it for breakfast. They don't eat it during the day. I only learned this from somebody who almost got killed by a bunch of Arabs for being a spy. He was a spy, and he went to a restaurant and ordered hummus. So they almost killed him. He said, "What? You're a Yehudi, Yehudi." You're a Jew? No, I'm not a Jew. What are you talking about? He speaks Arabic better than them. Why are you saying I'm a Jew? He goes, only Jews eat hummus during the day and at night. Arabs, we only eat it for breakfast. It's Arabs. They have their own minhagim. They also have a minhag to kill people too. Maybe it's a mitzvah.

9:19Anyway, Rabotai, Sadiq Deumari says, I see an Israeli Jewish soldier eating pita with hummus. And I say to him, Yehudi, you know, today is Pesach. So the Jew tells me, no, so? He goes, yeah, but your people, Allah told them not to eat bread on Pesach. So the Israeli soldier, who didn't realize what kind of damage his words were going to cause, his few words, he didn't realize. He said, "Listen, it's not my problem what my grandparents did 3,300 years ago. I'm living today, and today I feel like having pita with hummus. And that's what I'm doing."

10:22Salah the Omni says that he went to sleep that night with mamash, new energy. He couldn't sleep the whole night. He had a fire in him. And he said, I realized at that moment, that's it. No more fighting for pieces of land. No more fighting for small little communities. No more fighting for just a few prisoners. From now on, the Palestinians, we fight for everything. We're taking the entire country. From now on, we're fighting for everything. Why? A nation that does not connect to its past does not have a future. The minute I saw that this Jew does not connect to his ancestors from 3,000 years ago, I knew I'm going to win the war. We're going to win the war, the Arabs said. These Jews don't connect to Moshe Rabbeinu, to Musa. They don't connect to him. That's how and why we connect to Muhammad. We connect to our ancestors, the Arabs said. And from that moment on, Rabotai Yekarim, the war, the Hamas, the Hezbollah, all of these different terrorist organizations went on pretty much a campaign that started and never ended for almost 30 years now.

11:4330 years they're shooting missiles at us without even a fear of anything. For 30 years, they're launching missiles, bombs, assassinations, and random murders in the middle of the street on just a typical day. A yeshiva kid, 19 years old, went to buy a few books. They just pulled over next to him and killed him just a couple of days ago. For no reason. Not like he knows them. He cursed somebody out. There's a pre-existing relationship. No. Oh, it's a Yehudi. Let's kill him. Why? So what? Why not? Why not? That Israeli soldier from 30 years ago in Shamayim, they may say, no, no, he has a partner in this murder from a couple of days ago. Why? The Arabs weren't as strong 30 years ago. They didn't have the ometz they have now. They didn't have the ometz they have now. Now they have people in the Israeli government. They believe they run the show, and for better or for worse, they do to some extent. A nation that does not connect to its past certainly does not have a future. This is why, Rabotai Yekarim, it's our obligation to learn the details of our past.

13:07What happened 1950 years ago? What happened 2400 years ago? What happened 70 years ago? I have plenty of books in front of me, Baruch Hashem, that will give us some insights on different things that happened. Some of the stuff is not pleasing to the ear. Quite frankly, none of it is. But it's important we know where we came from because that's the only way that we're going to have an idea Who Hashem really is and that He's not our friend? He's not a puppy. He's not something that just is supposed to work for us. This was the mistake that Adam HaRishon made. I think Rav Pincus, a"h, says this was the mistake that Adam HaRishon made with the first sin. When the serpent came and said, "No, no, listen, Hashem doesn't want you to eat or touch the tree. Touch it, see, I touched it," and... At that moment, the serpent convinced Chava that Hashem is just there to give you stuff. Why? The tree, of course, why? He's telling you not to touch the tree? No, look, I can touch the tree. Why? It's all about touching the tree, not touching the tree, eating the tree, not eating the tree. It's just about that. It's not about Hashem said, therefore don't do it. Hashem said, therefore do it.

14:32He completely removed the reality from the situation. It all became about the fruit. It all became about getting stuff from Hashem. Unfortunately, this is what's happening today. We have a generation of people that believe that the relationship that we're supposed to have with Hashem is based on stuff. Stuff we're supposed to get from Hashem. I pray, so therefore Hashem will give me stuff. i do mitzvot, so therefore Hashem will give me stuff. If He doesn't give me stuff, then why should I pray? Why should I pray if He's not going to give me stuff? Whatever stuff you want. You want stuff, you want a car, you want a house, you want a zivug, you want refuah shleimah even, you want anything. If He doesn't give me, why should I do it then? That's the generation we live in today. Unfortunately, rabotai yekarim, that is a very big mistake. Because that's turning the Melech Malchei HaMelachim HaKadosh Baruch Hu into a servant. Be'emet, if your relationship with HaKadosh Baruch Hu is based on stuff, "I do it, therefore He's going to give me stuff, and if He doesn't give me stuff, therefore I'm not really going to want to do it." That type of mentality will ultimately lead to complete kefira, complete heresy, and abandonment of Torah and mitzvot.

15:58Because it was never real, to begin with. The relationship was never with HaKadosh Baruch Hu. It was with Santa Claus. It was with somebody that's supposed to give you presents. Hashem is not Santa Claus. Hashem is Hashem. Now, of course, HaKadosh Baruch Hu gives us stuff. Of course, there is nobody else that gives us anything other than HaKadosh Baruch Hu. But if what we're doing is only because of the things that we want Hashem to give us, and that's what we base our relationship on, then the day is going to come when He doesn't give us what we want, to test us. As it says in Sefer Devarim, Hashem tests those He loves. One of the tests is by not giving them what they want, to see how they react. Do you still love me? You looked for a zivug. How many years? Two, three, four, five, six, seven years? Ten years you're looking for a zivug? I didn't give it to you. Do you still believe in Me? Do you still love Me? Do you still pray with kavanah? Oh, I gave you a lot of money. Now I took everything. Do you still believe in Me? Do you still pray to Me with kavanah? Are you still going to give a little bit of tzedakah proportional to what you have now? Or no, you're only going to give when you have a lot? That's the best thing. People tell me, listen, if I had a lot more money, I'd give tzedakah.

17:06What about now? You don't have any money? No, I have some, but I don't have a lot, so why should I? I'm going to give $10, Rabbi. Yeah, give $10. Hashem wants your $10 more than He wants the $10,000. Why? Because the $10 shows you actually want to do it. Now, if our relationship with HaKadosh Baruch Hu is based on stuff, it's only a matter of time before we become kofrim mamash. Now, this is why I said something last week in passing, but I meant it 100%, is that You'll hear from the prophet in Sefer Eicha, the prophet Yirmiyahu, to tell the people of Israel, the large part of the blame of why we had a destruction is because of the Nevi'ei Sheker, the false speakers. Navi comes from Navi Peh, someone that speaks. And he says that there were fake speakers, people that would tell people, everything is okay, you're a tzaddik.

18:07Just give a little to the cow in that box. Don't take the one that says my name on it. Put the stack up with the money, and the cow walks over there. You're good. You don't need to do Teshuva, you don't need to keep Shabbat. You don't need to do anything. You're fine. You're fine. Hashem will wait for you whenever you're ready. These people gave others false hope and lied to them in so many words and never told them the full truth. The Prophet Yirmiyahu says this is the reason why HaKadosh Baruch Hu destroyed the Beit HaMikdash. Those people got the worst punishment, but we say it every Monday and Thursday, "Anshei Emunah Avadu." The Gemara in Masechet Chagigah says, what's "Anshei Emunah Avadu?" What does it mean that men of faith are lost? It means that men who actually have real emunah in Hashem, to the extent where they'll tell people the truth. There are no more people to tell others the truth, to rebuke them, to tell them to do teshuva. Hashem says, if that's the case, therefore I have to destroy the people. I have to destroy the Beit HaMikdash. And to wake up the people. So, today, there's a lot of marathons and lectures and so on. I don't know what everybody else is saying. But if it's the same type of stuff that some of these speakers have been saying the rest of the year, then quite frankly, you're not allowed to listen to them. And the reason why is because most of what they say is just to cheer people on with falsehood.

19:32you're a tzaddik, tell you you're perfectly fine, tell you that Hashem needs you. There are a couple of speakers out there that tell people that Hashem needs them. This is false. Hashem does not need you or anybody else. He will do His will with or without us. He's perfectly fine with or without us. Anyone that tells you that Hashem needs you is a liar; you can't even count them for a minyan. But unfortunately, there are some very, very popular speakers that tell people, Hashem needs you. Hashem needs our mitzvot. Our job is to bring Hashem into the physicality, into the material world, not for us to become more spiritual. It's the exact opposite of Torah. Now, since people don't know right or left when it comes to Torah, if the guy has a beard, we'll believe him. he has a million views. We'll believe him, double believe again, stuck on two, and this is happening. This is happening today. So you have to be careful with whom you're listening to. If the person that you're listening to, male or female, beard or no beard, is telling you that everything is perfectly fine, delete why it's not. Look at what's going on. A couple of days ago, a young Jewish kid was murdered in the middle of the street for no reason, and

20:59he didn't do anything. Kadosh Baruch Hu has His reasons. But the kid, according to everybody else, he didn't entice anybody. He doesn't know those Arabs. There's no pre-existing relationship. And this is happening every week. There are shootings all over America on a weekly basis. All over America. There are shootings in schools and hospitals and mail centers. Offices, people are losing their minds, just start shooting people for no reason. Abortion has become l'chatchila. Mass murder of almost a million kids per year is happening in America. Almost a million kids per year are being murdered in abortion centers, and the government is paying for it. Government is paying for it, and the political people are saying, "Yeah, no, I'm pro-life. I'm against life." I'm like, are you even having a conversation about this? I mean, do you realize you're killing people? "No, no, you can't; it's not people; it's still in the stomach." Okay, so if I put you in a cell and I said, "I call it the stomach from now on," that means you're not alive anymore? Why? Because I can't see you? That means you're dead?

22:17Kavodai, the situation in the world is not okay. Just to go, this is the first time we're doing a day show over here. We're not just to get here. First time I drove in the day in this area, I don't know how anybody lives here and is still Jewish. A normal person lives here for a week, you become a Christian. Why? Nobody wears any clothes. How can you be Jewish here? It's not even the beach. The beach, I don't know, is a few miles away, I think. You can't look at traffic signs because there's somebody always next to the traffic sign. How can you be Jewish here? No, my beit knesset is here. Beit knesset is here. How can you have a beit knesset here? Walk around in the middle of the day. Every time we have a shiur here, it's at night. Somebody asked me, why don't you move over here? Maybe we'll have more shiurim. Oh, I have my decision now. You can't survive. You can't survive here a week. The point is, Rabotai Yekarim, that all of this is hard to hear, but it's a reality. It's a reality that the situation is not fine, to say the least. It's not fine. And we need to know it. I brought a few books, some Sifrei Torah, some not. One not, actually. But nonetheless, we can learn a lot from it.

23:45Want to give you guys a little bit of an understanding of, first of all, what we had in the Beit HaMikdash. The Beit HaMikdash was a place of Kodesh, a place where we simply had a personal relationship with HaKadosh Baruch Hu. The Shekhinah was there at all times. When we did Korbanot, I... The Gemara in Masechet Yoma says that there was a heavenly fire. There was an ember in the shape of a lion. An enormous lion would come from heaven and burn the korban. I mean, I had a visual of this a couple of times just in my mind. What it would look like to see a lion from heaven come down and burn a korban. I mean, it

24:45Eliminates any doubt that anybody ever has about anything. You see a lion come from heaven burn a korban. There's atheism gone, idolatry gone, every religion gone, everything gone. What you just saw because HaKadosh Baruch Hu sent a lion in the shape of a lion from heaven. You need anything else? What do you need Torah and science for? You're still... You need any more rebuke? What do you need anymore? You have a lion coming from heaven. This was one of the smallest miracles. It wasn't even a big one. This happened for years, hundreds of years. But just like we have the big miracles, we also have a big yetzer hara, and every generation has its own yetzer hara. The Gemara says that in the first Beit HaMikdash they had the lion in the shape, the fire in the shape of a lion, crouching. But in the Second Beit HaMikdash, it was crouching. It was in the shape of a dog. Shape of a dog. So the first question you're supposed to ask is, wait a minute, a dog? A dog is an impure animal. Not just that it's not kosher. The lion is not kosher either, but...

26:10It's known that there are a couple of animals, a couple of creatures that are cursed. One of them is the dog. Even though a dog is a good animal as far as, you know, they're kulo lev, it's a very loving animal, it loves its owner, it's grateful, and so on and so forth, you're not really supposed to keep dogs in the house. And if you do, they have to be really small dogs, very friendly dogs, because the Gemara says if you keep a vicious dog in your house, you have a very serious problem with Shamayim. unless you have, it's outside, you're a shepherd of some kind, there's a real reason for it. But you have to be very, very careful owning any of these big dogs, these German Shepherds or Pit Bulls and so on and so forth. Because they can scare people and even cause someone to have a miscarriage. I had a dog for 16 years, a Pit Bull. I mean, he was a very friendly dog and practically never barked. Now, if you raise your dog that way, it's not as problematic. Still not ideal, but not as problematic. But some people train their dogs to bark at people. They train their dogs to bark at people. It's like, oh, no, no, just... No, he's okay. Just don't get close to him. Just don't look at him in the eye. He's okay. He's okay. He's good. But just don't look at him in the eye. Just don't look at him in the eye. Oh, you looked at him? Okay, I'm sorry. I can't help you. What do you mean? Get me out of here. I told you not to look at him.

27:35No, whatever, I'll nip at you a couple of times. Just don't move. What am I, is he a bear? But this is what's happening. People train their dogs to be like these things, and it's not allowed. It's forbidden. So, needless to say, how is it that the Beit HaMikdash has an ember, a huge fire, if you will, and a sheep of a dog? So the Gemara says, the first Beit HaMikdash was built by Shlomo HaMelech. Shlomo HaMelech was from the tribe of Yehudah. Yehudah had a symbol of a lion. The second Beit HaMikdash was not built by Shlomo HaMelech. In fact, it wasn't even built by a Jew. It was built by the king of Persia. And that Tum'ah, unfortunately, carried weight. And even though we did Teshuvah, like everybody says, yeah, we had the first Beit HaMikdash was destroyed because of murder, because of know, uh, idolatry, and then we did teshuvah. No, the reality is it wasn't full teshuvah. Even though we got the second Beit HaMikdash, it wasn't full teshuvah. Why? Because the second Beit HaMikdash was missing certain things. It wasn't like the first Beit HaMikdash. What does the Gemara say here? The only reason we're allowed to learn is because it's relevant to the issue.

29:03says in the Second Beit HaMikdash there was also a fire from heaven, but there was something lacking. What was it lacking? There were five things which were missing in the Second Temple in comparison to the First Temple, and these are the Ark, the Ark cover, the fire from heaven, the divine presence, the holy spirit, and the urim and tumim. So, some of these things sound like only one thing, but first and foremost, we see that the Ark and the Ark cover—that's one thing. meaning that the Luchot HaBrit, the Ten Commandments, both sets of Ten Commandments, the Sefer Torah that Moshe Rabbeinu wrote, the staff, the manna jar—there was a jar that was full of manna in there to prove to people that Hashem provided food from heaven for 40 years—all of this stuff was actually missing, was gone.

30:20and the reason why is because Shlomo HaMelech had Ruach HaKodesh, had actual prophecy, and he knew at the time he was building the Beit HaMikdash that it would be destroyed. So he built a special tunnel under the Beit HaMikdash so that as soon as something happened, the current king could hide the Aron HaKodesh. And that's what happened. So right before things got really, really bad, The king actually took it and hid it. King Yoshiyahu. King Yoshiyahu realized the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash was near and he hid the Aron HaKodesh, never to be found. So the Aron HaKodesh, which in essence also has the Keruvim, which is where the Kohen Gadol speaks to HaKadosh Baruch Hu on Yom Kippur, that didn't exist for the whole second Beit HaMikdash. Already we see that the holiness of the second Beit HaMikdash was worlds apart from the first Beit HaMikdash. Secondly, there was fire from heaven, but the fire from heaven was very different. Thirdly, the Shechina wasn't there. I mean, the Shechina is always there, but not on the same level. Fourthly, there was no prophecy. Ruach HaKodesh, meaning that there was no prophecy. People were no longer able to talk to HaKadosh Baruch Hu.

31:43like you and I are talking to each other. We had Ruach HaKodesh at that time, but no prophecy. Prophecy is talking to Hashem and knowing the future, speaking to Hashem, and He speaks back. A lot of people tell me, "Yeah, I think I'm a prophet." I said, "Why?" "Oh, I had a good idea and it happened." That's not prophecy. That could be you had Siyata Dishmaya; you had divine assistance where Hashem wanted you to know something. And it happened. That's not prophecy. Prophecy is when you speak to Hashem and He speaks back to you. You can speak to Hashem all you want. The best case scenario is maybe you'll hear the door crack. That's because somebody came in, though. He's not talking to you. Why? You're not a prophet. And don't be a fool and say you are. Why? Because if you say you're a prophet, that's a Navi Sheker. Sheker, a fake prophet, is a death penalty from Heaven. It's very dangerous. A lot of foolish people think that they’re prophets, especially in other religions and Christianity and Catholicism. Every other guy is a prophet, calls himself a prophet. All they're doing is just building themselves a big Gehinom. Even the Urim and Tumim were not part of the second Beit HaMikdash.

33:04The Urim and Tumim were these two special stones that would be put inside the Choshen of the Kohen Gadol. Anytime there was a national matter, such as whether to go to war, the Kohen Gadol would put on the Choshen and would ask Hashem a question: should we go to war or not? The Kedusha of these Urim and Tumim... ...would make the different jewels, the different diamonds or precious stones that were on the Choshen light up in different letters and would spell out the words "yes," "no," "you should do it," "you should not do it," "who," "what," "when." In essence, Hashem was speaking to the Kohen Gadol in a certain language. These Urim and Tumim were not there in the Second Beit HaMikdash. Some say that they were, but they no longer worked in the Second Beit HaMikdash.

34:04So it says here, wait a minute, but you said that there is fire in the Second Beit HaMikdash. How come you're saying there isn't fire, there is fire? He says, no, no, there is fire, but it's not the same. It's not the same fire. What kind of fire was it? This fire, the First Beit HaMikdash had a fire, the shape of a lion, Ari, but the fire in the Second Beit HaMikdash, Revu'atz keKelev, was crouched like a dog. Why? Why was it this way? Because the Second Beit HaMikdash was built by the Persian king, who was a non-Jew. And the Zohar HaKadosh says something very scary—that this dog was symbolic of the Sitra Achra, the Satan. Telling us that because we did not do full teshuva, Part of the korban is going to the Satan. Meaning the Beit HaMikdash itself was not fully for HaKadosh Baruch Hu. There was partial control by the Satan himself on the Beit HaMikdash. Why? HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, "I didn't destroy the bricks and stones just for you to rebuild them without doing teshuva."

35:29just for you to rebuild them without doing teshuva. And I didn't do it just for partial teshuva. I want full teshuva. And that, Rabotai HaYekarim, is what we're here to say. We need full teshuva, not partial teshuva. A person that does partial teshuva, it's good. It's a good start. But if you think that you can continue with partial teshuva, you're making a very big mistake. And the reason why is because somebody that knowingly sins, Meaning, he has gone to the point where he says, listen, I keep Shabbat, I keep Taharat HaMishpacha, I keep kosher, I keep this, I keep that, I keep all these different things. But this one particular thing, I'm not going to do it. Not that it's hard for me and I'm struggling with it. No, not that. I'm going to try to do it, but I'm just failing. No, no. This, I'm just not going to do it. It's not for me. Like he decides that this is not something he's going to do. He's not going to learn Torah every day even though the Torah commands him to. He's not going to watch his brit even though the Torah says to do it. He's not going to do something the Torah says to do. He says, no, no, this is too much for me. And he decides actively that this is not what he's going to do. The Rambam writes, such a person is a kofer gamur; you cannot count him in a minyan. Not that it's hard for him. It's hard for everybody to do stuff.

36:56It's hard for me. It's hard for you. It's hard for every normal human being. It's hard for you to do something. The hard, it's fine. That's acceptable. But keep trying. But to accept failure, that's kefirah. That's in essence, you're saying, no, no, this is too much for me. You made a mistake with this one with me. You made a mistake giving me this mitzvah. It's too much for me. Give it to somebody else. Somebody else will do it for me. That's a problem. That's a very serious problem. Now, before I go into... Some of the more intricate details. We say some of this stuff, and a lot of people have an issue with it and they want proofs. So I'll give you a little bit of a proof. Now, when you say that somebody that's a Mechalel Shabbat or someone that's a Kofer can't count them for minyan, people say, no, come on, my local rabbi said that that's no such thing. All Jews are counted in minyan. All Jews have a share in the world to come. All Jews this, all Jews that. They say all types of wonderful things. I like my rabbi. I say, okay, well, your rabbi should learn Torah first, because if he wants to be a rabbi. Why? Because the Torah doesn't agree with what he says. Now, some people say it in the name of some people that call themselves Chabad. If somebody that calls himself Chabad tells you that you're allowed to violate Shabbat and still be counted in a minyan, he's not a Chabadnik. He just has three letters and he calls it Chabad. He knows how to read.

38:22Chabad goes by the Rambam, just so you should know. Chabad goes by the Rambam. The Lubavitcher Rebbe made it a very, very important thing to learn the entire Rambam once a year. The entire Rambam: 14 books, once a year. Meaning that if you want to call yourself a Chabadnik, a real Chabadnik, you have to learn the entire Rambam once per year. Now, if you're like a hafach, you know, you're not, you have a lot of stuff going on, once every three years. There's a seder, once every three years. If you're like really struggling, then it's like once in a lifetime. But if you want to be a Chabadnik, you have to learn the whole Yad HaChazaka. The Yad HaChazaka, you have to learn it once per year. Needless to say, if you're a rabbi of Chabad, you have to learn the Rambam once a year. Every year. So, that means that you would know what I'm about to say. you contradict it, that means you haven't learned anything. This is what the Rambam says. I'm going to give you three different books from the Rambam. The Rambam writes something very interesting in chapter 3, Halacha number 4. He writes when a Jew is a kofer (apostate)...

39:46worships false deities or desecrates Shabbat in public, we do not accept any sacrifices from him at all. Even a burnt offering that is accepted from a goy, from a Gentile, is not accepted from an apostate or a Mechallel Shabbat, as we learned from Leviticus 1:2 which states a man from "you" who will sacrifice according to the oral tradition. We learned that "from you" is not from all of you. It excludes the apostate; it excludes the Mechallel Shabbat and... There's also other sources in the Torah, page 69, and also several other places in the Rambam, which we'll go over now. But here the Rambam says something very interesting. He says, listen, if you believe in other gods, or you violate Shabbat, the korban is not accepted from you.

40:47wait, somebody had praised, let's say, JC Penny, or praised a rabbi, or praised, I don't know, a picture. He's the same as somebody that drives on Shabbat? How could this be? How could this be? A guy's praying to somebody—okay, fine, I understand why he's not accepted—but why is the guy driving to shul on Shabbat? Why is he a problem? So the Rambam explains in Hilchot Shabbat that someone who violates Shabbat is equivalent 100% to an idol worshiper because the idol worshiper and he are both desecrating Hashem's name. This is because Shabbat is the cornerstone of the Jewish faith, just like believing in Hashem is. What does it mean, public? What does it mean, a public sin? Does it mean that I have to sit in front of 10 people? So, 10 people, that's public? 100 people? A thousand? What's public? Public means it's known by 10 people that you drive on Shabbat. They don't have to actually see you; it's known. If 10 people know that you violate Shabbat, we have a problem. You're considered a mechallel Shabbat.

42:07Naughty Noxian each bar. No, not a line. Nothing ten people know you drive on Shabbat. You have a serious problem now. The Rambam adds that we don't accept sacrifices of a Jew who has abandoned Judaism and accepted another faith, even if it's like Islam. Even though Islam is not idolatry, such a person is also considered a kofer. But here we see from one of the halachot from the Rambam, Hilchot Maaseh HaKorbanot, that the Rambam connects a Mechalel Shabbat to someone who is an idolater. Now, why is this relevant to korbanot? We'll go to the next one and explain. He writes again, also in Hilchot Shgagot, also talks about korbanot there. And he writes in chapter 3, halacha number 7, as we explained in Hilchot Maaseh HaKorbanot, which is what we just read, that no sacrifice at all is accepted from an apostate who worships idols or desecrates the Shabbat in public. When a person is an apostate with regard to a particular sin, we do not accept a sin offering from him for that sin.

43:32What's implied? If a person is an apostate, meaning a kofer, with regards to partaking of forbidden fat or any other mitzvah, and then he inadvertently partook of fat and brought a sin offering for this specific sin, it's not accepted until he does teshuva. Even if he was an apostate with regards to partaking of forbidden fats to fulfill his desires, and once he accidentally partook of the forbidden fats instead of permitted fats and brought the sacrifice, we still don't accept his korban since he did something sinful willfully and Whether it's to purposefully anger God or simply to fulfill his own desires, he's considered a kofer, and therefore the korban is rejected from him. Both of these actions are considered a denial of the entire Jewish tradition, meaning whether someone is a kofer or someone is a mechalel Shabbat. Now here we see the Rambam clarify even further, but again it has to do with a sacrifice.

44:45Why? What's the sacrifice? What does it have to do with the sacrifice? We're not doing sacrifices now. As you learned today, one of the amazing things that we did at the Beit HaMikdash is that anytime somebody sinned by accident—accidentally turned on the light on Shabbat, he forgot it's Shabbat. Forgot. He had to bring a korban. He had to go take a sheep or a cow, some type of korban, and take it to the Beit HaMikdash. Meaning he had to spend weeks just on this accidental sin. No one even saw it. He's the only one that saw it, but he knows. They were such tzaddikim. There was such a level of tzaddikim. They knew nobody saw them sin, but they still made teshuva for it. Why? Because they knew that HaKadosh Baruch Hu runs the world, and He saw it. So they had to shut down their business or leave their employees running the business by themselves. Who knows what the employees are going to do while they're gone? Take the journey all the way from Tveriah, from Tzfat, from wherever they were, all the way to Yerushalayim. That's not like today, you go in a car a couple of hours later, all the way across the country. You had to go on your donkey; it could take you a week just to get to Yerushalayim with this korban. Get to the korban, there's a line waiting. Finally, you get there. While you're in line, you're doing teshuva, you're crying.

46:06Finally, you bring in the korban, but you know that once the korban is taken, you're crying, HaKadosh Baruch Hu accepted your teshuva, Chatanu, avinu, pashanu, oh Hashem. You're clean. You're clean. For an accidental sin. We don't have that anymore. So the Prophet tells us that HaKadosh Baruch Hu spoke to Avraham Avinu. And Avraham Avinu said to Him, Hashem, what's gonna happen when my kids sin? He says, we're gonna have the Beit HaMikdash. Yeah, but what's gonna happen when there's no Beit HaMikdash? It's destroyed and they sinned again. He says, I'll have them pray. Their prayer will be the replacement of the sacrifice, which means that every time you pray to HaKadosh Baruch Hu It's a replacement for the sacrifice. There are other things that are replacements for the sacrifice, certain types of learning, certain types of actions, and so on. But nonetheless, the main thing that every Jew does in order to bring the korban, bring the sacrifice, offering to HaKadosh Baruch Hu to say "I'm sorry" for the accidental sins and even the purposeful ones, is we pray.

47:21What is the Rambam really telling us here? He's telling us if you are a Mechallel Shabbat or you are a Kofer, you believe in Buddha, you believe in JC Penny, you believe in yourself, you believe in some rabbi that died, you believe in something that's heretical, guess what? Your korban is not accepted. Meaning you could pray to Hashem until you're blue in the face. It's not accepted. You come to a shul, they cannot count you as part of a minyan. Why? You're a kofer. You're not considered part of Am Yisrael. That's what the Rambam is saying. And if the first two proofs weren't enough, I'll give you the last one, which is also Rambam Hilchot Shabbat, Chapter 30, last halacha, the 15th halacha. says the observance of Shabbat and the prohibitions against worshiping false deities are each equivalent to the observance of all of the mitzvot of the Torah. Shabbat is the eternal sign between the Holy One, blessed be He, and us. For this reason, whoever transgresses other mitzvot

48:38considered to be one of the wicked of Israel. But a person who violates Shabbat is considered an idolater. It's a very big difference here. You can make sense, it's not good, but you're still part of Am Yisrael. But someone that violates Shabbat or is a kofer, no, that person is an idolater. He's not considered part of Am Yisrael anymore until he does teshuva, until she does teshuva. Both of them are considered to be equivalent to Gentiles in all regards, meaning that the idolater or the Mechalel Shabbat are considered 100% the same thing or treated the same as Gentiles in all regards, not the good ones, the bad Gentiles, the ones that pray to J.C. Therefore, our prophets praise Shabbat observance, saying: "Happy is the man who does the following and the mortal who holds fast to it, who keeps the Shabbat without desecrating it."

49:39So here we see that the Rambam doesn't sugarcoat a single word. Doesn't sugarcoat a single word. He tells it how it is. And if your local rabbi speaks like the Rambam, learn his Torah. If he doesn't, run away. Why? Because this is what HaKadosh Baruch Hu has. Your rabbi, I don't care where he is. I don't care which organization he's part of. I don't care if he gives you a rock every Thursday night. And you like to party and play basketball with him. And he has a really nice long beard, and he says he used to be a lawyer. But he's still a liar nonetheless. Or he says that, you know, he does this, he does that. And he knows what's going on in Shamayim. Or he's a Kabbalist or a Populist or whatever. He's a puppy. I don't care what he is. If he speaks like the Rambam, listen to him, kiss his hand every time you see him. If he doesn't, run away. Run away. Why? Because this is halacha, rabotai.

50:46This is an obligation. Why? Not saying this is cooling off the nation, and that's what's happening today. Everybody wants to be very nice to people because they like what's in their pockets. But the reality is, so long as you don't tell people the truth, they're not going to know that there's anything wrong with them. They're not going to know that they need to do teshuva. They're not going to know that they need to do something about what's going on. If you don't tell people, listen, if you don't wear clothes as a man, it's not really great. It's not a good idea because you're not Adam HaRishon. But your cheshbon is not as somebody that's excluded from Am Yisrael. Why? You're not a modest guy. You're not a modest guy. But you're not excluded from Am Yisrael. If you're not excluded from Shabbat, you're excluded. Right? You can still put on tefillin, and you're still good, but hey. On the other hand, a woman walks around immodestly. Doesn't matter what mitzvot she does, even if she keeps Shabbat. Why? She causes men to sin. She walks around with a skirt that's closer to underwear than it is to a skirt. Guess what?

51:51Doesn't matter how many Shabbatot you keep every week. You keep the whole week Shabbat. It won't help you. Why? Every time you exist and you walk outside, people see you, they do sins in their mind. So if you tell people this, it's not nice to hear. But it's the truth, and it's the only thing that's going to get people to do teshuvah. It's the only thing that's going to get people to do teshuvah. Now, the Navi told us some things that I promise you, not the best things in the world for the yetzer hara but they're the best things for the yetzer hatov. We're going to go over a little bit of Sefer Eichah, some of the things the prophet said. The prophet says that he starts She sits in solitude, the city that was great with people has become like a widow. The greatest among the nations, the princess among provinces, has become a tributary. She weeps bitterly in the night, and her tear is on her cheek. The type of disaster that happened at the Beit HaMikdash...

53:18was something that made the Holocaust seem like a child's game. I learned quite a bit about the Holocaust, which we'll go over momentarily, and some of the disasters that happened during the Holocaust. But if you read the Midrashim of what happened during the Churban of Beit HaMikdash, the first one and the second one, it's of no comparison. There was literally a river of blood from city to city that was three feet high. River wasn't like a, you know, a river of blood from city to city of Jewish blood. That's how many people they killed. They made the walls giant walls of bodies. That's how many people died—millions and millions of people. It's hard to understand how is it that they killed so many. How come we didn't fight back?

54:19same question is asked about the Holocaust. How is it that we didn't fight back? Six million Jews. Even if you spit six million spits, you kill somebody. How come we didn't fight back? There's an answer to that. It's actually part of the punishment. The problem starts with our faith being in the wrong thing. Am Yisrael unfortunately abandoned their Father in Heaven and had their faith in themselves, in their money, in the government, in their friends, in their power, and so on and so forth. And that's why the prophet says, he says all our friends have betrayed us, they have become our enemies. The first rebuke that he mentions, the first thing that he mentions that HaKadosh Baruch Hu did to wake up the people is make you realize that your whole life is one big, fat, disgusting, stinky lie.

55:34had trust in the local government, you had trust in the Iron Dome, you had trust in your own muscles, you had trust in your bank account, you had trust in your connections, you had trust in Trump or in this one or in that one. I'll show you how all of them, in one shot, turn into enemies. The money turns into enemies, the government turns into enemies, everything that you trusted in, I'll turn it all into enemies. This is not the first time that it happened. Unfortunately, it happened several times. We were good friends with the enemies that destroyed us. We were very good friends with the Germans. We helped them build the country. We were very good friends with the Egyptians. We helped them build the country. We were very good friends with all of these enemies. We helped them build their countries. We helped them create a monetary system, a legal system. Am Yisrael has always contributed to society more than any other nation in history. No one compares. No one compares to how much Am Yisrael did. But yet the nations hate us to this day. Because there's a halacha. HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, "I have to have this law in nature that the nations will hate you." Why? Because the fact is that even now,

57:01...that you know that we've gone through the Holocaust, you know that we've gone through the pogroms, the Inquisitions, the open hatred, the anti-Semitism every other day, whether it's in politics or it's in the middle of the street, whether it's in America or it's in Europe or it's in Israel, you see it. I mean, you have to be blind, deaf, and stupid not to see anti-Semitism. Over 40% of Americans admit that they hate Jews. Over 40% admit. Who knows about the other ones who don't admit? And these are our friends. 40%? Oh, 40%, so we're still okay with 60. No, what 40%? 40% is 120 million people. You know what 120 million people is? It's an enormous amount. It's almost 10 times the amount of Jews that we know about. We're not talking about the lost tribes, which is, Baruch Hashem, millions. We're talking about the ones that we know about. The point being is that a lot of people openly hate us, and they're our friends.

58:05Friends like that, who needs enemies? This is what we had in Germany. We were in politics. This is what we had in Spain. We were in politics. We even had one of the Gedolei HaDor inside the kingdom. One of the personal, the treasurer. Abarbanel was the treasurer of the king. We had power, we had money, we had everything. HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, you put your faith in, I put you in those positions. to get closer to Me. You thought you got yourself that position? You thought you got yourself the CEO job? You thought that, oh, once you get, okay, now that you have this job, you don't need Hashem anymore? HaKadosh Baruch Hu rebuked us, unfortunately, and this has happened many times. It's happening right now, and people are putting too much faith and attention into the political system. I mean, there's not a single Jew

59:06that's on the internet that doesn't mention Trump at least once a day. It's like you have to get out of teshuvah. It's like a teshuvah. Like you say, modeh ani lefanecha every day, that you woke up, you also have to mention Trump once a day. You like him, you hate him, whatever it is. Every Jew has to fulfill an obligation of stating his opinion publicly about Trump for some reason. Or mentioning what his opinion about the stock market is. Like, rarely do you see somebody say, listen, I have a chiddush. that I just read Parashat HaShavua. Here, let me share it. Oh, here's this really good video that's gonna help you do teshuvah. Only few and far in between do that. Baruch Hashem that they do. But most people, you see their pages, how much they have about politics and the stock market and whatever business they're in versus how much Torah they have and you see, wow, we're confused. We're thinking, how come? Shouldn't it be the opposite? No one says be ignorant of the world. But where are your priorities? And that's the problem: we forget our priorities and eventually we forget Hashem. So HaKadosh Baruch Hu rebukes us, starting with that. He turns all of the things that we relied on into our enemies, Hashem Yirachem. Then he says, he continues in verse 3, Lo Matza Manoach, that the exile was so difficult, we found no rest.

1:00:32No matter where we've been over the last 2,000 years, Rabotai, Am Yisrael has had nice sections of time, nice periods of time, like we're having right now, Baruch Hashem. But for the most part, if you look at the last 2,000 years, it's been one big tragedy. We've had pockets of time that were good, right before the Holocaust. There was a pocket of time when we were doing okay. I was doing well financially and so on spiritually not so good, but we had pockets of time where the world left us alone for a little while. Same thing in Spain, same thing everywhere all the time. But generally speaking, if you look at the large scope of time, 2,000 years, we've simply been chased day and night, tortured, poor, sick. Every tragedy that happened to a nation happened to Am Yisrael. This is part of being in the exile. So when people don't pray for Am Yisrael to do teshuva, so HaKadosh Baruch Hu can bring Moshiach.

1:01:35In a good way. If you pray for Moshiach to just come right now, pretty much you're also praying for the death of most Jews today. It's the same thing. Why? Because most Jews didn't do teshuva yet. If Moshiach comes tomorrow, Baruch Hashem, we will be happy that he came and hopefully, he'll accept part of our teshuva. But the reality is that most Jews didn't do teshuva. Most of your friends, most of your family, most of my friends, most of my family haven't done teshuva yet. If Moshiach comes tomorrow, Hashem will help. There's no more teshuva. So, yes, we're supposed to pray for Mashiach, but first we have to pray for Teshuva. Why? Because if Teshuva happens, Mashiach comes in a better way. Now, HaKadosh Baruch Hu wants to bring us Mashiach. He wants to bring us to salvation. He wants to build a better Mikdash. And the first thing that will do is eliminate this gezera here that says that we have no comfort. that we have no peace of mind, that we have no rest. Right now we're constantly worried. Even though we have money, we're still worried about money. Even though we have health, we're still worried about being sick. Even though we have whatever we have, we're still worried about it. And that's part of the exile. The other thing that he says here is that in verse number 5, our adversaries have become our masters.

1:03:01One thing that the prophet is saying is that one of the worst things that Hakadosh Baruch Hu rebuked us with is that He made our enemies our new masters. Now, it's one thing if your competition beats you. It's something completely different if your nemesis is somebody you have to tell, "Thank you." Worst of all... that Chachamim also say tsarei l’rosh also is referring to that our own trouble came from our own heads, meaning the biggest problems came from the heads of the Jews. The Jews were the biggest problems for their own Jews. Who? The kapos in the Holocaust. One of the horrible things that happened during that time is that people sold out their own nation. Jews would rat out on other Jews and go to the Nazis and tell them, "Listen, there are three, four, five Jews over here hiding," to save their own lives. They would have these people go and write on them. Even in the camps themselves, they would have Jews beating up other Jews. It was just like that in Egypt; the Jews were the leaders under the Egyptians, beating up their fellow Jews.

1:04:27the prophet says, "Your conquerors, your destroyers, come from within you." We are our own worst enemies. Our enemies saw and gloated. "MeShabbat" also means that the enemies gloated and were happy that we are not able to keep Shabbat because the nations knew better than us that... Shabbat is our school of all schools. It is our bechor of all the holidays. A nation that keeps Shabbat has the ultimate protection. Now, what happens is when Hashem took away everything, He took away all of our power, political power, money, and so on, and made our currency literally worthless.

1:05:28People always ask, you know, how could it be? You know, a guy has millions of dollars. He's got buildings. He's got houses. He's got stocks. He's got bonds. He's got Bitcoin. He's got schmitt coins. He's got everything under the sun. How could such a person fall to nothing? Well, it happens. It happens. How does it happen? He tells us. It says in verse 11, still chapter 1, "All our people are sighing, searching for bread. They traded their treasures for food to keep alive. Look, Hashem, and behold what a glutton I have become." It says that the level of starvation was so high because the enemies locked the land. They locked the people inside so no one was able to get food. So the Gemara says that there was a certain woman who was filthy rich. She had literally diamonds the size of bread, but she had no food. So she told her servant, "Listen, go get me food. Here's a diamond. Go get some food, get me a bread, this type of bread." He goes, he comes back, he goes, "No, they don't have that bread." She goes, "Okay, just give me anything." locked the land, they locked the people inside so no one was able to get food. So the Gemara says that there was a certain woman who was filthy rich. She had literally diamonds the size of bread, but she had no food. So she told her servant, "Listen, go get me food. Here's a diamond. Go get some food, get me a bread, this type of bread." He goes, he comes back, he goes, "No, they don't have that bread." She goes, "Okay, just give me anything."

1:06:50Take the diamonds; he goes and comes back. He says, "Oh, yeah, now they don't have anything." She died in the middle of the street from starvation with the diamonds on top of her, diamonds the size of bread worth nothing. People literally gave everything they had just for a little loaf of bread. That's how the starvation went, meaning that when push comes to shove, Hashem doesn't need to take money or use our limited wisdom. He has the ultimate wisdom. Part of the reason why he did this is because, again, we trusted in our money too much. Now, that starvation here in Chapter 2 goes into even a worse extent. Jacob, try to pay attention. The phone should be turned off. If you don't want it to be turned off, you can go outside with the phone. a worse extent. Jacob, try to pay attention. The phone should be turned off. If you don't want it to be turned off, you can go outside with the phone.

1:08:17He says, He cut down in fierce anger all the dignity of Israel. He withdrew His right hand in the presence of the enemy. He burned through Jacob like a flaming fire consuming all sides. So this explains, before we go into the next part of the starvation, what punishment really is. HaKadosh Baruch Hu does not want to punish us. He does not want to punish us. I'm gonna explain this. He does not want to punish us, but punishment happens. How could it be? People say, "Where was God during the Holocaust? What do you mean? He's the one that did it." So what do you mean? You just said God doesn’t want to punish. He doesn't want to punish. So what happens? So, how does this work? This is the verse that explains it. HaKadosh Baruch Hu does not want to punish us, but what happens is that He withdraws His hand and That's blocking the enemy from eating us alive. When? When we distance ourselves from Him. It's not that He punishes us. It's that He is protecting us by making sure that this Esav hates Yaakov. He hates him. Esav wants to kill Yaakov. But the whole time Hashem is blocking him.

1:09:40He's blocking him so he doesn't kill Yaakov. He's even letting Esav pretend like he likes him for a little while, letting him live next to him, letting him do business with him, letting him eat with him, trade with him, even share a smile, maybe even let him marry his daughter. But what happens when he lets him marry his daughter? Hashem says, no, now you crossed the line. Now you crossed the line, Hashem takes away part of that cover. He takes away more of that cover. And Esav starts showing who he really is. Anti-Semitism starts showing up in your local streets once every few months. Then it starts showing up every other week. Then it starts showing up in the news. Then there's a politician that's potentially going into office. Then there's a politician that's already in office, who is openly anti-Semitic. Then there's Hitler. You get the point? It's not that HaKadosh Baruch Hu wants to punish us. It's simply an outcome of us distancing ourselves from Him. When we distance ourselves from Him, He simply uncovers what's being covered right now. And that's what this verse says: "In fierce anger He has cut off all the strength of Israel; He withdrew His right hand in the presence of the enemy."

1:10:54he burned through Yaakov like a flaming fire consuming all sides. As soon as He just withdrew His hand that's covering, that's protecting us, the fire of Esav started burning Yaakov. It always wanted to do it. That's its nature. But it wasn't allowed to do it. As long as we kept Shabbat, as long as we learned Torah, as long as we served HaKadosh Baruch Hu and not money, as long as we connected to HaKadosh Baruch Hu like He wants us to, Esav is not allowed to touch us. Yishmael is not allowed to touch us. No one is allowed to touch us. The minute that we forsake HaKadosh Baruch Hu, Hashem says, okay, so each time you do something, I'll uncover more, I'll uncover more, I'll uncover more. Now, Doesn't do it all at once. He gives us warning signs, warning signs, warning signs, but if we don't get the warning signs, it gets worse. Here, he says the starvation got even worse. At this stage, here in chapter 2 of Eicha, it says there, they say to their mothers, the kids who were starving say to their mothers, "Where is bread and wine?"

1:12:04They swoon like a dying man in the streets of the town as their souls ebb away in their mother's lap. Literally, the kids are starving and they're asking, "Ema, can I have something to eat?" And Ema says, "I'm sorry, I don't have anything to give you." I mean, that alone should be a nightmare to any mother in the world to do teshuva just having even that thought become a possibility. that you cannot feed your child, and no one else can. It's not like, no, I don't have it, but go to our neighbor, he has. No, go to the local g'mach, they have. Go to the homeless center, they have. No, no. There is no choice. That alone, anyone understanding that this is a possibility, should immediately force us to do teshuva. But it literally says that this was happening as another sign. And some of the kids started dying, literally, in front of their parents.

1:13:04But we didn't do teshuva. Why didn't we do teshuva? Why didn't we do teshuva? What, are we stupid? You see people dying in the streets. Why aren't you doing teshuva? The Prophet Jeremiah tells us. Nevi'ayich chazu lach shav v'tafel v'lo gilu et avonech la'ashiv shevutech v'yachazu lach mas'ot shav u'maduchim. says your prophets envisioned for you vanity and foolishness, and they did not expose your iniquity, your sins, to bring you back in doing teshuva. They prophesied to you oracles of vanity and deception, it says. People that were supposed to tell you the truth about your sins, about why all this is happening, why this starvation? Why the markets are crashing, why nobody has any food? Why? People are supposed to tell you. All those speakers, what do they tell you? No, no, no. You're okay. You're okay. It's not you. It's just a season. It's a bad season. It's a bad economy. It's a bad market. No, Hashem, Hashem is testing us.

1:14:17Testing us. If the kid died, it's a test. If the kid got sick, it's a test. If the kid died, it's not a test anymore. It's a decree. But the people that had the truth didn't tell it. They learned it, but they kept the truth to themselves. Why? Telling people the truth is very expensive. So what happened? What happened as a result of this? Look, Hashem, and behold whom you have treated so. Should women eat their own offspring, the babes they have cared for? Meaning, Hashem, you're bringing us to a point where we're starving so much that the women are going to have to eat their children. It's not just that the kids are starving; the parents are also starving. What are we going to do?

1:15:20And then he starts chapter 3: "I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of His anger." He says, "I am the man who saw the worst things in the world." From here, we see that Jeremiah was there, witnessing all of this. He wasn't just prophesying the future, what could be. He literally witnessed people dying in the streets, millions of them. placed me in darkness like the eternally dead. He has walled me in so I cannot escape. So what happened when Jeremiah tried to rebuke people? I've become a laughingstock to all my people, an object of their jibes all day long. When he tried to tell people the truth, he tried to tell people to keep Shabbat, he tried telling people to do good things, get closer to Hashem so bad things would stop, and

1:16:21because there were so many wicked speakers, so many fakers that called themselves prophets, it was very hard for people to say, "Wait a minute, you're telling me you're one guy that says the truth, but there's 500 that are lying. More likely, it's 500 telling the truth and you're the liar. This is just a bad season, it's just bad weather, it's just bad luck, it's just bad this, it's just bad that. It's not Hashem; it's something else." Because we understand Hashem. Hashem understands us. He knows that we can't do it. He says, "I've become a laughingstock." They'd make fun of him in public when he tried to tell them the truth. So what happens when this happens? Yirmiyahu tells them, "You're forgetting that Hashem is Hashem and not just some person."

1:17:22In verse number 37 he says, "Whose decree was ever fulfilled unless the Lord ordained it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that evil and good emanate? Of what shall a living man complain?" A strong man for his sins. Let us search and examine our ways and return to Hashem. He says all of this stuff that's happening, everything is coming from Hashem. Don't ever think anything that's happening in the world is coming from somewhere else. Whoever said something and did the opposite of what Hashem wants did so without Hashem allowing it to happen. Meaning anything and everything that happens in the world, Hashem signs off on it. You want to make a sin? Hashem will allow you to do it. You want to make a mitzvah? Hashem will allow you to do it.

1:18:23There's a hurricane, it's Hashem. There's a financial crisis, it's Hashem. There's cancer, it's Hashem. There's reward, there's good, there's all types of wonderful things, that's Hashem. Everything is Hashem. That's what the prophet Jeremiah says. Where was God during the Holocaust? It's Hashem. Churban Beit HaMikdash? Hashem. Everything is Hashem. That's what Jeremiah is saying. Instead of complaining, he says, what are you complaining about? You should only complain about your own sins, he says. Let's search and examine our ways and return to Hashem. All of these bad things are only happening because we're disconnected from Hashem. Now, unfortunately, after we do this for a while, what ended up happening, the prophet Yirmiyahu says in verse 44, is that you wrapped yourself in a cloud that no prayer can pierce. We took it too far. The prophet came and told us the truth, and we rejected it and made fun of it. he says even when we started praying, it was as if it was rejected. A few people started praying, "Oh no, no, come on, do it, pray, pray, fast a little bit, maybe that's going to help." The prophet says, "No, it was too late; it's too late. It was like Hashem rejected the prayers." Now, this eventually got to the worst and most horrific thing in the world.

1:19:53Where the Prophet says, he says more fortunate were the victims of the sword than the victims of the famine, for they pine away, stricken, lacking the fruits of the field. He says it was better for those people that died in the beginning. some, uh, some goy chopped their head off, stabbed them to death, killed them. It was much better for them to die that way. Why? The starvation was much, much worse. How much worse? He says, "The hands of compassionate women have boiled their own children; they have become their food when the daughters of my people were shattered." He says the starvation was so horrible... that the parents started literally eating their own kids, Hashem yerachem, the level of craziness that came from the starvation, the level of craziness, you lose your mind, you literally lose your mind, is that they weren't able to tell the difference between right and wrong, good, bad; they simply lost their humanity. And the parents literally started eating their kids.

1:21:11There was even one of the Midrashim that says there was a halakhic question that came to the rabbi, to Yirmiyahu. It says a woman came complaining about her neighbor. What was the complaint? She said, "Listen, you know, my son died, so I shared him with my neighbor. Now her son died, and she doesn't want to share him with me." This was a halakhic question during the Churban Beit HaMikdash. That's how bad the punishment was. That's how bad the punishment was. And for whatever reason or another, HaKadosh Baruch Hu always uses an eagle to rebuke us. He says, "The eagle is in the sky. The pursuers were the eagle in the sky." We see that the Romans had an eagle, the Nazis had an eagle, and many other enemies had an eagle for whatever reason or another. America has an eagle.

1:22:12The point is, rabotai, that the eagle is something that keeps recurring in the Torah. It's also in parashat Ki Tavo, Ki Tisa, in Ki Tavo, in Bechukotai. And then he tells, after all of this happening, he says, He says, "Please, Hashem, why do You ignore us eternally, forsake us for so long? Bring us back to You, Hashem, and we shall return. Renew our days as of old, for even if You had utterly rejected us, You have already raged sufficiently against us. Bring us back to You, Hashem, and we shall return. Renew our days as of old." So we see, Rabotai, that horrible things have happened during the time of the Beit HaMikdash. But plenty of people have a hard time relating to this because it happened so long ago, and they don't know any survivors from the Beit HaMikdash. Now, the Gemara in Yerushalmi, Masechet Yoma, beginning...

1:23:38Aleph Aleph, it says that the Beit HaMikdash, the First Beit HaMikdash, Chazal said we don't know who the people were because we weren't alive at that time. But we know that they worshipped idols, they committed murder, and they committed sexual immorality—all types of immorality. That's why Hashem destroyed the Beit HaMikdash. We understand that. He said, but the second Beit HaMikdash, we're having a hard time understanding. Why? It says the second Beit HaMikdash is saying that, uh, technically, the people did teshuva, they stopped murdering, they stopped raping, they stopped worshipping idols. So why did Hashem destroy it? I mean, technically, the rapist, the murderer, the, uh, All of these people are much worse, they destroyed the Beit HaMikdash, but after seventy years Hashem built the second one. But the second one He destroyed, even though the people in that time knew a lot of Torah. They fulfilled mitzvot, they went to yeshiva, they went to kollel, they had nice long beards. What's the problem, Chachamim say? They say the second Beit HaMikdash was destroyed because they loved money and they hated each other.

1:25:04The part that you've all heard about, and probably heard if you listen to lectures today or any other day about Beit HaMikdash, about general hatred in general, is the Sinat Chinam, the baseless hatred of each other. The part that few have actually heard—I've only heard this from my Rav, never heard this from a speaker before—is the part about money. Most people think they know about Sinat Chinam. They know about Sinat Chinam. We hated each other. The Ashkenazi hated the Sephardi. The Sephardi hated the Ashkenazi. Everybody hated this one, hated that one. Fine, but what does it have to do with money? Ahavat Mamon. Beit HaMikdash was destroyed because they loved money.

1:26:05Here's the chiddush. Chachamim say, when you love money, it's impossible for you to love each other. When you love money, you're willing to kill your best friend for it—your brother, your mother, your sister, anybody. If you love money, you don't see straight. we're not talking about ambition and you want to do more in order to do more. Ambition is something that HaKadosh Baruch Hu gave you in order to be ambitious for Torah. But you can use that ambition for other things as well, as long as it's within reason. As long as you don't start working overtime every day, all the time, including Shabbat too. That's idolatry. That's an infatuation with money. And that, by the way, Rabotai,

1:27:06means that it's impossible for you to ever do teshuva for sinat chinam. Impossible, as long as you love money. Why? If you love money, for sure you're gonna hate everybody else. For sure. Why? At some point, one of them is gonna get in your way. You have a company, somebody's opening competition. You have a store, somebody opens next door to you. You have a new website, somebody made a better one. You have an irgun for Torah, but he has a campaign while you're having your campaign. You're afraid that your donors are going to go to him. So naturally, what are you praying for? You're praying for your success, but his failure at the same time. Why? Because you love money. It has nothing to do with Torah anymore. It has nothing to do with Torah anymore. has to do with money, has to do with your infatuation with money. This is even on simple things between a person and his friend, where it creates jealousy like no other. You see your friend with a new car. You tell your other friends, like, ah

1:28:15Look, that jerk got another car. Why is he a jerk? Because he got a new car. Why does he have to be a jerk? Like, he got a new car. Why can't you just say, ah, mabrouk, enjoy, good job for you. You got a nice car. Why is it always like, oh, look, you see that thief? Yeah, I mean, that guy, yeah, he bought the new house over there. Why does he have to be a liar, a thief, and all these things? Why? People can't be happy for each other. Why? Because they love money. The infatuation with money... Chachamim say that's the reason that the Beit HaMikdash was destroyed. But they had Torah, they had mitzvot, they had kollelim, they had yeshivot, they had chachamim, they had a lot of good people. He says, yes, but with all of that, if you have that poison in there, it ruins everything. All that Torah, if the Torah is for the sake of making money, that Torah is worth nothing. Those mitzvot, those mitzvot are for the sake of Hashem giving you more money, not because of Hashem. Those mitzvot are going to the wastebasket. If you're infatuated with money, you're disconnected. You're disconnected. Now, we're not advertising for people to become homeless as a show of zealousness. Oh, I'm zealous, therefore I'm homeless. I sold everything and I gave everything away. No, no one's telling you to do that. The point is, don't become obsessed.

1:29:38with chasing money non-stop, there's a time for mitzvot. There's a time to work. But even your work could be full of mitzvot too. There's a time for this, there's a time for that. The problem is that we don't know how to stop, put a stop to it. We talk business in a beit knesset. Oh honey, you're going to beit knesset today? Yeah, yeah, Steve's going to be there. Oh, who's Steve? Oh, he's the guy I just sold the house to. I'm going to try to sell him another one. Oh, so that's why you're going to beit knesset? To go talk to him about the house? Oh, yeah, who's there? Who's at the Beit Knesset today? Oh, yeah, I spoke to Charlie. Oh, what? Yeah, he's interested in buying the company. Oh, so that's what you discovered in the Beit Knesset on Shabbat? That Charlie's interested in the Beit Knesset? He's interested in buying the company? That's what happens. The Beit Knesset became a social club. It becomes a social club because of our infatuation with money. And little did we know that our infatuation with money is actually leading to our hatred of each other.

1:30:39Because at some point, we're each going to get in each other's way. If you have a business and I have another business, you're going to find me undesirable. If you have a campaign and I have a campaign, you're going to tell people not to donate to my campaign. You may even tell them, "Listen, I'm not even sure if the campaign is real. But mine, for sure, I know is real because I'm running it." Everybody's sure about themselves, but not about his campaign. And it leads to a lot of mistakes. A lot of mistakes, Rabotai. I could tell you stories from here to next year about things that people do for money. Mamash selling out God. There's even a story that's occurring right now as we speak. Right now as we speak, people raised a lot of money and then they found out they didn't need the money. They raised a lot of money but they found out they didn't need the money. But they didn't return it to the people, though.

1:31:41People donated money because you needed it. Okay, now you found that you don't need it, so give it back to me. Right, it's simple. Meaning that if I give you money based on a certain reason and that reason is no longer valid, I don't have to ask for the money back. You have to give it back to me. I don't have to ask for it back. I don't have to send you an email, I don't have to send you a notice. If I give you money based on a certain principle, based on a certain rule, I gave you money, we had an agreement. I give you A, you give me B. If B no longer exists, I don't have to ask you for the money back. You have to give me the money back. It's called a mekach ta'ut (mistaken transaction). Because the agreement was based on B existing. If B never existed, therefore, there's no agreement. It's null and void. So if you ask for money, and people gave it to you, but that reason is no longer valid, you're not supposed to tell them, listen, I know you gave me the money, and I know I don't really need it anymore, but do you still want it back? Are you sure you want it? Maybe I could use it for something else that's good. Why are you putting me on the spot? Maybe I don't want to fund the other thing that's good, and I'm only going to do it because you're making me feel bad about it now. I don't want to do it. I need the money for something else. I wanted to give it to you, but now you don't need it, so I want to give it to something else that's more needed.

1:33:09Maybe you're not going to reach me. Maybe I'm on vacation. Maybe I changed phone numbers. Things happen. But no, rabotai. People love money so much, they will literally steal it in the name of God. They'll steal it in the name of God. It's happening right now. Right now, it's happening with a lot of money. I don't want to mention a name because I don't want to make a big chilul Hashem, but I can tell you privately. It's a huge chilul Hashem. I don't know if a tsunami is coming to Florida soon. Natan HaNavi gave an analogy to David HaMelech about a rich shepherd who stole a poor man's sheep. In essence, Natan HaNavi was trying to rebuke David HaMelech about Bat Sheva. But you see how David HaMelech, who was an ish yashar (straight person)...

1:34:14He says, "Wait a minute, this rich guy. He has the sheep, but he still took the poor man's sheep. Kill him. He lost his right to live." Yeah, but it doesn't say to kill such a person. The Torah says if you stole from somebody, you have to return double. Where is the death penalty? How come David HaMelech says that this person... is a ben mavet. He lost his right to live. He has to die. Why? In essence, he gives himself a death penalty. He doesn't know that yet. But why does David HaMelech say that somebody that is just simply greedy? Why is somebody greedy deserving to die? David HaMelech, Kodesh Kodashim, Mashiach is coming from David HaMelech. He's right. He's not making a mistake. What he's saying is true. Why? somebody that's greedy, somebody that's willing to literally sell their soul for money, this person is going to sell their soul for every other desire that they have. Meaning, it's only a matter of time before they do everything else. If they're like this now with money, they'll do it with anything else also. And therefore, they have no right to live.

1:35:36Of course, as far as halakha, we don't use it as halakha. A thief has to pay double. But the point is, you see, what does David HaMelech, what does an ish yashar, a straight person, a holy person, how he sees things for what they really are. Now, there's a very strange, unusual, disturbing story in the Gemara, Masechet Gittin. Several of them in the Gemara over there talk about why, what was the final trigger that caused HaKadosh Baruch Hu to destroy the Beit HaMikdash. One of them, as I said to you, says that there were no more people to rebuke; the rabbis were not rebuking and... strange, unusual, disturbing story in the Gemara, Masechet Gittin. Several of them in the Gemara over there talk about why, what was the final trigger that caused HaKadosh Baruch Hu to destroy the Beit HaMikdash. One of them, as I said to you, says that there were no more people to rebuke; the rabbis were not rebuking and They were false prophets. They were supposed to speak the truth, but instead, they spoke lies and fantasies. So, the Gemara asks for a few examples of this. How could they, like, give me an example? What, did they go and give a lecture about puppies? What happened in reality? So, the Gemara tells a story:

1:37:02Of a person that was staying by someone, learning the trade of wood making. He was learning from his rabbi to become a wood maker. As he's staying with him, he noticed his wife is pretty, newly married, and young. He saw his wife; she's a pretty girl. He started liking her. It wasn't enough to like her. Said, "I'm going to get her." "Yeah, but your rabbi has, this is the rabbi's wife. She's an Eishes Ish." "We'll figure out. We'll figure something out. Hashem will help me with this." "But it's the rabbi. He's stealing his wife." "No. He'll get another wife. He had his eye on the wife. As you would have it." Someone that wants to become impure, Hashem helps him, opens the door for him, and says, "Go do whatever you want." So this rasha ended up leaving the house, going to his own house, and one day...

1:38:22There was a money exchange between the rabbi and him, and he told the rabbi, "Listen, just send me the money. Tell your wife—she knows where I live—tell your wife to come drop off the money." The rabbi didn't think much of it; this guy lived with us for four months, so he's like family. He sent his wife to go to the guy's house. He sends the wife, but she doesn't come back. He doesn't see the guy in the streets or anywhere... No, it's going on three days. She's gone. Three days, his wife, that I've been with, is gone. After three days, he sees the guy. "Hey, what happened with my wife? What happened?" "Why would I know about your wife?" "What do you mean? I sent her to your house to drop off the money." "Listen, I don't know, but I'll ask around. She came to me and I let her go, but I'll go ask. Let's see what happened." All this time, she's actually at his house still. And he's wining and dining her. But he's not touching her. He's making her feel good about herself. Like a vacation, like a spa. He's not touching her. So he comes back to the Rabbi. He says, "Rabbi, you don't want to know." "Why? What happened?" "I don't know. She gave me what she needed, but I let her go. And when I asked around, what happened? Did anybody see this woman? They said she went with all the guys. She started hanging out."

1:39:51Rabbi, honestly, between us, I threw her out. What? She did all this to me. She cheated on me. She did this. Rabbi, disgusting. I don't want to tell you anything. I don't want to tell you what she did. Mamash disgusting. I'm sorry, Rabbi, it's happening to you. I'm sorry. Mamash disgusting. This filthy woman. You should kick her out right away. The Rabbi says, listen, I promised her a big ketubah. If I kick her out, I have to give her a lot of money. He goes, you know what, Rabbi? For you, I'll do it. I'll pay the ketubah. I'll lend you the money. How much was the ketubah? 100,000. On me, Rabbi. Give it to me, whatever you have. He gives him the money for the ketubah. The guy divorces the woman. The next day, this rasha marries her. Now time passes. The guy comes and says, Rabbi, I need my money. You know, the 100,000 I gave you for the ketubah. I don't have the money. I'm still a rabbi. I'm still making barely any money. Okay, so come work for me. Well, what should I do? You just come work in my house, be a servant to my house. My business is doing well; I need some more help around the house. Maybe you could manage the kitchen area, the kashrut, and everything. What was the poor guy going to do? He owes so much money. He has no other way to pay him back. Okay, fine. He comes to the house. He says, "Rabbi, listen, in the morning, do me a favor. I like two cups of tea. Bring it to my room. Two cups of tea for me and my wife."

1:41:19He goes to his house and he sees his own ex-wife in the house with the guy. But he knows he has to make them tea in the morning. That's the agreement. The Rabbi breaks down and two tears fall into the tea. I'm seeing how this used to be my wife. This Rasha took my wife, and now he has the chutzpah to ask me to serve them. What low level have I gotten to? How, Hashem, what happened to me? And at that moment, HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, "If this is the type of people we have, I want to destroy all of them." Hashem wanted to destroy the whole world. He decided to destroy the Beit HaMikdash instead. Now the Gemara is shocked. It's shocked by this. Why? What is a maaseh of a rasha? Why is the action of one rasha, one evil person, affecting everyone? Everybody here agrees this guy is the worst of the worst. But why is he and what he did my problem?

1:42:38Why does Hashem have to destroy the entire Beit HaMikdash for this? Okay, kill this guy. Give him cancer. Put a tumor in his head. I don't know. Give him some type of disease. A few of them if you want. Create a new disease for him. Him and the woman. No, why not? Why does the rest of Am Yisrael have to suffer? So the Gemara says, because everyone else saw it, They saw him steal the wife, but they didn't rebuke him. They didn't tell him, "What are you doing? That's your rabbi's wife. How are you taking the wife? It's not your wife." No, no, it's okay, you don't understand. Nobody rebuked. The Chasid Yaavetz gives a fantastic chidush about this. He says, what do you mean they didn't rebuke? Nobody said anything's wrong. Nobody, I mean, everybody has eyes. Everybody knows that's the Rebbetzin. It's not his wife. Okay, now she is, but everybody knows it. Everybody saw with their eyes. I mean, you have to be blind, stupid, and everything else to not notice what's going on here. Nobody said anything. The Chasid Yaavetz says it's worse. They put a hechsher on it. How? He said, listen, he didn't touch her while they were married.

1:44:01Only after. He didn't touch her while they were married. She was in his house, but he didn't touch her. See, the Gemara says he didn't touch her. He didn't touch her. He only touched her after they had a legal chuppah and kiddushin. Look, he's a tzaddik. Three days in a house with this woman, and he didn't touch her? This guy's a tzaddik. It's a tzaddik. Look, he took her into the house, they got married, chuppah, kiddushin. He even had the rabbis there. He invited the rabbis. What? It's a legal marriage. Technically, it's a legal marriage. It's not a mamzer. If they have a kid, it's not a mamzer. It's a legal marriage. Hashem says this is it. That's the problem. That's why HaKadosh Baruch Hu decided that He wants to destroy the Beit HaMikdash, almost wanting to destroy the entire world. He says why? He says because these rabbis gave fake kaf zechut to a rasha because of their love for money. Because of their love for money, they said, look, he didn't sin with her for three days. They got married legally. And the Yavetz says, he says that this is a lesson to us that there is a sin that's worse than all sins, but is actually not written in any place in the Torah.

1:45:31There's a sin that's worse than all of the sins that there are, but it's not written anywhere in the Torah. No other sin is such that Hashem said, "Okay, for this, I'm destroying the whole world." Usually, it's a combination of sins, and this was the final straw, but here, this sin alone is the worst sin. The Yavetz says this sin alone is the worst sin in the Torah. What's the sin? The sin is in the Torah; we should see it in the Ten Commandments. We should see it in the 613 mitzvot. Yet Hashem says not only are you not going to see it in the Ten Commandments, you're not going to see it anywhere in the Torah. But it's the worst sin of all. It's such a big sin that Hashem will destroy the whole world for it. What sin is this? It says, anytime that somebody does something that's against honest logic, That they know it's wrong, but it's legal. So therefore it's allowed. Hashem hates this more than anything else in the world. People that are just intellectually liars, but they're legal. It's a legal way to do it. And the Ramban writes that this is called "Naval Birshut HaTorah."

1:46:52Despicable in the name of the Torah. That he'll do things that are logically permitted, but they're against the straight mind. They're against logic. They're against what we all know is appropriate. We know is right. There's a simple concept everybody has of right and wrong. You don't have to be Jewish for that. The Jew knows; the non-Jew knows; everybody knows right and wrong. You're a human being. That's what distinguishes you from animals—you know right and wrong. Now, everybody knows there are certain things that are right without Torah. And you know there are certain things that are wrong even if the Torah says it's allowed. You know it's wrong. It's allowed to marry this woman. She's divorced. But it's wrong. You don't need the Torah to tell you that it's wrong. It's wrong. What you did is wrong. There's no law in the Torah that's going to tell you you're not allowed to marry her. She's divorced. You're allowed to marry her. But it's wrong.

1:47:53It's morally wrong. And Yavit says this is the worst sin in the Torah. Things that are against honest logic, an honest mindset. Needless to say, my Rav says this is the same exact thing with the cash advance business. He says a lot of these guys go to their rabbis. The rabbi, Rambam, says you're allowed to lend non-Jews money. With interest, right? Jews that keep Shabbat are not allowed to charge them interest. But if it's a non-Jew, interest, you're allowed. Rabbi says, yeah, you're allowed. But you're not allowed to destroy them. You're not allowed to charge them 900% or 400% or 90%. No one says you're allowed. But honest logic will also tell you you're also not allowed to overcharge them either. Honest logic will also tell you you're not allowed to charge them more than the market rate either. You're not going to charge them 50% or 60% or these high percentages that you pretty much know. The only way this guy is getting out of the hole is if he wins the lotto or if his product is the next iPod. That's the only way he's getting out of this hole. He's borrowing $100,000 right now. By the time he finishes paying interest for this year, he owes double already. He's never going to pay the money back unless his business literally quintuples. It's not happening. Charging him 60%.

1:49:16Well, he has to. It's not going to happen. Honest logic, not even Halacha, also tells you it's not allowed. But even without it, honest logic will tell you that's not allowed. It's forbidden. Why? Because you're taking advantage of people. Whether they're Jews or non-Jews is irrelevant. This is one of the things that people don't know was one of the pretexts that Hitler, yimach shemo vezichro, used as an excuse. to kill the Jews because that's exactly what they did before the Holocaust. They took advantage of non-Jews because they were in charge of capitalism in that age, not too different from today, and they were in charge of many of the banks. They lent people money with high interest, and when those people weren't able to pay back, they destroyed their businesses. That's what Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf in chapter 2. He hated the Jews because they were not only the enemies of God but also because they destroyed the economy. They are pro-communism and so on and so forth. How do they destroy the economy? Aside from bringing pornography and gay bars and all that other garbage to Berlin and turning it into a Sodom and Gomorrah, they also destroyed the economy with their high-interest loans. Quite frankly, he's right. They did.

1:50:38They did do that. He's not right for killing them. We curse them every day. But he's right about what the Jews did, though. This is happening again now. But how are these people doing it legally aside from the law? You're talking about a lot of the people that are in the cash advance business who are religious Jews. They look more religious than me. The pay is high. It's everything. A lot of people tell me, wait a minute, all my religious friends are in this business, this cash advance business. We just bought two houses because of it. What are you telling me? It's not allowed. i said, it's not me telling you it's not allowed. To us, it's not allowed. And I give you 500 reasons why it's not allowed. Not just the reasons I mentioned now. This is just another one that we mentioned that's relevant to this. It's against honest logic. It's against your own sense of right and wrong. Your rabbi telling you it's allowed because you're allowed to charge interest, you know, from goyim, yes, he's not telling you you're allowed to charge 60% or 40% or some obnoxious number that's much, much higher than the norm. No one is telling you that the Torah is allowing that. Because if the Torah allowed that, you could take the Torah and throw it in the garbage. It's an unethical document. Not allowed. So that's what HaKadosh Baruch Hu hates more. Why? Because this leads ultimately to Chilul Hashem. It's the biggest sin, not because it's the sin by itself, but because it leads to the biggest sin. It leads to Chilul Hashem. It leads to the desecration of Hashem's name. Now, a straight mind, an honest mind, integrity they call it sometimes, is something that is hard. It's hard to have integrity; it's hard to be intellectually honest; it's hard to be intellectually straight. And the reason why is because if you are straight and honest and...

1:52:07a straight mind, an honest mind, integrity they call it sometimes, is something that is hard. It's hard to have integrity; it's hard to be intellectually honest; it's hard to be intellectually straight. And the reason why is because if you are straight and honest and 99% of the time, you're a liar. You're a liar. The fact that you're a liar only 1% of the time doesn't change anything. You're still a liar. And it's only a matter of time before you'll be a liar for more than 1%. You're just currently a 1% liar. Next week, maybe 2%. Next month, maybe 5%. Eventually, you'll be a 100% liar. As long as you allow lying into your life intellectually... It's only a matter of time before that grows and becomes an epidemic. Meaning that in order to be intellectually honest, you have to do it constantly, every day, all the time, while everybody else is making fun of you for doing it. I remember years ago when I first started making a little bit of money and...

1:53:37the brokerage business, and this was back in early 2003. Word spread that I started making some money. I became a big hitter in the business and so on and so forth. Some guy that I know in the business, whom I hadn't talked to in a long time, calls me and says, "Okay, I heard you're doing good. You're doing this and that." I replied, "Yeah, I'm doing all right." He's like, "What are you doing?" and I started talking about business, and... and he goes, "Well, how come you're not making more money?" I said, "What do you mean? Because I'm doing well; I'm doing what's right. What's the problem?" He says, "Nah, you could be making at least 10 times more money." I said, "How can I be making 10 times more money?" He goes, "I don't even have 10% of what you have, and I'm already making more." And I said, "How?" And he explained to me pretty much the way he's stealing from people, in so many words. He's telling me, like, what he's doing in the business. And in some ways, he's stealing from people. And I said, this is not allowed. What you're doing is not allowed. It's churning. You're burning people. You're taking all the money for commissions and so on and so forth. He goes, ah, no, come on. What's wrong with you? He goes, listen, you're burning your license lifetime.

1:54:56meaning, in his mind, he's surrounded by so many wicked, dishonest people that already in his mind he's got it built in that you are going to be in this business for a set amount of time before they throw you out because you have to be a thief. So, the fact that I'm not stealing, I'm burning my time because anyway they're going to throw me out at some point. So, I'm burning my time. I could be making more money. This, Rabotai, as strange as it sounds, this is the typical... This is typical. It's become the norm to be a dishonest person. People think that in order to get ahead, you have to be dishonest. You have to finagle this and finagle that and tell people that you're selling something brand new, but in reality, it's refurbished. Or tell somebody that this is your brand, but in reality, it's somebody else's brand. He just doesn't know that you're selling it. And all types of dishonest things that people do, this has become the norm. This has become the norm. People believe that they have to do this. Find me one guy who did remodeling on his house that's happy with the contractors. Everybody's happy when they find the contractor. Everybody hates the contractor and his mother by the time he finishes the job. Why? Because there's not a single contractor that's honest. Not one.

1:56:13They're only honest until you give them the rest of the money. Once you give them the rest of the money, they don't come back for the rest of the job. Everybody's house is always unfinished. You see a million-dollar house, but it's missing 18 stones in the kitchen. What's wrong with the stones? It's $10. Just put it there. Oh, yeah, the contractor's supposed to come. Oh, when? I don't know. He's been supposed to come for six months. Everybody's house is missing a few stones, or the bathroom is undone, or there are no outlets in the socket. Why? Because contractors are notoriously dishonest. Notoriously dishonest, and if they're honest, their peers make fun of them. I have a friend. He says, "Listen, my wife drives me crazy." I said, "Why?" He says, "Ah, she says I'm too honest." So I asked, "What do you mean you're too honest?" He responded, "I don't know, I just tell people that, you know, this is the job, that's how much it costs, that's what they do." I said, "Okay, so what's the problem?" He said, "She says that everybody else charges five times more money for this." I said, "Well, you're allowed to charge more if it's worth more, but you're not like... She goes, "Well, explain that to her." So this has become the norm. People think that you're supposed to lie, that you're supposed to be intellectually dishonest. And when you are honest, people make fun of you. So to be an honest person, you have to do it all the time. There's no 90% truth, 10% lie. It's like saying, all of you are thirsty right now. In a few hours, we're going to be able to drink. But I have a present for you.

1:57:43When I give you the water or whatever drink you want of your desire, but there's a 1% chance there's poison in it. How many people drink? Nobody's drinking. Yeah, but it's only 1%. Yeah, it's too much. 1% is already too much. If there's a 1% chance there's poison, I'm not taking a chance. I don't care how thirsty I am. That's being a liar 1% of the time. Meaning that to be intellectually honest... ...have integrity. It requires toil daily, every day, and you're going to keep getting tests. It'll be with money, it'll be with business, it'll be with what you do, it'll be with all types of things. Whatever your life is involved in, you'll have constant tests of integrity. And who will send you them? Why? Because, in essence, this just shows who you really are—who you really are when push comes to shove. Now...

1:58:46One of the things that is an interesting thing about intellectual honesty is that even the Torah, learning Gemara every day, learning Halacha every day, learning Parashat HaShavua every day, learning Chok L'Yisrael every day. You learn that every day, it's not going to change a thing. You can still stay Filthy, disgusting liar, just like you were before you finished all Shas, nothing changes. Meaning, even the Torah cannot make a person yashar (straight) and clean. The key, even though it can't do it, the only thing that can do it is daily Mussar, daily rebuke, daily understanding of what reward and what punishment there is for certain things and... what you're supposed to be, what you're not supposed to be—a constant reminder of the things that you already know. That's the only thing to do it. Learn Torah every day, learn every day, learn every day, learn all that stuff. It's not going to do it. How do we know? What's the proof aside from the fact that my rabbi told me? Other than that, how do I know? But the Mikdash, second Beit HaMikdash...

2:00:10Second, the Mikdash says, we don't understand. They knew a lot of Torah, they fulfilled mitzvot, they had kollel, they had yeshivot, they did all of those. Great! Why did Hashem destroy them? Because they loved money and they hated each other. Meaning they did not have straight minds. They did not have intellectual honesty. If money was involved, I hated you or I loved you. Meaning I determined it based on where the money was, not based on you or what's right and wrong. And if that's the case, that means that all of the Torah and all of the mitzvot that they made literally went to naught. Now, sometimes intellectual honesty could be in a place that we never think it would be. For example, a businessman asks a dishonest rabbi:

2:01:12About two possible deals that he has: "Rabbi, I have these two deals, and I want your opinion. This deal, I can make a million dollars, round and nice. Okay, what do you gotta do? How many people are you gonna kill?" I gotta do this, this, this, this, this, this, and this. Okay, it's a little shady, though. You find the rabbi realizes, "Oh, it's a little shady, this little deal. It's not glatt, it's not glatt. It's a little treif, a little treif. There may be a little pig leg here and there, maybe shrimp. So, there's a few things that are not kosher, something gray, black, gray, something." And then there's the other deal, Rabbi, and this deal, you know, only a hundred thousand. But this deal, clean, beautiful. Now, if the rabbi has Yirat Shamayim and is a straight-minded person, there's no thought process. Decision is made instantly, like it's a reflex. Of course, go to the smaller, honest deal. There's no question here. But a rabbi that loves money

2:02:38Therefore, he will be intellectually dishonest and will do the same thing that the guy who asked the question is already doing. He's only asking the question not because he cares about the rabbi's permission. He's just looking for an okay in the name of the Torah, in the name of God. He knows it's wrong. He knows selling drugs to underage kids is wrong. He doesn't need you to tell him. Yeah, but they're in Chile. They're in Zimbabwe. They're in a different country. There aren't even Jews there. It's not a big deal, right, Rabbi? Not a big deal. You know, try to rationalize whatever way you can. He knows it's not allowed, though. But he's looking for the Rabbi to do the same thing. Why? If the Rabbi does that, he has a kosher stamp on his pig. That's the wig business today, by the way. Anybody that's in the wig business, all they have is a kosher stamp on a pig. Everybody knows it's not kosher. Every single person knows it's not kosher. Every person, the rabbis, the people that wear it, everybody knows it's not kosher. No one feels like a real tzaddik wearing this or tzaddeket with this. Everybody knows it's not kosher. Why? It's a pig. It's a pig.

2:03:44Everybody knows. It’s just, you know, it’s a nice way to make the pig look. Why? Because I have a kosher stamp on it. Because some guy, Gross, decided to create a fake kosher department. He’s the only kosher certification for the entire thing in the entire world. There are, I think, five different bodies of kashrut just in Florida for food. just for food in Florida. In America, there's probably 50 or more. But for wigs, one in the entire world. Why? Because nobody else wants to deal with this pig. Nobody else wants to do it. But everybody uses it like it's, ah, this is l'chatchila, this is perfect, this is perfectly fine. Why? Because everybody is lying to each other. Everybody's lying to each other. Everybody knows it's not kosher. Everybody knows. But, because the rabbi says it's okay, and that rabbi says it's okay, and we'll mix and match, and we'll play puzzle with the wrong pieces, it'll make it okay. So that's what happens. What happens is the rabbi starts with this dishonest approach himself. Why? Because he's thinking, wait a minute. This guy is not, he's not going to be Moshe Rabbeinu anyway. He's probably going to do it anyway. So, why should I lose out by telling him no? So let me see if I could find a halachic permission for this treif.

2:04:54Because technically, if I tell him yes, he's going to make a million dollars. Now, if you make a million dollars, he has to give tzedakah. He has to give tzedakah, ma'aser, ten percent. No, you want to be a tzaddik, right? You want bracha. If no bracha, how are you going to make money? There's no bracha in the money. Who needs the money if you're not going to give bracha? And he starts. Okay, you know what? Listen. If I give you the answer, you know, it says in the Torah, Eliyahu HaNavi told us, we have to learn two halachot per day. Let me teach you two halachot. One ma'aser, one chomesh. One's the 10%, one's 20%, because the Vilna Gaon says you have to give 20%. So I'll teach you two halachot. And he gives them a shiur Torah on ma'aser. Because see, now we learn Torah, Baruch Hashem, from your question. And by the way, your question is, there is a de'a in the poskim, I think, I have to double-check, but maybe, but sure, but this, allowed. Allowed for what? You're not really sure why it's allowed, but it's allowed somehow because now he knows the mitzvah of ma'aser. And remember, you have to be an honest person. You have to give the ma'aser to the right people.

2:05:58Ah, you have to give, that's what he said, Rabbi Eistel, you have to give, you have to be right, you have to be straight, like Avraham Avinu. You have to be just like Avraham Avinu. When he finally made money, he came back and he went back to the same motel. Why did he go back to the same motel? To pay back the loan that he borrowed, but also to give business. To the people that did him a favor. So when the rabbi does you a favor and tells you that this is allowed, remember, you have to give ma'aser to the right people. Don't just give it to some irgun somewhere that you never saw. You have to give the ma'aser to the right people. You know this mitzvah, right? Yeah, rabbi, of course I know this mitzvah. Of course, rabbi, love you. Thank you. Guy's the biggest drug dealer in the world now. Why? Rabbi said it's okay. That is an example that happens daily. Some rasha looking for an excuse and finds a bigger rasha that gives him one. This happens all the time. It's funny, but it's not funny. It's funny in theory. It's not funny because it's happening in reality. It's happening in reality now. There are all types of things that you know are not allowed.

2:07:15Intellectually, but people still do it. I'll give you one example that happened the other day. Somebody asked me about it. I corrected them and they're fine, but somebody asked me. He's like, "Listen, I want to, I'm trying to give out CDs in my community, and I'm having a tough time downloading this lecture series by Rabbi such-and-such. It wasn't me, and..." Do you know how I can get the file? I said, why don't you go buy the CD from the rabbi? No, I could do it cheaper if I just buy the CDs. I just buy both of the CDs from the internet. I could, I don't know, buy a thousand of them for $20 or something. And I could just download them on my computer for a few hours. I have the machine, I download them. And I got the CDs. Instead of paying a dollar for each CD or $2 or $3 for each CD, I could just produce them for 20 cents. Why should I? What's the problem? Technically, it's allowed. Technically, what he's doing is 100% allowed. But in Shamayim, it says, despicable in the name of the Torah. Why? If the rabbi is selling on his website, buy from his website.

2:08:29If the rabbi said, you asked the rabbi, and he said, go do it, that's different. But you did it on your own. You decided, no, no, I'm going to print out the CDs because I feel like it. I'm going to distribute it in the name of Kiruv. I'm going to go make copies of this book in the name of Kiruv. Not to help people. I'm going to go make it. This book is a great book. I'm going to make copies. Go to the machines, make copies, because, you know, nobody's paid for it anyway. I'm going to make it in the name of Kiruv. Mitzvah, no? No, that's a mitzvah ba'ah be'aveirah. That's a mitzvah ba'ah be'aveirah. But it's not written literally in the Torah. It's written literally in your mind. You know it's not allowed. You know this is not kosher. Everybody knows it's not kosher. Why? Because if they did it to you, you wouldn't be so happy. You had a product that you were selling and somebody says, you know what? I like your product. It's the best product in the market. I just made the same thing in my backyard and I'm giving it to everybody else for 10% off. What do you mean? It's my product. I worked 20 years to develop it. Okay, good for you. You have your own customers. I'm not selling to your customers. I'm selling to my customers, just for 10% off. What do you mean? Why don't you sell your customers to me? How am I going to make money if I give to you? What do you mean? But that's why I work. You have to be an honest person to get it. Honest person. If you're an honest person, there's no debate. If you're a dishonest person, the debate will never end. Now,

2:09:55Bilam says in Parashat Balak, "May I have the end like the end of the Yesharim. May I have the end like the end of the straight, those who are straight." Who are these straight? The first book of the five books of Moses, Sefer Bereishit, is also called Sefer HaYesharim, the book of the straight. Who are the straight? Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov. They were honest people, intellectually honest people, to the highest possibility. And Bilam is the typical person that wants to have the end of Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov but wants to act like Bilam, though. In order to have the end of the Yesharim, we have to act like them during our life—not just, you know, think that because we were born to a certain lineage,

2:10:55or because our parents know this and that, or because we did one or two big mitzvot, we're going to have the same end as the Yesharim. It doesn't work that way. It doesn't work that way. Now, the Gemara in Masechet Ta'anit, page 29a, and also Masechet Sotah and the Midrash Eicha, say that Am Yisrael had made a mistake 3,300 years ago with the Meraglim, with the spies. When the spies came back, they said bad things about the land. This wasn't, by the way, the first Lashon Hara that existed. There was other Lashon Hara starting already with the snake. It’s the Lashon Hara about Hashem. But nonetheless, Hashem saw that they were saying Lashon Hara, but only reacted Once Am Yisrael reacted. If it was just the Meraglim saying what they said, but nobody else reacted, we wouldn't be here today. But it was because of the reaction of Am Yisrael crying hysterically for no reason and believing the words of the Meraglim, the spies, that Hashem said, "You cried for no reason; I'm going to give you a reason to cry on this day every year."

2:12:25Now, why did Hashem get so offended by this? I mean, technically, Am Yisrael made other mistakes. It's not the first one. They made plenty of other mistakes. He didn't say, listen, for every mistake that you made, from now on, this day, you're going to suffer. He didn't do that. But here He did. I mean, if it was up to me, I'd say, which one? Which one was worse? Them believing bunch of, you know, guys that said bad things about the Land of Israel versus 24,000 people or more actually went and went with goyot. I'd say the one with the goyot is much worse. So from now on, every year that they sit with the goyot in the next parasha, or actually the end of this parasha, that day should be a day of mourning. That day should be a day of, you know, suffering and so on and so forth. But no, it's not that. We don't have any commemoration whatsoever for that action, aside from reading the parasha, as far as the Am Yisrael sitting with goyot. Yet, we have Tisha B'Av every year on the same day that we cried for no reason. We cried because Hashem sent the meraglim, and they came back with bad words. Why? Who wants to try? No? Because they had a...

2:13:48it was, it was, it was. It's more of a harder test for them. It's more of a, it's more of a nefesh. But a nefesh is more, not sacrifice, but it's harder because it's physical, it's a desire. It's a nefesh, like it's something part of you. If they had a choice not to listen to the spies, it was, it was an easier choice. It was an easy, it was like not that big of a test for them. In other words, they heard it, but they didn't have to agree with it. They didn't have to follow it. They could have just said, they didn't have to cry, but... How do you know that was easier for them to, uh... was hard to do it, uh... girls, it's actually today's interesting answer, but, uh... technically, it's... from what we see, you're much more likely to make sins with your mouth than you are to make with your body. Even if you do sin with your body, you'll sin once a day, twice a day, but most likely with your mouth you'll sin and you could sin a thousand times. Every word out of your mouth could be a lie, could be lashon hara, could be rechilut. So there's much more sins with your mouth than there is with your body, which leads us to understand that

2:15:15The inclination to sin with your mouth is much, much greater than physicality, even though physically, obviously, the sin is great and grave. But that's not the reason. And I like the reasoning, though. It's just, it's not the reason. What else? Who else? No, I spoke for two hours straight. You guys can say something. Nothing? So, the answer is Hashem says... You cried for no reason. What does it mean no reason? No reason means that in essence you're crying because you think there's something wrong with the land and so on and so forth. Which means that all of the miracles that I made until now, the ten plagues, turning the Egyptians into nothing, turning Pharaoh into a scaredy-cat, splitting the sea into twelve, all of these different things that I did, I did it for nothing just so you guys could just die in a desert. You cried for no reason. What does it mean, no reason? No reason means that, in essence, you're crying because you think there's something wrong with the land, and so on and so forth. Which means that all of the miracles that I made until now—the ten plagues, turning the Egyptians into nothing, turning Pharaoh into a scaredy-cat, splitting the sea into twelve—all of these different things that I did, I did for nothing, just so you guys could die in the desert.

2:16:29So, meaning that you cried for no reason, that you're in essence saying that everything that I did is for no reason. You did everything that I did for no reason, and that's a mistake more than sinning with the non-Jews or anything else. You have to be reminded of this because a person always has to know that everything that HaKadosh Baruch Hu does has a reason. Can I? My question on that answer is that it's a lack of emunah, but we see that, you know, your answer is a big chiddush because emunah is a test for everyone on a constant basis. So, the lack of emunah to get such a big punishment for that kind of thing is true. I mean, I don't really know how to qualify this. Hashem did a lot of things for them. I can't deny that. But the magnitude of the test is also perhaps equally great or... We see that Hashem says in the Torah that they tested Me ten times. I mean technically He's seen much more than ten times. But He says they tested Me ten times. Why these ten times? I had a shiur about that about two years ago. It shows that every one of those tests, that HaKadosh Baruch Hu almost killed us for, really annihilated us as a nation, were emunah tests. Meaning that HaKadosh Baruch Hu wants us to believe in Him 100%. When we believe in Him 100%, nothing wrong can happen.

2:17:58When we lack emunah, when we lack belief in Him, it's only a matter of time before all hell breaks loose. Because we're distancing ourselves from HaKadosh Baruch Hu. He says that concern is normal. To be concerned about how the land is going to be, whether there's going to be fruit or not, or if the fruit is too big or too small, or if there are giants or no giants. Being concerned is normal. The reaction to your concern was wrong. Being concerned makes you a human being. Hashem knows what He created. He knows that we're humans. And we're going to worry about money. We're going to worry about zivug. We're going to worry about stuff. It's normal to be concerned. But go open a sefer Torah. Go to the rabbi and ask a question. Rabbi, do I have something to worry about or not? Am I allowed? Not allowed? Can I do it? Can I not do it? Meaning, the difference between Am Yisrael and the nations is that we have the Torah. So we're supposed to default to our Torah. That was the mistake, greater than anything else. It wasn't, in essence, the lack of emunah per se. It was the fact that, because we had a lack of emunah, we simply lost our minds. We defaulted to just using our own rationale. We just decided that, oh, these people are giants. Each one of them is the size of 500 men. There's no way we can beat them.

2:19:26Okay, wait. So ask Hashem. Hashem, what are we going to do? Ask Moshe Rabbeinu. Moshe, these people are bigger. What should we do? Ask something. Go to the Torah. Go to the rabbis. Ask a question. Don't default to giving up. You're not allowed to give up. That's in essence what's being said here. They chose to give up on Me, Hashem says, by breaking and by crying. Now I'm going to give them countless reasons to cry for a real reason. The Baal Shem Tov's students say, just look at it this way: if crying for no reason got us into such a mess and punished us so severely for so many years, how much reward will we get if we're happy for no reason? All we have to do is just figure out how to do that now. Like we said, there is no... Possibility of doing this 99% — you're either a hundred percent in or you're not a hundred percent in; you're just imagining that you are. Now, the book here that I have, I mentioned something from it a few years ago, but this is a book that is an interesting testimony of things that happened in the Holocaust. It's called "Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account" by Dr. Miklos Nyiszli. Now, one of the things that HaKadosh Baruch Hu said to Am Yisrael in Parashat Ki Tavo is that one of our punishments, if we don't listen to Him...

2:20:56It's called "Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account" by Dr. Miklos Nyiszli. Now, one of the things that HaKadosh Baruch Hu said to Am Yisrael in Parashat Ki Tavo is that one of our punishments, if we don't listen to Him, that we will serve our enemies. We'll serve our enemies. Now, this Miklos Nyiszli was a Jew and a very proud Jew of his profession, not necessarily of his Judaism. And he apparently was given this curse of a life that he had to... endure an experience like no other. Now, some of the things I'm gonna read are gonna be extremely disturbing. I'm just warning you, not so you run away, but so you can put your sensors on and understand what you're about to deal with. One of the things that Miklos Nyiszli did, it says in a book...

2:22:24I mean, interestingly enough, it says this is a bestseller. I just have yet to meet one person that read it, though. Other than my rabbi. Anyway. Now, in the beginning of the book, this psychiatrist, by the name of Bruno Bettelheim, says that something that was very peculiar about the Holocaust is that Am Yisrael didn't fight back. This is extremely peculiar. It doesn't make any sense that those millions of them, though being slaughtered day and night, everybody knew what was happening. Everybody was denying it was happening, but it was happening nonetheless. And yet still, no one was doing enough. He says out of the, I believe it was 14.

2:23:2414 Sonderkommandos, only one revolted. Only one actually caused a man. The other 13 literally led themselves to annihilation without a fight, even The extermination was at such a high level, what they did to us... um... You would think that somebody would fight for it, that somebody would do something about it, and he just can't get his head around it. Pretty much the whole introduction to this book is how he's battling with this more than anything else—more than the level of how horrible human evil got to, more than the level of how low the desperation was, more than anything else, even more than the suffering. He simply, as a psychiatrist—or I guess a psychologist, since that's what his main thing is—simply the psyche, the...

2:24:43mind of a person; he just cannot understand how come they didn't fight back. Now, if I didn't know too, I would agree. Not that I know much, but I know about this answer. This is actually one of the punishments now. As I mentioned, I think in the beginning, I remember seeing it in Masechet Gehinom and I believe also in other places. That when a person, or better yet, a neshama, is, or even a person actually, whether it's in chibut hakever, they're in a grave, or they're in the next world and it's the judgment of a wicked person, there's no defending yourself. There's no concept of defending yourself. Like right now, for example, even if somebody's weak and some big guy comes and hits him, you'll defend yourself. You know, the person defends himself. They put their arms up to guard their body, maybe even throw a punch once in a while, a kick, something. Or if you're simply defenseless, you're simply just going to cover yourself. I remember one time, I'll expose a little of my own embarrassment. One time, I went out in my Shem Me'achem days,

2:26:09Went out one night to one of these bars or whatever. And after we went to the parking lot to get the car—I think it was my car or my friend's car—anyway, there was a group of people that came, girls that came. And I saw one of them was crying. So I said, "What's wrong?" Just to be nice. Like, I don't know, something happens. "What's wrong?" And, you know, they ignored me. I said, okay. And then as soon as I finished saying "What's wrong?", this group of guys, like, I don't know, maybe like ten guys, surrounded me. They said, "Why are you talking to my girl?" Now, first of all, I should just let you know, she was at least four times my size. So she wasn't my type. She was four times my size. I wasn't into football players. Now, the second thing is, I wasn't talking to her for that purpose. I was just asking "What's wrong?" But this little guy that apparently was her boyfriend or her baby or something, he decided I'm talking to his girl. And, you know, I found it humorous. This little guy is saying something to me. But I didn't find it funny that I had nine or ten other guys around me either, though. Now, when I didn't answer him or he thought that my answer wasn't to his liking, he decided that he and his friends were going to have a good time on my body.

2:27:23i couldn't do much, so I had to just sit there and wait for it to end. It wasn't fun, but it ended at some point. Even then, you could defend yourself; you could block, you could do something. Meaning, your natural instinct, even if you're being beaten up by 10 people, is to defend yourself, to do something. Got it? The punishment in heaven doesn't have such a thing. There's no defending yourself. You see when you read from the books that someone who stole, that Chochmat HaShit says that the angels feed him sand. The glass of sand cuts his body, cuts his face, cuts his teeth, breaks his teeth, and then there's a voice of Hashem saying, Eat. Eat. It's free. The stuff that you stole wasn't free. You took it when it didn't belong to you. So this, what? This you don't want? We're giving it to you. And the soul, the body, whatever it is, can't do anything about it. It has to continue enduring this horrible, horrific pain. Same thing with all of the other punishments. Meaning, there's no defending yourself. Now, this is hard for us to imagine.

2:28:46because this is like a horror movie times a thousand. So HaKadosh Baruch Hu also showed us this, gave this guy this insight, this seed in his life, and we have it in the book now. And he's saying that there were literally thousands and thousands of people being killed every single day. There was one camp, actually I think it was one of the first ones that this Miklos Nyiszli... saw himself said there were 3,000 Jews who went in there. 3,000 Jews went into a building, and everybody died—killed all of them in a matter of 20 minutes. And he gives you all the details of what they did to the bodies and so on and so forth. Not a single person tried to run out, tried to fight, tried to do anything. It's not just because they were tired or desperate or weak. It's not just because of that. Because one thing that all human beings have naturally, unless they lose their mind, is inertia, the desire to live. Every human being has that. People are stupid, and they say, "Ah, I wish I was dead. Ah, I wish I died already." People are dumb, and they say stuff like that, usually because they like attention.

2:30:08that really wish they would die and just tried to kill themselves. Those people are crazy; those people have to be put in mental institutions and, you know, put under some sedation because they're dangerous to themselves and to the public. But people that just say it are stupid people. They just like attention. Because every human being has inertia, has the desire to live. How do you know? Hold your breath. You want to die so badly? Hold your breath. Let's see. You'll see that after 20, 30, 40 seconds, already you're like, why? Because you want to live. You want the next little bit of air. You want to eat. You want to breathe. Okay, you don't want to do that? That's too hard for you? Okay, put your head into water. Fill the bath with water and just put your head in there. Watch. 30, 40 seconds, you're going to want to live again. All of a sudden, you like your life. Why? You said two minutes ago, I wish I was going to die. No? Why? How come you like your life all of a sudden? Even if you're getting beat up, even if you're homeless, even if you're suffering, even if you've experienced the worst crimes against humanity, you still want to live. But here we see the sefer starts off with this extraordinary introduction where it says that literally, you saw the people not defending themselves, as if most of them had lost their desire to live and...

2:31:33Simply, it's not that they wanted to die. They lost the nature of a human. That's how much suffering they've endured. They lost the nature of a human being's desire to live. They didn't defend themselves. Now, he says here... the same business-as-usual attitude that enabled Dr. Mengele to function as a doctor in the camp, that motivated him to volunteer his help to the SS, enabled millions of Jews to live in ghettos where they not only worked for the Nazis but selected fellow Jews for them to send to the gas chambers, meaning that This is actually one of the strangest things that I read so far, which has very much to do with what we learned, which is that the rebuke came in a way

2:32:37from Heaven came in a way that Hashem turned what people turn into their own idol, which is their own professions, their skill set, into the tool that actually killed them and their friends. Many of the experts that worship their job like an idol, Hashem actually made them use that skill to kill fellow Jews. So many of them were very, very much into their career. They were very proud of their career, especially doctors and things of that nature, or even shoemakers and so on. Hashem made them employees in the SS, but used them in an unfortunate way, similar to this Nicholas Wetzli that he used to dissect bodies and do experiments, Hashem Yirachem. So this fascination that they had with their own... With their own profession and so on, it allowed them to lose their own inner balance between what's right and wrong. Meaning that as long as I can do my profession, even though it's in a camp killing people, it's not so bad after all. Yes? Would they be held accountable? You know, did Hashem do what He did to Pharaoh? Took away free choice? Yeah.

2:34:03The answer is depending on what they did before. We see that, and I'll read from another book in a moment, The Annihilation of Lithuanian Jewry by Rabbi Ephraim Oshry, that for the most part, I have yet to hear contrary, for the most part, the people that lived the life of Torah and mitzvot didn't do this. meaning that the ones that ended up doing some of these questionable acts, I mean you can't question them, that they were in that position in the first place, but the ones that did these things usually lived a certain type of lifestyle that was absent of God before it. and this book, I mean written many years ago, but definitely a must-read for anybody that can find it because it gives you an understanding of how much mesirat nefesh Am Yisrael did to serve HaKadosh Baruch Hu inside the ghettos. We'll get to that in a moment, but here he says

2:35:21This business-as-usual mentality, in essence, caused people to lose their inner balance between right and wrong, and so on and so forth, and enabled millions of Jews to live in ghettos where they not only worked for the Nazis but selected fellow Jews for them to send to the gas chambers. Meaning that it's not just that they worked in order to survive, but that they literally killed each other sometimes for the sake of saving themselves. which is not something that you're allowed to do according to the Torah. You're not allowed to, oh, need to change batteries. It's not allowed according to the Torah to, in order to save yourselves, kill somebody else. It's called a big aveira. If somebody tells you, "Go kill somebody or I'll kill you," you have to die. You can't kill them. Your blood is not worth more than theirs. So he continues, he says, it was similar inertia and...

2:36:39If not, also the business-as-usual attitude that postponed the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto until hardly any people or any strength was left for fighting, and certainly far too few to make a breakthrough that might. Oh, and certainly far too few to make a breakthrough that might have saved thousands of lives. All this would be past history except that the very same "business as usual" is behind our trying to forget two things: One, that 20th-century men just like us sent millions into the gas chambers, and two, that millions of men like us walked to their deaths without resistance. So something very interesting he says here that may give us a little bit of mussar for those of us that are living in America voluntarily. In Buchenwald, I talked to hundreds of German Jewish prisoners who were brought there in the fall of 1938. I asked them,

2:37:56Why had they not left Germany? Because of the utterly degrading and discriminatory conditions they were subjected to. Meaning, before they went to concentration camps, there was a lot of anti-Semitism, open anti-Semitism. I mean, technically, that was actually the point. The Nazis forced undesirable minorities, which were the Jews, to do a lot of different things that they didn't want to do in order to get them out of there, to get them to leave. This was the point. They started, you know, not allowing them to do business, not allowing them to get married, whatever they wanted, and so on and so forth. The whole point was for the Jews to leave, and it was all even a deal that they made, you know, to allow them to take some money with them. Tennessee said, but when this didn't work, the extermination policy was instituted by the Nazis. So the author has said, I asked many people and...

2:38:56how come you didn't leave? At the fall of 1938, before the whole, you know, hell on earth went into effect, how come you didn't leave Germany? The answer was universally: how could we leave? It would have meant that we'd have to give up our houses, our places of business, and Their earthly possessions had so taken possession of them that they could not move. Instead of using them, meaning the possessions, they were run by them. As a matter of fact, the discriminatory laws against the Jews were meant to force them to leave Germany, leaving most of their possessions behind. But it actually ended up being the anchor that kept them there. Many people had the opportunity to do Aliyah, but didn't do it just because they liked their house, they liked their job, they liked their this. Hopefully, they don't like it too much because eventually, there will be a time to leave. So how did Dr. Nazili fool himself? It could be seen, for example... kept him there. Many people had the opportunity to do Aliyah, but didn't do it just because they liked their house, they liked their job, they liked their this. Hopefully, they don't like it too much, because eventually, there will be a time to leave. So how did Dr. Mizzili fool himself? It could be seen, for example...

2:40:21Repeatedly, he’s referring to his work as a doctor. To stick this to this Nicola Nicholas Mizzili. He's still living a delusional life by referring to what he did as a doctor, not as an assistant to a mass murderer, not as a partner in the crime. No, he's like, "No, I did this for this new medicine and..." The fact that he worked for a vicious criminal is of no... It's not being repeatedly mentioned here. He mentions a few things that kind of indicate that he doesn't like the guy, but he's still referring to himself and his own actions as, "I did what I had to do." He refers to the Institute for Race, Biological, and Anthropological Investigation as the most qualified medical center in the Third Reich. Machshema v'Zichram. Though it was devoted to proving falsehoods. That's all they did over there. So the point being about is that his obsession with money, profession, and so on got him to a certain tikkun, if you will. When you read this book, you see some of the things that he had to witness. It's tragic what he had to witness and the fact that it actually happened.

2:41:56Trying to just brief into a couple of things and we'll move on to the next part. At seven in the morning, the doctors in my section, as well as the personnel of the hospital, lined up in front of the barracks to be counted. That took about two or three minutes. They also counted the bedridden, as well as the previous night's dead. Here, too, the dead were stretched out beside the living. During breakfast, which we took in our rooms, I met my colleagues. The head doctor of Barracks Hospital Number 12 was Dr. Levy, a professor at the University of Strasbourg. His associate was Dr. Grass, a professor at the University of Zagreb. Both were excellent practitioners, known throughout Europe for their skill. With practically no medicines, working with defective instruments and in surroundings where the most elementary aseptics and antiseptics were lacking. Unmindful of their personal tragedy, unconscious of fatigue and danger, they did their best to care for the sick and ease the suffering of their fellow men. In Auschwitz-KZ, the healthiest individual was given three or four weeks to collapse from hunger. Filth blows from the Nazis' yimach shemam, I'm adding the yimach shemam part,

2:43:24and in human labor. How can one describe the state of those who were already organically ill when they reached the camp? In circumstances where it was difficult to forget that one was even a human being and a doctor besides, they practiced their profession with complete devotion. Their example was faithfully followed by the subaltern medical corps, which was composed of six doctors. which was composed of six doctors. They were all young French or Greek doctors. For three years, they had been eating the KZ bread made from wild chestnuts, sprinkled with sawdust. Their wives, their children, their relatives, their friends had been liquidated upon arrival or rather burned. If by chance they had been directed to the right-hand column, they had been unable to stand up under the ordeal for more than two or three months.

2:44:24and the chosen had disappeared into the flames. Overcome by despair, resigned, apathetic, they nevertheless attempted with utmost devotion to help the living dead whose fate was in their hands. For the prisoners of the hospital were the living dead. One had to be seriously ill before being admitted to the KZ Hospital. For the most part, they were living skeletons, dehydrated, emaciated, their lips were cracked, their faces swollen and had incurable dysentery. Their bodies were covered with enormous and repulsive running sores and suppurating ulcers. Such were the KZ-6. Such were those one had to care for and comfort. So this is just one example of the doctors that were there. They were actually helping certain people, but too delusional. Now, this is one aspect of the doctor. Now he's saying himself, what did he do? Here. No one present knew that I had spent three years at the Borzal Institute of Forensic Medicine where I had had

2:45:48a chance to study every possible form of suicide under the supervision of Professor Strasman. I realized that as a prisoner doctor, 8450, that was the tattoo he had on him, I had better remember all that Dr. Nicholas Nizili had formerly known. I began the dissection. I proceeded to open first the skull, then the thorax, and finally the abdominal cavity. I extracted all the organs, noted everything that was abnormal, and replied without hesitation to all the numerous questions they fired at me. Their faces showed that their curiosity had been satisfied, and from their approving nods and glances, I surmised that I had passed the examination. After a second dissection, Dr. Mengele ordered me to prepare the statement of my findings. Somebody would stop by to pick it up on the following day. After the SS doctors had left, I conversed a while with my fellow prisoners. On the following day, three more bodies arrived for dissection. The same public appeared, but this time the atmosphere was less tense, for they knew me and had seen my work. Those present took a more lively interest, made a number of astute and provocative comments, and on certain points, the discussion grew quite animated.

2:47:12After the departure of the SS doctors, several French and Greek doctors paid me a call and asked me if I would instruct them in the technique of lumbar punctures. They also requested me to grant them authorization to try the operation on some of the bodies given to me, a request I readily granted. I was deeply moved to find that even inside the barbed wire fences, they continued to manifest such an interest in their profession. attempted to puncture, and after six or seven tries, at last succeeded. Then, they withdrew, quite pleased with their afternoon's work. So, in essence, his job in the concentration camps was to do all types of experiments on dead bodies, sometimes not so dead. He says that they had a peculiar interest in twins, and... twins, kids that were twins, young and old. He goes into detail about how he cut up every part of their body, discovering this and discovering that. And he says, even in the beginning of the book, that being Mengele's assistant—Mengele, we know him as Malach HaMavet—and

2:48:33He was by far the most vicious human being that’s lived probably in the last few thousand years, probably worse than Hitler. He was a sociopath, psychopath that HaKadosh Baruch Hu used as a staff to strike us worse than anybody, by literally taking human beings, living or dead, and making different experiments in the name of science. Now, most of the people were Jewish people, but they did take about 4,500 people that were Gypsies who were Catholic. And they found them very peculiar because they had a lot of deformities. Many of them had deformities. Some were midgets, some were giants, and many different twins with different eye colors, and so on. In the name of science, they did a lot of experiments on these people.

2:49:47What's the reason? I mean, this is a very good book to read to understand the level of evil that our nation has endured, but also the level of evil that a human being can do without a lot of conscience. But also, what I found interesting is the same thing that the psychiatrist/psychologist who wrote the preface to the book finds interesting: how deluded the author is. the Jew, the Nicholas, Nicholas Nazi, how deluded he is to think that what he did was actually medicine. Like, he's still referring to his work as work. He's still connecting this to what he did and how he's like, uh, he lost his mind too, you know. Um, and it's, in essence, just a rationalizing of things in an irrational way. So... There's a lot of things that you can see in this book that are really tragic. I remember one time he gives the details of what happened in one of the places where they killed 3,000 people in the gas chambers. They killed 3,000 people in one shot. And he gives the detail because he was the supervisor.

2:51:15He was a supervisor. He was given this position to be a supervisor. So he had free access to everything. He saw the gas chambers, saw the before, the after, what happened. And it was literally like a factory where they would go. They had a whole system where they had all of the people march. And then, because they starved them to death pretty much, nobody drank even a sip of water for five days. he's rushing. These Nazis appreciated animals and plants much more than they appreciated Jews. So right outside the crematorium where they're burning the bodies and the gas chambers, they had a beautiful lawn that was being watered by fountains. So the Jews, as soon as they saw the running water, ran to the water, and the Nazis let them. Because they know they can't stop them. At this point, they haven't drunk in five days. Let them drink this water. Why? Because they're about to burn them anyway. Such is the viciousness of these people. So they let them drink whatever they want to drink. They all filled up pots and pans as if thinking that they're going to be able to leave. No one knew for sure that they're going to be killed. They just didn't fight. They didn't have the inertia. They didn't have the ability to fight. Point being, they went, they got some water. Then they all enter into a building. And then they're told by this loudspeaker

2:52:42all removed their clothes, 3,000 people in a room that's 2,000 yards—two football fields long. They were told to remove their clothes; everybody went naked. They were instructed to make sure to hang their clothes and shoes on the same hanger so they wouldn't get lost. These Germans... they were right. They really did mean it. They said make sure that the shoes and the clothes are put on the same hanger so it doesn't get lost. Not because it's going to get lost for you. Because we want to know who they belong to. We can put it in our records before we dispose of it. Before we sell it. That's how precise the Nazis were. They wrote down literally everything. Whose tooth belonged to this one. What number belonged to that one. What medicine this one took. What shoe size. What eye color. Everything. Everything. They documented everything. I'm going to tell you some stories that were actually said. You have to listen to this. At least once in your life.

2:53:47Just to know what happens when you don't listen to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. As a nation, not as individuals only. Now, they all go in, they take off their clothes. Especially the women felt uncomfortable, Hashem yerachem, all these strangers seeing them, but they had no choice. They gave them 10 minutes to remove all their clothes. And told them they all had to get disinfected. The Nazis had this thing about everybody else being infected, even though they were the ones truly infected. So they took them into rooms. In reality, there was nothing disinfected. That was the room where they were to kill them. Disinfection actually did happen, but only to the clothes. They took all the clothes that were hanging after everybody died. They took all the clothes and sent them to a place to disinfect them because the Nazis would actually send them back to factories to rehash and resell them. That's part of the way they made money, by selling all these clothes. I mean, imagine you have millions and millions of people bringing clothes fabric. You rehash it, and there were many, many factories. They made a huge amount of money from it. Now, second...

2:55:05They sent them into the gas chamber, and no one knew that this was a gas chamber. Even some that knew didn't have the courage to do anything about it. They said that every day, a different type of government car would show up with the poison itself. It was never the Nazis; they were very particular about not having this poison in the camps. It would always come every day at the same time by a different official, and usually, it was the Red Cross. The Red Cross, the one that many Jews donate to this day billions and billions of dollars, came. They came aside from helping some people that drowned in the tsunami, and they also came with the poison gas. help the Nazis. Where's the money? So they came, they brought the poison gas that he writes in his book. You don't have to, like, say, "Oh, it's in the book." Anyway, they came with the poison gas. They brought, for this particular case, four canisters. By the way, that poison gas was developed by a Nobel Prize winner who was a Jew.

2:56:24they threw the gas in, or they had the mask on, they threw the gas in, and then he says that he saw it. Within three minutes, everybody died, but they still let it go. Nobody entered for 20 minutes, just to make sure there's no reserves, there's no gas left, and so on. And he says the worst possible thing that I remember that he said is that the worst part was seeing what it looked like after. because it wasn't what we would imagine, which is just, okay, there was gas, everybody just dropped dead on their spot. It wasn't that. It was literally a pile, a mountain of bodies, where everybody was trying to get to the top, to the ceiling, because the gas was on the bottom. So everybody was trying to live just another second longer. because the air was still okay here. And then they didn’t have the bodies, didn’t have the strength. Somebody would beat them up and they would climb on top of them. So everybody literally just completely lost their acknowledgment of any human being around them, whether it’s their son or their daughter or their parent. Whoever it was, everyone fought for just another second to live. Hashem Yirachem. Hashem Yirachem. And then after that,

2:57:40Explains that first, they would clean everything because the body has a reflex when a person dies that it defecates. So, they would first clean all of the bodies, and then they would go into a processing system. First, they would shave everybody because the Nazis would make money from the hair, and They shave the hair and they use the hair for different reasons, for weapons, for clothes, for different reasons. They would use the hair, so they shave everybody. Then, aside, they would take them to a certain department that was close to the crematorium in order to see if they have any gold teeth, so they could take out the gold teeth. He says that on average, they would collect almost 20 pounds of gold per day just from teeth. people that they're killing. I mean, you know what 20 pounds of gold is? It's an enormous amount, especially when it's coming in small little tidbits. That's how many thousands of people they were killing every day, and it's just from Auschwitz. We're not talking about the rest of them. Any which way that they could, you know, deform the body, destroy the body and everything, they had no concept of a life, no concept that this is an actual person with a family, with kids, with anything.

2:59:03That's how evil these sticks, these rods that HaKadosh Baruch Hu used were. We unfortunately ran out of time before the rebuke. Now, one of the stories that I've told you in the past is the story of Rav Elchonon Wasserman, alav ha-shalom. Rav Wasserman was known as an Ish Kodesh who fought for the Torah day and night. He really cried to people to do teshuva, and nothing would ever get in his way. In his biography, it says that when he came to the United States, there was a certain minhag that they would have dance parties in synagogues and And when Rav Wasserman thought about it, heard about this, he immediately rebuked the people. So one of the people said, "Listen, but Rabbi, this is how we're raising a lot of money. We're raising a lot of money from these dance parties. People don't come to shul for no reason, so they come for these dance parties." He says, "You want to build Torah off of this stuff? Off of something that's against Hashem?" "Yeah, but Rabbi, we could have a dance party for you, so we could..."

3:00:30People were so confused about what the truth was and what the fake was. They actually thought they could do this, like there was no problem. Unfortunately, today, it's happening as well. People are having casinos; it's not dance parties. They have casinos inside schools today. Baccarat Shabbaton, let's have a poker Sunday, or let's have a Super Bowl Sunday party, and at halftime, we'll do a shiur Torah. We'll be Greeks for three hours, but we'll pretend we're Jews for five minutes. This is happening everywhere. Now, Rabbi Wasserman, zt"l (zecher tzadik livracha), he taught Torah until his last day in life. The witness to many of the things that he did before he died was actually this rabbi, Rabbi Fay Moshe. He saw with his own eyes. He says that days before he died, before he was murdered by the evil Nazis, he gave a serious shiur to the people about dying al kiddush Hashem. And he explained to them how you're supposed to die al kiddush Hashem, you do a specific blessing, realize there's goodness, and so on and so forth. And Rabbi Fay Moshe saw this, saw this happening, saw him get murdered.

3:01:56Now, this same Rav Fay Moshe was... Oh, this is dead again. Something's going on. This very famously was something out of this world because to witness all of the disasters that he witnessed and stay sane is already a ma'alah. It's already something special. It's already something out of this world and

3:03:03But imagine I tell you that somebody not only stayed normal, in fact, improved. In fact, increased the Kedusha in the world. Through the concentration camps, through the ghettos, through the punishment, through the disaster, through the death, increased the Kedusha in the world. Sanctified HaKadosh Baruch Hu's name even more. Wrote a series of halacha books inside the concentration camps. Five-volume halachas of some of the most complicated halachas that you could possibly imagine inside concentration camps. Built a Beit Midrash in the ghetto. Synagogues in the ghetto. Such a thing is like, "Oh, yeah, maybe in your dreams, Rabbi." No, but this is actually what happened. I have a file mostly... Series of halacha books inside the concentration camps. Inside the concentration camps, five-volume halachot of some of the most complicated halachot that you could possibly imagine. Built a Beit Midrash in the ghetto. Synagogues in the ghetto. Such a thing is like, "Oh, yeah, maybe in your dreams, Rabbi." No, but this is actually what happened. I have a file mostly...

3:04:04Lava Shalom was a Ish Kodesh who wrote Shut Mima'amakim, which is a five-volume book of halachot that he actually wrote inside the ghetto. Now These halachot were the questions that were presented to him while he was inside the ghetto, while Jews were being killed in the middle of the street for no reason whatsoever, while people were being tortured, while all types of horrors were happening to our brothers and sisters, our grandparents. People were coming to him with questions: "What should I do here? What should I do there?" Now, this book has many, many stories in it. I haven't finished it, but with Hashem's help, I will one day. He writes, there's a chapter here, it's interesting, where he talks about all types of mitzvot they did and all types of tzaddikim that lived at that time and died and got killed and so on. But there's an interesting chapter that says the spiritual life, how they studied Torah.

3:05:28how they studied Torah inside the ghettos. He said, throughout history, even during times of terrible persecution, the sounds of Torah study could be heard emanating from the homes and synagogues of the Jewish people. Our ghetto joined in this sacred tradition. One outstanding place of study was the home of the revered teacher Rav Avraham Grodzinski. The spiritual dean of Slabodka Yeshiva. In his home, Torah study never ceased. People studied in groups and sometimes individually. Rav Grodzinski would give a lecture in Mussar for all who were present. Rav Yechezkel Bernstein, one of the deans of the yeshiva, or Yisrael, one of Slabodka's preparatory yeshivas, had a study group in Talmud Tractate Nedarim. Tzaddik Rabbi Yisrael Lubchansky, son-in-law of Yosef Orvitz of Novardok, lectured there in Shaarei Teshuva, the classic Mussar book by Rabbi Yonah of Gerondi. In fact, as mentioned previously, the great gaon Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman had been lecturing on tractate Niddah when he was seized and taken to the 9th fort and killed.

3:06:46See, he's talking to you. They're learning Torah. Not learning Torah like they're coming forward, they're hearing a five-minute YouTube video on the ride to work or while they're smoking a cigarette, but they only really remember like one out of the five minutes. We're talking about learning three, four, five, six hours a day of Torah inside the ghetto. Through the concentration camps, through the tortures, through every possible nightmare a human being can endure, they're learning Torah. The people's dedication to Torah was mamash unbelievable. A long string of pearls was woven into the fabric of that awesome period in which, despite everything, a life full of beauty and wealth was revealed. In my duty to record several events,

3:07:49that future generations will be able to learn what spiritual life was like during the Jews' time of suffering and isolation, even during the bitter and dark ghetto years when murder was the order of the day. When the majority of Torah leaders and the yeshiva students were martyred, when death threatened every Jew every minute, still Kovno's Jews continued to go to houses of worship to study and to pray, to recite Tehillim, and to pour out our hearts to the world's Creator. This recharged our energies, enabling us to continue living until the One Above would take pity on Klal Yisrael and rescue us from our horrifying situation. Now, these tzaddikim continue to do this, and as the Rav answers all types of questions, these questions will show you what kind of tzaddikim we had. pour out our hearts to the world's Creator. This recharged our energies, enabling us to continue living until the One Above would take pity on Klal Yisrael and rescue us from our horrifying situation. Now, these tzaddikim continue to do this, and as the Rav answers all types of questions, these questions will show you what kind of tzaddikim we had. So in Shu"t Mima'amakim, Chelek Aleph, Halacha number five, Siman five, regarding cooking on Shabbat in the ghetto, somebody came to Rav Oshri and said to him, "Listen, they force us to work on Shabbat in different jobs, and I work in a kitchen, and they feed us this black soup."

3:09:15Now, I could, because I work in the kitchen, better my own circumstances by eating this black soup that I'm cooking. But am I allowed to? Because it's Shabbat. I'm not allowed to cook on Shabbat. And if a Jew cooks on Shabbat, you're not allowed to eat his food. You're benefiting from someone violating Shabbat. But this person that's starving is coming to Rav Moshe and says, "Listen, I work in the kitchen. I can better my situation by eating the food that I'm cooking anyway. I'm violating Shabbat. Am I allowed to eat or not allowed to eat? Because if I'm not allowed to eat, no problem. I won't eat. I'll starve." That's how much they honor the Shabbat. And Rav Moshe says, "Allowed." Why allowed? Because it's for the sake of Pikuach Nefesh. It's a life risk. Person that's not eating is most likely will not survive the day, not just from the work and the slavery they endured, but also because of the toil on the body and the other things that they did to them. Next, there's a fantastic story here in this book that

3:10:31insane. There was a family from Kovno that pretty much pretended like they were not Jews for years, like their whole life. He lived among the goyim, pretended to be goy, acted like goyim, did business with goyim. But who says, if you don't make kiddush on yourself, I'll send the goy to do havdalah. If you don't sanctify yourself, I'll send the goy in order to separate, to show you that you are different. Even if you don't want to be different, you don't want to count yourself as a Jew, and you want to unite with the non-Jew, I'll make the non-Jew as my tool to separate and remind you that you are a Jew still, even if you don't want to be. Now this family lived as non-Jews to such an extent that their son was not even given a brit milah. A mitzvah that even atheists today give. Many atheists even give brit milah to their kids. Most Jews, whether they believe or not, still give the brit milah to their kids. Some don't, but for the most part they do. Still a high rate, baruch Hashem. Here, this family in Kovno was so assimilated that they already got to a point where their son already grew up without any brit milah.

3:11:55Now, the son that was in this ghetto saw the situation of his brothers and sisters, his fellow Jews, because the Nazis did not care if you cared about your Judaism or not. Whether you cared about your Judaism or not was irrelevant to them. If you're a Jew, you're a Jew. And they threw you in a concentration camp, in the ghetto, and tortured you and did whatever they wanted to do to you. Now, this young kid I believe he was a teenager, 13, 14 years old, 15 years old. He had a moment of emet in his mind. He saw that all of the people were Jews, just like he is. They look like Jews, and he didn't. But he's being tortured for being a Jew, even though he doesn't act like one; he doesn't know anything about it. he says, "If I'm going to die as a Jew with the rest of my brothers, why don't I just live as a Jew too?" And he went to the rabbis and asked them to give him a brit milah. Young kid, teenager. No matter the fact that it's pikuach nefesh.

3:13:19No matter the fact that it's possible that from just the pain and agony, the Nazis will just get upset that you have any pain and you're moaning one extra moan and they shoot you for no reason. So if I'm going to die anyway as a Jew, let me live as a Jew. So what's the question? The question is, it comes to Rav Oshri, who saw this kid, met this kid, and had a question about this kid. What's the question? In chapter 1, Siman 8, it says, Are you allowed to get a Brit Milah from an Avaryan? What's an Avaryan? It says that in the entire ghetto at that time, during the period when the kid wanted a Brit Milah, there was only one mohel. There was only one person who knew how to perform a Brit Milah. The problem was, he was a Mechalel Shabbat. He was a Mechalel Shabbat. Are you allowed to get a Brit Milah from a Mechalel Shabbat? He's considered avaryan. He's considered excluded. Why? You will have to get a Brit Milah from him. He violated Shabbat. On one hand, we learned already today that a Mechalel Shabbat is considered like an idol worshiper. So how can you get a Brit Milah? On the other hand, we have a situation here. This kid wants to be Jewish. He's a Jew, but he wasn't given the Jewish stamp on his body, on his flesh. And he wants to be. So Rav Oshri says...

3:14:47That according to halacha, it's allowed because this is a sha'at ha'dachak. This is a time of persecution. And we cannot, you know, we can't find others. It's not like we have another choice of another mohel. If there's another mohel available that's a shomer Shabbat, then this guy is completely forbidden. But if he's the only choice, then you're allowed. It's called a sha'at ha'dachak. So here you see what kind of questions came inside a concentration camp, inside a ghetto. Yes? I have a question on that. What defines a time of persecution? Because, like, Muslims believe that the Western society, growing the way it is, that they're at a time of persecution. Are you inclined to agree the same towards us, that as we watch society kind of unravel around us, does it allow for certain, I mean, were we foolish to think that, like, oh, everything is fine and dandy, or? Right now, right now, we're in the exile. We have the suffering of the exile, but it's not a time of persecution. A time of persecution is when it's legal to kill Jews, when it's simply legal. Now, if you kill a Jew, even though I don't think that the anti-Semitic police force or the anti-Semitic governor or the anti-Semitic whatever person is necessarily going to lose any sleep over it, and...

3:16:12Okay, but still, nonetheless, that person still has to get arrested. That person that killed the Jew or shot the Jew still has to get arrested. But the persecution, per se, is when, in essence, it becomes allowed. So, there is a justice system, even though, yes, you're right, it is technically an illusion. There is somewhat of a justice system. I mean, technically, sometimes there is more favor and protection for Jews in America than there is in Eretz Yisrael. Like, for example, to be a soldier in Eretz Yisrael is more dangerous than being a soldier in America. Not to say that you should be a soldier in America, but it's actually safer to be a soldier in America than it is to be a soldier in Israel. Reason why? A soldier in America, if somebody messes with him, if an Arab, you know, has a knife in his hand, a soldier in America just takes his gun, shoots him in the face, and you're finished. Why? You're allowed. The guy's trying to kill you, you're allowed to kill him 100%. In Eretz Yisrael, if the guy has a knife in his hand, if you kill him, you go to jail.

3:17:13You go to jail for a while. So what does that mean? All the soldiers in Eretz Yisrael are scared to death. They're not scared of the Arabs; they're scared of the government because they're not allowed to defend themselves. This is even persecution against our own kind, our own people, our own protectors, if you will. Some of the members in the government of Eretz Yisrael, unfortunately, are Arab terrorists. Openly, Arab terrorists support terrorism, but nonetheless, the stupidity of their fake democracy tells them that you're supposed to allow them in there. So, yes, there is an illusionary system that people depend on, if you will, but it's still not considered persecution or a sh’at ne’ak, because it's still illegal. So they're still not allowed to do certain things. They're not allowed to persecute the person openly, not to kill Jews openly, and so on and so forth. But it is something we've been dealing with as a consequence of the exile in general. There are parts of the exile that are worse than others. For example, the Holocaust was a time that was much worse than today or really any time in recent history, whereas today is counted as one of the better times.

3:18:28that the Jews have endured in the last 2,000 years. Spiritually, yeah. Spiritually, we've been on a steady decline since Moshe Rabbeinu. We've been on a spiritual decline. But as far as the material aspect of it and physicality, it's a much better time. Spiritually, yeah, of course. It's a Yeridat HaDoros. We're declining every generation. Okay. Okay. a lot of the people that are in government were openly anti-Semitic when it was okay to be openly anti-Semitic. You know, and now there's more of it than there was, let's say, in a previous generation. But the previous generation, there was more than there is now and

3:19:39i mean it's well known that the, uh, Kennedy family was, uh, anti-Semitic, that, uh, Henry Ford was, uh, a Nazi, that many Americans were, uh, you know, what or, or pro-Nazis. There was actually even an event that took place in Madison Square Garden, a very famous event that they have a video of, uh, where there was a, uh, Nazi, uh, gathering in Madison Square Garden in New York. 30, 40,000 people gathering in the name of Hitler at the time of the Holocaust. Meaning they were American Nazis. It wasn't Germans. It was American Nazis. And thousands of them. And many of them still exist today. So it's a... On one end, HaKadosh Baruch Hu is favoring us by giving us peace at this time. But at the same token, He gave us that peace in the past. Before the review came, He constantly gives us chances. You know, before Germany turned into the animal that it really was all along, but Hashem allowed it to be, it was a fantastic place—no less than America is today. Jews were doing extremely well financially there. They were politically powerful. They were financially powerful. They were healthy. They were doing a lot of good things over there until Hashem...

3:21:04showed the Jews who the Nazis really are. So that has happened many times throughout history. It's not the first time or the last time, and unfortunately, it's no secret that the Prophet says that the nation that will be used as the stick against Am Yisrael at the end, in Gog and Magog, is the nation of the north. The only place in the world that's called by the name of the north is North America. It's not North Russia. it's not North anything else. It's called North America. Everybody knows North America. It's not to say that every American is going to be bad. It's just to say that generally, that's what's going to happen. Anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional. But for now, HaKadosh Baruch Hu is allowing us to be here and to try to do good. The only reason why I'm here is because I know that there's a need for people to do teshuva here much more than there's a need for me in Eretz Yisrael. If it wasn't for that, trust me, I'd leave tomorrow. I'd leave today, actually.

3:22:05I have no desire whatsoever to stay in this country. I can't stand it. But it gives a lot of freedoms and conveniences that I'm very, very grateful for. But if it were up to me, I'd leave. Why? Because I know that even though Eretz Yisrael is missing certain things that I became very accustomed to and like, Even something as simple as an Amazon shipment arriving at my house and eliminating my need to go to a store is a convenience I appreciate. It helps me become more religious. Why? Because I don't have to go to a store and see all the immodest people. So, it helps me. That is a convenience. But even those conveniences are not worth the educational system that we have here. The educational system in America is a pure disaster. So, at some point, I would have to do something. Today is not that day. But that's not to say that we think anything different. It doesn't change the eventual prophecy. It doesn't change anything else. There's a need. There's a time. There's a place. You do what you have to. What's going to happen tomorrow or next week or next year or in 10 years from now? God only knows. For now, there's a need right now. Same thing that everybody else has to look at. Don't get so, you know, stuck.

3:23:12in your place today, you know, building houses and expanding on them and expanding and expanding and falling in love with the materialism of the world that you live in, so much so that you can have a hard time leaving. That's what happened to the German Jews. They built themselves such anchors that when it was time to leave, they thought, "How can I leave this house? I just finished remodeling it." I leave this business. I just bought it. How could I leave this? I just did this. Don't get me wrong, I mean you have to associate with materialism to some extent, but don't get it twisted. It's the same thing with the government system. People have so much faith in Bibi Netanyahu or in Donald Trump or in anybody. None of these people will have power to... above Hashem. Every one of them will be directed by HaKadosh Baruch Hu. When push comes to shove, HaKadosh Baruch Hu will press the buttons and direct whoever He wants to direct, however He wants to direct them. If He wants to use Trump as a stick, He'll use Trump as a stick. If He wants to use him as a staff, He'll use him as a staff.

3:24:16If He wants to use Bibi as a stick, He'll use him as a stick. As a staff, He'll use him as a staff. Not to use him at all, throw them both in the garbage. Don't get it twisted thinking, no, no, I'm going to vote for this guy. No, I'm going to vote for that guy. People are going crazy about this thing that's happening in California right now. The public school system is trying to start a new program that, in so many words, is anti-Semitic. An anti-Semitic educational program that excludes Jews. California, it's a major city. It's a major, major state. It's not like some middle-of-nowhere place in Oregon where there are six Jews and a deli, you know. You're talking about California. Okay, we're talking about California trying to implement an educational system that's anti-Semitic, you know, and against Jews and so on and so forth, and Jews are going crazy about this. You're missing the point. It's not the educational program, it's the fact that this even bothers you because technically, if If you were following what the Torah says, it shouldn't affect you at all. Why? You're not going to public school. Let them teach whatever they want. What do you care? Let them teach that they came from monkeys. Maybe they did. Who knows? I don't know. Teach Torah to your children. You're not going to public school. But that's the problem. We want to send our kids with the goyim. And we don't like the goyim. We want to teach the stuff that technically is relevant to goyim.

3:25:40So, that's the thing. That's the problem. We want to have our cake and eat it too. And that's why Hashem at some point runs out of patience. And that has happened many times. It happened in the Holocaust and, unfortunately, will happen again in the war of Gog and Magog. So, as the outside world starts to crumble around us, are we to only illuminate by example rather than try to influence? Both. The best influence is by example. Meaning, you cannot lead others to good if you're not doing good yourself. You can't tell people to keep Shabbat if you're driving on Shabbat. You can't drive a truck around with a sign saying, "You should keep Shabbat." You can't do that. You can't tell people to keep Torah and mitzvot when you're stealing and you're lying and you're cheating and so on. You can't. This is why many of these organizations that are telling people to do mitzvot get them to do mitzvot, but they don't get them to do teshuva. Because they're giving people the feeling that this one mitzvah is like kula Torah kula. It's like I'm buying the entire Torah by putting on tefillin one time a week, one time a month, or whenever the rabbi comes. I'm buying the entire Torah kula by, I don't know, giving a donation once a year on Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur. I'm buying the entire Torah.

3:26:58the disaster that we have today is that we have such an infatuation with money that, unfortunately, we're looking at things the wrong way. People are looking at things the wrong way where they're saying, "Listen, if I don't get money from this guy on Yom Kippur, then I won't be able to fund my kollel. If I don't fund my kollel, then I won't be able to teach my kids. If I can't teach my kids, then the situation will get worse." It's as if you're taking this one guy as a sacrifice. He's a sacrifice to save my ten guys. Where in the Torah does it say that it's allowed to do such a thing? You're not allowed to kill one person in order to save ten. It's not such a thing. You're not allowed to tell them, "Oh, I'm going to lie to him and let him live a lie, and he can continue going out with the Goyah so I can get his money and let my ten young kids eat." No one says that. That's not allowed. Why? Because that's the mind that we talked about before that's not straight, that's crooked. They try to, you know, make the pig kosher. And that's the problem. And we see that at the time of the Holocaust, there were many people like that, but there were also many tzaddikim too. But unfortunately, when a decree comes down from HaKadosh Baruch Hu to a national decree, there's no such thing as righteous and wicked anymore. You see it throughout all of history.

3:28:23There was no such thing as righteous and wicked. There was simply a nation called Israel because all of Israel is responsible for each other. So, the interesting part here is that you see that some of the fantastic examples that the Rambam says are about these good people, these people that were glued to the Torah even when they had all the reasons and excuses in the world. To violate the Torah. They had pikuach nefesh as an excuse, a default excuse. Pikuach nefesh puts the entire Torah on hold. If you have a life risk, you can put the entire Torah on hold. If there's a life risk, you don't have to keep Shabbat. If there's a life risk, you can eat whatever you want. If there's a life risk, you can work whenever you want. You can do a lot of things because of life risk. They had life risk, but they didn't do anything. They actually became even more strict with the law. showing that it's a lot more than a social thing, or "I was born this way," or "I was brainwashed," or any of the nonsense that people say, or that's why they're religious. It has nothing to do with that. It's because they were literally glued to Hashem even when push came to shove, and they understood clearly that this stick, this hitting that they're getting is from Heaven, is a decree, and somehow is going to turn out for the good.

3:29:47Even though they just saw a family relative or somebody just died in front of them, another shocking story in this same section about brit milah is that it says that in 126, 126 actually says that... These Nazis hated these zealous Jews, but they liked to torture them. How? By trying to destroy their neshamah. By trying to destroy them morally, similar to how the Egyptians did it. So, he says that a Jew came to Rav Oshri and asked him, what can I do about putting on tefillin? Because the Nazis saw him laying tefillin, but rather than kill him like they usually do, what do they do? They tattoo a cross on his arm where he puts the tefillin. So now, every time he wants to put on tefillin, there's a cross there. So in essence, they're saying, oh, you're praying to our God. You're praying to Jesus. So the poor Jew comes to Rav Oshri. He says, what do I do? Can I put on tefillin or is it to their God?

3:31:07That's how, I mean, you ask somebody today, an average guy who doesn't even keep Shabbat, what should he do? Of course, he should put on tefillin. Sure, why? I don't know, come on, it's a mitzvah. It's a mitzvah. But that's a response out of pride, not out of knowledge. It's out of pride. You're proud to be a Jew, but in reality, what are you doing to be a Jew? You're proud to be a Jew, but how? How are you proud to be a Jew other than saying you like kosher food once in a while? What? These people actually wanted to know, can I do it or not? Can I do it or not? The answer is yes. The answer is yes. Then it says, also a halachic question about putting up mezuzot. Rabbi Oshri says there is no need to put up mezuzot. Why? A mezuzah is only for a place you plan on staying in. Surely we would leave this hellhole, he says, the minute we get a chance. Then in Chapter 2, Siman 10. The Nazis forbade pregnancy among the Jews. Anyone who came into the ghetto or the camp pregnant would be killed on the spot, in the middle of the street. One of the ways they destroyed the morale of the Jews was by literally killing their wives when they were already late into pregnancy.

3:32:29But Am Yisrael was zealous for HaKadosh Baruch Hu, who cared less about what the Nazis were doing. They cared about what HaKadosh Baruch Hu wants, and women still got pregnant and hid their pregnancies. In one case, a pregnant woman needed to find a location to have the baby, and she knew that the Nazis forbade the Jews from entering the hospital. There was a hospital in the ghetto, but you weren't allowed to enter it if you were pregnant. In essence, the real reason to go to the hospital, you're not allowed to go to the hospital. So she had to go find somewhere, a place to go have the baby. And right in front of Rav Oshry, a Nazi identified that she was pregnant and killed her on the spot, in the middle of the street. Shot her in the heart. Now the Jews took her body and one of the Jews had in mind, wait a minute, look, she's at least eight months pregnant. If we take the baby out right now, we could save the baby.

3:33:32But look at how sharp their minds were. We're already excited about this baby right now. But look how sharp their minds of Torah were. Wait a minute. Maybe she's not 100% dead yet. And if we actually performed the surgery, we'd cut her life short by an extra few seconds or extra few minutes, which is murder. That's why in Judaism you're not allowed to pull the plug. Ever. As long as there's a life, as long as the person is living, you're not allowed to pull the plug. Even one second, not allowed. One second could be a lifetime of suffering that he has that allows him to repent for things here instead of over there. There's actually a very famous story of some doctor in Eretz Yisrael that took the initiative and pulled the plug on a patient when the family refused to pull the plug. The family didn't want to pull the plug, but the doctor said, "Listen, this patient has no chance in the world of recovering." He's never going to recover. He's suffering. Maximum, he's got another couple of days. Why should we waste the bed? The family didn't want to do it. And the doctor, in his mercy, in his fake mercy, decided to pull the plug. The patient died. And the doctor went to sleep that night and had the patient show up in his dream, yelling and screaming and cursing him.

3:35:00me, "Why did you kill me, you murderer? I had only a few more hours to live. But now, because of you, they're judging me in Heaven that I have to go to Gehinnom because of you for an x amount of time. For that time, I promise you, I'm gonna torture you, and I'm gonna do this to you, and I'm gonna make your life Gehinnom because you stole it." So the guy, in the beginning, didn't think much of it. He thought it was just a crazy dream. "Maybe I watched too many movies," he thought. didn't think much of it. Went back to sleep. The next day, same exact dream again. "I'm going to destroy you. I'm going to do this." Three, four, five times he had the same dream over and over again. Eventually, he got to the point where he thought there's something wrong with this dream because he actually started getting some physical symptoms. He went to the rabbi. I don't know who the rabbi was, but the rabbi said... You have to do teshuva. You killed somebody. He goes, no, but this, but that. He goes, no, no, that's a real thing. It's really happening. And it's only going to get worse. And the doctor actually ended up doing teshuva. I think it was a story from maybe 30 years ago, something like that. Yes? Well, the person had an amount of suffering that he was going to be able to endure by living an extra few more hours as a result of some sins that he committed during his life.

3:36:21Instead of sending him to get home, you've got some suffering in this world. But because that doctor pulled the plug, he had less suffering in this world, so he starts to pay for it. So now he has to pay for it over there. So now the doctor ended up doing teshuva. This poor woman hid the baby, but then the Nazis, yimach shemam, found it and killed the woman in the middle of the street. The Jews took the body and brought it into the hospital and then came to bring Rav Oshri and asked him a halachic question: Are we allowed to open her up right now and take the baby out to save the baby? Probably still save the baby. Or would it be killing the mother quicker? Rav Oshri says you're allowed. 100% allowed. Save the baby. They perform the surgery and they save the baby. And before you get too happy, Remember what I told you about how pedantic the Nazis are, and how precise they are, and how they write down everything. Moments after the baby was born, the Nazis came into the hospital to get the information about the woman they had just killed, so they could put it into their little books. Before they burn themselves and the books in Gehinnom, they want to put it in their books. They go inside the place and they see there's a baby.

3:37:51They couldn't believe that they saved the baby. The Nazi got so angry, he took the baby and smashed its skull against the wall, killing the baby. How about she writes this in both books because I saw this with my own eyes. This is what happened to our brothers and sisters. This is a form of how a prayer gets rejected. You prayed. You did. I still don't want it. Why? I should have prayed before. But the fact that they thought about this question inside the concentration camp, inside the ghetto, is something that should fascinate you even more than the disaster I just told you about.

3:38:54Chapter four of Shut Maharam Schick, he says that his friend Rav Goldstein, who dealt with the halacha of the crash of the students from Chile, that crashed. There was a movie made about it called "Alive." It was a crash of students in a plane. I think it was a soccer team or something like that, and they crashed on a mountain, and since there was no food and no means of survival, they ended up eating each other in order to survive. So Rav Goldstein, a friend of Rav Moshe Schick, asked him the question: Are we allowed to eat human flesh if we need to survive? Not to commit murder in order to eat them, but if someone is already dead and Are you allowed to eat them? And this answer is fascinating not because of the yes or no part, but rather because of the explanation after. Rav Moshe Schick says, because it's after somebody dies...

3:40:09If somebody is in the same situation, where they have to save their life, where there's an issue of pikuach nefesh, you're stranded on a mountain, you're stranded in a concentration camp, you're stranded in some place in Gehinom somewhere, and you need to eat, and the only thing that's there is actual flesh, you're actually allowed to eat it. But he says, this did not happen in the Kovno ghetto. This did not happen in the Kovno Ghetto by the Jews. Even though we saw Russian soldiers who were goyim that would eat each other after they were starving, they started eating each other. The pride of Am Yisrael is that we did not go down in kedushah even if starving, even if it led us to death itself, and preferred to die al kiddush Hashem. Meaning the nation itself, the ones that clung to Torah before the ghetto, not during the ghetto. Again, before the ghetto, they stayed holy throughout the entire ordeal and did not do this. Even though technically you're allowed. Even though technically you're allowed, they didn't want to do it. Because of how much they understood that each Jew, even their body, is holy.

3:41:39The author of Or HaChaim in one of his commentaries says, "Why was the First Temple destroyed?" The same question we asked before. We know there were three sins: idolatry, immorality, and bloodshed (murder). Second Temple. We know also that they fulfilled mitzvot and they did kind deeds, so why was it destroyed? It says there was senseless hatred among them, which shows us that the three sins are equivalent to this one sin. What do we learn from this? Chazal say, better to have the claws of the earlier generations that murdered, that were immoral, that worshipped idols, than the baseless hatred of our later generations. Because if you contend that this is not so, the Beit HaMikdash is proof. For what was returned to the former but not yet has been returned to the latter. He says that not only is it a...

3:43:05equivalent, that the Sinat Chinam is equivalent to the three sins, it's actually worse, Rabbi Yochanan says. Why? Because we see that the three crimes, the murder, the immorality, the idolatry, they did Teshuvah for. In seventy years they fixed it, and that's it. But with the Sinat Chinam, we still haven't done Teshuvah. We still haven't done Teshuvah. So it's better to have the murderers and the rapists than to have the people that are saying Lashon Hara. Rabbi Feldman says there are four animals taught by the Sages as having a single sign, and this is symbolic of the four exiles that we will have. We have the camel, the rabbit, the hare, and the pig. Now, the first three animals are they have one sign out of the two signs required to be a kosher animal. These four animals only have one sign. The first three animals, the camel, the hare, and the rabbit, have one sign, which is that they chew their cud. That's their sign, but you know that they're not kosher because they don't have split hooves. This is symbolic of the Babylonians, the Greeks, and the Persians, and

3:44:28Whereas the pig that has the sign of the split hooves but doesn't chew its cud, that's the sign of the last exile of the Romans. Why? Why is this the case? So says Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman, he says, look, the first three exiles, those three nations were attached to physicality, to materialism. to their earthly gratification. So you can see that they pursued wealth, lust, and other forms of earthly gratification. And just like these animals, you can see that their non-kosher status is an external sign. They don't have split hooves, so the sign they have is internal. There's something in them, but the stuff that's not good, you can see already on the outside. He says, but that's why the last exile, the exile of the Romans, of Edom, is the most dangerous one. Why? Because externally it looks good. Externally it looks like it has split hooves. Meaning only if you check the pig will you find out that it doesn't chew its cud. Meaning only if you check inside you realize it's not kosher. On the outside it looks kosher. He says that's the same thing with Edom. It's the same thing with the Romans.

3:45:53The exile, the last exile, the reason why it lasts longest is not because the punishments are worse. It's not because there's more death. There was death in all of them. There was punishment in all of them. The last one is the most dangerous because the last one, by the time you find out it's not kosher, it's already too late. Because the way that the Romans try to trick you is by loving you. They present themselves as friendly and accepting, but inwardly, their hearts are tainted with selfishness and disdain. Exteriorly, they tell you, "Oh no, once you marry my daughter, once you marry my husband, once you marry my son, once you marry somebody, kumbaya, we all love each other, everything is good. Live in our country, pay taxes, you know, be with us." Until you find out that they really still consider you a Jew that they don't like, it's already too late. It's already too late. Inwardly, however, their hearts are tainted with selfishness and... they lost faith in God, believed success and failure to be in their own hands, and consequently saw their fellow man as a threat to their own pursuits. The result was sinat chinam, senseless hatred. Therefore, they were conquered by Rome, a nation which feigns civility outwardly, but inwardly is rotten with corruption. Since that's also the reason why HaKadosh Baruch Hu gave us that last exile,

3:47:13Hardest test because that was our test. It wasn't just sinat chinam. It was also the fact that we hated each other because of monetary reasons, meaning everything that we were connected to was exterior-based. He says, so the Romans, they also connect everything to exterior-based values. So therefore, because of that, that's the last test. That's the last test, and that's why a beautiful midrash says it's better for us to face the first three tests and the claws of the earlier generations than the bowels of the later generations. Because the claws, the non-kosher hooves, allude to the impure external nature of the earlier generations, but the bowels allude to the corrupt inner nature of the later generations. So here, we see that this, unfortunately, is also part of the rebuke. This is part of the rebuke on us. Because the Torah tells us clearly that any generation in which the Beit HaMikdash is not built is the same as a generation in which the Beit HaMikdash was destroyed. Every person has to look in the mirror and find a reason why the Beit HaMikdash is not being built because of them. Not because of your rabbi, not because of your chavruta, not because of the guy that comes to shul but drives on Shabbat. Look at yourself first.

3:48:41Before you look at everybody else and find a reason why the Beit HaMikdash is not being built, look at yourself. If every person looked at themselves, and we really had that happen, we could get the Beit HaMikdash built in a fantastic, fantastic way, fast, without much damage, if at all. But if everybody continues to look at everybody else and says, no, no, it's because of you, because you're a Mechalel Shabbat, that's why. Oh, it's because of you, because you waste seed, that's why. No, it's because of you, because you're still married to the Goyah, that's why. Oh, it's because of you, because you're not honest in your business, that's why. Oh, it's because of you, because you don't wear a beard, that's why. Oh, it's because of you, because you're not from my Chassidus, that's why. Oh, it's because of you, because you're this and this and this and that, oh, till no end. Guess what? We'll have another 2,000 years. Nothing's going to change. That's what we've been doing for 2,000 years. Everybody thinks that nothing is wrong with them. We point at each other. But remember, you have to rebuke. So how do we make all of these points together? First and foremost, remember what we said in the beginning. When it comes to optimism, you're obligated to be optimistic with yourself,

3:49:53you're obligated to also tell the truth to the public; you cannot be fake optimistic to the public. You can't tell everybody that they're all great and let's move on, let's forget the past. To the public, you're forbidden from doing this. Why? Because if you tell the public everything's okay, guess what? No one's going to change. Everyone's going to stay exactly the same. If you tell yourself everything's going to be okay, then you may do teshuva. Why? Because if you tell yourself everything is not okay, you'll get depressed and you'll go off the derech completely. You say, ah, listen, I've already been with the Goyah once. What's the difference if it's twice? Ah, I've already been with the Goyah twice. What's the difference if it's three times? Ah, I've already eaten treif one time. What's the difference if I eat three times? Ah, I already cheated one time. What's the difference if I cheat all the time? You start rationalizing more and more sins. So with yourself, you have to be optimistic and get yourself out of the hole. But with the public, it's the opposite. You have to tell people, you have to do teshuvah. You have to change yourself. You have to, you have to, you have to, or else we're all doomed. Or else I'm going to suffer for your sins. There's no such thing as "your sins are your problem." Your sins are my problem. My sins are your problem. And the Chachamim say it's the same thing as somebody who was in a ship and everybody had their own room. One of the guys started making noise in the room. Eventually, everybody came to the room and said, "Hey, what are you doing?" And they saw the guy digging in the floor at the bottom of the ship. They said, "Hey, what are you doing? Are you crazy? You're drowning all of us." He goes, "What are you talking about, drowning all of you? I was making a jacuzzi for myself."

3:51:14what jacuzzi? You're going to drown all of us! He goes, "Hey, mind your business. It's my room." Because now you're all in that one boat together. He goes, "It's my room." There's no "your room." There's no "I'm a Jew here because I'm in this section" or "I'm a Jew over here because of this section." There's no such thing. You have to do it by yourself, but you also have to encourage the nation. But that also means that you have to rebuke them. You have to tell people the truth. You cannot lie to them. And you cannot support organizations or individuals that lie to them. Because then you become a partner to the lie. If you're going to a shiur Torah by a liar, you are as much a liar as he is. Yeah, but I like playing basketball with him. Okay, so you'll play basketball with him inside Gehinnom. They'll give you two balls over there. One for you, one for him. Yeah, but I like the children that he gives us. It's for free. I was hungry. Okay, so over there, they'll feed you some other stuff over there. Anytime you support resha'im, you become a rasha. You have to know this. Rav Wasserman, a lover of shalom, wrote this in a teshuva. You go to a place where they tell you it's allowed to do whatever you want in Judaism. Hashem loves everybody. You are kofer by the entire Torah, just like the guy that said it. There's no difference between you.

3:52:34It's not like, no, no, but he's the one that said it. I just want to be there. Why? Well, I just want to eat some chulent, have a hot dog, play some basketball, shoot some hoops. What's the problem? If you didn't come and none of the other people came, guess what? There would be no program. He'd be by himself. Maybe he'll do teshuva. Maybe he'll actually encourage them to do teshuva. But no, you want to go, you want to have a hot dog, you want this, don't worry, they'll feed you other things also. You have to know this. Somebody has to tell you this. Because there's a lot of people like this. In Florida, in New York, in California, they're everywhere. It's like a plague. A plague all the way since the time of Jeremiah. The prophet Jeremiah says in Sefer Eicha, what was the problem? The problem that caused people not to do teshuva is these reshaim that didn't tell people the truth. No, no, no matter what, you can be counted in a minyan. But that's not what Torah says. No, no matter what, Hashem loves you. But that's not what Torah says. Well, you write a new Torah. You're writing a new Torah. Where's your Torah? What is it? Third Testament? What is it? Where does it say what you said? We have a Torah. We have Halacha. We have the Five Books of Moses. We have a Tanakh. We have all different parts of the Torah. And don't tell me 70 faces of the Torah.

3:53:46no 70 faces of the Torah if it contradicts itself. 70 faces of the Torah means that they all work within a body of laws and qualifications in order to be counted as one of the 70 faces. Your opinion is not a face, it's not one of the 70 faces. Your opinion is bupkis. If it's not within the body of laws of the Torah, it cannot be considered a face. It's not just any Joe coming up with their opinion. Oh no, 70 faces of the Torah, Rabbi. Here are the 70 faces. They're going to give you 70 faces. That's what they're going to give you. What's 70 faces? 70 faces mean it has to have certain guidelines. There are certain rules in the Torah that every chidush has to match. I'll give you a default chidush that will eliminate 99% of your chidushim. If it disagrees with Chazal, it's not a chidush. Somebody has to agree with what you're saying, at least part of it. You cannot be contradicting Rashi, Rambam, Ramban, all the Rishonim, all the Acharonim, everybody else, and you're right and everybody else is wrong. It's never going to be. If you contradict everybody else, it's not a chidush, it's not a face, it's not a nothing.

3:54:57So that means that if Rambam says that someone that's a Mechalel Shabbat cannot be counted in a minyan, and the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch writes it, literally, someone that's a Mechalel Shabbat cannot be counted in a minyan, guess what? No one in this generation, or the previous generation, or any generation, could ever say otherwise. I don't care who he was. Even Moshe Rabbeinu cannot come and change it. Even Moshe Rabbeinu cannot come and change it. Why? Finished. Once it's in the Torah, once it's in the Halacha, finished. You can't change it. No, no, but it's a tikkun of the dor. It's a difficulty of the generation. What, you think they didn't worry about this? You think this is the first generation that had problems? Which means, Rabotai, if you're going to be donating money, or even attending a shiur, Supporting giving flyers or doing anything with an organization that publicizes things that are against the Torah makes you as much a partner in it as they are. Now, I know that everybody else that's watching and everybody else here has fantastic hearts and only means well, and that's why I tell you this. Not because I think you're doing it—I have no idea what you do or don't do. I'm just telling you to think twice before you do anything and...

3:56:17Because you don't want to go to a Lama Bar thinking you have a bag of gold, but in reality it's just sand. Oh no, I did all this kiruv. What kiruv? You kill 50,000 people a week with your kiruv. What did you do? You told people everything's okay. You told them just wait for the Rebbe to come and everything's going to be okay. You told them that if you're a Chassid and you start breakdancing in the middle of the street, everything's okay. We're okay. Nothing's okay. If you could do the live again, it just stopped. there's no okay. There's no okay whatsoever. A person needs to know that

3:57:33A person needs to know what they're doing before they do it. Don't be so naive. Don't just do things because the guy who asked you to do it has a nice beard and a bunch of books in his house. You don't need to be a big talmid chacham to be clever. Who gave you a brain? Use it. Double-check: Is what he is saying, or what this Rebbetzin is saying, or what whoever is saying, in accordance with the Torah? Can I see this in a book? Is them publicizing that somebody's Mashiach even though he died? Is that in a book somewhere? No, it's not in a book? Okay, therefore that goes in the garbage. Okay, is them saying that you have to dance in the middle of the street? Is that in a book somewhere? No, it's not in a book. That goes in the garbage too. Is them saying that all of Israel has a share in the World to Come no matter what they do? Is that in a book somewhere? No, that's not in a book. That also goes in the garbage. Can I find these things in a book?

3:58:34The Rambam. Can I find this stuff in the book? If I can find it in the book, go for it all the way. Why? Therefore, you can go to Shamayim with the book. You say, Hashem, listen, I don't know what this rabbi said. All I know is it was in the book. It was in the book. The Rambam put a signature on it. I went by the book. I went by the book. You have a problem? Go to the Rambam. Don't go to me. It's not my fault. I read the Rambam. Rambam said this. Shulchan Aruch said this. I did what it said. It's not my problem anymore. It's Rambam's problem now. If it's wrong, it's Rambam's problem. If it's right, it's my problem. It's right, it's my problem. But if it's wrong, it's Rambam's problem. The reward I want. But if it's not in a book, then what? What are you going to say to them? "Oh, the rabbi told me." Yeah, but when the guy told you to buy that stock, he said, "Listen, let me check it out." When the guy told you to go buy that property, he said, "Oh, let me check it out." You didn't go buy it. You didn't buy the stock just because he told you to buy the stock. You didn't buy the property just because he told you to buy the property. You checked. You double-checked, you triple-checked, you asked for comps, you went to the computer a little bit, you wanted to see what the competition says, you wanted to see what the neighbors say. You checked for four, five, six days of checking, sometimes months of checking. I remember the first stock that I ever invested in, I was maybe 17 years old. I researched it for six or nine months, some absurd amount of time, before I bought one share. Eventually, I bought 700 shares.

3:59:57700 shares, like a $3,000 transaction. I researched this thing for months before I bought it, as if my olam haba was depending on it. People actually do stuff that their olam haba does depend on, but they don't check anything. No, the rabbi told me. But it's very, very important to check everything. Don't trust anybody. Not that anybody is trusted, trust only Hashem. Trust only Hashem. Why? Because that's what Yirmiyahu says to us. Yirmiyahu says to us, unfortunately, part of the problem was the people that speak lies, the organizations that speak lies. Baruch Hashem, there are many good organizations in the world, but unfortunately, there are bad ones, and plenty of bad ones, much more than the good ones. If it were a ten-to-one ratio, it would be an understatement. Usually, the bigger the organization, the more problems there are. Why? Because there's more money involved. And that's the tikkun of the generation. We said it already; the Gemara said it in Masechet Yoma, it says it. What's the tikkun? Sinat chinam and ahavat mamon. They hate each other because they love money. So part of the reason why there's so much falsehood in the world today is because of the love for money. I remember somebody called a big synagogue, asking them, and I guess you guys can ask questions if you want.

4:01:22We have another 40 minutes. I could talk, but maybe you guys have questions. Somebody asked. They wanted to set up a lecture for me. A big shul. And who do I talk to? Who do I talk to? I talk to the rabbi. Okay, so eventually, they get the rabbi on the phone. "Hey, Rabbi, listen, can we set up a lecture for Rabbi Yaron Reuven? He's really popular. He's on the internet. It's not like nobody knows. A few people know. Can we set up a lecture for your kehillah? Let me get back to you. No, it's free. It's free. Don't worry, Rabbi. We don't need to do any fundraisers. It's free. You know that other speaker you had last week? You probably paid them $5,000, right? Yeah. No, no. You don't have to pay him anything. It's free. Okay, okay. Let me get back to you." Oh, no, but it's any schedule you want. Anytime you want, he can come. It's not a problem. Yeah, yeah, let me get back to you. Meaning all the conditions you could possibly have an issue with, we're already ahead of time telling you there's no problem, there's no money, there's no this, there's no that, whatever you want. Let me get back to you. Later on, I get the call. Recording, I hear the recording. And... They ask the rabbi, listen, Rabbi, how come...

4:02:40What's the story? How come Rabbi Reuven can't come to give a shiur at your place? It's free. It's anytime. What's the problem? Because I'm not sure if it's a good fit. He speaks Torah. Oh, no, no. He speaks Torah. There's nothing wrong. He speaks Torah. This is why. Well, he's not really mainstream. He doesn't speak like everybody else. What do you mean? He doesn't speak well. He doesn't tell people... Yeah, you know, he tells people stuff that's hard to hear, like, you know, about Shabbat, if you drive on Shabbat. You know, people don't say that stuff anymore. Ever think maybe that's the reason why you need him to come speak here? But no. Why not? Because if Rabbi Yaron Reuven comes to speak at this shul, then guess what? People will stop driving on Shabbat. That's a good thing, right? For Hashem. Bad for the rabbi. Why? Because then there's less people giving tzedakah. There's fewer people coming to the minyan because they can't drive on Shabbat anymore. They have to go to a closer shul. Unfortunately, this happens everywhere. Florida, New York, California, wherever you want. It's everywhere. These shakranim are everywhere. But we are at fault for it as much as they are.

4:04:01Because we contribute to them. People that contribute to them, that donate to them, that go to their lectures, that share their lectures, that watch their lectures, that support them in any way, shape, or form. Even just telling somebody, "Yeah, he's good." That's support. That's supporting them continuing to do it. And unless each one of us finds out the truth for what it really is and starts standing for it... I'm not telling you to start whole websites against bad rabbis, which is not really such a bad idea. But anyway, I'm not telling you to do that. But at the very least, stop supporting them. Stop supporting these fake organizations. Because that's the root of our problem. Yes? I would like to know what you mean by fake organizations. Do you have any specific examples? fake rabbi someone tells you that everything is okay and he knows that people drive on Shabbat but doesn't say anything. He even tells you things that are against the Torah. So, for example, there are a few people that we spoke about publicly, and we have no problems continuing to speak about them publicly because they have admitted that they are staying that way.

4:05:14One example is this guy from Goldberg from Boca Raton who decided to bring a Catholic missionary to Israel and cried when the Catholic missionary refused to come. You know, a guy that wants to bring a Catholic missionary to speak at a shul—that's a rasha. Anyone that supports such a person is a rasha just like him, no less, not a penny less. He brings Dr. Ruth, Shmuley Boteach, and all types of missionaries and resha'im to his shul on a regular basis. I lived there for a few years. I know what he brings there. And you can see it on their websites. They highlight who they bring. So a guy like that is a rasha. Anyone that supports him is 100% a rasha just like him. There's no difference between them. And Shamayim doesn't judge them the same way. Other people that tell people, listen, things that are against the Torah. Rambam says anyone that's a Mechalel Shabbat is considered an idol worshiper. Somebody says, no, the Rambam is wrong here. That person is a rasha. You go to his lectures. You attend his lectures. You support his lectures. Even if you have lunch with him just to support him, you're just like him. Just like him. There's no difference between you.

4:06:25No difference between you. That's another example. A third example is Dror Kasuto. He tells people to smoke marijuana. If they smoke marijuana but it helps them study, he says it's a mitzvah. Or if your wife is niddah, but she doesn't feel like going to the mikveh, you can still be with her. Or if your wife wants to drive on Shabbat to the beach, go with her for shalom bayit. He says this in his lectures. There are a lot of lectures that he has. In every lecture, you'll find some type of bomb in there. Every lecture. He's a machmir in bombs. Every lecture he has some type of shetuyot in his lectures. If you know Torah, it sounds normal. It sounds even like fun. Wow, his Judaism is much more fun than Rabbi Reuven's. He looks like fun. I'll be surprised if he doesn't build the Eiffel Tower again. With him, everything is kosher. So all you’ve got to tell people is, “You want to be a gadol hador, mekubal, tzaddik? Tell everybody that everything they’re doing is perfectly fine. The wig is ideal. Ideal, it’s a mitzvah. A mitzvah to do it. It’s the best thing in the world. That you can drive on Shabbat as long as it’s to the Knesset. And kol Yisrael has a share of the world to come.” You tell people this, you’re a mekubal, tzaddik, tzaddik ba’ir, all the compliments in the world, they’re going to put flyers on you everywhere.

4:07:38Especially if you have a book, even though you don't read it the whole time, you have a book in front of you. Wow, this guy is such a learned person, even though it could be, uh, that sefer in front of you could be "Smurfs" in front of you. Nobody reads the books in front of you. Yeah, we're all laughing, and it's open like he does also, by the way. He always has a book in front of him, never reads one word, never read a single word from the book, but he always has a book in front of him. I bet you that book is like a comic or something. It's like "Smurfs" and got the man chasing them or something. It's not too long. Why? He doesn't say a word of Torah. A word of Torah doesn't say. Now everyone is saying, wait a minute, they're supposed to say less Lashon Hara, you're saying Lashon Hara about these people. This is not Lashon Hara; this is a warning. There's a very, very big difference between Lashon Hara and a warning. If somebody is a Rasha, and he is a danger to the public, it is a mitzvah from the Torah. You can look at the Chafetz Chaim, chapter 8, I believe it's halacha number 3 or halacha 11. It's chapter 8 for sure though. It's a mitzvah from the Torah for you to publicize their name in order to warn people. If you don't do it, it's an aveira. If you know that somebody is violating the Torah like this and hurting the public, you have to publicize it. Yes. I don't agree with his shita. I've never heard him say kefirah, though. I don't agree with his shita as far as everything is, you know, some of the things that he does, he has a different shita. That doesn't make it wrong, though. Just a different shita. But I never heard him say any kefirah. I've never heard any heresy coming out of him.

4:09:06a relatively decent human being. I wish he was more modest, but other than that, there's no kefirah that I know of. Rabbi, no rabbi. People portray him as a rabbi. That's not the problem. Even if you're a Jew and you violate Hashem's name, it's still considered chillul Hashem. There are certain things that he should get a rabbi to help him fix, because there are definitely certain things that are problematic, but it's not kefirah. It's not kefirah. My main issue is kefirah. My main issue is somebody distorting the Torah. Somebody sins, like someone, for example, who is not modest, or his wife is not modest, or something like that, that doesn't make the person wicked. I mean, it's wicked according to the Torah, but it doesn't make him an evil person. It's not good. It's not ideal. I wouldn't invite him to my house or anything like that, as far as to lecture to my little kids, but it's not like a danger to society. But somebody that says that Hashem needs you, That Hashem needs to be in physical form or that Hashem became one with the Rebbe or something crazy like that. That's a danger to society, not just Judaism, but society in general. That's a person who's dangerous. So those are the people that are more problematic. Those are the ones that I associate with more or warn more about because those people are more confusing. I mean, listen, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to realize that there is modesty and immodesty, and...

4:10:32No one thinks that someone who's immodest is modest. No woman that walks around with a miniskirt thinks of herself as modest. She knows she's immodest, but she chooses to be that way. If a person wants to lie to themselves, let them lie to themselves. But in reality, everybody knows what modesty is and what isn't. However, not everyone knows what the truth is and what isn't. Not everybody knows what the Rebbe really said. What Moshe Rabbeinu really said. What Rabbi Yonatan Eybeschutz really said. What the Rambam really said. No, people don't know that. So if the Rabbi says that the Rebbe said such, or Moshe Rabbeinu said such, or somebody else said such in the name of Torah, 99% of people are not going to double-check. Meaning they're going to simply take your word for it. So if you tell them certain things in the name of the Torah, in the name of one of the tzaddikim, when in reality it's as far from the truth as possible, then you are a danger to society. Much more so than even Hitler himself, because Hitler was killing bodies. Those people are killing souls. But again, rabotai yikarim, they're not doing it alone. They're doing it with your money.

4:11:47That's what you have to understand. They don't, you know, the Satan has a lot of money, and he gives money to people that want to give money to those people. That's the thing. This is not a fundraiser of any kind, but this is the truth. This is the truth as it is. The Holocaust happened. The Beit HaMikdash was destroyed. All of this happened, but there's a common denominator. There's a common denominator. We've always had the Torah. Meaning, we always had it for about three thousand three hundred years. We always had it—our road back home. Always had this—our road back home. Anyone that looked at it says, "Oh, this is what it says." They would immediately figure out, "Ah, this is what it says. I have to change." No matter who you are, you could be the biggest rabbi in the world. You realize you have to change something. Anyone who's intellectually honest knows that when they read the Torah, they realize, "Oh, I have to change something." So, we've always had the way back home. The problem has never been the Torah. The problem has been who's teaching it. I had rabbis and so-called rabbis come to my office for 15 years, and it's something I will never, ever forgive—that they came, they saw, they took, and never said a word.

4:13:0615 years here in my office, you never once told me to keep Shabbat? 15 years? When is this so-called strategy supposed to work? In fact, one time they invited me to a Shabbaton knowing I was going to drive there. Why? It's good you have kiddush with us. Me? Stupid me. I said, yeah, I'll have kiddush with you. What do I know? What do I know? The point is, Rabotai, It's our responsibility as a nation to not only protect ourselves but to protect each other, whether you know each other or you don't know each other. And for the first time in history, try to go against the tide a little bit. Go to the Torah, not just to the people. See if it matches the person to the Torah, not vice versa. Do not assume that just because he said it, it's in the Torah. Study Torah. Learn a little bit about it. Hashem, there are plenty, plenty of books available. Honestly, one of the thoughts that I had while I was learning for this shiur is that I wish the authors of all of these books would be speakers. Or better yet, that the speakers would simply just say what the author said. Because you see, other rabbis also have books in front of them. It's just that, for whatever reason, many of them forget to say what it says in the book. I

4:14:34Like, if you had the authors of this fantastic book from ArtScroll, you had them just come out and read it out loud—this book about teshuva. Eight out of ten people who listen to it would do teshuva; the other two are probably not mentally capable, so we can't help them anyway. Just read the book. That's it. Read it out loud. Have a computer read it out loud to people. You do teshuva. It just says what it says. If anybody comes, reads this book, comes back from Eretz Yisrael, comes and reads this book. Or somebody, one of his students, comes and reads this book. Just word for word. Doesn't say a single word out of it. Just reads it word for word without giving his opinion. Word for word, people do teshuva. Why? You have to or you're crazy. Somebody reads the Chumash with commentary by Rashi. That's it. Nothing else. Don't add your opinion. Nothing. Not your chidush. Not your nothing new, nothing old. Just read it. People do teshuva. You don't have to be a giant. You don't have to be a chacham. You don't have to be anything. You just simply read what the author wrote. That's it. It's not that hard. But our ego is in the way. We have to throw our two cents in. We have to throw our two cents in. That's why I say to you, if the speaker, the organization as a whole,

4:15:56Saying things that are in the Torah that are leading to results when it comes to teshuva. Support them all the way. Better yet, support only them. Focus on one organization. Be the biggest tzaddik of that organization. Don't try to dip into five other organizations. Go be the chassid for that organization, especially if you are important to them. And you could be a significant donor. It's much better than to donate to 15 different organizations where there's not even enough time in a day for you to research that many organizations to know if they're all good or not. If you know one for sure is good, go all the way with that one. But if you don't know, then check, research, find out, investigate, do something. It's not that hard anymore. There are computers today. You can pretty much find out everything on the internet, if not by a phone call or a text message. That's all you need today. It's not like in the old days when you had to go to libraries and ask people, "Do you know this one? Who knows that one?" Pretty much everybody and everything is on YouTube or Google or something. If you want to find out anything, you can find it on the internet.

4:17:11And then, when you see it and something looks odd, doesn't match the face, you verify with the guy. Oh, wait, listen, it looks like you were a criminal. Is it really you? Oh, no, no, I have the same name as this other criminal. Oh, okay, great, thank you. You know, you have to give kaf zechut to people. Don't just assume that whatever's on the internet is true. You have to assume that sometimes it's wrong. Sometimes there's two people with the same name. Or sometimes the person has changed. But the point being, Rabotai, is that you should do some research on it, just like you do on property, just like you do on stock, just like you do on everything else in life. Because there's just too much money exchanging hands today and not enough results. Eats my heart up to see all of that happening where you mamash, you see what just literally happens with some of these organizations. One year, one year of their funding, you can make all of Am Yisrael do teshuva with one year of their funding. I'm not even talking about 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, just one year of their funding. You can make all of Am Yisrael do teshuva and... You simply use all of that money to make sure that the truth is in every single house in every shape, form, or size—in a CD, in a video, in a book. You pretty much make sure that it's in everybody's house. You don't have that many Jews; you don't need that much money for that. Some organizations have that money, but unfortunately, nothing happens. I don't want another Holocaust to happen.

4:18:34That's why I talk about it all the time. I don't want it to happen. I hope you don't either. But me saying I don't want it to happen is not going to do anything for you. You saying "never again" is not going to do anything for you either. The only thing that's going to do something is if you do something. Do something about it. First, it starts with our own teshuva. It starts with us beginning to fix ourselves. We can't be hypocritical. We can't be hypocrites. We have to do something about ourselves. We have to fix ourselves, rebuke ourselves. Be strong. Don't give yourself a shortcut. Don't give yourself some type of get-out-of-jail-free card. If you fall, soften up a little bit. Cheer yourself back up. Get back on. Before the sin, be strong. After the sin, be soft. Get back up, then go again. Why? Because initially it's hard to stop some of these sins that you're addicted to, especially if they're physical sins. But nonetheless, don't ever say that it's okay to sin. It's never okay to sin. I don't care if you're a Baal Teshuva for a week or 20 years. It's never okay to sin. Saying it's okay to sin is a mistake. It's going to lead to a lot of mistakes. The second thing is to make sure that you don't stay selfish. Share your knowledge. Share the videos. Share the CDs.

4:19:55Share the books. Whatever it is that you have access to, share it with people. Not only if they're just off the derech and they're about to marry a goya. Everybody. It doesn't matter who they are. Everybody needs a little chizuk. Third, make sure that you do a little bit of research before you contribute time or money to any rabbi or organization because there's just too much money going to bad places and too little going to good ones. How do I know? I see it every day. Yes, you have a question? If the shul is going to have a regular shiur Torah that has a real speaker, then yes. But if the shul is just going to be another four walls connected together with a roof on it, then no, there's no point in doing that. We need more Jews, not more buildings. Just to pray, hopefully, when you get a minyan, then no, there's no point in doing that. We need more Jews, not more buildings. Buildings, Baruch Hashem, we have many. We have many, many buildings. We have buildings on every corner. There are so many buildings that there are literally abandoned buildings. There are abandoned shuls. There are shuls where literally nothing is going on. They don't have anything to do with it. That's how this shul started, for example. This shul, before we did it, there was nothing going on here for a while. Baruch Hashem, there's more action now.

4:21:24This is the only case. There's others. There's others like it. There's many, many shuls. There's literally nothing there. They're Orthodox in theory, but there's no minyan. Somebody's paying for it. If somebody took that money and actually got Torah to actually be publicized, real Torah to be publicized, it's much more valuable to Klal Yisrael than having another building. The problem is supporting Torah is not as popular because you can't have your name on the door. People don't know, don't you know, can't go and see what you did with it. So it requires a little bit more mesirat nefesh, a little bit less ga'avah. It requires a person to want to actually do the mitzvah for the mitzvah itself. You know, people that contribute usually to kiruv are ones that actually care only about the mitzvah itself and... people that contribute to synagogues and organizations, and, you know, Batei Midrash and Yeshivot, sometimes yes, sometimes no. Sometimes they care about the work that's happening there, sometimes they only care about their name being on the door of that building. It's not always this, it's not always that. But when people are actually contributing towards Klal Yisrael doing teshuva, it's always because they care about teshuva, because there's no, nothing, you don't get anything out of it. It's not like you get something, a plaque,

4:22:44know, and you put it on the wall. Thank you for contributing and saving Klal Yisrael. You don't get anything; you pretty much get a receipt thanking you for donating whatever you donated. That's it. Once in a blue moon, you get, I don't know, some mezuzah or something. But in reality, if you compare the two, you can't tell by, "Hey, listen, go to that building I built." Nothing like that, understand? So, that's the thing. It requires a lot more mesirut nefesh, but it's important. It's much more important. It's much, much more important, yes. So why do we celebrate and why do we mourn on the 9th of Av, if the actual destruction of the Temple, when it actually was burning and destroyed, was on the 10th of Av? So the Gemara in Masechet Ta'anit discusses this, and Chachamim discuss it. The first one was on the 9th, the second one was on the 10th, but also the attack began on the 9th. begin tonight, so we use it in order to have one universal day, one day where all of our mourning is supposed to be instead of spreading our mourning to many days during the year—the 9th, the 10th, this one, that one. We try to minimize it and have one major day, also not to put too much on the public. If you told people that they have to fast two days in a row because technically there is a problem that happened on the 9th and there is a problem that happened on the 10th, the vast majority of people wouldn't fast even once. The prince simply said, listen, since I can't fast two days, I might as well not fast at all. So, in order to minimize it, the Chachamim put it as a single day. Anyone else? Does anybody here know anybody that lived through the Holocaust? Yes? Which one in the...

4:24:10vast majority of people wouldn't fast even once. The prince simply said, listen, since I can't fast two days, I might as well not fast at all. So, in order to minimize it, the Chachamim put it as a single day. Anyone else? Does anybody here know anybody that lived through the Holocaust? Yes? Which one in the... Your grandfather. I mean, if you simply ask them, if they can, some people don't like to talk about it. He does? What does he say? Yeah.

4:25:21That's the thing with the Holocaust: some people, it caused them to become closer to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, and some people used it as an excuse to go away. They used it as an excuse: "Where was God during the Holocaust? Oh, if God wasn't there to save me during the Holocaust, therefore I'm going to leave Him." Truth be told, even though you cannot judge anybody at the time of their pain, Anyone that learned a little bit of Torah knows that if you know the truth, it's not possible to leave it. Like somebody asked me a question the other day, I don't know if it was here or somewhere else, and said, "What happens if there is a mistake found in the Torah?" And if you asked me this question years ago, I would tell you, I don't know, I guess there's a mistake. I guess we just start something new or come up with some type of rational answer. But the simple answer is that it's not possible. No, but what if? There is no what if. There is no question such as this question. If you know that the Torah is real, that question simply cannot exist.

4:26:36It's not that, oh, we hope it doesn't exist. If you know the Torah is real, not if you believe the Torah is real. If you believe the Torah is real, then in your mind you still have that question. And hopefully you learn enough to know that the Torah is real, and you know it's real, not believe it's real. That's the difference between knowledge and belief. So if you know the Torah is real, you know Hashem is real, then a mistake is not possible. It's not possible for you to fathom such a thing existing. If you believe it's real, then belief is in essence there until there's a problem. So some people that left the derech and used the Holocaust as their pretext for doing so, this is no different than Elisha ben Avuyah. The Gemara says that the rabbi of Rabbi Meir Baal Hanes was one of four people that went to heaven as a living person and saw things in Heaven that made him go crazy. Out of the four people, one person died on the spot, one person became holier, which was Rabbi Akiva, one person became crazy, and one person became a rasha. So

4:28:06Elisha ben Avuyah became a rasha. How can you go and become a rasha as a result of seeing what's happening in heaven? I mean, shouldn't that make you even more religious? So, this very interesting story is that he went up to Shamayim and he saw that one of the angels, whatever this means, was sitting down and And he says this contradicts the Torah because the Torah says that the angels have one leg and they're always standing. And Chazal said, in reality, he's right. The angels always stand except for this one. And this one, because Shamayim already knew that this one was supposed to stand, and that Elisha ben Avuyah wouldn't understand this, and he didn't stand, he got punished for it, this angel. The angel got punished for not standing. But nonetheless, Elisha ben Avuya, instead of asking a question, "Oh, why is this? This doesn't make any sense," he just concluded, "Oh, if there's a mistake here, there's a mistake everywhere." Meaning he used it as a pretext to justify things that he already wanted to do anyway. And that's the same thing with everybody else that left the derech. It's not that if you believed it, you're simply never going to leave it.

4:29:30If you actually know that Torah is real, you're never going to leave it. Never going to happen. If you believed it but never got the knowledge, then it's possible. Then it's possible. Why is it possible? Because you have a yetzer hara with certain desires. If you arrive at the conclusion that you want your desires much more than you want to know that your belief is true, then that's what's going to happen. your desires will be fulfilled and you'll justify them with whatever nonsense you want to justify them with. And that's why there are many people who have a certain religiosity to them and consider themselves religious but perform crimes against Hashem on a regular basis. So it's very, very important to know there's a very, very big difference between knowledge and belief. Yes, you have a question? Who says they don't have free will? They have free will, but it's not the same type of free will like us, meaning we have free will to do what we want and we will eventually get punished. They get punished immediately. So it's free will, but it's not the same free will as us. They could do what they want, if you will, but they get punished right away, which means that they're more likely to make the right decision.

4:31:06If they're wicked? Right. I mean, listen, wickedness and righteousness are only determined by whether somebody is fulfilling mitzvot or not. If somebody is fulfilling mitzvot, their sense of rationale, their sense of truth, and their general actions will lead them in a certain direction. If a person does not observe Torah and mitzvot, their rationale, their logic, and everything else will lead them on a different path.

4:32:13So it's not up to us to define somebody as righteous or wicked. In essence, they define themselves. If their actions lead them to violate the Torah, then we are obligated to call them wicked. We are obligated to say that they're wicked. We cannot say they're anything else. In fact, it's a sin to call a rasha a tzaddik, which is very common today when people call anybody a tzaddik, especially if he donates a few shekels. He's an extra tzaddik. He's a tzaddik mistar even. He's all types of tzaddikim. But this is a mistake. It's a mistake. The Gemara talks about it, where if you call a wicked person a tzaddik, it's a sin from the Torah. You're, in essence, calling Hashem a liar by saying that this person is a tzaddik, even though he's not, because Hashem says what a tzaddik is. If this person is not a tzaddik, in essence, what you're saying is that Hashem is a liar because His definition of tzaddik is different than yours. So it's a mistake. So if a person does something that makes him a tzaddik, then he's a tzaddik. But if he's a rasha, he's a rasha. But as far as this guy's delusional experience, it's still something we can learn from. Meaning, we can learn what it's like to be under the wrath of HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Number one, to make sure that we're not in this picture.

4:33:29Hashem shalom or anybody else that we know, but also to understand that this is what our brothers and sisters endured. I mean, yes, I feel bad for him in the sense that he endured this thing, but at the same token, this is a bed that he made. You know, so yeah, you could feel bad that somebody has to spend their entire life in jail because that's not really such a great life. But how much bad can you possibly feel for them if they killed five people? I mean, they made their bed. There's not much bad that you can feel for them. That's why Hashem says, "There is no peace for the wicked." So it's not that we are stomping on their grave and dancing around it and are happy that it happened. That's not what we're saying. But we can't portray the picture differently than what it is. We have to call it for what it is. This is what it is. Can you learn from it? Absolutely. That's why I own the book. Is this guy a tzaddik? It's not even a stretch of the imagination. Not even a stretch of the imagination. On the other hand, you could see similar horrific stories that you could learn much more from. A religious Jew. And he is a tzaddik. But he didn't have to go and do what he did.

4:34:50So they both got their test. They both had to deal with dead bodies. They both had to deal with horrible, awful things. But that's the difference. One stuck to the Torah. And one, I'm not even sure if he knows how to spell Torah. This is not an insult. It's a reality. It's a simple reality. He dedicated his entire life to Torah. It doesn't matter what happened. The other didn't. Did they both have a choice? They had to. Why? Because I don't know what his life was, and I don't know what his life was. But I know that HaKadosh Baruch Hu does not put anybody in this world without giving them a choice. Everybody has a choice. Even if it wasn't a choice that he was able to make when he was young because he lived in some secular family, he could have made it later after he did know. You understand what I'm saying? So that's the excuse. People say, oh no, but maybe he wasn't brought up in a religious house. I wasn't. Does that mean I have to have a get out of jail free card to murder and kill people for a living just because I wasn't brought up in a religious house? Like, that's not an excuse. Everybody uses this card. You know, all of the matriarchs, all of the wives of Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, all of them grew up in wicked people's houses.

4:36:09Forget about not religious. Wicked. Leshaim. Murderers. They weren't. They didn't say, oh no, Sarah decided one day, you know what, maybe I'll become a murderer today. Why? Because my father was an idol worshiper. Or Rivka, you know what, maybe I'm going to become a murderer today. Why? Oh, my father's a gangster. Nobody ever said that. Why? Because everybody had a straight mind and they knew. Right? Wrong. So, even if he didn't make that decision beforehand, he could have made it after. If he didn't make it after, what excuse can we give them? Yes, it depends. If it's the toilet, the note, if you are going to read it just for education or for your own pleasure, then yeah, I mean, it's not exactly ideal for you to invest and use your time to learn anything secular. It's also to be considered bittul Torah. Like, for example, if you read one of these, I don't know, books about the statistics of baseball players, or the statistics of, I don't know, the best CEOs Coca-Cola ever had, I have no idea how you can make that not be bittul Torah, not a sin.

4:37:20On the other hand, if you are buying some type of book, whatever secular subject it is, and you're going to use that in order to teach Torah with it, to learn something that's relevant to Torah, then there's not a problem. There's chokhmah bagoyim ta'amin. There's wisdom among the goyim, and you're allowed to believe, and you're allowed to even learn it. Not as a replacement of Torah, but as a complement to the Torah. That's why you'll see, for example, there are a couple of rabbis who are constantly asked questions about different subjects regarding the Holocaust or other secular matters, and they are bigger experts in it than even the experts in the secular world. They know a lot about that stuff, which obviously means they learn about it. Why? Because they use it for the sake of Torah in their own way. So, there are certain things that you can do. There are certain things that you can do. That's why it's important to first invest. Your number one investment should be in Torah. That should be your number one investment. If your time allows and there is a need, there are other things that complement it. That's not a problem either. But it should complement it. It shouldn't ever be just a complete waste of time. Next. Yes. Why over here, why do I have to do this line?

4:38:46What does it mean? It's how you read the words and make certain sounds if you read certain words out loud, especially minhag Sefarad. The Sefaradim make certain sounds and extend the word. They make certain sounds when they pronounce certain letters. So if they have a certain nekud, they'll know whether to go to "o," "i," or "u," whatever it is. Especially when they read out loud from the Torah. That's our vowel system, those little dots. Two dots, more dots, yeah. It's all types of dots. Chachamim made it. A very sophisticated system that even Arabic uses. Arabic uses it, Chachamim use it. What else? Yeah.

4:39:48Numbers always existed. It's just that the numerical numbers are in the Torah. We already see from Sefer Bereishit: Rishon, Sheni, Shlishi, Revi'i, Chamishi, Shishi, Shevi'i. That's the days Hashem created the heaven and the earth. It was evening, and it was morning, the end of day one, Rishon. It was evening, and it was morning, day Sheni. So numbers are already in the Torah. No one invented it. Some people believe that the Arabs invented algebra or different parts of mathematics, but that's also complete nonsense. In our Torah, you have every wisdom that exists in the world. There are seven types of wisdom. All seven of them are inside the Torah. Meaning that nothing was invented outside of the Torah. Anything that's out there was discovered. Nothing was invented. So even the things that you see today that people like, and I told you guys this many times, you see things like a famous statement or a certain type of stories.

4:41:05A lot of this stuff is in the Torah. For example, there's a story of Arthur. Arthur, from my days, was famous. I don't know if you guys even know what story it is. But with the sword, taking the sword out of the rock. This is a fake story. But it's based on a real story. And the real character is Moshe Rabbeinu. The real character is Moshe Rabbeinu. One of the things that was created, because at the end of the day, one of the things that was created was the staff that Moshe Rabbeinu would eventually use. It was made out of materials similar to ruby. The Midrash says it was approximately 674 pounds and 10 amot, almost 20 feet. It's huge. In comparison to us, it was huge. In comparison to Moshe Rabbeinu, it was normal. He was also 20 feet. Anyway, and he was strong. Now, this staff was carried by Adam HaRishon, Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, Noach, but eventually, there wasn't a righteous person that would have it, and it was buried in the ground, like a stick stuck out of the ground, in Midyan. Now, that land was owned by a person named Yitro.

4:42:34Jethro saw this beautiful staff and saw that there was writing on it—all types of names on the staff, which were the ten plagues, the Shem HaMeforash of Hashem, and all types of interesting things inscribed and engraved into it. He wanted to take it out, but he couldn't; he didn't have the power to do it. So he offered a reward and... And he said, whoever can take this staff out of the ground, I'll give you any daughter that you want. He had daughters. He said all of his daughters were beautiful. He said, I'll give you any one of my daughters to marry. Now, all of the heroes from different lands came for this reward. Everybody tried. Everybody failed. Years passed. People forgot about this. It became like something that's just there. And one day, an Egyptian by the name of Moshe shows up at the well, saves the daughters of Yitro, and he gets invited to Yitro's house. Yitro finds out that he's not an Egyptian, actually. He's part of Bnei Yisrael. But he finds out that he's on the run from the Egyptians. Why is he on the run from the Egyptians? Because he killed an Egyptian. And he was the king of Kush.

4:44:0040 years, this Moshe Rabbeinu was a king of Kush for 40 years, but then he left Kush and came to Midian. In Midian, he's still running from the Egyptians. So Yitro, even though he was an idol worshiper, was an Ish Emet, meaning he only worshiped an idol. It says that he worshiped all the idols. Why all the idols? Because every week he would change an idol because as soon as he found out that it was fake. He would stop worshipping it. He would go somewhere else. And that's why as soon as he found out about Am Yisrael and the miracles that Hashem did for them, he immediately converted to Judaism. There was no convincing anymore, no convincing needed. He was looking for the truth his whole life. So anyway, when he saw that Moshe Rabbeinu was a fugitive, he said, oh, you're a fugitive? You get the death penalty. So he threw him in a cell and threw out the keys. For the next 10 years, the daughter of Yitro, whom Moshe Rabbeinu saved, would sneak into the cell and give him food and water. After 10 years, she came to her father, Yitro, and she said, "Abba, why don't we check what happened to that Egyptian that you threw in jail?" He goes, "No, honey, it's been 10 years. He must be dead. I haven't fed him in 10 years." She said, "Oh, Abba, you never know." She didn't tell him, obviously, that she's been the one feeding him.

4:45:22So he went to, just to a pitaron, he went to the cell and to his surprise he saw that Moshe was still alive and immediately he realized that this is a holy person. Something is not, something's off here. So he let him out. He said, okay, you're going to work for me. Come with me. And as they were walking, the Midrash says, as they were walking in the field, they passed by the staff. They passed by the staff that was already, it wasn't Moshe Rabbeinu yet. It was just a staff that was owned already by Adam HaRishon, Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, and everybody else. It wasn't owned by Moshe. But Moshe saw it, and he saw the letters on it, and he decided to just take it out of the ground. And because he was the one that was supposed to take it out, when he took it out of the ground, it was like taking a hair out of milk, meaning with complete ease. He didn't try hard. He didn't know that it was stuck. He didn't know the whole story about it. You know there's a staff here. Let me take it out. He just took it out. So as soon as he took it out, Yitro was in shock. How did you do it? And he realized that Moshe Rabbeinu was somebody special, and he said, "I have to allow you to marry any one of my daughters that you want." And who did he pick? He picked Tzipora, the one that saved his life. So that story, or at least a version of it, was turned into a book, was turned into a myth, was turned into a movie, was turned into a cartoon called Arthur.

4:46:47Same thing goes with the superheroes. If you go to the Midrash Me'am Loez, Midrash Rabbah, and into the wars of the tribes—the Twelve Tribes—you see that the wars of the tribes sound very much like an action X-Men movie. You know, it sounds like many of the superpowers that they have in the movies, the tribes had. Werewolves and things like that existed also. Binyamin (Benjamin) was a werewolf; he could turn into a werewolf. So a lot of really, really interesting things exist in the Torah, but people don't know about it, and they think that the Torah is boring or that the Torah is something that's old-fashioned. Little do they know that all the stuff they like actually comes from the Torah, because anything that's of any value must have a source in the Torah. Even the discovery by Einstein is not originally from Einstein; Rambam already wrote it 900 years ago. E=mc², you'll find it in the Rambam. So, a lot of this stuff that people think is like, "Oh wow, look at his genius," there's no discovery here. Actually, it's from the Torah because anything that's of any value must have a source in the Torah. Even the discovery by Einstein is not originally from Einstein; the Rambam already wrote it 900 years ago. E=mc²? You'll find it in the Rambam. So, a lot of this stuff that people think is like, "Oh wow, look at his genius," there's no discovery here.

4:47:59no discovery at all. Yes? What about vampires? Vampires are also in the Torah. There were certain people that would suck blood. And they turned into bats and were flying and such. Not so much, but the concept of eating blood and things of that nature and vampires does exist. Wizardry does exist. Strange beings do exist. People that turn into animals did exist. People turning into monkeys did exist. Monkeys never turned into people; people turned into monkeys. No, it's true. How about one of the punishments was that Hashem turned the wicked into monkeys? A few people, not a small number, would fly on an eagle, a big eagle. They also had in the Beit HaMikdash, Gemara Masechet Yoma. The Beit HaMikdash had, how did they, the Kohanim, the Kohanim had a few dollars. How did they make a living? They sold gold fruit. Why gold fruit? Where does this gold fruit come from? The Beit HaMikdash, the Beit HaMikdash had trees that grew gold. It was a golden tree that grew gold. Gold fruits. And the Kohanim sold the gold fruits. Gemara Masechet Yoma.

4:49:21So, a lot of this beautiful stuff existed. You learn the Torah, that's why you'll never see somebody that completed the Shas interested in comic books, or interested in movies, or interested in anything that's of. If somebody really studied the Shas, not somebody that did, like, you know, studied an hour with some rabbi for seven years and said himself that he studied the Shas. Someone that really toiled over the Shas. Someone that toiled over Torah has no interest in this world. Zero. Everything is like old news. I was like, "Oh yeah, I saw this in the Torah. Oh yeah, I saw this. Oh yeah, it's not new. Well, it's a big deal. Why are you guys all so crazy about it? It's a big deal." They're not surprised by anything. People go to Rav Chaim Kanievsky, who finishes the Shas every year. Yeah, probably, you show him, he finishes everything over with him. People ask him questions. He goes, "Oh yeah, of course, this is in the Torah." He tells them exactly where it is. They go, "Rabbi, how did you know? Do you have prophecy?" He goes, "No, it's not prophecy. Your question just happens to be on this page, in this Midrash, on this page. So, of course, it's going to be. It's in the Torah, so of course, it's going to be. Well, what's the question?"

4:50:24No, it's because we don't know Torah. If we know Torah, you know they exist. Do they still exist now? That's a different question. There are things that are extinct. There are things that don't exist anymore. They existed. They don't exist anymore. But they existed. Like, for example, there is a big question that people love to ask about a mermaid. Do mermaids exist? Torah talks about it. Gemara talks about there's a mermaid. There are certain animals in the ocean that it says half of them look like a human, and half of them look like a fish. Now people say, "Wow, it was a joke. What, are you guys crazy? This is a fairytale." If you say this is a fairytale, then why don't you say the Mabul was a fairytale, or the creation was a fairytale, or the Anakim, the giants that it says in the Parashat HaShavua, are a fairytale? Everything is a fairytale then. Where do you cross the line? Like, where is the line of "this is a fairytale, this is not"? So, that's the thing. The Torah has an enormous amount of information, and usually, the more Torah you're going to learn, the less you're going to desire the mundane things of this world because it's simply going to become old news to you. It's going to become old news. You're going to see a lot of beautiful things in the Torah, and there's simply no reason to go after those things. Yes.

4:51:50God can do everything that He wants; it doesn't mean that He did it, though. Meaning there are certain things that are in the Torah that He did. But there are certain things that somebody just invented, like, for example, I don't think that there is Pokémon because somebody invented Pokémon. I mean, I haven't read the entire Torah yet, so I haven't gone into the Pokémon section. But to my knowledge, there isn't any Pokémon. To my knowledge, there's no Pokémon. But maybe one day I'm going to tell you, oh, I made a mistake. I made a mistake, guys. I found Pikachu in Parashat... Maybe. Maybe. I don't know. Up till now, I don't have it. Right now, I don't have it. But the point is that we see things that are in the Torah. We see things that are in the Torah. The point is, Rabotai, to make sure that you study. Don't think that you can piggyback off of somebody else's learning or somebody else's doing. You have to study yourself. Even if you finance Torah, you still have to study Torah. Even if you have a whole kollel, you still have to study Torah. Every Jew has to study Torah. If you're doing a lot with your money and you need to work in order to make that money, then you can study less, but you still have to study Torah nonetheless. No one is absolved from studying Torah.

4:53:15no one is absolved from studying Torah, and one of the things that I learned from this shul is that no one has an excuse to not study Torah anymore because if Rav Oshri over here says that they studied Torah inside the ghettos when people were literally afraid for their lives, where every day more people died, and they could still study three, four hours a day, if not more, and... i don't think there's a single human being in the world that lives under such conditions. So if we don't live under such conditions, let's not force Hashem's hand and get us to those conditions in order to do teshuva. And that's actually what happened a few times. We see that people that didn't live a religious life before the Holocaust suddenly did a miraculous act of teshuva before they died in the Holocaust. Like, for example, there's a story that he says about one guy who didn't eat kosher, didn't keep anything before the Holocaust. And this Nazi, yemach shemo, liked to torture the Jews. So he said, let me just feed these Jews non-kosher food. So, as you would have it, he picked this guy. Now, this guy ate non-kosher food anyway. So he told him, eat this pig or I'm going to kill you.

4:54:40Something clicked in this Jew's mind at that moment, and he said, "No, I'm not gonna eat it." The Nazi said, "If you don't eat, I'm gonna kill you." So he replied, "Then kill me. I'm not gonna eat it." He started hitting him, but he still didn't eat. Eventually, he killed him. He didn't eat. Look at this, look at the neshama of a Jew. When you were alive and had anything you wanted to eat, and... You chose to eat non-kosher. You chose to eat non-kosher. You could have eaten kosher for $5. Non-kosher for $5. Same thing. Not like it was that much more expensive. You could have eaten kosher just as good. You chose to eat non-kosher. But in the time they told you life depends on it, now finally you're going to keep kosher? Why? That's the neshamah of a Jew. The moment of truth, everybody knows the truth. Everybody knows the truth. Unless you're a Rav. Unless you're a Rasha. Unless you're one of those people. One special person is one of those people. One of those people that says the Resha'im, even on Pnei Gehinom, they don't do Teshuva. So, Be'ezrat Hashem, this will be another Tisha B'Av that will get us closer to Teshuva. Closer to Ma'asim Tovim. Closer to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Another year of Torah, Be'ezrat Hashem.

4:56:08behind us and another big one ahead of us. Hopefully, we use everything that we've learned today and throughout the rest of the year to help ourselves, to rebuke ourselves, and to help each other to get Am Yisrael closer and closer to the truth. Please, please, Rabotai, if you're not going to listen to anything else that I said, at the very least, listen to the one thing that I said about staying away from wicked people and especially if they have a beard, especially if they call themselves rabbis. Stay away from them. They are the most dangerous thing in this generation. They're much more dangerous than Iran. They're much more dangerous than Hitler. They're much more dangerous than anything else on earth. Because they kill neshamot by making you feel okay about it. They simply numb your soul. Stay away from them. And if you don't stay away from them, you cannot go up to Shamayim and put a lawsuit against me. I didn't tell you. I I'm serious. Don't go up into Shamayim and say I didn't tell you. I told you. Whatever happens to your soul from that point on, you come to every shiur of mine. I promise you. You come to every shiur of mine, but if you continue going to them even once a week, you're never going to do teshuva. You're never going to do teshuva as long as you have this tumah inside you. It's never going to happen. It's like putting on tefillin every day, learning the Shas, learning Tosafot, but you're still married to a goya. Nothing's going to help you.

4:57:28Nothing's going to help you. Nothing, nothing. Keeping mitzvot, giving donations, giving this, but you eat a cheeseburger once a month because you like it. Nothing's going to help you. You're never going to be able to fix it. If you're 100%, you're 100% with Hashem. You're going to treat Hashem like He's some side girl, like some side girlfriend? Hashem's going to treat you like you're a side project. Your teshuva will never be accepted, I promise you. Not because of me, but because you're mamash going against Hashem. Please, please, listen to that part. There are a lot of dangerous people out there. If you find out something that doesn't fit well with the Torah that you learned, don't say anything. Don't publicize it. Just ask the Rabbi, "Can you show me what you said in a book? Can you show me your source for what you said in the Tanach? In the Gemara? In the Poskim? Something that's halacha. Can you show it to me somewhere? Can I find it somewhere, or is it just in your mind?" with Pikachu's mind. Can you show me, please? Ask them to show it in a book. Why? Because as soon as you do that, you'll find out the truth for yourself. If they can't show you in a book, that means you cannot rely on anything they say from that moment on. Everything has to have a source. Everything has to have a source. So, please, please listen to that. It's very, very important. I want you guys to do teshuva. I want to do teshuva myself.

4:58:52we're going right now to daven. They're davening in a while, around 7:20 or 7:30, so we have a little bit of time. Thank you for learning with me.