It's Now Or Never. Desperate Kiruv Initiative Before MaShiach (11 minutes)

0:10To answer the question of what happens when you see a bunch of people who are violators of Shabbat, they're ruining your Shabbat. The reality of it is that the rebuke is more on you than it is on them. The reason is because, instead of being upset that they're mechalelei Shabbat and they're ruining your Shabbat, you should be upset that they're not keeping Shabbat for their own souls. It's like seeing your own brother or sister commit suicide, and being concerned for their spiritual well-being.

1:38But you should know in the Gemara, it says Rabbi Zeira became friends with a group of criminals. One day, one of the Tannaim, one of the Kodesh Kodeshim, became friends with a bunch of criminals and everyone said, "What are you doing? Kodesh Kodeshim friends with all these criminals?" He responded, "I'm doing kiruv and getting them all to do teshuva." One day, he died, and the criminals said to themselves, the ones that were still uncertain, they said, "Listen, when Rabbi Zeira... Alive, at least somebody was praying for us. Somebody was praying for us. Who's gonna pray for us now? We have to do teshuvah, one hundred percent. All of them did teshuvah. So, we're not telling you to go make friends and go make parties because you need to socialize. But if you're already out there, you're part of a community. Become friends with people you can help. Bring them to a lecture, give them a CD, arrange a lecture at the Beit Knesset and... Arrange a lecture at the Beit Knesset, arrange a lecture at your house, arrange a lecture at the local place—somewhere do something. I'll make it even easier for you because, as my wife—God bless her—said, I need to listen to her. She says I have to do more kiruv (outreach). So I'm going to do it and make a deal with you: if you can get 50 people—yes, 50 people—I'll go anywhere. Free, no charge. The only cost would be whatever it takes for me to get there. If I have to fly to California, just cover my flight.

3:05It's New York, just pay for my flight. I have family that lives in most places, so other than that, it's free. No charge for the lectures. You don't have to sponsor anything; just get 50 people. Get 50 people, and I'll come. If it's local, if it's Florida, I'd be happy to come at 3 o'clock in the morning. I'll come, just get the people. I... Don't get three people who are bored, drinking coffee, and smoking marijuana, just wanting to listen to somebody because they're high. Get people who are willing to listen and are open to doing something, at least being receptive. I'll come for free, and you don't have to worry about money, whether it's $1,500, $15,000, or even 15 million dollars. It's nothing. It's free. Just get the people. People spend fortunes promoting events for no reason, such as for the grand opening of a salon, grand opening of a new car lot, or grand opening of whatever it is. They spend ten, twenty thousand dollars just promoting an event for no reason whatsoever. If you want to spend a few dollars, promote an event, get fifty people, get a hundred people, get two hundred people to come to a certain business. It’s about engaging your audience effectively.

4:21That's the only money you have to spend. For me, I'm just going to come there and talk. If anyone wants to donate, wonderful; if they don't want to donate, no problem. But you have at least half the battle: all you have to do is get people, get people. And the reason why I say 50 is because if I tell you there's no limit, then I know that I'm going to get 5 million phone calls tomorrow. There's one guy here in the middle of Africa, there's three people in Kuwait, there's six people in New York under the bridge, there's one guy tweaking, and, you know, we don't really know where he is, but it looks like he's interested. You know that you have to be serious, you have to get a certain amount of people. If it's really, really close then maybe even less, but the point is that if... If I'm traveling, it has to be more. The point is that you don't have to worry about money. You could literally do Kiruv for free. Free—get the speaker, get everything free. Most places you can get for free. As far as, look, this place—we don't pay for it. They're kind enough to give us this place to give a lecture every week for free. You want to get 50 people next week? You're gonna have 500 people next week filling up places.

5:35The biggest battle that people have with kiruv is usually when the Satan tells them, "Listen, you can't afford to do kiruv. You can only do kiruv once you're rich. You know, go make a few million dollars in your business. Then you can do kiruv. You'll open a yeshiva. You'll open a kollel. You'll sponsor 50 million CDs. Everyone that doesn't have a CD player, you'll buy them a CD player too." The Satan convinces us that we need money to do kiruv. You could do kiruv for free. As mentioned earlier, use the Internet. Instead of looking at ducks crossing the road, share a link on one of the social media websites that you're already on. If you have a few bucks, sponsor some CDs and send them to people, or I'll send them to people. If you don't have any money and you don't have the Internet, great. You have your mouth—okay, get your local community. Tell them, "By the way, show up here at 8 o'clock. Why? Because something really interesting is happening." Get 50 people or more to show up. I'll be there. instead of looking at ducks crossing the road, take a link. Share it on one of the social media websites that you're already on. You have a few bucks? Sponsor some CDs and send them to people; I'll send them to people. You don't have any money, and you don't have the Internet? Great. You have your mouth. Okay, go to your local community and tell them, “By the way, show up here at 8 o'clock. Why? Something really interesting.” Get 50 people or more to show up. I'll be there. That's it. Listen, in the business world, I cost $3,000 an hour, $3,200 an hour in the business world. So you could feel special. I'm spending five, six hours for you for free. So it's about, you know, $15,000, $16,000 for free. Why? Kiruv. And I have to listen to my wife. So, without Hashem, Rabbi Matya gave us a lot of mussar today. Rabbi Matya told us, yes, you could be nice to people.

7:02You can say hello to people. That's not going to help them. It's not going to help them. What's going to help them is if you are makdim b'shalom, you bring them God. You bring God to them. That's going to help them. If you bring God to them, then you'll understand the rest of this Mishnah that says that it's better to be at the tail of the lions of the tzaddikim than at the head of the resha'im. But if you're still thinking it's just "hello," you have no idea what the rest of this means. What does the fox have to do with the lion? Maybe the lion is going to eat the fox. Maybe the fox is going to fool the lion. What does it have to do with anything? It has nothing to do with "hello." It has to do with God. Bring God to people; bring the truth to them. Because as long as there's no one out there bringing the truth to people, we're going to continue suffering. Disaster that's happening in Saudi Arabia will spread to more places. The terrorism that is in America will spread to more places. The anti-Semitism that's all over the world will spread to more places. Things will get worse until we do something about it. There's no doubt, Hashem wants to us to recognize this and do teshuvah, to bring about a change in the world. May Hashem give us enough information and encouragement to take action.

8:15To push us to do something about it. You want to continue chasing bitcoins? Enjoy it; eventually, it's gonna be all worthless. You want to continue focusing your entire life on chasing money, chasing material things, chasing all this stuff that you can't do anything about? Fine. It's all gonna be worthless eventually. All of it's gonna be worthless. The only thing you're gonna have is they're gonna ask you: how many souls did you save? How many souls did you save? Am Yisrael left Egypt, and only 20% survived. Some say much less—some actually say it's less than 1% of Am Yisrael survived Egypt. The rest of them didn't want to do teshuva, so Hashem killed all of them. The prophets say that at the end of times, it's going to be a repeat of Egypt, meaning the same thing that happened in Egypt is going to happen again. Some are saying that just as there were few who survived the Exodus, meaning only 20% or less survived the Exodus, only 20% or less are going to survive when the Mashiach comes. This means that when the Mashiach comes, it will be very significant if you are responsible for anyone surviving because not many will survive. So it's going to be very, very precious.

9:41It's a very precious commodity if you can say, "Hey, Mashiach, listen, my Shabbat wasn't the greatest, my mitzvot weren't the greatest, I wasn't the biggest Talmid Chacham. I was really trying, but I didn't get there yet. But by the way, you see those 500 people? Do I need to say, do I really need to say who did it?" And he would tell you, "No, you don't. You don't need to say. I know." Why? Because he could see your Yirat Shamayim. You don't need to be the biggest Talmid Chacham. You don't need to be a rabbi. You don't need to be a speaker. You don't need to be anything. All you need to have is a heart. Be a Makdim Shalom. Bring Hashem to people. Bring Hashem to people.