Life After Death, Magic, Shabbat vs Murder, Lubavitcher Rebbe, Christianity - STUMP THE RABBI (12)

0:15Good to be here. We have our Wednesday night "Stump the Rabbi" session. This shiur, I think, is the most popular out of the three that we have each week. You know, people like to learn about bitachon. They like to learn about things of mussar, about the Iggeret HaRamban. But most importantly, people want their questions answered. Everybody has questions. And sometimes the weekly shiur, whether it's different things of mussar or different things about bitachon, don't necessarily answer them. They have a question. I remember when I was younger, I had a lot of questions. I still have a lot of questions, but much less than I used to have. So the questions that you guys ask don't only help you get the answers that you've wanted. but it also answers questions that other people have all over the world. Baruch Hashem, right now, we have somewhere in the neighborhood of about two million minutes per month. Two million minutes per month of people watching our shiurim. And that doesn't include all of the CDs and the other places, the other things that we spread out. So Baruch Hashem, there's a lot of Torah spreading around the world. And that's actually one of the nevuot, one of the prophecies that's going to happen. The Gemara says before Mashiach comes,

1:39The Torah says, and the Tanach also says it, that people are going to have a hunger. They're going to be very hungry. They're not hungry for food, not hungry for material things, but hungry for spirituality, hungry for a connection to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. And you're actually seeing it all over the world. People are waking up and asking difficult questions: What’s the purpose of life? Why am I here? Why do I have problems? Why does everybody have problems? The point is that you want to ask these questions because you want to answer the safek, the doubt that you have inside you. Because if a person is a real person, if you're an honest person, intellectually an honest person, then once you've answered all of the doubts that you have, at least the main ones, about HaKadosh Baruch Hu, about Am Yisrael, about the Torah itself, once you know that the Torah is from Hashem, once you know that Hashem is real, then if you continue violating Shabbat, you're simply crazy. We would just put you in a mental institution. Why? Think about it. If a king of flesh and blood came over here and said to you, "Listen, if you raise your right hand, I'm going to kill you," how many of you are going to raise your right hand?

3:09No one. Why? Because you don't want to die. Which means, if we know that Hashem Yitbarach is the one who wrote the Torah, and He is real, and the Torah is real, and the Torah says don't walk around immodestly, and the Torah says don't go with goyim, and the Torah says don't eat non-kosher, and the Torah says don't violate Shabbat, and so on and so forth. If HaKadosh Baruch Hu wrote the Torah, and the Torah says all of these things, only a crazy person would violate it. Now, we don't live in a generation of crazy people. We live in a generation of ignorant people. The vast majority of people are ignorant. They simply don't know. Either they don't know at all if the Torah is real, or they don't know at all if Hashem is real, or they know that Hashem is real and the Torah is real, but they don't know that the punishment part is real. They don't know that when Hashem wrote all of the punishments in the Torah, He was serious. They think, "Yeah, listen, if you keep Shabbat, you're a tzaddik. You don't keep Shabbat? You're still okay." Why? Because sometimes you have people that call themselves rabbis that tell you stuff like that just because they want your money. So they want to make you feel good about yourself, so they call you a tzaddik for no reason. HaKadosh Baruch Hu says who's a tzaddik and who's not a tzaddik. The Torah clarifies who's a tzaddik and who's not a tzaddik.

4:31He says who I love and who I hate. There are some people that Hashem hates and there are some people that Hashem loves. He doesn't love everyone. Anyone that tells you that Hashem loves everyone is lying to you. Why? Because the entire Torah describes the people He loves and also the people He hates. But sometimes you have difficult people. There are not that many, but unfortunately enough to drive you crazy, that even if they hear the truth, even if they know that Hashem is real, even if they know that the Torah is real, Even if they know that, you know what, yes, there's punishment, but I'm not ready for it, Rabbi. I'm not ready to keep Shabbat yet. I'm not ready to leave my girlfriend Christine. I'm not ready to leave my boyfriend Jose. I'm not ready because I like him. He makes me happy. Yeah, but he's not Jewish. He's not going to make you happy in Gehinom. I'm not ready. Oh, you're not ready? Okay. So when are you going to be ready? Oh, later on. How do you know you have later on? Who promised you later on? Who promised you that you're going to live till next week? Who promised you you're going to live till next month? Who promised you you're going to live 120 years? Even though it says on the birthday cakes "until 120," who promised you you're actually going to live? It's only a cake. So sometimes there are certain people that are so delusional that even if they know the truth, unfortunately, they still violate it. And we have it in our Torah. In last week's parashat Korach,

6:00The time of Korach, all of Am Yisrael saw miracles that no other nation, no other people has ever seen before. They literally saw HaKadosh Baruch Hu open the heavens and show them what's there. They saw Hashem split the ocean into twelve. They saw Hashem turn the biggest, strongest civilization that ever existed, the Egyptians, into nothing. But yet, they unfortunately had a few resha'im among them, a few wicked people among them. In last week's parasha, we had two people called Datan and Aviram. And Datan and Aviram, even after Moshe Rabbeinu came to them and he said, listen, you know that Hashem is real. You saw what He did to the Egyptians. They said, yeah. He said, you know Hashem split the ocean. They said, yeah, we were there. You know that Hashem just gave us Matan Torah, opened all the heavens, everything. You saw everything. Yeah? You saw His voice. Yeah. Not hear it. You saw it. Every time Hashem spoke, there were words in the sky. You saw the voice. You saw everything. Yes. And you're still going against me? You're still going against Hashem? Datan v'Aviram, it says, וַיַּעֲלוּ מֵעַל מִשְׁכַּן קֹרַח דָּתָן וַאֲבִירָם מִסָּבִיב, וְדָתָן וַאֲבִירָם יָצְאוּ נִצָּבִים פֶּתַח אָהֳלֵיהֶם, וּנְשֵׁיהֶם וּבְנֵיהֶם וְטַפָּם.

7:18Datan and Aviram went out erect at the entrance of their tents with their wives and children and infants. Meaning, after Moshe Rabbeinu tells them the whole truth, says, listen, do teshuva, stop it. Stop messing around. Hashem is not your friend. He's God. They went out with their heads held high. No, nothing's going to touch me. What are you talking about? Me? No, I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm a tzaddik. They made their own rules. They made their own Torah. They went out arrogantly, even though they knew the truth. And their end wasn't pretty. HaKadosh Baruch Hu opened the ground, swallowed them, put them into Gehenom, and they will never ever see the light of day. Why? They knew the truth, and they still violated it. So now, Rabotai HaYekarim, what we try to do before we start questions, is to enlighten you. Everyone else that’s watching and will watch in the future, as others, with what Hashem said? We're not judges. We're not a jury. The reality is that everyone here is obligated to learn what the truth is. What you do with it? That's your business. You listen to the truth, you're a very smart person according to Hashem. You don’t listen to the truth, you're a very foolish person according to Hashem.

8:43why? Because if you listen, there's reward. If you don't listen, there's punishment. But not only in the next world—here too. You see, all of the people that live without Hashem not only have problems like everybody else, but they have problems worse than everybody else. And worst of all, they have a meaningless life. They have no hope, no dreams. And that's why the suicide rate in the secular world is exponentially higher than in the religious world. Very, very rarely do you ever hear of a religious person committing suicide. Very rarely do you ever hear of a religious person getting a divorce. Very rarely do you ever hear of a religious person overdosing on drugs. Yes, it happens—over 30 Jewish kids overdosed on drugs just in the last month, Hashem, in America. Nine of them died. They thought they were going to live when they were taking the drugs. They thought they were going to have a good time. We're going to have a good time, but then they died. Nine of them died, six are in a coma. B'ezrat Hashem, the rest of them will hopefully be okay, especially if they stop doing drugs this time. So it happens. It happens to some of those people, unfortunately. They were not, you know, religious people. It wasn't just not religious. So it does happen. But if you compare this 30 and...

10:09Versus the rest of the world, it's nothing. It's not even a fraction. The point being is that when you have a connection to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, you have a reason to live. You have instructions on how to live, and you have answers to your questions. Unfortunately, the people who usually end up committing suicide... overdosing on drugs, having a divorce. Usually, they did the mitzvot, but they didn't really know why. They just did it because somebody told them to. They grew a beard because it grows for free. They put a kippah on because they had a bald spot. They went to Beit Knesset because they wanted to hang out with their friends, not because they wanted to go hang out with HaKadosh Baruch Hu. So, yeah, they were religious in practice, but not inside. What we try to do is spread the truth so you are religious inside and outside. And that's why, b'ezrat Hashem, we try to do these shiurim. We sacrifice everything and anything we have so you guys can have the truth and, b'ezrat Hashem, build fantastic families one day full of kedusha and without all of the problems of the secular world. As a side note, a couple of major announcements. Tonight, just in the last couple of hours, it was announced that

11:21The biggest lecture probably in the last decade is going to happen in New York, b'ezrat Hashem, in the next couple of weeks. It is going to have myself, Rav Mizrahi, and Rabbi Yaron Reuven all in New York on one stage. Never in history has such a thing happened, and b'ezrat Hashem, more will come. But this event is going to be one of those events where there will probably be people waiting outside, and because a lot of people have asked for this lecture to happen over the last few years, but all of us are busy, all of us have our own schedules. So, for all of the people that have family in New York, or people that are watching, or people that want to travel, it's definitely one of those events worth going to. So, there's nothing that's happening on the 29th of July, so just in the next couple of weeks... On another note, also in regards to the CDs, I noticed that a lot of you guys, even though you come here, Baruch Hashem, a few times a week, some of you guys don't realize that we have CDs for free. So each one of you take the CDs, put them in your cars. Each CD has 40 hours of Torah. Each package has two CDs. You take two of the packages, there are four different CDs. That's 160 hours of Torah. By the time you finish 160 hours of Torah, you're like a little mini rabbi.

12:33know everything you need to know in order to be a kosher Jew. You can help all of your friends, you can help your family, you can help your cousins, you can help your enemies, you can help humanity with the knowledge that's on those CDs. Those CDs, we have too much blood, sweat, and tears went into those CDs too, and it's given to you for free. Why? Because those CDs are much like food for the neshama. Take CDs, they're in there, they're outside, they're for free. Also, we have an app on iOS, on Apple, and the Google app is coming up in the next couple of weeks. For anyone that wants to watch the shiurim without going to YouTube or the internet, because there's so much garbage on those places, you can download our app also for free. Last but not least, we're constantly trying to raise money so we can continue giving you guys... much as possible. The food, the 15 bucks stipend, all of this stuff costs money. Just the camera system was almost five thousand dollars. Everything costs money, so we're constantly trying to raise money. But more importantly to us, aside from spending five thousand dollars a week just on these events, is that you bring more people. I want to build five buildings like this, not one. I don't want to have only a hundred people for you; I want to have five thousand. I'm sure each one of you guys knows at least five people.

13:48So each one of you guys, next week, bring five people. That means you've turned into six people. That means that a hundred people turn into six hundred people. Now you're going to say, where are we going to fit them? Don't worry, we're going to fit them. We'll fit them. Why? The Beit HaMikdash, we know the exact measurements of the Beit HaMikdash. But somehow millions of people fit in it. Measured, if you see the measurements, what they say in the Torah, there's no way that millions of people fit in the Beit HaMikdash. But HaKadosh Baruch Hu made it work. How? When there's Kedushah, Hashem makes miracles. I don't know, maybe Hashem is going to give us a whole building, a stadium, who knows. All we need you to worry about is bring people. Bring more people. Let them sit on the ceiling for a while. Let them sit with me. We're just going to bring him. Why? Because the reality is the Mashiach is coming soon. Once Mashiach comes, there's no more teshuvah. There's no more teshuvah. There's no more conversion. There's no more "I'm not ready yet." There's no more "I'm not ready to leave Jose." There's no more "I'm not ready to leave Christine. I really like her." There's no more of that stuff. There's no more "Oh, I couldn't really afford the full dress. I only bought the mini dress." There's no more of that stuff. If you haven't done teshuvah by the time Mashiach comes, we're finished.

14:54So that's why we have to do everything and anything possible to get more people—more people your age, more people older. So we have flyers out there. Take a couple, two, three, give them to your friends, give them to anybody you can to get more people here. Where we're going to get the money, only God knows. But I can tell you for sure that if kids come, parnassah comes with it also. So, with all that being said, you guys start asking some questions. But last thing, also remember, there's a rule in the Torah. It's something called nafka mina. Nafka mina means, what's the point? In so many words, in English. What's the point? Sometimes in the Gemara, Chachamim have a question, and another Chacham says, what's the point? What's the nafka mina? What do you get out of this question? Why do you ask this question? Where are we going with this? Where are you trying to get to? Why? If there's no point, why am I going to waste my brainpower and my time in this world toiling on a question that's completely meaningless and has no end? It's like going full speed into a dead-end street. For what? So when you ask a question, please, please, I ask you, worry more about the nafka mina than about stumping me. Why? Because if you ask a question that means something to you, that's going to help you...

16:16that's going to change your heart a little bit, get you closer to Hashem, that's going to change your life. That's going to change your friend's life. That's going to change the world. That's worth it. But you're going to ask questions that really have no nafka mina, no purpose, no point, that whether you know the answer or you don't know the answer doesn't really make a difference. Then you've wasted your time and you've wasted an opportunity. So please, b'chavod, and also whoever asked the question, just wait a minute so we can give you the mic. B'chavod, who wants to go first? Yes, yes. Hold on a second, give him the mic. So, HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, I give you life and the good, death and the bad, in the book of Devarim. You should choose life.

17:16I mean, it's an obvious thing. What do you mean, good and life? Bad and death? Choose life. Well, yeah, did He really have to mention choose life? Here, the Chachamim explained to us that Hashem is not just talking about good in this world. He's talking about life, but not life in this world—life eternally after you die. I and death eternally after you die. Meaning that after a person finishes their time in this world. Some people die at 100 years old. Some people, like my cousin from a couple of weeks ago, die at 50 years old. Some people, like my other cousin, die at 26 years old, last year. People die at different ages. Even though all of us say, every time you say happy birthday, "Oh, until 120" is the minhag. In reality, how many people do you know that live to 120? How many people do you know that live till a hundred? How many people do you know that live past 80? Not many, not many. Most of the people that live till 80 years old usually want to die already at 60 because of how sick they were the last 20 years. Meaning, it's not just about living; it's about having a good life. What's a good life? A life with a purpose. Now, HaKadosh Baruch Hu says that after this life, there's a life of eternity—an eternity of good or an eternity of bad. And...

18:44There is heaven, and then there is Gehenom. There is Gan Eden and Gehenom. Gehenom has seven names in the Gemara. One of my dear friends, Rabbi Reuven Chaim, wrote an article on Ohr Sameach's website and other places, talking about the different places the Gemara in Masechet Eruvin, page 19a, gives seven names to Gehenom. And this Gehenom, the Chachamim say these seven names, it's not that there are seven names for the same place, it's that these are seven parts of Gehenom. The bad part has seven chambers. It's like a building with seven divisions within the building. Heaven also has seven chambers. Seven divisions within it, each with its own distinct level. Why each one? You don't just group all the good people together—the ones who observed mitzvot, kept Shabbat, and did all the good things that Hashem commanded. You don't put all of them in the same place. Why? Because imagine this: if, let's say, you went to school, you did your work, and you got a 65 on a test—you just passed, barely—and...

19:51And then your friend who studied really hard, he got an 80. And then the guy who studied hard and is a genius, he got 100. Should all of you go into the same class next year? Who agrees that you should go into the same class? Who thinks you should all go into different classes? You with me? All agree with a different class. Why? The 65, he doesn't belong with the 100. Why? He has a 65 brain, a 65 effort. The guy that's 100 belongs at a different level. Maybe if the guy that studies, the guy that's 65 studies harder, maybe he can get to 100, but today he doesn't belong there. Same thing here. A person lives in this world, fulfills a certain amount of mitzvot, he has a certain place in Gan Eden. If he does all of the mitzvot, he learns Torah, he does everything that's necessary, he can go to the highest level of heaven. On the other hand, unfortunately, if a person does not fix his character traits, does not fulfill the mitzvot, continues using electronics on Shabbat, continues violating Shabbat, continues watching movies that are inappropriate, continues wasting seed, and so on and so forth, then he cannot go to heaven. Why? Because in heaven there are people that got a passing grade: 65, 75, 95, 100, and some even 105 and 110; they got extra credit. does not fulfill the mitzvot, continues using electronics on Shabbat, continues violating Shabbat, continues watching movies that are inappropriate, continues wasting seed, and so on and so forth, then he cannot go to heaven. Why? Because in heaven there are people that got a passing grade: 65, 75, 95, 100, and some even 105 and 110; they got extra credit.

21:17They got extra credit. But if he got a 20 on his test, he cannot go to heaven. He has to go somewhere else. And that place is called Gehinnom or seven other names. Now, what those two places look like is hard to imagine. because the best that you can possibly imagine in your human body is still not even one percent of one percent of one percent of the lowest level of Heaven. The best thing you could possibly imagine, all the good in the world, all the pleasure in the world—whatever pleasures there are in this world—when you eat good food, when you're married to a good woman, you're married to a good man, you have money, you have all the things that people desire in this world. Let's say you take all the good in the world that ever existed... from the beginning of the world all the way to today, from all of the people, and you combine it all into one little box, all the good they have had, none of the bad, the good food they had, the pleasure they had, the intimacy they had, the stuff they bought, whatever they had, all the good stuff they had, you combine all of the people's good things, remove all the bad, you put it all into a little box.

22:30The beginning of the world to the end of the world. Right now, there are almost 8 billion people in the world. So just now, there are 8 billion. The previous generation, about six and a half billion. The generation before that, about six billion. The generation before that, about five billion. And so on and so forth, all the way back to the beginning of the world. All these billions and billions of people, and take just the good part of their lives, none of the bad. And you put all of that good into one little box. Imagine how much pleasure that is. Imagine how great that is. Your life—you could think of a few things that are amazing that already make you happy. So imagine having all the happy moments of all the people who ever existed. That is not even 1% of one hour of Gan Eden for a righteous Jew. So, that is impossible for us to comprehend—that's how good it is. Unfortunately, for the wicked people that do not do teshuva, that continue going against Hashem, the bad is just as bad. All of the bad that ever existed from the beginning of the world for every single person, all of the diseases, all of the death, all of the cancer, all of the heartbreaks, all of the hunger and starvation, all of the bad that ever existed for all of humanity, the Holocaust, the Inquisitions, the pogroms, everything,

23:54Combine it into a box, not even an hour of Gehinnom. Not even an hour. So you see, Rabotai, people say that Hashem is merciful. Yes, He is. But in this world, in this world there's mercy. In this world, we can violate Shabbat, and Hashem will still give us a chance to do teshuva and hopefully we keep next week. In this world, we can even kill somebody. and do teshuva for it. You're alive, you can do teshuva. You can change. But once a person dies, once a person leaves this world, no more mercy. There's no mercy over there. Why? There's judgment. There's good, there's bad. You're my lover, you're my enemy. That's what Hashem says. You're my lover, that's because you kept the mitzvot. You're my enemy, that's because you violated the mitzvot. You're my lover, you have Gan Eden forever. You have all the pleasure in the world forever and ever and ever. How much is a million out of forever? Nothing. It's not even the beginning.

25:01And you have it forever, for good. On the other hand, if somebody violates the Torah with some of the big sins, like Chilul Shabbat, wasting seed, Chilul Hashem, these big things, their punishment, according to the Gemara, 17a and also 16b, their punishment is forever. It's a very, very scary punishment. So that's why, Rabotai Yekarim, it's not worth it to have even the best pleasures of this world if they're going to get us to a place we don't want to be in. It's much better to take the things that Hashem said seriously, apply them to your life, and see that not only are you going to benefit by getting heaven forever, but you're actually going to live a good life here too. Better than anybody else that you know. But it requires a little bit more knowledge and a little bit more effort to understand why we're doing what we're doing. And that's part of the point of the issue. Next question. Yes, one second, give him the mic.

26:05Sonny was recommending I throw the mic, but I said I wasn't a quarterback in high school, so I might hit some faces. Is there a mitzvah or a chiyuv in moving to Eretz Yisrael? Ah, good question. Is there a mitzvah or a chiyuv to move to Eretz Yisrael? The Gemara says that living in Eretz Yisrael... is the best thing that somebody can do if they keep mitzvot. If they keep mitzvot, they keep the Torah, they learn Torah. The best place in the world for them is to be in Eretz Yisrael. But if they violate the Torah, it's the worst place on earth. Why? They're going to have much more punishment for violating the Torah in Eretz Yisrael than for violating the Torah somewhere else. That doesn't mean it's allowed to go violate the Torah. Right here, I don't eat. I just, sometimes, it's good to eat. Sometimes, I'm not hungry. I ate before. So anyway, you know, you don't catch up. So the point is if a person fulfills the Torah in Eretz Yisrael, it's much higher. If a person fulfills the mitzvot, it's also high. If he doesn't, Eretz Yisrael, Hashem has a special place in His heart for this land. So if you do it over there, it's much better. On the other hand, if you violate the Torah over there, the land could vomit you, literally.

27:31could get to a point where all your life collapses and you get kicked out of the land, which is what happened to us 2,000 years ago. Why do you think we live in America? Because you like America so much? Anybody that lives outside of Israel, the land vomited them. But at the same token, it says that from the bad comes the good, that even though the land vomited the people that sinned. This is also part of the good that Hashem brings to the world, because part of the mission for the last generation before Mashiach is going to be not only to spread Torah to all four corners of the world, but also to spread Torah to goyim, to the extent where you can convert many, many goyim and have them join Am Yisrael. That's actually part of the mission of the last generation before Mashiach. And that's part of the reason why Hashem spread us to all four corners of the world. Now, as far as if you're gonna live in Eretz Yisrael or not, it's not simply if you're just gonna fulfill mitzvot. Why? Because you could fulfill mitzvot but still fail as a Jew. For example, let's say if you learn Torah. You learn Torah, you do mitzvot, but you have work, you make a little bit of money, you bring some living. But you say, listen, honey, I want to move to Eretz Yisrael. And she says, listen, honey, I don't want to.

28:52I don't want to. Why? My parents live here. My brothers live here. My sisters live here. Our kids are going to school. Everything's okay over here. No, honey, we have to go to Eretz Yisrael. Now, you can push all you want, and you can convince your wife against her will to go to Eretz Yisrael, but guess what's going to happen? You're going to arrive in Eretz Yisrael, and all you're going to have is Eretz Yisrael. You're going to have hell on earth as a life. Why? Your wife's going to cry every day. You're not going to have any Shalom Bayit. Your kids, who knows if the schools are going to accept them. You're going to have a miserable house. Everybody's crying all the time. That's not a mitzvah. It's not a mitzvah. On the other hand, somebody says, "Honey, I want to move to Eretz Yisrael." "Yeah, but listen, I have a good job here. I make $100,000 a year over here. In Eretz Yisrael, if I'm lucky, I'll make $30,000. We can't move. We can't afford to live over there, honey." "Well, listen, I want to move to Eretz Yisrael." And you force. She forces. Everybody forces to go to Eretz Yisrael. And they go to Eretz Yisrael. And guess what? You also have no Shalom Bayit. Why? Because you have no money. you have no money, or last but not least, some people move to Eretz Yisrael and they feel so comfortable with the rest of the Hebrew-speaking population, they forget that they have to keep Torah and they end up, instead of getting closer to Hashem, getting lower. The point being is that if

30:06Your Avodat Hashem, your servitude of Hashem, your learning of Torah, your fulfilling of the mitzvot, everything that you're doing can be done better or at least as well over there. You'll have parnassah, you'll have shalom bayit, you'll have Torah, and you can do it over there? For sure you should move to Eretz Yisrael. But if your life is going to collapse and your wife's going to divorce you, your husband's going to leave you, your kids are going to jump off of bridges and all of that stuff, then no, it's a sin to move there. It's a sin. So, it's not so simple. It's not a simple "yes, move" or "don't move." It all depends on individual cases. That's why the Mishnah in Avot says, "Make yourself a Rav." Why? Because for these types of questions, you need a Talmid Chacham who knows you, knows the Torah, and obviously not only has a brain but also has a heart. and can give you an answer specific to you and your case. He knows how your Shalom Bayit is and how it will be affected. He'll ask you the necessary questions before determining whether you should or shouldn't move. I can tell you already, there are a few students that I told should move, and there are a few students that I told if they move, they're making a sin, not a mitzvah.

31:27Unfortunately, in one case, a student I told not to move ended up moving, and it didn't work out too well. It didn't work out too well doesn't mean that I'm always right. It's just that there's an opinion of the Torah. If you don't listen to it, that means you don't listen to Hashem, not me. It has nothing to do with me. So you have to ask a Talmid Chacham; you have to ask somebody that has knowledge of Torah but also knowledge of you and your specific case. If you could do all the mitzvot in a better way over there, it's definitely better to live over there. But if it's going to hurt you in ways that are impossible for you to live under those conditions, then it's better for you to live wherever it is you live. As long as you live in a kosher Jewish community, as long as you live somewhere where you have Judaism, you're fine. Next question. Isn't there a Gemara that says... so important that a person can divorce his wife without paying a ketubah if she doesn't want to? Ken, there is a Gemara that says that you need to divorce your wife, but it's assuming that you don't have children that you're leaving behind, assuming that you're not going to become a chiloni, assuming all of these other factors. If a woman does not want to follow her man, in general, already you have in Sefer Bereshit, that once a man marries a woman, the woman is obligated to follow wherever the man goes.

32:43Even our own parents, whom she is obligated her whole life to respect and honor. Once she is married to her husband, the honor for her husband actually supersedes that of her parents. If she can honor both her parents and her husband, good. But if she has to choose, she always has to choose her husband. Her husband is always right over her parents. Even if he's wrong, she just tells him privately, "Honey, by the way, you're wrong. I just didn't say it in front of my father. I didn't say it in front of my mother." She has to choose a side. She has to be glued to him. Why? Because you become one neshama. So if a woman does not want to follow her husband, that means that she doesn't want to be married. She wants to be married to something else. Maybe she wants to be married to her car, maybe to her family, maybe to the mall. She doesn't want to be married to her husband. But that's assuming, again, that there are no children involved, no money, and none of these other things. So it's a general thing. We're trying to answer more specifically. Next. Yes, give it to me. How does one get rid of the worry that he hasn't done enough teshuvah for a really serious sin he committed? How does a person get rid of the worry that he hasn't done enough teshuvah? Well, that depends. If he wants to be a tzaddik or if he wants to be a dreamer. If he wants to be a dreamer, then he could listen to all of the self-help gurus like Tony Robbins and the rest of his buddies and say, "Don't worry," and he stops worrying. That's a dreamer. If he wants to be a tzaddik, never stop worrying. The beginning of wisdom is fear of HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Petrified. Constantly. Why? Maybe he didn't do enough.

33:58If he wants to be a dreamer, then he could listen to all of the self-help gurus like Tony Robbins and the rest of his buddies and say, "Don't worry," and he stops worrying. That's a dreamer. If he wants to be a tzaddik, never stop worrying. The beginning of wisdom is fear of HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Petrified. Constantly. Why? Maybe he didn't do enough. Maybe I haven't finished. Maybe even the teshuvah that I did is wrong. Maybe I forgot the sins that I made and I haven't even done teshuvah for them. How do I know this? Gemara Masechet Berachot has one of the greatest tzaddikim that ever lived, Rabbi Yochanan. Rabbi Yochanan is on his deathbed. His students come to him and say, "Rabbi, teach us something before you go to the next world. Teach us something that's going to get us to Gan Eden." He says to them, "May you have as much fear of Hashem as you have of men." The students say, "No, no, Rebbe, you mean we're confused, right? Maybe we have fear of men as much as we have fear of Hashem. It's the opposite, right?" "No, no, no, you are more afraid of the cops pulling you over than you are afraid of Hashem. Why, if you're driving a hundred miles an hour and...

35:16And the cop pulls you over. You almost have a small, little, miniature heart attack. "Oh, I'm going to get a ticket. It's going to be $500. Let me see if I have any PBA cards. Maybe I should call my cousin, who's a cop." You're so scared to get a ticket. You get something in the mail that you have a meeting in court. The IRS sent you a notice. You don't even know what it's about, and you're already scared. But driving on Shabbat—people drive on Shabbat, no big deal. Looking at a goyah that's not your... ...touching your wife when she's nidah—it's kosher? Not kosher! It's delicious anyway? Hashem understands people make sins all the time. What, because they're not afraid of Hashem? Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai said to his students, "May you be afraid of Hashem at least as much as you're afraid of people." So then he says to them after he explains this... I'm scared on my deathbed. I'm scared. They say, "Rebbi, why are you scared? Why are you crying?" He says, "Because I know that I'm about to meet my Maker. I'm about to meet HaKadosh Baruch Hu, and I don't know if they're going to take me to Gan Eden or to Gehenom." This, Rabotai, is one of the most righteous people that ever lived, and...

36:37One of the foundations of our Oral Torah in general was able to revive the dead because of his Kedusha. Somebody died, he looked at them, and brought them back to life. That's how holy he was. And he wasn't sure of himself, of whether he's going to Gan Eden or Gehenom. To spoil it, he went to Gan Eden. But the point is, Rabotai, why? Why did he go to Gan Eden? Not because of the mitzvot, but because he was worried constantly, "Am I doing enough? Am I doing enough? Am I doing enough?" When you're constantly worried, "Am I doing enough?" you end up doing more than enough. When you end up having ambition in life, what's ambition? Ambition is a constant desire to do better. That's ambition. In essence, you could say it's worry. Worry about being homeless. Worry about not meeting your own mark. Worry about not beating the competition. It's worry. Worry is good if you know how to channel it. If you know how to channel it. If you channel it that you just have zero confidence and no matter what you do, you're still depressed. No, that's just yetzer hara. We're supposed to be worried in order to encourage us and drive us to do better. Do your mitzvah. The mitzvah that you're doing now, do it better next time. The prayer you prayed now, next time pray better.

37:55The learning you did today, next time learn better. I can tell you a small secret, and then we'll go to the next question. I always tell people that if you come to my shiurim, there's so much information in them. If you studied for this shiur, with all the sefarim that we cover, and you studied from beginning to end, not just this one, but any one of the shiurim, we talk on average about somewhere between 50 to 100 sources per shiur. If you studied enough Torah to learn all these 50 to 100 sources, if you're a heavy reader, it would be at least 8 to 12 months of information. But you're getting it on a silver platter. This is not to give myself a compliment. This is simply to give you an understanding of what you have. Now, when I study with my rabbi, to this day, today I studied with him, yesterday I studied with him, the day before, every day I study with him. A little bit every day, sometimes more, sometimes less, but every day. You know what I do? I bring a notebook. And I try to write down every single word he says. Every single word he says. Why? I don't want to miss anything.

38:56Why? This is important. This could change my life. Maybe not today. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next week. Maybe next year. Maybe I could use it in a shiur. Maybe I could give it to someone. Maybe somebody else needs it more than me. I want to write it down. Why? This is a diamond. So I tell people, bring notebooks. Write down some of the stuff I'm going to say because there's no way in the world you're going to remember all of it. It's impossible. I don't remember all of it and I'm saying it. So, it's important that you take the Torah that you learned and try to write some stuff down. Try to take more than just mental notes. More than just mental notes. Study the Torah. Don't just watch it like it's a movie. Because once you write it down, then it's like you reviewed it seven times. When you write something down, it's like you reviewed it seven times. That already helps your memory. Once you write it once, it's as if you read the same thing or heard the same thing seven times. That already is going to help you remember it when you need it down the road. that also shows that it's important to you. So, especially when you have so many sources, so many things, Take advantage of it because it's literally being given to you on a silver platter, and if you were to study it yourself, it would take you a very, very long time. So when you can get it on a silver platter, it's much easier because instead of studying for 8 to 12 months just for one shiur, you could simply take, you know, one page, two pages full of notes, and you have literally 10 months of Torah in your hand. Next question. You can pass them. It's good. We'll close. Bye.

40:26after somebody dies, their neshama naturally feels like it needs to be cleaned, and like it needs to go to Gehinnom to clean itself so it can feel better. So the question is, does the neshama feel the need to be cleaned? So the Chachamim say in Reishit Chochmah, also the Arizal discusses it, and several other places that... Once a person passes this life, there's a whole process. After they go to the Beit Din of Shamayim, the court of heaven, the court of heaven has a movie that they show this person of every single thing that they ever did in their life. And there are several different angels that are responsible for different missions. One of the angels, the Arizal says, is responsible for asking you why you did what you did in every moment of your life. Not every hour, not every day, every moment of your life, every rega. Why did you do this? Why did you do that? Why did you think this? Why did you look there? Why did you see this? Everything. And then they show you what you did, and this is all happening at lightning speed.

41:54And then they give you something that's called din ve'cheshbon. They judge you in heaven about all the things that you did. They count all of the mitzvot and all of the aveirot, all the sins. If he has more mitzvot than aveirot, he's considered righteous, but he still has to pay for these aveirot. There's no discount, like if you have more mitzvot than aveirot, you just go straight to heaven. No. There's still a process, a cleaning process. If there's more aveirot than mitzvot, Hashem Yirachem. Now, more doesn't actually mean quantity, like number. More means as far as the size, the magnitude. So, for example, somebody could do all of the mitzvot in the world. Every day he puts on tefillin, he keeps Shabbat, he does everything. But only once a month, just once a month, he kills somebody. Just once a month, not every day. Once a month he kills somebody. Tzaddik, there you go. Tzaddik and Gehenom. Tzaddik and Gehenom. Why Tzaddik and Gehenom? Why are you killing people? Even though it's only one sin, yeah, but you're killing people.

43:01Everybody that's normal understands you don't need many sins. One of these sins and you're finished. But guess what, the Ten Commandments say that violating Shabbat is worse than murder. The Ten Commandments say violating Shabbat is worse than murder. The mitzvah of Shabbat is the fourth commandment, the mitzvah of murder is the sixth commandment. The fifth one is honoring your parents. Why? If you violate Shabbat, according to Hashem, you're a hundred percent an idol worshiper. Whereas if you murdered, yes, you went against a certain person, you hurt somebody, you're going to suffer for it. But nonetheless, you're not an idol worshiper. So now, once a person's mitzvot and sins are reviewed, he's shown all the things that he did and And then he's shown the cheshbon, the accounting, of all he could have done. What potential did Hashem put in you? Not just what you did, but what you could have done. That's the cheshbon. So now, how is that like? Somebody has a talent to, let's say, he has a photographic memory. Now that person, he could learn Gemara, he could memorize the entire Gemara in a week. He could know the entire body of all the Torah in a week.

44:23instead, he wants to go to be in a circus. He wants to memorize phone books. So in Shamayim, they're going to show him: "Look, I gave you brainpower to memorize the entire Torah by heart. You could have been the biggest Rabbi in the world. Instead, you were a circus act that remembered phone numbers for 50 million people." So, not only do you get punished for the sins you made, but you get punished for misusing the gift that I gave you. I gave you a hundred million dollars. Instead of using that hundred million dollars to spread My Torah all over the world, what did you do? You built nightclubs. People who sin not only get punished for the nightclubs and the sins but also for misusing the gift that I gave them. So, once a person is shown the counting of all of what they did and also all of what they could have done, their embarrassment in front of HaKadosh Baruch Hu is so severe. They're so disgusted with themselves, they start begging Hashem to put them in Gehinnom.

45:29Because, like you said, they feel so dirty and so filthy from their own sins, they say, Hashem, I can't take it. You have to remove this filth from me. You have to remove this disgusting sin from me. This goya that I had a one-night stand with. This stealing that I did. This that I did. Get this off of me, Hashem. Please. Why? Because over there, there's no yetzer hara. There's no desires. There's only truth. You see the truth for what it is, fully, clearly. At that point, when you see that Hashem gave you everything and you misused it and in fact used it against Him, of course you want to be cleansed. On the other hand, if a person lived a life of Torah and mitzvot, there's nobody happier than that person. Because that person will get to not only see how much he lived up to his potential, But he gets to see all the bad that he could have done, how he could have misused it. And he sees, wow, I would have had to go to Gehinnom for all that stuff. And he's shown what could have happened to him if he didn't do it. So imagine you won. Okay, that's great. But imagine you won, but they show you what the loser feels like. That makes the win much better.

46:51So that's one of the things that is one level of suffering before the official suffering. Yes, follow. So right when you turn 20, you get judged differently. So what's the best thing to do right when you turn 20? When you turn 20, you are judged differently. What does it mean to be judged differently? Right. Once you have, you first get judged differently... you're 13 years old as a man, and when you're 12 years old as a woman, because according to the Torah, a 12-year-old woman is a fully grown woman. Even though in today's world, even a 20-year-old is sometimes not fully grown, and even though sometimes there are 35-year-old guys who are not fully grown mentally, the reality is, according to the Torah, your judgment starts at 12 or 13, accordingly. However, that judgment changes, and the severity of that judgment changes at the age of 20. where there are certain sins that you commit before the age of 20 where the judgment is not as severe. It's still a judgment; it's still a punishment, but it's not as severe. But there is an exception. There is an exception that age does not apply to. And unfortunately, it's the most addictive sin in the world.

48:11The sin of wasting seed. Wasting seed has no age. Anybody that's wasted seed, no matter what age they were, even before the age of 13, they will get fully judged for it. Which means that anyone with a brain and a belief in HaKadosh Baruch Hu and His Torah will start doing teshuva regardless of what age they are. They don't wait until they're 20. They don't wait until they're 14. They don't wait until they're 40. They simply understand, I have to do better tomorrow. In fact, I have to start doing better today. What could I do today better? So yes, the severity of judgment does change at 20, but it doesn't mean that anything before 20 is insignificant. What should a person do once he arrives at the age of 20? Whatever he did up till now, pick it up a notch. You were learning 15 minutes a day? Strive for an hour. You are not so careful with your eyes? You better start getting careful.

49:11You are, you know, not so careful with kashrut. The point is, pick it up a notch. But in reality, you should pick it up a notch regardless of what age you are. But if you're already approaching closer and closer to that age of 20, then something changes. What is the biggest thing that changes? It is that the punishments for some of the sins start coming to you in this life. Meaning, before the age of 20, with the exception of wasting seed, punishments do not come to you in this life. But if it's after the age of 20, some of the punishments already come in this world, in this life. So it's better that a person does teshuvah, ASAP, regardless of what age they are. But quite frankly, I think that the biggest sin is also the most addictive and the most common that people have, which is the one that we keep mentioning in every shiur, because this is what's relevant to our generation and every generation. And also what the Zohar HaKadosh says is the tikkun of the generation. It's the major thing that will bring Mashiach once the generation fixes their brit. Once women become modest, once people become Shomer Brit, Mashiach can come. The reason why is because as long as a person continues to waste seed, the full mitzvot that he's doing, all the good that he's doing, he cannot get paid for it because he's wasting it. fixes their brit. Once women become modest, once people become Shomer Brit, Mashiach can come. The reason why is because as long as a person continues to waste seed, the full mitzvot that he's doing, all the good that he's doing, he cannot get paid for it because he's wasting it.

50:29He's wasting it away. So, I know it's hard. I know it's addictive. And the Rambam even says it's the most addictive thing to have. And that's why I have countless boys from religious homes, non-religious homes, and even non-Jews contact me 24 hours a day, somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 to 450 messages per day, per day, asking for help. Now, we tried to help. We have a whole playlist about this topic, but the point is, it doesn't make sense to fill a bucket with priceless water if there's a hole in the bucket. When a person makes big sins, it doesn't make sense. Why? Because even though you're doing big mitzvot, those big sins are like a hole in the bucket. So it's better to do teshuva for those big sins, and then la'at la'at, also do teshuva for the small ones too. Let's get something from the back as far as questions. I know somebody has questions in the back. Yes. Pass the mic, please. Don't throw it. Only I'm allowed to throw it. So my question is, does Judaism believe in magic? Does Judaism believe in magic? Yes, the Gemara says that there were ten levels of magic, of witchcraft, that were given to the world. Nine of them were given to the Egyptians. So the Egyptians had something called necromancers.

51:44Yes, the Gemara says that there were ten levels of magic, of witchcraft, that were given to the world. Nine of them were given to the Egyptians. So the Egyptians had something called necromancers. And these people had literally black magic where they were able to manipulate reality. That's why when Moshe Rabbeinu came to Paro and he showed him how his staff, how his stick turned into a snake, Paro wasn't impressed. Why? He had three of his necromancers come and turn their sticks into alligators. Like, oh, a little snake? Oh, we have alligators here. But then he saw that the snake ate the alligators, so then he got scared a little bit. But the point is that magic was always around. The Egyptians were so powerful in their magic that they actually made statues as the guards of the country. And that's the reason why Am Yisrael got to a level of depression so heavy that they wouldn't even waste any time trying to run away. You know, if you're a prisoner, you try to run away. If you have a chance, you see a door opening, you run away.

52:55If you're a normal prisoner, you see an open door, you run away. Even if you're guilty, you want to run away. If you're innocent, you want to run away. No one wants to be a prisoner. The Am Yisrael didn't try to run away. Why? Anyone that tried to run away died. Because at the corners of all the cities, they had huge, gigantic statues that were able to move and kill the people. Anyone that left, crossing the border, the statues would kill him. That's how much black magic the Egyptians had. Black magic still exists today. I know a few people that know people, and have seen it with their own eyes. But there's also kosher magic. There's something called Kabbalah Ma'asit. Kabbalah Ma'asit is using the holiness of Torah in order to manipulate reality. I have a dear friend; he's an avrech in Yerushalayim. He has... shown people. I haven't seen it with my own eyes, but my rabbi saw it, and many other really reliable people have seen it with their own eyes that he can manipulate reality.

53:56Create fire out of nothing in his hand. Bend spoons with his mind—things that you see magicians do, but actually do it with true skill. Now, here you look at him. He looks like an average Joe—nothing special. But Baba Sali knows how to do certain things that are unbelievable. So there is kosher, there is non-kosher, and... The stuff that you see on TV, for example, whether it's all these illusionists, they call them, for the most part, it's just hand-eye coordination. It's technology working its magic and things like that. Most of it is complete nonsense. Most of it is just fooling people to make you look over here while they're doing something over there. It's just hand-eye coordination and just fooling people. Most of it. Sometimes, sometimes there are certain people that know how to use black magic, and they can actually manipulate reality with it. The way these people do it is by using the kochot hatumah, the impure powers of the world that come from shedim (demons). They make, in essence, a deal with the devil, if you will, in simple lingo, and they do certain things that will give them something, and they get something in return.

55:13they get something in return. Usually, for example, if you've ever met—hopefully you never did, and you never will—but if you ever met a devil worshiper, like a real devil worshiper, not just somebody that says he is, but a real devil worshiper, those people, their services or ceremonies, whatever you want to call it, are full of blood and semen. That's what they eject out of their body. They cut themselves, or they ejaculate because these things are what these demons want. That's what they want. They want your seed. They want your blood. You give them that, they'll give you whatever you want. They'll give you money. They'll give you whatever you want. But once you're in, you can't get out. Once you give them what they want, to get out requires death. So that's why these people become slaves. Unfortunately, in the beginning, they feel good, but eventually, they become slaves of their own power. The point being, Abotai, is that yes, it is real. Some people actually know how to use it. There are different... parts of the world that know more about it than others. For example, some of my dear friends from Haiti told me that they grew up seeing black magic in their own houses, where people would manipulate reality, voodoo, and things of that nature. And some people just, you know, saw it elsewhere. All they know from Sippurei Tzadikim, from the books. We see many, many Sippurim from the Gemara even. One of these Resha'im went into a bathhouse and saw two of the Tzadikim. After he saw one of them, he used black magic and froze them in place.

56:42Frozen in place. So the tzaddikim saw what was going on. He's frozen. What's going on? And they realized it was coming from this rasha over there. So they also had power, but kosher power. They froze him in place. They said, "Let him go, we'll let you go." And that's what happened. So the Gemara talks about it in many places. A lot of beautiful stories in the Gemara, by the way. Mystical stuff. If you like mysticism, if you like all these types of things, the Gemara is full of it. The Midrashim are full of it. Judaism is full of it. Miracles are literally on every single page of the Torah. All the stuff that you see in movies, whether it's stuff like the superheroes, all of these different things, all of them have sources in the Torah. Anything and everything that's of any value, anything and everything that's any good in the world has a source in the Torah. Like for example, all the superheroes, anybody hear of the Hulk, the green guy? Okay, by the way, he is a replica of Yehuda. Judah. Shevet Yehuda, the son, the son of Yaakov. Son of Yaakov, you look at Midrash Me'am Loez, Midrash Me'am Loez, the third installment. You go to the parasha, it says the war of the twelve tribes. War of the twelve tribes, and it describes all of the superpowers that each one of the tribes, each one of the sons of Yaakov had. Yehuda, when he would get angry, when he would go to war, he would roar, and it would literally destroy buildings.

58:06and copper would come out of his body, and he had superhuman powers. Naftali, also one of the tribes, was able to run from Egypt all the way to Eretz Yisrael in one second, like this Flash, I think it's called, in superheroes. All the stuff you guys see in superhero movies, it came from the Torah. There's no imagination. There's nothing, no imagination in the world. Everything that's of any value is inside the Torah. Everything of any value is inside the Torah. So you can see a lot of beautiful things in the Torah, even vampires and werewolves. All these different types of stuff exist in the Torah. Harry Potter is a nice story of how somebody used a broom to fly around and do some interesting things, but yes, that also exists in the Torah. But it says that Rabban Gamliel was president, and he promised that once he became president, he is going to kill all of the witches and... He's gonna kill all of the witches, but he knew that as soon as the witches went on their brooms and they started flying, there's no power in the world that can stop them. So what did he do? He said to one of the witches, "Listen, where do you gather? I want to meet you. I want to show you my trick; you show me your tricks." So she told him where they're gonna be. So he went there on a rainy day—it was really dark because that's when they have their ceremonies—and he went there with 80 of 1880 tzaddikim. He told them, "Listen..."

59:31Cover your clothes so when you come there, the rain goes on other clothes. But then, when we go inside the cave, you take off the clothes, put new clothes on, and you wait in the dark until I give you the signal. Okay, so they all waited in the cave in the dark. He went inside. He saw all the witches over there. He said to them, "Nu, show me some of your tricks." So, the witches showed him some tricks—this, that, the other thing. So they said, "Okay, so you're here already. Show us your trick." He said, "I can show you that I can make 80 people appear right now in one second and lift all of you guys in the air." They responded, "You can do that? Show us." So, voila, he made it dark and then made it light. All of the 80 guys came inside and lifted them all up in the air. Now, they're all excited. But what happened? They lost all their power because they're in the air, in the hands of the Jews. So after that, they tied them all up and killed everybody. Why? Because the Torah says, the Torah has a rule: someone that uses witchcraft is not allowed to live. If you know somebody uses witchcraft, you have to kill them. Now today, we don't have a Sanhedrin, so we're not allowed to kill anybody, but there's a rule in the Torah, there's a pasuk in the Torah: if you know somebody is a mekhashef, a wizard using black magic, you have to kill them. So that's what they had to do. And these witches would literally fly in the air and do all types of things and torture people. Next question.

1:00:56Later on, they had their own things, we had our own things, but Baruch Hashem, we're still here, they’re not. Pass the mic to him. In the back, yes, is somebody in the back also? Yeah, give it to someone in the back, one of the ladies in the back. Speak louder, please. The mic only works for the camera, not for me. Speak louder. If Hashem takes a neshama and splits it into two and the baby comes into the world, chas v'shalom, the baby dies, what happens to the other half? Do they not have a soulmate? I'm sorry, I couldn't hear. Can anybody else hear what she said? If Hashem takes a neshama and splits it into two? If Hashem takes a neshama and splits it into two, when the baby comes into the world, chas v'shalom, the baby dies, what happens to the other half? Do they not have a soulmate? Oh. Hashem takes a neshama and splits it into two, and one neshama comes into the world and, let's say, dies early. Does that mean that the other neshama doesn't have a zivug? That's the question. So the Gemara Masechet Sotah, beginning of the Gemara 2a, says a person will get a zivug, a spouse, based on his actions.

1:02:11A tzaddik gets a modest woman. A rasha gets a prutza, an immodest woman. So the Chachamim say, what does one thing have to do with the other? What does one thing have to do with the other? A tzaddik should be with a tzaddeket. A rasha with a resha'it, not wicked with wicked. What does modesty have to do with it? So Rashi says on the Makom, if she's modest then she's more likely to be a tzaddeket. She belongs with the tzaddik. If she's not modest, it is impossible for her to be righteous. So she only belongs with a rasha. So here we see that Hashem mezaveg zivugim based on certain circumstances. But that also means that this is a dynamic thing. meaning that someone can come into the world, we all come into the world naked, but then shortly later our parents put clothes on us. If we keep those clothes on for the rest of our life, and we keep mitzvot, and we keep modesty, and so on and so forth, and we keep improving our level of kedusha, if let's say, for example, from level one to level ten, one being, I don't know, Hitler, ten being Moshe Rabbeinu.

1:03:24If, let's say, a person in a level of righteousness is, let's say, he's a six. He's a six, and he's not a ten. He's not a one either. He's not a rasha. Now, when Hashem gives him a zivug, he's going to give him somebody like him, according to this Gemara. If he's righteous, he'll get somebody like him. If he's wicked, he'll get somebody like him. If he's a six, he has to get someone that's close to six. Maybe it's another six. Maybe it's a five. Maybe it's a seven. But he's not going to give him a ten. And he's not going to give him a one. He's not going to give him a one because he doesn't deserve to be with a rasha. It's not right. He's trying hard, and he's going to be married to a rasha. It's not fair. On the other hand, he cannot give him Sarah Imeinu. Why? He's not at her level. He's not at her level. So he's going to give him somebody close to him. Now, even though Hashem, HaKadosh Baruch Hu, when the neshama was put into the seed, there's a malach called Laila. The Gemara in Masechet Niddah says there's a malach, there's an angel called Laila.

1:04:28this malach takes every seed that leaves the human body and goes to Hashem. He says, "This seed, what will be with him? Will he live or die? Will he be male or female? Will he be rich or poor? Will he be tall or short? What will be with him?" And Hashem decides on every seed. That's why wasting seed is killing millions of them now. After Hashem decides that, part of the decision is who's going to be the other half. Who's the one that belongs to this one? Who is going to be the zivug for this seed? If it's a woman, who's going to be the man? If it's a man, who's going to be the woman? But now, they have their own power. Once they come into life, they have their own free will. Their own free will will actually influence their actions. If he continues, if they were brought both into the world, They're both at a certain time in their life. Let's say they reach the age of 20, and they're both at level six. Or she's a seven and he's a six, or she's a five and he's a six, and so on and so forth. But they're a match. Then Hashem will manipulate the world in order to put them together, even if she has to move all the way from Africa to Florida. He'll do it. On the other hand...

1:05:51If she lost her mind along the way, by the time she reached 20, she decided to be a nightclub dancer. And he decided to become an avrech. So he became a level 8 and she dropped to a level 2. Hashem cannot punish him because it wouldn't be right. So what happens? Hashem takes away her zivug. That zivug is no longer hers. He has to give him, now that he's at level 8, somebody else. And she loses her zivug. Because now she would only match a level 2, he has to give her a level 2. If she does teshuva, if she overcomes her own desires and starts doing things better, she will actually get something better. you're leaving, you don't have to influence the rest of the people to leave. You could just leave quietly, and we can continue this. It doesn't have to be a whole orchestra. Next question. You have questions? How's that? So transfer the mic. We need the mic, huh? I need the mic for the camera; it's not for you. The mic doesn't project things; it's for the camera.

1:07:09I want to understand. You said breaking Shabbat is worse than murder, right? Right. And a goy is not allowed to keep Shabbat. So if a goy keeps Shabbat, is it murder? Murder? Well, the Rambam writes that a goy that keeps Shabbat is considered a thief. Why? Because the Gemara Masechet Shabbat says, HaKadosh Baruch Hu at Mount Sinai says to Moshe Rabbeinu, I have a big present in my treasure chest, and its name is Shabbat. Go and tell Am Yisrael that I'm giving it to them. Which means that Shabbat is a brit b'ni u'veineichem. It's between Hashem and Am Yisrael. This is a present that HaKadosh Baruch Hu gave His children. He didn't give it to the world. He only gave it to His children. So when a goy keeps Shabbat, what happens? He's taking the present of Am Yisrael and using it for himself. So the Rambam says that a goy deserves a death penalty according to the Torah if he keeps Shabbat because he's a thief. Why would a thief deserve such a punishment? If you steal as a Jew, all you have to do is return double.

1:08:23But if you steal as a goy, you're violating the seven Noahide laws. And the seven Noahide laws, even though they're all common sense and they're all much easier than our mitzvot, the punishment for violating any one of them is always a death penalty. So, meaning that when a goy steals, whether he's stealing $5 or he's stealing Shabbat, in heaven, they say that the goy deserves the death penalty. So if he doesn't keep it, The G-d keeps it. It's like theft. They're not the same. If a Jew doesn't keep Shabbat, it's considered idol worship. It's considered as if he's serving an idol. Ah, so you meant like the sentences. It's worse than murder. Violating Shabbat is worse than murder. It's not like murder. It's worse than murder. Murder is the sixth commandment, and Shabbat is the fourth. So violating Shabbat is worse than murder. And in the Torah, it's considered idolatry. It's considered as if the person is like an idol worshiper because what happens is that Hashem says that...

1:09:26When you keep Shabbat, you're testifying that Hashem created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. When you violate Shabbat, you're saying you don't believe that Hashem created the world and rested on the seventh. Which means that if you don't believe Hashem created the world, you believe somebody else or something else created the world. Or, like some of the fools in the world, you think the world created itself or always existed. Which means that's a form of idolatry. So if you violate Shabbat on purpose, that's a form of idolatry. It's considered as if you are an idol worshiper. Now, it doesn't mean that you are now not allowed to keep Shabbat. It just means that you are classified as an idol worshiper according to halacha. Meaning, if an idol worshiper touches your wine, your uncooked wine, you are not allowed to drink it anymore. And the reason why is because goyim, who are idol worshippers, part of their idolatry is to use wine, shake wine, and give it to their idols. So if an idol worshipper touched your wine, you don't know if he touched it to drink it or he touched it to serve his idol. So once he touches it, it becomes yayin nesach, meaning it's a forbidden wine you have to spill. You can't even sell it, you can't even give it to your dog, you can't do anything with it other than to destroy it. Anything that was used for idolatry must be destroyed.

1:10:41That's the only thing you're allowed. You're not to benefit from idolatry. That's also why we're not allowed to benefit from, let's say, for example, people that wear wigs today. A lot of times, they don't realize that these wigs come from temples in India, and they gave their hair, they donated their hair, as a form of idol worship. So when a woman wears a wig, she's benefiting from idolatry, unfortunately. Now, if the wig came from a kosher place, which is almost impossible, but let's say it does, that's a different issue. But if it came from India, you have a very serious problem. Because not only do you have the issue of the wig as far as modesty and immodesty, but you have a different issue: you're benefiting from idolatry. Now, I'm sure people are going to say, "Yes, but that means that there's over a million religious Jewish women that are benefiting from idolatry." Yes, there's also 15 million that are violating Shabbat. Just because there's a lot of people sinning doesn't mean it's not a sin. So now, as far as once a Jew violated Shabbat, halachically speaking, he's treated as an idol worshiper as far as halacha, meaning you cannot use him as a witness, you cannot touch his wine, you cannot have him do the Kiddush for you and you say amen. He's still obligated to do the mitzvot, which means as soon as he stops sinning and he does teshuva,

1:11:55she does teshuva, they're fully accepted back into being a Jew, a beautiful Jew, and a perfect Jew. The Rambam says there's no one in the world that Hashem loves more than a ba'al teshuva. That's how much Hashem loves ba'alei teshuva. So he comes back; he doesn't have to go through a formal conversion process. It's just that when they treat themselves like idol worshipers, then Hashem treats them like idol worshipers. They're putting their Judaism on suspension, if you will, and The Jew needs no suspension until they put it back into play. But when a non-Jew keeps the seven Noahide laws, he's considered a righteous non-Jew. When a non-Jew is an idol worshiper, then he's an idol worshiper. If a non-Jew keeps Shabbat, he's not considered an idol worshiper. He's considered a thief. That's two different things. So to clarify, a Jew breaks Shabbat, he's considered an idol worshiper, not a murderer. And a goy who keeps Shabbat is considered a thief. So why is the thief deserving of death? Because we have 620 laws: 613 from the Torah and 7 rabbinical laws, including Chanukah, Purim, and so on. Now, the 620 mitzvot each have reward and punishment, and they're all different. If you steal and you get caught, you have to pay double.

1:13:17If you kill somebody, there is a death penalty. Different sins have different punishments and different rewards. But for the goyim, because they have much fewer mitzvot, they only have seven Noahide laws and somewhere around 50 common-sense laws, like honoring their parents. Because they have much less responsibility in the world, their punishment is much more severe. Violating any of their mitzvot, according to the Torah, results in the death penalty. they don't have as much responsibility, don't have as many mitzvot, and as much responsibility to learn Torah as the Jews, but their punishment is much more severe. Just like, for example, when I worked on Wall Street, we would invest in companies, but part of the investment was finding out who the CEO is. Why didn't I find out who the janitor is? Why didn't I find out who the secretary is? She might be nice, he might be nice. Why did I find out who’s the clerk that gives the mail to all the desks and the cubicles? Why? Because I don't care about those people as much as I care about the CEO. Why? He has a much bigger responsibility. That’s why anytime you see a major company go through a major crisis, the first thing the shareholders want

1:14:33Fire the CEO, fire the chief. Why? He had the most amount of responsibility. He also had the biggest paycheck too. The clerk is getting $40,000 a year. The CEO is getting $40 million a year. So his reward is much, much bigger. But his punishment is also bigger. The clerk, the janitor, very rarely do they ever get punished. Very rarely. Even if he doesn't clean the room, you don't fire him for not cleaning the room. If he doesn't deliver all the mail, you don't fire him for not delivering the mail. It's like, "Hey, listen, Steve, please, next time deliver the mail. Please, next time clean." It's not a big deal if he messes up. But when the CEO messes up, the whole company fails. That's the difference. When a Jew messes up, all of creation gets hurt. All of creation gets hurt. He has a big job. He's a CEO. He's supposed to be אור לגויים (a light to the nations). When a non-Jew messes up, he's more hurting himself than he is humanity. The analogy is exactly the opposite of what you said before. I'm not following. OK. The janitor doesn't get a big punishment, right? The CEO is the one who gets punished. He's supposed to be the אור לגויים (Or LaGoyim). The CEO, I'm assuming, is the analogy to the Jew, right? Yes. And the clerk and the janitor are like the goy in this example.

1:15:48But what you said was the opposite. Because the Jew has more responsibilities, the punishment is greater. And because the goy has fewer responsibilities, the punishment is less. It's the exact opposite. It doesn't fit like a glove. The point I was trying to make is that the CEO has a bigger responsibility, and therefore he gets paid more. That's the point. The Jew has a bigger responsibility, and therefore he gets paid more. His reward in Heaven is greater. the significance of his mitzvot is greater and so on, the janitor has less responsibility and therefore he gets paid less. has less responsibility and therefore he gets paid less. That's, in essence, the biggest part of the point that's most relevant as far as consequences are concerned. There's a lot more that a CEO can get away with. Actually, if you want to make it fit like a glove, you can see that the CEO can get away with certain things that the janitor cannot get away with. For example, if the CEO decides to shut down the kitchen and not let anyone in because he feels like having dinner only with him and his wife, he feels like it.

1:16:50No one's going to care. Why? He didn't affect everybody. He just affected you, and a few people got annoyed, but that's okay. So, we're just going to let it go. But if the janitor does it, he's getting fired. Why? It's the same crime. It's the same crime, but it's a bigger punishment for the janitor. Why? Because he doesn't have as much significance. So, it can fit like a glove if you really want to make it fit like a glove. Yes, pass the mic to him. I asked you this question a while ago and you didn't answer it on the spot, plus it wasn't even the day, so I'm going to ask you the same question again, including there's a follow-up for it as well. So, what are the four halakhic conditions to be Mashiach? The key word over there is halakhic. Well, I don't know who told you there's only four halakhic conditions to be Mashiach; there are a lot more. There's a lot more than four conditions to be Mashiach. If I can read you the halacha right here, the Mishneh Torah, you look at the Rambam. I brought you the book. The Rambam writes, if the king shall rise in the house of David, who diligently contemplates the Torah and observes its mitzvot. So already you have three requirements. First, he has to be from the seed of David. Second of all, he has to be a ben Torah. Third of all, he has to observe Torah. So already you have three requirements.

1:18:13House of David, who knows Torah and follows it. A lot of people know Torah, but they don't necessarily follow it. So now you have three requirements as prescribed by the written Torah and... The oral law, as David his ancestor, compels all of Israel to walk in the way of the Torah. Now, he also has to do kiruv. That's the fourth requirement. He has to influence people to do teshuva. He has to influence people to get closer to Hashem. If he knows a lot of Torah, he fulfills the mitzvot, and he's from the seed of David, but he's closed off, he puts himself into a little cubicle, by himself, in a little cave, then he cannot be the Mashiach. Why? He has to influence people in order for them to do teshuva. Now he continues, he says, and he compels all of Israel to walk in the way of the Torah and rectify the breaches in its observance, meaning he specifically gets people to do teshuva, not just get them to come to shul, not just get them to put on tefillin, not just get them to eat kosher, get them to do teshuva. Meaning they have to change their life and fight the wars of God. What does it mean to fight the wars of God? Go fight Christianity, go fight idolatry, go fight heresy, go fight Reform, go fight for the Torah. Fight the wars of God. Now you already have five, and we, with assurance, may consider him a Mashiach.

1:19:32If he, but this is meaning, this is meaning he has chizkat Mashiach. What's chizkat Mashiach? He's qualified. Not he is Mashiach because then you could have 5,000 people fit this description. I fit the description. Doesn't mean I'm Mashiach. Point being is that it's a, you have a lot of interesting thinking. Chizkat Mashiach meaning he's a potential, potential Mashiach. Now it continues. If he succeeds in the above and he builds the Beit HaMikdash... its place, meaning he has to build the Beit HaMikdash. If he hasn't built the Beit HaMikdash, guess what? He's not Mashiach. He's not Mashiach and gathers the dispersed of Israel. Ah, now you have to know who the twelve tribes are in the world. Who knows who the twelve tribes are in the world? I We know of three, maybe four. We don't know who the twelve tribes are. Nobody knows who the tribes are, so that already means we don't have Mashiach yet. And then it says, if he does all of that, then he's definitely the Mashiach. But if he did not succeed, if he continues, actually he will then improve the entire world, motivating all of the nations to serve God together. But if he did not succeed to this degree and was killed...

1:20:48Surely he is not the promised Mashiach. If he died, he is not Mashiach. If he died, Rambam. If he died, he is not Mashiach. I'm repeating again. If he died, in case somebody's not watching. If he died, he is not Mashiach. Rambam. Now, who said to learn the Rambam, other than the Rambam? Who said? All of the Chachamim, all of Shulchan Aruch, and guess what? Also the Lubavitcher Rebbe. The Lubavitcher Rebbe made it like as if it's a halacha in Chabad. You must learn the entire Rambam every year. The Lubavitcher Rebbe himself said, I'm not Mashiach. Why? You have to learn the Rambam. If you learn the Rambam, I'm not Mashiach. So now he continues, as if he died, he's not Mashiach. Surely he's not Mashiach. And then he continues with some examples of who was a fake Mashiach, and he says, Jesus of Nazareth, who aspired to be Mashiach and was executed by the court, was also alluded to in the book of Daniel's prophecies. Chapter 11, verse 14, where it says, "...the vulgar among your people shall exalt themselves in an attempt to fulfill the vision, but they shall stumble."

1:22:03He says that even the prophet Daniel, who came a thousand years before Jesus, already spoke a prophecy that Jesus is going to fool people into thinking that he is Mashiach. And then he says something that a lot of Jews don't know because they think that Rambam liked Christianity, but they didn't read the whole halacha. What does he say? He says, "Can there be a greater stumbling block than Christianity?" all of the prophets spoke of Mashiach as the redeemer of Israel and its savior, who would gather the dispersed and strengthen their observance of mitzvot. In contrast, Christianity caused Jews to be slain by the sword, their remnants to be scattered and humbled, the Torah to be altered, and the majority of the world to err and serve a god other than Hashem. You see here that we learned a few beautiful things here, prepared for you customarily. What? First, we know that the Christian Mashiach is no Mashiach at all. He's just some moron that was considered vulgar, just like the Torah says in many places. But even more so, a lot of our brothers and sisters that are very dear to us and we love them, think that the Lubavitcher Rebbe, who died...

1:23:18His yahrzeit was just a few days ago. They think he's Mashiach. Well, according to the Lubavitcher Rebbe, now your own movement, who said study the Rambam, because that's what they go by in Chabad. The Lubavitcher Rebbe says study Rambam. The Rambam says the Lubavitcher Rebbe is not the Mashiach, neither is Rav Ovadia, neither is anybody that died. Why? That's the halacha. That's the halacha, which means what? If it's the halacha, what does it mean if it's the halacha? I'll teach you something about Judaism. Even if there's a Midrash. Even if there is a Gemara. Even if there's whatever you want that says, and Abarbanel says that, yeah, maybe it's a possibility that the Mashiach could be resurrected. Somebody had died and come back to life. There's an opinion like that by the Abarbanel. That's what the Chabadniks use. But they don't tell you something. They don't tell you that in Judaism, the opinion doesn't count. Halacha does. Even if there's one opinion among many that contradicts it. No one else says this.

1:24:21Even if there's an opinion, even if he said that someone could potentially die and come back and still be Mashiach, once a beit din here, once something becomes halacha, that's it. That means that the opinion of the Abarbanel becomes null and void in regards to this specific thing. Once halacha from the Rambam says, that you cannot die and come back to life and be Mashiach. That's the halacha. And we know from here that we have something special: this is what the halacha is for all of Am Yisrael, not just Chabad, not just Yaron Reuven, because everybody goes by the Shulchan Aruch or what the Rambam said if the Shulchan Aruch did not discuss it. So this is one of the issues the Shulchan Aruch did not discuss as far as the Mashiach, which means that the halacha for all of Am Yisrael is this Rambam. If I had asked you this question today instead of the day that I asked you, would I have stumped you? Would you have been ready for it? I answered the question. I answered the question. You left. I did answer the question. You left. I just answered in more detail today. Do you have a comment? Give him a comment.

1:25:44the Christians, they don't. Jesus said that he doesn't follow anything about the Oral Torah. He doesn't agree with it. So why would a Christian go on what the Oral Torah says about the Mashiach not being able to die and come back? Why would they follow that when basically their whole religion says not to follow the Oral Torah, right? So the interesting thing is that most Christians do not even know their own New Testament. most Christians don't know it because, on one hand, their own New Testament violates itself. If it's a New Testament, that means that it's a continuation of the Old Testament, which is the Torah, which means that it cannot contradict the Torah. So on one hand, Jesus says that if somebody were to erase a yud, which is the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet, he will be cursed forever. If somebody were to remove one yud from the Torah, from the written Torah, he would be cursed forever. That's what Jesus says. The problem is, Christians don't keep Shabbat.

1:26:52Christians don't keep 99% of the Torah, which means they're not only erasing a yud, they're erasing the entire written Torah, including him himself, which in his book actually says that he's the son of God physically, meaning that his mom had sex with Hashem. That's what they say. They don't follow it because they say that he said, "I came to fulfill, not to..." right? They say a lot of things. You're going to meet 30 Christians, you're going to have 30 different denominations. There's no two Christians that are alike, even if they all go to the same church. So I know a lot of Christians, Baruch Hashem, and I helped a lot of them get out of Christianity. So what is the purpose? Because Jews have, like, apparently this divine purpose to serve Hashem. So what is the purpose for the goyim? The purpose for the goyim is, number one, to help Am Yisrael get closer to Hashem. Number two, for them themselves to get closer to Hashem. They have to fulfill the Torah by fulfilling the seven Noahide laws and all of the common sense rules. And they also have to help Am Yisrael get closer to Hashem. Those are the two major purposes of the non-Jews. But some of the non-Jews have a special mission where they actually have to become Jewish. They have to convert to Judaism. It's not an obligation for most non-Jews, but it is a special mission for some of them.

1:28:09nonetheless, their obligation is much less than ours. But the Christians and other idolaters of the world are not only not fulfilling their own mission, they’re not fulfilling any mission because they’re violating the Torah. They’re violating everything by idolizing a human being, and the funny thing is that anyone who actually read the New Testament would see that the New Testament is the most anti-Semitic, nonsensical document that was ever written. would see that the New Testament is the most anti-Semitic, nonsensical document that was ever written. On one hand, they see that their god is Jewish, their Jesus is Jewish. They call him Mashiach, but they believe he's God. Mashiach is another name for God for them, by the way. They don't actually believe he's just an average guy. They believe he's God. He's like a piece of God. All of them, all of them, every single one of them believe that he's a portion of God. Some believe in a trinity, some believe that he's a part of this. It's different versions of their own idolatry. But nonetheless, they believe he's Jewish though. He's a Jewish god. So now, on one hand they say that, but at the end of the book, they say that only 144,000 Jews

1:29:13would survive at the end. Only Christians are going to survive. Meaning that all of the Jews, their God, they're all going to die, only they're going to live. It's the most ridiculous thing in the world. And it says a lot of other things that contradict themselves. The lineage of Jesus, it doesn't match, there's 25 years, 25 years, and so on and so forth. about exposing Christianity in the New Testament, you can watch. The point is that anyone following Christianity is definitely not following their own mission or anybody else's mission in the world. But if they are a non-Jew, they can fulfill their mission relatively easily by simply following what the Torah says for non-Jews. They don't have to become Jewish, but they can be. Do Muslims also believe in the Torah? Muslims also believe in the Torah, but they are also heretics of the Torah. Meaning that they are implementing the law into their hands, where they say that because the Jews are violating the Torah, they are taking the initiative to kill them. They are, in essence, saying that they are replacing the Jews. What's the main thing you would tell a Muslim about Islam? No, I'd be like, what's the main proof that their prophet is not a real prophet? Well, a few things. Number one, in order for someone to be a prophet, they have to know how to read and write.

1:30:28Their prophet did not know how to read or write. Mohammed did not know how to read or write. That's number one. Number two, there have to be witnesses to the prophecy. There are no witnesses to his prophecy. Same thing with Jesus. There are no witnesses. When Mary had a dream, no one could see her dream. When Mohammed was in the desert, no one was there. So there are no witnesses. Number three, look at the book itself and look at how many human mistakes it has. For example... If you're saying the Quran is a continuation of the Torah, that means it has to agree. So the Torah says that Moshe Rabbeinu was alive 3,300 years ago. Haman, about 1,000 years ago, 1,500 years ago. the Quran says that Haman was alive at the same time as Moshe Rabbeinu. Why? He was best friends with Paro. Haman was best friends with Paro. It also says that Mary, the Christian God's mother, is actually Moshe Rabbeinu's sister, Miriam, even though they lived 1500 years apart.

1:31:30Fifteen hundred. These are actual historical mistakes, not like your own oven or Judaism verse. This actually says that in their book that Mary from Christianity is Miriam, Moshe Rabbeinu's sister, even though they lived 1500 years apart. So, once somebody actually studies a little bit of history, a little bit of the beginning, a little bit of Torah, and as soon as they start seeing what the Quran and New Testament say, they vomit because of how much stupidity is in it. The problem is that most people are ignorant; most people never read the Torah from beginning to end and... Needless to say, they never read their own books. Even people simply go, they listen to somebody speak, and that's their Torah. They heard five minutes; that's their Torah. That's their... Which is stupid. Why? Because your whole eternity is depending on this five minutes. You listen to this guy for five minutes. That's it? You're gonna do what he says? I mean, that's a pretty crazy thing. If somebody told you, "Listen, take on this diet. If you take on this diet, your whole life's gonna change." Okay, so what's the diet? Eat poison every day? Oh? You know what, let me get a second opinion. Why? Because what you said doesn't make sense. Does it make sense? Yeah, but it only took me five minutes to say it. Doesn't make a difference; it doesn't make sense. When it comes to health, we always double-check. A doctor tells you something that you don't like, you get a second opinion. A lawyer tells you something you don't like, you get a second opinion. People tell you stuff you don't like, you get a second opinion. The problem is, when somebody tells you something about Hashem and...

1:32:56Whether you like it or not is irrelevant. You don't double-check. Why? Because the Yetzer Hara works really hard. He says, no, no need to double-check. Go back to work. Go make money. Go get another girl. Go get another guy. Go get another house. Go get another dog. Go do something else. Get yourself busy doing something, anything other than serving Hashem. That's why we have a generation of ignorant people. Even though there's more information easily available in this generation than any other generation in history, you could literally get anything you want from your phone. Anything you want. You want the Quran, you want the New Testament, you want the Torah, in one second you get all three. One second. Any translation, any language. Any book you want, any picture, anything you want, you get from a phone. I could order literally a million dollars' worth of stuff just by simply going to a website and pressing a button. That's all you have to do today. You get anything you want with a button. But we're such a weak generation in the sense that we need to be pleased constantly, quickly, and constantly be, you know, like a dog. Like, if you say what I like, then I'll stay in a lecture. If you don't say what I like, I'm leaving.

1:34:04You know, we're such a spoiled generation that unfortunately what happens is people have a very short attention span. You know, if the video is good, within three seconds, I'll watch another six seconds. If it's not good within three seconds, I'm going to a different video. That's why our intros, when we first started, for example, our videos online, made me a video. Fantastic videos. The intro, you know how they, like, you have a show, it starts, they give you like a little, you know, beginning video? So he made me a video, and it was 48 seconds long. I loved this video, but we had to stop using it. Why? It's too long. Now, even though the lecture itself is two, three hours sometimes, you see some of my lectures are four hours, nine hours. I had lectures that are nine hours, but no one's going to get to it. Why? As soon as they saw it's a 40-second intro, you lost me already. He lost me. They never got to the lecture. They just literally left. They never watched the video. Oh no, the intro is too long. Too long. So we had to change our intro. Now our intro is like six seconds. And we're still losing some people. Why? Oh, six seconds. That's crazy. That's crazy. Or sometimes I send somebody, "Listen, here's my personal story." Oh, that's two and a half hours. "Do you have a shorter version of your personal story?" I said, "Do you want to hear the story or do you want me to give you a quote?"

1:35:16So people have a short attention span. We need to invest a little bit more time in our neshamot, in our life, in our eternity. She has a question in the back. If somebody can pass it. Run to the back, please. Yeah, we lost some of our delivery men in the middle. So, my follow-up question is about benefiting from an idol worshiper. Does that relate to, like, a... I'm sorry, a follow-up question is, and I lost everything. A follow-up question about benefiting from an idol worshiper. Does that relate to benefiting from, like, a Shabbat goy? Benefiting from a Shabbat goy? No. If the Shabbat goy is not an idolater, no, there's no problem. No, he's not. What he's doing is not... He's working. He's working in the valet. He's working at the laundromat. He's working wherever he's working, not as part of his servitude to his avodah zarah. He's working to make money.

1:36:22the benefiting from idolatry means that the actual act that they're doing is serving the idol. So, for example, lehavdil, we used to bring cows and chickens to the Beit HaMikdash as a sacrifice. That was a sacrifice. The Hindus bring their hair. A sacrifice to their false gods. It's because he had a very expensive wedding. This is a really serious story, as stupid as it sounds. He had a very expensive wedding and he couldn't afford it. So the god said, "You guys have to sell your hair for eternity so I can pay for the wedding." That's one god. Another god had a big boulder fall on his head and it gave him a bald spot and... So for the rest of eternity, the Hindus have to donate their hair in the name of this god because he had a bald spot. These are foolish reasons, but these are their gods. So imagine how foolish this is to us. Imagine how disgusting it is in the eyes of Hashem. Imagine having that hair that was given to this false god as a sacrifice, how foolish and disgusting it is to Hashem. So when a Bat Yisrael that keeps Shabbat, that keeps mitzvot, that keeps everything, she puts this foolish, fake god hair on her head...

1:37:38We can't expect Hashem to like it, so that hair was used as a sacrifice. In a sense, it's not something that the idol worshiper did. It's not like he went to the bathroom and then he flushed the toilet, therefore we're not allowed to use toilets anymore. He went to the factory, he made a tie, therefore we're not allowed to use ties anymore. No, it's not that. It's that the actual hair was part of their idolatry itself. That's why we cannot use it. One of the examples we have in the Torah is Sefer Yehoshua. It's the book of Joshua. The first mitzvah that Yehoshua bin Nun was obligated to do as soon as he brought all of Am Yisrael into Eretz Yisrael was to destroy all of the Asherah trees. Eretz Yisrael, Hashem said, destroy all of the Asherah trees, certain types of trees, destroy all of them. Why? What did the trees do? What, did they violate Shabbat, these trees? What, did they eat non-kosher? What did these trees do? Hashem says these trees were worse.

1:38:42It wasn't the trees at fault. That's what we don't understand. Once something in creation served as a god, as an idol. Hashem says it must be destroyed. That's the only thing that you have to do. And that's why, even though you could have used all of that wood to build a building, to sell the wood, to cook something, to burn firewood—you could have done a lot with the wood—Hashem says you have to destroy the trees, not use them, not cut them. Destroy them from the face of the earth. Why? They were served even one time. One time they were served and... They must be destroyed because the Torah speaks very severely about idolatry. Once something is idolized, it must be destroyed. That's why at the time of Mashiach, as soon as Mashiach comes, the idol worshippers themselves, all the people that were born goyim, they themselves are going to destroy all of the churches. One of the prophecies says that when Mashiach comes, all of the goyim are going to destroy their own churches because they're going to realize that their fathers lied to them.

1:39:48And this place is a place of idolatry. And it's disgusting in the eyes of Hashem. And it cannot be turned into a synagogue. So, they're going to destroy it from the face of the earth. And there's a special bracha. There's a special bracha. Anytime there's a church that's destroyed or a place of idolatry that's destroyed, there's a special bracha that a Jew has to say. Like, for example, when that Notre Dame was destroyed a few months ago, every Jew that saw it was supposed to say a bracha. Unfortunately, we have some foolish Jews that call themselves rabbis. that instead of saying a bracha, Baruch Hashem, that You've destroyed idolatry from the world, may You continue. That's the bracha. What do they say? "Wow, so sad that such a holy building is removed from the world. Wow, so many good people prayed in this place." Rabbis! Rabbis said this on the internet. No shame, no shame. They never learned Torah in their life. They just call themselves rabbis. They should call themselves rabis, not rabbis.

1:40:4912,000 about what they burned over there. 12,000 in Notre Dame. Can you believe it? 500 years ago, they took the Oral Torah. They saw that our Gemara says that their Jesus is in Gehenom. They didn't like it. They burned 12,000 masechtot because our Torah says the truth regardless of whether it's politically correct or not. Oral Torah says that their Jesus is in Gehinnom. It literally says Jesus is in Gehinnom and he's never coming out. He's in what's called Tzoah Rotachat. Tzoah Rotachat is boiling feces. Forever. And it's him saying it. He said it himself in the Gemara. The Gemara, by the way, is the only document in the world that actually was around at the time of Jesus. Meaning that their New Testament was written 300 years after he died. The Gemara is the only thing that was around at the time he was. And at that time, we have actual testimony in several Gemarot: Masechet Sotah, Masechet Gittin, Masechet Sanhedrin, and I think also Avodah Zarah. All of them testify that Jesus is in Gehinnom. He was a Rasha; he was a garbage of a human being, but he had a lot of potential. He had a lot of potential. He actually was the Talmid of Yehoshua ben Perachya, one of the biggest Tzaddikim in history. One of the Zugot, this is even before the Tannaim.

1:42:09so he had a lot of potential, but he liked to look at girls. He liked to look at girls. So, one time he looked at a girl, and the Rabbi said, "You should be ashamed of yourself." He kicked him out. Kicked him out. When Jesus came to say, "I'm sorry," The first two times, the rabbi wanted to see if he's really doing teshuva or he's just saying, "I'm sorry," just to get back in. So he rejected him the first two times. The third time that Jesus came, he was in the middle of kriyat shema. The rabbi was in the middle of kriyat shema. And halacha is, if you're in the middle of kriyat shema, you're not allowed to stop. You're not allowed to talk. Unless there's a scorpion on you or a sword on your neck. Death. But even if there's a snake on you, you're not allowed to stop. But if the scorpion kills, it is much more dangerous than snakes. The point being is that he was in the middle of kriyat shema and couldn't talk, but Jesus didn't care about him praying. He came wanting to say, "I'm sorry." The rabbi didn't want to go, but he couldn't speak to him. So he made a gesture with his hands to indicate, "one second, I'm almost finished, one second." Jesus didn't like it. He said, "okay, you don't want to accept me. I'm going against everything," and he used everything he learned...

1:43:16to do witchcraft and make all types of magic tricks and fool people into following him. That's why the Gemara says, he not only violated the Torah, he caused other people to violate the Torah. And even after that, his rabbi went to him and said, "Jesus didn't want to do teshuva." He was already addicted to the sin, didn't want to do teshuva, and that's why Onkelos HaGer, in the Gemara Masechet Avodah Zarah, says that Jesus, when he had a chance to do teshuva, didn't, and that's why he is in Tzoah Rotachat, he's in Gehenom forever, and anyone that follows him will join him, unfortunately, for them. But the point is, Rabotai, that The Torah is so beautiful that anyone who investigates it enough will not only see that the Torah itself is real, but will easily arrive at the conclusion that everything else in the world—materialism, idolatry, Christianity, Islam—is just a waste of time.

1:44:22We just have to invest a little bit of time, a little bit of effort into learning Torah as we're supposed to. Not just because I have to, but because you have to for yourself. Learn the Chumash with commentary from Rashi. Do the mitzvot even if you don't understand them. See how it makes your neshamah feel. Learn the Torah and just do it whether you understand it or not. You'll see. Even if you start fulfilling the Torah without wanting it, eventually, if you're doing it genuinely because you want to do something good in the world, Hashem will make you love it. Because it's good for you. That's what your neshamah is for. Give him the mic, please. They need it for the camera. We want to hear your beautiful voice. You have another question? We'll give you right after him. Eventually, if you're doing it genuinely because you want to do something good in the world, Hashem will make you love it because it's good for you. That's what your neshamah is for. Give him the mic, please. They need it for the camera. We want to hear your beautiful voice. You have another question? We'll give you the mic right after him. So Gemara is very, very difficult in the beginning because it's a completely different way of thinking. It's a completely different way of analyzing a problem.

1:45:31But after you overcome that big obstacle of the beginning, you start noticing that literally your brain is rewired. You think differently, not just in regards to Torah. You think differently about everything in the world. You analyze business differently. You analyze marriage differently. You analyze everything differently. Your brain gets rewired. But you have to go through a hurdle. And Mamash, make it a very, very important thing to toil and toil and work hard on it every single day. The learning curve for people is different. Some people, you know, they get addicted to it right away. You know, a few months. For some people, it can take a few years, and they're still not there. It all depends on how much effort you put in. "L'fum tza'ara agra," the Mishnah says. The toil is going to determine your reward. The more toil, the more reward. So, the more you toil on working on learning Gemara, the more spiritual pleasure you're going to feel in the end. But if you just say, you know, you just go to, let's say, a Daf Yomi shiur, and just listen to the rabbi talk for a half hour, that's not going to get you to love Gemara. Most likely, it's not going to get you to love anything because that's just a superficial covering of what it is. It's like, for example, you know, going to the car lot every day but just looking at the cars, never buying anything.

1:46:50It's nice to look at the cars, but once in a while, can I drive it? Can I check it out? Can I do something with this car? Oh, no, I can just look. After a while, you don't want to go anymore. Why? I don't want to look at the cars. I want to drive one. So that's the thing with the Gemara. If you break your head, break your head, break your head, eventually it becomes the most addictive, beautiful thing in your life. You simply don't want anything else, including eating. Have you guys ever forgotten to eat? forget to eat. People that learn Gemara seriously forget to eat all the time. Why? Because the Gemara, once you actually learn it seriously, actually starts creating a sweet, physical taste in your mouth. Some of the Chachamim, every time they would learn Gemara, would start feeling something sweet in their mouth. Now you guys think I'm crazy, but that's because you haven't felt it yet. You're going to see, one day, all of you are going to get to this point. You're going to study Torah, and all of a sudden you're You're not eating a candy. Nothing. But all of a sudden, there's something sweet in your mouth. All of a sudden, there's a physical pleasure from reading a book. What do you think? It makes sense that over 100,000 bachurim sit there all day and learn a book? Like, it doesn't even make any sense. What do you get out of it? Money? They get $500 a month for studying 12 hours a day. What do they get out of it? Imagine every day you wake up early in the morning, run to the kollel to what? To read a book all day.

1:48:14For 12 hours straight. To a person that never did it, seriously, sounds like hell. Sounds like, what's the matter with you people? Go watch a movie or something. Go eat dinner. Go out to the beach. Go... It doesn't make any sense. Why? You're reading a book? Why? Why are you reading this book? How many times can you read the same book? That's what my question used to be. Until you read it. Until you review it and you realize it's not how many times. You never end it. no end to the Torah. You could read the entire Shas a million times and still never finish. He finishes countless midrashim and several other things that I can't remember every single year for over 80 years now. Now, if you do Daf Yomi, which has become very popular over the last 30-40 years... you do Daf Yomi, that means you're going to finish the entire Talmud Bavli once every seven and a half years. He finishes that, the Yerushalmi, and all the other things that each one of them usually takes people seven years to finish. He finishes all of them every year for over 80 years. Why? Why do you read it already 70 times? You've read it already a thousand times. How many times can you read it? Because it's so delicious, because every time you read the book and

1:49:39you see the answers. You see new answers. You see something you didn't see before. So that's the Torah. The Torah is sweet. Give her the mic if you don't mind, please. I just want to add, funny you mentioned that last thing because for the first time in my life, I grabbed the Torah to read it from the first page to the last page. And I'm almost done with it. I was totally amazed, totally blown away by what a difference it is to read the book of the Torah with commentaries and without commentaries. With commentaries by the great Rambam, Rashi, all of them, it blows your mind because we are not on their level, and they show you angles and things that us regular guys can never ever conceive. So, from one sentence, we think we know what it says, but we don't know what it says. After you read what they say, it's mind-blowing. That's the problem with the Christians. They read the Bible, they read the Torah like they read a Harry Potter book, just literally. If you read the Torah literally, you're simply going to end up at a dead-end street with a lot of misinterpretation, even starting from the first verse of the Torah. You're not going to understand anything. Yes, you have a question?

1:50:56common that we like to point out our physical flaws in ourselves. How do we train ourselves to see more of the spiritual defects, like our bad character traits and stuff like that, so we know what to work on as opposed to just focusing on something physical that we don't like? Right, so physically, we look in the mirror, and we already know all of our defects. I stopped looking in the mirror years ago. Now... Yeah, I don't watch my own shiurim. I don't watch my own shiurim. I don't watch my own shiurim. I don't watch my own shiurim for two reasons. Number one, I don't really like to see myself on camera. Not because of physical appearance. It's just strange to me. Even when I used to have TV interviews, I wouldn't watch the interviews. But number two is because I'm a very big critic of myself. So if I hear my own lecture, I criticize myself worse than my own fans. and say, "Oh, I could have said this better, could have done that better." By the time I finish the lecture, I'm depressed.

1:51:59My wife, every time I come home, she asks me, "How was it?" I'm like, "Garbage. I can't believe I did this lecture." She goes, "What do you mean? It was amazing. I watched it." I said, "No, it was terrible. I don't know why people come. I don't know why people come." She goes, "What do you mean? You had 10,000 views on this thing." I said, "I don't know why they watch me. I don't know. I'm terrible. Every time. It's the same thing. Every time." She goes, "Every time you say it's terrible, it's the best lecture." So I'm a critic of myself. That's a good thing. It's not a bad thing. Anyway, it's much better than being too proud of yourself. but when it comes to physicality, we look at ourselves. We can easily see our defects. When it comes to character traits Unless a person is going to learn Mussar (Mussar is ethical teachings of the Torah), they're simply never going to find any flaws in themselves. As the Gemara says, "A person does not see the deficiencies in himself." Everybody thinks they're right. Everybody thinks they're good. Everybody visualizes themselves better than what they are. Maybe not physically,

1:53:03but spiritually, psychologically, mentally, everybody thinks they're smarter than they really are. Everybody thinks that they're a better salesman than they really are. Everybody thinks that they're better than they really are, more kind, and so on and so forth. Now, why ethical teaching of the Torah? Because the ethical teaching of the Torah, called Mussar, actually tells you what you're supposed to do according to the Torah. Then you're obligated, just naturally, to compare that standard you're supposed to reach versus you and then you start seeing, wait a minute, I'm supposed to be humble? Wow, I never really even thought that humility is even something to consider. I thought that being proud like Donald Trump is good—it's gonna get you ahead. What? I'm supposed to be generous? Wow, why don't I just— I thought that I'm supposed to tell people to go get a job. I'm supposed to be forgiving? Wow, I thought that standing my ground when somebody stepped on my foot is a good thing. Meaning, our natural inclination is terrible, is evil. It's like an animal. The Torah

1:54:10teaches us what we're supposed to do by giving us different examples from different people that existed throughout Am Yisrael, and we see their lives, we see what they did, we see this is the sargel, this is the ruler, this is the standard we're trying to reach. And then naturally, you look at yourself like, "Wow, I've got a lot of work to do." So if a person learns mussar every day... at least 15 to 30 minutes a day. That's real mussar, not just like "baby mussar" where people are just telling you, "You're great, you're great, you're great," a million times a day. Real mussar is when people tell you, "This is what it says, like it or not. This is what it says. This is what is expected from you. This is what I’m expecting from you. If you don’t do it, you don’t do it, but you have to do it. This is the point of your life." If you learn it and you want to work on yourself, you're going to start taking things and applying them. You’re not going to be able to apply everything... Right away, but you'll take one thing. So for example, the piece I miss a lot. They call him the father of Mussar. He started something called the Mussar movement a couple hundred years ago, and he was a huge, huge talmid chacham, knew an enormous amount of Torah. But he said that it's much easier for him, even though he was a giant in everything—in character traits, in Torah, in every aspect you could imagine. And

1:55:30He says it's much easier for him to complete the entire Talmud Bavli, which takes people seven years to complete. That's much easier for him than to fix one character trait. Which means, even if it takes you seven years to fix your arrogance, let's say, or your stinginess, or whatever bad character trait a person has. You're still doing okay. Why? It's hard to remove this stuff. It's hard to remove some of these things that are really, really strong with us. Some things we have, like, we're okay. We can fix them quickly because we don't have so much desire for them. But there are certain things about every one of us that we're really, really glued to. Certain people, they get really angry right away. So you tell them, listen, work on your generosity. They can work on it within six months. All of a sudden, you see this guy is a gvir. He starts giving money to everybody. Work on your anger. A guy says, "Are you out of your mind? It's going to take me a thousand years to work on my anger. Until now, I thought it was good to be angry." So for him, it's very hard. It's going to take him longer and more effort because this is something he connects to more deeply. It's tattooed into his soul. But that's actually his or her mission in life. The more difficult it is, the more it is your mission in life. And that's what the Gaon of Vilna said. The whole purpose of all of the mitzvot...

1:56:52whether it's Shabbat, or Kashrut, or Taharat HaMishpacha, or anything else, the point of all of the mitzvot is to fix our character traits. And if we did not fix our character traits, he says, then what did you live for? Meaning that even if you fulfill the mitzvot, there's no point. Why? Because your main point, your main purpose, was to use those mitzvot, apply them to your life, in order to fix yourself as a human being. That's the point of the mitzvot. So if you learn Mussar every day, we have CDs of the Mussar series. There's about 80 hours of Mussar in there, and then there's online, there's another 150 more lectures like that in a series. Once a person studies those lectures, By far, by far, they become a better human being. I have, Baruch Hashem, countless people that have told me how much these lectures have changed their lives. They made them better husbands, better wives, better children, better bosses, better businessmen. Because it's simply pure Torah that's not necessarily politically correct, but it's beautiful.

1:57:55And if a person is intellectually honest and starts applying some of this stuff, it’s making you into the diamond you can become. Right now, we’re all like a golem. We’re all like a rough diamond. We’re all like a rough diamond. Mussar makes that diamond shine. That’s the point of Mussar. Next question. Okay, one second. Give him the mic. Somebody. Do you get a mitzvah for living by tzaddikim? You get a mitzvah living by tzaddikim? Yes. It says in the Torah that you have to glue to Hashem. So the Chachamim say, how can you glue yourself to Hashem when Hashem is a fire? Not physical fire, but nonetheless, no one can glue themselves to Hashem. He's fire. So the Chachamim say you glue to Hashem by gluing yourself Next to the tzaddikim. Be next to a tzaddik. Go to his shiurim. Learn his books. Do what he says. Do whatever you can to be close to this tzaddik. Be close to these tzaddikim. Why? If you glue yourself to them, you're going to learn from them. You're going to learn from them, you're going to emulate them. You're going to emulate them, you're going to become fire just like Hashem wants you to be. It's like you're gluing yourself to Hashem.

1:59:19So yes, it's an essence, it's not only a mitzvah, it's a chovah. It's not only a mitzvah, it's a chovah, it's an obligation. You have to live by tzaddikim, you have to be next to people that are righteous. You're not allowed to live only next to wicked people. And the Rambam writes in halacha that if you only live next to wicked people, you have to move. You're not allowed to live next to wicked people. You have to move. But what if everybody next to you is wicked? He said move to the desert. That's how dangerous it is to live next to wicked people. So much so that if you know that somebody is wicked, you know somebody is a rasha, you're not allowed to look in their face. Because it will affect you. It will hurt your neshamah. That's what we talked about a couple of weeks ago when I told you guys about the story of the Ba'al Shem Tov. So, the point being is that it's important to be next to tzaddikim and do whatever you can. That's why the Chasidim, for example, follow their Rebbe everywhere. They have this practice that if anyone didn't do it, it would look strange. So, the Rebbe has a little bit of, you know, he has a bowl of food. and he takes a small bite of something. After he takes a small bite and he puts the food down, you see four, five, six hundred Chasidim fighting over it, taking a piece, just to get a little crumb out of this bread. Now they all have food at home, baruch Hashem.

2:00:33They all have food at home, but they're all fighting over this piece of bread. Then the Rebbe takes a piece of cake, a piece of cake, puts it down. Everybody, 500 of them, fight over it. Da, da, da. Now, when I first saw this, I said, those people are sick. What's wrong with these people? But then my Rebbe told me, he goes, no, no, you don't understand. They want to glue themselves to the Rebbe so much, they want to have anything, anything to do with him. Anything to do with him. So if he ate a crumb, they want to have also a crumb. They want to have something also. Now, this is not only by the Chassidim, it's also by the rest of Am Yisrael. For example, after Rabbi Ovadia died and went to Gan Eden, People want to raise money, so they auction off some of his stuff. I believe his pen, the pen that he wrote with, a regular Bic pen you can buy from the store for a dollar, was sold for two million dollars. Why? You can just buy one for a dollar. No. This pen, he wrote chidushei Torah. He wrote Torah with this pen. This pen is priceless. To have a piece of something that the gedolim touched one time and actually wrote something that we're learning today? If you understand what a tzaddik is, you understand what Torah is, then it's worth 20 million dollars.

2:01:53If you have it, you buy it. But if you don't know and it sounds silly to you, then it's okay. We're still at a basic level. There's no problem. It doesn't make you a bad person. It just means you don't understand. No problem. Listen, would I spend $20 million on a pen or not? That's a different question. The question is, whose pen is it? Who spent it and how much money do I have? Right now, I can't spend $20. I just gave it to all you guys. But the key is that it's really important to know that tzaddikim, we have to glue ourselves to them as much as possible, do everything and anything possible to learn from them, to watch them. I remember when I would go to Yerushalayim, I would watch Rav Ephraim shop in a supermarket just to see what he does. I'd watch how he handles his kids, just to see how he handles his kids, Baruch Hashem. I'd watch how he talks to his wife. By the way, All the years that I know him, I've never spoken to his wife. Now, I actually stayed at his house for two months. I lived in his house for two months. A few times. Never once did I have a conversation one-on-one with his wife. We talk, Baruch Hashem, almost every day. Every day we talk. On Skype, we see each other. I've seen his wife a million times. Never once did we ever have a conversation one-on-one, and he never once had a conversation with my wife. When we want to say something, we say, tell the Rabbanit this. So he tells her. And he tells me, tell your Rabbanit this. And I tell her. Why? That's kavod. That's kavod. Why? She's your wife. You talk to her.

2:03:18She's your wife. You talk to her. So to me, when I first saw this, I thought, what's wrong? How come she doesn't want to talk to me? How come she doesn't want to talk? No, no, it's not that. He said, it's not that. No, no, I'll tell her. I tell her. You tell me. She's right here, but I'll tell her. Now, even though, sometimes it's me, it's him, and she's sitting right next to him, I can't say, listen, Rabbanit, such and such. No, no, I tell him. And even though she heard, he still tells her. Why? That's the kavod. That's the kavod for the Torah. So when I first saw this, it looked weird. Today, I think it's the biggest blessing in the world. It's the biggest blessing in the world. I actually find it disgusting that many times guys tell me, "Can you do me a favor? Can you call my wife?" You want me to call your wife? You call your wife. Why do I have to call your wife? No, tell her what you said. You tell her what I said. She's your wife. Why do I have to call her? I had people like this tell me all the time, "Listen, tell my wife that I'm here." No, you tell your wife. She's your wife. People have no problem telling any stranger to talk to their wife. By the way, that's also the reason why there's so much cheating in the world. Because guys make their friends friends with their wives also. So the guy becomes friends with the wife and eventually he's a boyfriend also. This is what happens.

2:04:33People make friends. They come over, they come over, they come over a few times. They're friends with you and they're friends with the wife. And eventually, they come over and you're not home. But they say, "Listen, I've been here so many times, let me have coffee with the wife." have coffee with the wife, and eventually, it's not just coffee. That's what happens. Doesn't it seem logical for a man not to talk to a woman? Yes, including his wife. The Gemara specifically says: a person who spends too much time speaking to a woman will definitely go to Gehinom. This woman is referring to his wife, needless to say, talking to his friend's wife. Because if you're talking too much to a woman, that means you're not studying Torah. That means you're not going to do whatever Hashem wants. You have to talk to them just enough to do what you need to do, not have chitchat, because Hashem says that He brought ten levels of speaking into the world; nine of them He gave to the women. Women like to talk. So if you talk to your wife like she wants to talk, you're going to start a conversation you'll never finish and... you're never gonna have time to learn, you're never gonna have time to eat, you're never gonna have time to do anything. So you have to talk to them just enough to do what needs to be done. Be nice, be beautiful, all that stuff. But go back to learning Torah. So, but of course, always have kavod. Kavod for the wife is critical. So much so that the Rambam says in halacha, you have to love her, you have to love your wife as much as you love yourself, but you have to respect her more than yourself. And

2:05:59Love her as much as you love yourself. You wouldn't jump off a roof; don't throw her off a roof. You wouldn't want anybody to embarrass you; don't embarrass her. But, even when it comes to honor, even more so. Even more so. You have to give her more honor than you give yourself. You expect people to act a certain way towards you; you act even more so towards her. That's how important it is. That's halacha. Yes, you have another question? Next to you. When Mashiach comes, will Hashem bring all of Am Yisrael, the chosen ones, to Yerushalayim? Or will He teleport them? Or will Hashem contract the land like He did with Yaakov Avinu? Fantastic question. So, the Chachamim say in the Zohar HaKadosh and a few other places, There are a few opinions on what's going to happen when Mashiach comes. That's why the Rambam says don't spend too much time dealing with what's going to happen after Mashiach comes because we're only going to know once it happens. But there are certain things that are nevuot, prophecies. And once Mashiach comes...

2:07:11Once Mashiach comes, he has to collect all of the righteous, righteous among Am Yisrael, not just all of the Jewish people, but people that are righteous, people that have done teshuvah. The Go'el, the Mashiach, is coming to save the people that have done teshuvah. That's what the pasuk says in Tehillim. so now he's going to come and he's going to collect all of the righteous among the nations. There are different opinions; some say they will come with eagles. In those days, they actually did have huge eagles, but today we have planes, so there are different ways. But what's going to happen, by the way, with all of the righteous that have died and are buried elsewhere? They're buried in Ukraine They're buried in America. They're buried in different places. When there's the resurrection of the dead, their neshamot will be put back into the body, and then they are going to go in tunnels, underground, fast, high speed, all the way to Eretz Yisrael. Underground. I know this sounds supernatural, but that's because it is. This stuff doesn't happen every Tuesday. But yes, interesting, interesting things will happen once the Mashiach comes. Pass the mic to him, please.

2:08:25What if a fellow Jew led you astray, and the only thing you first got to observe in Judaism was basically desecrating Shabbat and not doing the right things? So, in error, you're following what you think is correct, but it's not. If a Jew leads another Jew astray, he tells them, "Don't keep Shabbat." He tells them, "Don't follow the Torah." He's called a mesit. A mesit is someone who leads other Jews astray, to go away from Hashem. The Rambam writes in Halakha that he is one of the 24 people who will not only not have a share in the world to come, But their genome will never end, and also even to do teshuva will be very, very difficult for such a person that led other people astray. Hence the reason why it was impossible for Jesus to ever do teshuva, even though he had many opportunities to do it. Now, the person that went astray, even though he was given a bad influence, he was also given a good brain. And that brain is going to live past that bad influence.

2:09:44And at some point, HaKadosh Baruch Hu is going to expose that person to check what his brain learned in Chapter A versus today. So, for example, the things that we all learned when we were 15 years old, we believed were facts. Fast forward to 25, what we believed at 15 sounds ridiculous. Fast forward to 35, what we believed at 25 sounds ridiculous. Fast forward to 45, Even more ridiculous. Why? As time changes, you find out new information, which many times disproves what you thought was real. Complete nonsense. So as time will pass, that person will be given opportunities to see a different shade of the truth they haven't seen before. And B'ezrat Hashem, at that point, they'll have the ability to practice their free choice and choose right or wrong. If they're already addicted to the sin at that point and they choose wrong, they'll be punished because it was their choice. But if they simply died right after somebody said, "Hey, listen, baby, you're a Christian," and then the baby dies a day later, yeah, he's not going to get punished for that. That's not free choice. But when a person has free choice and lives in the world for a certain amount of years, Hashem will give him many, many opportunities to see the truth and will give him the ability to practice their free choice.

2:11:01And trying to emulate them and then come to find out that I'm just sitting off the chain. Right. Well, that's the thing. Every Jew has an obligation to learn Torah and learn for themselves. Not just learn from what somebody said, but also learn for themselves from seeing it in a book. And as the Rambam said, On Sefer Mishlei chapter 10, it says Rabbi Yishmael says that, "Look how difficult Yom HaDin is, the Judgment Day, when Hashem judges every person." He says a person cannot escape the judgment of Hashem if a person arrives to Hashem knowing the Chumash but not knowing Mishnah. Hashem sends Malachei Chabalah, which are angels of destruction, to surround them and take control over him. Hashem looks away while those angels do their business, destroying him. "Why? I gave you a hundred years in this world, and all you know is Chumash! What about the rest of my Torah? How did you practice Judaism if you just know the Chumash?" If a person is a Talmid Chacham and he knows the Chumash and the Mishnah...

2:12:25Then Hashem asked this person, what have you learned, my son? What have you learned? And the person doesn't know how to repeat what he learned. He doesn't remember anything because he didn't study it enough. Rabbi Yishmael says, oy for the busha, oy for the klima, oy what an embarrassing day it's going to be when Hashem asks you, show me what you learned over a hundred years, and you have nothing to answer. If the person knows half the Shas, half the Talmud Bavli, two, three sedarim, Hashem asks him, my son, how come you didn't learn all of the halachot and the aggadot? You learned half the Shas, good, but what about the rest? What about all the halachot? What about all the laws? What about all the midrashim? How come you didn't learn those? Meaning Hashem, even though you know a lot of Torah, it's still, Hashem says, it's not enough, more. I gave you seventy years, I gave you eighty years in the world. If a person comes who knows all the halachot, knows everything, Hashem says, "How come you didn't learn my aggadot, my midrashim, all the super mystical stories? How come you didn't learn about my tzaddikim, the super tzaddikim? Why, you thought you were too good for it because you just know halachot? Why didn't you learn about my aggadot?" He comes and he says something fantastic.

2:13:50If a person comes to him and this person either gives shiurei Torah to get people to do teshuva or he supports shiurei Torah to get people to do teshuva and he arrives to Hashem. And he's not even giving difficult shiurim, the Midrash says. He gives shiurim with stories. He gives shiurim that just get people closer to Hashem. says the Midrash, Hashem forgives the sins of all of Am Yisrael on that day. And when his audience says Amen to the Kaddish at the end of the shiur—you’re supposed to say Kaddish at the end of the shiur—and the shiur was about aggadot, about mystical stories and such, He says at that moment Hashem is so pleased with the people that showed up to the shiur, the people that sponsored the shiur, the people that paid and donated, and so on, that He cancels many tough decrees on those people. Because of how much nachat, how much pleasure, it gives to Hashem that this person and anyone that supports him is actually bringing His children back. Meaning that sometimes

2:15:06You have an opportunity to learn a lot of Torah. Hashem says, learn even more. Sometimes you don't. So what are you going to do? Rabbi Yishmael says something fantastic. He says, you can't become the biggest talmid chacham in the world. You can't learn the whole Mishnah, the whole Torah, the whole this. What do you do? Support kiruv. Support someone, support something that's gonna help people get closer to Hashem. Why? That's your "Get Out of Jail" card. That's it. Because even if you learn Torah, it's not necessarily gonna work for you. Why? Maybe you don't know enough. But if you give people shiurim yourself or you support the organization that does and that helps people do teshuvah... That gives us so much pleasure. He says, "I don't care what you know. I don't care what you know. All I care is that you did what you're supposed to, and you got people close to Me. That's it. You brought My children home. Who's better than you? Even if somebody is not exactly the most respectable person in the world, but he saves your kid from drowning. He’s not respectable. He doesn't have great manners, but your kid was drowning and he saved his life."

2:16:13You love that guy. You invite him for Shabbat. You invite him for Shabbat. He's like, "I love you. Why? You saved my son. You saved my son. You're not a perfect human being, but I love you anyway. Why? Because you saved my son." That's what kiruv is to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. That's what teshuva is to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, yes, some of us have the potential to be big chachamim. Some of us have it but don't use it. We have a get-out-of-jail ticket. What is it? Support it in whatever way you can. Once you get people to do teshuva, that's your ticket. Either way, everybody's obligated to do it. But nonetheless, this is actually something that's siyata dishmaya. I learned the answer to your question today. Yes, the answer depends. To the mic, please. One second, one second. Let me... Mike, I could hear you, but they can't hear you at home. You said earlier that if something is used for idolatry, then it should be destroyed. Now, I think, I assume that people worship money, right? So if money's passed on to everybody, you don't really know where the money's coming from. Why is it not destroyed? Because it could have been used. Two things. Number one, the Torah says in several places that at the end of times, there's going to be lo yihyeh kesef velo yihyeh zahav.

2:17:39that one of the difficulties of the last generation is that they're going to turn money into God. People are going to worship money, not literally, per se, where they're going to take a dollar bill and start praying to it, but they're going to do everything and anything possible just to chase money, which obviously we see. So even though somebody, in essence, dedicates their whole life to money, you're still allowed to use the $100 bill that he gave you because he didn't actually worship that bill. He worships the concept of having money, even if that money is digital on a computer. It says a 1 with 9 zeros or 10 zeros or 20 zeros after it. That's what he worships, and that's what he's willing to do. not the actual physical bill. The physical bill, to him, if you rip it, you don't rip it, it doesn't make a difference to him. What makes a difference is, in essence, the concept of money, whether he has it, whether he doesn't, and so on. So the actual paper itself is not worshiped, but rather the concept. So you can't kill the concept. The only way you could kill that concept is with Kedushah, with Torah. And that's what we're trying to do. Yes, next question. You have another one. This one's going to sound strange.

2:18:48They're always strange. Maybe I'm wrong, but maybe I'm not. What does the Shulchan Aruch say? The Chachamim, for different reasons, had different opinions, had a machloket, a debate about the issue of kapparot. Kapparot is before Yom HaDin. It's a minhag. Under some customs of Am Yisrael, not all do it. For example, my rabbi says don't do it. A few other rabbis, like Rav Ze'ev that I know, do it, and he's a huge talmid chacham. So you don't necessarily disrespect it, you don't necessarily need to do it either. What's the kapparah? You take a chicken, you slaughter it, and you go around the person's head, and you say, this is in essence part of the repentance of the person's sins, to arrive at Yom HaDin, judgment day, clean.

2:19:49So this is in essence like a minhag, a custom that some people in Am Yisrael have done because we don't have the Beit HaMikdash where we used to bring sacrifices, in essence, to do something similar. Not the same, but similar. But some of the opinions are very strongly against it for a few reasons. One of the reasons is because they give the chickens away to poor people. If you believe in this minhag and you're saying that all of your sins are going into this chicken, why are you giving this to a poor person? Why do they need your sins? Give them a good chicken. Don't give them a bad chicken. Second thing is, as Rav Avigdor Miller used to say, in reality, if you're really going to put this somewhere, get a cow. Get a cow, not a chicken. That's how big your sins are. Don't slaughter a chicken, slaughter a cow. That's how big your sins are. Why slaughter the poor chicken? What happened actually in America is made to me even more disgusting. Why? Because in America, it's such a rich country that many people throw out the chickens because they don't want to give them to the poor people, and they don't want to eat them themselves. So what do they do? They throw out the chicken. Now, throwing out the chicken is a waste. It's wasting food. There are countless people who are starving.

2:21:12throwing out chickens. So, that's the reason, or at least some of the reasoning, that I can remember. There was a machloket about whether you should or shouldn't do it. The point being is that there's an equation, there's something for both sides. There's an argument for both sides. But the more we see things today, people are becoming less and less traditional, and there are They're not liking that minhag, let's put it that way. It's not as popular as it used to be for several reasons, especially since the secular people and people that don't understand the minhag make fun of it publicly and it becomes a big chilul Hashem. Because people, what they do is they throw out the chickens and sometimes they don't care about other people, they don't have any good manners, they throw them out and the garbage pails as they are, which creates a big seirah, a disgusting smell, maggots, and stuff like that, and it causes harm to other people, becomes a big chillul Hashem. So in general, as far as if you ask me what do I do, I don't sacrifice any chickens or anything like that. My rabbi told me what you do in replacement is take money and give it to poor people.

2:22:23The value of a chicken. A chicken, let's say, is worth $10, $20. Give $10, $20 to a poor person. That's it. That's the kaparah. Don't do the other chicken. If you want to do the chicken, there's nothing wrong with it, but at least learn a little bit about why you're doing it. Don't just do it because you think it's going to fix all your problems. That it's not going to do. A cow is not even going to fix all your problems. A whole slew of cows are probably not going to fix your problems either. Why? Teshuvah is going to fix your problems. Teshuvah will fix your problems. Next. It's not a weird question. It's a good question. or wait one after? He did his homework. What will happen to all the other countries in the world? Will they just be empty? Yerushalayim, and Eretz Yisrael in general, The Gemara calls it like the skin of Yerushalayim specifically. It's like a city, like the skin of a deer. Now, I never went hunting, but I know a few people that did, and they told me something very interesting about the skin of a deer. When it's alive, the deer is alive, skin, it's a big animal. Big, big animal, caused a lot of car accidents, unfortunately, in New Jersey and different places. It's a big, strong animal.

2:23:50But once you kill the animal and you skin it, the skin shrinks much, much smaller. And then you look at how small it is. You take this little thing. This is like it. You see, this little small thing went on that animal. It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense how this thing stretched to that. It says in the time of the Beit HaMikdash that we had in the past, as well as the Beit HaMikdash that, b'ezrat Hashem, we will have in the future, Eretz Yisrael will spread and will be stretched like the skin of a deer. Meaning many, many more people can fit there than do now. That's one. The second thing is, the olam, the rest of the world, will continue to operate as is. is, meaning the rest of the world will still live where they are. The righteous among the nations that live in America will be in America, or in China, or in Europe, or wherever it is. They all live in their countries. Not everyone's going to move there to Eretz Yisrael. They're going to live in their countries. There will still be commerce; there will still be different things, but there's going to be a world full of kedusha. Nonetheless, as far as the amount of Am Yisrael will go, Am Yisrael will go to Eretz Yisrael. And even though I...

2:25:03You could even add another one or two zeros to the number of Jews that we know of today. Even if there were a billion Jews, for example, they'd still be able to fit in Eretz Yisrael because of the spiritual significance that the land has. China has a billion people. I mean, they have a lot of people. In reality, if you talk about the 1960s... In the 1960s, there was a study that came out. It was a study that came out, I believe it was 1962, when there were about 3 billion people in the world. The study said that if people don't start dying, the world is going to end. That very same year, there was an Indian, a guy from India, who came out with a fantastic way to help seeds grow faster. fruits and vegetables to grow faster. And he said, "Why are they all gonna die?" The first guy said, "They're gonna die because there's not enough food. It's three billion people. If we continue growing," he predicted, "I believe within like five, ten years, the world was gonna end." And he became a bestseller. People bought his book; people thought the world would end in the 1960s. The very same year, somebody from India, non-Jewish, invented this thing that helped

2:26:27fertilize the different seeds. And today, we have 8 billion people and room for even 20 billion more if we want. Why? Because people don't run the world; Hashem runs the world. So, people that worry about, for example, I always found it ridiculous when people say, "Oh, yeah, these immigrants are stealing our jobs." It's a common American mentality that immigrants are stealing their jobs, and... You know, oh, we don't have enough room, we don't have enough this. That just means you've never been around America. America, the vast majority of it is land. The vast majority of it doesn't look like Florida, New York, or Los Angeles. The vast majority of America is a bunch of farms, animals, and land. Empty, empty land. If Hashem decided, He could literally fit 8 billion people in America. 100 billion people. You could fit a lot more. China fits almost 2 billion people, and it's smaller than America. You know, so the point is that people think that only three or four hundred million people can fit in America. It's completely ridiculous. You can fit a lot more. It's just that people are small-minded, and they also make Hashem into a human being, so they think Hashem is small-minded. That's the problem because they think their God is a human being. That's the problem when you have a human being as God. Yes, we found out that...

2:27:52Every single, maybe it was around six, seven billion population, that everyone can fit in Australia, have a small house and some land, and half of Queensland province will be empty. Everyone can fit in Australia. Yeah, the person that came up with that study that said that 3 billion people were too much already and people were going to die, somebody else went against him and said, no, you can fit everybody and more just in Australia, but nobody listened to that person. Nobody cared about the person because everybody believed the bad news for a period of maybe even a decade almost. It was like hysteria around the world. And that's actually, during that time, the Chinese came out with a law You're only allowed to have one child. You're only allowed to have one child. And they would literally kill kids. Yeah, Japanese also. Japanese also. Japan is the oldest country in the world. They don't have enough young people. No, they have women, they just don't have enough young people. And even the young people don't want to have kids because it's so expensive to live there.

2:28:56Sad people, sad people. When I was there, they changed it to a two-child policy. It doesn't help. Am Yisrael will have two kosher children and more. Just that Am Yisrael unfortunately has two dogs and a cat and sometimes a kid because we're so focused on money. That's why the Muslims are taking over. Muslims are taking over not only because of their numbers, they're also taking over because we're not listening to the Torah. Next question. Where are you supposed to wash before you eat? Like one of them is bread. There's another one when you eat certain food, if you dip it in water with salt. Dip it in water with salt? Like karpas. Yeah, it's Pesach. But not just, we do it on Pesach, but if I do it during the year, would I have to make a beracha? No. You don't have to dip it in salt if you do it during the year. No, it's just the minhag anyway. It's not a beracha. It's the minhag to put the karpas in salt. It's the minhag. It's not a beracha. It's not a beracha. It's a minhag.

2:29:57Like if you don't have the karpas or you don't have the salt, you can still eat it. You can still continue with the seder. It's not a... Most of the confusion that people have in general about Judaism is because of minhagim. It's not because of halachot. Halachot, Baruch Hashem, are clear and well-documented. ...beautiful. They make sense, especially when you learn them—when you learn poskim, when you learn why and who and what and when, and who wrote it. When you realize who wrote these, what we have today—you don't even want to know why. Why, if this genius, this holy person, said that's what you have to do, who am I to go against them? That's the problem. We don't know who the tzaddikim are because we don't learn about them, so we think the tzaddik is like me, he's like you, he's like our average Joe. That's the foolishness of men, yes... It's a common question whether the Beit HaMikdash will be built or come down. And the common answer is that it will come down, but it will come down slightly incomplete. Why? Why slightly incomplete? Why can't Hashem build the Beit HaMikdash? No. It's that just like the human being comes to the world slightly incomplete, where you have to have a brit milah on the eighth day, Hashem is going to bring the Beit HaMikdash slightly incomplete. Why does He do both of those things? In order to make us shutafim, in order to make us partners in the creation. If you are a partner in making yourself kosher by having a brit milah, then you will watch your brit.

2:31:12where you have to have a brit milah on the eighth day, Hashem is going to bring the Beit HaMikdash slightly incomplete. Why does He do both of those things? In order to make us shutafim, in order to make us partners in the creation. If you are a partner in making yourself kosher by having a brit milah, then you will watch your brit. If you are partners in building the Beit HaMikdash, then you will honor the Beit HaMikdash. So the point is that it's going to come down. We don't need to build anything, just that once it comes down, there are going to be certain stones that we have to put in. Just like, for example, when a Sefer Torah is written, they don't complete it. Usually, what they do is they, let's say, write it in Israel, but they leave a few letters missing and... Because once they ship it, if it was complete, you would always have to have 10 people with the Sefer Torah. If it fell, everybody would have to fast. There are certain laws about moving a Sefer Torah. But if it's incomplete, then it's not considered a Sefer Torah. You can even throw it in luggage if you want. You shouldn't, but you can. The point is that they leave a few letters empty, and the sofer, the scribe that wrote that Sefer Torah, travels with that Sefer Torah, comes to the Beit Knesset with that Sefer Torah.

2:32:27And completes the last few letters with the Kehillah. It's a very interesting and beautiful ceremony. I had that done once in my life about 15 years ago. Why doesn't it come complete? They don't come complete. Women have to renew themselves every month. The menstruation cycle is renewing their entire inner system every month. You want to be a man or you want to be a girl? No, I'm saying it's not the same as a... that's supposed to be the same. She's a woman, you're a man, okay? But then they have to carry kids for a long time. You want to carry a kid instead? That's why we say, "Thank you for not making us a woman." When a woman carries a baby, just so you know, her entire inner system breaks. Her entire body breaks. Lungs go here, heart goes there, liver goes there, everything breaks. Not like it moves, it breaks. That's why it takes a while, a year and a half, sometimes even as much as two years. Chachamim say, two years for the body to fully heal. Two years for the body to fully heal. Why? It broke. It's not like it moved aside just to make room. No, it broke. She's broken inside. Needless to say, that's why we have to kiss our mom's feet when we see them, just for carrying us.

2:33:50Carrying us, and that's why we have to honor our wives for bringing children into the world and doing us the favor of performing this mitzvah. The point being is that we say "ברוך שפטרני מעונשו של זה" because men could not handle such pain. If it were men who carried babies, the world would end because we're too selfish as creatures. We simply wouldn't have any babies. Yes. So when Mashiach comes, we know that there will be a red heifer that will purify Am Yisrael. Okay. Will Mashiach purify the people with the red heifers that have already been seen and already been claimed that they found them, or will it be a red heifer that he finds that will be unknown? No, there were eight red heifers in history before. They believe that there are two more right now. We need a red heifer for when the time of Mashiach comes. But it has to be a red heifer that's qualified at the time he's there. So even if there's a red heifer now, if Mashiach doesn't come now and something changes, for example, if somebody puts a sack on top of that red heifer,

2:34:57even though it's beautiful and red, it's not kosher anymore. Because there are rules for the red heifer. And once you make that red heifer, that cow, carry something, even one time, you can't use it anymore. If its body changes, its eyes change, it becomes pasul (invalid), becomes cross-eyed, and so on and so forth. or perhaps now it's kosher, but let's say the Mashiach didn't come for another year or two years, and she grows two black hairs. So yes, in the beginning she was kosher, but then after she grew two black hairs, she's no longer kosher. You can never use her again. The point being is that it has to be a red heifer at the time the Mashiach comes. So even the ones that we have today don't necessarily guarantee that the Mashiach will come today. It means it's a possibility, it's even a likelihood. Needless to say, most people don't understand the significance of the red heifer. The red heifer is not going to fix us from our sins. The red heifer is going to purify us from tumat met. All of us are impure from death. death of other people. We've all either touched a dead body or touched somebody that touched a dead body. Tumat met transfers. So you, for example, shook the hand of your new boss. "Hey, thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir." His mom died five years ago. Guess what? He's still tamei. Now he's tamei. He touched you. You shook his hand. High five. Okay, you're tamei now. Everybody's tamei. Everybody's tamei. The only way to become purified is with the red heifer. The red heifer doesn't clean sins. Sins are cleansed through teshuva. Yes.

2:36:23Only the red heifer will cleanse death off you. It will not clean the sins or purify you of sins. The only thing that purifies you of sins is your teshuva. That's the only thing that purifies you of sins. Your teshuva will purify your sins. If nothing else can purify your sins, not your rabbi, not your wife, nothing. The only thing that can purify you from sins is your teshuva. And teshuva is definitely many, many parts, but the point is that we have to purify ourselves. Now, the prophets say that at the time of Mashiach, and then we'll finish here, at the time of Mashiach, there's going to be a war of Gog and Magog. Two-thirds of the world will die, and the one-third that's left, the one-third that's left, is going to be burned like gold, purified like gold, meaning that Hashem is going to put us all to the test. And literally, some people will be put to the test in ways that they don't believe they can handle. So that burning, that difficulty, that nightmare of a time, is for people that are actually relatively righteous and...

2:37:39Like, it's not the wicked people. This is the third that's left that are good. But they're not perfect. So Hashem is going to put all of those people to the test to see what they choose now. what they choose now. Why? Because they still have some sins. So in order to make up for those sins, He's going to give them serious, serious difficulties. And if they make the right choice to stick with Hashem, then He'll choose them out of that third. So even that last third, not everybody survives. It's just the ones that choose right. The ones that end up becoming gold. Meaning the ones that become purified. Because they still had sins, but they're not perfect, but they're not wicked. They're just average. He received the Torah, and he came down and shattered the tablets when he saw that they made the golden calf. Why did Moshe use the golden calf to punish them? Because he made them drink the gold. Why did he not punish them by killing them or using another punishment? Why did he use that? You see that Moshe Rabbeinu did kill them.

2:38:51As soon as he saw that they worshiped the idol, he said, "Whoever is for God is with me." And the only ones that chose his side were Shevet Levi, or the Leviim. And he told them, "Kill whoever worshiped the idol, even if it's your father, even if it's your brother, even if it's anybody, kill them." And several thousand men Died that day, so he did kill them. He did kill them and many, many got punished. But nonetheless, still some of the people that were part of that sin survived till this day. They are called the Erev Rav. The Erev Rav, huh? Survived, he didn't kill them. He didn't kill them. He didn't kill everybody that sinned. He killed only part of the people that sinned because Hashem needs to have Erev Rav in every generation. There are bad souls in the world whose job is such that they can either overcome it and become real big tzaddikim or they can become the weapon that Hashem uses to hit us. "Your conquerors, your destroyers will come from within you." What is within you? Our biggest enemies are Jews. Am Yisrael's biggest enemy is itself.

2:40:00The biggest heretics in Israel, the biggest heretics, I should say, have been Jews. The biggest problems have been Jews. The problem is not the Arabs; the problem is not the Christians. Yes, they are a problem, but that's just Hashem hitting us with the stick because we're not following His Torah. The reason why we're not following Torah is because of all the heretics that lead people astray, and many times they are Jewish. The biggest Christian missionaries in the world are Jewish. The biggest heretics in the world are Jewish. The biggest enemies of the Torah are Jewish. Lefty liberal people running America, running Israel, they're all Jewish. These are the people that have always been enemies of Torah. These are the Erev Rav. Now, you can technically do teshuva. It's not that you lose free choice, but it's a rare situation. Rare situation. I'm kind of tired, and I think you've asked enough questions. I'm going to leave you with some more for next week. Hopefully, you learned a few new things. I know I learned a few things. Thank you very much for learning with me. Baruch Adonai le'olam. Amen ve'amen. According to the Midrash in Eicha Rabbah, at the time of the Beit HaMikdash...

2:41:21We did the calculation because it shows the measurement of the city and how many people were in the city at the time of the Beit HaMikdash. We did the calculation because it shows the measurement of the city and how many people were in the city at the time of the Beit HaMikdash.