Money Talk at Maor YeShiva High School New Jersey

1:03very happy to be here in New Jersey and Maor Yeshiva High School. It's an honor to be with all of you tzaddikim, learning Torah every day. As I told the few students I just spoke to, I'm jealous of you. I'm not jealous of you for a few reasons. Number one, For things you probably don't realize, the fact that you're here in this school learning Torah on a daily basis with Rabbanim kedoshim that are teaching you the truth, that are embodying the truth, that are publicizing the truth—it's 100% in this world full of lies. It's very difficult to find people that are yearning and publicizing the truth. So the fact that you have the zechut to learn in a school like this at such an age You must have some zechut that gave you the benefit of actually being here in the school. Now, it's very difficult to understand and see what I'm saying today at your age. You know, if I was your age and I was in a school like this, I would think, ah, my parents just sent me to this school. What's the big deal? You'll get to my age one day and you'll see what a privilege you actually had today. You won't have to wait 20 years for it.

2:19The other reason is because when I was young, I didn't have this opportunity. I didn't have an opportunity to learn Torah. I didn't have an opportunity to learn what is the purpose of life at such a young age. I was born in Israel in 1980, and we went to, you know, in those days, Israel was less problematic than it is today as far as religious concerns, and it was easy to find a religious school. So we went to a religious school, but it was the type of religious school where you're religious in school and at home... You're religious in school, you wear a kippah, you wear tzitzit, but for the most part, many of the kids would go home, take off the tzitzit, take off the kippah. It was like a uniform. It wasn't really something that you truly believed in. Moshe was a nice character, like a comic character. Noach, very cool. He's the only survivor in the world. You didn't actually live those stories. You heard them. It was nice. It was interesting.

3:22But you didn't necessarily connect to it to such an extent where you would say, "Oh, I have to learn something from this story to apply to the rest of my life." So anyway, I went to this school until I was 10 years old. When I was 10 years old, the land vomited us and brought us here to America. As it says in the Torah, when we don't do the will of Hashem, we don't necessarily have the zechut of living in Eretz Yisrael. So part of the punishment is Hashem sent us to exile. But Hashem loves us so much that even in the punishment, He gives us the ability to enjoy. So we came to America, and as soon as we landed, we went to public school. So now, instead of being half-dati (half-religious), ...you know, half-religious, now we're completely nothing. We just stop religion, start eating non-kosher. I start wanting to be like the goyim because I'm surrounded by goyim. Once in a while, you have a Jewish friend here and there, but he's also like me; he also wants to be like the goyim. You have an earring here, and an earring here, and an earring here, and an earring there, and eventually earrings in other places, and you know, you're lucky you still have a face left. And you want to live like the goyim, do like the goyim, and start connecting to the material world.

4:39Where, in order for you to enjoy life, you have to have stuff. You have to have a car, you have to have a watch, you have to have a girl, you have to have this, you have to have that, and after you get it, what happens? You want more. So the Gemara says you give somebody 100, he wants 200. You give him 200, he wants 400. Meaning, who is the guy that has the biggest desire for money? The one that has the most. Who's the one that feels that he's lacking the most? The one that has the most. Meaning the guy that has $100 feels like he's closer to his goal of $200 than the guy that has a million because the guy that has a million feels like, "I need another million." So he feels like he's missing more. So you connect to the material world and little by little get to a point where that's your only world. When I was eighteen years old, I got a job on Wall Street. I started as a trainee, as an assistant for a brokerage firm. I'm shortening some of the story just so we have time to cover some other things. Some more details of the story are in the CDs that I sent you guys. Baruch Hashem, it's the first track, and it's very, very popular. I try to tell the story, a different version of the story, and also different chidushim along with each time because, after a while, I get bored of it, so I have to... Eighteen years old, I got a job on Wall Street. I started as a trainee, as an assistant for a brokerage firm. I'm shortening some of the story just so we have time to cover some other things, and some more details of the story are in the CDs that I sent you guys. Baruch Hashem, it's the first track; it's very, very popular. And I try to tell the story, a different version of the story, and also different chiddushim along with each time, because after a while, I get bored of it, so I have to...

6:07Also, enjoy it. So, baruch Hashem, at 18 years old, I went to Wall Street. You could say I had to pay my dues. You know, anytime you want to succeed in life, unlike the current generation that thinks that everything is supposed to be gifted to them on a silver platter, my generation, we knew we had to earn it. So you have to pay your dues. You can't just be day one CEO of Google, at least. You have to start in a mailroom. You have to start as an assistant. You have to start as the guy that actually does all the work but gets no money. And that's what I did for the first three years on Wall Street. I worked for other people. I did everything I could to make them rich. I made phone calls, I made appointments, I did research, all the different things. I started my day somewhere around six o'clock in the morning. I'd finish at around nine o'clock at night. Long day, lot of phone calls, lot of work. The best month was $1,800. Best salary that I had in one month over those three years was $1,800, but I didn't actually get the $1,800 because the boss found an excuse to dock my pay.

7:21Because he said that one day I was on a phone, personal call for one minute, so that's... I lose $100 for that. And another day, I didn't answer something the right way, so he docked another $100. And, long story short, by the end of it, he gave me $1,160. So even the $1,800, he didn't pay me. So, long story short, after three years of working for other people, I changed a couple of firms and eventually I realized that this is not going to work out. The only way for me to succeed is by being independent within a company. So I told the manager of some office that I worked at, I told him, "Listen, this partnership is not working out. This guy promised me a lot of money. He ended up gypping me out of all the money. He owed me a few thousand dollars. He ended up paying me $81. You know, obviously, there's a little bit of a difference." And I want to be independent. So the boss, an Indian guy, said, "Okay, what's your intention here?" And me, being 21 years old at the time, said, "To buy you out." I wasn't too humble.

8:39I had no money in my pocket, only a dream and some ambition. And I'm telling a guy that's already in the business for 20 years, a millionaire, that my intention here is to buy him out. Well, that was naïve, ignorant, arrogant, a combination of all, not really sure. Either way, it was entertaining for him. He said, "Okay, let me think about it." And he thought about it. And after a few days, he said, "Okay, fine. You can start. You just have to know that every month, just for you to come and work in this office, you have to come up with $4,000." You have to pay me for the phone bill. You have to pay me a piece for the secretary. You have to pay me for this. You have to pay me for that. You have to pay me for this. And he gave me a whole list of different things I have to pay for. So before I am even able to take any money home, I have to pay him $4,000. Chas v'Shalom, did he lose money? So, he said, how are you going to come up with the money? I said, I have no idea, but I'll figure it out. So, this is what I do. I start working. And a couple of days after I start working, September 11th happens. Mazal Tov, Wall Street collapses. Not exactly the best time to recommend stocks to everyone, at least. No one wants to invest; everyone is losing money. And me, being ambitious, driven, and so on, I say, listen, I don't really have much of a choice. I'm not going to change careers again.

10:07So I still have to convince people to invest because, at some point, these stocks are going to go up. So I start building a business even after September 11th. But I'm not able to make any money because, first, I don't have any clients. So even if I start to get some clients over the next few months, which is very, very difficult, any little bit of money that I'm making, I have to give to this Indian guy. So, it gets to a point where, after a few months, I ran out of the money that I had saved in the bank from a previous job that I had. I used to work extra jobs to make extra money on the side. And I ran out of the money, and I got to a point where I had $36 or $35 left to my name. I got to a point where I had to sneak on a bus every single day in order to get to work. I had to borrow a dollar from this guy named Dimitri. He noticed I could eat for the day. Fifty cents went for coffee, fifty cents went for a donut. That was the food for the day. And every day was like this for a few months. Difficult is a bit of an understatement. But I had a lot of pride. I didn't want to go back to Abba and Ima, saying, "Abba, I need money. Ima, I need money."

11:24they had their own battles to deal with. I didn't want to be a headache for anyone. I said, listen, I'm going to survive. I'm going to figure it out. We're going to make it happen. Eventually, about six months after I started being independent, I finally made $1,000. Which, to me, in a month, was like all the money in the world. After paying this guy, I finally got to take home $1,000. I was excited and continued to work. The next month I made $5,000. Now I'm rich. The next month, another $5,000. The month after that, $10,000. The month after that, $17,000. And then in November of 2002, approximately a year after I started, I made $117,000 for the month. Brokerage, same thing. Yeah, same thing I was doing. Eventually, I got to a point where I built enough clients. One of my stocks worked out, went up in value while the rest of the market was going down. I sold the stock for everybody, made a lot of commissions. People started sending me more money, and I took home $117,000 for the month.

12:35and broke an office record. All of a sudden, I became the gadol of the office. Suddenly, everyone cares and likes me. So I took some money, bought my parents a house, and with the rest of the money, I continued to invest in the business, trying to get more clients. But life would never be the same. At that point, I get a lot of clients. People start calling me, asking me if I would take them as a client instead of me chasing people. And little by little, I grow the business to the point where I'm making $50,000, $100,000, $200,000 a month. By 2003, a year later, I sell one of the big positions that we have and make $601,000 for the day. So now, I'm a millionaire. So I have to decide, do I stay working for this company or do I build my next? Well, like any Israeli, I want to be an entrepreneur; I don't want anybody to tell me what to do, so I start my own company. I start my own company, I start hiring a bunch of salespeople, analysts, and so on. A bunch of people that actually went to college start working for me. I went to college for one year but then realized that for me it was a complete waste of time.

13:52Not because college in general is a waste of time, but if you already know what you want to do, and you know how to do it, there's no point in going. Other than just wasting your parents' money, there's absolutely no purpose. If you're going to learn a specific profession, if you're going to become a doctor, if you're going to become a lawyer, if you're going to school for an actual purpose, to get a certain degree to do something with it, then there's a reason for it. But if you already know what you want to do, and you can do it already, there's no point. In general, education, one of the major reasons for it, as you guys already know, and as I'm sure your teachers already teach you, the first part of secular education is to teach you how to think. They try to teach you how to use your brain. As far as certain skills, that's, again, above and beyond. So anyway, I already knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a salesman. I wanted to be in business. I was already in it. There was no point for me to go to school. So I stopped. Even though I was considered a talmid chacham, I had a 3.9 GPA. I was in honor school. I was already taking college classes in high school and blah, blah, blah. But again, I didn't want to be a doctor. I didn't want to be a lawyer. And I didn't want to be in school for 100 years. So I went into the business world. And now I'm making money.

14:59and I'm getting all these other guys that went to college and are working for me. And little by little, we're making more and more money. And it gets to a point where a bad month is $200,000. And then in May of 2006, I get to the biggest day of my career. We sell a big position that we had. We had many, many shares of this company called Sirius Satellite. We're one of the top shareholders of the company. And we also had a few big positions in other companies. I made a lot of money and that day was the highlight of my career. I make 1.6 million dollars. So, the money is not just coming in; it's almost like we're printing money. We joined the Federal Reserve. A young guy in his 20s, I have a big office, all these people work there, we're making money. But for some reason, the one thing that we don't have is a smile. The one thing we don't have is a purpose. The one thing we don't have is a plan of what to do with all of it.

16:17because I myself never cared for money really. I just liked making it. I just liked the competition. That's it. I just wanted to be the best. And making more money was just a way to grade yourself. Like, I wasn't one of these guys that bought all the toys. I didn't care for a million cars. I didn't care for a bunch of houses. I didn't care for the watches. In my entire life, I never spent a dollar, a dollar on a piece of jewelry that was for myself. I bought a couple of pieces of jewelry for my wife, but very, very simple ones, nothing like $50,000 or $20,000. Even though, like I said, we had plenty of money because neither one of us valued it, valued material. But we liked making it because we were able to do things that were more meaningful. We were able to give tzedakah, we were able to help people, we were able to help our parents, help our friends. Something more than just like making the money. Everybody says, "Oh yeah, when I have money, I'm going to give a lot of tzedakah." Okay, let's see once you get the money. If you like money, you're not going to give tzedakah. And the reason why is because, naturally, no one wants to give something they like.

17:34If parents love their children, they don't give them up for adoption. Usually, the ones that give up their kids for adoption do so because they have mental issues, and they're not connected to their children. People that love money don't usually give money unless there's a benefit, unless there's more money to get. Meaning, the guy that donates a hundred million dollars to a hospital usually does so not because he cares for the hospital that much, but because him getting so much notoriety, he's going to help him make another $500 million. Him getting notoriety is going to help him build more business. Or he just has to decide, either give $100 million to the hospital as a donation, or have to pay it to the government as taxes. There's a tax benefit out of it. So he says, I might as well pay it to the hospital, and that way I don't have to pay any taxes, and on top of it, I get kavod. So if you really, really like money, and you have a huge ambition to make money for money's sake because you want stuff, you should remove from your mind that, yes, once I get money, I'm going to give tzedakah because I'm already telling you ahead of time it's not going to happen. You like it too much. For some reason, I didn't. I don't know why, but I didn't. I gave most of my money away.

18:54Whoever needed it would come to my office. And I was so busy that an hour of my time was worth approximately $3,000 at the peak of my career. So if somebody wanted to talk to me for an hour, I had to evaluate my time. How much is my time worth? How much is this problem? Really, how important is it? So usually when I would know it's a personal issue, this may be a little bit... This is not a lesson to learn what to do. This is a lesson to learn what not to do. I would usually ask somebody, how much does it cost? He would tell me his problem, start spilling his heart out to me, and I would stop him in the middle and say, well, how much does your problem cost? And he would tell me, oh, yeah, well, you get to the point. Oh, it costs $5,000. Okay, so I would just say, okay, so just stop one second. I take a checkbook, give him $5,000. And go back to my job because I figured, okay, he's going to talk to me about this problem for two hours. It's going to cost me $6,000. If I just give him $3,000 right now or $5,000 right now, I'm saving money. And again, it's only because I didn't care for money. It's just paper. It's not even paper because you don't actually get the paper most of the time. It's usually in some digital thing that shows it to you.

20:04That's it. So I gave money to a lot of people. Anybody who had a problem would come to me. If I actually got all the loans that I gave to people, I would be a millionaire again. But just one food for thought for all of you: if you ever want to give somebody a loan, just for yourself, don't think of it as a loan. Because most likely, you're not going to get it back. Unless it's somebody with Yirat Shamayim, there's a shtar iska, it's somebody that actually cares about the Boss in Shamayim, most likely you're not going to get the money back. Especially if it's small money. Especially if it's a hundred bucks, a thousand bucks, five thousand bucks. You know, especially the people that come to you, "Hey, listen, can you lend me five thousand dollars for this week?" It's never this week. If five thousand dollars was going to help him this week, he could wait another week. If he was going to get the money next week, he could just wait another week. $100 is not for today. You give me $100, I'll give it to you next week. He's not giving it back to you. It's just not. Most of the time, I'm telling you from experience. This is not to call everybody a liar. It's just a reality. If somebody gets to a point where they need $100, the problem is much bigger than $100. Which means that by the time he gets to needing $100, he actually needs it to survive. He's not going to have the ability to give it back to you.

21:19So if you ever have the opportunity to serve Hashem with your money by giving somebody a loan, know that it's a mitzvah. But know that this mitzvah doesn't pay you in this world, because he's probably not going to pay you back, so you should just consider it already in your mind as a gift. Give it in your mind. Okay, he can say it's a loan, and if he gives it back to you, chazak u'baruch. But if he doesn't, don't be upset. Because if you're upset, you lose the mitzvah. And on top of it, you have to come back to this world in a gilgul. Because once he doesn't give it back to you, it's considered theft—gezel. He stole it from you. And then both of you have to come back to this world so he can pay you back the money. Who wants to come back to this world? We barely want to be here in the first place. So, if a guy doesn't pay you back, just say okay. If he gives it back to you, chazak u'baruch. But most of the time, they're not going to give it back to you. So just think of it as a gift. I helped Am Yisrael.

22:19Long story short, I started making all this money. My biggest toy was my house. I bought a nice apartment on the corner of Wall Street and Broad Street for a couple of million dollars. Didn't really have much time or patience to furnish it. So we had some simple furniture. Didn't really have much time to put window shades on it, so we put something simple on there too. Just really busy with life. And again, this material stuff that you always want your whole life, eventually once you get the ability to do it, it's not that important. What was important to me was to continue to build this enterprise so I could figure out what the point of all of it is. Like what to really do. What I didn't realize is that I actually had the instructions of what to really do all along. I just never read them. It's like getting the best product in the world or the cure for every disease but never taking the pill. So Hashem, throughout my life, gave me different signs and I just ignored them. I gave them different names.

23:34Hashem would give me a sign, "Hey, listen, you need to start laying tefillin on a regular basis, start keeping Shabbat, start learning Torah, start doing mitzvot. This is the purpose of why I created the world." I already believed in God, but it was my own version of God. It wasn't the God of the Torah, because I didn't really know the God of the Torah. I just knew that there had to be a God that created the world. I wasn't one of these fools who thought that everything came from absolutely nothing. It has to come from somewhere. So, I believed in God, but I never actually knew that if I don't do it, there are punishments. And half the Torah is pretty much very scary. I believed in my own God, which, like in today's world, people think of as Santa Claus. Like the God that owes you stuff or gives you stuff all the time, but you don't have to do anything for Him. Most people think God works for them. It's like, "I want this, I want this, I want this, I want this, I want this, I want this." Okay, great. What are you doing for Hashem? When you get up to Shamayim, b'ezrat Hashem, after 120, they're going to ask you a few questions. I'm sure you heard from your teachers. They ask you if you conducted your business with faith, meaning did you have emunah? Not just that you conducted business and you were honest—that's already a given. But with faith, meaning were you the type of guy that worked overtime because you didn't think that Hashem has any money? And you had to work overtime because how else are you going to build this giant house?

25:02How else are you going to go on three vacations a year? You work three jobs because, hey, listen, Hashem, you know, He built the world, He spent all of His money on creation, He ran out of money. But in Gemara, Masechet Rosh Hashanah and also Masechet Beitzah, it says that Hashem already decrees how much money you're going to get for the year on Rosh Hashanah until Rosh Hashanah. Meaning that it doesn't matter if you work overtime or not. It doesn't matter if you work one job or two jobs or no jobs. Your parnassah is already determined in Shamayim. So for anyone that thinks they need to be in a certain profession in order for them to be rich, the Gemara is here to tell you, you're wasting your time. If Hashem wants you to be rich, you'll be rich. You could be rich being a stockbroker. You could be rich being a teacher. You could be rich being a garbage man. You could be rich selling Q-tips to hotel chains. You could be rich doing anything. There's someone rich and someone poor in every profession. There's someone poor that made all of your clothing. In China or India, one of those places, they make like a dollar a month or something like that. I don't know how they live.

26:12But literally, they make like a dollar a day or a dollar a month or a dollar a week. Somehow they survive. And they make all the clothes. And they make pretty much a lot of the products we use on a day-to-day basis. But then there's the guy that owns the place. And he makes millions. Same profession. There's the guy that recommends stocks. And he can make some money, he may not make some money. Some guys are successful stockbrokers, some guys are failures. But then there's the guy that actually owns the company that you're investing in. So he's the rich guy in every profession. Meaning that Hashem decides who's going to be rich and who's not. You don't necessarily need to drive yourself crazy working overtime or thinking that I have to be a doctor to be rich, I have to be this to be rich, I have to do this. No, you have to convince Hashem. That's what you have to do. So now, Little by little, I get to a point where the money is now becoming more and more meaningless. Because the more you have it, the more you want to do stuff with it, but then the stuff gets boring. In the beginning, when you first got a car, the car was fun for a year. After a while, you get another car; okay, the car is fun for six months. After you get the next car, then it's fun for like a month.

27:35And eventually, it gets to a point where it's not even fun at all. As soon as you get it, you already want something else. So, I got to a point where I said, okay, well, what's going to happen? Eventually, I have to donate some of this money, so I donated a Sefer Torah. I thought maybe that's going to be good to do. I donated some money to the Beit Knesset. I donated some money to some people, and so on and so forth, but still never got to a point where I have this feeling you call happiness. And the reason why is because happiness is a spiritual feeling. Meaning that in order for you to be happy, you have to be injected with something called spirituality. You can give somebody as many cars, houses, planes, and whatever else they want, but they'll never be happy because it's the wrong cure. This is the explanation for anyone that asks why it is that some of these big movie stars and big celebrities kill themselves with drugs and alcohol and everything else despite having $100, $200, $500 million in the bank. You have this misken, Robin Williams, who was not a Jew, at the top of his career, had a family, had kids, had plenty of money, somewhere probably in the neighborhood of $150 million.

28:55was considered very, very funny, but just in the last year or two, he killed himself. He had everything that everyone else thinks makes you happy, but to kill yourself, obviously, you can't be happy. You have to be as far away from happiness as possible, giving us proof that money is definitely not going to make you happy. Now, if I never had money and I told you money is not going to make you happy, you would say, "What do you know? You never had money." I'm telling you, I had some. It's not going to make you happy. But now I have to figure out what is going to make me happy. So I figured, you know what, maybe if I'm healthier and I'm better and I start working on myself, I should start doing things independently. I started reading some self-help books on how to be happy. how to develop good relationships, how to do this, how to do that. And along the way, I said, you know what, let's also work on my health a little bit. I had this annoying medical issue. I had hemorrhoids, which two out of three people have. Don't worry, you're not going to hear the rest of the story that I'm about to tell you. This is my own personal tikkun. But I had these hemorrhoids that would bother me once or twice a year. That's it. It wasn't like a problem. It wasn't like something that stopped my life.

30:11It was just annoying. I went to the doctor. The doctor said, yes, it's a very simple surgery. You go have the surgery. It's a same-day surgery, meaning it's very simple. It's called an elective surgery. You can choose to have it or not. It's not going to change your life as far as if you don't have it. It's just going to, if you have it, cure it, and you're not going to have this issue twice a year. That's it. I said, okay, so what does it take? Well, you come to the office, have the surgery. Or you come to the hospital, have the surgery under anesthesia. You sleep for an hour or two, we have the surgery, you wake up with morphine in your body so you're not feeling any pain, you go home a few hours later, you have a little bit of discomfort, which in English means pain, for a couple of days, and then you're back to work. Okay, fine, doesn't sound like the worst thing in the world, fine. So my biggest problem was, when do I go back to work? Because $3,000 is expensive. So he said, "Listen, you come in on Wednesday, you're back to work on Monday." I said, "Okay, so I'm taking a vacation for a couple of days, not the end of the world. Fine." I go to the surgery perfectly healthy. I wake up as sick as can be. I wake up out of the surgery screaming and yelling in pain.

31:35...because I'm feeling that somebody's taking a dagger and cutting my body open over and over and over again without stopping. And the dagger is also connected to electricity, which is what I'm feeling. I'm being electrocuted and cut up at the same time. I'm screaming my lungs out, asking whoever's next to me to kill me. No one wants to listen. Eventually, I see my wife... and my mom and I asked them to kill me, and they also don't want to listen. The doctors continue to give me morphine, and then they discover that my body's rejecting it, meaning the morphine is not working. Now, I never took drugs in my life because I actually like my brain. So now, when we finally take drugs to actually limit this pain, it's not working. So initially, the doctors asked my wife, is he a drug addict? Maybe he has such a high tolerance. She goes, no, he's anti-drugs. As a matter of fact, I paid for a few of my friends to go to rehab because of how much I hate drugs. And all drugs, whether it's crack, cocaine, or even something that people think is simple and meaningless like pot. Because it's legal in parts of the country, everybody thinks it's a mitzvah.

32:56Everyone thinks that doing pot now is going to be tough. No, look, it helps cancer patients. Okay, do you have cancer? No. Yeah, but it helps this patient. Okay, do you have it? No. So what do you have? I'm just bored. Okay, bored. You want to ruin your brain? Good luck. Good luck ruining your brain. Good luck ruining your life. It's not going to help you in any way. All you can guarantee yourself by doing pot is that you virtually become an official loser. Maybe not necessarily a loser in life because a lot of people have this visual of people like Steve Jobs and other celebrities that smoke pot. Look, he's a winner because he has money. Having money doesn't make you a winner. Having a life makes you a winner. So when you have a couple of hours of time where you're just high and doing nothing with your life and you're excited about some type of potato chips at 3 o'clock in the morning, that does not make you a winner in life.

33:58And don't tell me it helps you learn, because that's complete hogwash. Baruch Hashem, I learned plenty in my life, both secular studies as well as Torah. I did not need one hit of any type of drug whatsoever. I don't think that Ben Ish Chai or Rabbi Ovadia or any of the tzaddikim needed pot to learn. As a matter of fact, just so you know, it's actually a sin. How do we know it's a sin? Because the Torah tells us that you're not allowed to ever pray to Hashem unless you are fully there. Meaning that if you just smoked pot, you're not allowed to go to Beit Knesset. Because your prayer is considered To'avat Hashem. It's considered disgusting. So instead of getting a mitzvah, you're getting an aveirah. The simple solution is don't do it. So now, I needed to have this drug so I could stop having this pain, but it's not working. Baruch Hashem, eventually, the doctor says we gave him the most amount of morphine legally allowed, which would kill most people. And finally, it calmed his body down. So, Baruch Hashem, they calmed my body down. I'm no longer in pain. And foolishly, the doctors decide to release me after a few hours. Okay, yeah, this was just a hiccup.

35:24He can go home. He'll be fine. I felt fine because I had enough drugs in my body to kill a horse. I said, okay, fine, let's go home. Thank you for the adventure of making me see Gehinnom. It was a lot of fun. At least I know that Gehinnom actually exists in this world, too. I got a shiluach at the hospital. So, I go to the house on the way home. My father stops at the shawarma place. We get the shawarma. It's a very famous shawarma because I've told this story many times, and each time I remember the shawarma. I have a shawarma. We bought it in Brooklyn. I think it was Olympic Pita. And everybody knows Olympic Pita. So, I went there, had shawarma. We actually took the shawarma home. Went to my fancy apartment. We're at the house. I tell everybody, thank you for the adventure today. It was nice to see everyone. I enjoyed my shawarma. I'm going to sleep. I thought the interesting story full of pain was over. Forty-five minutes later, I wake up with worse pain than I had in the hospital.

36:51Two differences now: number one, there are no doctors to give me morphine; number two, the pain doesn't stop for the next 62 days. Sixty-two days of this horrendous pain, where, after taking a lot of painkillers and everything else, the most amount of consecutive sleep I can get over 62 days is 15 minutes. David HaMelech was a tzadik. So he had Ruach HaKodesh, he was a Navi, he was amazing. So for him, sleeping 15 minutes a day was normal. Someone who doesn't have even an ounce of an ounce of an ounce of any of the merits of the Torah or the knowledge that David HaMelech had, can't survive that way. So once you are not sleeping for an extended period of time, you start dying. Your body starts failing. So, my liver started to fail, I started peeing blood, my eyes started bleeding, my ears became infected, and slowly but surely I was dying. But in a really bad way. Doctors couldn't do anything for me; they wouldn't even accept me in the hospitals. They said, "We can't do anything for him." It got to a point where my mom told me that somebody told her I was going to die.

38:21whatever reason or another, after 62 days, Hashem had mercy on me. I said, "Okay, maybe you got the point this time. I gave you a bunch of tests throughout your life; you didn't get the point. Maybe this time you got the point." So after 62 days, the pain started subsiding. There was still a lot of pain all day, but it was manageable. I only had to take 25 painkillers a day. And I started going back to life. I started going back to the office, but it was hard for me to walk. It was hard for me to move. But nonetheless, I was able to start functioning mentally, at least. I was able to start sleeping for a few hours a day. And by the way, another outcome of not sleeping for an extended period of time is that you start hallucinating. You start seeing things. You start losing your mind. So finally, I realized that I was getting better because my mind was coming back to me. One of the things that I usually like to do to test myself is math problems in my head. 5 times 5, 50 times 50, 300 times 312, 5,012 times 15, whatever, all the types of problems that take a little time to calculate to see if my brain's working. Then I know, okay, Baruch Hashem, I'm alive.

39:41So, anyway, I go back to life, but I don't listen to the instructions that Hashem gave me. The text message that He sent me, I didn't listen to. I ignored it. The WhatsApp message, I ignored it. The email, I ignored it. And when He knocked on my door, I also ignored it. So Hashem has to come back. A few months later, I feel pain in my leg. And it doesn't go away. I have to go to the emergency room. They tell me in the emergency room that I have an infection between two muscles. If it had been delayed by a matter of hours, it would have exploded, entered my bloodstream, and killed me instantly. I have to undergo emergency surgery. This surgery is much more complicated, difficult, and painful than the first one. I have to stay in the intensive care unit for a few weeks, next to people who are dying, people who have been shot, and all types of other serious cases. So, I'm in an intensive care unit with a morphine drip connected to me 24 hours a day. I'm pressing the button non-stop. And life is hell. Eventually, I leave the hospital. I go back to life. I still don't get the sign. I still don't answer the email that Hashem sent me. I still don't look up. I still don't lay tefillin. I still don't keep Shabbat. And the problems persist.

41:01Three months later, I'm back in the hospital for another surgery. Same thing. I still don't listen. A couple of months later, I'm back in the hospital. And then eventually it gets to a point where I have a new infection, a new problem every month. My life continues to deteriorate, and it gets to a point where I think a summer or two summers later, one day I start feeling my feet hurting. A couple of days later, I notice that my legs have doubled in size and I can't walk. I go to the hospital, they tell me, maybe it's the heat because it's the middle of the summer. The heat. I said, what do I look like to you? An old lady that's been walking for five miles with a shopping bag? What do you mean it's the heat? They said, we can't explain it any other way why your legs doubled in size and you can't walk and it's in pain. I said, you should probably go back to medical school. Medical school. all the medical school that they went to 100 years ago, they went to medical school, still don't know how to diagnose anything. They sent me home, and now my walking ability becomes a disability. For the next year, I have to walk around with a cane. I'm in pain 24 hours a day from my legs, now aside from the rest of my body. And little by little, life becomes more and more meaningless. I start losing money because I can't work as much, and also...

42:26Hashem starts taking it away. Where in the past, every deal that I would do would work out, I would turn dust into gold, now I'm turning gold and platinum into dust. Everything starts failing. Hashem says, says this to the Prophet Chaggai, says to him, mine is the money, mine is the silver, mine is the gold. Everything is mine. Give me a reason to give it to you. It's all mine. The money you have in the bank is my money. The money you want is my money. The money he has is my money also. Everything is mine. I gave you a bunch of it, assuming you'll do the right thing. You thought the right thing was depending on everybody else's mitzvot. You bought a sefer Torah for other people to read. You donate to the Knesset for everyone else to attend. You donate to the family for them to pray. But like Hillel told us, if I am not for myself, who is for me? You can't rely on your grandfather's mitzvot or your father being a rabbi or your teacher being a tzaddik. What about you? If I am not for myself, who is for me? It's not going to help you if your father is a tzaddik. Every day I see different people.

43:52many of them, unfortunately, don't keep anything. What, are you going to keep Shabbat? You know, if you don't keep Shabbat, your Judaism is on suspension. According to the Rambam, chapter 30, a Jew that violates Shabbat is considered 100% an idol worshiper, not like a goy that could be a tzaddik like Job. Job, we have a Sefer Torah, one of the books in the Torah, one of the 24 books, is the book of Iyov. Iyov was not Jewish. And Iyov was a tzaddik; he was a prophet who went through a big tikkun. But nonetheless, he was righteous enough for Hashem to write a piece of the Torah about him. He didn't write about me, but about him, He wrote. he's not Jewish, so you see that not being Jewish is not necessarily a bad thing if you're born not Jewish. But to live like a non-Jew when you're a Jew is a serious problem because when you're living like a non-Jew when you are a Jew, Hashem doesn't consider you a righteous non-Jew; He considers you an idol worshiper, and that's a bad place to be.

45:08So now I'm violating Shabbat. I'm not doing anything for myself. I'm relying on everyone else. You figure you donate the money to the rabbi and he's going to do mitzvot. That's not what Hashem brought you to the world for. Why? Because if He wanted to give money to the rabbi, He just told us all the money is His anyway. You can give it to him in a different way. He doesn't need you. Don't tell me you're going to get a career and make a hundred million dollars because you're going to give tzedakah. Hashem doesn't need your tzedakah. He already has everything. If He wants to give it to the rabbi, He can give it to the rabbi in a different way. If He wants to give it to the school, He can give it to the school in a different way. He doesn't need your help. The only thing He wants from you is for you to do mitzvot. The only thing He wants from you is for you to fulfill your purpose. And as we said earlier today to a few of the students I had a pleasant conversation with, it says in Gemara Masechet Chagigah, if someone is not involved in Kavod Hashem, In the honor of Hashem, on a daily basis, the Gemara says it was better that he never came to the world. To that extent. Meaning, you have to do something every day. Try. You don't necessarily succeed every day. We're rewarded for effort. Execution is Hashem's business. It's none of your business. You try to help people do teshuva. Whether they do teshuva or not is Hashem's business. You keep Shabbat.

46:35Whether you do it the best possible way or not is your effort. Hashem will decide what's going to happen. You try to learn a lot of Torah. Whether you become a talmid chacham or not is Hashem's decision. You work, you exert your effort, Hashem will decide whether you succeed or not. But the point is, you are responsible for trying. So you're responsible for trying to do kavod Hashem every day. Do something for Hashem every day. Not once a week. Not once a month. Not once a year. Don't be one of these people, oh, no, no, I haven't gone to this shul in three years. I donated $5,000 for Parnassah, Yom Kippur. No thank you. Kavod Hashem every day. The Rambam says if you don't do it every day, it's a serious problem. There's no purpose. You're not fulfilling your purpose. So me donating all the money, The only thing it helped me with is that it gave me more time to do teshuvah. That's it. It says, Okay, so Hashem, even though You had many, many reasons to take me out of this world, because I had plenty of sins, apparently You gave me a little more time. But it wasn't like time that I was enjoying; it was time that I was suffering. Nonetheless, eventually, I get to a point where I don't want to live anymore,

48:02And my mom makes a phone call. She tries to get a bracha from some rabbis. She calls different rabbis all over the world, in Israel, in the US, in different places. You know, every Sephardic mom has a phone book full of rabbis' names. And she calls these different rabbis, but today, no one's answering the phone. And she calls this number in Eretz Yisrael. And a woman answers the phone after an hour and a half of calling people, finally somebody answers the phone. A woman answers the phone and says, is Kvodo HaRav so and so there? And the woman says in Hebrew, I'm sorry, wrong number. So after you call for an hour and a half to get a bracha for your dying son and no one answers and finally somebody answers and you got the wrong phone number, my mom broke down and she starts crying over the phone to this strange lady. And she said, Hashem, peeks in and shows us who's boss. When the woman says, "Dolis," this is my mom's name. The woman not only knows my mom, but she identified her voice. And my mom is in shock; she stops crying and says, "Who are you and how do you know my name?" She says, "I'm Penina, your niece." My mom dialed the wrong phone number in the wrong country.

49:20And she got to a person that not only knows her, but later on we find out is the only person that can help. So Penina says to her, "What's wrong?" And my mom is still shocked. She says, "Well, how did I get to you? I don't even have your phone number. We've never spoken on the phone before." They didn't have an existing relationship. They're related, but you know, like many of us have cousins, or nieces and nephews and so on, but it doesn't necessarily mean we're best friends. So, she says to her, "I don't know how you reached me, but if Hashem made you reach me, obviously there's a purpose for it." She says, "What's wrong?" And she says, "Well listen, my son is dying, everyone knows, it's a problem, I'm looking for a blessing." She says, "Well if you're looking for a blessing, why don't you call Rabbi Ephraim, my brother. He's a big Talmid Chacham, and he also lives next door to Rabbi Ovadia, zikhrono livracha."

50:22He says, "Oh, you want to talk to me?" She goes, "Of course, you're the aunt from America. I'll talk to you, call him." My mom calls him. And Rabbi Ephraim is obviously at the kollel, so he doesn't pick up, but then his wife picks up and she has Rabbi Ephraim call my mom. And he calls my mom. And now I didn't even know who Rabbi Ephraim was. I never knew he existed before this day. I didn't know I had a cousin that was a Talmid Chacham. I didn't know I had a cousin named Ephraim at all. he calls my mom and my mom talks to him, and she cries and she says this and that and help him. And then, if I get to a point, he goes, "Okay, does he speak Hebrew?" She responds, "He speaks a little." He goes, "Can I talk to him?" She says, "No, he's probably not going to want to talk to you. He doesn't talk to anybody anymore." And at that very moment that she's telling Rabbi Ephraim that I won't talk to him, I decide to call my mom on the other line. And she picks up, hysterical, crying, saying, "Talk to him, talk to him," as if I already know who she's talking to. And I said to her, "Who, and why are you crying, and why is this person making you cry?" She goes, "Talk to Ephraim." And I'm like, "Who is Ephraim?" She goes, "Your cousin, he can help you." I'm like, "Just stop crying. Anyone you want to talk to me, just tell him to call me, I'll answer." And Ephraim calls.

51:42And we start talking, and he gives me the first story that he tells me. He goes, "You like stories?" I said, "Sure, why not?" He tells me a story about Yehuda and Tamar, and different wisdom behind the story, why Hashem made it so. And I love the story. And we talk for an hour and 40 minutes. We learn Torah, I ask him questions, he gives me answers. And I find out that this cousin of mine is a very smart guy. So a week later, he calls me at the same time, same day. Thursday, 4 o'clock, and we talk for three hours. I ask him questions, he gives me answers. But he gives me the type of answers that are the best answers. Answers with a source. I ask him a question, he gives me an answer where he's like, oh, Rabbi so-and-so asked the same question 812 years ago in this book, in this chapter, on this page. To me, I never knew what a Talmid Chacham was. I'm like, how do you know the page? How do you know the book? So I thought maybe he knows like two books. So I just continue asking questions. And he just keeps giving me answers with the page number, with the rabbi, with this, with that. And I'm like, how does he know this stuff? I ask him science questions, he knows the answers. I ask him business questions, he knows the answers. I ask him, I never saw anything like it. It's similar to my student that, Baruch Hashem, converted yesterday. We had the merit, Baruch Hashem, of having another student convert to Judaism. Left the falsehood of Christianity.

53:09was mamash connected to the Torah. She became addicted to it, so the Beit Din, usually for a conversion, by the time the conversion actually takes place, you know they know if the convert is serious or not. So they ask a few questions. It's not like a meeting of five hours or anything. They ask a few questions; if you know the answers and it looks like you've changed your lifestyle, it looks like everything is good, they convert you. But the Beit Din was so impressed with her answers. They would ask her one question, and she'd give them an extensive answer with sources. It just became like an interesting lesson; it became like a chavruta. For an hour and a half, they're asking questions just to see how much more she knows. They start telling us, "Listen, we're not actually going to ask you this for conversion; we just really want to know how much you know." It's like asking, you know what mayim acharonim is? Oh yeah, mayim acharonim is masechet Megillah. You do it because of this and because of that. It's part of minhag, but also it's this and it's that. It should give still the whole details. Oh, you know this, you know that. It becomes like a chavruta. Someone is dedicated to becoming a Talmid Chacham, even if they come from another nation. So now I find this Talmid Chacham, and I start getting some answers to questions I had my whole life.

54:31And ultimately, these questions lead me to a point of realizing that not only is Hashem real, but it's very much the Hashem of the Torah. And now Hashem gave us this instruction set, and I have to start learning it. I have to start seeing what it says, and I have to start getting to a point of doing it. So, little by little, I start learning Torah, I start dedicating time to the Torah, and little by little, the material world gets to a point of being completely meaningless to me, mainly because I start seeing Hashem run the world. How so? After seven years of suffering and being in pain and going to over 50 different doctors, just trying to diagnose the problem, not solve it. Because in order to solve a problem, first you have to know what the problem is. So I went to over 50 different doctors, experts in all types of fields of medicine, whether it was traditional medicine or holistic medicine, acupuncture, steroids, surgeries, whatever you want. I became an experiment even at some point in a scientific study.

55:58They started injecting ozone into my bloodstream a few times a week, figuring maybe it'll clean my blood system by purifying my blood. They didn't realize that the only way to purify your blood is by eating kosher food. You could have ozone going into your blood system, which theoretically is supposed to clean your blood system. But if you're a Jew eating non-kosher, whether it's non-kosher meat, non-kosher chicken, or even non-kosher pizza, which, by the way, is milk and meat at the same time. If you just look at the ingredients of pizza, everyone has the same basic ingredients: cheese, tomatoes, and bread. Why am I saying it's milk and meat? It's actually worse than eating pig. Eating pizza at Pizza Hut, eating pizza at Domino's, eating pizza at Gino's, or one of these non-kosher places is worse than eating pig. Because pig, it's one sin. Eating non-kosher pizza has multiple sins. And the reason why is one of the ways that they make cheese is by using different types of meat that comes from the stomach of pigs and other animals.

57:13non-kosher animals, and even sometimes kosher animals, but nonetheless, it comes from meat. The way to make different types of sauce is by using different types of meat that they cook with. And this is not a theory, this is a fact. You look up cheese, you go to the supermarket, and you look at the dairy aisle, and you'll see there are 150 different types of cheeses that are not kosher, and only five that are kosher. Why the 150 don't want to pay rabbis to make kosher? It has nothing to do with the rabbis. It has to do with the ingredients. And the ingredient of using different parts of the stomach of animals as part of cheese is already mentioned in the Gemara for over 2,000 years. When the Gemara asks in Masechet Avodah Zarah, are we allowed to eat the cheese of the goyim? It says no, because they use meat to make it.

58:16So now, I didn't know this, so I would say, no, I don't eat burgers at McDonald's, I don't eat this at some other treif place, but I eat pizza. Or I eat the pasta with some cheese on it, not thinking it's a big deal. Little do I know that I'm making a worse sin—milk and meat at the same time. So you can put all the oceans in the world, and my blood is not going to help, because my blood's still not pure. So, slowly but surely, I start realizing that this instruction set is something I have to listen to 100%. There's no such thing as half a Jew. It's either a real Jew or nothing. So I start listening to this instruction set, I start learning it, and then I discover a chiddush. In the Torah, in this week's parashah and last week's parashah... It mentions a few interesting things. We meet Yaakov Avinu and Esav, his brother. When someone comes to me, a secular person, they tell me, "Oh, my father is a tzaddik. My grandfather is a tzaddik. They're rabbis, they're this, they're that." So I tell him, "How come you don't keep any mitzvot?" He goes, "No, but my father's a big tzaddik." I said, "Yes, but Esav's father was also a tzaddik. He was actually Gadol HaDor. His name was Yitzchak Avinu."

59:44But if you look in the Prophet Malachi, Hashem says, "Yaakov, I loved him, but Esav, I hated Esav. I hated Esav," he says. Both of them, their father was a tzaddik. Why did Hashem hate him? In Targum, it says that Esav was born with a beard. Not just hairy on his body; he actually was born with a beard. Looks like a mekubal. Eisav was also a ben Torah. He knew Torah. He knew a lot of Torah. He knew so much Torah that he asked Yitzchak Avinu, "Abba, how much salt do we have so I can give maaser of the salt?" You want to give maaser of salt? You don't give maaser of the salt. What do we learn from here? Eisav was a kofer.

1:00:45He knew Torah, but he didn't listen. He knew Torah, but he didn't follow. But he pretended to. So he had a long beard, sweeping the floor, just like Osama bin Laden. He knew Torah, but he still served his father dogs. When Yitzchak Avinu sent him to go find him deer to eat, He couldn't find the deer, so he just killed the two hunting dogs he went with, and he served them to his father, Yitzchak. My phone's also giving me the sign. So Hashem says, "I hated him." Why? Because he knew the truth but didn't follow it. We're going to finish with two points, b'ezrat Hashem. Now in this week, we see that Yaakov... asks Hashem, Hashem, please protect me from Esav, my brother. Yaakov, after he went to yeshiva for 14 years without sleeping, learning Torah, Kiddush Hashem, becoming Yaakov Avinu, then not saying lashon hara about Lavan, who cheated him for 20 years, still not even telling the wives that their father is a cheater, just not to say lashon hara.

1:02:10Yaakov Avinu is asking Hashem, "Don't have my rasha brother kill me." How does this make any sense? So what does he do? He goes, "Okay, you know what? I'm going to send him all of these sheep and chickens and cows." What's that going to do? You send him cows so he doesn't kill you? You send him chickens so he doesn't kill you? You know, ma'aseh nes, he had to be shomer on the way, he had this chiddush. Shlomo HaMelech, in the book of Proverbs, Mishlei, it says, so Hashem says, if you seek it, referring to the Torah. you seek it as if it were silver, if you search for it as if it were a treasure, then you will understand the fear of Hashem and discover the knowledge of God. For Hashem grants wisdom; from His mouth comes knowledge and understanding. So Hashem is telling you, if you seek knowledge of Torah like it’s silver and treasure,

1:03:39Then I'll give it to you. Then you'll understand that I run the world. Then you'll have Yirat Shamayim. Then you'll know who I am. But another word for silver also means kesef. Kesef means money. Meaning if you chase my Torah like you chase money, then I'll give you the answer. Then I'll give you everything. And He gave me a chiddush. When Hashem says, "If he has the gold," why does He mention the silver? Because the silver is not silver. The silver is money. But money is also saying, "If you're chasing my Torah like you chase money, then I can give you the zahav also. Then I can give you Olam HaBa as well as Olam HaZeh." Then you're fulfilling your purpose. So you see, my friends, when people ask me, after you got healed, with Siyata Dishmaya, Hashem healed you, Hashem gave you everything. Full health is everything already. Full health, you're already a winner. Why don't you just go back to Wall Street and make money again?

1:05:07The answer is, because I don't want to be Esav. You see, the reason why Yaakov, you know, in this week's parasha, sent him chickens, sent him cows, and sent him material, is because he knew that even though Esav knew the truth, he didn't care about it. All he cared about was material. All he cared about was kesef. All he cared about was zahav. All he cared about was anir. All he cared about was kavod. He didn't care about the birthright. He cared about the inheritance that comes with it. So when Yaakov said, listen, if I'm going to protect myself against Esav, oh, I remember. He sold the birthright because he wanted material. He wanted the food. He sold him the food that he's willing to sell. His birthright. But then he figured that he's going to cheat me. But then Abba, Yitzchak Avinu, gave me the blessing anyway. So now he's thinking, oh, I'm going to get all the money. So now he wants to kill me. And I tell him, no, no, no. You don't have to kill me. Here's all the money. Here's all the money. Why was Yaakov so comfortable with giving him all this money? Because he finally understood what leah kesef means. He says, I already have Torah. I don't need money.

1:06:35His birthright. But then he figured that he's going to cheat me. But then Abba, Yitzchak Avinu, gave me the blessing anyway. So now he's thinking, oh, I'm going to get all the money. So now he wants to kill me. And I tell him, no, no, no. You don't have to kill me. Here's all the money. Here's all the money. Why was Yaakov so comfortable with giving him all this money? Because he finally understood what "lo haya kesef" means. He says, I already have Torah, I don't need money. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.