One of the most important mitzvot of our generation

0:02One of the smallest mitzvot, as far as people think that it's a small one, but it's actually one of the biggest and most important mitzvot of our generation, if not the most important one, is kiruv. Helping people do teshuva. Most people don't think of it as such a big deal because most people don't really care much about what other people do. That's just the reality. Most of us are selfish. We care about our life, our parnassah, our family. That's it. We care about ourselves.

1:19have nothing to do with Torah, let alone with kiruv. They'll donate to a hospital, they'll donate to some non-profit organization that's saving dogs, or saving lions, or saving parrots, or some rare breed of butterfly or something. They're not saving Jews. And even the ones that are actually investing in Judaism, you ask a guy, "Listen, you built this Bet Knesset?" "Yeah, I built this Bet Knesset." "How much did it cost you to build this Bet Knesset?" He goes, "Well, to start it up, it cost me half a million. It's a fancy Bet Knesset. But to run it every month costs me $25,000. It's beautiful. How many people did you love while you were in this Bet Knesset?" He won't be able to give you an answer. How much money do you spend on actually doing Kiruv, actually saving Jewish people? $200 a month. Wait a minute. So the Bet Knesset, you spend half a million dollars plus $25,000 a month on, but to save the people that are going to come there, you spend $200? $200?

2:43It's like spending $50 million on a factory and $3 on the ingredients. If you don't have ingredients, the factory is useless. We have a big Beit Knesset on every corner, Baruch Hashem, but it's not necessarily such a great thing. The main reason why we have so many Batei Knesset is because people desire fame and fortune. They want their name on a Bet Knesset, or perhaps they had a disagreement with the one before and want to establish their own. There's an issue in every Bet Knesset. If we actually start utilizing all of those funds—the money we invest in Batei Knesset, and the money we invest in Sifrei Torah, which are already abundant—we wouldn't need any more Sifrei Torah. Every Beit Knesset has plenty. You need a couple. Most Batei Knesset have four or five, six, and they keep getting more. There are some places in Brooklyn and other places in the world that have over 150 Sifrei Torah. They have a basement full of Sifrei Torah. Even if they wanted to, they can't use all of them.

3:52You can't use all of them. What are you going to use? Okay, so you open the Sefer Torah three times a week: Monday, Thursday, and Shabbat. So even if you use a different one every single time, which is not really a good logistical plan, but let's say you do. You still can't use all of them. In reality, most batei knesset, they use two, three, four at most, over and over and over again, and then once a year they just open all of them, just for the purpose of, you know, making sure that they're all okay, and kosher, and so on. But in reality, they just sit there and do nothing, and people keep bringing in and bringing in each one, fifty, sixty, seventy thousand dollars. The rabbi said, yes, let's have another party. What party? The $50,000, $60,000 you spent on a Sefer Torah that's going to sit in a basement and earn the guy no mitzvot whatsoever. You could have saved 30,000 Jews. You could have saved 50,000 Jews. You could have saved the ingredients. And that's what we're missing in this generation. Why? Because we're not paying attention to the small details. We're only paying attention to the big things. Oh, the Beit Knesset has a big sign with my name on it. That's what I want.

5:04What about the sign in Shamayim? You've just experienced another Torah class.