Parents, Failure, Free Choice, Rationalizing God, Messianic Times, TeShuva - STUMP THE RABBI (3)

0:14We are back to our new series on "Stump the Rabbi." You guys ask questions, and I will provide you with some answers from the Torah. Since there are a few new people, I'll give you the rules. The rules are that you can ask any question. Any question. There are no boundaries. Ask any question. Obviously, it has to be relevant. But even if you have something that's not necessarily that relevant, we'll try to make it relevant in the Torah. The Torah has answers for everything. Anything and everything that you think of, are going to think of, have thought of, or somebody thought for you, the Torah has answers for it. Hopefully, HaKadosh Baruch Hu gives me the answer, and I give you the answer from the Torah about your question. Now, the question is the easy part. Usually, it's supposed to be the easy part because you guys, Baruch Hashem, are all anywhere from 15, 20, 25 years old. And I'm sure that you've had enough time to ask a bunch of questions in your life, and maybe you didn't get the answers you wanted or you didn't get answers at all. So, Baruch Hashem, we'll try to provide you as many answers as possible with a complete answer. If I don't have an answer...

1:36First of all, I'm sorry that I don't have the merit to give you the answer, but I'll find you the answer anyway at some point. I'll find you the answer if I don't have the answer. But more importantly, you get 50 bucks as a reward, at least for the delay that I don't have the answer on the spot. Now, the objective is not necessarily just for all of you guys to become rich on my dime. The objective is for you guys to ask questions that mean something to you. meaning something that's going to change your life in some way. Like something that if you knew this answer, it will affect your life in some way. It will do something for you. It will give you stronger emunah (faith) in Hashem. It'll give you more courage to be more religious. It'll give you, you know, more confidence in the path that you're going, in the path that you're not going, and so on and so forth. The point of the questions is not just to ask questions for the sake of questions. If you want to, you can. But really, if you already have the opportunity, ask questions that are meaningful. Meaningful to you. It doesn't have to be meaningful to me. It doesn't have to be meaningful to anybody else. It has to be meaningful to you. And Hashem will provide you the answers.

2:42ultimately, that's the goal for you. The goal for me is to answer the questions that you have and give you the realization that the only way to live a good life in this world and the next is with Torah. It's the only way. Now, for anyone who doesn't know a little bit about my personal story, baruch Hashem, I think we have some CDs here. We'll give you some CDs of my personal story. If it's not here, it's in my car. I think one of you guys could have a CD for free and... I lived most of my life as a secular person. I was what they call Masorti, meaning that we kept the basics of whatever we liked, we kept. Whatever we thought was important, we kept. Yom Kippur, we would fast. On Pesach, we ate matzah; we didn't eat bread. Some of the other holidays we kept, some of the other holidays we didn't keep. On Shabbat, we had kiddush, but then we went into the car to go to a club or go somewhere else. And that's the type of life that I lived most of my life. Until one day, through a series of miracles, I woke up and realized that I was on the wrong path. And the rest is history. Anyone who wants to know the details, it's a very, very inspiring story. We have worked on it over the last year. It's been a very well-known story that has probably been seen by tens of thousands of people on the Internet and heard in cars and houses and so on.

4:10But it's been so popular and it's helped so many people, inspired so many people, that, Baruch Hashem, over the last year, we've turned it into a movie. Which, Baruch Hashem, is going to be coming out probably over the next month or so. Month, month and a half, maybe sooner. Like a movie version of it. And the key is to inspire you to change. The key is to inspire you to go on a path that's closer to HaKadosh Baruch Hu than the path that most of us are used to. Now, I'm not judge, I'm not jury. I'm not going to tell you anything that's judging you or telling you that you're a bad person. All I'm telling you is what Hashem says. The only opinion that matters, by the way, you should know, is Hashem's opinion. My opinion doesn't matter. Your opinion doesn't matter. Our opinion doesn't matter. His opinion doesn't matter. Nobody's opinion matters. The only opinion that matters is Hashem's. That's the only opinion. Why? Because that's the only opinion that doesn't change. Everybody else's opinion changes. Today they like blue. Next week maybe it's green. And three weeks from now it may be red. People change. People change their minds.

5:11In this upside-down world, one day a guy has a strong opinion that he wants to marry a woman. The next week, he wants to marry a man. A few weeks from then, he wants to marry a dog. You don't know where—people's opinions are crazy. So we can't rely on that. We can't rely on people's opinions. We can only rely on HaKadosh Baruch Hu's opinion. Why? His opinion doesn't change. He wrote it in the Torah and He said, "Machshavotai lo machshavoteichem"—My thoughts are not like your thoughts. I don't change My mind. You think a certain way, and maybe next week you're gonna change your mind. Once Hashem thinks something, that's it. It's the beginning, middle, and end. So that's why we always want to know His opinion about what I'm doing, His opinion about what she's doing, His opinion about the world as we know it. And you'd be surprised that many times, what you think is right is actually wrong. Most people define themselves, or actually all people define themselves, as good. Everybody says, "I'm a good person though. Why do I have to do all this other stuff? There's Shabbat, Tzitzit, Kosher. I'm a good person." So you explain to me, what do you define as good? And usually the answer is, "Well, I don't kill anybody." Well, neither does the cow. So is the cow a good person? It's a cow. You still eat it for steak. I

6:29So what's good? Well, I give tzedakah to people. What if that guy takes the money that you gave him and then he buys a gun and shoots up a place? Is that still good? You give money, does that still make you good? Well, I'm really nice to people. How are you nice to people? I say hello. Well, sometimes in some places in the world, they have machines that say hello to everybody that walks inside. Does that make the machine good? Point being about it is that good is not defined by the few simple things that you do because most of us think that what we're doing is good and many times we're biased. The reason why is because we're the ones that are doing it. So, of course, we think it's good. There was a person a little over 70 years ago that was one of the most inspirational leaders in the last several centuries. He inspired his people to get up off of their depression, go back to work, rebuild the country, and he actually did something that nobody has ever done in recorded history, which is he took six million unemployed people and put them back to work in two years. While the rest of the world was going into a Great Depression,

7:47His country went into a boom. They were doing fantastic. He inspired the people to work. He inspired the people to get rid of pornography. He inspired the people to get rid of all the drugs, immodesty, and all the garbage in the world. He inspired them. And he gave speeches that, if you understood what he said, you'd be inspired too. The only problem was his name was Hitler. That's what he just said. Smart men, his name was Hitler. He was one of the most inspiring people in the world. The only problem was he was a sociopath, murderer, and evil. But he inspired people. He inspired millions of people to follow him, and there are still millions of people that follow him to this day. He woke up every single day saying, I am doing good. I'm a good person. What? The fact that we're killing millions of Jews? Yeah, the Jews are bad. Jews created communism. Jews stole from people. Jews created all these immodest films, pornography, and homosexuality, which only came into the world through the film from Jews.

8:56Communism came from Jews. All the stuff that ruined economies came from Jews. He says, "Look at these Jews; they're ruining the world. They ruined Russia. They murdered 30 million people. Now, they're trying to ruin Germany. Why should I let them? If you are a Jew, you become anti-Semitic also based on this." But that's the problem. See, the problem is when it's based on our opinion of what good is, then we could say, listen, they're doing bad, therefore it's right for me to bring justice. How? By killing them. That's not good. Hashem says there's good, there's bad, there's also teshuva. There's fixing. You have an opportunity to fix. You have an opportunity to change. That's what distinguishes us from animals. Animals eat all day, but they don't just eat for fun like us. They eat when they're hungry. A lion goes and chases the gazelle or the deer or something. Why? Because he's hungry. He's not going to kill the gazelle for no reason. A man sometimes eats just because, sometimes kills just because.

10:07Hashem says you have free choice. You have the ability to choose good or choose bad. You can choose to kill for no reason just because you don't like the guy, or you can choose to save his life. You can choose to give because it's good to give, or you can choose to say no, I don't have, even though you have $500 in your pocket. You could choose to lie. That's what distinguishes us from animals. And the only way that we know if something is good is if the Manufacturer, if Hashem, is the One that dictated it. Because the Manufacturer will always know much more than the actual customer. You can buy a phone, and you can be a genius in phones, technology, and computers, but you're never going to know more than the company that manufactured it. Never. They manufactured it. They know all the ins and outs of the phone. They know all the ins and outs of the program. They know all the ins and outs of the software. They know all the ins and outs. You know a certain aspect of it. Same concept with Hashem. You may know certain parts of your life through your experience—15, 20, 30, 40 years of experience. Hashem has endless experience.

11:19Not only does He know the things that we don't know, He knows the things that are in our mind. He knows the things that are in the future. He knows the things that are in the past. And He also knows what's good. He knows what's good for us. So you'll see, as each one of you gets some questions, gets some answers, if you start taking action and get closer to Hashem and get closer to His opinion. It'll only improve your life. Of course, there's always going to be battles. There's always going to be difficulties. There's always going to be confusion, ups and downs. But that's with or without Hashem. Everybody has difficulties. Everyone. The difference is a person that lives a life of Torah has the answer of why he has difficulties. Whereas the other people that don't live with Hashem, they have difficulties also, and they don't have Hashem, and they don't have any answers. So they just suffer. their entire life. So without further ado, please, Chavérim, first question. Well, since we're not Hashem, since we're not Hashem, we can't go into His mind, but we can get to know Him. How? He wrote a love letter. It's called Torah. And in the Torah, He wrote everything He wants you to know about Him.

12:41He wants, what He likes, what He hates, what He despises, what He thinks is good. What is the purpose of the world? What are the things that are the opposite of the purpose? So, for example, I could ask about who says in this week's parasha, this week's Torah portion, "Kedoshim Tihyu Ki Kadosh Ani" — you be holy because I am holy. Okay, thank you. We know you're holy. We could be holy, but how? Perfectly good question. So he gives us a first set of instructions. Every man, your mother and your father shall you revere, meaning have honor and respect for your parents. And my Shabbat, you shall observe. I am Hashem, your God. He says, first and foremost, remember, you have to honor your parents, but also keep Shabbat. Why does he connect this one to that one? He says, even though we have the Ten Commandments, within the Ten Commandments, we have ten different things that Hashem says are the foundation of everything. All 620 mitzvot that we have, 613 from the Torah, and 7 from the rabbis, all of them stem from the Ten Commandments. It's like, that's the tree, and the others are the branches.

14:06He says, you see these Ten Commandments. They come in order. First is, I'm the One who took you out of Egypt. There's only one God. Second is, don't worship anybody else. Don't go to Buddha. Don't do Reiki. Don't go to Christianity where they have three gods. Don't go to some guy that says that, you know, he's the prophet and you have to believe in him in order to get to God like Muhammad. None of that stuff. You speak to Me directly. Third one is, don't use My name in vain. Don't just say Hashem's name for no reason. Either say it when you're praying or when you're teaching, but don't just say it, "Hey, Steve." Hashem is not Steve. Hashem is not something you just mention casually. The fourth one is keep Shabbat. Keep Shabbat. The fifth one is honor your parents. Why? Why is the fifth one, what's the order all about? After that, it's don't murder. Don't steal and don't be jealous. Why does He say it here? He says, "You see, I give you an order in the Ten Commandments for a reason." The first three are obvious. I want you to know I'm the only God. Why? Because if you think there's more than one God, all bets are off. We have no relationship. If you use My name in vain, you don't respect Me. You don't respect Me as a God. Then we don't have a relationship.

15:27if you worship an idol, we have no relationship. So as long as you've got the first three, we're good. Now, okay, what do we do? Keep Shabbat. And then, honor your parents also. Why that order? Hashem says in this verse, He says, see, you have to honor your parents. It's very, very important to give respect to your parents. But always remember that Shabbat is the fourth commandment, not the fifth one. It came before. Meaning that if your parents tell you, "Honey, do me a favor, go to the store for me on Shabbat," even though you're obligated to honor your parents, you're not allowed to listen to them. Why? Because if they tell you to violate Shabbat or any part of the Torah, you're not allowed to listen to them. In fact, honoring them in that case would be not listening to them. If they tell you that on a Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, no problem. But if they tell you that on Shabbat, you're not allowed to do it. Why? Because you are not allowed to work on Shabbat, not to use money on Shabbat, not to drive on Shabbat, and so on and so forth. So...

16:28Torah gave us many, many verses, 304,805 letters in the Five Books of Moses. They give us clear instructions of what He wants from us, which in essence lets us get to know Him. The more you get to know Him, the more you get to know what He wants from you, and the more you realize that what He wants for you is for your best interest. And as you get to know Him, you're going to start thinking like Him. just like, for example, if you go to a certain course in college or something, and you're going to want to be an A student in this course. How do you become an A student in this course? You befriend a teacher. You befriend a mentor. And you listen and you teach and you not only just go to class. You want to do above and beyond. So you ask them for suggestions. What else should I read other than what you're suggesting for everybody else? What else should I do with my time other than just do the homework? What else do I do in order to succeed in this course? Same thing in the business world. If you ever want to succeed in the business world, you want to get yourself a mentor. Work for somebody that is going to almost be like a second father to you. He's gonna tell you, "Listen kid, I know you're only in the mailroom, but if you want to be CEO one day, make sure you wake up early and you go to sleep late." Why? Because that will make sure that you are the first one in, last one out. If you're the hardest worker, that already gives you an advantage over everybody else.

17:52So this mentor already gave you a rule for life. You want to succeed? You have to work hard. Then he's going to tell you, you know what? You want to make sure that you study. Don't just come and wing it. Don't just come to work and just try your best, hoping it works out. Throw something on the wall; maybe it sticks. No. Study what you're going to do. If you're going to be a salesman, study the product. Study what you're going to sell. Get to know the product. If you don't like it, why are you selling it? Don't sell something you don't like. Study the product. You don't like it? Find something else. Find a different company. Don't just work because of money. Work because you're passionate about what you do, and so on and so forth. This mentor is going to give you different guidelines on what to do, which means that if you want to succeed, you're going to want to know how to succeed. He's going to tell you how. The more you get to know him, the more you get to know how he thinks. the more you get to know how he thinks. And eventually, even though he's not going to tell you every little bit of what to do, you've heard enough advice from him that you already know how he would look at this specific situation.

18:54So you don't have to ask him everything for the rest of your life. It's just that after enough answers that you got from this person, you already get the point. Like, oh, you know what? Even though I'm not asking him, I know that when he had a similar situation, this is what he did. And you start thinking like the mentor and, in essence, become the mentor yourself. Now, you're never going to become God, but you can think like God. Meaning you can think like a holy person. And that's what HaKadosh Baruch Hu wants from us. Next question. How about Jews all dressed the same? Not necessarily. Why do they dress the same? Well, as far as dressing the same goes, it's not necessarily the case because there are many Jews who wear different clothes. Some Jews choose to wear black and white, and some Jews choose to wear clothes like you're wearing. Some Jews wear, you know, a blue shirt. Sometimes I wear a blue shirt. Sometimes I wear a black shirt. Sometimes I wear a white shirt. But as far as in general, we try to be not like the goyim is really what the key is. Meaning, the number one objective that the Torah tells us is to make sure that we're modest and... Jews choose to wear clothes like you're wearing. Some Jews wear, you know, a blue shirt. Sometimes I wear a blue shirt. Sometimes I wear a black shirt. Sometimes I wear a white shirt. But, as far as in general, we try to be not like the goyim is really what the key is. Meaning, the number one objective that the Torah tells us is to make sure that we're modest and...

20:09Make sure that we look respectable and not like the goyim. What does it mean not like the goyim? Some people say, wait a minute. Wait, you're not allowed to wear what the goyim are wearing? You shouldn't wear ties because the goyim invented ties. You shouldn't wear a suit because some goyim invented a suit. No, that's not what we mean. What I mean is you have to know that we have to, first and foremost, have clothes that look respectable and modest. A woman cannot walk around with clothes that bring attention to her. So, if she wears a miniskirt or clothes that show her body, that's immodest. Why? Because people are looking at her. If she walks around with clothes that are not that different from a bathing suit... It's not—you don't have to be a genius to realize it's not modest. If every single guy in the world that walks by her is doing a double-take, there's a problem here. Judaism says you have to be modest. Why? Because your father is the King. The King is your father, meaning you're a queen. A queen cannot dress like everybody else and...

21:13Prince cannot dress like everybody else, meaning if everybody else decides to walk around naked, you cannot. Not because you're not human and they're human—they're also human—but you're the king's son. You are the king's daughter. The king's son and daughter cannot be like everybody else. They have to be modest. They have to be respectable like royalty. You're never gonna see the Queen of England, l'havdil, in a bikini. You're never gonna see that. You're never gonna see the queen of any country walking around with a tube top. You're never gonna see that. Why? Because they're kings and queens, and kings and queens don't walk around like that. Even though they all put their pants on one at a time just like us, when you have a position of stature, you don't walk around like everybody else. That's why you're never gonna see a president, a real serious president of a country or a company, walk around with a bathing suit, like shorts, a bathing suit, and no shirt. You're never gonna see that. By the way, you should know that one time they caught something on tape when, I believe, it was Bill Clinton meeting the Russian president or some major figure. I think it was the Russian president. A lot of people don't realize that they talk even though you don't hear it, you know, because they don't turn on the mic right away. But one time the guy made a mistake, and the mic was on right away, so they heard the conversation that the two presidents were having among each other. You know what they were talking about?

22:36You would think they talked about the nuclear crisis, financial crisis, or something like that. No, they talked about, I think it was Bill Clinton saying to the other guy, "I really hope I don't sneeze when they start recording us." Why does he care if he sneezes? Because when you sneeze, you lose control of your body, and So all that power that you present as a president, as a king, or some kind, is meaningless. Why? Because you don't even have control of your own body. The last thing a president or a powerful person wants to present is a lack of control. So what is he worried about? Not the financial crisis, not the nuclear crisis, not the war, not anything. He's afraid that people will see him as weak. Because he sneezes just like them. In our Torah, it is the same thing. Pharaoh told people he doesn't go to the bathroom. That's why in all the palaces that you'll see, the pyramids you'll see in Egypt, none of them have a bathroom. Because Pharaoh told everybody, "No, no, I don't go to the bathroom." So he made a rule: every day at four o'clock in the morning, no one's allowed to leave their house. That's when he would leave his castle, go to the Nile River, and do his business so nobody could see that he actually really does go to the bathroom. Why? Because he didn't want to show weakness.

23:58Point being is that Am Yisrael, being the sons and daughters of the King of Kings, have to present themselves as such, which means that it's not necessarily important whether you wear a suit and it's black and white or you wear overalls. That's not the key. The key is, do you look presentable? Do you look modest? If you're going to walk around with a tank top, no one's going to think you're the sons of a king. you're gonna walk around with short shorts. No one's gonna think you're the son of a king. Why? You look like everybody else, and that's the key. So, it's not necessarily the suit and tie because, technically, the suit and tie is a relatively recent invention. It’s only in the last couple of hundred years. Until a couple of hundred years ago, Jews around the entire world wore what the Arabs still wear today, and We wore something that's similar to a dress, really, and that's what we all wore. They wore pants under it, but nonetheless, they wore something that looks like what the Arabs wear today. Why? Because that's actually the most modest clothing you can find.

25:02So that's the most important. Today, it's become much more popular to wear suits, especially among religious people, because it is the most presentable. But I can tell you that when I was on Wall Street for the last 16 years, we also wore suits, even though we weren't religious. Suits are just something that you wear because it looks presentable. If you don't want to wear a suit, it's not a sin. It's not a problem. Just look modest. Look presentable. That's it. Next. Yes. Good. You don't have to say that everything is true. You have to listen to him. I didn't say you have to say everything is true. that depends on what it is. Now, that's exactly what we learned from this week's parasha. Who says you have to honor your parents? So if your parents tell you, "Go make me coffee," you have to go make them coffee. "Go to the store," you have to go to the store. "Go do your laundry, fix your room, help out in the house in some way or another, speak nicely, be honorable, be respectful"—you are obligated to do all that stuff.

26:11But if the minute he tells you to do something that's a violation of the Torah, whether it's Shabbat or any other rule in the Torah, then there's no honoring him. Why? Hashem comes first. Okay, so you have to see what it is. Did he make a mistake intentionally or not? A lot of people say things, and a lot of people say things in the name of the Torah, and many times it's wrong. That's why I always tell people, rule of thumb for life in general, not just for Torah, for life in general: anytime somebody tells you something that's perhaps the opposite of what you believe or simply doesn't make sense to you, it's very important to ask them, what's your source? Now, if he tells you it's the Torah, okay, the Torah is big. The Torah is enormous. If you took a million books, filled them up with Torah, it would still not be enough. If you studied Torah 24 hours a day for a thousand years, you still wouldn't finish the Torah. Because the Torah is not just this one book. The Torah has many, many other books that give commentary on this book and other books, and so on and so forth. We have a Written Torah, we have an Oral Torah.

27:27Point being is the Torah is huge. So in the Torah world, it is important—it's actually a rule that the Mishnah says in Chapter Six—that if you're gonna say something in the name of Torah, you have to provide the source. You have to say it in the name of who said it. Why? Because we want to know who said it to verify that what you said is correct. And then we're going to check what they said; if it agrees with you, then where did they get it from? Why? Because we want to know how what you said today, three thousand three hundred years after we got the Torah, tracks all the way back to Mount Sinai. If it doesn't track back to Mount Sinai, it's not Torah. It's something else. It's maybe a different religion. It's maybe your opinion. Maybe you got it in a fortune cookie. It's not Torah. But if it's Torah, it must go back to Mount Sinai, and... Meaning that if somebody tells you something in the name of the Torah, he says, yeah, I know it's in the Torah. He says, okay, where? Oh, I don't remember. All right, do you have an idea? Can we check? Where did you hear it from? Where did you get it from? And usually, everybody has some type of idea of where they got this idea from. Oh, I got it from my rabbi. Oh, can I get your rabbi's phone number and ask him? And he called the rabbi. Oh, listen, Rabbi, how are you? My father told me such and such.

28:40I was just really interested. Where does it say that in the Torah? And if he's a real rabbi, he should know. He should know at least an idea of where you find this in the Torah. He said, you know what? Can I come? Can you show me this? Can you show me in the book where it actually says this? And you see it, and that's it. Now, if the rabbi said, "No, no, your father is wrong. I didn't say that. I said something else." Then that's fine. That's great. That's not dishonoring your father. In fact, that's honoring him. Why? He said, "No, Abba, I asked the rabbi. He actually said the opposite." Not what you said. He said the opposite. You said red. It's actually blue. It's red in the other case. Oh, okay. So now both of you learned. That's not dishonoring him. That's just simply learning Torah together. People make mistakes all the time. Now, I'll tell you something where I made a mistake. I believe it was yesterday or the day before. I told a story about a soldier who learned that the first halacha he learned was how to tie his shoes according to the Torah. There are multiple opinions on how to tie your shoes and how to put on your shoes in the morning. Believe it or not, even that. From the minute you wake up to the minute you go to sleep, there are rules. But all of these rules are, in essence, instructions on how to live. So, according to the Gemara, which is the foundation of our Oral Torah, it's the foundation of our Torah, Rabbi Yochanan says you're supposed to tie your left shoe first, you're supposed to put on your right shoe first, and then your left shoe, and then tie the left shoe. That's the Gemara.

30:08But the Shulchan Aruch says, no, you're supposed to do the opposite. You're supposed to put on your right shoe and then your left shoe, but tie the left shoe first. So, I mentioned the first one, even though the halacha today, the final law, is the second one. But ultimately, you can do either one. So that is a mistake that most people are not going to notice. Most people don't even care, and quite frankly, it's not relevant for most people. Why do I mention it to you? Because sometimes, in the Torah, there are multiple opinions, and there's a reason why there are multiple opinions. Sometimes one opinion is right and one opinion is wrong, but other times, both are right, and there are reasons why both are right. The original opinion, for example, of what I just stated, that the Gemara says to put on your left shoe first and then your right shoe, is the opinion of Rabbi Yochanan. That's what he says. But then the Shulchan Aruch decided to do right and then left. Why? Because the Shulchan Aruch says yes, Rabbi Yochanan said that, but there was an earlier sage...

31:17said contrary to it and we go by the earlier sage. Why? Because he was closer to Mount Sinai, and had Rabbi Yochanan known this particular thing that we found after the fact, he would have probably judged with us. The point of the argument is to show you that the Torah has different aspects to it. It's not black and white all the time. Many things are black and white; quite frankly, most things are black and white—yes or no. But there are times that both opinions are correct. It's not like the secular world or general knowledge, where it's easy—zero or something. Sometimes they're both winners; sometimes they're both losers. So the point is that the Torah teaches you not necessarily just what to do, but why we do what we do. So that's what the Gemara in essence teaches us. It's not just teaching them the laws, but it teaches us how we arrived at those laws. Where do we get these laws? Which verse in the Torah actually gives you this particular rule? And that's, in essence, the most important part—to know that everything you're doing has a source from the original Torah that we got from Mount Sinai.

32:28as far as honoring your father, yes, you're supposed to honor your father, but as long as what he's doing or telling you to do is not against the Torah. If it's against the Torah, then honoring him would be not listening to him. Go ahead. Earlier you were speaking about Hitler, so I have a question: why did the Holocaust happen? Oh, it's a fantastic question. I only have about six shiurim about it. So, because I have six shiurim, full shiurim about it, I'm going to give you a short answer because you deserve an answer. But if you want to know more details, I recommend watching these shiurim. You'll hear things you've definitely never heard in your life. Number one, it's because most people don't like to talk this way because they're politically correct and they're afraid to turn you off or say things that are not pleasing to your ear. I, quite frankly, don't care and the reason why is what I told you in the beginning: I don't care about your opinion. I don't care about my opinion. I care about what God's opinion is. So, God's opinion sometimes is not politically correct and...

33:32So the second reason why the things that you're going to hear in the shiurim are going to be different than what you've heard, or perhaps you've never heard them at all, is because it involves a lot of facts from history, which most people today do not study. Most people's entire history knowledge comes from fifth-grade class, maybe seventh and eighth grade. They learn a few more things that perhaps they remember by the time they're 20 and... and a couple of YouTube videos that are usually published 50, 60, 100, or 200 years after the event happened, which have a little bit of propaganda in them anyway. So with that being said, when people ask, not just why did the Holocaust happen, but an even more daring question, where was God during the Holocaust? Meaning, if God is all good, why did He allow the evil Nazis to kill six million Jews, if that's His sons, if that's His daughters? The answer is, we have no less than three sections in the Torah. Three parashot in the Torah, three Torah portions in the Torah,

34:38that specifically talk about what happens if we don't listen to God. Where God says, if you go with My laws, He gives us 13 verses full of blessings. He tells you, if you go with My laws, you are going to be the warriors that one of you will beat a thousand of them—a thousand enemies, one Jew. You'll be rich. You'll have children. You'll never have any mishaps. You'll never be sick. You'll always have money. Oh, everything good—13 different blessings that have no end. But He says if you don't, there are 49 different verses describing curses on His own people that would happen to them. Now, those curses literally detail every single thing that happened in the Holocaust and Everything, even stuff that you probably never know unless you read serious history books—the stuff they don't publish anymore. For example, if you ever met a Holocaust survivor who spoke honestly to you, and you asked him what the most difficult part of the Holocaust was, he's not going to tell you Hitler. He's not going to tell you that it was hard work. He's going to tell you the starvation.

36:04Why was the starvation the most difficult? Because when a person starves, he can easily lose his sense of reality, his sense of right or wrong. And what would happen is, when these people starved, they literally waited for each other to die. They waited for each other to die. Why? So as soon as somebody died, they took his liver and ate it. That's in the Torah. That's in the Torah, in no less than three places. To such an extent that the evil Nazis starved them for days. Days they didn't eat. They sent them to work non-stop, 18, 19, 20-hour shifts. Even machines don't work that way. After those days, eventually, after working for several days in a row with no break, no food, no drinking, no nothing, they finally told them to come back to camp. When they came back to camp, they saw a huge pot.

37:06And they smelled the aroma of the meat in the pot. Everybody ran. Oh, maybe this is the reward. This is the reward for this hard work that they just almost killed all of us. A few people died on the job. They all ran. They all started grabbing meat from the pot, hot water. It didn't make a difference. They started eating because they hadn't eaten in days. They were literally on the verge of death until somebody ran out from the barracks, from the camps, and said, "No! It's your children. You just ate your kids." The evil Nazis cooked their kids as another form of punishment, as another form of torture. That's how sick the Nazis were. Even what I just told you, as disturbing as it's going to be for the rest of your life, it's also in the Torah. It says it in parashat Bechukotai, it says in parashat Ki Tavo, it says in the book of Eicha, which is Lamentations in English. All of what happened in the Holocaust is mentioned in the Torah verse by verse to such an extent. that if you ever heard of something called Torah codes. Torah codes are different secrets inside the Torah that are not literal, meaning you can find specific words, specific things that exist throughout history, way, way after the Torah was written—3,000 years after it was written—that happened throughout history, and you can find them by using different

38:27Computer programs that could calculate the letters and find hidden words between the letters using equal mathematical skips. This means we have three hundred four thousand, eight hundred and five letters inside the Five Books of Moses. Now, we already know this. In essence, one part of it is the obligations, the Torah mitzvot. One part is the sins. One part of it is the story, the actual story itself, from Adam HaRishon all the way to Moshe Rabbeinu. Now, aside from that, the Torah has, because it was written by God and it's divine, it has secrets that happened from the beginning of the world all the way to the end of the world, meaning the future as well. Everything including today's lecture is inside the Torah. You can find it if you know how to. Everything that happened in your life is in the Torah if you know how to find it. Everything that you're ever going to say is in the Torah if you know how to find it. Now they use computer programs to find these letters, to find these words. For example, if they want to find a specific word, such as the word Holocaust in Hebrew, which is Shoah, they look for those letters. So, if you want to find the Holocaust, it is HaShoah, which is five letters in total. Since there is no word in the Torah that says Shoah straight out, you might ask, "Where can I find HaShoah? Where can I find the Holocaust in the Torah?"

39:48And the computer will say, we'll check the entire Torah and we'll find you the word. They'll say, oh, the first letter, hei, is in this. Then you skip 50 letters and you get the shin. Then you skip another 50 letters, you get the vav. You skip another 50 letters, you get the aleph. Skip another 50 letters, you get the hei. Meaning you have the whole word. The only difference is it's not like a regular word, but rather it has an equal mathematical skip between the letters. Now, people will say, wait a minute, that’s maybe a coincidence that you found this word. Maybe if I did the same thing on a Harry Potter book or Fiddler on the Roof or any book that you have out there, it’s a big enough book, I’ll find the same things. Here’s the problem with that theory. First of all, you're not. randomly, you will find, but you're not going to find the same thing. The reason why is because all of the words that you're going to look for, if they're on the same subject, meaning you're looking for the Holocaust, you're looking for Hitler, you're looking for the gas, the gas tanks

40:48You're looking for Zyklon B, the gas that actually killed people, which actually was invented by a Jew, Hashem yirachem. You're looking for the concentration camps. All of the words that have to do with the Holocaust, all of them are on the same exact page. They're not just randomly across the entire Torah. They're all on the same page. And if that's not enough, that exact page talks about the Holocaust. That exact page talks about what happens if we don't listen to God. so it's not random here, there, and so on, like you would find perhaps in other books, but rather you see that it was designed specifically and it was put in there well, well before it ever happened, in a specific place. So you see that the Torah is not something that could have been written by a human being, because no human being knew that these things would happen 3,000 years later. And that's why it's important to learn a little bit more about the Torah other than just the basics that you've learned in your life, whether it's the stories or a few nice things, to learn that there are certain things that are actually in the Torah that are extraordinary for anybody, even if you're not religious, even if you're not Jewish. It's just extraordinary to see that there's actually a book that's available to you that's written by Hashem.

42:07Now, with that being said, when they ask, where was God during the Holocaust? The answer is, it's not where He was. He's the one that did it. He's the one that made it happen. Why? Because we didn't follow His laws. He says, "I have laws. You follow them, you get blessings. You don't follow them, you get curses. But I'm not going to punish you right away. I'm going to give you time. I'm going to give you 10 years, 20 years, 50 years, 100 years, 200 years." His patience is up to Him. No one tells Him what to do. wait for us for a while until He says, "Now we're in a situation where if I don't rebuke you harshly and cause some type of major disaster, you'll be lost." And that's exactly what happened before the Holocaust. The assimilation rate in Germany was over 80%, meaning Jews were marrying goyim and The assimilation rate around the entire world was very high, meaning that if Hashem didn't cause the Holocaust, we would have caused it ourselves. This would have meant that there wouldn't have been any more Jews, because we were one generation away from simply all of us becoming goyim. So sometimes your father gives you instructions, and you don't listen. So he yells at you, and you still don't listen. After a while, if he knows that you're in danger, he's gonna have to slap you.

43:32After why, if he tells you, "Don't touch the fire," you say, "It's funny, Abba. I'm okay. Don't touch the fire? Come on, Abba. You're just a nervous wreck. I know what I'm doing. I..." And if he knows that you really don't know what you're doing, and in fact you're doing something wrong and you're about to touch the fire, guess what? He's probably going to slap you so hard you're going to remember it on your wedding day. Why? Because he's trying to save you. Not because he wants to hurt you. He's trying to save you. But sometimes saving you hurts. Sometimes saving His entire people hurts a lot. And it's happened to us many times. 2,500 years ago, 2,000 years ago, 500 years ago, 70 years ago, and many, many other times in between. Every time we steered off too far from God, God had to wake us up. So if you ask why the Holocaust happened, the answer is actually written in the Torah. It's just that we have to see it and get someone who's intellectually honest to tell you that. Most people are not going to want to tell you that. And the reason why is because they want you to think that God is always good, like the Christians.

44:38Christians say God is always good and therefore I could do whatever I want. That's what Hitler believed. Hitler believed that God is always good and he could do whatever he wants. Even if he decides to kill his children, even if he decides to kill 20, 30, 40 million people, God's good. God's good, I'm gonna go to heaven. That mentality is a murderer's mentality. God is good, but good also requires punishment. A parent that gives his child everything he wants without ever saying no is simply an evil parent. Why? Because the child doesn't know the danger of everything. He doesn't know what he doesn't know, and therefore if a parent doesn't use his knowledge and experience to teach the kid, he's an evil parent. And that's why God sometimes has to slap us and sometimes even hurt us even more in order to save us, not necessarily to hurt us. But sometimes it's to save us from our own stupidity. Next question. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. No. Well, the King of Kings, there's the King of Kings, which is God. He's the King of all. There's nobody superior to Him. There's nobody like Him. But Mashiach doesn't show his face either.

46:04Not yet. He will eventually. Hashem is the King of Kings. But as far as the Mashiach, the Mashiach will be the king of the world here as far as flesh and blood. No. No. The Mashiach is a flesh and blood human being just like you and me, only much more righteous. He's flesh and blood. He's not God. He's not God in human form. God does not have a human form. He never had a human form. He never will have a human form. That's what the Christians want to believe. But God does not have a human form. He has no body. He has no likeness of a body. There are actually 13 principles of faith. Thirteen foundational rules that every Jew has to believe in order to be classified as a Jew, and one of them is that God has no image and no likeness of an image. Meaning, He has no arms. He has no legs. He has no face. He has no features. He has nothing you can—you're not even allowed to visualize His name, the four-letter name that most people know. You're not even allowed to visualize that as if that's what He looks like, you know. I

47:10Well, no, Hashem's lack of image comes from the sense of Him not having any type of limitations. If He had a body, then He would be limited by the body. If He had a hand, He would be limited by that hand. If He had anger, He would be limited by emotions. Hashem does not have those things. But yet you're gonna see that in the Torah it says God was angry or God took Am Yisrael out of Egypt with a strong arm. So what does that mean? He doesn't have a strong arm, doesn't have an arm. He doesn't have anger. He's not subject to anger or emotions because if He did, then technically the anger would be God. The anger is superior to Him, or the hand would be a limitation. So what does that mean? The Torah talks to us sometimes in a way that we would understand some type of Visual of Hashem, even though there's no vision, nothing to see, in order to understand what's actually transpiring. So it talks to us in a language where it says Hashem took us out of Egypt with a strong hand. What does that really mean? The sages explain that really many of the Jews did not want to leave Egypt. Many of the Jews did not want to leave Egypt because, after they were slaves for so many years and they stopped being slaves, they said, "Listen, we're not slaves anymore."

48:27Leave us in Egypt. Hashem says, "You don't want to go? You don't leave Egypt." He killed all of them—80% of Am Yisrael were killed in Egypt; only 20% left, some say even less. The other 20% also really didn't want to leave, but they left because they were scared that if they didn't leave, something bad would happen. Needless to say, Hashem says, "I took you out of there with a strong arm," because in essence, you weren't even ready to believe. Same thing goes when it says that Hashem was angry. If it simply said that Hashem punished us without saying Hashem was angry, then we would say, wait, there's no righteousness here. Why is Hashem punishing us without even warning us? So that's why it says in the Torah at different times that certain things anger Hashem. It's not that He's subject or limited by anger. It's simply for us to understand what He likes and what He dislikes. Next question.

49:28Depends on what kind of promise. If a person promises, for example, to keep the mitzvot, and a woman says that she's going to be modest, and she fails, she may unfortunately — many religious women in their life at least once or twice at times because of peer pressure. Even though they live a religious life, and I'm giving you a religious person's perspective instead of a secular perspective, so you realize that failure is not just among secular people; it's also among religious people. A religious woman who is married is obligated to cover her hair with a hat or a scarf. Because of modernization, because of the influence of the gentiles, and because of the influence of the world at large, even the one that's religious, if she's not religious enough, meaning if she doesn't have really strong emunah, she can fail. When? When there are special events. She'll wear the scarf or the hat all year round.

50:32she'll wear it every year. She'll wear it on the holidays. She'll wear it on Shabbat. She'll wear it all the time. But she'll fail once. When? When one of her kids or somebody that she knows is having a wedding or a bar mitzvah, she'll, instead of putting the kisui rosh on of the scarf, she'll put a wig on. Why? Because she says, well, if I wear my scarf, I'm gonna look different from everybody else. Maybe they're gonna make fun of me because the scarf doesn't look as good and as attractive as the wig. So, therefore, she decides to do that. This is a disaster for her. Why? Because not only is she breaking a promise, but she's also showing that she's more scared of people than Hashem. So a person like that obviously has to do teshuva, has to repent, say, "I'm sorry" to Hashem that they failed, and start all over again. All of us fail at some point or another. The key is to get up again. The key is to say, "Okay, I failed, I'm sorry, do over. Let's do it again." beg Hashem to try again, and that's, in essence, for everything. So even though all of us are going to try to be more righteous today, and tomorrow, and the next day, we're going to try. We're going to try to keep Shabbat. We're going to try to keep the holidays. We're going to try to be righteous in every aspect. Once in a while, we're going to fail. We're going to have a certain desire that will overcome us, a certain need of some kind, or at least we think it's a need that will overcome us. If you failed...

52:00All that makes you is human. That simply makes you human. Failure does not make you evil. Failure makes you human. Humans fail. If you never fail, then you're not human. You're an angel. You should go to the world of angels and be there. Humans fail. What makes a person evil? It's not failure. Because there's a Torah. There's no such thing as a righteous person who doesn't sin. Everybody sins at some point or another. But how come they're still known as righteous? Why does it say tzaddik? Because if they failed, They're still okay. They're still tzaddikim as long as they did teshuvah. When do they become reshaim? When do they become evil? When they give up on doing teshuvah. When they say, you know what? I'm just not going to do it. I'm not even going to try. I wanted to be more modest. You know what? I tried. I don't like it. The heck with it. God, it's not for me. That makes you evil. Why? Because that's in essence telling Hashem, Hashem, You run the world, but I don't feel like listening to You. Or in fact, You run Your world. I'm going to run my world. We'll meet in the end.

53:06In essence, deciding that you're not gonna listen to Him knowingly—that's evil. But if you try and you fail, that makes you human. Try again. The same thing is going to happen in your whole life. You're going to go into business. You're not going to succeed from day one. You're going to get fit. You're going to fail. Maybe get fired. Maybe go bankrupt. Maybe something's going to happen. You're going to fail in life. What's the difference between the success story and the failure? The failure stops trying. The success story goes from failure to failure to failure to failure until he succeeds. That's the difference between the success stories you read about and watching the news and the failures. The failures you never hear about. Why? They never succeeded. Why would you care? Success stories you hear about, even though he failed a thousand times, you hear about why? Because he eventually succeeded, because he continued trying. So it's okay to fail. It's okay to try, fail, and try again. The same thing with Torah. You make a promise to Hashem: "Hashem, from now on I'm only gonna eat kosher," and one day you messed up. I don't know, you were so hungry and you didn't have the patience to go to a kosher restaurant. You went to a Starbucks.

54:21and you ate one of their sandwiches over there. It's not kosher. Or perhaps you went to a McDonald's, or you ate some treif in the middle of the road. Whatever happened to you, you decided to eat something just out of the blue because you were so hungry. Okay, you failed. But it doesn't mean you have to be a failure for the rest of your life. You satiated yourself. You're not hungry anymore. Fine. Tomorrow, prepare better. Tomorrow, bring food with you so you don't have the same test. Put a fence around the fence, meaning you failed once. Know that you are vulnerable in this aspect and try to do better next time. You know that every time you pass by a McDonald's, you have to go buy a Big Mac. Guess what? Easy solution — don't drive that way. Drive a different road, so at least you don't see it. I know that sounds simple, but this simplicity helps life a lot. Next question. You have a question? Yes.

55:24I'm not following. What do you mean if Judaism is spiritual? Why do we have rules? I'm not really sure. What does that mean if it's spiritual? You have freedom of choice, but the freedom of choice that we have is not the same freedom like you would think it is in a secular world, which is, in essence, the whole world outside of Torah. believe that the freedom of choice that they have is that they could simply do whatever they want. That's not actual free choice. The free choice that we have is not really free; it's choice, but not free choice. Meaning, if, let's say, for example, somebody goes and works for the mob. The mob tells them, the Mafia boss tells them, "Listen, I Every day, I'm gonna pay you $25,000 a head if you kill this guy. I tell you, I'm gonna give you $25,000. If you don't kill the guy, I'm gonna kill you. That's not really free choice. That's choice. That's coercion. That's closer to Torah than actual what we have because what we have is reward and punishment.

56:41we do good, we will get good; if we do bad, we will get bad. Sometimes the good takes time to manifest, and sometimes the bad takes time to manifest. It's not immediate; sometimes it looks like the evil people are receiving good, and sometimes it looks like the good people, the righteous people, are receiving bad, and... That's why the Torah tells us, "amtin." Amtin means wait. Wait to see the whole equation. Don't think that Hashem dances to your tune. Hashem gives reward and punishment based on His own specific timing. I'm going to give you an example of something that looks terrible. There's a woman in the Torah named Dinah. Dinah was the daughter of Leah. What is the name? Each one of the names in the Torah has a meaning. What does Dinah mean? Dinah comes from the root "din." Din means judgment. So the sages say, what does judgment have to do with Dinah? It says when Leah was pregnant with her seventh baby, it was a boy. She already had six boys.

58:02She was pregnant with another boy. But then she said to Hashem, "Hashem, please have some mercy. Even the two maidens, even the two other wives of Yaakov, had two boys. I have six. There are supposed to be 12 tribes. Rachel doesn't have anything. So at least give her as many boys as the maidens, as the maidservants." She pleaded to Hashem in mercy for her sister. At the same time, Rachel was also pregnant for the first time, but she had a girl. She didn't have a boy. She had a girl. Hashem said, "Dinah, you decreed for mercy for your sister to give her a boy. I'm going to give her your boy. I'm going to give you a girl and you're going to get her boy." So Leah got Dinah as the daughter. She got a daughter and Rachel got the boy. Now, what happened with Dinah? Dinah later on went to see what the non-Jewish girls were doing, and Hashem punished her. One of these goyim raped her.

59:14And the picture looked horrible. Why? Because, after all, Dinah was a blessing in disguise. After all, what happened? Why did Dinah come to the world? Because Leah had mercy for her sister Rachel. She had mercy on her. Hashem says, okay, you want her to have two boys? I'll give her your boy. So she had mercy. She should be rewarded. What happens? The daughter is born. The daughter grows up. She gets raped. And you have the Torah for the rest of eternity. Every person that learns Torah is going to learn about this woman named Dinah who was raped. I mean, it's a horrible, horrible story. So it looks like a punishment. Hashem says, wait, be patient. Let me show you. Let me show you what happens. Now, because she was raped, she was embarrassed of the child. She was embarrassed of the child that was born. So she got the advice of Yaakov Avinu, her grandfather, and Yaakov says to her, it doesn't make sense for you to constantly live with this embarrassment for the rest of your life. Why don't you take this child and send her to someone we know in Egypt? Send her to this rich family in Egypt. Don't worry, everything's going to be fine. I'm going to write her a medallion so that she knows she comes from our family, but at least you're not going to have to see this for the rest of your life.

1:00:31And that's what Dina did. She sent the girl to Egypt. Years passed, and that daughter ended up marrying who? Yosef HaTzaddik, also her uncle. She was the only woman in Egypt that Yosef was allowed to marry. And from her, from this marriage, came two boys, Ephraim and Menashe. And Yaakov says to Yosef, "Ephraim and Menashe are going to be like Reuven and Shimon. They're going to be like two tribes. Why? Because this starts originally from the original Mesirat Nefesh of my wife." My wife sacrificed our own boy because she had mercy. Hashem rewarded her, but it looked ugly in the beginning. It looked really ugly. There was a rape. They were giving the kid up for adoption. It looked horrible. But Hashem was just telling us, wait, let Me show you how beautiful it is in the end. In the end, you gave up one son, you got two.

1:01:35You gave up one son from the tribes; you got two sons. You got two tribes now. So that was the reward in the end. That's our problem. Our problem is that we think that whatever we see today is the end. When people get into a depression—there are others; none of you ever get into one—why do they get into a depression? Because they believe that their current miserable circumstance will never end. They think that their current sadness, whether it's from a breakup, a financial loss, or a disease of some kind—whatever misery that they're going through, which is most likely right there. It's miserable. It's horrible. It's terrible. But they think it'll always be like this. That's the mistake. I promise you, it will not always be like this. It will not always be like this. At some point, it will change. At some point, that misery will change if you allow it to. If you allow it to. If you move on. If you do something about it. But if you keep staring at the wall and crying yourself to sleep every single night, then you're right. It's not actually going to stay the same anyway. It'll actually get worse.

1:02:41The point is that when people get to a point of suicide, for example, which is, by the way, a rich person's problem because, statistically speaking, more rich people commit suicide than poor people. The reason why is because rich people that go into depression, until now, thought that money could solve all their problems. When they realize that it can't, they go into a depression, and they think that, "Oh, if money can't solve my problem, then nothing can solve my problem," and they feel like their current misery will always be that, and... and they lose hope very quickly. And that's what the Torah tries to tell us. Sometimes the picture, the current picture, looks horrible. Don't lose hope. More time will pass, and things will change. Same thing on the opposite end; sometimes the picture looks beautiful. You're printing money, you're making so much money, you have the perfect wife, your kids all look just amazing. The kids are great, the wife is great, money is great, health is great. Hashem says, "Hey..." more time will pass, and things will change. Same thing on the opposite end: sometimes the picture looks beautiful. You're printing money, you're making so much money, you have the perfect wife, and your kids all look amazing. The kids are great, the wife is great, money is great, health is great. Everything is great. Hashem says, "Hey...".

1:03:42Take it easy. Remember, it's all a circle. There are ups and downs in life. Don't think that life is always going to be like this. You have to plan accordingly. You cannot always think that everything is going to be like this, good or bad, forever. Things change, and that's what the Torah gives us as an instruction set—to simply not lose hope because things do change. Good and bad happen in everybody's life, and... If you live long enough, you'll experience both of them many, many times. The key is to listen to the instructions and know that, oh, this current time, whatever it is, is temporary. Could be for a week, could be for a month, could be for a year, could be for five years. But eventually, it'll change. And keep going. Next question. Yes. No, the Gemara says that the more righteous a person is, the more precise his judgment is. Meaning that although Moshe never had the problems like we have—where he never woke up late in the morning, he never had a problem doing tefillin, he never had a problem keeping Shabbat or not eating non-kosher—he never had a problem with that.

1:05:05But he had issues on his level. So, for example, when Hashem told him to speak to the rock, he hit the rock. Why did he hit the rock? Because Am Yisrael was annoying him. making fun of him because he spoke to the rock and the rock didn't answer. The rock didn't, you know, bring the actual water out, so they started making fun of him. It's like, "Ah, see, you don't know what you're doing. You know, you're probably not talking to God even. You know, you're probably just a magician." Like, they pretty much took everything that Moshe did for them all those years and threw it in the garbage. Moshe got upset because of what was happening, and he hit the rock. So even though he was the best of the best, that slight moment of anger where he hit the rock, it was in order to sanctify Hashem's name. It wasn't to go against Hashem. It was to show them, "No, the water's going to come; stop complaining." But they were so annoying that he wanted to make it happen faster.

1:06:06Hashem says, "You see, yes, the water came out, but it didn't come out the way I commanded it, so there was a little bit less sanctification of My Name. And for that, you'll be punished. If you and I did it, it’s not a sin, but on his level, it was." And for that, one of the many reasons, that's one of the reasons why Hashem says, because you sanctified My Name a little less—not that you didn't sanctify My Name, but you sanctified it less than what you should have. For you, on your level, it's considered a sin. The same thing goes for all of the Avot, all of the righteous; each one of them was caught on something. For us, it wouldn't be a sin at all, but for them, it is, because they're on such a high level. So there's no such thing as a person who doesn't sin, with the exception of four people. Four people in history, the Gemara says, did not sin. One of them was the son of Shlomo HaMelech. One of them was the father of Moshe. The other one was the father of David. And the other one was Binyamin, one of the 12 tribes. Next question, in the back. Yes. No, it's not. No, there isn't.

1:07:24But I'll give you more meat than that. The problem that you have, really from the beginning of time, but it seems more apparent today than ever, is that people try to rationalize the Torah. And that's a mistake. The reason why that's a mistake is because they're trying to rationalize God. God was something you could understand, you would be God. If I could understand Him, I would be just like Him; therefore, I would be God. We're not supposed to understand Him; we're supposed to understand what He wants and can understand you because I'm also human. You can understand me because you're also human. We happen to speak the same language. Therefore, we can understand each other. Hashem does not have limitations like us. So, for a limited creation to understand the unlimited is impossible. So, the real reason behind every single rule in the Torah—all of them, without exception—is not because it makes sense.

1:08:41It's because Hashem said so. Hashem said keep Shabbat, and that's the only reason you should keep Shabbat. Now, yes, there are benefits to keeping Shabbat. Yes, there are benefits to eating kosher. Yes, there are rational reasons for a lot of things. For example, niddah, taharat hamishpacha, a husband and a wife being separated from each other for half the month. There are actual real benefits and logical reasons to do it, but that's not the reason why we do it. That's just an additive to it. That's just a little bonus. The real reason why we have all of the mitzvot in the Torah is because the King of Kings, the Creator of all creations, HaKadosh Baruch Hu, said so. That's enough. If a person lives their life that way, they'll be very righteous. Why? Be simple. He said it. I'm doing it. That's enough. If you really believe God said it, that's more than enough reason. The problem we have when we try to rationalize things is that even though many of the mitzvot, almost all of them, have rational reasons for why we do them,

1:09:47you're only gonna do things because you rationalize and it makes sense to you. It's only a matter of time before it doesn't make sense to you. So, for example, keeping Shabbat. You could rationalize keeping Shabbat. What's the rational reason? Everybody needs a break. Once a week, you have a break. Further, everybody needs to spend a little bit of family time. Once a week, you spend some family time. Further, everybody needs a little bit of a special meal once a week. You get a special meal once a week. Further, everybody needs a special time to pray to Hashem a little extra. There you go. And I can give you many, many reasons. The problem is this: one day, a person is going to reach a financial crisis. His wife is going to tell him, "Honey, rent is due in a week. We don't have the money. We don't have the money." Yeah, but I get my salary in two weeks from now. She goes, no, no, no, you don't understand. You need the money. You need the money or they're going to kick us out. Okay, but I don't have the money. She says, I have a job. I want to make the money, and I'll get it in a week. She goes, no, no, you need the money now. We need the money within a couple of days. We need the money. What is he going to do? He says, he rationalizes. He goes, well, listen, God says...

1:11:07Shabbat because I could take a break—who could take a break under such conditions? I'm stressed out the whole time. Who can eat? I can barely afford to pay rent. How am I going to pay for food? Who can sleep? Who would want to spend time with the family when everybody is stressed out? So what did he do? He said, "Ah, God wanted me to keep Shabbat under these conditions. Since these conditions are no longer valid, ah, therefore I will go work on Shabbat. Why? I'm helping God. I'm helping God by going to work on Shabbat. I'll make the money so that way I can pay the rent, and then next week I'll definitely honor Shabbat." you just rationalized violating Shabbat, which Hashem says you're not allowed. The point being that if a person tries to rationalize the Torah, eventually they'll arrive at a point where they'll rationalize going against the Torah. So yes, there are benefits to every aspect of the mitzvot, every one of them, with a few exceptions that we don't know what the benefit is. We don't know how they work. For example, Parah Adumah, the red cow. we don't know why the red cow that they slaughter and then they burn and then we use the ashes with special water, and it purifies all the impure people. We don't know how that works because

1:12:18It worked according to our rational mind. That means that if, let's say, I'm the Kohen who takes the ashes and the water of the red cow, and I'm purifying all of you now. You're no longer considered impure. That would mean that you're all pure, and I'm also pure, but that's not the way it works. I'm purifying you. And by purifying you, at the same time, I'm becoming impure. That doesn't make any sense. Rationally, it doesn't make any sense. That's what Shlomo HaMelech, the wisest man of all time, says: This is bigger than me. Meaning, not just this mitzvah, the whole Torah is bigger than me. I tried rationalizing it where it makes sense. If I'm pure and you're pure, that makes sense. If you're impure and I'm impure, that makes sense. But you becoming pure by me becoming impure, that doesn't make any sense. Rationally, it doesn't make any sense. So there are certain things in the Torah that make a lot of sense and have a lot of benefits, but there are things that don't make sense. For example, the mitzvah that you mentioned, shatnez. Hashem says you're not allowed to have wool and linen sewn together. But there is an exception. When? When it's for a mitzvah. What mitzvah? There are two exceptions. One is the clothing of the Kohen, which had shatnez. Two is tzitzit. Your tzitzit is shatnez. Those are the two exceptions. Why are there two exceptions? He says, normally you're not allowed to have wool and linen together unless it's for a specific mitzvah that I said this is the exception.

1:13:33which had shatnez. Two is tzitzit. Your tzitzit is shatnez. Those are the two exceptions. Why are there two exceptions? He says, normally you're not allowed to have wool and linen together unless it's for a specific mitzvah that I said this is the exception. So as far as it doesn't make sense, rationally, not really. Why would Hashem care whether you wear wool and linen together or not? But it does make sense that there are exceptions. Why? Because Hashem is telling you, "I want you to use this, but only according to My instructions." I want you to be with your wife, but only according to My instructions. So you can be with your wife when she's pure, meaning when she's not menstruating. When she comes out of the mikveh, you can be with her as much as you want. That's usually about half the month. Other than that, when she's menstruating, when she has her period, don't even touch her finger. Now, Rationally, you would say, well, this actually kind of makes sense. Why? Because if you look at the divorce rates in Western society, divorce rates today are over 80%. 80% of people who are divorced will get divorced again, meaning that realistically, if your people are secular, don't get married. You're wasting your money. There's an 80% chance you're gonna fail within five years if I told you...

1:14:54You know what? There's an 80% chance that every plane is going to crash. Are you going to take a flight to New York? Are you going to take a flight to Colorado? Are you going to take a flight somewhere else? No, right? There's an 80% chance it's going to crash. I'm not going. I'm not going. 80% chance of crashing? No. Well, in the secular world, there's an 80% chance of crashing within five years. Why bother? Why bother? Here's the thing. You know why planes don't crash 80% of the time? the pilot goes to school and he follows the instructions on how to fly a plane. Anytime he has a question, he calls the office and says, "Hey, listen. I'm over here, north this way, this degree, that degree." He tells them where he is, "There are winds going this amount of miles per hour. I'm 35,000 feet above instead of 34. Am I okay? Am I not okay?" He always checks back to see where he stands. He gets a second opinion. Even though you went to school for two or three, four years, it could be, if it's a jumbo jet, five years. The point is, he has instructions. He follows the instructions, but he always double-checks himself. People today don't double-check themselves. They think that just because they're old enough to have sex, they're old enough to find a girl. They're old enough to find a guy. They should get married. That's the problem. That's the problem. And usually, the people they ask for advice are also divorced people.

1:16:16Also, miserable couples. So they say, "Hey, Dad, listen. What do you think I should do with my wife?" "I had a divorce." "No, I didn't even tell you the problem yet, Dad." "Well, listen, I divorced your mom a few years ago. At one point or another, you're going to get divorced. Might as well divorce now if you already have a problem." People ask for advice from people who don't know what they're talking about. They ask their friends who are still single. They ask their colleagues who are divorced. They ask their family who can't stand their bride or can't stand their husband. They ask people that are biased instead of asking people that are actually experts. They go to marriage counselors that suggest for them to have marriages with other people at the same time. That's, by the way, the new strategy today. If you're unhappy with your wife or husband, why don't you have a second or third one on the side? That's what they suggest to people. Listen, you're not happy with her? I'll convince her as the doctor, the psychiatrist. I'll convince her to allow you to have a girlfriend, as long as you have a rule. Oh, what's the rule? She's going to have a boyfriend. Oh, you know what? I don't mind if she has a boyfriend and I have a girlfriend, but we're still married. No problem. That's what people advise to them. That's the stupidity of today's psychiatrists and the secular world. On the other hand, the successful marriages...

1:17:29Look at things differently, how they look at things first and foremost. I'm not going to ask anyone that's biased. If he doesn't like my wife, if she doesn't like my husband, and so on and so forth, they're already excluded. Number two, they have to have a history of success. I'm not asking divorced people for advice on marriage. Why? Obviously, they failed. If they're failing, how are they gonna tell me? It's like asking a homeless guy how to make a million dollars. It's not gonna work. If he knew it, he would do it himself. Third, I need to make sure that the advice is foolproof. How do you know it's foolproof? It's from God. Why? His system works. It's the instructions. You have instructions from God on how to be married, you're going to pass. As long as everybody follows the instructions. How do you know you follow the instructions? You double-check back with the home office. Who's the home office? The rabbi. He's a real rabbi. It's that rabbi. Listen, I know I went to the class, went to the shiur, and we listened to ABC and everything that you said. But I don't remember everything, or maybe I'm not really sure if what I remember is correct. Can you double-check? I'm 35,000 feet in the air. He double-checked. She just yelled at me. He double-checked. He didn't come home tonight. He double-checked. What do I do under this circumstance? When a person double-checks with the rabbi and he gets real advice, he's put in a situation where now...

1:18:52He can succeed in having a marriage last for his entire adult life, but that's again someone who wants to succeed, and not someone just looking for a shortcut. Next question. Yes, Moshe and David? Yes, I know. Yes, I know. Every generation has somebody that has a spark of Mashiach. Every generation has a spark of the soul of Mashiach. Whether that spark will be enforced or not and put into place is only under the decision of HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Every generation has a potential Mashiach, every generation. So even when sometimes some of the sages, like Rabbi Akiva or others, mentioned that they believed that Mashiach was pending or perhaps even there, there's a Gemara that says that Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi met Mashiach and he asked him, "When are you coming?" He said, "Soon." So he didn't come. He didn't come. He said, "Soon, when you do teshuvah," meaning, "I'm going to come when you do teshuvah."

1:20:22So he met the Mashiach. The Mashiach was alive already back then. The soul was there, but again, obviously he died, and there has to be that next generation has another opportunity. So every opportunity, no, it's not the same person; it's the souls, the souls themselves. Right. The souls themselves reincarnate in every generation in order to give every generation an opportunity to have Mashiach. Unfortunately, we have not had the merit yet to see Mashiach, even though some people believe that their rabbi was Mashiach or somebody they know was Mashiach. If they did not become Mashiach, then even if they had the possibility of being Mashiach, it's null and void. We have to wait until we have the merit, b'ezrat Hashem, to actually see Mashiach. Yeah, like I said, if I was the one running the world, it would work off my logic.

1:21:29Good for you that I'm not running the world because my logic is flawed because I'm a human. So even though things make sense to me, that's simply because I'm a stupid human being. God is not stupid, and He's also not human either. So for a stupid human to question the infinite God is even stupider than stupid. Understand, so who am I to question Him? He runs the world. He's the King of Kings. He'll bring the Mashiach when He's fine and ready. Me, I'm just trying to survive. Hopefully, I'll go to Gan Eden one day. That's all I'm trying to do. I don't question God. I don't say, "Oh God, why'd You do this?" Who am I? I'm running the show? I'm His boss? I'm His employer? No, I'm just here trying to be a human being and barely struggling at that. So, that's the thing that people need to understand. We are not in a position to question God's logic because that would mean you see yourself on His level. For two people to debate if it's a

1:22:30Well put together, a debate requires the two people to be on the same level. But if you're in first grade and he's a professor, for there to be a debate, it would be an embarrassment. It actually would be an embarrassment for both parties. One, because the first grader doesn't know what he's talking about, and also for the professor. It's an embarrassment, like why are you picking on a kid? It's an embarrassment for both. So when two people are having a debate, they have to be on the same level. For us to have a debate with God, we have to be God. For us to say, "Wait, God, you know, You really should have brought the Mashiach a thousand years ago. You know, You really should have, you know, done better. You know, I think if I was God, I would have done a better job than You." That's a serious problem. That's a mental deficiency that a person has. A person needs to know where they stand. You are the creation. He is the Creator. Don't tell the Creator what to do. You focus on what you're doing. He'll focus on what He's doing. And trust me when I tell you, He knows what He's doing. He's been here for a while.

1:23:33That's the way it should add up in your head. Even though logically we can all rationalize why the Mashiach should have come already from the beginning. Technically, if we really knew the truth, it should have never been us at all. It should have been Adam HaRishon in Gan Eden still to this day. What's the big deal? What did he do? Eat a little fruit? What does Hashem care? Eat two fruits. He gave the whole world to him. If it was really up to us, rationally, the whole world wouldn't exist. Why? It's full of evil people. It's full of greedy people. It's full of stinky people. It's full of stupid people. Why do we even need the world? For what? People are greedy. People cheat each other. People kill each other. People take advantage of each other. What does Hashem even need this world for? Just, if you want a human being, leave Adam HaRishon in Gan Eden. He has a wife. Maybe a couple of kids. One of them died. No problem. Have more kids. Leave them in Gan Eden and that's it. But it's rational. It's human. It's flawed. We have to realize we have to work on our life, focus on our responsibility, not his responsibility. We don't question his responsibility. We question our responsibility. Why? Because he knows what he's doing. We don't. So we're trying. And that's the main focus that a person needs to have. Yes? So I understand that most of the good English and what are

1:24:50in this generation come from the time of the Golden Calf. This is the Golden Calf. So if that's the case, then why? Because as we know, the generation is very, they don't trust, they don't have a lot of things that you see in the Golden Calf. So that means that there has to be a certain generation or certain people that are higher up then how would they be able to get better if they weren't, you know what I mean? There's not, as every generation, as many people that are higher level than others in our kind of understanding of life or able to, you know. That's what you're saying. There's no leaders and there's no followers either? What are you trying to say? What I'm trying to say is there's not, how can you give kavod to

1:25:55So Shlomo HaMelech writes, there's nothing new under the sun. Meaning, as wicked as our generation is, it's nothing new. There have always been wicked people and there have always been righteous people. In order for the world to continue standing, it has to have 36 tzaddikim. 36 people that are righteous beyond their understanding that exist in every generation. So long as they exist, the world has enough merit to exist. If they don't exist, our world would not exist. Now, as far as the rest of the people, there have always been righteous, and there have always been wicked. In a generation a couple of thousand years ago, a little more than two thousand years ago, almost 2,500 years ago, the generation of the Beit HaMikdash, the generation of Yeshayahu HaNavi... righteous beyond their understanding that exist in every generation. So long as they exist, the world has enough merit to exist. If they don't exist, our world would not exist. Now, as far as the rest of the people, there have always been righteous, and there have always been wicked. In a generation a couple of thousand years ago, a little more than two thousand years ago, almost 2,500 years ago, the generation of the Beit HaMikdash, the generation of Yeshayahu HaNavi Now, that generation, if you rationalize it without knowing the information, you would say this must be the most righteous generation in the world. Why? They have all the reasons to be righteous. They have a Beit HaMikdash, the first Beit HaMikdash. It's not only a thing of beauty; it's a building that's literally an open miracle 24 hours a day. Every time they brought a korban, somebody made a sin by accident.

1:27:20they turn on a light on Shabbat by accident, not on purpose. If it's on purpose, they kill them. But if it's an accident, they have to bring a cow. They have to bring a korban to the Beit HaMikdash, because it's an accident. The korbanot, by the way, are only for accidental sins, not for a purpose. If it's on purpose, it's a death penalty. Now, accidentally he violated Shabbat. He was so righteous... Did he admit he made an accident? Nobody saw it. Hashem saw it. Nobody else saw it. He admitted it. He went all the way from wherever he was in the country, stopped his business, closed down shop for a couple of weeks to trek all the way to Yerushalayim with his cow. To go bring this $25,000 cow for what? Accidentally turn on the light. That's how righteous he was. Amazing, right? Now he arrived at the Beit HaMikdash. The Kohanim say, "Oh, Baruch Haba." They start singing. He starts crying. Why? He's crying because he's doing Teshuvah. Now, something amazing happens. After they take the blood, because most of the Korbanot, unlike what we think, Masechet Yoma explains it.

1:28:22Also, Masechet Zevachim explains it. We think that they put the cow on the altar and that's it, and it's done. That's wrong. In reality, only a small part of the cow goes in, only a few innards go in; the rest of it is eaten by the Kohanim. The main part of the korban is the blood. They take the blood and put it on the altar. That's the main part. As for the meat, most of it is eaten. We thought that they just, my whole life, I thought they take the cow, slaughter it, put it on the altar, and then it goes to Shamayim or something. That's what I thought. That's not how it works. Most of the korban is blood. They take the blood, spread it in specific places, and so on and so forth. It depends on what type of korban it is, whether it's inside the Kodesh HaKodashim, or outside the Kodesh, and so on and so forth. Now, what happens at this point? After you put the whole thing, a fire, in the image of a lion, comes from heaven. Enormous, enormous, monstrous, huge, beautiful lion comes from heaven and takes the korban for everybody to see. Imagine, you're right there; a lion comes from heaven. If the guy was crying before for a sin he made by accident, by now he's hysterical. Why? He just saw a lion from heaven and everybody else is crying too. Why? Hopefully, that lion doesn't eat me.

1:29:48And guess what? Every day. Every day, all day. All day you see miracles. All day. The Kohen puts a little incense. The incense makes a pillar from where the Beit HaMikdash is all the way to heaven. Straight line. Even if there's a hurricane. Even if there's an earthquake. Even if there's wind. If there's rain. It doesn't make a difference. The pillar of smoke goes all the way from Beit HaMikdash like a beam all the way to outer space. Smoke, nothing can stop it. I mean, it's open miracles. No woman had a miscarriage. No woman had a miscarriage. Not a single fly ever entered Beit HaMikdash, even though there's a bunch of meat. Go to a butcher shop for five minutes; you'll see fifty thousand flies. Go to a butcher shop, see how many flies are there. That's nature. It's not that it smells. It's not that it's not fresh. It's just nature. You have blood. You have all types of stuff. There are flies. Your garbage can has flies. Even if you clean your garbage can, it's still going to have flies. You go to a butcher shop, it's going to have flies. Beit HaMikdash, no flies. Countless miracles happened in Beit HaMikdash.

1:30:58So you would think, everybody not only should be righteous, everybody should be so righteous, it should be a generation of Moshe Rabbeinu, Moshe Rabbeinu, Moshe Rabbeinu, Moshe Rabbeinu, everybody's Moshe Rabbeinu, that's what you should think. Everybody should be called Moshe, why? That's how it, you see a lion, you see all these things, what does Yeshayahu say? Yeshayahu says, Women, you wicked, you will shine, you wicked women that are walking around with high heels and bells and wigs on your head. You'll see what Hakadosh Baruch Hu does to you when, eventually, the things that you're trying to motivate the others with will be used against you. That's how he's going to punish you. And the women answer, "Well, what do you want from us? What?" You're making the goyim look at you. The women say to him, "What's the worst that's going to happen? The goyim are going to want to marry us? So let them marry us." These are Jewish girls, Beit Yaakov. Chachamim ask, "Who are these wicked women? Living at the time of the Beit HaMikdash. Who are these wicked women? What is this, Amalek? Who is this?" He says, "These were the rabbis' wives in that generation."

1:32:22Beit HaMikdash, Kodesh HaKodashim, Kohen Gadol, meaning nothing new under the sun. Women that wanted to be wicked were wicked. Women that wanted to be righteous were righteous. Eventually, everybody got what they deserve, reward or punishment. Nothing new under the sun. This is to teach us that as far as the generation that you're in, you're in it because of you, not because of anybody else. And you could be Moshe Rabbeinu in this generation. That's what the Rambam writes in Hilchot Teshuvah. He specifically says every single person can be righteous like Moshe Rabbeinu. He doesn't say just in the generation of Moshe Rabbeinu, just in the generation of the Beit HaMikdash, just in the generation of ... no, no... every generation. You can be righteous like Moshe Rabbeinu. How? Learn Torah. Now, I brought a couple of books yesterday, but I didn't say it, and I'm gonna say it to you today. Most people know this version of me.

1:33:28You don't know me from Wall Street. Maybe you saw a few pictures or something like that, or you saw a few articles if you looked me up. But you know this version of me. Most people just know this version. Now, when I first started doing teshuva, I wasn't this version. You know what version I was? I was a very, very different version. The version was that I knew I needed to change. I knew I didn't know anything. And I knew that if I didn't submit... to somebody bigger than me, somebody smarter than me, why even bother? My whole life, I was the leader. My whole life, I was the smartest. My whole life, I was the richest. My whole life, no one told me what to do. But I knew that if I continued this way, How could I progress? Why? Because I'm going into a different world. So you see, yesterday I taught you guys a shiur that the Ramban writes where he says, "Hear, my son, the musar of your father." Sometimes you have to make sure the guy is listening. Then you have to make sure that you show him some love. But you have to give him musar. But remember, you're giving him musar out of love.

1:34:50You see, today when I teach, whatever I teach, you come to my house. You can see there's a lot of books. It's a lot of books, a lot of impressive books, more books than here. You have a lot of books, and I try to read those books, a lot of impressive books. But you know, it was my first Halacha book. My first Halacha book for Shabbat. Shabbat, big mitzvah. No Shabbat, no Torah. No Shabbat, no Judaism. Shabbat, without Shabbat, there's no Judaism. Without Shabbat, there's no teshuva. You can keep 612 mitzvot. If you don't keep Shabbat, there's no Shabbat. There's no Judaism, nothing. So, you come to my house, you're going to say, "Oh, wait, it was probably Yaakov Yosef. It was probably the Gemara Masechet Shabbat. It was probably the other one, Shabbat. There's a bunch of Shabbat books there." You know what was my first halacha book for Shabbat? When my rabbi told me, Yaron, it's time to keep Shabbat. I started making some excuses. I said, you know, Shabbat is the time that I usually take a break. I watch some movies. I go to the casino. I have a good time. I have such a tough life. I have such a tough life. I need Shabbat to go relax, do whatever I want. And then I realized that I was full of it. And I said, okay, I'll keep Shabbat. How do I keep Shabbat though? Okay, I'm going to keep Shabbat. But how do I keep Shabbat?

1:36:04How do I do it? What do I do? Do I just stay there like this all my breath? Why? What do I do? He says, "Don't worry. I'm going to send you, I'm going to show you some love." He didn't say, "I'm going to show you some love," but that's what he did. "I'm going to show you some love. I'm going to send you a halacha book on how to keep Shabbat." Now, you would think he would give me the book that I gave you guys for free or perhaps show me a website. Show me a website, go to this website, Shabbat.com. You'll keep Shabbat that way, right? That was my first Shabbat book. Now you're going to laugh, but you're wrong. This is one of the best Shabbat books in the world. Yeah, it's a children's book, but that's how I learned how to keep Shabbat. Now I have many other books that have more details, but this is how I started. It's a children's book, but written by talmidei chachamim, and if you read it word for word, you're going to learn how to keep Shabbat the best possible way.

1:37:05If you advance, you'll read other books and there's more detail. But if you're going to be one of these people who say, "Nah, what am I, a kid? I'm going to learn Shabbat from a kids' book?" You're never going to keep Shabbat. You're never going to be a real Jew. You're always going to be a faker because you're full of arrogance. Hashem despises arrogant people. Why? Too good for it? Your rabbi said read the kids' book. That's what you read. The rabbi suggested something else, you read something else. But if the rabbi said this is the book, you, Yaron Reuven, the smartest guy on the block, that's what you're gonna read to learn Shabbat. Guess what? That's what Yaron reads. Why? The rabbi said so. The rabbi said so. That's what people don't understand. They say, wait, the rabbi said this to me, but do I really have to listen to him? Maybe I should ask a different rabbi. Maybe I should shop around, go to Walmart, see aisle six, get a new rabbi every week. Now, if you think this is like a one-time thing, wrong. I also had a new Mussar book. I had to learn Mussar. Why? I had to fix myself. I had to fix myself. My wife had to fix, everybody had to fix themselves. I had to learn Middot. I didn't even know that Middot existed. I just knew if you're angry, that's the way you are. If you're cheap, that's the way you are. That's the...

1:38:27I didn't know you were supposed to change. So my rabbi says you have to learn Mussar. I said, okay, how do you learn Mussar? We learn a shiur. Okay, but what else? Is there a book? Yeah, I'm going to send you a book. Now, Rabbi Fein wasn't exactly rich. So each one of these was like a life-saving investment into me. He sent me a Mussar book. You know what my first Mussar book was? Here's my first Mussar book. It's called The Incredible Voyage of Good Middot. It's a children's book, but I bet you any adult that reads it, actually studies this book, it changes his life. And by the way, if you like it, there's a whole series of them. There's a whole series of this. Why? It's all based on Orchot Tzaddikim. The real Mussar book. The real Mussar book is Orchot Tzaddikim. One of the greatest Mussar books that was ever written. But if you give a new Baal Teshuva that doesn't even know what Teshuva is yet, Orchot Tzaddikim, he says, Rabbi, this Judaism is too big for me. I'm not. I'm 50 years old. I'm 40 years old. I'm 30 years old. What do I do with it? I got to the second page. I already started blowing smoke out of my ears. I don't know what he's saying. He's saying I'm supposed to be holy. What is he talking about? He's saying I'm supposed to do this. I'm supposed to do that. What is this guy? Does he know what generation I'm living in? So the rabbi that shows love, sometimes he tells the guy, "I love you. That's why I'm telling you things that are against your logic. Because your logic thinks that you're much bigger than what you really are. In reality, you're a child. And you need to learn children's books. Learn Mussar from a children's book."

1:39:49I love you. That's why I'm telling you things that are against your logic. Because your logic thinks that you're much bigger than what you really are. In reality, you're a child. And you need to learn children's books. Learn Mussar from a children's book. If you're an arrogant person who thinks he knows it all, thinks she knows it all, guess what? You're going to say, "Listen, Rabbi, were you insulting me? You're telling me children's books? Were you serious? I'm a Wall Street executive. I made a million and a half dollars in one day." I was on CNBC, on Bloomberg, on CNN. I was on the board of directors of a company. You're kidding me? You're sending me a children's book? But guess what? You know what I once said? Nothing. Thank you. I love you. I'm going to read it from page to page. And every day, my wife and I will read it, page to page, every little character, every little thing. We go to the back and double-check, just like a kid. Why? Because that's what HaKadosh Baruch Hu wants.

1:40:49We finished this one, and we got another one, and another one. You'll come to my house and see why I have a lot of kids' books. You're going to think it's for my kids. No, these were for me. These were all for me. But you see, that's the difference—nobody's going to admit this stuff to you. I don't care what you think; I care about what HaKadosh Baruch Hu thinks. That's the difference that people can't get through their mind. They care too much about what people think. They care too much about what their friends think. They're only gonna do this. They're only gonna do that. She's only gonna wear this. She's only gonna wear that. You forget. HaKadosh Baruch Hu runs the world. If you're going to serve Him, serve Him like He wants, not like you want. Stop questioning Him. Why did You send me in this generation? Why did You send me with no money? Why did You send me this? Why did You send me that? He knows what He's doing. He knows what He's doing. If we simply stop questioning Him, we're going to start winning.

1:41:52But if every single time something happens in your life, every time some gas comes out of your body, you're going to change religion, you're going to change opinion, you're going to change rabbi, you're going to change something, guess what? You're never going to get ahead. You're going to be a failure for the rest of your life. In order to succeed, you have to humble yourself. You have to realize there's a world you know and there's a world you don't know. In the world you know, do what you gotta do. The world you don't know, which is the Torah world. Keep your mouth shut and listen to the rabbi. Listen to what the rabbi says. They know what they're doing. They've been here for a while. They read a lot more than you did. They know what HaKadosh Baruch Hu said. But if you're only going to listen to yourself, guess what? You're never even going to graduate the kids' level. You're never going to graduate. Why? Because you never started. And that's what people need to understand. You need to make sure that if you're going to do teshuva, first rule, God runs the world. Second rule, don't forget the first rule. The rest of it will just take some time. The rest of it will just take some time. The rabbi says, you do. The book says, you do. Hashem says, you do. Why? That's your job in the world.

1:43:13That's your job in the world. Be simple. Don't ever think you're too big or too smart or too this or too that for anything. Because if HaKadosh Baruch Hu brought this to your life, that means He wants this. He doesn't want something else. When somebody came to the Chafetz Chaim and said to him, Kevod HaRav, how do I do the will of Hashem? How do I do the will of Hashem? The Chafetz Chaim says to him, you want to do the will of Hashem? He says, yes. He said, "You sure?" He says, "Yes." He says, "Regardless of what happens in your life, be happy. Regardless of what happens. Car accident, health crisis, financial crisis, marriage, divorce, kid, no kid. Regardless, serve HaKadosh Baruch Hu with full happiness, full extent, full power. Every tefillah with kavanah. Every time you give a shiur, 100%. Every time you learn, 100%. Everything you do for HaKadosh Baruch Hu, 100%." As if, this is it. As if, Hashem, I know you're here. You do that, you're going to fulfill His will. You're going to get to Gan Eden. You're going to go to the next world. If you don't, eh, 50-50. Next. Yes? When He says something, He does what He says. Baruch Hashem. And it says in the Mishnah that

1:44:38Basically, there are some signs of the end of days, which we're in right now. And according to the Mishnah, we've already met all of them, including the right power of Hashem. But what's missing is Mashiach. It's a pretty big, important ingredient. Yes. And another thing is that Hashem said that the world will not exceed a certain amount of years. And at a certain time in that history, we lost count of the number of years. No, we know what year it is. It's 5779. The Christians made a mistake. We have 5779 years since the beginning. One thing that we have for sure is our calendar. We have a calendar showing 5779 years. 5779. That's what we have. No, we don't have 6,000 years. No.

1:45:40The sages explained that HaKadosh Baruch Hu will send Mashiach before Shabbat. Not talking Shabbat, the day of the week, but Shabbat, the year. The Shabbat year starts before 6000, because David HaMelech exposes one of the greatest secrets that we have on the timing of HaKadosh Baruch Hu, even though He's not subject to time. which is that every thousand years that we have is like a day to Him. So if that's the case, and we are in the year 5779, 1,000 years is one day. So we are now 5,779 years, which means we have completed Thursday. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday—we've completed 5,000 years, which means we have completed five days. Then we have 779. If 750 is three quarters of 1,000, right, 750 is three quarters of 1,000, so that means that three quarters of 24 hours have passed. Three quarters of 24 hours is...

1:46:5618th hour, 6 o'clock, 6 p.m. Okay, so that's already 750. 750, 5,750, but then we have some change, 779. I did some math one time and it's approximately 41 years per hour. 41 years per hour, which means that the 29 years extra above the 750, we're almost at 7 o'clock. we're almost at 7 o'clock. You follow? We're almost at 7 p.m. Friday. We're almost at 7 p.m. Friday. Now, you follow? 6 p.m. Five days were completed. 5750 is already Friday. That's 6 p.m. Another 29, you're talking about somewhere around 6:45 p.m. 6:45 p.m. Friday. Now, the Sages said... Mashiach is going to come before Shabbat. Before Shabbat doesn't mean 6,000. 6,000 is already deep into Shabbat. Before Shabbat means, when does the average Shabbat come in? 7 o'clock, 7:30, 6:45, meaning in our lifetime.

1:48:12In our lifetime, Mashiach is coming. When that lifetime is, whether it's tomorrow or next year or five years or 20 years from now, I don't know, you don't know, nobody knows. And the Rambam says, do not delve into the timing for a few reasons. Number one, it's not going to increase your Yirat Shamayim. Number two, it's not going to increase your Ahavat Hashem. It's not going to help you fear Hashem, and it's not going to help you love Hashem. So why deal with it at all? Number three, it most likely will lead you to sin, not to do teshuva. why? Because you're going to be so obsessed with the timing. When is he coming? Maybe it's this year. Maybe it's that day. Maybe it's because the moon is that way. Maybe it's because the sky is that way. Maybe it's because... You're going to start timing it and start pinpointing time. Pinpointing time is a sin. You're not allowed to pinpoint time when Mashiach is going to come. And that's the mistake that people make. They try to pinpoint time. And they don't realize that their objective to do good is actually a sin. Why is it a sin? Because if you pinpoint time, and people follow you, and they say, "Oh, Yaron said it's going to be Thursday at 3:30 in the year 2027." And Thursday at 3:30 in the year 2027, according to the Christians, arrives...

1:49:33Mashiach doesn't. He doesn't. Guess what? All of those people that followed are going to say, "Oh, so I guess he's not coming. I'm going to go back to being Mechalel Shabbat. I'm going to go back to marrying the goyim. I'm going to go back to eating pork. I'm going to go back and do whatever I want. Why? Because he promised it's going to come on this day. It's not coming now. It's probably not coming for another 20 years. So let me just live my life, and I'll do teshuva another 20 years from now." You understand? You can lead people to fall. That's why we're not allowed to do it. So you should not focus so much on the timing of Mashiach. You're obligated, according to the 13 principles of faith, to expect him every day. Meaning, you're obligated to expect Mashiach every day, meaning that you have to do teshuva every day. You have to get ready to see Mashiach every day because once Mashiach comes, he will only save you if you have done teshuva. But if you were too busy focusing on learning when he's going to come, when did you have time to do teshuva? When did you have time to learn the rest of the Torah?

1:50:36If you're so focused on learning about Mashiach, when do you have time to learn halachot Shabbat? When do you have time to read this book that's going to change your life? When are you going to have time to come to the shiur? You focus on Mashiach all day. That's the mistake people make. Why? Because Satan wants you to focus on that. He wants you to focus on the timing, on the timing, on the timing, and therefore you're a five-year, ten-year Baal Teshuva, and you still don't know how to keep Shabbat. You're a five-year, ten-year Baal Teshuva, but you're still not really sure. What do you do on Sukkot with your lulav? Do you eat it? Do you play with it? What do you do with it? Why is it so expensive? Do I really have to buy one, or can I just borrow my kid's lulav? Just, you know, buy one, use it for two, three days—what do you do? People don't know anything. Why the focus on things that in reality they shouldn't be focused on? Satan wants you to focus on that. So it's a mitzvah from the Satan. So that tells you, yeah, focus on the timing, focus on this, focus on that. Why? Because eventually, what ends up happening is you get let down because the Mashiach does not arrive at the time you wanted, expected, or hoped for, and...

1:51:48You could easily just let everything go. Why? You were never really fully committed because you never really fully did Teshuvah, because you never fully learned anything about Torah. The whole religion was based on just Mashiach coming. And now, since he didn't come, ah, to heck with it. And that's the mistake people make. People make the mistake of focusing on one thing. You're not allowed to focus on one thing. Even if it's a big mitzvah, you're not allowed to focus on one mitzvah. Focus on the entire Torah. You should be an expert in one mitzvah. You should be the best at one mitzvah. But you're supposed to learn the entire Torah. Pick one mitzvah, be an expert in it. Whether it's the mitzvah of Sukkot, or the mitzvah of Tefillin, or Tefillah, whatever it is. Pick one and be an expert at it. But in general, you have to learn the entire Torah. If you focus all of your energy on the timing of Mashiach, you're going to end up wasting your life, and it will be very, very easy for the Satan to break you. So, Some food for thought for all the people who spend a lot of time on Mashiach and try to time it because of their math ability, scientific ability, rational mind, irrational mind, and so on and so forth. All people need to understand that this generation is much, much lower in Kedusha and intellectual ability than the ones before it over 2,000 years ago.

1:53:12...after the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash, a generation of much higher righteousness, Kedusha, and intellect had an exact prophecy that HaKadosh Baruch Hu would build a second Mikdash exactly 70 years after He destroyed the first one. This means they didn't have some random number like we have now; they had a precise prediction... It's already been 2,000 years, and we still don't know when it's going to be. We have an understanding of when it's possible, when's the deadline? But we don't have an exact number. They had an exact number—only 70 years. They were much smarter, much holier, much closer to Mount Sinai than we are. And guess what? Not a single one of them got it right. Not a single one of them got it right. Not one got it right. Nobody got it right. Nobody. Why? Because HaKadosh Baruch Hu's timing is not for you to know and You may decide that the Beit HaMikdash was destroyed on a specific day in a specific year. That doesn't mean that you should decide that. If He wrote it, He decided it. If He didn't write it, that's because He doesn't want you to know it. And He left it up there for a reason, and He made sure that seventy years, no one's gonna get it.

1:54:32Same concept goes. If we couldn't figure out 70 years when we had a much higher level generation, what makes anybody think they can figure out 2,000 years plus? So don't waste your time trying to figure out the timing. Just focus on your obligation. Your obligation is to do teshuva. Your obligation is to fix your middot. Your obligation is to learn halachot. Your obligation is to connect to HaKadosh Baruch Hu and stop looking for a shortcut. That's your obligation in the world. If you do that, you're going to be a winner in this life and the next. If you don't, nothing can be done to help you because you're already destroying yourself. You've decided to lose by your own hands. Anything else before we go? Rabbi, don't you think that if we actually did have an exact timing Well, the thing is, though, that although what you're saying makes rational sense,

1:55:37like I said, we don't question God, but to show you why your rational sense is irrational and wrong, you have to understand there's a rule in the world that Hashem runs His world according to a set of rules that He created. One of them is the rule of free choice. He has to give us free choice to choose right or wrong. If we knew that the deadline is a week from now or a year from now, Therefore, our right to free choice is now no longer free choice. Why? Because we know this is the deadline. That's it. So it's no longer our decision to be righteous. It's simply the end. Okay, so I'm not choosing it; I'm forced into it. That's not righteousness. You understand, if somebody puts a gun to your head and says, "Well, either give me your money, or I'm gonna shoot you," that's not free choice. That's putting a gun to your head, you understand? So if Hashem told us exactly when it's gonna be, that's putting a gun to our head. That's not free choice. So that will defeat all of what He's done over the last nearly 6,000 years. Why is the last generation not going to have free choice when everybody else did? And it's then, so even though it would seem to help people if we knew the deadline, that would not happen ever simply because it would defeat the purpose of the creation and...

1:56:53So that's why we simply don't guess, don't bother to guess, don't care to guess, and don't need to guess. Because even if we knew that Mashiach is going to be here in a year, that's still not going to help us. Because either way, we have to do teshuva today. And the reason why we have to do teshuva today is what if we don't make it a year? Who guaranteed that you're going to be here tomorrow? Who guaranteed that I'm going to be here next week? Who? Nobody guaranteed it. So what's to say that even if you know that Mashiach is going to be here in a year from now, what's to say that any one of us is going to live to see it? Now if I'm going to wait, I'm going to do teshuva, I'm going to do teshuva, but I know I have a year. Guess what? I'm going to take my time because I know I have a year, but what if I'm not here next week? Chas v'shalom, but in reality, that can happen. What if somebody says, "I have a year, so this month I'm gonna learn about Shabbat. Next month, I'll learn about Yom Tov. The month after that, I'll focus on another topic. Let's say in 12 months, I plan to learn the entire Torah. In 12 months, I'll be the biggest talmid chacham in the world." But guess what? What if you only have three months to live? You would do things differently. Hence, the point is that Hashem does not want us to know about...

1:58:04neither the time of when Mashiach is gonna come nor the time that a person will exit this world, because knowing that would actually remove his free choice. That's why even David HaMelech, when he asked Hashem, "When will I die?", Hashem said, "I cannot tell you." The only thing that he was righteous enough to get was the day of the week. which was Shabbat. Other than that, Hashem told him that He cannot tell him when he's going to die. So if David HaMelech was not given this information, obviously nobody else will either. B'ezrat Hashem, next week we have our shiurim continuing again. We have Sunday, we have the Bitachon series, Tuesday. We have the Igeret HaRamban, and Wednesday, B'ezrat HaShem, we'll be back here to do the questions and answers. As far as the week after that, we'll have only a shiur on Sunday, because I'll be in New York, B'ezrat HaShem, but we'll talk about it then, we'll get closer to that schedule. Anything else pressing? Okay, last question. So, you said that everything that HaShem wants you to know is in Hebrew, but it's not in the Torah. Okay. And the thing He doesn't want you to know is what you do not know, He's not going to say it, that's it.

1:59:09Okay. Three years ago, right? Yeah, three years ago. Okay, so how does this, does it make sense? Does it not make sense? What's your opinion on that? When it first came out, I saw it. And even though, to the better part of the world, everything he said was new, anyone that learned Torah did not learn a single thing. Why? Everything he said is already written in the Torah. He didn't say a single ḥiddush. You go look at the book of Zechariah, chapter 14. It gives even more details than he gave. You go look at Ezekiel. It gives more details than he gave. You go look at certain parashot in the Torah. It gives more details than he gives. You look at Masechet Sanhedrin. It gives more details than he gave. You look anywhere in the Torah. It gives even more details than he gives. So nothing that he said was new. Nothing. It was new to other people.

2:00:23and it perhaps maybe motivated some people to change their life, which in essence seems like at least part of the purpose of why HaKadosh Baruch Hu gave this kid a shot. But if anybody only stayed religious because they thought that the kid had the exact timing of Mashiach and Mashiach was going to come in six months, like some people understood from his message, then unfortunately most of those people are probably not keeping Shabbat anymore. Because he made the mistake of putting a specific time, so the kid—it's cute, hopefully he did teshuva and is still learning Torah. But the reality is that anyone who learns Torah seriously knows that it doesn't matter. We don't need to wait for somebody to die and then come back to life to tell us to do teshuva. We can just listen to Moshe Rabbeinu. We can listen to Rabbi Akiva. We can listen to HaKadosh Baruch Hu Himself. That's all we need to listen to. Hashem says, every prophet told us to do teshuva from the beginning of time until now. Every prophet told us to do teshuva. We don't need anybody to die and tell us to do teshuva. But some people need a message specifically. And because HaKadosh Baruch Hu loves His children so much, He gives you private messages. Technically, if I was God, I'd tell you guys, listen, this is the book. You like it, good. You don't like it, I have a special place called Gehinnom for all of you.

2:01:46Or what I'm going to do to you if you don't listen. That's why I'm not God, by the way. Why? Because... But HaKadosh Baruch Hu loves you dearly. And He says, listen, I have this book. It's a beautiful book. It's a love letter. And I love you so much that I know you're not going to read the book. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to send you a kid's book. I'll send you a kid's book. Why? Because the kid's book you're probably going to read. The YouTube video you're probably going to watch. I'm going to create YouTube for you. I'm going to create Google for you. I'm going to create Facebook for you. I'm going to create some crazy Wall Street guy to come from the end of the world to teach you for free. I'm going to do so many things to give you the message in so many ways that it's going to come out of your nose. I'm going to create WhatsApp and ButtsApp and TootsApp and all this stuff. I'm going to give you messages through cookies. I'm going to give you messages through car accidents. I'm going to give you messages in dreams. I'm going to give you messages through autistic kids. I'm going to give you messages in so many ways. Why? Because I love you. But if you don't get the message, then you're on your own. Okay? No, He's going to run it. Why? Because it's reward and punishment. It's reward and punishment, rabotai.

2:03:01loves you. So He's giving you the message in a million and a half different ways. That means that once we all arrive, there's no shame in heaven, Shamayim. We deserve this because we worked hard for it. We worked hard to get to Gan Eden. If we arrive again, no guess what? We're going to say, "Hashem, you're right. You gave me a million and a half messages." You gave me a million and a half messages. The WhatsApp and the WhatsApp and Facebook and all the shtuyot in the world. You gave me the messages. I didn't want to listen. I didn't want to listen. I liked the goyim too much. I liked the hamburger too much. I liked stealing too much. I liked raping too much. I liked killing too much. I liked all the sins too much. I didn't want to listen. Even though You sent me messages a million and a half different ways, I didn't want to listen. But now that I know the truth, even more so than I did back then... I know I deserve the punishment. So you see, that's why the Beit Din of Shamayim, Hashem doesn't make the judgment guilty or innocent. The person himself does it. Hashem, I'm guilty. Please put me in Gehenom.

2:04:11Why? Because at that moment of truth, when the person sees all of the different messages that HaKadosh Baruch Hu gave him throughout all of his life, and at the same time, all of the other kindnesses that Hashem gave him. through all of his life. He gave him a wife. He gave her a husband. He gave him kids. He gave him food. He gave him air. He gave him things where he didn't know. There were meetings behind the scenes to fire him, but Hashem sent some special person into that meeting to convince the people to hire him and not fire him, and to give him a raise instead. And all types of miracles that happened. But he never saw them. He never knew. And finally, he's going to see all the beauty, all the kindness that HaKadosh Baruch Hu gave him. Then he's gonna be shown all of the ungratefulness he returned to God. All of the times he violated Shabbat, all of the times he wasted seed, all of the times he caused other children to sin and end up being gay, all of the times he stole, she stole, he cheated, she cheated, all of the times that instead of returning to Hashem at least some good, all the times we returned terrible.

2:05:26And we feel such shame at that moment when we see all the greatness He gave us, all the kindness He gave us, and all the messages He gave us. And then you see how ungrateful and disgusting we behaved. We asked for Gehinnom. Do you understand? So you see, Rabotai, the key is to listen to the words that I said, in the name of the Torah and get the message that way. Don't wait for the message when it's too late. This is the way you were supposed to get the message today. Tomorrow you may get it on WhatsApp, the next day on YouTube, the next day on Facebook, but at some point, the time is gonna run out. Don't be one of these people that has to see his own shame. Because he didn't do teshuva. Because she didn't do teshuva. Don't be one of those people. Be one of those people that's smart and clever enough to say, you know what?

2:06:30Hashem, I got the message. I got the memo. I'm gonna change. It's a kid's book you want me to read? I'll read the kid's book. It's a big Chumash you want me to read? I'll read the Chumash. It's a Shulchan Aruch that's the size of the equator you want me to read? I'll read the entire Shulchan Aruch. Whatever you want me to do, I'm gonna do, HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Why? Because You do so much good for me and You gave me so many signs. Why wouldn't I? Why shouldn't I? After all, it's for my own good. We'll be right back. We'll be right back.