Preparing For A Miracle (Five Towns New York)

0:26Thank you very much for having me. It's my first time in Five Towns. Before we start, we always have to remember the hosts. This shiur will be for Ilui Nishmat Tamar Bat Mazal, and also for Hatzlacha Rabbah, to our two dear sons, Eddie, Ephraim Ben-Tamara, and Mark Ben-Tamara. Also for a refuah shlema for Shlomo Ben-Kumri, Sveta Chai Bat-Mazal, Arkady Ben-Ephraim, Rochel Bat-Sara, Miriam Bat-Abigail, Chaim Ben-Sara, Tamara Bat-Rachel, to our two dear sons, Eddie, Ephraim ben Tamar, and Mark ben Tamar. Also for a refuah shlema for Shlomo ben Kumri, Sveta Chaya bat Mazal, Arkady ben Ephraim, Rachel bat Sara, Miriam bat Abigail, Chaim ben Sara, Tamara bat Rachel, Alec ben Azaria, Artur ben Tamara, Mikhael ben Rachel, also for Levana bat Sara, Rav Ephraim ben Shulamit, David ben Ezra, Doris bat Yora, and Hatzlacha Rabah for Eren ben Tziona, Rotem bat Simcha, Roy ben Tziona, Tziona bat Lili, Chanina ben Rachel,

1:52Levana bat Simcha. And also for Le'ilui Nishmat, David Tzvi ben Yosef Yohanan. HaKadosh Baruch Hu, yevarech otam. Zot Hashem, and also all of the people that have come here, Baruch Hashem, to learn Torah, Ashreichem Yisrael. Now, I'm going to start, you know, everything is siyata dishmaya, really. People always ask me, what are you going to talk about? And the answer is, I have no idea. So, and the reason why is because it all depends on what HaKadosh Baruch Hu wants this crowd to listen to. You know, a speaker, if he has a good kavana, meaning his intention, is to help the people get closer to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, then he doesn't necessarily need to worry too much about preparing a speech. And the reason why is because even if he prepares or he doesn't prepare, as long as he learns Torah, HaKadosh Baruch Hu is going to put the words in his mouth that are specific for the people that are watching. Now, sometimes I try to beat the system. What do I do? I try to prepare the speech...

3:11I come to the shiur, I talk for three hours, I look at my list, I see I didn't speak about even one thing from the list. Why? Because HaKadosh Baruch Hu wanted me to say something else for that particular crowd. Many times, people come to the shiurim and say, "Listen, Rabbi, I have a question." I said, "Okay, after the shiur, you can ask as many questions as you want." The shiur ends, three hours later, I said, "Okay, so what about your questions?" He goes, "No, no, the shiur answered my questions." Why? Because you came to the shiur, HaKadosh Baruch Hu gave the speaker specific words just for you. So when you come... to an actual shiur Torah, you become part of the shiur. It's not just attending like le'havdil, the goyim, who go to baseball and football games and have a lot of fun together. Am Yisrael is an Am Kadosh. Am Yisrael is a chosen people that HaKadosh Baruch Hu gives our neshama superpowers if we just use it the right way. To such an extent that when you attend the shiur, it's not like the goyim attend a football game. When you attend the shiur, you become part of the reason the speaker is going to say certain things. Now, one idea that I did have, that I'm sure is going to give you guys some thoughts, some negative, some positive, is a question. The question is, how much, if, actually, you know what, two questions. First question. Everyone, obviously, has heard about the Holocaust. Even though this generation doesn't know very much about the Holocaust, Baruch Hashem, we still have people that understand what the Holocaust is. How many people here know somebody that either survived or, unfortunately, passed in the Holocaust? Why raise your hands?

4:41Quite a few people. Okay. Okay. So now, if you had a chance to save that one person, had a chance to save any Jew, even if it's not somebody you know, how much would you pay for it? Assuming numbers don't matter. You have all the money in the world. You're like, I don't know, Bezos from Amazon. $130 billion just got cut in half from a divorce. No? How much would you pay? To save one Jewish neshama, how much? Give me a price. A million dollars, two million dollars, five dollars. How much is a Jewish neshama worth? Priceless. Okay, so if somebody told you, give me ten million dollars to save one Jewish neshama, are you paying it or not? If somebody said, give me one million dollars, not ten million dollars, one million dollars to save one Jewish neshama, would you save it or not? What if I told you we could have saved a million, a million, for two million dollars? Meaning two dollars a body. Would you pay? Unfortunately, some people didn't pay. There's a book, a very disturbing one. I don't read very many secular books unless they have something to do with Am Yisrael and are for the sake of teshuva. It's a very disturbing book I've been reading. This book is called "51 Documents: 51 Documents about the Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis." And it's different letters.

6:11that the founders of Zionism, if you will, are not exactly what a lot of people think. I mean, people who like Israel think that if you like Israel, you have to be Zionist. Well, the reality is if you actually learn about some of these Zionists, you realize that if you like Israel and you like Jews, you're supposed to be anti-Zionist. And the reason why is because the founders of Zionism weren't exactly what the picture tells. One example is the fact that Herzl, was still to this day celebrated as a leader. What a lot of people don't know is that in his personal journal, he has letters that he had with the Pope. In one of the letters to the Pope, he said that his solution to anti-Semitism is to do to the rest of the Jews what he did with his son, which is not to circumcise them and to convert them to Christianity. Because that's what Herzl, that was his belief. He says, you want to eliminate anti-Semitism? Eliminate the Jews. No more Jews. This is the Jewish leader. Now, you ask an average college student, university student in Israel about Herzl, he won't tell you this because they don't teach this in school. I took classes in university here in America at Binghamton University about Zionism, and I promise you they didn't tell us this stuff. Now, one of the other things they didn't tell us is that some of these Nazis had a price.

7:36And at one point, one of the generals over there told us that he's willing to sell 25,000 Hungarian Jews for $50,000. And in this letter that exposed this by Dr. Rezső Kasztner, apparently, those 25,000 students, those 25,000 Jews weren't saved. They didn't want to come up with the money. $2 was too much. Now, if this wasn't enough, there was also a guy by the name of Joel Brand. It's a very famous story. You can look up on Wikipedia or Google who Joel Brand is. Joel Brand negotiated a deal with the Nazis to try to save one million Jews. The Nazi says, "Okay, we'll give you 1 million Jews for 10,000 trucks. That's what we want. Value each truck, let's say, at $5,000. That should be a decent price for a bunch of Jews, no?" When he tried to do it, his own Zionist teammates sabotaged him and threw him into jail until the war was over and until those million people were dead.

9:02Now you ask yourself, why would one Jewish person do this to another Jewish person? That's because one of the things that the Torah teaches us is that Judaism is not just something you're born into. Judaism is something you must practice. If you're born to a Jewish mother, that's good, you're a very lucky person, but that doesn't make you a Jewish person by default, meaning that you're gonna die Jewish. You're a Jew, but if you do not follow what the rest of the book that says that you're Jewish says, your Judaism is put on suspension. If a person reads the Torah, he quickly understands that didn't invent Judaism from day one, meaning he didn't make Jewish people. Avraham Avinu was not a Jew. He was a Noahide. And the reason why is because Judaism was created at the time of Mount Sinai. That's when we became Jews. What changed at Mount Sinai? The only thing that changed is that we got a book. We got a Sefer Torah. We got a written Torah, we got an oral Torah, and we got the Ten Commandments. That's what we see in Parashat Yitro.

10:19HaKadosh Baruch Hu tells Moshe Rabbeinu, Moshe Rabbeinu tells Am Yisrael, what are the things we got at Mount Sinai? We got a written Torah, we got an oral Torah, which includes the Gemara, the Shulchan Aruch, the Zohar, and so on. And we got the Ten Commandments. If you follow these rules, good. If you don't follow these rules, not so good. That's why the Rambam wrote 900 years ago, That there are 13 foundational beliefs that a Jew must have in order for him to be practicing his Judaism. Meaning he could wear a kippah or not wear a kippah. He could, you know, wear black shoes or not wear black shoes. Wear a shtreimel, not wear a shtreimel. Wear a beard, not have a beard. That doesn't make you Jewish. There's plenty of Osama bin Laden's in the world with a beard. Beards grow for free. Keeper, there are so many people who are not Jewish that cover their head. That doesn't necessarily make you Jewish. You should do it if you're a Jew, but nonetheless, it doesn't make you Jewish. HaKadosh Baruch Hu says if you follow these basic principles, you're practicing your Judaism. Now, one of those things is the knowledge and understanding of reward and punishment, meaning every Jew must believe that there is a reward and a punishment for every act that we do.

11:35The fact that you're sitting here, for every second that you're here, you're getting a reward. Why? Because we're learning Torah. We're not talking about baseball or basketball; we're talking about Torah. Every second here, you're getting a mitzvah. Every mitzvah you make, you create an angel. That angel is going to help you in your life. If a person eats kosher food, if he did a beracha, that's another mitzvah. If he said Birkat Hamazon, that's another mitzvah. If tomorrow he goes for minyan, he prays Shacharit, that's another mitzvah. If he does Mincha and Arvit, that's more mitzvot. If he does business in a kosher way, it's another mitzvah. And so on and so forth. Every time a person does the opposite, he eats like the goyim eat. Whatever's in front of him, he eats, it doesn't matter if it walks or it doesn't walk, you know, like the Chinese people. They eat whatever walks or doesn't walk. As long as it's something that's soft, they eat it. That's why, by the way, that's why Adam HaRishon wasn't Chinese. That's how we know. If he was Chinese, he'd eat the snake and ruin the whole story. But the reality is, if we eat like goyim, meaning every time, whatever's in front of us, we eat kosher, not kosher, bracha, no bracha, there's no mitzvah there. It's the opposite. It's a sin. So Hashem says, if you're making a sin, you do the opposite, the opposite effect. Every Jew has to believe this. There is no such thing as a person being a criminal without a punishment.

12:49So then you're going to ask, wait a minute, but how come there are so many people driving on Shabbat even though Hashem says no fire on Shabbat? And one of my students who is an engineer says that every time you press the gas pedal, depending on how fast you're going, it's anywhere between 3,000 to 6,000 fires. Just pressing the gas pedal. Now we're talking about driving 3, 4, 5 miles. You press the gas pedal, it's between lighting 3,000 to 6,000 fires. You drove for 15 minutes; by the time you got to shul driving on Shabbat, you probably made somewhere in the neighborhood of a million aveirot. Unfortunately, in Florida, we have an epidemic. A lot of people think it's a bigger mitzvah to go to shul than to keep Shabbat. So they drive to shul on Shabbat. There's no bigger mistake than that. One of the beautiful things I saw about the shul, That's mamash kavod to the rabbis and to the kehillah. Right in your parking lot, you say this parking lot is closed on Shabbat. I need you guys to lend me some of those signs so I can put them in Florida because apparently, they don't have the knowledge of this. A lot of people drive on Shabbat, and it's a very big problem in the world today because people think that it's a bigger obligation to go to shul than to keep Shabbat. Hashem says otherwise. Now, what's the big deal of keeping Shabbat? Shabbat, Rabotai Yekarim...

14:05It's one of the things that HaKadosh Baruch Hu calls the brit. Meaning this is the deal. This is the covenant. If a Jew keeps Shabbat, HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, I'm going to give you blessings. A Jew doesn't keep Shabbat, HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, your Judaism is now put on suspension. What does it mean your Judaism is on suspension? There are 12 times in the Torah that HaKadosh Baruch Hu mentions Shabbat. 12 times. Every single time. He mentioned Shabbat, keeping it or violating it, right next to it. You could test me, you could check it out yourself. Right next to it, He talks about idol worship. Meaning, keep Shabbat, get blessing. Don't keep Shabbat, He says, all types of horrible things. Death penalty, shorter life, all types of things. But then, right next to it, the very next verse usually, he says, by the way, idol worship is also bad. Praying to some statue, praying to Yoshke, like the Christians, praying to some rabbi that died, praying to anything but HaKadosh Baruch Hu, that's also horrible. So the Chachamim come, and they say, why is this always next to it? He says, because HaKadosh Baruch Hu

15:18says if a person keeps Shabbat, he's fulfilling the Torah. If he violates Shabbat, he's like an idol worshiper. That's why the Rambam writes in Hilchot Shabbat, chapter 30, last halacha. He says, a Jew that violates Shabbat on purpose is considered 100% an idol worshiper. Yeah, but I love Hashem. How do you love Hashem if you're cheating on Him every Shabbat? It's like saying to your wife, honey, I love you, but what do you think about my girlfriend? It doesn't work. HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, this Shabbat, this is the brit. This is the deal. This is the deal. You keep Shabbat, we're on good terms. You don't keep Shabbat, it's not good. You're cheating on Me, HaKadosh Baruch Hu says. So that means that a Jew can live a life 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 years, thinking he's going to Gan Eden because he gives tzedakah, because he, you know, helps people, he's a very nice guy, he doesn't murder anybody, at least no one knows about it. He does all types of things, but he doesn't keep Shabbat. He goes up to Shamayim after 120 years, and they say, "I'm sorry, you were very nice to people, but you were very, very bad to God. The judgment is not favorable."

16:31Why? There's reward and punishment. You got the reward for all the good things that you did in the world that you lived in. But now that you were really bad to God, unfortunately, there's an outcome for it. Now, unfortunately, right now, the very basic knowledge that I just gave you is unknown by nearly 80% of Klal Yisrael in the world. Now, even though what I just told you is basic aleph bet of Judaism, This is what your five or six-year-old is supposed to learn. This is what we were all supposed to learn at five or six years old, not at 20, not at 30. At five years old, you're supposed to learn this: that Shabbat is the ikar. This is the foundation. Without it, there's no Judaism. HaKadosh Baruch Hu minimized Himself in order to create Shabbat. He didn't need seven days to create the world. He didn't need six days. He didn't need five days. He didn't need anything. In reality, He created everything in an instant. But He spread out the creation over six days in order to stop creating, because that's the only thing that you can also do. You can't create anything. You all may be talented, you all may be wonderful, you may be very, very smart, but you cannot create a thing. Why? You can innovate, but you cannot create. No one can create in the world other than HaKadosh Baruch Hu. We could innovate; we could take a seed and turn it into a human by using the system that HaKadosh Baruch Hu created.

17:55We could take money and we can buy something with it. We could take an idea that HaKadosh Baruch Hu puts in our head and we could use it for something, but we cannot create anything. HaKadosh Baruch Hu is the only One that can create. So HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, now, since you cannot create, but I can, what can we have in common? What can we do in common? Oh, so you know what? There's going to be one day that I also don't create, Shabbat. I created the world in six days. I spread the creation over six days. On the first day, I put Shamayim and Aretz. Second day, third day, fourth day, fifth day, sixth day. On the seventh day, I'm not creating. Why? Because that's the one thing that we can do in common. That's how you know you're my son, you're my daughter. We have something in common. In essence, HaKadosh Baruch Hu created the whole world for you, created Shabbat just for you, so when a person doesn't keep it, Hashem says, you're cheating on Me. You're violating the covenant. And that's why it's very important for Am Yisrael to know this basic stuff because if 80% of Am Yisrael does not know this because they're not keeping Shabbat, that means that there's something missing. There's something critical that's missing.

19:09Now, at the time of the Holocaust, many people were in a similar situation like we are today. Anyone that studies the Holocaust a little bit will see that it's almost identical. With the exception of iPhones and iPods, everything else was the same. Intermarriage before the Holocaust in certain parts of the world, especially Germany, was over 80%. Intermarriage in America, which is the modern-day Germany, is over 80%. That means that 8 out of every 10 Jews in America, we have 6 million Jews in America, give or take, 8 out of every 10 are marrying non-Jews. Hashem yerachem. Now, that means if things continue, if they continue marrying goyim, we are one generation away from simply not having Jews. Hashem yishmor. When someone asks you, where was God during the Holocaust? The honest Torah answer is: He did it. That's the answer. How do we know He did it? He said He's going to do it. If we don't do certain things, He'll punish us.

20:32But specifically, things like intermarriage, Chilul Shabbat, things of that nature, he says the punishment is very, very heavy. To such an extent that he gives you details of what happens if we don't take Him seriously. He says, "You treat Me with casualness. You don't care about what I say. I'm going to treat you with casualness when the goyim start anti-Semitism for no reason, like Hashem Yishmor, what happened in New York just a couple of months ago. One day a bunch of people decided to start killing Jews for no reason. This was a warning shot. This is not like something that just happened and went away. It's quiet now. No, this is a warning. Hashem is talking to us very carefully. Why? He's trying to get our attention because He doesn't want to bring another Holocaust." But the Holocaust happened because we didn't take the warning shots seriously. He sent us a bunch of warning shots for a long period of time. We didn't take it seriously. So HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, listen, if I let you continue acting like goyim, continue violating Shabbat, continue the intermarriage, continue dishonesty, continue charging people interest that's absurd, like what's happening in the merchant cash advance business today, Hashem yishmor,

21:46People are just completely robbing people blind thinking it's permitted because it's going on. "No, I'm only charging him 50%, Rabbi, only 50%." I'm like, "Oh, so you're only taking half of his life, not the whole thing. You're only murdering half of him." "No, but Rabbi, it's a goy." I said, "It's worse if he's a goy. No, I thought Rabbi that you are allowed to charge a goy interest." I said, "Who told you this?" Doesn't it say it somewhere in a book? I said, you're relying, your whole Olam HaBa is relying on something you never saw in a book. You have a whole business every day, you're lending people money because somebody told you you're allowed to do it. Now, you know, if you're wrong about this, it doesn't matter if you keep Shabbat, it doesn't matter if you do everything else right. If you're wrong about this one thing, you have no Olam HaBa, you're finished. You go up to Shamayim and say, okay, yeah, you go to the hot place. Why? But I kept Shabbat. Yeah, we'll set off the fire on Shabbat. You kept Shabbat. We'll fall, shut off the fire on Shabbat. Yeah, but somebody told me. Did you see it in a book? No, but somebody told me. I'm sorry. Shegaga b'meizid. Oh, that's it. If a person makes a mistake because he didn't study, HaKadosh Baruch Hu doesn't count it as a mistake. He counts it as if he did it on purpose. Why? Because you didn't study Torah on purpose.

23:07You cannot just say, "I didn't know." You can't go up to Shamayim and say, "Hashem gave you 70, 80, 90 years, I didn't know." Okay, did you not know because you didn't get to it yet? You studied everything else except this? Or you didn't know because you just didn't feel like studying? If you didn't feel like studying, then that means you didn't know on purpose. Because for your business, you studied for 20 years. For your law degree, you studied for 20 years. To learn how to be a good jeweler, a good doctor, a good anything else, you studied for a long time. So how come you didn't learn how to be a Jew? How come you didn't learn for that? Oh, you didn't care? Okay, so you didn't care on purpose. So now you're in a business that's not kosher, and you're relying on someone who said it's kosher. But did you see it? No. So you're relying on heresy. You're relying on somebody else's word. So if somebody told you, "Listen, sir, I don't know your name, but I think your wife is cheating on you," you're just going to take his word? Or are you going to check it out? Are you just going to divorce her right away? Listen, I think your son—yeah, I think your son is trying to kill you. You're going to take his word because he just told you John's trying to kill you? You're going to check it out. Like, somebody tells you something shocking. Are you just going to accept it? You're going to check it out. In a Torah shiur, anytime you have a shiur Torah, the rabbi is supposed to provide you sources—what book it's from, where it's from, why. This shows us that what he just said comes from Mount Sinai, not his opinion. We don't care about anybody's opinion in Judaism.

24:32We care about Mount Sinai. That's the source. Mount Sinai is where we met God in public—millions and millions of people. If what someone says doesn't come from Mount Sinai, it doesn't really have much value. It's an opinion. Next week it's going to change. One day he likes blue, the next day he likes green. People's opinions change every day. God doesn't change. So if you're going to be in a business that is assuming you're allowed to do something, you have to check it out. Now, when it comes to lending, a person needs to know that even lending money to goyim with charging interest is not so pashut—it's not so simple. This means you cannot just charge them whatever you want, and you cannot even charge them interest just because of that. A lot of people don't know this, and they just assume they can do whatever they want. They don't realize that what they're actually doing is a worse sin than lending to Jews with interest. The reason why is because if you cheat a Jew...

25:33you cheat one Jew, chas v'shalom. That Jew is going to say, "You're a bad guy. You're a bad girl. I don't like you. Why? You cheated me." Now, if you cheat a non-Jew, what does the non-Jew say? "Ah, all Jews are bad." It's not just you anymore. Everybody's bad. And that's called chillul Hashem. That's called, we just desecrated Hashem's name. That's much worse than him just saying you're a bad person. So, when we do something bad to a goy, it's much, much worse than doing something bad to Jews. That doesn't mean we should do something bad to Jews. But the point here is that we have an entire industry that's been built over the last 15-20 years called cash advance, merchant cash advance, that's predominantly led by Jewish people. Many of them pretend to be religious, but... because they have no religious clothes on and the beard that grows for free. The reality is that they are doing the same thing that we did in almost every generation that had a disaster. If anyone ever read Mein Kampf from Hitler, Hitler tells the world why he hates Jews. He says the Jews created communism, the Jews

26:53of that time were communists. They hated religion, they hated Torah, they hated God. So they created something called communism. Hitler thought of himself as a God-believer. He thought of himself as someone religious, even though he murdered millions of people. He justified it based on his demented ideology. That's what Christianity has been doing for 2000 years. But the point is, one of the reasons why he hated Jews was because they were anti-God. But another reason that he sold to the people, that he said, you hate Jews also, even if you don't care if they're religious or not. It's because Jews are taking advantage of you. And people said, how? He says, the Jews are the ones that are in control of all of the banks that are lending you money with high interest. And everybody said, yes. Why? Because it was true. The Jews destroyed the economy in Germany by simply lending money with high interest. that cannot meet this demand. The business is not growing as high as they thought it was going to grow. They ended up closing down shop and saying, "Listen, I'm defaulting and declaring bankruptcy. I have to start all over."

28:03But now they found out, oh, the guy that did all of this to me, he's not blaming himself, he has to blame somebody else. Oh, it was the Jewish guy. When Hitler said, yeah, all of the lending is from the Jews, everybody joined him. Overnight, a loser named Hitler that never had anything significant or meaningful became a world leader who was very powerful. Why? HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, you didn't listen to the warnings, now here's the message. 500 years before that, in Spain, the same thing happened. 900 years ago, in England, it happened. In 1186, the Jewish people were doing really well financially, primarily in the business of lending money, ignoring the Torah rules. One day, the leader of the place goes on vacation, and they're going to decide to start mass murdering Jewish people in the streets. Why? Because they're tired of paying you interest. We're tired of doing this. This, rabotai yikarim, is repeating the same story over and over again. This is why Shlomo HaMelech, 3,000 years ago, says it's not allowed to lend people money with interest, even if they're not Jewish. So now, where does this leniency to lend non-Jews money with interest come from? It comes from the Gemara; it comes from a few chachamim who say it's only allowed if the person is a talmid chacham, meaning he studies Torah all day.

29:26So he doesn't have time to go work on Wall Street or work in the Diamond District or work in construction because he learns Torah all day, but he needs to make a living. So he has a little bit of money his parents gave him or some people gave him. He can lend it to some guy, charge him just enough money to make a living. He needs $2,000, $3,000 a month. That's all he's allowed to make. Meaning you're not allowed to become wealthy off of this money, which is the opposite of what's happening. This is an industry that has grown so big that in just the last five or six years, there have been at least half a dozen companies that have become public companies, billion-dollar companies, from simply doing a business that's destroying the economy. And if that's not bad enough, just to show you how bad it is, everyone knows that the mob, the mafia, their primary business was lending money for years, for generations. That's what the Italians did. That's what they did. You didn't have money from the bank. Nobody was able to lend you. You go to Tony from the mafia. He says, how much do you want? I want $100,000. Okay, $100,000, 30 points a week.

30:30much by the time you paid him back the loan, you gave him also two lungs too, or he took them out of you. One way or the other, he's getting his money back. This business of merchant cash advance is so horrible that the mafia shut down. They don't lend money in the streets anymore. You know how they lend money now? They also opened merchant cash advance businesses. Why? There's more money there legally. If the mafia is your coworker, that already gives you enough of an understanding. It's not a good business. HaKadosh Baruch Hu gave us warning signs. When we don't follow them, problems happen. Now, I'm sure you guys have in this beautiful Beit Knesset, you have a Me'am Loez. A Me'am Loez, Parashat Yitro. Ten Commandments under the commandment "Lo Tignov" – Don't steal. The Midrash says what happens if we steal. Hashem says if stealing becomes

31:43Allowed, meaning dishonest business. No one cares anymore. No, you need to be dishonest. Why? You need to get ahead. People confuse ambition with something that you need to get ahead. They think that just because you're ambitious, that means you're allowed to cheat also, and Hashem says once the stealing becomes allowed, meaning the government allows it, people allow it, no one says anything—not the rabbis, not the students, not anyone. Everybody's quiet while pretty much you're doing things that are illegal. HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, "I bring famine to the world," meaning everybody loses in the end. That's what the Midrash says. ...says a person that steals gets his own individual punishment. But if people start stealing in large quantities, the Midrash says Hashem brings famine to the world. How could famine come to the world? Everybody's making money. It's the opposite; you're seeing people that are in that business and other businesses that are unethical making a fortune. How could all of a sudden famine come to the world?

32:49Now, when I was a kid, if anyone did anything wrong, the whole block knew it. If somebody smoked cigarettes, parents said, "Don't hang out with this kid." Why? He smoked cigarettes. Today, everybody smokes. Nine-year-old, ten-year-old, eleven-year-old, people don't think much of it. If someone was divorced, someone was divorced on the block, people would say, "No, don't hang out with him." Why? His parents are divorced. It's not good. Everybody knew he was divorced. It wasn't like, it wasn't so popular today. Today, it's like a good thing to be divorced. It's like a mitzvah. People are like, no, I'm committing a mitzvah, rabbi, I give a get. It's a mitzvah, no? People don't understand that divorce is not exactly a mitzvah that we're supposed to fulfill. But unfortunately, people are doing it, especially in the secular world. In the secular world, you have a better chance of winning the lotto than staying married past five years. But if somebody was divorced, everyone knew it. Now, why is there so much divorce today? Why is there so much consumption of drugs today? Because we live a life that's immoral. We live a life where we share our business with the world. You have all types of TV shows where people pretty much sell the most sensitive details of their lives.

34:14how their body looks, even without clothes on, what they do in their private life, what they do in their marriage, what they do when they cheat on their marriage, what they have done, what they're going to do. People share their entire lives just for a few dollars. So much so that in the middle of the street, you see people doing their business and no one says a thing. We live a life that's the opposite of what HaKadosh Baruch Hu says. HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, "You shall be holy because I am holy." What does it mean to be holy? Holiness starts with the way we treat ourselves in terms of modesty, in terms of promiscuity, in terms of how we treat ourselves, whether we are moral people or not, meaning whether we're sharing our business with the world or we're keeping part of our life private. Now, in the Torah, you're going to see that a righteous person, like, for example, Noach or Yosef, are called tzaddik. A righteous Jew, a male righteous Jew, is called a tzaddik. But you're never going to see in the Torah a woman called tzaddeket. That word exists, but you're not going to see it in the Torah. You're not going to see Sarah tzaddeket, even though Sarah was a tzaddeket.

35:29Olia tzaddeket—you're not going to see that. You're not going to see tzaddeket anywhere in the Torah. What are you going to see? Anytime Hashem wants to give a woman a compliment in the Torah, what does He say? She is modest. Meaning that if she's not modest, there's no way for her to be a tzaddeket. And that's why the Gemara in Massechet Sotah, second page... beginning of the Gemara, it says if a person is righteous, if he is a tzaddik, HaKadosh Baruch Hu is going to send him a modest woman. If he's a rasha, if he's a wicked person, Hashem is going to send him an immodest woman, a prutza. She says, how come it's a modest one? And how come if he's righteous, he gets righteous? If he's wicked, he gets wicked? If he's a tzaddik, he gets a tzadeket. If he's a rasha, he gets a prutzah. How come? What does modesty have to do with the wickedness? What's going on? She says, if she's modest, then she's much more likely to be righteous, much more likely to be a tzadeket. Not a hundred percent, but much more likely. But if she's not modest...

36:48there's zero chance of her being righteous. Zero, no chance in the world. Why? Because every time she walks around immodestly, other guys look at her and start pretending in their head that they're her husband. Meaning she leads them to start thinking things that are inappropriate. She's leading them to sin. She's leading them to all types of thoughts that are not good. Those thoughts only belong to her husband. She's not married? Okay, she has to wait until she gets married. Every time a woman walks around immodestly, she's creating sins, not only for herself but for other people. Why is this so common in the world today? Why is every woman in the world today almost walking around with her entire business showing? It's almost like they think the fewer clothes they have, the better they look. Even if they're 500 pounds, they think that it doesn't matter if they have clothes. No, but man, you see certain people, they belong in a zoo, but they walk around with no clothes on, just like in the zoo. How come? Because we've gotten so confused in the situation, we think that fewer clothes means pretty. You're never going to see the Queen of England walking around in a bathing suit, never. Why? She treats herself like a queen.

38:03But a bat Yisrael that really is a queen, unfortunately sometimes walks around not so much like a queen. How come? Confusion. Lack of knowledge of the law. Living an immoral life. Living a life without understanding what is expected of us by Hashem. Now, when people live such a life, and they engage in all types of things, such as promiscuity—every other day there's a new wife, every other day there's a new husband—nightclubs, mixed dancing, all of these different things that Hashem says He hates. This leads to problem number two. In the same Midrash, when HaKadosh Baruch Hu talks about morality, He says that if a person lives an immoral life, Hashem brings a plague to the world. But people have been living an immoral life for a while. In the last 40 years, fashion has changed dramatically. If you look at pictures of your great-grandparents, early 1900s, Baruch Hashem, whether they were Jewish or non-Jewish, they were modest. Even the goyim would cover their hair, the women. Even the goyim. I one time went to a government building to get a passport in Florida.

39:16And they have, you know, in Florida, they have all these pictures on the walls in these government buildings. And you see pictures of, I am assuming, non-Jewish people on a beach. A bunch of non-Jewish people sitting on a beach. They were all wearing dresses more modest than some of the Rabaniyot in the world today. Covering their hair, dresses bigger than their body. That's how they were going to the beach. I wish people walked in the street like this today. but this was how Jews were. Today, it's the opposite. The less clothes, the better, people think. So this type of life, HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, when people act like this, they're immodest, they think immodestly, they watch things that are immodest on television, on the internet, they speak immodestly, they curse, all types of things that are against Hashem. Hashem says, if it becomes on a massive scale, then the individual issues, the individual punishments that people get are no longer enough. What does He bring? He brings plagues, epidemics. If you notice, the last 20 years, we've had quite a few. We had SARS in 2003, I believe. SARS was a miracle. Why? It was supposed to destroy the world. There was no cure. If you touch somebody that had it, that's it, finished. It wasn't like AIDS from the '80s.

40:45where you have to do something in order for Hashem to have mercy. But SARS, you don't have to do anything. You're in an elevator, the next guy next to you has something, that's it, finished. He gave you a handshake, hey, how are you? Finished. There was no cure. Started killing people like flies. Then disappeared. Hashem made a miracle, it disappeared. Then we had another one, MERS I think it was called, or something else a few years later, 2013. Also, miracle, now we have corona. Corona is worse than anything we've ever seen in the world. Reason, not only is there no cure, you don't need to touch the person. With SARS, you had to do something. With SARS, you had to touch the guy at least, hold his hand, you know, a few hours after, finished. Either way, those viruses died after a few days. Meaning, if he touched something, after two days, that's it. Even if he touched it, the virus dies. With corona, they found that if someone touched something, nine days later, the virus is still alive. There's no cure. And you don't have to touch anything. You just have to be in the same room as some of these people, Hashem Yirachem. That means, Rabotai HaYekarim,

42:12Based on some basic calculations that some mathematicians put together, ten months without a miracle, every person in the world has this disease. Now, I have no doubt in my mind that HaKadosh Baruch Hu is going to make a miracle and we're all going to be okay if we do teshuva, if we do something about it, if we take the signs seriously. Because right now, this Midrash from Parashat Shavua from two weeks ago... ...gave us the answer. You see, if the immorality, sexual immorality becomes rampant, everybody starts acting like they're zoo animals, walking around like zoo animals, and that becomes the normal thing, HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, I'm going to bring a plague. But also, if stealing, if stealing also becomes normal, also becomes a thing that people do, and no one says anything, I'm going to also bring famine. How do the two connect? If you notice, the places... Italy, China, Iran—all of these other places—any pictures you see on the internet, what do you see? Immediately after somebody was caught with something in Iran, in Italy, immediately, like within a day of somebody being found with this disease, all of the supermarkets are empty. Everybody goes to the stores and empties out the shelves—no more food. If they find one person, chas v'shalom, in America...

43:39Two people, three people, five people. You have 400 million people here. It's not that hard to get five people, ten people that have it. Supermarkets are not going to have any food. Stocking up is not going to help anybody. People think, oh no, I'm going to stock up. I'm going to buy a bunch of food. I'm going to go on Amazon, buy every cookie they have. That's not going to help you. Why? This is a gezera from Hashem. This is a decree from HaKadosh Baruch Hu, meaning us stocking up, us buying guns, us buying cookies, all that stuff is not going to help us. Why? That's materialism. HaKadosh Baruch Hu runs the world. He doesn't want us to buy cookies. That's not the way to do teshuva. He wants us to do teshuva. He wants us to start changing certain things. If we're not keeping Shabbat, start keeping Shabbat. If we're not modest, put some clothes on. If we're not honest in our business, start being honest. If we're not learning Torah, how are you doing anything right? Every Jewish person must learn a little bit every day. There's no exceptions. It doesn't matter how busy you are. Now, in the beginning, when I first started learning, it was very difficult for me. Number one, I was very sick. For anyone who doesn't know my story, there are flyers in the lobby over there with a QR code on the back of them. If you put your phone on top of it to read the QR code, exactly, that's what he has in his hand.

44:57You look at the QR code, it goes directly to the movie about my personal life and why I do what I do today. I used to be on Wall Street. I used to make millions and millions of dollars. Baruch Hashem, I lost every single penny and almost my life. Now, it's a fantastic story. I don't want to go over it today because there are other things to learn and the movie's available already. But the point is, Rabotai, that when I first started learning, it was very difficult. Number one, I was very sick. I was fighting for my life. I was in pain 24 hours a day. No break. I was in the hospital every single month. My brother, God bless him, he's over there. He used to see me in the hospital, come visit me all the time. Why? Right there, you see him. He used to see me in the hospital all the time. Everybody looked at me. It was uncomfortable to look at me. Why? Every few minutes, I'd start screaming because I was in pain all the time. It was a nightmare. A nightmare, not just for me, but for anyone that was watching me. Nightmare. But that was my life, baruch Hashem. Why do I say baruch Hashem? Because my life was the opposite of what Hashem decreed for me. So once I started learning Torah, it was hard. Why? It was the opposite of what I was used to. I was used to looking at Wall Street reports and company financials, and how to make money, and businesses, and so on. And now, all of a sudden, I'm dealing with holy things. I had no idea how to do it. I had no idea what I was talking about. No idea. So, after five minutes, I'd fall asleep. I'd start reading it, fall asleep after five minutes. Listen to a shiur, five minutes, fall asleep.

46:25But I knew this is the cure. And I continued going. Little by little, five minutes became ten minutes. And then ten minutes became fifteen minutes. And fifteen minutes became an hour. And two hours. And ten hours. And so on and so forth. So when I first started, I made a commitment: fifteen minutes a day, no less. Hopefully more, but no less than fifteen minutes. That means nobody has an excuse. If I can start changing my life with fifteen minutes a day, for sure everybody here can do it also. Now, if you're already learning an hour or two hours a day, that means you have to increase it. Why? But if someone is only doing 15 minutes, yes, he's at a beginner level. You're not at a beginner level. You also need a miracle. That means you have to increase too. Everybody has to do more. The rabbis have to do more, the talmidim have to do more, the rabbanim have to do more, the wives have to do more—everybody has to do more. Why? Because we right now need a miracle. That's the point; we are relying on a miracle. Now, we can't just rely on a miracle for no reason. We have to earn it. So that means we have to change certain things. Every person can start learning a little bit. Sometimes reading a book is difficult because you haven't read a book in 20, 30 years since school. So HaKadosh Baruch Hu made it easy. He created YouTube. You go to YouTube, you type in Yaron Reuven, and you'll see somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,000 shiurim. Pick one. Press play. Have a good time.

47:48That's it. You just press play, listen. Don't play with your phone while you're watching the shiur. Don't work while you're watching. Watch the shiur. 15 minutes straight. If you could do more, do more. But the point is, watch the shiur. Don't make it into background music. Watch the shiur, write down some notes, take it into memory, try to apply it. This is necessary. If you don't learn Torah, you're not going to know how to be a Jew. You're not going to want to be a Jew. Now, who is this required from? Every Jew that's alive. Whether you're religious, not religious, you know a lot of Torah, you don't know a lot of Torah, everybody is required. Why? Because HaKadosh Baruch Hu is rebuking all of us right now. All of us are in a situation where we all have to do something more. Now, another thing that we have to do ...that sometimes you get used to something. For example, sometimes, when you first get married, how excited are you? "Oh honey, how are you? I missed you so much!" Hugs, kisses, like you haven't seen them in 10 years, but you just went to the store 15 minutes ago. "Oh, I miss you honey!" Now, after a couple of years, the guy comes home and is like, "Oh, you're home? Yeah, I've been home for three hours. Okay, hi." You get used to it. Why? You're used to it already. You've been married for a few years; you're used to it. That's not good, by the way.

48:57Sometimes, if you do the same thing in marriage, your wife may be willing to tolerate it. Your husband might not tolerate it. HaKadosh Baruch Hu, not so much. We pray as Jews three times a day, no less. We're supposed to pray more, but we pray three times a day. However, sometimes we get so used to praying that it's hard for us to have kavanah. Why? Because we're used to it. Same thing, same thing. You get used to it. It becomes like a robot. Even more so, the average person goes to the bathroom six to eight times a day. You go six to eight times a day, you say it like you know it by heart. You forget what you even said. You started, you finished. You're so used to it. So HaKadosh Baruch Hu also wants to make it easy. How do you make it easy? Read it from the book. Don't do it from memory. They asked the Gaon of Vilna, Kvod HaRav, how come you still read Birkat HaMazon from the Siddur? Even a six-year-old boy knows it by heart. How come the biggest rabbi in the world is reading it from a Siddur? He says, if I read it from a Siddur, then I know I'm going to have kavanah because I'm going to look at the words. I'm going to think about the words. What do they mean? Why is Hashem picking this word? Why is Hashem picking that word? And that's going to help me have kavanah. When I do it out of memory, I get used to it.

50:25So we brought you Asher Yatzar posters. Put them on your walls. Instead of doing it from memory, look at it with the Ashkenazi, Sephardi—both sides. One side is Ashkenazi, one side is Sephardi. And if you're something else, then I can't help you. But pick one of the sides, that's it. But the point is, rabotai, you look at the bracha, say the bracha, and know that this bracha is a special bracha for refuah. If you have kavanah, you'll see some of the things that are written around it. Different chachamim, whether it was the Prophet Iyov, or it was the Ben Ish Chai, or Rav Zilberstein from Yerushalayim, talmid chacham, over there, still alive, baruch Hashem. Different chachamim spoke about Asher Yatzar. Anyone that says the blessing of Asher Yatzar, with 100% kavanah on a regular basis, is guaranteed to have refuah sheleimah. Now, if you do it sometimes yes, sometimes no, then sometimes we don't feel good, sometimes we feel good. Meaning, it's measure for measure. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Okay, so sometimes you have a cold, sometimes you don't have a cold. But if you make sure that every time you're looking at this blessing, you have kavanah, you think about the words, you think about what you're actually seeing, that every hole in your body is only open at the right time. And if it's not, if it's open at the wrong time, then it's a problem.

51:48Every closing stays closed because if it's open, that's also a life risk. You think about how your body works. It doesn't matter what you eat, whether it's an apple or a steak. It all turns to blood, and if it doesn't turn to blood, it turns into waste that leaves your body. Who told the steak to turn into blood? Who told the apple to turn into blood? Who told the candy, those little jelly beans that you ate from the kosher market, to turn into blood? How come it all turns to blood? Doesn't matter what you eat; it turns to blood or it turns to waste. This is a miracle. And the reality is, if you really think about it, how come you're able to turn the steak into blood and have all of these acids in your stomach destroy the steak and turn it into blood and the rest of it into waste? How come the stomach doesn't eat itself? The stomach is also meat. How come the stomach doesn't eat itself? How come it doesn't start eating some lungs, maybe a little sandwich from lungs? How come? It really does, actually. But HaKadosh Baruch Hu created your stomach in such a unique way that scientists discovered that the stomach regenerates its cells faster than it destroys them. What's an ulcer? When that mechanism stops working properly. When the destruction is a little faster than the regeneration, you start creating holes in the stomach. That's ulcers.

53:10So that means that right now, Baruch Hashem, we don't have any ulcers. That's a miracle. Why? Because if you eat a steak, the steak's gone, but the stomach's here. If a person thinks about this, every time he goes to the bathroom, he realizes that this is a whole miracle. The fact that I was able to leave, go to the bathroom without screaming my lungs out, is a miracle. That should have kavanah. Now, sometimes we get used to this blessing. We get used to the miracle. So we read it. We remind ourselves. These are different small things a person can do. The same thing with learning. Learning Torah, I brought you CDs. There are hundreds of CDs over there. It's the beginning of a series we called Mussar Pirkei Avot. It's somewhere in the neighborhood of maybe 80 hours' worth of shiurim on those CDs, two CDs. Once you learn those first 30 shiurim, you have another 140 from that particular series. That series goes over pretty much different aspects of Judaism, different things that will help your life, your marriage, your business. Different things like we're talking about today, but every shiur is very different. So already over there you have 80 hours' worth of shiurim. The point is, this makes your learning something that you could do anywhere. You could do it at home, you could do it in your car, you could do it anywhere you are.

54:22Who's making it easy for us so much so that we won't have any excuse. Now, over the next couple of days, we're gonna publish an interview that Rav Chaim Kanievsky, my rabbi's father, gave. He was interviewed by an organization called Hidabroot. And the reason why he was interviewed is that there was a boy who had, what was it called? Not autism, Down syndrome. Thank you. He had Down syndrome. Now, Down syndrome, anyone who knows someone who has Down syndrome or has seen someone with Down syndrome, it's not a typical situation. It's a very, very severe condition. Now, most people in America that have Down syndrome usually don't improve very much. Whatever they are, they stay, in essence, what they are. There's not much of a recovery system for them. And the system for people that have Down syndrome or any type of mental deficiency in the world today is that if he has Down syndrome, we're going to put him in a class full of people that have Down syndrome. If he has autism, we're going to put him in a class that has a bunch of people that are just like him.

55:41The Torah says the opposite. Rav Chaim Chalon has next to him a kid, who is no longer a kid, he's already almost 20 years old now, who was born with Down syndrome. But I'm not talking about a light case of Down syndrome. His own mother is next to him, his adopted mother is next to him. She adopted him with it. She says, when I first saw this boy, his tongue was hanging out of his mouth. He was completely disheveled, like the worst case you could possibly see. Why is he in this interview? Because when she brought him to Rav Chaim Chalon, Rav Chaim Chalon understood the situation. You don't have to be a genius. You see it. He said, okay, bring him to the shiur Torah. He's going to sit next to everybody else and learn Torah. And over the last few years, this young man has reached the point where he's almost completed the entire Talmud Bavli. He's almost completed the entire Shas. In the interview, he speaks normally. His face looks almost normal in comparison to what it used to be. Why? The Torah is the cure for everything. So when they ask, how come you did this, which is the opposite of what normal medicine is? He says, normal medicine is from people.

57:03people have no idea what they're talking about. They're using their logic. They're saying if he has Down syndrome, then he should go with other Down syndrome people. The problem is, if he's only going to be next to people that are just like him, that's who he has to look up to, that's who he has to compete against. He's going to be just like them. But if he is going to be surrounded by a bunch of people that are learning Torah, people that are much higher than him, and he's going to learn from them, he's going to try to be like them, and little by little he becomes even better. This is the opposite of what traditional medicine teaches. The opposite. Same thing with prison cells. Today, somebody commits a petty crime or somebody commits a big crime. Kills somebody, sometimes they go to the same jail. Sometimes they go to the same prison. Now, what do prisons do in the world? They make criminals even bigger criminals. Why? Because they're surrounded by a bunch of other criminals. So, the guy that came in for stealing, by the time he left, he already knows how to murder too. The guy that murdered somebody, by the time he left, he knows how to rape, he knows how to steal, he knows how to do a bunch of other things. Why? That was his chavruta. That was his friends. In Judaism, the Torah says there's no prison. Prison is just a place that they keep somebody before they kill them. But that's only if he violated something significant. If someone stole, according to the Torah, he has to become a slave. Who does he have to work for? He has to work for a tzaddik. Why? Learn how to be a tzaddik.

58:27Learn from him. Meaning that we don't have a prison system; we have a rehabilitation system. So we see that the rules of the Torah work better. Unfortunately, they're not popular so much in the world. But that's also because we ourselves don't know them. If we start learning them and we start seeing how we can apply these rules into the world we live in, to the best of our ability, little by little... We're changing our own life. We're changing our own environment. In the old times, the way people would get married was through a shidduch system. The father would have a son. Another father has a daughter. Okay, why don't we introduce the two people, see if they get along, see if they can talk. After a few meetings, finished. Guess what? The divorce rate was almost zero. In the really religious communities in the world, the divorce rate is almost zero, even to this day. If you hear about a divorce in the religious communities, it is not very common, but it exists unfortunately today. But not very much—1, 2, 3, or 4 percent. In the non-religious world, some places have over an 80 percent or 85 percent divorce rate. Meaning you have a better chance of winning the lotto than staying married in the secular world. And now it's gone to the point where the people that kids look up to are...

59:48celebrities. I went to yeshiva a few times, and I asked the boys, "How many of you want to be like Moshe Rabbeinu?" Not a single kid raised his hand. I asked them, "How many of you want to be like LeBron James?" I said, "He's a basketball star." Everybody raised their hand; they already knew who LeBron James is. I thought they were supposed to know because the yeshiva kids all know. They knew better than me. Everybody raised their hands. They said, "Oh, so everybody wants to be a basketball player, but nobody wants to be Moshe Rabbeinu." This isn't the yeshiva. Not one, not two, not three, not four. Why? Because that's the role model. Why is it their role model? Because apparently one of their parents also likes him. Likes him enough to let the kid watch it. That's their role model. That's what they look up to. People, young kids, whether they're religious or not religious, are looking up to celebrities. They want to be like celebrities. Why? Because a celebrity has a movie lifestyle. Everything looks good. But that's like Facebook. People put their life on Facebook, but they only put the good parts of their life. Like that one moment someone took a picture, it looks great. Five seconds later, they got a divorce though. You know, they get a family picture, but they don't show you that right before the family picture, the wife said to the husband, I don't want to be with you anymore. Or the husband said to the wife, listen, I think we should talk.

1:01:06Or the kids were saying, "Abba, listen, I have a secret to tell you. I really want to be a girl." They don't have that. They tell you a fake picture. They just show you a picture on the internet. They show you their food. Like, why do I care what you eat? People show each other their food. Why? It's fake. It's a fake life. "Look, I'm having a good time. I have a good steak." That's why it's a good life. It's all fake news. Why? Because that's our role models. We look at their life, the celebrities of the world, their fake life. Now, the problem is when you look at their fake life, what are you trying to do? You emulate them. Guess what? Celebrities, you're not a celebrity unless you got divorced four times. You cannot be a celebrity unless you got divorced a few times. That's normal in their life. Getting divorced three, four, five, six times, eh, it's normal. Oh no, he's only on his third marriage. He's only in the third one. Another two or three, then he'll settle down. Marriages turn into dating. That's not what Am Yisrael said. Am Yisrael said we cannot live like the goyim. Am Yisrael said we cannot make the mistake of thinking that the goyim have it better than us. It's the opposite. Now, the only way that we can do that is if we start learning from the books and not from the television screen, if we start learning what Hashem said, what our sages said, and not what celebrities said, and...

1:02:27The only way to do that is by censoring ourselves. Now, the Torah says that at times, a person is going to have such a yetzer hara, that yetzer hara, that evil inclination, is going to try to interfere with everything he does, especially when he tries to do teshuva, especially when he tries to change his life. There's a famous story of... Young boy named Shlomo. Now, Shlomo was from a place called Schluss. And Shlomo was in a religious family; almost everybody was religious at that time. But Shlomo was a community terrorist. Anyone he saw, he looked for a way to terrorize them. If they had a cat, he made sure that the cat knew how to fly. If they had a dog, that dog knew how to fly also. If they had something new, he made sure it didn't look new the day after. He would break it for them. He'd do them a favor. Before they break it, he'd break it for them. He terrorized the whole town. Everybody was his victim. Now one day, Shlomo is on the way to yeshiva to terrorize his rabbis. And there are two boys walking after him.

1:03:42...but they don't know that it's him, and they're talking among each other. They start fighting, so one guy calls the other guy a name, and the other guy says, "Ah, you're like Shlomo." So the guy gets upset and he goes, "Ah, no, come on now, you took it too far. You called me like Shlomo? Ah, come on, no, I'm not your friend anymore." "Okay, I'm sorry, you're not like Shlomo. You're not like Shlomo. Okay, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I took it too far." It was like it was the worst curse in the world to be like Shlomo. So now Shlomo hears this and he turns around. He says, "No, I'm right here. What's so bad about me? Why am I worse than this curse that he said to you?" He goes, "Ah, no, come on, Shlomo. You're like a mikreh avud. You're like a lost case. Nothing's going to be with you. You're a terrorist, you." Shlomo took this to heart. He knew what he was, but he never heard anybody else say it. That day, he didn't go to yeshiva. He went back home. When he got home, his father said to him, "What, that's it? You killed your teachers? That's finished? You got a heart attack today?" He goes, "No, no, Abba, I have something to tell you." He says, "What?" He says, "Abba, I want to go to the best yeshiva in the world."

1:04:49I want to go to Yeshivat Volozhin. Rabbi Chaim Volozhiner, he's the Gadol HaDor, I want to go learn in his yeshiva. His father starts laughing, "No, you want to terrorize the Gadol HaDor? No, enough problems already. Chalas, all right, Shlomo, go back to yeshiva." "No, no, Abba, I want to go to Yeshivat Volozhin." He goes, "Son, listen, just to get into that yeshiva, you have to know 250 pages of the Gemara by heart." He goes, "Abba, I want to go." He goes, "Listen, son, you want to go? Why do you want to go? Why do you want to terrorize the teachers over there? They're good people." He goes, "No, Abba, I want to learn." I said, "Really?" He goes, "Yeah, I want to learn." He goes, "Okay. I'll fall for it. Here's a couple of dollars. Here's a loaf of bread. Kol hakavod, go for it." You know, in those days, not like today, there were no buses; you went to school, you came back, you went to school, blah, blah, blah. You go, you're going. I'll see you in a few years. By seven, eight years old, you're already a grown man. Today, he's 30 years old and still living at home. a little different. So now Shlomo goes on the train, he gets to the yeshiva from Volozhin, he sees the biggest rabbi in the world, Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin. He says, Rabbi, I want to learn. He says, what do you know? He says, nothing. So what makes you think I'm going to accept you? He goes, because I want to learn. Because you want to learn? He says, yeah. He goes, yeah, here's the Gemara, start learning.

1:06:15Opens the book, starts learning. And he's learning, and he's learning. Everybody takes their break, he's still learning. Everybody goes back, he's still learning. He's learning seriously. Usually, Rabbi Chaim is very strict with whom he accepts in his yeshiva. He sees this is a serious guy. He lets him in. He's in yeshiva, he's learning. A couple of years pass. Once in a while, the boys get letters from their parents. He gets his first letter. Dear Shlomo, Your father is sick. It's time to come home and help your father by taking over the business. So little Shlomo learned some Mussar, learned that one of the mitzvot is to give honor to your parents, right? Takes the letter, comes to the rabbi, "Thank you very much for teaching me. I got to go." "What happened, Shlomo?" "I got a letter from my ima. She told me that I have to come back because my father is sick. So I just wanted to say goodbye to the rabbi." Rabbi Chaim says to him, "Sit down." Listen to me. That letter, put it in your drawer, close the drawer, and go back to learning. Yeah, but what about my parents? He goes, don't worry about your parents. Go back to learning Torah. You trust me? Of course, I trust you with my life. You trust me? Go back to learning. Okay. The Rabbi knows about it also. He also learned. But apparently, the Rabbi says, no, no, right now it's more important for you to go back to learning Torah. Okay, learn Torah. Baruch Hashem.

1:07:43He went back to learning. A couple more years passed. He gets another letter. Dear Shlomo, your mother died. Come for the funeral. Shlomo gets his stuff, comes to the Rabbi. Rabbi, listen, I gotta go. My mom died. He says, "Shlomo, you trust me?" He says, "Of course, Rabbi, I love you. You're everything to me." "Shlomo, put the letter in the drawer. Go back to learning Torah. No questions asked already. Okay, go back." Rabbi says, "Go back, go back." Rabbi also knows. It's not the first time. He goes back, he starts learning Torah again. A few more years pass. He gets another letter. "Dear Shlomo, the whole city burned down." The whole city of Slusk burned down. Please come help us. Rabbi Shlomo, Torah. Go back to learning Torah. You can't do anything. The city burned. Go learn Torah. You can do something there. Rabbi says, I do. That's how it used to be, by the way. It wasn't like today where the rabbi says we do the opposite. Back then, they actually listened to the rabbis. Baruch Hashem.

1:09:00Rabbi says, I do. He starts learning. He learns for several more years. 12 years straight he's learning. Nothing else but the book. After 12 years, a bunch of rabbis from Slusk come to Rabbi Chaim Volozhin. He says, Kavod HaRav, the head rabbi of Slusk died. We need a new rabbi. We need a big rabbi because we're having a lot of problems in the city. Rabbi Chaim Volozhin says, I have not only a big rabbi, I have the biggest rabbi in the world learning here. His name is Rabbi Shlomo Mislusk. He's the biggest rabbi in the world. They see him, they ask him questions, and he gives them all types of insights they haven't heard since Mount Sinai. He is no longer the same person, someone unbelievable; his face looks different, his middot, everything is different. They're as excited as can be to accept him. Now, before he leaves... to go be the biggest rabbi in his hometown, Rabbi Chaim Volozhin says to him, "Shlomo, listen, when you get home, don't be surprised if you see that the city didn't burn, that your father is not sick, and that your mom didn't die." He says, "What do you mean, Rabbi?" He says, "None of those things happened."

1:10:26He says, "But Rabbi, I got the letter from my parents." He says, "Yes, you got the letter. It's true, you got the letter. But it's not true." He goes, "How does the Rabbi know?" He says, "I checked. You see, your parents..." They weren't so happy he went to yeshiva. The Yetzer Hara got into their heads and said, "How can we get him to come out of yeshiva? Let's make up some lies. Let's make him feel bad." The Yetzer Hara was doing everything possible because he saw that if he stayed in yeshiva, he would turn from Shlomo the criminal to Shlomo, the biggest rabbi in the world. "I have to stop this. Let's tell him the mother died. Let's tell him the city burnt down. Let's tell him everything possible. Just get him out of there." The Yetzer Hara works in clever ways. That's why the Gemara says the Yetzer Hara has seven names. He really has more than seven names. But what is the Gemara trying to teach us? The Yetzer Hara is going to come to us in different ways. Sometimes he's going to come as a friend. Sometimes he's going to come as a business partner. Sometimes he's going to come as a child. Sometimes he's going to come as a spouse. He's going to come in different ways, different colors, different shades. The only way to beat him, Torah says, is with Torah.

1:11:35Barati Yetzer Hara, barati lo Torah tavlin. Which means that the Yetzer Hara is going to come to you in a million different ways and present you with a business proposition: "Listen, if you do business, you can make more money. If you make more money, you could donate more money, right? You want to do a big Beit Knesset, Sefer Torah, Mitzvot, right? Yeah, of course. Okay, so let's steal a little bit together." But it's business; it's not business, it's still stealing. Still stealing. The point is the Yetzer Hara is going to come to you with different masks on. A person needs to know how to defend himself. How will you know how to defend yourself? By learning every day. A little bit of learning every single day goes a very long way because that's the only way that a person is going to know how to deal with it. Now, of course, you can't stay at 15 minutes your whole life. Fifteen minutes is first grade. After a little while, you have to go to 30 minutes, and after a little while, go to an hour, and eventually get to a point where it's a little bit more. You can still work in the world, you can still make your money, you can still run your life. but you have to learn a couple of hours a day, especially if you're a guy. You have to learn in the morning, and you have to learn at night. What if I'm tired? Okay, you're tired. A lot of people do things when they're tired. You have to look at learning Torah as if it's breathing. Without breathing, you can't live. Without Torah, you also can't live. You can't live right. Now, if a person looks at the Torah that way, everything changes. There was one time a mother that was trying to teach this to her son. Her husband died, and she wanted her son to learn Torah. Now, she didn't have much money, but she made sure to give every single penny she had to get her son the best rabbi in the world to teach him every day—the best rabbi she could afford. She would borrow money, she'd work extra jobs, whatever she could, and every day, her little son Meir would learn Torah. One day, the rabbi couldn't come; he didn't feel good.

1:13:03Her husband died, and she wanted her son to learn Torah. Now, she didn't have much money, but she made sure to give every single penny she had to get her son the best rabbi in the world to teach him every day—the best rabbi she could afford. She would borrow money, she'd work extra jobs, whatever she could, and every day, her little son Meir would learn Torah. One day, the rabbi couldn't come; he didn't feel good. Not that he didn't want to come, he just didn't feel good. And the son, Meir, said, "Okay, fine, he didn't come. Okay, we'll learn tomorrow." After he said that, he started seeing his mom cry hysterically. She's crying like somebody died. He's like, "Ima, why are you crying?" She goes, "Because the rabbi is not here." Okay, Ima, we learned yesterday. "Yeah, but the rabbi is not here today." He goes, "Okay, Ima, we're going to learn tomorrow." She goes, "No, my son, you don't get the point. The rabbi is not here today. You're never going to get today again. What was yesterday was yesterday. Tomorrow, who knows if we're going to survive. You're never going to get another opportunity to learn today because the rabbi is not here today." And she started crying hysterically because today was the only thing she cared about. Now that young boy...

1:14:25He didn't understand what was going on. He's still a little kid. He's just seeing his mom crying, and it's not comfortable to see your mom cry. But what he saw was engraved into his mind. He remembered it forever. When he started going to yeshiva and he started learning with other people, he always remembered that his mom cried because he missed one day because the rabbi couldn't show up due to a stomach flu. But that day was a big deal. So he made sure to learn every day. Years passed. He went beyond yeshiva, became a rabbi, but still young. One day, he comes to the Chafetz Chaim, who was the greatest rabbi in the world at that time, and he says, "Rabbi, I have an idea. I see in yeshiva that every time a guy finishes one page of Gemara, he has a little smile on his face, like he just achieved something." So why shouldn't we have an idea that every Jew should finish one page of Gemara every day, and over seven and a half years, he would finish the entire Shas? So all of Am Yisrael could have that happiness. All of Am Yisrael could have the knowledge too.

1:15:33Fitschheim says, "Genius idea, but don't tell me. Only come to this event we're having in a few weeks. All the biggest rabbis in the world are coming to hear me speak. Instead of me speaking—I'm almost 100 years old—it's time for you to speak. But come 15 minutes late." "Okay, Rabbi, I'll do what you say," said the young 20-year-old male. It's gonna follow the biggest rabbi in the world's advice. He gets to the event, all the rabbis are there, they're waiting for the Chafetz Chaim. All of a sudden, this young guy walks in 15 minutes late. People are looking, so who's this chutzpan that's late to hear the biggest rabbi in the world? But suddenly, they see the Chafetz Chaim standing up. The old man, 100 years old, he's standing up for this youngster. He stood up, we're standing up, everybody's standing up. He must be important, this person. They're following, everybody's standing up. Now we want to hear what he says. The Chafetz Chaim says to him, come, come, come to the stage. Now everybody can't wait to hear. Maybe this is Moshe Rabbeinu. Maybe this is Eliyahu Hanavi. Maybe this is the Mashiach himself. The Chafetz Chaim must know something. He tells everybody, listen to the idea of this young man, Rabbi Meir Shapiro from Lublin. And he tells everybody the same idea as he told the Chafetz Chaim.

1:16:55before it. Of course, since the Chafetz Chaim said, "Listen to him," everyone not only listened, they liked it automatically before they heard it. And everyone applied it. And you know what happened? About a month and a half ago, almost 100,000 Jews gathered in a stadium here in New York because almost 20,000 of them, or 80,000 of them, whatever big number it was, completed that system of learning Daf Yomi. Learning one page of Gemara every single day and completing the entire Shas every seven years. Now, at some point, his friend had a dream that he told him about. He said, "I saw your mother in a dream, and your mother was wearing a very, very fancy, glorified crown full of diamonds. She told me, 'Tell my son that every single day someone learns Gemara from that system, that value, that precious day that we missed, they add another diamond to my crown. Why? Because I taught my son how valuable one day of Torah is.'"

1:18:10How valuable one day of Torah is. She's just crying for her son. She ended up being the solution for an entire generation. The point is, Rabotai, that if a person takes some of these things into their mind, if you just listen and you go home and you go back to your life, within one or two days, the impact is gone. The motivation is gone. This is why learning Torah is required every single day. Just like we eat every day, we breathe every day, we need to learn every single day. We need something to motivate us every day. Chizuk is something that's required every single day. Now, to finish off, I'm going to tell you something regarding Purim. Now, the mitzvah of Purim is not just to wear costumes or just to get drunk or half-drunk, depending on who your rabbi is. The mitzvah of Purim is to remember what Amalek did to us. You go to Parashat Zachor. At the end, it says, remember what Amalek did to you. Now, in reality, we're supposed to remember it every day. There's a minhag that's probably in your siddur that after Shacharit, you see two things.

1:19:35In your siddur, that's not part of your tefillah, but it's a minhag of Am Yisrael to do it. One thing is the list of 13 principles of faith, to every day read the 13 foundational beliefs of every Jew, that there's one God, that this God doesn't have a body or the likeness of a body, that He knows everything, including what's in your mind, that Moshe Rabbeinu is the prophet of all prophets, that the Torah will never change, And so on and so forth. The reward and punishment that I told you about. That Mashiach is going to come one day. Resurrection of the dead. So we have 13 principles of faith. After that, there's something called the 10 remembrances, which are 10 major things that happened in the history of Am Yisrael that every Jew must remember. Remember where you came from, so you know where you're going. The first thing... Naturally, it is yet another time to remember the Exodus. Remember that we were slaves, and HaKadosh Baruch Hu turned, for the first and last time in history, the slaves into the masters. Never in history has such a thing happened, not before and not after. Once in a while, you would have some slave run away from his master and maybe live to tell that story, but never was it on a massive scale of people.

1:20:54This is the first and last time in history that millions of people who were slaves turned into masters in a matter of a few minutes. Remember that, because that was the miracle of HaKadosh Baruch Hu who showed us He is the one who runs the world. Remember that the opposite can happen too. The masters sometimes turn into the slaves. We saw this several times. When Am Yisrael was in Egypt, Tell us they were much, much greater in number than the Egyptians. Much bigger. So, I mean, ask, how come they didn't kill the Egyptians then? Better yet, something more connected to us, something closer. Am Yisrael—six million of us were in the Holocaust. Six million of us were being murdered. by these evil Nazis, but who was helping them? We were. Who was managing the burning of the bodies? The slaves themselves. Who was the one that was hitting us sometimes? Us ourselves, meaning the Jews were helping destroy themselves. And you actually see there's a guy named Nicholas Nizli, who was...

1:22:18Holocaust survivor. Because he was Mengele's assistant, Mengele was much more visible. Mengele was one of these sociopath Nazis who would do different types of testing on Jewish people. He would collect all types of body parts for his sick ideology, and this Nicholas Nizli was a Jew, a non-religious Jew, who was his assistant because he was a doctor, and he would... help him dissect the bodies and do all types of horrible things. Now, he wrote a book. And he wrote in the beginning of the book, the guy that gave a foreword, wrote a commentary on this book, says that the author is clearly sick in the head, naturally because of what he went through. But also because of how he tells the story, where he tells the story, this Nicholas Nizili, who is telling the story as if what he did in the Holocaust is real medicine. Like he was still acting as a doctor, as if it's, you know, cutting up a bunch of people. It's like real medicine. It's your brother or your cousin, and you think this is medicine. So the guy is seriously sick. But the point is, he says, is that this sickness is no different...

1:23:36no more difficult to understand it than understanding the fact that there were millions of Jews in the Holocaust. But out of all of these camps, out of all of these camps, there was only one time that the Jews tried revolting and fighting back one time. During that one time they tried revolting, they blew up one of the gas chambers. They did some serious damage, meaning if they would have done it one or two more times, we would have gotten out of there. This is why nobody did anything. Why did they keep going in line, one after another, as if they didn't know they were going to get killed? Everybody knew they were going to get killed. Why didn't they fight back? same thing happened in Egypt. How come they're just letting themselves be killed? The Torah tells us that's because the koach of a Jew, the fearlessness of a Jew, is not something that belongs to him. It's something that Hashem allows him to have or doesn't allow him to have.

1:24:53When we do the will of Hashem, Hashem says, one Jew can beat a thousand goyim. Not because he's stronger than them. Not because he's smarter than them. But because Hashem will make all thousand of those goyim afraid to death of him. They won't mess with him. But when the Jew is not doing what Hashem wants, a thousand Jews cannot even handle one goy. And that's exactly what happened in Mitzrayim. We had many more Jews than Egyptians, but we were still slaves. Unfortunately, the same exact thing happened and repeated itself several times in history, most recently in the Holocaust. You had many, many Jewish people, but everybody was scared to death. No one was able to fight back. And even the few who would fight back, no one would support them because everyone else was scared. Now, The situation we have in the world today is not very different. The beauty is that we have history to learn from. Meaning, the religious people today, Baruch Hashem, they know a few things, but there's not that many of them. The non-religious, we have a lot. Which means that most of us, as a people, are not exactly doing what we're supposed to be doing. Now, in the beginning, I asked you, how much would you pay to save one Jew?

1:26:22Everybody here agreed: priceless, much more than the two dollars, right? The non-religious Jews, the founders of Zionism, weren't willing to pay two dollars for a Jewish body. Two dollars they weren't willing to pay for it. This is written in books. It's not my creation. I $2 they weren't willing to pay for a Jewish body. Why? Because they had a certain image of what they needed to get. They said the more dead Jewish people, the more likely we're going to be able to get Medinah. They wanted the world's sympathy. They cared less about the Jewish people. Many of them were Christians anyway, by the way. Point being, they cared less about Jewish people; they cared about their matarah, their goal, their agenda, and Hashem, all of you are precious neshamos that care about Am Yisrael. You care about Am Yisrael, and I tell you that you can save not just 25,000 Jews; you can save 15 million Jews for free. For free! Not even for two dollars, not for a million dollars, for free. How? Take the shiurim and

1:27:40Take the link and share it with your friends. Your friend watches the shiur, your friend watches the movie, it's going to wake up his neshamah if he still has a Jewish neshamah. It's going to wake up her neshamah if she has a Jewish neshamah. They're going to start saying, okay, you know what? I don't want to be a goy anymore. I want to be a Jew. I want to do something about it. They're going to start living a Jewish life. They're going to stop pretending to be like the goyim. That you can do for free. If you want to do something more than that, you said you would pay a million dollars to save one Jew, you could do a lot more with a million dollars. More than just save one Jew. There are many things that we can do to help Klal Yisrael. Just like this, you are obviously arranging this event, making more events, building a yeshiva that actually teaches real Torah instead of just collecting fees from parents—five thousand dollars a month—just to make them graduate with a degree, but nothing else. There are a lot of things that we, Klal Yisrael, can do in order to improve the situation of not just the religious people but everyone.

1:28:44Everyone, there's almost 20 million Jews in the world. Everyone needs help. Every single Jew needs help now. Whether a person is joining Judaism for the first time from a different religion, realizes that their previous faith is idol worship and complete nonsense, that the New Testament is completely man-made and full of mistakes, and decides to convert, or a baal teshuva—it's a person that just started keeping Shabbat in the last few weeks and... It's a person who's going to start keeping Shabbat right now. It's a person who's going to start learning Torah right now. In the beginning, you don't know what you don't know. Now, my dear friend Rabbi Golan wrote this book that is perfect for the generation. The reason why this "Welcome to Judaism" is for both people that are new to Judaism and people that are old to Judaism is because I think this book is important. There are many, many other books. I don't usually promote books in my shiurim, but this one I do. The reason why is because this book is applicable to the generation.

1:29:46The reason why is because many of the things that I say to you, if you're learning Torah every day, you know what I'm talking about. Sometimes I see some things that people that I know have no idea what I'm talking about. Why? Because we're used to visual, we're used to seeing stuff, and Somebody says there's a deal on clothes. I want to see the clothes and how much they cost. I'll decide whether it's the right deal based on the price and on something that I see. If somebody says to do something, I need to watch a YouTube video about how to do it. We need a visual—that's how this generation is. We need to see something. Most of the books that teach the laws of Judaism, the basic laws, the aleph-bet, the basic stuff, don't have pictures and... So new people, whether they're converts or new Ba'alei Teshuva, don't connect to many of the books because it's a bunch of words. So they want to watch videos. So they watch me on the internet or other rabbis on the internet to learn what to do. Now, Rabbi Golan wrote a book that not only teaches you the basic rules, but he has pictures next to it also. He not only tells you to keep Shabbat, but he tells you what not to do by showing you a picture of what not to do.

1:30:55This helps learning because now you'll have several senses being used in order to learn the basics of Torah. Now if you already know the basics, surely you know somebody who doesn't, whether it's your young kid, or it's your friend, or it's your spouse, or it's your colleague, or it's somebody else. So this is just one of the examples that HaKadosh Baruch Hu helps us to publicize Torah, to teach people Torah, to make sure that we teach this generation the need to learn Torah. But obviously, all of this is expensive. Books, CDs, yeshivot, buildings, all of this is expensive. People that want to contribute, people that help us do everything, Hashem came. Now, one of the benefits of people that help publicize these shiurim, that when they pray to Hashem, their prayer goes to a different department. How do I know? Aside from my own life, I see it because it says it in the Torah. The prophet Jeremiah, chapter 15, verse 19 says, "אם תשוב ואשיבך לפני תעמוד ואם תוציא יקר מזולל כפי תהיה" — if you bring someone that used to be not religious and you make him religious, Hashem says you will be like My mouth.

1:32:08So the sages say, what does it mean you will be like God's mouth? So God said to them, just like when I say something, it happens, when you say something, I'll make it happen. So when a regular Jew prays to Hashem, a regular Jew, a nice Jew, who keeps Shabbat, keeps mitzvot, and is a nice person, but he doesn't help other people do teshuva, he simply takes care of himself and his family, he prays to Hashem. That prayer goes to Shamayim. In Shamayim, there's a Beit Din over there, and they review the prayer. Oh, this guy David is asking for Refuah Shlemah. Let's look at what David has been doing in order to evaluate whether he deserves. Oh, David is a nice guy. Okay, that's a check. David is honest in business. Okay, check. David has shalom bayit. Okay, check. Oh, David stole money and he didn't do teshuva. Oh, okay, that's an X. Okay, it has to be on delay. Why? Because he's not yet a hundred percent deserving. If he fixes this one thing, he has...

1:33:13So now when a regular Jew prays to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, HaKadosh Baruch Hu has a beit din, now you have to evaluate, deserve, don't deserve, based on the actions. When someone that helps people do teshuva prays to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, it's a completely different department. Why? It's no longer his actions only. Why? Because he is now HaKadosh Baruch Hu's lost and found. Imagine this. 3,300 years ago, HaKadosh Baruch Hu came to Am Yisrael, millions and millions of people, and He told them, you be My nation and I will be your God. We said, we'll do it, whatever You want, Hashem, we're in. Hashem was happy, Am Yisrael was happy. Even though we messed up shortly later, Baruch Hashem, we made up again, everything was good. And somewhere along the way, we messed up. How do I know? We're still here. We're still here. That means all of us were on Har Sinai. When we messed up, we had to go up to Shamayim. Hashem said, you messed up, you have to come back and do it again.

1:34:34We did it again. We messed up again. We went up to Shamayim. Hashem said, you have to do it again. So He sent us back again. The whole generation that lives today was at Har Sinai and has been coming back over and over again to do it again. Which means, HaKadosh Baruch Hu has been looking for every single one of us for over 3,300 years. Imagine a father looking for his son, looking for his daughter that somebody kidnapped. Some guy kidnapped her. Some guy kidnapped her. And he's looking for them. He's looking in every corner. He's looking in every building. He's looking under every desk. He's looking everywhere to find this kid because he loves this kid. For 3,300 years, he's not willing to give up. And one day, you show up. He says, "Abba, is this him?" And Abba says, "Yes, that's my son." I've been looking for you for 3,000 years. And I only found you now because he found you and he started getting you to keep Shabbat. He started getting you to keep Taharat HaMishpacha. He started getting you to become modest. I finally found you. 3,000 years I've been looking for you. So now, the person that he found is fantastic. He's been looking for them. It's fantastic. This person is going to go to heaven. But what about the person that found them?

1:35:57When he says, Abba, listen, I know you're the king also. Can I get something from you? Can I get like a little favor? You know, I have a little bit of health problems. Can you help me out? I have some financial problems. Can you help me out? I have some zivug problems. I don't have a wife. I need a wife. Can you help me out? I need a husband. Can you help me out? What do you think the king is going to say? Oh, let me evaluate what else you've been doing? Let me check everything else or anything you want. You don't need to be a genius to realize when the king sees that you're the one that found this kid after 3,000 years, it's anything you want. Anything you want. Im totzi yakar mizolel ke'pi tiheye. You will be like my mouth. You ask for something, Hashem makes it happen. It doesn't necessarily work on your timing. You say something and two seconds later it appears. Oh, Hashem, I want $10 million. $10 million appears. Hashem is not your worker. But the point is, Rabotai, whatever you need, you get. When you actually need it, not necessarily when you want it. This is why, Rabotai, every Jew needs to care not just about themselves, but also about Klal Yisrael.

1:37:13Because we're in a situation where you have 15 to 20 million of our brothers living a life that unfortunately could lead to another Holocaust. I'm not trying to be overdramatic to scare you. I'm just telling you a reality. This is just a reality. This is what it is. You ask people, what did the world look like before the Holocaust? They'll tell you exactly like today. Jews were marrying non-Jews. Jews were acting like non-Jews and sometimes even worse. And that's why the prophets say, "Your conquerors and your destroyers will come from within you," meaning your worst enemy is you. We are our own worst enemy, but we're also our own savior. If every single Jew here takes the suggestion and takes responsibility that this year, I'm going to help 10 people do teshuva. 10 people. How? Sharing lectures, supporting financially, arranging shiurim like this. 10 people. Within a couple of years, all of Am Yisrael does teshuva. Just like the virus works that way in a bad way, kiruv works that way also. I spoke to a person that has been doing kiruv for 20 years in Canada when I was there last week.

1:38:39I told him we have to change the system to apply to the generation. He said, "I like what you're saying, but you have to convince my rabbi." I said, "Who's your rabbi?" He says, "The biggest rabbi in the world." I said, "You want me to convince the biggest rabbi in the world? I'm telling you, this is what works." So he wasn't getting the point, so my friend asked him, "Listen, I'm gonna ask you a question. How many people have you helped do teshuva in 20 years you're doing it?" He said proudly, "100." So my friend says... He does it every week. If every day passes and I don't get at least five emails from people who have changed their lives, I start getting depressed. Because that means we're never going to get there. If every Jew does not help at least ten people do teshuva every single year, we're never going to get there. And if we don't get there, Hashem has to get us there. And if Hashem has to get us there, it's much more painful. That's what we can avoid. this corona, this financial crisis, this bubble we're living in, this imaginary life we're living in, we could fix it if each Jew starts caring a little bit about people he doesn't really know.

1:39:53Sometimes he knows him, sometimes he doesn't know him. Take a few flyers, give them to a few people. Take a few CDs, give them to a few people. Take this link that's going to be published tomorrow, give it to a few people. Send those WhatsApp messages. And no Facebook and all these social media—at least use it to publicize Torah, because that's the only way we're going to get Klal Yisrael back on the same page. Be'ezrat Hashem, when Mashiach comes, he's not going to come in a bad way; he's going to come in a good way. But that's only going to happen if we change something. Everything that's happening in the world is warning signs from HaKadosh Baruch Hu. I hope we're all smart enough to take those warning signs to heart, use them in a positive way. Be'ezrat Hashem, do teshuva ourselves, help our communities, bring more chizuk to Am Yisrael, and, be'ezrat Hashem, have HaKadosh Baruch Hu bring us only blessings to each home, to each family, and to each kehillah. Baruch Adonai le'olam, amen ve'amen.

1:40:59What does it mean to the Jews with some suspension? Every time, it's 12 times in the Torah, that HaKadosh Baruch Hu mentions Shabbat. 12 times. Every single time He mentions Shabbat, keeping it, or violating it. Right next to it, you can test it, you can check it out yourself, right next to it, He talks about Avodah Zarah. Meaning, ...He talks about Avodah Zarah. Meaning, HaKadosh Baruch Hu is placing Shabbat and Avodah Zarah on the same level of importance. Shabbat is not just another mitzvah; it is a foundation of our emunah (faith).