Purim 5778 The War Between Mordechai, HaMan, and AchashveRosh

0:12Today, we're going to take a little bit of a break from the Musar series and talk a little bit more about Purim. We'll learn some Musar from the story itself. I've been working on a paper about it for a while now. It's not easy because when you write something, it's not like when you talk. And it's a very good idea. We'll try to expand on it tonight. If you have any questions regarding the holiday, this is the time to ask. Also, the shiur be-Refuah Shlema to Maribel Medina. and also to Levana Bat Sarah, Sarah Bat Levana, David Ben Esriah, Doris Bat Jorah, Elisheva, Chaya Bat Sarah, Dvora Bat Mercedes, and all of Am Yisrael. Be'ezrat Hashem, they will have Refuah Shlema, Refuah HaNefesh, and Refuah HaGuf. So, Megillat Esther is an obligation

1:40core obligation of Purim. And if you really think about Purim, it's no different than the mitzvah of mezuzah. And the reason why is that mezuzah is one of those mitzvot that has mazal. What's mazal? Mazal means that it has success for the most part. The overwhelming majority of Jews have a mezuzah in their house, whether they're Orthodox, Modern Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, or Hiloni, you know, secular. Now you have even the Christians that also call themselves Messianics; they have mezuzot, even though their mezuzot are treif. They have JC Penney in there, or they have the cross in their mezuzot, but nonetheless, the whole issue of a mezuzah, it's not one of those mitzvot that you have to convince people to do. Somebody moves out of their parents' house, within a very short period of time, they realize, "Oh, I got to put a mezuzah up. Gotta put a mezuzah up. Something bad happens..."

3:08Somebody in the house, even if they don't keep Shabbat, they don't keep kosher. They're married to a non-Jew. They kill people on the side. They kill people in front of everyone, whatever. They do what they want to do. But they check my mezuzah. Will you check your heart too, though? No, no, I think it's the mezuzah because the IRS came to audit me. They're saying all the money I'm getting from murdering people for the Mafia, they say that it's—I'm not paying enough taxes. So maybe you should stop murdering. No, no, no, it's the mezuzah. It's the mezuzah. It's the mezuzah. It's pasul. So, mezuzah, people hold it in high regard, and it is. It is. We talked about it briefly on Sunday, in the series we are having, Amazing Questions About God. I showed you guys a Gemara in Masechet Avodah Zarah, that the minhag, the custom of... Kissing the mezuzah on your way in and on your way out. We actually learned this from Onkelos HaGer, Onkelos the righteous convert. When the Caesar wanted to arrest him, he sent his soldiers, and the soldiers saw Onkelos kiss the mezuzah. They asked him, "What is this? Why are you kissing a mezuzah?" He says, "Because your king is...

4:31is afraid, so he hides behind the castle and he sends you to protect him. My King, He's not afraid of anything. I just have to remember that He is there and He protects me inside the house and outside the house. They said, "Oh, that's okay. We want to be Jews too. Your King protects you; we want to be Jews too." They all converted. Oh, and we learned this minhag from Onkelos HaGer. Now... Mezuzah is something huge; it gives you protection inside the house and outside the house. And most Jews do it. Unfortunately, many Jews know how to spend half a million dollars or more on a house, but when you tell them that a solid mezuzah is going to cost them a hundred, two hundred, or three hundred dollars, they already say you're going to be a thief. You tell them, "Listen, my mezuzah on my front door is a $5,000 mezuzah," and they think, "Oh, something's wrong with you, somebody robbed you," and... Somebody robbed you. There's not $5,000. Somebody robbed you. I said, if I could pay a hundred thousand dollars for it, I would. And if you wanted to give me a million dollars for it, I wouldn't give it to you. A million. I wouldn't give it to you. And that's serious. The mezuzah on my front door. You give me a million dollars for it, I wouldn't give it to you. Cash. I won't give it to you for a million dollars. I don't know if you could say maybe I know a little bit about mezuzah.

5:57Maybe I don't know enough, and I realize it's worth a lot. Who knows? Either way, you're not buying it. But sometimes people tell me, "You have some mezuzot?" "Yeah, we can get you mezuzot. I only deal with high-quality mezuzot. I don't deal with the stuff that you can get from your local guy for 50, 60 bucks. You want a good, solid mezuzah? 200, 300, 500, a thousand—it depends on how good of a quality mezuzah." And that's just for the scroll. The mezuzot that we're giving away to some of our bigger donors, they're $500 mezuzot. Good quality mezuzot. Somebody said, why? My mezuzah is top quality. My rabbi wrote it. It's $70. I said, okay, $70. It's $70. What are you going to get for $70? Nothing's wrong with it. It's still kosher. Nothing wrong with it. But $70? Somebody says, listen, I bought a quarter-million-dollar Bentley. I said, oh. million-dollar Bentley might be a good car. I say I have a thirty-thousand-dollar Hyundai. He said, okay, thirty-thousand-dollar Hyundai, hopefully you can get here. Oh no, thirty thousand dollars, it works. Oh, okay, two hundred fifty thousand now, Bentley also works, but two hundred fifty thousand dollars and Bentley, obviously everybody knows it's a better car, not because of the price, but because of the engine.

7:23$500 size, not because of the price it's better. Somebody could be really a thief and tell you, "Listen, a million dollars with Zaha." And if you're a sucker, you're going to buy it for a million dollars. Who knows? It's not because of the million dollars that it's better. It's because of the engine. How is it written? Who wrote it? How did they write it? Are they a kosher person? They have Yirat Shamayim, they dip in a mikveh before every single letter or just maybe once in a while. They keep Shabbat b'chlal, or is it a computer that wrote it for you? You bought it on eBay. Somebody told me, yeah, I bought my mezuzah for $30 only, Kavod HaRav. It was on eBay. I said, yeah, the computer made a 100% profit on that. A computer wrote the mezuzah. I said, I'll be surprised if it's actually even a klaf, meaning it's an actual scroll. Be surprised. He goes, why wouldn't it be? I said, for $35? I think just a scroll will cost that much. He checked the mezuzah. He says, yeah, you're right. It's just a piece of paper. But the bayit, the house of the mezuzah, the casing, he said, I spent $250 on that. I said, you should have switched it: $30 on the casing, $250 on the mezuzah.

8:37But either way, Rabotai, laugh as much as we want. The reality is Am Yisrael loves the mitzvah of Mezuzah. Loves it. Loves it. It's a good mitzvah. It's an easy mitzvah. But I'm telling you that Purim, they love even more. Purim. They love it even more. Reason why is if you think about it, two thousand five hundred years ago, Megillat Esther, the event of the Megillah happened. Am Yisrael was in danger. Achashverosh, yimach shemo v'zichro, agreed with Haman, yimach shemo v'zichro, as well. They got paid cash. down payment of 384 million dollars, 10,000 kikarim zahav, not kikarim kesef. I said 334 the other day. It's actually 384, 384 million dollars worth of silver. And for that, he agreed. And if you look at chapter 7 of the Megillah, after they agreed, what did they do? L'chaim. What do you mean? You just agreed

10:01Mass-murder an entire people, millions and millions of people. Millions of people are gonna die right now. They're gonna die. You just signed off. You got 384 million dollars. But that 384 million dollars is a down payment to go kill millions and millions of people, tens of millions of people. You don't have a little bit of suffocation in your heart? You don't have a little bit of, like, "I, you know what, some of them are gonna be babies." What are they gonna do, skin the babies? Some of them are gonna be little children playing in a playground. What do they do? The little children are innocent. Some of them are gonna be women, nice women. What do they do? Be skilled, said he caught. Some of them are gonna be Tommy the homie, Manis Friedman, good people. What do they do to you? You're gonna go kill them in mitah meshunah, a strange, unusual death. Hang them, put them on crosses, cut them up, sell them in the market. What are you gonna do to them? And all you can say is, like, I'm that's it. You want to have a little bit of a little bit of that guy. You know what? Poor people. But poor people. Tough for them. Nothing, not a bone in your body feels bad a little bit. Haman, we know he was an Amalek. It's in his bones, not in his blood, in his bones.

11:27In his bones, he hated Am Yisrael. That's in his bones. He's created like that. Achashverosh, on the other hand, okay, the Gemara says in Masechet Megillah, page 12, that he was a bigger anti-Semite than Haman, but why? And even if you're anti-Semitic, like many of the anti-Semites all over America today, Hashem yerachem, Even if you hate them, don't you feel bad when you see somebody bleeding all over the floor? Even if it's not your people, even if you don't like him, you don't feel a little bad? Are you that much of a behema? Are you that much of an animal? Were you a lion in the middle of the jungle on the Discovery Channel chasing a gazelle? You don't feel bad? Nothing? And as a side note for all of you who are enjoying America, Like the rest of us, America is changing. America is changing, no different than Shushan changed, no different than Spain changed, no different than Germany changed.

12:48An article came out in the LA Times—not that I read the papers often unless it's something critical that was sent to me—that they did a research. And, of course, this is politically motivated in order to pin everything on Donald Trump. With or without the politics, the reality speaks volumes, and they say that the antisemitism in America... Aliyah has increased by over a hundred and ten percent in the last year. A hundred and ten percent in the last year! We're not talking about, yeah, you know what, last year they killed three people, this year they're going to kill 3.1. Last year there were a hundred graves destroyed, this year 101. That's 1%. It happens. 100% increase in anti-Semitism in America. Already, the last report that came out said that over 40% of Americans declare themselves openly as anti-Semitic. Now, if you do the math, 40% sounds like a small number, like, "Oh, at least 60% like us." Come on, for the love, you know, look at the cup half-full. Why so negative? Why so negative all the time? 60% like us? No. 40% admit it. We don't know about the other 60%.

14:14What does 40% actually mean? 40% of America has approximately 400 million people. 40% is exactly 160 million people. 160 million people that live in the number one ally of Israel hate Israel, meaning 10 times the amount of the Jewish population. Hate them just here. We're talking about the Arabs, two billion of them. We're not talking about all the other countries in Europe and so on and so forth, just here. But moving to Israel is not so easy. Eventually, it's going to become easy because we're not going to have a choice. We're not going to have a choice, I'll be honest with you. Enjoy the convenience of America as much as you do. We talked about Aliyah; we talked about it a lot—going, staying. I have a bit of a different dilemma than most people because of what we do, because of the kiruv. The work we do is much more necessary here than it is in Israel. There are many rabbis that do kiruv in Israel and...

15:40there are very few in America, even though there are many rabbis, there are very few that actually do kiruv. There are very few that actually tell the truth. And realistically speaking, most of the people are online anyway. So even that is a... as great an argument as it was a few years ago. But anyway, still we debate, we debate. Do you want to go? Do you want to stay? Do you want to go? Do you want to stay? You start thinking about the logistics of moving. And this is mussar to myself; it has nothing to do with you. And I have to be honest with you. This is mamash. This is a rebuke on myself because this was actually on the list at one point. So, you know, you have a lot of conveniences in America. Most of us don't realize these conveniences and you have high-speed internet, especially in the cities. In Israel, it's not everywhere. They have internet, but it's not high-speed, and for what I do, I need it. That's a convenience that's very necessary. Where I want to live in Israel doesn't actually have it. It's a problem. You know what the other inconvenience is? Amazon.

16:54You have high-speed internet, especially in the cities. In Israel, it's not everywhere. They have internet, but it's not high-speed, and for what I do, I need it. That's a convenience that's very necessary. Where I want to live in Israel doesn't actually have it. It's a problem. You know what the other inconvenience is? Amazon. Laugh at me, but you all know it's exactly true for you, too. I'm not the only one. Why Amazon? Because I don't like to leave the house. The only time I leave the house is for an emergency. What's an emergency? To go save Am Yisrael or to go do groceries for my wife. That's it. If there's an emergency other than that, I'm not leaving the house. And even for groceries, Baruch Hashem, we already set up a situation where I don't really have to go 90% of the time. Other than that, I don't leave the house. Why? What am I going to go see? Everyone's naked. Yeah, whoever's not naked is probably trying to do something wrong. Anyway, you know, what are you gonna do outside the house? A nice woman sends me an email yesterday. Don't take this the wrong way; this is the truth. She said her husband is very zealous, keeps Torah and mitzvot, no questions, in a Jewish community actually here in Florida.

18:23says to me, "No, me and the girls decided to go out to celebrate someone's birthday and have dinner together. We went to such-and-such restaurant, and I noticed that the restaurant doesn't have the same kashrut as what I believe is acceptable, and..." I'll leave out the rest of the details. The point is it's acceptable or not acceptable. We have to double-check; we can't just believe people's opinions. But the whole time I'm reading this story, I'm thinking, "Baruch Hashem, she's actually one of the few people in the world that actually cares about kashrut." What kind of kashrut? Why? Most of us, when we want to go to a restaurant, all we care about is that there's a K on the door. If there's a K on the door, I'm eating anything that moves. Anything that moves, I'm eating. If it doesn't move, I'm eating it too. I'm getting two meals. If it has a kosher on the door, I'm eating it. You don't care which rabbi, which mashgiach, which Rabbanut, you don't care why it's kosher. It's very different in Israel, by the way. There's Rabbanut, and then there's the Badatz, the higher level.

19:42Levels of kosher and then there is somebody selling kosher food, but he's not kosher. Why? The food's kosher, but he's not kosher. So the restaurant's not kosher. If he doesn't keep Shabbat, he doesn't get a kosher certification. In America, it's very different; anyone that's willing to sell kosher food is kosher. It's a problem. It's a problem. Sometimes even the food's not kosher, and the people are not kosher. Nothing's kosher, but they say kosher, like we found out a month ago in this other restaurant in Florida. Anyway, she said to me like this: "I saw this restaurant. It didn't have, you know, the kosher certification that I was used to, and I'm having doubts." I tried to tell my girlfriends, "Maybe we shouldn't eat here. We should go somewhere else. There's so many choices, baruch Hashem. There's no end to the restaurants." You can find one in every corner in Florida. It's not like a Delaware farm over there where the only kosher is what you're going to slaughter. You have, baruch Hashem, you have a lot. She said, let's go find a place that's more kosher, according to her opinion. Because, da da da. And she got very upset when they ignored everything she said. They said, listen, this is a good place, we're going to eat, da da da.

21:01I'm trying to respond to her question because she's very upset. So first and foremost, you cannot rebuke people if you're upset by default. Why? The mitzvah in the book of Leviticus says, "You must rebuke your brother, but don't come to sin." What does it mean? Don't sin because of the rebuke. How could I sin? I'm telling them to keep Shabbat. How could I sin? I'm telling them to keep mitzvot. How could I sin? I'm telling them to stop eating treif. No? It's a mitzvah. No, it's not a mitzvah automatically. Why? If you're angry, it's not a mitzvah. Why? Mitzvah, the Gemara says, Masechet Shabbat, anger, Masechet Shabbat says, is the equivalent of avodah zarah. Anger. Being angry, the equivalent of avodah zarah, idol worship, like you just went to Chinatown, bought a statue for $50, and started praying to it. Like the people in India, every time a cow passes the road, they all stop and do whatever they do. You got angry, you threw a remote across the room. You got angry, you yelled at your wife. You yelled at your kids. Avodah zarah, big deal. Why? All of us do it. All of us get angry. It's a problem.

22:19the Torah says not just on anger, specifically when you're rebuking. Specifically when you're rebuking, don't get angry. Why? Then it's not a mitzvah. Then the rebuke is not going to work. The rebuke is not going to work if you are angry. Why? He's just thinking, why is this guy telling me what to do? Why is he telling me what to do instead of actually listening to what you're saying? You know what? Maybe she's right. It's not kosher enough. You know what? Maybe she's right. I shouldn't have a wig. You know what? He's right. Maybe I should keep Shabbat. You know what? He's right. Maybe I should leave the Goyah. I should leave the Goyah. You're right. Instead of thinking about what you're saying, they're thinking, why is he yelling at me? Who does he think he is? Who does he think he is to yell at me? I know more than him. I'm more than him. Now it becomes personal. Anyone want pizza? Rafael, God bless him, is giving you guys pizza. You can eat it. Just make sure to, if you're going to eat it, you have to do netilat yadayim. Otherwise, just wait until the end of the shiur, but you should eat it. No problem. I don't get offended. He brought it for you; you can eat it. So, anyway, first and foremost, don't get angry. If you get angry, it's not a mitzvah. It's not a mitzvah to rebuke if you're angry.

23:32You could look angry. Like me, I look angry all the time by nature. My wife always tells me, "Why are people always scared of you?" I said, "Yeah, why? I'm such a jolly guy." She goes, "You're the scariest guy in the world." I said, "Me, I'm scary?" She goes, "You look scary. By default, you look scary," she tells me. "By default." But if you actually get to know me, I'm not so scary. By nature, I guess I look scary. You could look scary. can even look angry, but you cannot be angry. If you're angry, no mitzvah. Mitzvah toilet paper used—no mitzvah, no mitzvah. If you're angry, no mitzvah, number one. Number two... can't just assume certain things. You have to have proof. In Judaism, we work based on proofs, not hearsay—not based on "Oh, he said, she said, maybe yes, maybe no." No, no, no. We work off of proof. Before we go and we say, "Listen, this guy, him and his shul, and his kashrut, and everything about him is treif," we have to have a hundred percent proof. Not even 99% is enough.

24:42I went and I started telling you guys about Goldberg and his clan of missionaries. We tried everything we could to stop it privately. For me, even before we tried to stop it, we tried verifying if it's even true because why would an Orthodox Jew... Orthodox day, and why would he bring the number one missionary in the world to a shul? I mean, this is something that you have to be smart about. Haman from Gehinom is saying this guy's an idiot. Haman was screaming, "Listen, this guy should be right next to me." So I said, no, it couldn't be true that you're bringing a missionary to a shul. So I double-checked. I checked, I took... Maybe he doesn't know. Maybe he doesn't know it's a missionary. So I asked him, "You know it's a missionary?" "Yeah, yeah, but he's not going to talk about it." I said, "What do you mean he's not going to talk about it? What is he going to talk about?" "Purpose of life." I'm going to learn the purpose of life from a Catholic missionary? In a shul?

25:51Haman is laughing. He's laughing his butt off in Gehinom. He's laughing, "Come on, no, no, go, go, go. Come on, I'm waiting for you. The villa is right next to me. He's waiting for you. This guy is, I have a villa for you," he's telling me. So I said, okay, maybe he just doesn't see right, doesn't see left. So I start giving him Torah proof. I'm giving a dayan that's supposed to know the Torah by heart. Torah proof, he's not allowed to do it. What does he do? Control-Alt-Delete, you know what Control-Alt-Delete is? He restarts the computer just pretty much like he has no interest whatsoever in talking to me. Everything doesn’t even go from one ear to the other because if it goes in one ear and out the other, a little bit is left. When something goes in one ear and out the other, a little bit of the remnants are left. Nothing. It doesn’t even go in one ear. He rejects everything that I say. We tried this; we tried a few other things. Long story short, before we came out and started saying, "Come on," there was a very, very big disaster about to happen. Before that, we had to double-check, we had to verify, we had to confirm. You can't just say, "Oh, this guy looks not kosher, therefore he's not kosher." He looks like a man, therefore he's a man. Because sometimes a person looks like a man, but he's more the chayim.

27:07Sometimes a person looks like Haman on the exterior. Maybe he's wearing a t-shirt, or he doesn't have a kippah, or sometimes he has a kippah, but it's on the side like it's falling off all the time. That's the style now. Some people have the kippah on the side. I don't know why; it seems so uncomfortable. But it's on the side, like, you know, even back in the day when I was young, the style was to have your hat backwards or to the side. I know, with a little kid it was backwards. Then I grew up, and the hat would be to the side like this. Like, you have to wear it to the side, like if you weren't straight, like you're supposed to wear a hat. Something's wrong with you; you have to wear it to the side, so people wear the kippah to the side like this. It's like it's falling off. He looks like Haman. He looks like he's pretending, but then you start talking to them, tzaddik. Start talking to him, and you actually hear about some of the ma'asim that he's doing, some of the things he's doing. It's tzaddik, supports kiruv, helps people keep Shabbat, and so on and so forth. Oh gosh. Oh, he's more the high. So, looks can be deceiving. You can't just pretend. Listen, I know you don't know. You have to double-check. So, I say the first thing is you can't be angry. The second thing is Lashon Hara.

28:28You can't just say such and such about certain people if you don't know for sure. No, but I heard from so-and-so. "Heard from so-and-so" is not enough in Judaism. We're not the newspaper. We're not journalists. We don't just write a story based on assumptions. That's not how Judaism is. Why? People's lives are at risk. You're destroying somebody's reputation and might as well just murder him. But that's the answer that I gave her. Between you and me and hopefully she hears this because she hears some of my shiurim, and some of our friends also hear my shiurim. The whole time I'm thinking something completely different. Don't take it the wrong way. This is a myth the whole time, okay. Oh, that's the answer. Okay, I just said to you, but it's not really the answer. It's the answer, but it's not really the answer. What's the answer? The answer is a question. What's the question? What are you doing with a bunch of girls going out at night to a restaurant? That's the answer. What are you doing? Don't you have kids at home? Don't you have a husband at home? What are you doing going out at night with a bunch of girls? What's going to come out of it? Happy birthday to you. You know who they celebrate happy birthday to? Paro and Nebuchadnezzar. Those are the only two people that had birthday parties, by the way. Two people had birthday parties, Paro and Nebuchadnezzar.

29:56Second of all, what's gonna happen at night? What's gonna happen at night? Why are you going out with girls at night? What's gonna happen? Who's out at night? Wolves are out at night. Guys that don't care if you're married or not married are out at night. Non-kosher things happen at night. What are you doing as a kosher woman going out? And I know it's just out with my friends. I know that's what they're gonna tell me. I was just out with my friends. What's the big deal? We just wanted to eat. I say, eat at home. If you want to hang out with friends, bring them to your house. Even that, not so much. Why? The reality is that women love to speak almost as much as I like to speak. If you're speaking one-on-one with a person, it's good. Maybe you can have some chizuk. When you have a group of women, it's very different, very, very difficult. Why? 99% of the conversation is lashon hara. 99% of the conversation is complete nonsense. That's the reality. How do I know? Girls tell me. The women tell me all the time, like, "Oh, yeah, I went out. I regret it. I went with my friends. I regret it. All they talked about is this one and that one and this one." Now, when it's story after story after story for years, I'm hearing the same thing. Secular world, religious world, the same thing. So what's going to come out of it? Of course, a Jewish woman does not go out at night. She doesn't go out at night.

31:26You want to go out at night? Go out with your husband. Husband? No problem. Go out as much as you want. Enjoy the marriage. Enjoy each other. No problem. You have no problem going out. If that's what you want to do with your life, fine. No problem. As long as it doesn't get in the way of you raising your kids. As long as it doesn't get in the way of you being a mom, of your husband learning Torah, and so on. No problem. But having girls' nights out is only a modern thing, Abotai. Grandparents did not do such a thing. Our grandparents did not go out with the girls, didn't have girls' nights out, didn't have guys' nights out. This is not just for women; it's also for men. This whole night out thing, let's go have a bunch of drinks together as the guys, that was never one of the things we did on a regular basis. Maybe you have a drink as siyum masechet, you finish a masechet, you finish a Gemara tractate, you want to have a drink, l'chaim, no problem. Maybe there's a mesiba, a little celebration for marriage, a little celebration for bar mitzvah, specific events that are rare and not often, fine. But just a night out once a week or twice a month or whatever it is, this is ma'aseh goyim, this is not the way Am Yisrael acts. This is not what we do.

32:49That's really the whole story of Purim. The whole story of Purim started with us trying to be green. The whole story started with us trying to be green. I had a party. He said, "No, you're gonna come to the party." "No, I'm Jewish." "Okay, so what's the problem if you just come to the party?" "No, we can only drink kosher wine." "Kosher wine? I'll give you the best kind. How many do you want?" No, but we only eat kosher Chinese food. Okay, Chinese food. No problem. No, but we only have kosher gefilte fish. Oh, no problem. All right. What else do you have? What else do you want? What? Come. Just come. Kosher pizza. I'm coming. We went to the party of the non-Jews, even though the greatest among us, more the higher Yid, said don't go. The higher Yid said don't go, but we went. Why? Because Jews are not supposed to fraternize with goyim, not because they're bad people. Some of them are wonderful. Some of them are even better than some Jews. I know some goyim that are much better than most Jews—no, not some, most. They met some of them, must treasures, treasures. But still...

34:18go to wedding parties and this party and that party and get-togethers and dinners with the non-Jews. It's not what we do. Why? We have to remain separate. We have to remain separate as a nation. We have to remain separate simply because we don't want to have anyone think—not from the Jewish side and not from the non-Jewish side—that it's okay for our children to get married. Never want anyone from either side to think that it's okay to behave like the other. Just like the non-Jew is not allowed to keep Shabbat, the Jew is not allowed to violate Shabbat. Same thing. You don't want any confusion; there's enough confusion already in the world. And because we didn't feel like this was a relevant mitzvah already 2,500 years ago, only a thousand years after we got the Torah, and... Hashem said, "Okay, time for a wake-up call," and He almost brought the Holocaust because of it. But as you read the Megillah, you'll see that this Megillah is full of miracles. We call them coincidences because it's not like yetziat Mitzrayim (the Exodus from Egypt) and...

35:42Egypt. Hashem split the ocean after we left Egypt, or He turned the water into blood, the blood into water, the frogs came in, frogs left, animals from the North Pole came and started killing Egyptians, but they didn't kill Jews. Ice and fire, and the same thing. I mean, a lot of things that are beyond nature. There were no such open miracles, but countless coincidences. that are really miracles that happened, as Tommy said, throughout all of Purim, throughout this entire story, and saved Am Yisrael from a potential holocaust. Because when Haman wrote a check, he didn't decide, "No, no check. Maybe he's not gonna believe me. So let me just give him the cash." He brought the cash with him. He brought the cash with him again. Listen, when somebody sees the cash, already that's half an agreement.

36:44If you just show somebody the money, it's already half the agreement. Okay, now what do you want to say? Now listen to you. Now that you brought the money, now it's half the agreement already. He brought the money with him. He gave him the money and then he said l'chaim. He didn't think about the fact that he's about to kill millions and millions of people. He didn't care about the fact that he may be married to a Jew. He didn't think about the fact that they don't really deserve it. He didn't think about any of this stuff. Why? Cash. But countless miracles happened, Rabotai Yekarim, that saved us from a potential holocaust. This potential holocaust was approximately 1,000 years before the founding of Germany and almost 2,000 years before the founding of the Nazi party, meaning...

37:462,000 years before the real Holocaust of Hitler, where he killed six million of our brothers and sisters, we avoided a potential holocaust that would have actually been worse. These miracles are a story we hear every year. The story is a story we hear every year. The holiday of Purim is relatively not obligatory. It doesn't obligate you to do much. There are very, very few mitzvot you have to do. Each person has to give two mishloach manot. Mishloach manot is a meal. You have to give two meals to another person. Not to the same person because he's hungry. Give him two meals to two different people. Two different people have to give him means he has to be able to do significant...

38:56So if you're giving him just a basket full of candy, that's not mishloach manot. It's nice, he'll say thank you, and he'll give it to his kids, or maybe he'll be like me and eat it himself, but it's not mishloach manot. Mishloach manot can have the candy, but it has to have something significant. It could be considered a meal. A meal has what? Either mezonot or lechem, mezonot or bread. So it could be wafers, it could be cake, it could be cookies, or it could be a challah bread. Or if you know him really well and he trusts you, you can make him a sandwich. Most people today don't do it anymore because they don't trust each other. That's the reality. They don't trust each other. They don't trust that, number one, your food is kosher. But even more so, they don't trust that your food is tasty, so they're just going to throw it out in the garbage. Why? They go to a restaurant for $10 to buy a better sandwich. They know for sure it's good. So if you're going to buy him something, have something that's wrapped. Wrapped. Cake wrapped, like individually wrapped cakes or individually wrapped bread, something like that. And, obviously, it has to have a kosher sign visible on it. Include a drink, and you can add candies if you want. Each person has to do two of those. So, the husband and wife have to give. The husband gives to two men, and the wife has to give to two women. The woman does not give to a man, and the man does not give to a woman; it's not modest.

40:16No, but he's my friend since high school. Okay, once you get married, he's no longer your friend. There's no such thing as platonic relationships in Judaism. So, first mitzvah, second mitzvah, you have to give money to the poor. Each person has to give the value of two meals. Each meal, let's say, is ten dollars. You have to give 20 bucks. If you know poor people, give it to them. If the poor people happen to be Jewish, great. If the poor people happen to be non-Jewish, that's also good. That's like the million-dollar mezuzah. There's the local homeless guy; that's a mitzvah. That's like the mezuzah that's, you know, good. It's kosher, 50 bucks. Then there is a Jew. That's the mezuzah, it's 150 bucks. But if it's a Talmid Chacham, that's a million-dollar mezuzah. Why? His whole life is Torah. Anyone who knows Talmidei Chachamim, people who learn Torah, you give it to them. If you don't know them, you can give it to Be'ezrat Hashem. We are giving it to Talmidei Chachamim in Yerushalayim. We have a few people that gave, we gave, and so on and so forth. It's part of what we do anyway. But anyone who wants to give to Talmidei Chachamim, we have a...

41:43People that we know in Yerushalayim that are real Talmidei Chachamim that we're gonna send it to. So each person has to give two of these meals, twenty bucks. The third mitzvah is Machatzit HaShekel, which we talked about already on Rosh Chodesh. Each person has to give the equivalent of Machatzit HaShekel, which is five dollars and fifty cents. I did the math; Machatzit HaShekel is five dollars and fifty cents this year. Each year changes based on the value of... The next mitzvah is to hear the Megillah. The Megillah reading is read twice, first on the eve of Purim, which is tomorrow night, and the second is the next morning. So, obviously, if you have kids, you can't go with your wife unless you have a babysitter. So what my wife and I usually do is most battei knesset have two readings: two readings at night and two readings in the morning. I go to the first reading or the second one, whichever it is. I go to one reading, then I come home and watch the kids, and she goes to the second reading or vice versa. Usually, I go to the second reading because it's later at night, and I'd rather her be home earlier. I watch the kids. Same thing the next day.

43:09Both men and women are obligated to hear the Megillah. And you're going to ask, "Wait a minute, isn't there a rule in Judaism that women are not obligated to fulfill mitzvot that are bound to time?" For example, tefillin. Women are not obligated to lay tefillin. Why? Because it's bound to time—you have to do it at a specific time during the day, and... Prayer, prayer every day. Men are obligated to do it three times a day. Women, only once a day. Which one? Whichever one they want. Whichever prayer they want. They want to pray Shacharit, pray Shacharit. You want to pray Mincha, pray Mincha. You want to pray Arvit, pray Arvit. But you don't have to pray all of them, and you don't have to pray any one specific. You just pick whichever one you want. Just pray once a day. That's the obligation, halacha, for women. Men, on the other hand, three times a day. Why? It's bound to time. Bound to time. Many other mitzvot that men do are bound to time, and therefore women are not obligated to do them. There are only a couple of mitzvot that are bound to time that women are obligated to observe. One of them is Shabbat. Why? Shabbat is for all of Judaism. Someone that does not keep Shabbat by driving on Shabbat, by

44:32Smoking cigarettes or hookahs or whatever they smoke these days on Shabbat, or watching television on Shabbat, or cooking on Shabbat, or working on Shabbat, unless any of those things are tied to pikuach nefesh, meaning they're tied to saving somebody else's life, and persons violating Shabbat. So if somebody is dying and you have to cook them a meal to save their life, it doesn't fall under an unusual pikuach nefesh. You have to cook them a nice juicy steak on the barbecue on Shabbat, and if you don't, they're going to die. It's strange, but let's say it's a hypothetical story and... It's a mitzvah for you to cook them. Meaning you should not even do it in an unusual way. You should do it as you would do it any other day. Why? You're saving a life. If someone needs to go to the hospital, it's a mitzvah to turn on the car and drive the car to the hospital, to take them to the hospital. Mitzvah. It's not that it's, oh, you shouldn't, or you should be careful, maybe make sure that no one's watching. No, no, no. Mitzvah. Mitzvah to go take them to the hospital. Why? You're saving their life. Mitzvah. But if you're doing those things just for your own ta'avon, your own desire, you're cooking a steak because you want a steak. You're working because you want to just make money.

45:37It's a mitzvah to turn on the car and drive the car to the hospital, to take them to the hospital. Mitzvah. It's not that it's, oh, you shouldn't, or you should be careful, maybe make sure that no one's watching. No, no, no. Mitzvah. Mitzvah to go take them to the hospital. Why? You're saving their life. Mitzvah. But if you're doing those things just for your own ta'avon, your own desire, you're cooking a steak because you want a steak. You're working because you want to just make money. Not because you're a doctor, you're saving somebody's life. You're a doctor, but you don't really have to go work on Shabbat. But you want to work on Shabbat because you want to buy an extra boat. You want to buy an extra car. You want to buy an extra diamond. You want to make more money. You're not working to save a life, you're working to make more money. Like there's one guy that stopped coming to my shiurim because he says, "I already did teshuvah." I said, "I'm not so sure." He goes, "Why? I keep Shabbat." I keep Shabbat. I'm like, there's a lot more than you know than just keeping Shabbat, and probably you don't know about Shabbat. He goes, "No, no, I'm okay." We're having this conversation on Shabbat. In the middle of the conversation, he tells me, "Oh yeah, you know what? I have to go check my phone on Shabbat." I'm like,

46:54walking in the neighborhood and he's like, "All right, hold on, I gotta go check my phone." "We have to check your phone on Shabbat?" He goes, "No, I'm a doctor." I'm like, "You're a dentist for little children. You're a dentist for four-year-olds that have parents that are probably not so smart sending their kids to dentists because their teeth are going to fall out anyway." It's all teeth that are not going to stay anywhere. They're four-year-olds, but they want their teeth to look like movie stars. So they send them to a family dentist for kids, even though none of the teeth are going to stay. They're all going to fall out. But whatever, that's your job. Good for you. But you can't. No, I'm a dentist. I'm like, it's not pikuach nefesh. But I did teshuva. I did teshuva. I did teshuva. Everybody thinks they did teshuva. Everybody needs to do teshuva. The chareidim need to do teshuva. The baalei teshuva need to do teshuva. The rabbis need to do teshuva. The chiloniim need to do teshuva. The goyim have to do teshuva. Everybody has to do teshuva. Everybody has to do teshuva for something. So, someone that drives on Shabbat to go save a life, it's a mitzvah. But if you're driving on Shabbat because you feel like driving or because you think you're saving a life, but in reality, you're not, you're just going to make more money...

48:09Violating Shabbat now if you think that you're going to save a life, meaning there's someone, a woman, that's about to give birth, that's considered pikuach nefesh. You take her to the doctor, you drive on Shabbat, take her to the doctor. They get to the doctor, and as it happens so often, they say, "Oh, no, it's just a thing where you don't have to, you're not going to have the baby right now. Come back in a couple of days. You're not due yet." It happens. Sometimes the woman has contractions and... And it doesn't happen that she's not giving birth. Did you violate Shabbat now? In the beginning, it was a mitzvah. But now, you didn't save any life because the doctor says no baby. Is it now a sin? No. It's still a mitzvah. Why? At the time, it was pikuach nefesh. At the time, it was pikuach nefesh. Still a mitzvah. But you're not allowed to go back home though. You have to wait until the end of Shabbat. So now, if somebody violates Shabbat, this week's parasha, parashat Ki Tisa, It's like Hashem coordinates for us. Vayomer Adonai el Moshe le'emor v'ata daber el b'nei Yisrael le'emor ach et shabtotai tishmoru ki ot hi beini u'veineichem ledoroteichem lada'at ki ani Adonai mekadeshchem.

49:24Hashem said to Moshe, saying: "Now you speak to the children of Israel, saying: However, you must observe My Shabbat, for it is a sign between Me and you for your generations to know that I am Hashem who makes you holy." And the next verse says: "Ushmartem et haShabbat, ki kodesh hi lachem, mechalelea mot yumat, ki kol ha'oseh melacha v'nichreta ha'nefesh ha'hi mikerev ameha." You shall observe the Shabbat, for it is holy to you. Its desecrators shall be put to death, for whoever does work on it, that soul shall be cut off from among its people. So here is one of the sources of what it means to violate Shabbat. Hashem Yitbarach tells Am Yisrael... this Shabbat. That's the deal. That's the covenant. Meaning no Shabbat, no deal. You keep every mitzvah in the book. You could create mitzvot. I

50:35You don't keep Shabbat? No deal. No Olam HaBa. How do we know? From the literal translation of the verse itself. We're not even looking at commentary. Simple translation. First and foremost, it says, "death upon death." The desecrators have "death upon death." That means two deaths. So, first death means that in the times of the Sanhedrin, the times of the Beit HaMikdash, they would actually kill them on the spot. If there is evidence that this person violated Shabbat, there are witnesses, he violated Shabbat, they kill him. How? The most vicious, hardest death penalty of all. There are four different types of death penalties. This one is the worst. This is the worst sin in Judaism. Now the Gemara says, "Okay, now there's no more Sanhedrin, there's no more death penalty from the Sanhedrin." It says even though there's no more death penalty because there's no Sanhedrin, there's no Beit HaMikdash, the death penalty still applies, only now it's from Heaven. And they give an example. It says someone that

51:54violate Shabbat by, let's say for example, working his cow or riding his horse—the equivalent of driving a car—will have a bull run over him. Sounds familiar? It's called a car accident. It's called an airplane crash, a September 11th, a terrorist attack—same thing. There are an enormous tens of thousands of Jews who die every single year because of car accidents. It's not an accident—Shema Yisrael. There's an unusual number of them dying while driving on Shabbat. Yes, in Israel specifically, that's why they did the study. There you go. 33 percent, according to Amos's research, 33 percent of all accidents in Israel happen on Shabbat. This means that Shabbat is only one day of the week, which is about 14 percent of the week. Yet, 14 percent of the week has 33 percent of the deaths. Shema Yisrael.

53:09That's the first mode. That's the first death. Second, you might ask, what is "you might"? "You might" means second death. How could such a person die twice? They don't die twice. It means that the second death is Olam HaBa, but their Olam HaBa dies. No more Olam HaBa for them. But then, if that wasn't enough, it says "vehikareit hanefesh hahi mikerev ameha." That soul shall be cut off among his people. If "nikaret hanefesh" would have meant death, then we wouldn't have had the first two words. But it's all in the same sentence. He already died once, he already died twice—this world and the next world. What's "nikaret hanefesh"? What does it mean? The soul is cut off from its people. According to the Rambam, that literally means that person's Judaism is on suspension. They are now, in the eyes of Hashem, considered 100% an idol worshiper and

54:11However sad it is, it's a reality. Sad as it is, the reality currently, according to Pew Research Center, 90% of the Jews in America do not observe Shabbat. So, if there's approximately 6 million Jews in America, 5.4 million are considered 100% idol worshipers in the eyes of Hashem. If that doesn't make you sad, you should double-check if you're actually Jewish, because one of the middot of a Jew is rachmanut (mercy). If you don't have mercy for your brother and sister being considered idol worshipers in the eyes of Hashem, the only eyes that matter, there's a problem with you more than with them. They're probably violating Shabbat because they don't know; you know, and you don't care. It's a problem. So now...

55:12person that violates it has a very, very serious problem, and we learned from our parasha. But Purim also obligates women to do a mitzvah that's bound to time. The reason why we mention Shabbat, if you forgot already, is because it's a mitzvah that women are also obligated to do because it's bound to time. But now Purim also obligates women to do a mitzvah that's bound to time. What's the mitzvah? Hearing the Megillah at night and in the morning. Why are women obligated to do this mitzvah even though it's bound to time? Because the story of Purim saved both men and women. Women were very much a significant part of the story and therefore they are obligated in this mitzvah. So that's the other mitzvah of Purim. So far, you have mishloach manot, matanot la'evyonim (giving gifts to the poor), hearing the Megillah, machatzit hashekel, and the last one, rabotai, is for men only. What is it?

56:39get drunk. Now, during the rest of the year, you're not allowed to just get drunk whenever you feel like it. Not allowed. But the Gemara in Masechet Megillah, page 7b, says Amar Rava. Rava said: One is obligated to become intoxicated with wine on Purim. Okay, how do we know who, what, when, and how? Ad delo yada bein arur Haman lebaruch Mordechai.

57:48until he's so drunk. He's so intoxicated until he does not know the difference between "arur Haman" (cursed is Haman) and "baruch Mordechai" (blessed is Mordechai). Throughout the Megillah, every time we hear the word "Haman," everybody makes noise with the groggers. They make a lot of noise, a little bit obnoxious actually, but nonetheless, they make it. People forget to hear the Megillah; they just make the noise the whole time. But in tradition, people make noise when they hear Haman. Why? Haman is arur, cursed. It's like Hitler. No different. Worse. Mordechai, baruch. Mordechai saved the day. Mordechai, whoever doesn't know, the Gemara in Masechet Megillah also says, Mordechai, where is he mentioned in the Torah? Where is he mentioned in the Torah? First, you can find him through Torah codes. Torah codes, which I mentioned, there was something significant that came out today—something I mentioned a few years ago about Torah codes. But it's also literal; Mordechai is in the Torah. Who is the prophet Malachi? The prophet Malachi is actually Mordechai. The obligation is to get drunk until you don't know the difference...

59:16until you don't know the difference. And then it tells a very unusual story. There are many unusual stories in the Gemara. They're very entertaining. It says Rava and Rabbi Zeira had a seudah together, a Purim seudah together, a Purim feast together. And they became intoxicated. They had a few too many drinks for the mitzvah. And Rava got up and he killed Rabbi Zeira. They got so drunk that Rava, tzadik, Tanna kadosh, who revived the dead, killed Rabbi Zeira, another Tanna kadosh, who revived the dead. The next morning he wakes up. He sees his body, tzadik, kodesh kodashim, is dead. So Rava prayed to Hashem Yitbarach for mercy and brought back Rabbi Zeira to life.

1:00:20brought back Rabbi Zeira to life. The following year, Rava sent an invite to Rabbi Zeira, "No, let's have the seudah this year." Rabbi Zeira says, "No, no, no, not this year. Not every year is Purim." Meaning, not every year we can rely on such a miracle. "You brought me back from the dead. I'm scared of you." But the question, Rabbi Fahim asked this question, it's an amazing question. The question is, first and foremost, Saw Baba, you saw how bad you got. You got so drunk you killed your buddy. You went from being a tzadik to a murderer. Why do you want to do it again? Why do you want to have another seudah? You, if anything, should stop drinking for the rest of your life. But not only that, you want to do it again, same person, same time, everything. Nothing changes. Why? Because the significance of this mitzvah is huge. If you understand what it means, if you understand what it means. If you're just getting drunk like a lot of people, just getting drunk and acting like fools, it’s not a mitzvah. If you understand what it means, the mitzvah, one of the Chachamim says, it’s such a big mitzvah that it’s considered as if you fasted an entire week.

1:01:49You understand what it means. Now, Purim is a very significant time for tefillah, a very important time for prayers to receive good things from Shamayim, but you have to stay away from sin. One of the things that people do, which is a very big mistake that ruins the entire holiday for them... they stay drunk, they get drunk, and then, instead of going to sleep as they're supposed to in the afternoon and letting the alcohol get out of their system, they remain drunk. They fulfill the mitzvah, but now they need to stop being drunk. Why? Because they have to go to Beit Knesset. What do they do? They go to Beit Knesset half drunk or fully drunk, thinking it's a mitzvah to pray drunk, and... What they don't realize is that someone who goes inside the Beit Knesset drunk is liable for the death penalty in Shamayim. Even if they have mitzvot like Moshe Rabbeinu.

1:02:53Someone goes to a Beit Knesset drunk. Someone goes to a Beit Knesset high on marijuana or cocaine or some pills or he had a bunch of drinks in his system. He goes to a Beit Knesset and he starts praying to Hashem in Shamayim. It's 100% a death penalty. How do we know? Nadav and Avihu, the two sons of Aharon HaKohen, went into the Kodesh HaKodeshim to such an extent that the Gemara says they were bigger than Moshe and Aharon. They were bigger than them. What did Hashem do? He killed both of them. Why? They had a drink before they went to Kodesh HaKodeshim. Not to get drunk. They just had one drink. One drink. Hashem killed them. He says, you don't come to Me like that. You can do mitzvot, but you can't pray to Me at the same time. Two different things. So Rambam says, what you should do is if you have a drink, go to sleep in the afternoon for an hour or two hours, whatever you need to get, and then that's how the liquor leaves your system. You wake up. But if it's still in your system—you drank so much that it still didn't leave your system—don't go to shul. You are not allowed to pray drunk. Now, that's pretty drunk. Forget about driving. That's a kal vachomer. You can't drive. But you cannot pray drunk. No, because people think driving—people can understand, "No, no, it's said I'm not allowed to drive when I'm drunk because it's dangerous."

1:04:15But if I pray, it's a mitzvah. No, no, it's not a mitzvah. It's an aveirah. It's a big aveirah. People think they can do certain mitzvot anytime. No, sometimes the same mitzvah is an aveirah. Giving tzedakah is a mitzvah. Giving tzedakah on Shabbat is an aveirah. Tzedakah is a mitzvah, but if you give it on Shabbat, you write a check on Shabbat to the shul for a million dollars, or you go on PayPal and you give Be'ezrat Hashem a million dollars on Shabbat, it's an aveirah, it's a sin. We don't want your money on Shabbat. Why? Sin. So a mitzvah is not just a mitzvah anytime. There's a certain time and place for mitzvot. But Rabbi understood that this mitzvah is a big mitzvah. Why is it such a big mitzvah? What's the real meaning behind it? That's the whole shiur is about the meaning behind this mitzvah. Why is it such a mitzvah to drink?

1:05:16Why is it such a mitzvah to drink so much that I forget who Mordechai is and who Haman is? Instead of saying "Baruch Mordechai" and "Arur Haman," I'm saying "Arur Mordechai" and "Baruch Haman." Instead of blessing Mordechai, I'm cursing him. Instead of cursing Haman, I'm blessing him. That's how drunk you have to get. Why is this a mitzvah? It's a mitzvah if the rest of the year you did it right. If the rest of the year you blessed Mordechai and you cursed Amalek, you cursed Haman, then it's a mitzvah to get drunk and get confused. If the whole year you're acting like Haman and you frown upon the Mordechai, then, Rabotai, it's no mitzvah for you to drink. You should never drink. You should mourn. So now the question is: What's the difference between the two? What's the difference, the obvious difference? Page 139 it says

1:06:41On the verse in Deuteronomy 31:18, Hashem says, "Where is Esther in the Torah?" In the verse in the Torah, it says, "Hashem says that I will conceal My face, I will conceal My face." And from here, we see this is where Esther is in the Torah, and we use Torah codes. you count 12,196 letters from that letter, and you find the name Esther. Also, but nonetheless, what is the real meaning? The Gemara says the meaning is that there are many things that are hidden in the Megillah, and Many secrets inside the Megillah, just like Hashem says He's going to hide His face, and He's not even mentioned one time in the entire Megillat Esther, but it's still part of our Tanakh. Megillat Esther does not have Hashem's name even one time, but it's still a critical part of our Tanakh. It's still considered a Sefer Kodesh to such an extent that the Gemara says that the Kohanim and Leviim

1:07:58would leave, would abandon their services at the Beit HaMikdash in order to go hear the Megillah. The Tannaim, the Amoraim, the Gedolei HaDor, the biggest tzaddikim in the world who all day, all night, all they do is learn Torah, they're obligated to stop learning Torah to go hear the Megillah. Meaning, to go hear this Megillah is not just like, "Oh yeah, it's nice. I'll just read it at home. I'll read it from my Chumash. It's nice. I'll read it when I get a chance. I'll read it tomorrow. I'll read it today. I'll read it next week. I read it already last week. Why do I have to read it again?" No, the Gemara says in Megillah 3a, That it's such a significant mitzvah to go hear this Megillah that the Kohanim that ran the Beit HaMikdash stopped and went to go hear the Megillah. Levi'im stopped and went to hear the Megillah. Tana'im stopped and went to hear the Megillah. Why is it such a big deal?

1:09:12know from the book of Jeremiah, Hashem says, "If not for My covenant day and night, the rules of the world will cease to exist." Meaning, if somebody does not learn Torah somewhere in the world 24 hours a day, I'll destroy the world. Meaning that right now, all the Tana'im, all the Tzaddikim, all the big rabbis that are learning Torah... They have to stop learning Torah. Why go hear the Megillah? Which means, in reality, if all the rabbis in the world stop learning Torah, the entire world will be destroyed. Hashem says, stop learning Torah, go hear the Megillah. You're putting the entire world at risk to go hear the Megillah. Meaning that there's a very big lesson here in this Megillah. What's the big deal? Why is it so important to go hear this Megillah? We heard it last year. What, the story changed this year, Mordechai loses? But Esther decides to slap Achashverosh this year. Haman falls on his face, and he dies at the beginning of the story. We don't have to deal with him the whole time. What happened? The story is the same story, Rabotai. Why do you have to hear it? You heard it last year. Anybody here didn't hear it last year? Anybody here doesn't know the story of Megillat Esther? Anybody here doesn't know the whole thing?

1:10:35Everybody heard it. Everybody knows the basics of the story. I'm not saying you know all the midrashim by heart. You can quote me verse. I'm not saying that. You know the whole story of Megillat Esther, what happened? Okay, I'll sum it up for you in two seconds. In the beginning, we have Achashverosh throwing a party. Am Yisrael shows up to the party. No good. Hashem gets very upset and puts a decree that Haman is going to be given power to destroy Am Yisrael, but obviously, Hashem already instilled the cure before the ailment. Before this whole thing happened, Achashverosh killed his own wife Vashti and married a Jew named Esther. Esther had several names. Esther was one of her names, but this is no different than many of the other sages in history. Each name had a different significance. It's not that she was trying to hide her Judaism. Because Esther was how the Jews also knew her, Hadassah was also a name that she was known by. She wasn't trying to hide her Judaism with her name. She tried to hide her Judaism with or without her name. Why? Because Mordechai told her to hide her Judaism. Hide it. He, on the other hand,

1:11:52Publicly told the whole world. He's a Jew. The Ben Ish Chai says, what does it mean? Mordechai ish Yehudi. What does it mean that Mordechai was a Yehudi? What does it mean? He says that he was visibly a Jew, where someone from far away could identify, "Oh, that's the Jew over there." Why? Because he had long peyot that were really big, that you could identify him from far away. Oh. That's a Jew. It can't be an Arab. It can't be a Persian. It can't be a Syrian. It can't be Amalek. It can't be somebody from, you know, I don't know, North Africa. It can't be an American. It's a Jew. It's a Jew. For sure. Why? Look at his peyot. And that's where the Ben Ish Chai says that anyone that shaves their peyot, their side locks, on purpose, most likely, violates the brit. Wasting seed—why was one thing tied to the other? He says the brit, the brit that you have, is something that makes you Jewish as a man. You break mila, you break mila if you convert at a later time. You have to have brit mila to be a Jew. No brit mila, not a Jew. But that's a deal, that's a covenant between you and Hashem that you must protect. But nobody sees if you protect it; nobody sees if you're a Jew.

1:13:14Says to be visibly Jewish, you can't tell from the brit. So how can you tell from the looks, from the exterior? From the exterior... Mordechai, on the exterior, you know he's a Jew. Why? He was not trying to pretend to be a non-Jew. He didn't want to wear their clothes. He didn't want to use their names. He didn't want to act like them. He didn't want to do business with them. He didn't want to go to their parties. He didn't want to be friends with them. You know Mordechai HaYehudi. Why? Everything about him is Jewish. Everything about him is Jewish. Somebody hurts their visibility of their Judaism. Meaning, on the exterior, I don't look so Jewish. Why? Their hair is shaved. They got a nice, what do they call, fade. They got a little fade, they got a couple of streaks like they're a basketball player. They look in a mirror half the day with the pose like they're skiing, looking at the mirror as much as their wife.

1:14:24You know, the suit is extra tight to make sure that everybody sees their figure. Even though they're usually like this, they still don't want everybody to see the embellishment of their chassidut of eating. The suit is extra tight, pants are extra tight, hair is all fly, they look like a movie star, they got a little fade and that thing. Get a haircut exactly on the same day every month just to make sure they always look fly. They look like everybody else. The kippah gets smaller and smaller, and sometimes it's so small you can't see it. Why? They put it in their pocket. When they put it back on, they go to the kollel. They're going to shoot the wristwatch outside. Jewish? You, do you want to put tefillin on? The Chabad guys ask him, "Do you want to put on tefillin? Are you Jewish?" Why? I can't tell if he's a Jew. You can't tell if he's a Jew. No kippah, no nothing. You cannot tell if this guy's a Jew. The Chazon Ish says if you can't tell he's a Jew because he's hiding it, that's because he's also violating the stuff that's hidden already. He's violating his Brit also.

1:15:49If he's violating the exterior brit, he's violating the interior brit. When we meet him in chapter two of the Megillah, when it says Yehudi, that means we can see it. We can see it. This Megillah, something we're all obligated to hear. So we read this pirush on Mordechai, good. The rest of the story stays the same. Why is the story so significant that the Kohanim have to stop servicing in the Beit HaMikdash? Why is the story so significant that the Leviim have to stop servicing the Beit HaMikdash? Why is the story so significant that the Talmidei Chachamim, the only ones that are visibly Jewish, meaning the Mordechais of the world, also have to stop?

1:16:50Most of us are more like Haman. He has to stop learning Torah, go hear the Megillah. But the story didn't change. Why do I have to hear it again? Last year Haman lost, this year he's going to lose also, next year he's going to lose also. Why do I have to hear it again? What's the message of the story? The message of the story actually has roots in this mitzvah, this mitzvah of getting drunk. Why? The mitzvah of getting drunk... Get so drunk that you confuse whether Mordechai is blessed or he's cursed and whether Haman is blessed or he's cursed. Why? Because the rest of the year you did it right. The rest of the year you knew for sure that Mordechai is blessed and Haman is cursed. Only one day a year you're allowed to make the mistake because that's a mitzvah. Why is this?

1:17:53such a big deal because the Gemara in Masechet Chullin, page 139, says just like Hashem hid His name and told that He's gonna hide Himself at the time of punishment in Parashat Ki Tavo, "haster astir et panai," He hid Himself during the times of Haman. He hid Himself during the time of the Holocaust. He hid Himself throughout all of history, where we had... Decree against Am Yisrael, but in the end, He always saved us. Sometimes fewer of us survived the disaster than we started with, but nonetheless, as a nation, we persevered. Just like He is hidden, the lessons in this Megillah are also hidden. The secret of the Megillah is also hidden. Now, what is the secret? Why do I have to read this Megillah year after year to such an extent that I have to stop learning Torah? What changed? The story stayed the same. Did I miss the story for all these years? Have we been misunderstanding the story? Have we been reading the Megillah and, because of our spiritual laziness, we just thought that the whole Megillah is just about a story between a few people and that's it?

1:19:21Answer is yes, we missed the story behind the story. So first and foremost, we're gonna go over it briefly. B'Ezrat Hashem, I'll have the strength tonight to try to finish this article so I can send it out to everyone by tomorrow. I'll have some more details, but if not, next year. But the lessons in this Megillah... The lessons of parashat Ki Tisa are all relevant all year round, especially to us as the generation of Mashiach, and this is how. If you look at the beginning of the Megillah, you start learning about Achashverosh, you start learning about Haman, you start learning about Mordechai. makes one better than the other. Let's just see their behavior. The first person that you hear about is Achashverosh. He controlled over one hundred and twenty-seven different countries. In essence, he controlled the entire world. Every country, unlike today where people say America is the strongest country in the world because of the strongest army and...

1:20:48he had more power than America. How do we know? Because in America today, we have a lot of weapons, which is good. If there's a war, America is more likely to win if you base things on nature, base things on logic. But that does not make them the most powerful country in history. Why? Because, in reality, America is a debtor nation, meaning they borrowed money from everyone. They owe an enormous amount of money, and what actually makes them strong is not the weapons. What makes them strong is that if their market collapses, if the debt market collapses in America or the US dollar collapses, all of the other countries in the world collapse with it. Why? Because they all depend on America paying them back the loan. They all depend on the bonds that America issued to them. maintaining value. This is the reason why I always tell my clients to never worry about America and China ever getting into a war. America owes China way too much money for them to go to war. So even if China hated the guts of America to such an extent that they wanted to murder them and

1:22:07Reality is they still would refrain from going to war, and the reason why is because America owes them an enormous amount of money. Which means that if they go to war, immediately the value of the money, the value of the bonds that China holds, that's based on a loan that they gave America, drops in value. Which means it's like murder-suicide. You murder the other person, then you commit suicide. Okay, so you're gonna go kill America, but you're also killing your entire economy at the same time, and The value of all the debt that you have goes down. The values you're talking about are hundreds of billions of dollars. And then, on top of that, you lose your number one customer, which is America. Also, the entire world is based on that. That's your Wall Street lesson for today. What makes America powerful is that they owe everybody money, actually. In the days of Achashverosh, it was much more powerful.

1:23:08Why was he more powerful than America? Because everybody owed him money, and everybody had to continue owing him money, and they never paid back. Why? Because it would be continually increasing. Why taxes? Every single one of the 127 countries had to pay Achashverosh taxes. Today, even Americans don't pay enough taxes to America. Americans themselves don't pay enough taxes to America, but they compare themselves to being the husband. Oh, it's not so much, not so much. In those days, if you didn't pay taxes, they killed you. Today, if you don't pay taxes, they send you a letter in the mail: "Please pay taxes." Five years, ten years, eventually, if you don't answer for a long, tough time, maybe they'll send somebody to the house. So anyway, Achashverosh controlled the world.

1:24:09The amount of money that he had is unbelievable. But a person that loves money never has enough money. As the masses say: a person that loves money will never have enough money. Or, as Chazal (our sages) say: a person who loves money will never be satiated by the amount of money he has. So now, if you look, if you notice the behavior of Achashverosh, most of the time he is a pretty... Happyguy. He has parties; he celebrated for six months. He invites everybody; he doesn't exclude the Jews, even though in his heart he's an anti-Semite Nazi. Externally, he invites the Jews to the party and even gives them kosher food. Kosher pizza, like Rafael gave you guys. They gave him a lot of kosher food. Even though he hates them, so he seems like a pretty jolly guy. Then it's a couple of times in the entire Megillah that you actually see who Achashverosh really is.

1:25:26And why, when we say his name, for the most part we say, even though in the end he ended up being a good guy, he didn't kill us. He still is a Rasha Merusha, the Gemara says, worse than Haman. Still. Why? To the world, when it fits and suits his needs, he was nice. He's a politician. Paying him taxes, he likes you. You've given him kavod, he likes you. You've given him money, he likes you. You vote for him, he likes you. But there's only a couple of times you see who he really is. The Gemara says there are three things that you can measure a person by and who they really are: koso, kiso ve'ka'aso. Koso, meaning how does he behave after he has a few drinks. Say, once you have a few drinks, the truth comes out. Well, you're a liar the whole year round. Yeah, you're a liar all the way around, all year round. You're pretending to be somebody you're not. As soon as you have a few drinks, all the junk comes out of your system, all the sewer you've been holding back. All of a sudden, everybody finds out you're an anti-Semite, even though you're a Jew yourself. All of a sudden, everybody realizes that you don't believe in anything; you hate this, you hate that. That's why you should, in reality, try not to get drunk ever, except when it is a mitzvah to do it, which is Purim.

1:26:52Because most people, in reality, can't hold their liquor anyway. They act like... You know what? So, first, you identify who the person is after he has a couple of drinks. A couple of drinks, the truth comes out. Hey, look at this guy. Watch out for him. Why? He's drunk. Why? But he was nice in the office. Once he has a couple of drinks, he's a different person. Different person. Because so. kiso. Kiso is pocket. It's pocket. We had a whole shiur about this on Sunday and last week. We talked about this a lot. To be honest with you, it seems like it's my tikkun more than it is yours. Dealing with stingy people. It's something that's kaparat avonot. I've always disliked stingy people. I remember that one of the reasons why I never had many friends is Because I couldn't stand people. Couldn't stand them. Why? Every time you know, you want to go out as a young person, you want to go out in the secular world. So there's— you have to go wherever you go and you have to pay. Nobody ever had money. So why'd you come? If you don't have any money, how come you came? Why don't you stay home? All of a sudden, when it comes to paying the bill, nobody ever has any money. Yeah, but you ordered three bottles. Yeah, but you ordered enough food to feed a civilization, and you ate it by yourself. I...

1:28:21What'd you think, they're just gonna give it to you for free? Or maybe I'm gonna go in the back and wash dishes for you? Time and time again, nobody ever has any money when it comes to the bill, and to me, after a while, I'm like, you know what? I can't take it. Nobody ever has any money. You ever notice that? But when it comes to buying a brand new car, they always have money. When it comes to buying a brand new watch, they always have money. When it comes to buying their own things at their own time, they always have money. For everyone else, they never have any money. Never have any money. Nobody has any money for tzedakah. They have $50,000, $100,000, $200,000 for a car, but for tzedakah, $18. $18. But if you tell them, listen, I'll put your name on the website. Oh, okay, for that I'll give $500. What, so without the website you're not going to give $500? If you put my name on your head, I'll give you $5,000. Put a little poster on your forehead. Every time they go, "So-and-so donated," I'll give you $5,000. Why? They don't want to give tzedakah. They just want to give themselves more fame. So, kiso. Kiso, rabotai, his pocket. You get to know a person really well based on how he treats his pocket. If his pocket is constantly being opened because he's generous, it's good nature. Good nature to such an extent that the Gemara HaKedoshah says, if you have a choice, and one guy is Talmid Chacham, the other guy Am Ha'aretz, doesn't know anything.

1:29:48Talmid Chacham learns a lot of Torah but is cheap. The people of Israel are generous. Go with a generous person. Stay away from a Talmid Chacham that's cheap. Why? If he's cheap and he's a Talmid Chacham, he's a Rasha. Meaning he's learning Torah like it's a history book. He doesn't believe what he says. Why? You know by default if you believe in the Torah, it means you have to be generous. Why? Hashem is generous. You are learning Torah to emulate Hashem. If you're not generous, you're not emulating Hashem. You're reading the Torah like it's a history book. If you're stingy, you don't believe in the Torah. You don't believe in Hashem. Amash. Kiso is a big deal, Rabotai. Even if he's a Talmid Chacham, stay away from him. If he's an Am Ha'aretz, if he doesn't know anything, go hang out with him. Why? If he's generous, that means he has good Middot. If he has good Middot, you can teach him Torah. You can make him better by adding Torah to him. But if he already has Torah and bad Middot, Neveilah seruchah tova mimenu. Even a dead animal in the middle of the street is better than him. Why? He has Torah and he still didn't improve. Hashem yirachem alav. This guy is a lost cause. If he has Torah and he still didn't improve...

1:31:00Lost cause. Lost cause. Torah doesn't say there are a lot of lost causes. It doesn't say there's a lot of lost causes. Here, Rabotai HaYekarim, someone that has Torah with bad middot, because he's stingy as one of the bad middot, Hashem makes 50,000 but his biggest donation of the year is $50, $100. How come? I'll come, forget about this other shame or anything. I'm doing in general. How come, how come you are so stingy? How come your wife is still wearing the same clothes from 1985? Why don't you give her some new clothes? She's your wife. Yeah, but she didn't work for it. What do you mean? She didn't work for it? She withstood being married to you for 20 years. That's already enough work. That's already worse than Gehinom, being married to you, being a stingy husband. A woman married to a stingy husband, that's worse than Gehinom. Why don't you give your wife some new clothes? Forget about tzedakah. Why don't you be generous with the people around you? If you're not generous with the people around you and you think that everything is yours, you have a serious problem. Once a person is stingy, it's a problem.

1:32:16Person is generous. It's a good start. It doesn't mean by default that they're good because sometimes people are generous with other people's money. You ever notice that people are always generous with other people's money? I remember I used to have employees and I would tell them, "Listen, you guys should get whatever you need in office supplies and so on, whatever you need. Just get it." The time anytime I would say such a thing, all of a sudden everybody raised that, "Yeah, I need this, I need this, I need this, I need this." I need all of you to need all this stuff all this time. Why don't you say something? Oh, you know, okay. All of a sudden after place, I wanted to make a $50 order from Staples, $1,500 by the end of the day. Everybody needs five staplers, this, that. Shema, have what you need, a whole school and... needs something okay, but said that once, twice, three times. Then we moved offices. Moved offices, you start going through your furniture, you take stuff out of every single drawer, file cabinet. What I saw was a bunch of brand new supplies. It's like they were storing it because I was paying for it. They're like storing this stuff. So you come to my house to this day, I have stuff from my old office. It's brand new. Why? They want to buy because I'm paying. They're generous with my pocket.

1:33:33Let's say, for example, I used to buy lunch for people all the time, whatever you work. Do that, I buy lunch, and all of a sudden everyone's ordering steak for themselves. They get a little Chinese food for $5 when they pay, but when I pay, everybody wants steak for $25, $30, $40, $50. Whatever is more expensive, that's what they want. Why? They think if it's more expensive, it's better. No, duh. Everybody wants to be a machmir in spending when it's my money. That's how it was. People are always generous with other people's money. That's not generous. That's not generous. It's a rasha. It's a wicked person. Taking advantage of somebody. So, thank you, go do mitzvot. Sako, kiso. Last thing is ka'aso. What's ka'aso? Anger. How does he act at the moment of anger? Everybody gets angry. Everyone. Some people have fire in their veins like me, where unless you work on yourself day and night, you're gonna spend 24 hours a day being angry. Not an hour a day or an hour a week—24 hours. They're gonna be angry if you don't work on yourself. I remember my life before teshuva. All I knew was anger.

1:34:59I'm telling him, that's serious. This was the biggest part of me doing teshuva, the biggest benefit. Why? I wake up in the morning already cursing. Nothing happened. I'm late. Wait till what? You're the boss. What, somebody's gonna dock you? What, you're late to what already? I was already angry. I come into the office. I'm angry. Why? They're not working hard enough. What do you mean? They've been here since 8 o'clock in the morning. What's not good? They're not working hard enough. No. No, I was heated. Always something, always something. It's like a constant anger in you. Food comes—it's not hot enough, it's not cold enough, it's not this enough. The guy invests a million dollars. I should have done a million and a half. This guy's a piker. Yeah, always not enough, always not enough. He's always angry at something. I... And that, by the way, rabotai, is worse than cancer. Being angry is like drinking poison and expecting the other guy to die. You being angry is like you drank the poison, but you expect him to die. That's anger. Only you're going to lose from anger. Only you. You're angry, you lose automatically.

1:36:09You don't work on your anger. Aside from the fact that the Gemara says that it's the equivalent of Avodah Zarah, you'll have a miserable life. You'll have such a miserable life that you'll forget to ever be happy. And even the happiness that you're going to have is going to be so minute and so insignificant that every five minutes is going to get ruined. Bar Mitzvah for your son — somebody didn't give a donation that's big enough, the whole event goes to garbage. Yeah, but the event was good. The kid did a bar mitzvah. You spent $50,000 on his bar mitzvah. Baruch Hashem, we had the money to pay for it. Everything is good. The kid's happy. The wife's happy. The kid's happy. Everybody's happy. Yeah, but Steve only gave $100. Busha. Busha mag'ilat shema. He's disgusting. Okay, so he didn't give a lot. Big deal. Disgusting. The whole thing. I'm not even allowed to have it. He liked the food. Yeah, he's blaming. He's blaming the food. He's blaming the guy every day. When a guy is angry, a guy is angry. He will never be happy. It's impossible to be happy unless you work on your anger, and working on your anger, rabotai, is a life task. It's not just like, oh, one day you do teshuva, you lay tefillin, you keep Shabbat, and you stop being angry.

1:37:30have to work on it day and night, day and night, to control yourself. It's very difficult, very, very difficult. Usually, usually the depression leads to anger. But the point is, rabotai, that when a person is gets angry, he's no longer the same person. All day he could be jolly, all day he could be funny, all day he's happy. But as soon as he gets angry, the Gemara says, and also the Ramban quotes it, that "Kol minei Gehinom" take control of him and Where's it mean all types of Gehinnom? He creates all these demons from the sins that he has, and those demons now take control over all of his actions. He used to be generous; now he's cheap. He used to be polite; now he's impolite. He used to be attentive; now he's playing with his phone. He used to be this; now he's the opposite—everything the opposite. Please, love, but stop playing with your phones.

1:38:53When someone is angry, they can't pay attention to reality. They can't pay attention to reality. But even that can be under control, meaning a normal person gets angry. The mom gets angry at the kid because the kid broke something. A father gets angry at the mom because she said something. A mom gets angry at the dad because he said something. Whatever, people get angry. What is the Gemara trying to tell us? It says, how angry do you really get? said something. A mom gets angry at the dad because he said something. Whatever, people get angry. What is the Gemara trying to tell us? It says, how angry do you really get? Do you let yourself get out of control where, all of a sudden, you would destroy the whole place? Or it's like, okay, you get angry, but you contain yourself. Relax, okay? Well, you meditate a little bit. You breathe a little bit. Okay, leave me here. I'm angry. I don't want to talk. I don't want to see. I don't want to breathe. If I could stop breathing, seeing, and talking, I'd do it right now. Please.

1:39:59Leave me alone for five minutes. Leave me alone for ten minutes. Leave me alone. Why? I'm angry at you. I don't want to see you. I don't want to talk to you. I want nothing. You made me angry. You go to your room. You go to the bathroom. You go to whatever room. You go smash your head against the wall a few times. Whatever you have to do to stop being angry. Under control. Why? Because you know if you don't, and he says another word or she says another word, you're going to break the whole house. All of a sudden, the Palestinians are already saying, "Okay, I'm sorry." They're scared of you. They're scared of you. But don't send over there because... So how angry do you get? So now, it's a big deal. Achashverosh looked like a jolly nice guy, invites everybody to parties. But we saw who he really was. When? When someone touched his kavod. When someone touched his kavod, all kol gehinom started taking control. We saw who he really was. When Vashti, his wife, said, I'm not coming. By the way, the Midrash says, why she didn't want to come? Because Hashem gave her tzara'at.

1:41:23Hashem gave her a disease equivalent to tzara'at—not really leprosy, but equivalent to leprosy—and put marks all over her body. Why did He give her such a big punishment? Because she used to take the Jewish women and make them work naked on Shabbat. She was such a wicked resha'it that she took the Jewish women, knowing that their number one mitzvah is modesty, and knowing that Shabbat is the number one day of the week, and made them work on Shabbat naked. Otherwise, she threatened to kill the miskenot. Hashem says, "Oh, you want my daughters to do that? No problem. She used to be a very beautiful woman. Now you're going to look like a demon." She had a tail. She had a horn on her head all of a sudden. Her entire body became white, like snow. So now, he didn't know this. He didn't know this whole thing happened. He said, "Oh, no, no. Let me show you how beautiful my wife is. Bring her out here. Bring her naked." Now, she used to be a shaitel. She didn't care about modesty. She would go around naked.

1:42:27Disgusting human being, this woman. But now I said, "No, I'm not coming." Why? She's not coming because she knows what she looks like. She looks like a girl with a horn. She looks like a demon. She looks with the horn. She looks like a unicorn with a human form. What'd she look like? So she said, "I can't come." So what? You can't come? Last week, you were walking around naked all over the neighborhood. The week before that, you had a party for naked people. Well, I said, "You want to come? Oh, you're violating my kavod. Death penalty." Didn't you want to think for a second? I said, it's your wife. Maybe it's not, I don't know, it's the time of the month. Maybe she doesn't feel good. Maybe, I don't know, she's busy. Look, it's your wife after all. Don't you think that you should control yourself a little bit? It's your wife. It's not some woman you found in the street. It's your wife. She's also a princess, the daughter of Nevuchadnetzar. She comes from a house of kings. It's not just some woman. Give her some respect, no? No. She violated my kavod, death penalty. Meaning the whole marriage, the whole lovey-dovey, all shtuyot, all nonsense, all fake. Why? Touch this kavod. Touch this kavod, it's worth nothing. The second time, the second time I got the chiddush this year,

1:43:52we see at the end of the Megillah that Esther plans the party in order to trap Haman. By saying, "Listen, there is a person inside your kingdom that's trying to kill my people and then trying to kill me," because now she's his wife. So she has the meal, you know, the whole plan, and then the second day... So now on the second day, she tells Achashverosh, yes, there's somebody that's trying to kill my people and trying to kill me, your wife. Achashverosh says, who? Who dares kill my wife? Kill everybody else, but don't kill my wife. Who's going to kill my wife? Who has the guts to kill my wife? She says, Haman. He's sitting right next to you. Him. Now, Listen, Haman just wrote a check or actually paid him cash, three hundred eighty-four million dollars a few days ago. Give him a check for a game or cash, three hundred eighty-four million dollars. So he doesn't want to necessarily kill him right away. Why? We're doing business together. We're doing business together, but at the same time, he's trying to kill my wife. He didn't tell me that when he gave me the money. You put me in a bad spot. I like this girl. So he's angry.

1:45:17Upset, he doesn't know what to do. What does he mean about killing your wife? Yeah, but there's money involved. There's money involved! I gotta go outside. He goes outside, and he sees his garden. This is his garden, and it says he comes back from the garden just as angry as he left. What do you mean? Your garden's beautiful, you have trees from all over the world planted, everything. What's wrong? The garden's supposed to make you feel good. That's why people have gardens. All the rich people, they have gardens because it's something nice to see and it makes you feel good. They forget to thank God, but they like what God gave them. So, it says that he came back as angry as he left. Why? Because Rabotai... Hashem sent malachim. He sent angels that pretended to be Haman's sons, and they were cutting down the trees that belonged to Achashverosh, cutting down the trees in his garden. "Hey, what are you doing? What are you cutting down my trees for? You know how much this garden cost me?" "Yeah, Haman told us. Haman told us." "Who cares Haman told you? I'm the king. It's my garden!"

1:46:40continued cutting the trees. Then he came back inside. He said, "Go hang him on it." Why didn't you decide to go hang him in the first place when he said he's gonna kill your wife? Why is it only after you found out that Haman's kids are cutting your trees that you're so angry? Go kill Haman now. Money doesn't matter. You didn't want to kill him when he was going to kill your wife because you still had some business dealings. Now, some trees get cut down, you could just replant the trees—big deal. No, now you touch my stuff, now you touch my pocket. You touch my kesef, you touch my keys, you touch my pocket—death penalty. Now it's a death penalty. Why? Money was more important to him than his wife and everything else. As soon as Haman touched his money—death penalty. So we see that Achashverosh, his nature wasn't exactly good. Haman, on the other hand, there's not enough time in the world to describe all of his bad middot. But we could see plainly from the story, Haman is the richest man in the land.

1:47:56So rich, the Gemara says he's the richest man that ever lived other than Korach. Other than Korach, Korach found one of the treasures of Yosef HaTzadik, which was a third of all the money that Mitzrayim (Egypt) had. And the rest of the nation, the rest of Am Yisrael, found another third, meaning Am Yisrael had one third, and he had another third by himself. said he had so much money that until this day, when you say "rich," you say "rich like Korach." And no one was ever as rich as Korach. The only one that came close is Haman. So when Haman wanted to get things done, he knew that money makes things happen; money makes the smart and wise blind also. So he came to Achashverosh and says, "Listen, there's some people..."

1:48:56Getting you know, they're really unusual. They're separate. They're not this, they're not that. Let me just kill them. In reality, I said, "Who are these people? Who are these people?" That's the Jews. "Jews, but they pay taxes. Pay taxes? Money? I'll give you more money. What do they pay, five million a year? I'll give you 384 million. I'll give you the money what they're gonna pay the taxes for years to come." Yeah, but their God killed all of their enemies before us. Look at Paro, look at Nebuchadnezzar. Look at everybody else. He killed all of them. I'm gonna go, God's gonna kill me because? No! Look what happened. You had seventy years. There was a prophecy that the prophet Yeshayahu made two hundred years ago that the same Beit Hamikdash will be built and... After the first Beit Hamikdash was destroyed, 70 years later another Beit Hamikdash will be built. Look, we did the math. Look, you and I did the math. He didn't build it. Which means Hashem left them. Hashem left them. So you don't have to worry about their God anymore. All we have to do is kill them on the day that they have no success. They have no mazal. What day? Seventh of Adar. Why? That's the day Moshe Rabbeinu died. Their leader died on the Seventh of Adar. That's the day they don't have any luck. They don't have any mazal. We'll kill them on that day.

1:50:25Without hesitation, Achashverosh signs the deal, not realizing that Moshe Rabbeinu was also born on the 7th of Adar. But why did he want to kill all of them? Haman HaRasha, the story is that when he would pass by with all the money that he had, with all the kavod that he had, he comes to his wife and he tells her there's also guests in his house. He tells her, listen, I have everything. I have my sons, I have my properties, I have my exchanges, I have my jewelry, I have this, I have this, I have this, but it's all worth nothing because Mordechai HaYehudi would not bow to me. What do you mean it's all worth nothing? The trillion dollars you have in the bank is not worth anything. Kids, you have in the world that kiss the ground you walk on, it's worth nothing. The wife that praises you is worth nothing. All the people that kiss your fingers and your fingernails and every deal is worth nothing. Everything is worth nothing. Why? This is the mida of the nachash, the nachash in Gan Eden, the original Gan Eden. And pass it by the sheet, shut the sheet. The nachash, the serpent, came and...

1:51:47to Chava and he said to her, "Eat from the apple, eat from the Tree of Knowledge, eat from the Tree of Knowledge." No, Hashem said, "No, Hashem said don't touch it. Hashem said don't eat it." And he said, "I have everything else, look, it's a whole garden." Any fruit, any vegetable, anything you wanted, it had. All the good that's in this world is not even 1% of what you had right next to her, available to her for free. She didn't have to work for it. The Zohar HaKadosh says the angels used to cook for them every day. Cook for them! You have everything good, but the serpent says, "Yes, but if you don't eat from the Tree of Knowledge, it's all worthless." Why? It's one thing missing. If there's one thing missing, you don't have anything. That's the midah ra'ah. That's an evil midah. Why? Looking at what you don't have. Instead of appreciating all you have, all you can see is what you don't have.

1:53:00An example they give in schools, and I've seen some videos about it that people do. It looks very smart, and it is smart. A teacher shows his class a blank piece of paper with a dot on it, and he says, "What do you see?" and everybody says, "Oh, you see the black dot." There's a huge piece of paper, and they show him there's a black dot in the middle of the paper. He shows one student after another: black dot, black dot, black dot, black dot, blah, blah, blah. He goes, "What, nobody sees the rest of the white that I have? Nobody sees the rest of the white paper?" That's our nature. Our nature is to see the little thing, the little tiny dot, not the whole thing that we have. Instead of seeing all the good that Hashem gives us, He gave you eyes, He gave you ears, He gave you lips, He gave you taste, He gave you taste buds, He gave you hearing, He gave you a wife, He gave you a husband, He gave you kids, He gave you a job. Even though the jobs are annoying, even though the boss is annoying and the customers are annoying, you have one. And even though the kids are annoying and they don't want to go to sleep, you have kids. And even though the wife and the husband maybe want to spend money, but you have a husband and a wife.

1:54:12You know how many people are willing to pay a fortune just to find a husband or wife? You know how many people are willing to pay a fortune just to have one eye? You know how many people are willing to pay a fortune just to have one liver? Or a wife, or a husband, or a kid, or anything of what you have? No, I don't see. Why? I had a tough day today. What did you have a tough day? Yeah, I lost a customer. Okay, but you still have another hundred customers, no? Yeah, but this was a big customer. Yeah, but you have a hundred more. No, okay. I have them already. I have the hundred customers. Oh, so that's not good. Yeah, but I couldn't have another one. So the whole life is ruined because you lost one customer? You forget about the hundred that Hashem gave you. All of life is ruined because you don't have this specific deal, or this specific amount of money, or this specific house, or this specific meal didn't taste so good. So the rest of Shabbat is no good? The wife toiled and broke her head and this and that and made a whole giant meal. She made you 3, 4, 17 meals for Shabbat. One of the salads doesn't taste good. One of the salads, ah, you don't know how to cook. Ah, you don't know how to cook. Next week I'm doing catering. Next week I'm doing catering. There are husbands like this. What do you think, I'm joking? There are husbands like this, Baruch Hashem, none of you. If not, your wife should send you to a private session.

1:55:36But the private session for people like that is just hating. No talking. Wake you up. Wake you up for not being appreciative. People only see what's missing, not what they have. That's Haman. That is Haman. Instead of seeing all the good that he has, the trillions and the millions and everything else, all he sees is Mordechai HaYehudi, who doesn't bow to him. It's all worthless. Who has the Amidah? The Nachash. The Nachash from Gan Eden. From the garden, from the original sin. You don't eat from the Tree of Knowledge, everything else that God gave you is worthless. Okay, so you don't have it. So, you are so upset that Gonna kill the guy. Hey, you're a little extreme there, Haman. Fine, you want to kill the guy. But why do you want to kill everybody? What did the rest of Am Yisrael do? Okay, Mordechai doesn't respect you, fine. Okay, he doesn't like you, fine. But why do you want to kill everybody? What did they do to you? Ka'as. Ka'as is anger. Once somebody's angry, logic escapes them.

1:57:03Logic escapes them. He's not thinking straight. He's not thinking properly. He's not thinking right or left. He's just thinking death. But they didn't do anything to you. Like all of these anti-Semites that you have in America and around the world, for the most part, most of them never even met a Jew. Forget about they've never been hurt by a Jew. Forget about they've been offended or they've never met a Jew. There's actually a whole country somewhere in Europe. I forget the name. It's a small country, but it has a few million people. They have a holiday where they celebrate the killing of Jews. Actually, there's a real, I forget the name of the country. I try to forget such things. There's actually a whole country that has a holiday where they make statues of what they think a Jew looks like—big nose, big ears. They look like monsters, and they hit them and burn them, and so on and so forth. I remember I saw some type of movie about it many, many years ago. It was a comedy, but it was based on reality.

1:58:25like a whole thing like an annual holiday of hating Jews and killing them, and so on and so forth. So the guy that came there said to them, "How many Jews have you met in your life?" None of them had ever met a single Jew. None of them had ever met a single Jew. Hate for no reason. Hate for no reason. Haman hated for no reason. Okay, Mordechai, you don't like him for whatever reason you have. You have beef between you and him. Fine. You're wrong about that too, but why do you want to kill everybody for? What did they do to you? Kaso, somebody's angry, can't control it. Nothing is stopping them from becoming Hitler. Nothing is stopping them from becoming Hitler. And we see that the entire thing that drove Haman the Rasha is someone dishonoring him, someone not giving him respect. All of it was based on a materialistic, egotistical mindset, the epitome of evil. On the other hand, we have Mordechai HaYehudi

1:59:54Mordechai HaYehudi, as we said already, was visibly Jewish. A Jewish man. This is actually the first time the word "Yehudi" appears in the Tanakh. First time, who? Mordechai. Mordechai HaYehudi. What does "ish" mean? Someone that has Yirat Shamayim. What makes somebody a Yehudi? The Gemara in Masechet Megillah says, someone that is mored by Avodah Zarah. Someone that goes against Avodah Zarah. So Haman made himself into Avodah Zarah. He had a statue on his neck. So every time somebody bowed to him, they bowed to the statue, thinking they're bowing to the statue. But in reality, Haman would take it as if they're bowing to him. "I’m Avodah Zarah. I’m a god." That's what he's saying. "Bow to me." So Mordechai refused to bow to him. The question is, this Mordechai...

2:01:16Everybody knows you don't like Haman. In reality, you guys made a deal many years before. The Midrash says that Haman sold himself as a slave to Mordechai many years before. The Midrash says that many years before, both of them were generals in the army. Mordechai was a ba'al midot, had good midot, and also taught his soldiers good midot. So when food came, he knew that whatever food they got from the home base, who knows when the next delivery was going to come. So eat a little bit a day, a little bit every day. Don't eat like you've never eaten before. Eat like my students eat pizza. They don't eat it at all. They just look at it the whole time. Eat like that. Eat like that. Don't eat. Eat, but don't eat. Eat with your eyes. Don't eat in reality. He said, because we don't know when we're going to get more. We don't know. Come on, no middot, no good traits. So what happens? Everybody ate like they never ate before in their life. What happens? They finished all the food. Finished all the food. You got a bunch of hungry soldiers with blood on their hands. They want more food. Who are they gonna go to? The general knew. Haman, give us some food. He said, "I don't have any food. We don't have food." "Haman, you don't bring us food? We have to eat something. We'll eat you!"

2:02:35Haman runs to Mordechai. He goes, Mordechai, you gotta help me out. I need food. I need food. He goes, you have a problem. You should have taught your soldiers middot, not to eat everything. Okay, okay. Thank you very much for teaching me some mussar. It's too late. I'm in deep trouble here. They're either gonna eat me or I don't know. I need some help. He says, listen, I'll make a deal with you, but I'm saving your life. So you have to pay me back. He goes, whatever. I have a lot of money. I'll give you money. No, no, no, no. I don't want money. I want you. Let me tell you, you're gonna be my slave. How long? Forever. So Haman did his math. Either I'm gonna be a slave forever or they're gonna kill me. What's a better deal? Be a slave. So he signed on a shoe with blood, signing a deal with Mordechai: I am your slave forever. So every time, years later, that Haman, who now became rich, who now became a leader, who now became second in command to Achashverosh, everybody would bow to him. He'd expect everybody to bow to him. Instead of Mordechai bowing to him, he'd pick up his shoe and show him the agreement that he has. Hey, what about you? You're my slave. You bow to me. That's what got him angry. Because he knew it was true.

2:03:59Everybody loves the truth until it obligates them. Always remember that. People love the truth until it obligates them. Many people love my shiurim until I say something that's against them. Why? Because they have to fix themselves. Tell you I go do everything is good. Yeah, against this, against this thing. I tell the guy, don't be cheap. Oh, all of a sudden, no, I'm Amalek, you wash out. Why? You liked my shiurim for two years? What happened? No, no. No, you, too much. What, too much? Two years, not too much. No, you said something about me. Everybody likes the truth until it obligates them, and this, Rabotai, is cancer and... Mussar is not supposed to be about other people. Mussar is supposed to be about you, about me. Everything that I'm teaching, I'm learning. Meaning, I'm really talking to myself the whole time. You guys just happen to be here. This is helping my teshuva. You want to help? Because I say Emet. You don't want to help? It doesn't make a difference. At least I'm going to do teshuva. Why? I want to go to Gan Eden, not Gehinnom, no matter what it looks like.

2:05:14People like it when you talk about everybody else except themselves, meaning they want to be entertained. They come to Shiur to be entertained. They think it's like a singer. They think I'm one of these singers, like Gad Elbaz. They think I'm going to do some dance for you guys on stage. They are shaming Hashem Aleinu. song, no dances, and I'm not looking for fans. Somebody sent me an email today. I haven't responded yet, but this is what the response is going to look like. He sent me an email and said, "Oh, I was watching your shiurim. Everything was great until I saw what you said about the Holocaust and how God did the whole thing. I want no part of such a God anymore. No more Yaron Reuven shiurim for me." That's what she said. I'll show you the email. I'm very busy. I didn't have time to read the email, nor to respond to it. Eventually, when I get to respond to it, whenever that's going to happen, the response is going to be: "I'm not looking for fans, Baruch Hashem. But you should know that everything I say is in the Torah. I will provide sources—not that it's going to change anything—but maybe, just maybe, if there's ever a small chance of such a person realizing the truth, we'll try to show them the truth."

2:06:37But at no point will there ever be an apology. Oh, I'm sorry it offended you. You will never ever see that in any of the emails. Why? Because I'm not sorry. There's nothing to be sorry about; it's the Torah. If you're offended by it, I'm offended by you. If you're offended by what God said, I'm offended by you. You are offensive. I'm offended by your existence. You're against my Father. If you're against my Father, I'm offended that you even exist. I'm not looking for fans; I'm looking for truth. You want to hear the truth? Sometimes the truth hurts. Why? It obligates you. It obligates you; it obligates me. And you should know that every single time I say something new in the shiur, usually I get tested with it either right before or right after I... Why? Hashem says, okay, you said it, let's see. No, you do it. I say I talk about stingy people, immediately I have an emunah test with money. Immediately I have a money issue. Immediately. It's like clockwork. But we still say it every week. Why? It's the truth. It's either a hundred percent truth or a hundred percent a lie. 99% truth is a hundred percent lie, rabotai. Mordechai HaYehudi knew this.

2:08:06Mordechai HaYehudi did not care about what everyone else thought; he just cared about the truth. So he did not pretend to be a goy. He did not pretend to be like anyone else. He wanted everyone to know, "I am a Yehudi. I am a Jew. I have nothing to do with anyone else, and I want you to know it not just by the words that I say, but also by the way I look." I'm not gonna come to your parties. I'm not gonna wear your clothes. I'm not gonna hang out. I'm not going to have chitchat with you. I'm not gonna have chess bets or tournaments. I am not like you. Why? I'm a Jew. Hashem put me in the world to be a Jew. If He put me as a goy, I'd be a goy, but since He put me as a Jew, I must be a Jew. A Jew is different. A Jew is chosen. Chosen to what? To serve Hashem 24 hours a day. Okay, be a Jew, but why don't you be like some of those political Jews that stay out of trouble? Why do you have to stay at the gate where Haman leaves every day and dafka not bow? Don't be at the gate; go somewhere else where a man is not going to be there. Why are you dafka going to the Nazi camp? You know a man is leaving there every day; he's going to see you every day, he's going to see you not bowing to him every day. Go somewhere else and...

2:09:32Okay, we know you're a Jew, chazak u'baruch, you learn Torah, you do mitzvot, good. But why do you have to do it in his face? Go somewhere else. Why? You're putting your life in danger, no? Not to put your life in danger. So how could the head of the Sanhedrin put his life in danger every single day? The answer, Rabotai, is also in Gemara Masechet Megillah when they ask, how come we do not read Hallel on Purim? We read Hallel throughout Rosh Chodesh. We read Hallel on holidays. Why don't we read Hallel on Purim? And the Gemara answers surprisingly, but not surprising if you know what's going on. What's the answer? The answer is, they say, we don't read Hallel because Hallel is a prayer of celebration. We have nothing to celebrate because we're still servants of Achashverosh. What do you mean we're still servants of Achashverosh? He died! No, no, no. Physically died, but figuratively speaking, we're the same people. Nothing changed. If Achashverosh invited you to a party, would you come?

2:11:02Come on. Donald Trump invites you to a party at the White House. Would you go? It's Donald Trump. It's the President of the United States. Would you go? Everyone's like... The fact that you're even thinking it's a remote possibility shows that Chazal are right. We are still the same people. Nothing changed. No one has done teshuva yet. 2,500 years have passed. Nothing changed. Everybody's like... Donald Trump though, no? It's nice, no? Trump might be in the White House. No, it's covered. No, he likes kosher food. Oh well, it's an honor to know. I don't know anything. You're a Jew; you have no place there. You have time to go learn Torah, go do mitzvot, go discipline your kids, make sure they're tzaddikim, go make your wife happy.

2:12:03You have no time for the White House. You have no time to go play golf on Sundays. You have time to be a Jew and a Jew only. But how many of us are Jews? How many of us are like Mordechai HaYehudi? Okay, so you got a couple of million that are religious, but how many are like Mordechai? If you invited them to the Beit HaMikdash or to the White House, how many of you would say no? How many are going to say no? All right, so everybody's going to come up with new excuses. No, it's kosher food. No, it's peace for the people. It's good for the people. Negotiations? You could do it on the phone, too. You could do it on the phone also. You need to go there? We need to go to a party? Excuses why you want to be in a picture? Oh, look. I'm next to Donald—mean Donnie, my boy. You forgot who you are the minute you left. But you have a picture on your wall for the rest of your life that you took a picture with the President—mean Trump—mean the President. People have—I went to all these people's offices throughout my life: lawyers, doctors, so on and so forth. Everybody has pictures of famous people on their wall. But the famous people don't have a picture of you on their wall, though.

2:13:26Famous people do not have a picture of you on their wall, but you have a picture of them on your wall like it's Moshe Rabbeinu. Look, I was with the president in 1985. I was with this one and that one. Who are you? What do you want? Where are you? Where is your head? Where is your head? This, Rabotai Yekarim, is the reason why we do not, we do not, we... Read, halilah, we're still the same people. We still haven't done teshuva. So now, we'll finalize with this: The Gemara says that you must drink until you get so drunk that you mix up the blessings of Arur Haman And Baruch Mordechai to the opposite. Instead of Arur Haman, blessed Haman. Instead of blessed Mordechai, Arur Mordechai. You're blessed. Why? Because the only time during the year you made that mistake. The rest of the year, you know Mordechai HaYehudi, Kadosh, blessed is he. Why? I'm trying to emulate him. I'm trying to be like Mordechai HaYehudi.

2:14:52If you did it the whole year round, then you're allowed to get drunk and it's a mitzvah. Such a big mitzvah, it's like you fasted for an entire week. But how many of us are doing that? How many of us, Rabotai, are really living the life of Mordechai? When you really think about it, it kind of sounds like many of us are more similar to Haman. Why? The minute the guy didn't give you kavod, what did you do? You say, oh, it's okay, it's okay, no problem. Or do you want to take his head off and put it on a picture right next to Donald Trump? He made you upset. Why? He didn't give you kavod. He didn't make you chazzan in the beit knesset. He didn't make you chazzan. Or he didn't give you the aliyah. He didn't give you aliyah, so you wanted to put him on the wall next to the mezuzah over there.

2:15:52Why? He didn't give you kavod? Or the minute you got angry, your wife said something, your husband said something, all of a sudden, you are Haman. Why? You don't want to just kill her, you want to kill her entire family. And everyone that knows her. And everyone that's friends with her. Why? Made you angry. All of a sudden you want to break this, break that, but what happened? Just one thing happened. How many of us are visibly Jewish? How many of us look like Jews where if we see, ah! Look at the Jew coming. No, no, Kaddish. Come on, come on. How many? How many of us look like Jews? How many of us look like Jews? How many? The Jews want to look like goyim, the most religious among us. That's the issue behind the whole wig thing. The whole wig thing is why we want to look like goyim. Not because we want to look like Jews.

2:16:53no place in the entire Tanakh do you see a single tzadeket, a single woman mentioned, oh, she had a wig on. Sarah Imeinu had a wig three feet long? No, you're never gonna see that. Rachel went to the wig maker and got a longer wig, a newer one? Never gonna see that. The whole thing, we want to have wigs, why? We don't want to tell I go to the store and they know when I wear my mitpachat. When I wear my scarf on my head or my hat, they treat me differently. Perfect, that means they know you're Jewish. Yeah, but I don't like it. Oh, so you don't like being a Jew? You don't like being a Jew? You're not proud of being Jewish? Why do you want to look like a goy? Why do you wear those clothes? Why do you want everybody to ask why you wear such immodest clothes? Why is your shirt so tight? Why is your skirt so short? When did you start wearing sleeveless tops? Oh, when Obama's wife came into the picture, everybody suddenly started wearing tank tops. Michelle Obama started a new style: no sleeves. Oh, so you want to be like the goya? You want to be like Michelle Obama?

2:18:15How come you don't want to be like Rachel? How come you don't want to be like Rivka? How come? How come you want to look like everyone else that's not Jewish? Oh, so you don't want to be a Jew? No, but I might. Keep Shabbat. Okay, good for you. Keep Shabbat. They stopped getting no men Shabbat for you. This, Rabotai, is the secret. The secret is We have more middot like Haman and Achashverosh than Mordechai. It's time to change. It's time to do teshuva. It's time for us to be proud that we're Jews. Because if you're a Jew, that means that you're chosen. You're chosen by the only one that matters, Hashem Yitbarach. He chose you. To be one of very, very few people that He says, "That's my firstborn. That's my firstborn." He doesn't say that about everyone else. In the book of Isaiah, Chapter 41, Verse 8, it says of Yaakov...

2:19:42But you, O Israel, my servant, Yaakov, you who have chosen offspring of Avraham who loved me. When all the goyim say, "Oh, who is the suffering servant in Isaiah 53?" Look, it's JC Penny. No, it's not JC Penny. It's Am Yisrael, Rabotai, and you see it right over here. Hashem Yitbarach says, "Oh Israel, you're my servant. You are my servant. You are my servant, oh Israel." Why? You're a descendant of Avraham, Avraham that loved Me. How many of us can be defined as lovers of God? If you love someone... You're proud of it. You show off. You have no problem telling people about it. Why? I love my wife. How much? More than life itself. Why? She's the greatest woman in history. I'm talking about my wife. Why? I'm proud of it. I love Hashem too. Why? It's the greatest. He gave me everything. Why? He's Hashem.

2:21:04of it. No problem. Not shy about it. Not second-guessing or should I say in front of people? I love being a Jew. Why? I'm chosen. It's the greatest thing in the world. Who has the problem? The one who denies it, the one who still wants to look like a goy, the one who still wants to hide their love for Hashem and they believe the religious in their heart. Just make sure no one knows though. Make sure no one knows I'm religious though. No, no, no, no way the kippah. No, no, no, I can't let them see. My customers are gonna leave me if I wear a kippah. My customers are gonna leave me if I wear a kippah. Never in the history of man has any real customer left someone that wears a kippah. As a matter of fact, if you ask Green... would you prefer to do business with the guy that is wearing a kippah versus the guy that's not wearing a kippah? A hundred percent of the time, not 99, a hundred percent of the time they'll tell you the guy with the kippah. Why? The guy with the kippah knows there's a God above; he's scared of something. If he's scared of something, he's more likely to be honest. This is why one of the head journalists in Israel...

2:22:26who for many years reported interesting articles and interviews with terrorists. He would speak their language in Arabic and so on. He would go into their places, putting his life on the line. One time, he says he did teshuva at the end, himself, did teshuva. They asked him, how come he did teshuva? He says, a terrorist helped me do teshuva. Huh? A terrorist helped you do teshuva? He goes, yeah. He goes, one time I was interviewing a terrorist. Hamas, a guy that's like the head of a terrorist organization, Hamas or this one or that one, whatever it was. And I'm interviewing him. In the middle of the interview, he looks at me and goes, you know I want to kill you, right? Somebody tells you he wants to kill you when he has a gun in his hand. It's kind of scary. But the only reason I'm not going to kill you is because I agreed not to kill you. I agreed to let you interview me. So he interviewed him and ran away after Shema Hashem. He just put his life on the line. Time passed, he did teshuva, and he interviewed the same terrorist again. So this time when he showed up, he showed up with a kippah. And the same terrorist says to him, he goes, you know, now I'm obligated to protect you. What? Protect me?

2:23:47wanted to kill me last time because, yeah, last time you were an enemy of God. Now you're the one He chose. He got this look from a terrorist. Do you need a look from a terrorist to be visibly Jewish? Are you still hiding? Still hiding the kippah? Still hiding the tzitzit? Still hiding Shabbat? Still hiding the mitzvot? You still don't want to tell people what you do on weekends and... You still want to go play basketball. This you have to ask yourself, why? Because you have a mitzvah coming up in 24 hours. You have a mitzvah to, for the first time, confuse Mordechai and Haman. Make it the last time for the rest of the year. Any questions? So what you're saying before, you're saying that we're closer to a person like Hitler than we are to Moshe? Based on our middot, yes, based on our character traits. We have more character traits similar to Haman than we have to Mordechai. Because if you look at Mordechai, his middot, as we went over for the first couple of hours—I think you missed a part of it—we looked at all the middot that Mordechai has, we looked at the middot that Haman has, and we have middot that are closer to him than to the other.

2:25:16Next question: Most of the world—it's almost 8 billion people in the world—most of them, which includes us in this room, includes all religious Jews, includes everyone—most, not everyone, most, if you haven't done complete teshuvah, you are definitely... Definitely, if you've done teshuvah maybe you, in some regards, are... You have to ask yourself, if somebody disrespected you, how did you act? Did you act like Mordechai or did you act like Haman? If someone asked you for a favor, did you act like Mordechai or did you act like Haman? And so on and so forth. We're not going to go over the same shiur again. But the point is that you have to look at the middot of Haman, you have to look at the middot of Mordechai. She picked one thing that most people have common sense not to do, but not necessarily everybody. In fact, there was somebody that forgot that just 24 hours ago. There was a father in Israel who

2:26:34got angry at his wife. So then he decided to kill her, and then kill his three-year-old child, and then kill himself by putting himself on the train tracks. And then a few months ago, there was a different father that asked the police to investigate the murder of his only daughter. He had only one daughter, and somebody murdered her, and he asked the police to investigate. What did they find out from the investigation? The father murdered the child because the mom disrespected him. The mom disrespected him, and he didn't like that. She disrespected him, and he knew she loved the daughter. So, he killed her even though it was his daughter too. So, murder may seem far away from us right now, but when you're angry, maybe it's not so far away. But that's not the only middah we talked about.

2:27:35many other things, but the issues of horrible behavior are happening every single day. The issues of ignoring the truth are happening every single day. You tell people to their face that certain things are not allowed, and they'll come up with excuses, knowing that it's an excuse. And they'll still say, "Yeah, but this, but that, but this, but that." They'll make up excuses to justify their lie. This is exactly what Haman was doing. Haman justified his misbehavior, his disgusting behavior by lies. Why? He said, listen, you have all this money, Haman. You have more money than everybody else. You have kavod, you're second in command. Everything is great. What's the problem? What do you care about this Mordechai? Haman said, no, but if Mordechai doesn't bow to me, Eventually, somebody else will listen to him too, and eventually, somebody else, and eventually, somebody else. Eventually, no one's gonna bow to me. He justified it and rationalized in his head, rationalizing in his head how it's right to kill Mordechai because he's not bowing to me. This is Mordechai. This is also us sometimes. If you don't mind, give me my bag. The black one.

2:29:03This is us. This is Mordechai. Next question. My life. You're telling me about my life? Yeah, for somebody that deals with backlash, welcome to the club. Ah, listen, it's not easy. It's not easy to try to be Mordechai. It's not easy to try to be Moshe. It's not easy to try to be Pinchas. It's not easy to try to be Eliyahu HaNavi. It's not easy to be Avraham Avinu. It's very easy to be Esav. It's very easy to be Haman. It's very easy to be Pharaoh.

2:30:32It's very easy to be Nebuchadnezzar. But to be Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, Moshe, Aharon, David, Shlomo—very hard. Why? You're the enemy of the state. Who's the state? Your own state, your own people. If you look at all of the prophets in the Torah Many of them had a mitah meshunah. Many of them had an unusual death. They were murdered by their own people. As you remember, I told you a story about Zechariah. His own people murdered him when Nevuzaradan, the chief in command for Nevuchadnetzar HaRasha, came to Jerusalem and he saw the blood on the floor. He asked the Jews, "What is this?" They said, "Oh, it's blood from one of the sacrifices." "I've never seen blood boil before. So make another sacrifice; I want to see it." They made another sacrifice, and the blood was swallowed by the ground and didn't boil. "Sorry, maybe this one didn't work. Do it again." They did it again, sacrificed another sheep—nothing. He said, "Okay, so obviously you're lying to me."

2:31:52So if you don't tell me the truth, I'll kill all of you. What's this blood boiling on the floor? I said, what can we tell you? This is the blood of our prophet Zechariah. We killed him. Why would you kill your own prophet? He rebuked us. He told us to do teshuva. We didn't want to do it. He told us to keep Shabbat. He told us to stop wasting seed. He told us to take off the wig. He told us to be modest. He told us to eat kosher. He told us to learn Mussar. He told us everything that Hashem told him to tell us. We didn't want to do it. So we killed him. We figured, ah, at least we don't have to hear it anymore. Nebuzaradan said, oh, I will avenge him. And he killed all of them. And then he went back to the blood and he saw that the blood of Zechariah is still boiling. He went and killed more people. Came back to the blood. It was still boiling. He screamed to Shamayim, he said, "Zechariah, Zechariah, I've killed the best of them. Do you want me to kill the rest?" And the blood calmed down. At that moment, Nevuzaradan did a, needless to say, he did a teshuva on his own.

2:33:17he said, "If all the people I just killed, the God of Israel gave me the power to kill them because they killed one tzaddik, and Hashem gave me the power to kill all of them and caused blood for killing one of them, what will He do to me if I don't do teshuva?" That very moment, it was a moment of truth for Nevuzaradan, the chief in command, the next guy in line after the king. Zillions of dollars, no end to the kavod, conquered the world. He gave it all up for what? To go be a slave. He took off his symbols of being a general. put on a sack, sent a suicide note back home so they wouldn't look for him. He converted to Judaism and joined the nation that became slaves. He joined the nation that was slaves in his own country. He converted to Judaism. What was his reward? His sons reached the level of Ruach HaKodesh.

2:34:37Because it is said he came, they got to the level of Ruach HaKodesh. I call this the moment of truth. He was able to do teshuva. It's very difficult. It's very easy to do teshuva when you're broke. It's very easy to do teshuva when you have nothing going for you. It's very easy to do teshuva when you're sick and lonely. Hard to do teshuva when you're general. Hard to do teshuva when you have it all. It all was a billionaire. Everyone kissed his feet. What did he do? He gave it all up. Why? He found the truth. That's why it's a parasha named Parashat Yitro. So, rabotai, right now, Baruch Hashem, each one of us has our own tests. But as a nation, we have a bigger test coming. the way it looks in the world, things don't look so good. If you still think they do look good, then you're just blind. Antisemitism is increasing bigger than ever. Assimilation is increasing just as rapidly. Those same things happened in the past, most notably right before the Holocaust. I thought about it, maybe doing Aliyah, maybe not doing Aliyah. It's still in consideration, but nothing's gonna change.

2:36:06Whether you live in Israel or you don't live in Israel is not going to help. What's going to help is if you do teshuva. If you do teshuva, it doesn't matter if you're inside a concentration camp, Hashem will save you. If you don't do teshuva, you could be on top of the Kotel, and Hashem won't save you. You have to decide where you want to be. Do you want to be Mordechai? Do you want to be Haman? It's easy to be Haman. Everything is based on material. You act like eight billion people. You look like them. You dance like them. You sing like them. You do business like them. Do whatever you want. Live for this world. It's easy. You have a desire, fulfill it. You see a woman, you want her, take her. You see a man, want him, take him. You see food, want it, eat it. Based on desire. But that does not separate you from the animals.

2:37:06Only difference is the animals are much more valuable. Why? That's their job. Their job is to see something and eat it. You are not supposed to be that. You are not supposed to just see something and eat it. To find out, is it kosher, is it not kosher? If I eat something that forbids me from eating this, if I eat meat, I have to wait six hours before I drink milk or eat any dairy products. If I just ate fish, I have to clean out, change the plate, and eat meat on a different plate. I can't eat fish and meat on the same plate, even though I'm not eating them together; it still can't be done on the same plate. You have to think about these things, which seem like a big deal for people that don't do it. In reality, once you start doing it, it becomes second nature. Why? I'm always thinking about Hashem being next to me. Always. What's tamid? Always. All the time.

2:38:16the time, not sometimes, not maybe, all the time. A woman that believes that Hashem is next to her all the time will never, ever, dare do something that matters. Never. She will never leave the house without a kiss. Never, never. She would never eat non-kosher. She would never curse. She would never do anything that puts something in the way of her husband learning Torah. Never. She would never tell him, "No, honey, why don't you stay with me? And, you know, I'm sick and I'm this and I'm that." Unless she's dying and she wants to see her husband before she goes to the next world. And even then there's a safek. Why? Shiviti Hashem l'negdi tamid. A woman knows that her husband's sole purpose in the world is to learn Torah. A woman knows that all of our s'char comes from a few basic mitzvot. One, her husband learning Torah. Two, her modesty. If she goes outside and she looks like the goyim, either because she shows her hair or because she wears a wig and no one can tell it's a wig, what separates her from everybody else?

2:39:34There's a real story I got from somebody just the other day. A woman told me that for years she went back and forth. Sometimes she would wear a wig, and sometimes she would wear a mitpachat. But she always knew inside her that the wig is not kosher. It had nothing to do with avodah zara. Nothing to do with avodah zarah. She knew it's not kosher. She had a few of them, and she knew it's not modest. She knew that the whole issue of covering your hair is two mitzvot. One is modesty. The second one is to cover your hair. So as far as covering your hair, even if you cover your head with a garbage pail, you covered your head. But that's not the mitzvah. Why? It's a walking chillul Hashem. If every Jew walked around with a garbage pail on his head, it wouldn't look good. It's against Hashem. obviously, it is a nice way to cover your hair. You cover your hair with a beach bucket or a hat or something like that. But the second thing is, is it has to be modest. Meaning, by definition, it cannot attract the attention of others. By definition, that's what modesty means. Now, it doesn't mean ugly; it just means it doesn't attract attention and

2:40:55you walk around and another woman walks around, she has her hair showing, you don't; you have a hat on. Some may look at both of you, but the vast majority of people will only look at her. Why? That's the way guys were built. So, a woman that covers her hair knows this. But this woman was going back and forth like many women do today and Sometimes they go to the extent where at home they wear a mitpachat, but outside they wear a wig, which is the opposite of what you're supposed to do. Or they wear a mitpachat all the time except when they go to a wedding or bar mitzvah or some type of event. So, God is in their life all the time except when other people see. Except when everyone comes, God's not there, but every other time God's there. This is actually worse, in my opinion. In my opinion, this is worse. Why? Yom HaMashiach... You're saying you're doing your mitzvah except when it really matters. So this woman knew this, and she knew, "I have to go back after this, after that." But it's hard, probably. It's hard. It's hard. It's hard to get rid of the wig. Why? You look so much better. You get so much attention. It even looks better than your real hair.

2:42:18It's always done. I mean, people treat you differently. You fit in. Okay, eight billion people fit in. A Jew is not supposed to fit in. If you fit in, there's a problem. If you're like everyone else, there's a problem and... She decided that it was time to get rid of the wig. After a lot of crying, a lot of prayers, and watching a lot of videos, she got rid of the wig. She says, "I couldn't believe how much less attention I got, even when I would go to the simple store and..." won't go to the store to buy milk, even when I went to work, even when I got so much less attention. And it doesn't make me feel good. Why did I know God was watching? When I was getting all the attention because I looked like everyone else with the wig and everything else, I got a lot of attention. Everybody was extra nice to me. Everyone was this, everyone was that. And that's how you know deep inside it's not kosher, it's not modest. I...

2:43:38That's how you know. That's how you know how Chachamim, Kedoshei Ha'olam, people that are the biggest rabbis in the world, said things like the Baba Sali who says, anyone that thinks that they're able to cheat HaKadosh Baruch Hu by wearing a wig, and it's as if they're pretending as if they're covering their hair. it's really like, it's a bigger sin. Why do you think you can fool God? The fact that you can fool people is one thing. But to call yourself religious by pretending that you're able to fool God, it's bigger, even more ridiculous. But this is not where he stopped. I mean, he said such harsh things like, any woman that wears a wig, regardless, long, short, avodah zarah, not avodah zarah. That wig will be used as something to burn her with in Gehinom. Why, do you think the Baba Sali just said things without thinking? He said things because of anger? He said things because he just wanted to scare people? No! This is the truth! This is the truth, Rabotai, what can I tell you? Rav Shwadron,

2:45:06Ask the question: Why does every woman want to look like the only woman in the entire Torah whose hair is mentioned? Who? The Sotah. No one ever talks about the hair of Sarah. No one ever talks about the hair of Rachel, Rivka, Leah, or Channah. No one ever talks about the hair of any of the other tzadkaniyot. Only one woman in the entire Torah has her hair mentioned. Who? The Sotah. The wayward woman suspected of cheating on her husband. That's the only woman whose hair is mentioned. And why do they mention her hair? Because they're showing her hair to embarrass her, to try to convince her and pressure her into... admitting that she cheated on her husband. Why does everybody want to look at the Sotah? And the list goes on and on, and we've gone over this many, many times. In the end, everybody knows the truth. So now, this woman, Baruch Hashem, she said that the videos, the lectures we've done, helped a lot because she said even though she stopped wearing the wig, it was still very hard to deal with in the beginning. But then when she heard that it's Avodah Zarah, she says that was the nail in the coffin. That was it. Then I knew I made the right choice. Then at that point it was easy for me. It was hard because of the modesty issue and so on and so forth. But once I knew it's Avodah Zarah, I said chas v'shalom. She said I'm trying to go to Gan Eden. I have Avodah Zarah in my house.

2:46:16Helped a lot because she said even though she stopped wearing the wig, it was still very hard to deal with in the beginning. But then when she heard that it's Avodah Zarah, she says that was the nail in the coffin. That was it. Then I knew I made the right choice. Then at that point, it was easy for me. It was hard because of the modesty issue and so on and so forth. But once I knew it's Avodah Zarah, I said chas v'shalom. She said I'm trying to go to Gan Eden. I have Avodah Zarah in my house. How? How could I allow such a thing? Even if it's 1% safek, possibility of Avodah Zarah, who would have 1% safek poison inside your steak and still eat it? Who would think that there's a chance there's a possibility of poisoning your food and still eat it? Who? Having Avodah Zarah is more than poison. More than poison. This is why the Gedolei HaDor, the Gedolei HaDor conclusively...

2:47:20said time and time again it's not allowed. And all those that say it's allowed said something completely different was allowed, not something that we have today. So now anyone out there that says such things like I just said, whether it's about Shabbat and what is a... Shabbat desecrator is considered an idolater, which is very uncomfortable to hear, or the fact that his Judaism or her Judaism is on suspension, or that a woman who does not want to cover her hair or does not want to do teshuva with modesty, she has a very serious problem with God. This is not nice to hear. This is not nice to say. But the reality is it's the truth. So anyone that joins that club, starts telling people the truth, of course appropriately, and not with anger and not with disrespect. Do not start pointing fingers at people in the middle of the street, calling them rasha, rasha, rasha, idol worshiper, idol worshiper. Even if they are, you still can't do that. You cannot bring yourself to sin because of your rebuke. Rebuke, but there's a way to rebuke.

2:48:27There's a way to do it. There's a time to do it. Don't do it in front of a lot of people. If it's just you, then it's a general speech. But if there's a group of you, say 20 people, don't say, "Hey, listen, you look like..." That's not the way to do it. There's a time and a place to do it. Usually, it's better if somebody else does it, not you. Bring them to a shiur, give them a CD, send them a lecture, and so on and so forth. But if you want to do it yourself, what should I say to you? Two things. One, welcome to the club. Two, it's going to be a very hard life. How do I know? Read the Torah. Every single prophet had that life. Even Moshe Rabbeinu had enemies. Even Moshe Rabbeinu had enemies. The Gemara Masechet Megillah says one of the names—there were several names for Moshe Rabbeinu. One of the names that Moshe Rabbeinu had was Godeh. What's Godeh? Like a fence. What fence? He kept all of Am Yisrael in check. Don't go against Hashem. He rebuked all of them. That's one of his names. So you see all of it. It's difficult. It's not easy. It's not easy to be the rebuker. In reality, you're going to be alone. A lot.

2:49:50Even your friends will eventually not be your friends so much, especially when you finally say something that affects them. It's very hard. It's very hard. I can tell you from personal experience, many of the people that I helped to do teshuva in the past, I'm not in touch with them anymore. Why? Eventually, they didn't want to hear it anymore. Not all of them, but many. I still have people in touch, but there's many I remember from the last community I lived in. Hashem did teshuva, they started keeping this, keeping that, but eventually they stopped coming. Why did they stop coming? Eventually, it got to a point where they didn't want to do teshuva anymore. Meaning, they kept Shabbat, they kept kosher, they kept taharat mishpacha, but as soon as they started talking about modesty, no more. As soon as they started talking about wigs, no more. As soon as they started talking about stop being stingy, no more. Whatever it was for them, whatever it was for them, That was their line. Okay. I can't continue coming to this shiur because if I come to this shiur, I keep hearing that I have to do more teshuva. I don't want to do any more. I'm finished. I'm enough. I keep Shabbat. I keep this. I keep that. That's enough. They don't want to keep growing. And unfortunately, in Judaism, there's no such thing as not keeping growing. It's either you keep growing or you go backwards. And many of them, unfortunately, started going backwards. Baruch Hashem, they still keep Shabbat from what I know.

2:51:10But they're not growing rapidly like they used to. They're not doing everything they used to. They're not growing in a lot of ways. But such is life. It's very, very difficult. Very, very difficult. I can tell you for sure, one of the biggest gifts that Hashem gave me was to make me naive when I first started this and not realize how difficult it was. Because if I knew how difficult it was, I wouldn't do it. I'm telling you outright, if I knew how difficult it was to do kiruv, I wouldn't do it. This, I worked on Wall Street for almost 20 years. Built a company, made money, da-da-da, all the things that I went through—sickness, this, that, the other thing, employees, enemies, fighting with the government—all types of wonderful battles that I had in my life. Never had an easy life. You could ask any of the people that know me from my past, never had an easy life. This is 100 times harder, 1,000 times harder. You guys think, oh, he comes, he gives a lecture, sounds like fun. You have no idea what I have to go through just to survive the day. But that's the life. Why? I'm trying to be a Yehudi (Jew). I'm trying to make it. Hopefully I make it. That's it. Anything else? So, B'ezrat Hashem (with God's help), we ask ourselves the critical question. Next year, this technically...

2:52:34...is the end of the year. Nisan, according to the Torah, is the first month of the year. Adar is the last month of the year. Even though Rosh Hashanah is what we celebrate as the beginning of the year, according to the Torah, Nisan is the beginning of the year, which means Adar is the last month of the year. So next year, Pesach, Nisan. Next year, meaning... Next month begins the year. You have to finish off the year strong. What should be your resolution? I'll tell you what it is. Be Yehudi. Be like Mordechai. Don't be like Haman. And b'ezrat Hashem, all of us will have the merit, the strength, and the siyata d'shmaya to be like Mordechai, a Yehudi, and Esther, a Yehudiah. Baruch Adonai le'olam. Amen v'Amen.