Questions & Answers by Rabbi Yaron Reuven and the SHORASHIM boys

0:12Wonderful to be back here. We got some good feedback last time with you guys. I think that the second part of the shiur last time was much more interesting because last time we had a shiur, I told you guys a little bit about my personal story. But then after the camera went off, we had questions for a while, and I think it was much more interesting than the shiur. So, I think tonight it's better if we do questions. Any questions you have? Anything that's been bothering you your whole life? Any question. You could ask questions about God. Where does God come from? Are there dinosaurs in the Torah? I don't know. Some question that's been bothering you your whole life. But ask a meaningful question that if you had the answer, maybe, maybe it'll make you 1% more religious. Maybe, maybe it's going to make you keep another mitzvah. Like something mashmauti, something that's like significant to you. Usually, when I tell people this, they forget all the questions they had their whole life. They forget everything. They don't have any more questions. All of a sudden, so then I ask them questions. So how come you don't keep the entire Torah? If you don't have any questions, how come you don't keep the whole Torah? Someone was a, I heard Rav Carlebach, Rav Shalom...

1:33He had a very unique way of doing kiruv, getting people to do teshuvah. And he worked very closely with the Lubavitcher Rebbe. And there was this young boy, you know, in his 20s, that was far... Pig with cheese onion people, not just college, but because he doesn't feel like going to shul. Not just, you know, he doesn't want to keep kosher. It's like he's a guy who works with people like that. It's much more difficult because you have to determine whether they even believe in God at all. Because if they don't believe in God, it's a completely different shiur. different shiur. You have to prove to them that God exists, and then you talk about all the other things about God and the Torah. So ask them, "Do you believe in God?" Sure. "Okay, so let me introduce you to the Rebbe. You believe in God? Okay, that's already something I can work with." He brings him to the Rebbe and tells him, "Rebbe, he's a little sick. He's a little sick."

2:50So he explains to him, just in two seconds, that this boy eats pig on Yom Kippur. So without really thinking much, obviously the siyata d'Shemaya, it's different. The help from Heaven that they get, the different thoughts that they have, it's very different from regular people. And he looks at the guy and he says to him—and his friends were next to him too, he had some other friends with him—he says, Has God been treating you so terribly that you're so mean to Him? On the spot, the guy started crying. On the spot. This was the whole shiur. Shiur started, shiur ended. That's it. That was the shiur. That's it. That was the shiur. That was it. Meaning, me, I have to talk for nine hours until somebody says, "Oh yeah, you said something nice three hours ago."

3:50they don't have to say much. They know exactly what's in your heart. It's something very, very unique, very special. But the key to learn from this story is that all of us have this doubt in our heart. All of us have this thing that's missing. Because if we didn't have something that's missing, we would be Moshe Rabbeinu. We would be something better. We all know somebody more religious than us. All of us know somebody more religious. And you have to ask yourself at some point, why? Why is he closer to Hashem? Why does he care more? Why does he care so much that he decides that he's not going to work on Shabbat? Why? I mean, the guy makes a bunch of money on Shabbat. So how could he just stop himself and just say, you know what? Shabbat, I'm not going to make money anymore. For somebody that's in the business world, it's a very difficult test. Because you're pretty much saying that whether you work on Shabbat or you don't work on Shabbat, I'm gonna send you just as much money. In fact, what you're saying is Hashem is gonna send you more money without working, which is the opposite of logic. Logic says if you work more time, the more you're gonna make. Statistics, if you look at financials, say that in fact, the busiest day in many businesses is Shabbat. The busiest day. If you go into the car business and you want to get a job in the car business and

5:15And they tell you, okay, you can start working. You say, oh, I have one condition. Oh, what's the condition? I can't work on Shabbat. What are they going to tell you? You can't work in the car business. That's what they're going to tell you. Unless you have a track record, meaning you already have customers and you're bringing customers, and you have a success ratio already from before. If you're new and you tell them, "Listen, I can't work on Shabbat," they tell you, "Listen, I'm sorry, you can't work in the car business." Why? Because the vast majority of the sales in the car business are on Shabbat. So for a person to go from working on Shabbat to not working on Shabbat, he's going against logic. He's going against logic because he's saying, "Listen, I'm not only gonna not work Possibly risk my job, but I'm actually betting that I'm gonna make more money by working less and not only less, but I'm removing the most important day of the week for that business. So for anyone that's not keeping Shabbat or anyone that struggles to keep Shabbat, they have to ask themselves: how come he has so much confidence? How does he do that?

6:27Why? Why does he have emunah? Where do you find it? In the street? Like you find 20 bucks? Where do you get this emunah from? People write and talk about emunah all the time. People talk about bitachon all the time. All these keywords that people like to hear. Where do you find this stuff from? Where do you get it? Like if I read one of these books behind you, you have, Baruch Hashem, you have Har Sinai behind you. If I take one of these books, am I going to get emunah automatically? Emunah comes with belief. How do I get it though? proven that, you know, it exists. When you see something exists, you have a belief, and when you believe in something, you get emunah. So what does it mean? It means emunah is not something you could just get from a book. You could learn the concept of emunah, the theory of emunah, the understanding of what it's supposed to look like. But the only way to actually have it yourself is by going through the difficulty yourself and overcoming it. Overcoming the difficulty, meaning

7:28You have to do something that's against logic—against logic because you believe that Hashem is going to find a way in His own infinite ways to make it work anyway. He's going to find a way to give you just as much money or more money or whatever you need without working that particular day of the week or that particular job. The only way you're actually going to get this emunah is by practicing the emunah before you actually have it. Meaning, you have to believe that you're going to be able to succeed in riding the bicycle without falling before you actually know whether you're going to succeed or not. The first time you rode a bicycle, you didn't know if you were going to ride the bicycle or not. You assure me. I mean, hopefully, I... But in reality, after you fell on your face the first 16 times like me, you're like, oh wow, maybe I should try something else. But in emunah, it doesn't work that way. In emunah, you have to keep going. You have to keep going, you have to keep falling until it works. Because that's the only way to actually have emunah. Otherwise, it's only in theory. And the Chazon Ish, one of the sages over the last 100 years,

8:48He says that he has a book called Emunah u'Bitachon. It's a wonderful small book that everybody should read. The first chapter talks about just the very basics of being a Jew, the very basics of belief. But then in the next few chapters, he talks about how there are a lot of people that have read a lot of books. They have the understanding, the concept, of having emunah in Hashem, believing that Hashem runs the world, having bitachon, that Hashem will take care of them. They have the understanding that this is the way it's supposed to work. But as soon as there's a difficulty in their life, all bets are off. They break down, they stop believing, they can't take it, they want to eat pig again, they want to go out with a non-Jew again, they want to violate Shabbat again, like everything. They gave lectures. They preached to all their friends, "Listen, you should have emunah in Hashem, emunah in Hashem, emunah in Hashem," because everything was good for them. So it's easy to say have emunah when everything is good. But what's really emunah? Emunah is seeing the light when everything is dark. That's emunah. Emunah means your life is terrible, but you have 100% belief it's going to be wonderful.

10:12All of this terrible is somehow going to be turned into something magically amazing. This is the greatest thing that's ever happened to you. The fact that you got sick, amazing, baruch Hashem. The fact that you lost money, wow, what a prize. It's very hard. Why? Because when you're in the fire, you can't help but say, "Ouch, it hurts, it burns, it hurts." So that means about that... We have to sometimes take small little jumps and sometimes we'll take big jumps with our emunah in order to build our emunah. It's not something where you can just take big jumps because it's too hard; our hearts sometimes can't take it. You can only take small jumps because, at some point or another, whether you want to jump small or not, Hashem's gonna give you a big jump. He's gonna force you. I told a story the other day, a few weeks ago, in a shiur. It's a very famous story. That will give us a little bit of chizuk. So you understand where you stand as a Jew. Today we have a vast majority of Am Yisrael that don't really understand the value of a Jew. And the reason why is because many of us, unfortunately, unless we're glued to Hashem, secretly want to be goyim. Secretly. Some of us openly want to be goyim. Some of us are dressed like goyim.

11:40Act like goyim, we want to be goyim, we say we go out with goyim, but some of us, it's like a secret. It's like a secret. It's like, really, I want to be LeBron James. Nine feet tall, jumps in the air like he's flying, makes a zillion dollars a day. People want to be him. Now the guy wants to be Donald Trump. He wants to run the country. People secretly want to be goyim, like they don't want to be Moshe Rabbeinu. I went to yeshiva one time, yeshiva kids learning Torah all day, all night. Maybe 30 kids, 40 kids there. I asked them, how many people want to be Moshe Rabbeinu? No one raised their hand. Yeshiva. Yeshiva. I said, how many people want to be like Moshe Rabbeinu? Nobody. I said, how many people want to be like LeBron James? A few people raised their hand. Why? Because people, unfortunately, they see the goyim as something attractive because they see it. Moshe Rabbeinu was like far, far away. I'm not really sure he had a good life. Maybe he was broke. Maybe, you know, we're not really sure. And that's because we really don't know the value of a Jew. We don't realize that you won the lotto

12:58trillion times in a row, and every time it was the biggest jackpot in the world. Right now, I think there was some type of jackpot that was the biggest in history, like a billion dollars or something like that. So imagine you won that a trillion times, every day. Meaning you had so much money you started lending money to governments, and it got boring, so you just decided to start burning it because it became paper and That's what being a Jew is. That's what being a Jew means. A Jew means you won the lottery. That means you don't know why you did that; you won the lottery. You're not going to keep the mitzvot if you don't realize you won the lottery. Now, both Jews and non-Jews have mitzvot. Jews have more mitzvot, non-Jews have fewer mitzvot, but if a Jew...

14:00violates the mitzvot. He has something called teshuva, meaning if he makes a mistake but he does teshuva. He says, "I'm sorry, Hashem. I won't do it again. I can't believe I did it, and I promise I won't do it again." Hashem says, "I love you. Come, come. You know what? I'm gonna give you another trillion dollars." But I made a mistake, Hashem. "Exactly. I'm gonna give you a trillion dollars more. Why? Because you made a mistake." So I'll make another mistake. No, it's not that I'm paying you for the mistake. I'm paying you because you said "I'm sorry." You understood that it's a mistake. Meaning, we get another reward for the teshuva. Teshuva is actually one of the mitzvot in the Torah. But the goy, he has much less mitzvot. There's the seven Noahide laws that are the foundation, similar to the Ten Commandments. And then there's another approximately 50. that are ethical laws to respect their parents and things like that. The problem for a goy is that he doesn't have the benefit like a Jew. Meaning, there's no teshuva for goyim. There's no teshuva. There's no "I'm sorry, Hashem." All these churches, places of avodah zarah, they have the confession room. It's just a bank. They just give money. There's no confession. There's nothing. There's no teshuva.

15:26Meaning that they have fewer mitzvot, but they have less room for error. Another reason is that, no, he's doing teshuva in a sense that now he's going to become righteous, but he'll always have to get punished for the past. Whereas a Jew that does teshuva can get to a point where his teshuva is so strong that even his bad actually turns to good, meaning he'll get rewarded for it. His aveirot turn into mitzvot. The goy can never have such a thing. His aveirot stay aveirot, his sins stay his sins, and he has to get punished for them. But now he'll at least have some type of salvation at some point that he'll get rewarded for it. Meaning either way he has to suffer at some point because he made sins. Whereas the Jew can actually get out of jail free. He actually has a get-out-of-jail-free card. But still, since most of us don't know, we still want to be like them. You know what? Maybe it's easier. Maybe it's easier to be a goy. There's less mitzvot. There's less mistakes. That's the mistake we make. A Jew, since he has so many mitzvot, Hashem made the reward and punishment different for each one. So for example, if somebody stole $100,

16:50If he admitted that he stole, he has to just give back the $100. If he got caught stealing, he has to give $200. A goy, on the other hand, if he stole $2—not $100, not $200, not $2 million—$2, death penalty. Death penalty. Every one of their things is death penalty. Meaning, yes, it's less mitzvot, but the punishment is much more severe. But the punishment is much more severe. Time will come; all of us live, all of us made sins that deserve punishment. Hashem runs His world with a lot of patience to give each person an opportunity to fix themselves. But if at the time of the Sanhedrin, if somebody violated, if a goy violated his rules, he would get a death penalty for even stealing 50 bucks. Now, obviously, this is at the time when King David was ruling the world, Am Yisrael was ruling the world, not when the goyim ruled the world, because at that point we didn't have the opportunity. But either way, here we learn something very, very important: the fact that we have a lot more mitzvot doesn't make our life harder. Once we understand the significance of what this entails, it gives us, yes, there's a lot more responsibility, but there's also a lot more reward, and there's also a lot more opportunities to fix ourselves.

18:18But yet, when you tell the average person, "Listen, you have to start keeping Shabbat, you have to start keeping kosher, you have to start doing this, you have to start doing that," people start thinking about all of the desires they have. "Wait, how am I going to keep Shabbat? That's the day that I usually go to the beach, and I do this, and I work," and they start thinking. All the Yetzer Hara in their head starts telling them all the things that they're going to be missing out on, and how really keeping this mitzvah is too hard for them. It's too hard for them to keep Shabbat. It's too hard for them to keep kosher. They love delicious, juicy pig. It's too hard for them to just have one wife. They want to have a new wife every week. Too hard for them. It's too hard for me to protect myself. It's too hard. Hashem understands me. People have this high level of unusual confidence that Hashem is giving them a different cheshbon, a different account. Everybody else is obligated to keep everything except them.

19:22We have a lot of confidence in this because it comes from the Yetzer Hara. The Yetzer Hara convinces us that we're different. The truth is, Rabotai, is that we're confused about who we are. There was one time a guy looking for chickens and he went to a farm and the farmer was Working, doing his thing. All he knew was his trade. He wasn't exactly a master of all trades, but he knew what he was doing. I told this story a few weeks ago. It's a very, very old story that has a lot of mussar, a lot of lessons for life that we need to know. The guy came and he said, "Listen, I'm looking for a chicken." The farmer said, "Listen, I have lots of chickens. Pick whatever you want. Just do it quickly because I have to feed the other animals and..." The guy looks at the chickens. He's a little confused because he sees these are not typical, some unusual chickens here. He says, "I can buy any chicken?" The farmer is confused why he's asking the same question twice. He says, "Yeah, please just hurry up. I got to feed the other animals. It's 5:30 already. Farmers are not like us, wake up at 11 o'clock in the afternoon. They start their day at 4:00."

20:50He said, "I have to feed the animals. No, no. Yalla, let's go. Is there any chicken? No, any chicken. Quickly, please. It's just based on the weight." He goes, "Even the black and white one over there?" He goes, "Well, you have a huge family. Such a big chicken you need." He goes, "I'm just asking. Can I get that chicken?" He says, "Yes, you get the chicken. Want the chicken? Get the chicken." "Well, I want that one." "Okay. Go get it. I'll give you the chicken." "How much?" "Four bucks." Really? $4 for this chicken? $4, sir, please. I got to feed the animals. The cows are mooing. No, I got to feed them. Gives him the $4. He goes in his car and he can't believe what happened. He's in his car. He looks at the chicken next to him. He's confused. Drives up to the mountain. He takes this huge bird in both of his hands because it's so big. He whispers in its ear, "You're an eagle. Fly! Fly!" And he pushes the eagle in the air off the mountain and forces it to fly. Now, why didn't the eagle eat all the chickens? Why didn't the eagle fly on his own? Eagles are vicious animals. They're not exactly friendly with chickens. A typical eagle will eat all these chickens for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. In the beginning of the morning, they'll have chicken lo mein. In the afternoon, chicken this, chicken that. Different meal every year. Why isn't he eating all the chickens?

22:20Because his whole life, since this eagle was a baby, he was surrounded by chickens. So he thought he's a chicken. They never told him. The chickens never gathered around him and told him, "Listen, sorry to tell you, we're not your Abba and Ima. We adopted you." They're not going to tell him that. There's no intervention. So he didn't know he's not a chicken. He thought he's a chicken. So he never tried using his wings. He just thought he's a big chicken. That's us. We have a checkered past, no different than some of our forefathers and the matriarchs. Rivka saw that in this week's parasha, parashat Toldot, that she knew she was a prophet. She knew that

23:20There's a tradition and teachings that the children of a woman end up inheriting some of the character traits of her brothers. So she didn't pray to have kids. She didn't pray to have kids with Yitzhak. That's why it says that Hashem, when He answered the prayers for children, only answered the prayers of Yitzhak. Why is he the only one that prayed? He's the one that prayed. Why? Because he knew that no matter what, you can influence the kid, even if he has bad genes, even if he has a bad family, even if he has a lot of bad things. If you give him enough good influence, you have a chance of winning. If God didn't want them to have kids... Because she didn't want to have anyone that's even 5% similar to her brother, Lavan. Lavan HaRasha. Lavan was so wicked that even Esav was scared of him. Esav is one of the most wicked people in history. Esav was scared of Lavan. He was the head mobster in the world.

24:40We have some of that checkered past ourselves. Why? We grew up in public school. We grew up violating Shabbat. We grew up not really even caring about being Jewish or not. We grew up not exactly from the family of the Baal Shem Tov. We didn't exactly grow up in a Hasidic family or a Haredi family or even a Shomer Shabbat family. All of us grew up in the streets, and we did our thing. We played football and baseball, and we wanted to be in the movies. We went out with girls, and we did this and that. So, we figure, all of us think, oh, since we all have this bad past, I can't be Moshe Rabbeinu. I can't be David HaMelech. I can't be Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov. I'm a nothing. I'm like Lavan, moldy. Hopefully, I end up in Gan Eden. I can't keep Shabbat. I can't keep Torah and Mitzvot. I can't do all this stuff. I wasn't born religious. That's our mistake. Our sages teach us that every single Jew, no matter who your father is, no matter who your brother is, no matter who your sister is, or who your kids are,

25:49has to say to himself, "When will my actions be like Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov?" Meaning, "When will I, me, me, when will I be like Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov?" So if we are all commanded to do this, what does it mean? It means we all can do it. Because Hashem is not going to give you a responsibility that you can't do. He's not going to say, "Listen, do me a favor. Every day at 8 o'clock in the morning, lift the whole building with one finger." He's not going to give you a mitzvah like that. Why? Because you can't do it. You're not going to tell your kid, "Listen, I love you, son. Do me a favor. Go take the car and throw it over the river with one hand. I want to see how far you can throw the car." You're not going to give him such a thing. Why? Because he can't do it. Son, listen, I know you just got out of your diapers. Do me a favor, run the company for the week. I want to go take a vacation. You're not gonna tell him that. Why? He doesn't even know how to talk yet. You're not gonna give your kid some type of responsibility that you know he can't do. Hashem is telling us we are responsible to say every day, "When will my actions be like Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov?" Which means we can do it. I

27:06We can be like them. So, what's our problem? Our problem is that we've been surrounded by chickens our whole life, so we think we're chickens. We've been surrounded by goyim our whole life, so we think we're goyim. Sometimes those goyim were actually Jews pretending to be goyim. Sometimes they were also eagles pretending to be chickens. Sometimes it was actually chickens. Either way, you're an eagle anyway. Fly. Hashem says fly. You can do it. You just have to push yourself. You have to want it. Just like you want anything in life. If you want anything in life, you have to push yourself. You want to succeed in life and business, you have to push yourself. You want to succeed in marriage, you have to push yourself. You want to succeed in school, you have to push yourself. Anything that comes easy is a problem. It's usually a sin. It's usually illegal. It's usually bad for you. Drugs are very easy to find. Why? It's poison. Bad wives are very easy to find. Why? They're in every bar in the world, and there are millions of them selling themselves for free.

28:26People are like, "Oh, I can't get married. I'm already 40." Where are you looking for a wife? "I go out every night." What do you expect? You go to a bar; it's full of prostitutes that are for free, and you expect to find a wife? Even if she marries, you shall divorce her a week later. She wants a new husband. You're looking for a wife in a bar? No. Where am I going to look? Shidduch. Ah, it's old-fashioned. Yeah, that's why they don't get divorced. It's old-fashioned. You look at the divorce rate. the religious people versus the secular people. You can't compare. The secular people, over 80% of them get divorced. 80%! Meaning you're more likely to win the lottery twice than stay married your whole life. You're more likely to win the lottery twice than stay married your whole life being secular. Religious people, divorce rate exists. Single digits, three, four, maybe 5% now. But that's only because many of them have become modern and like goyim in some cases. Not full.

29:35The real serious ones simply don't exist. Why? Because we all know we all have the same Torah. What's this Torah? Torah is an instruction set. Instructions for what? Instructions to solve problems. You have business problems? Torah will solve them. You have marriage problems? Torah will solve them. You have any problem? Torah will solve it. Which means that once there's problems in any part of your life, all you do is you learn Torah and you figure out how to solve this problem. Now if we're secular or if we're half religious, meaning that we keep the mitzvot, but we don't learn Torah. We go to beit knesset, but we don't learn Torah. We keep Shabbat, but we don't learn Torah. We do a bunch of other things, like keep the holidays, but we don't learn Torah every day. Then, in reality, we're like half. Why? We're doing some things, but we don't really know why. We're doing some things, but we're not really sure why. What is it like? It's like the duck and...

30:35duck. If you guys ever, there's not that much kosher duck today. In the old days, it was like a ma'adan, it was like a very high-end type of meal to eat kosher duck. Today, it's not as common. But the duck, before they kill them, what do they do? They force-feed the duck. They give him a ton of food down the throat, and they push food down his throat—a lot of food. It's a horrible, horrible thing, and that's part of the reason why duck became non-kosher because many times they will break the inner tubes of their throats, and it became treif, non-kosher. But anyway, in reality, what does a duck do all day? Because they want to get fat. If he gets really fat, there's more meat—delicious. The fatter he is, the more delicious. Same thing on Yom Kippur. There is one keves; they feed him a lot before they throw him off the cliff.

31:43put a lot of kishutim on him, a lot of jewelry on him, and bells, and they treat him this way. They walk with him, and they pay a lot of attention to him, and he thinks, "Wow, I'm having such a good day. They finally appreciate me! My whole life, I've been looking and asking for some respect. Finally, they woke up." So the little lamb over here thinks, "Oh, finally, everybody woke up." The dog thinks, "Finally, they're feeding me the things I want to eat." Little do they know, the end is near. They're about to kill you. They're about to kill you. When we keep mitzvot without learning Torah, we're no different than the duck or the lamb. Why? We have no idea why what's happening is happening. We keep Shabbat, but we're not really sure why. We're eating the food. They're feeding us food, food, food, but we're not really sure why they're feeding us this food. We're thinking that...

32:43It's a prize. And that's why, as soon as there's a big test in a person's life, he starts breaking Shabbat. As soon as there's a big test in that person's life, he starts regretting keeping the mitzvot. Because he didn't know the whole time why he's keeping them in the first place. That's why a Jew is obligated to learn Torah every day. Doesn't matter if he's a rabbi, or he's a student, or he's a student of a student, or the son of the student, or he's average. It doesn't make a difference. Hashem commands each one of us to learn Torah every day because that's the only way—not only that you'll know how to be a Jew—but that's the only way you're gonna know why you're a Jew, why it's so special to be a Jew, why you're an eagle and not a chicken like everybody else. So in the beginning... It's hard. Why? It's an adjustment. You're used to reading newspapers. Now you have to read this 3,000-year-old book that you really don't understand half of. It's a little bit of an adjustment. In the beginning, you have a lot of yetzer hara and you fall asleep after five minutes. You read the book, fall asleep. You do business, you don't sleep for three days. For everything else, you have a lot of energy. For Torah, five minutes max. So what do you do? Push yourself. Every day, commit to something.

34:00If you don't learn it all every day, commit to something today. Commit to 15 minutes a day. Start with something you know for sure you can do. Don't start making big commitments like, oh yeah, no, from now on I'm going to learn five hours a day. Don't make a big commitment like that. Why? Let's start small. Because it has to be something that, for sure, you can keep that promise. Start with 15 minutes a day. Start with a half hour a day. Start with something that, for sure, you know no matter what, I'm not going to sleep, I'm not waking up, I'm not surviving the day without this 15 minutes, without this half hour. It doesn't matter if it's a holiday, busy, not busy, my wife hates me, this doesn't make a difference. Without this, it's just like breathing. You're not going to survive a day without breathing. Same thing. Commit to something. Once you commit to doing it, you start seeing, wow, 15 minutes a day, I can do more. I can do more. So one day you push yourself, okay, today I'm going to do a half hour. Today I'm still at a 15-minute-a-day commitment, but once in a while I can do a little more, so you push yourself a little bit more. Today I'm going to do a half hour. Next day I'm going to do 45 minutes. Next thing you know, I like it. I like it. It's not even just I want it so that I can do more. I want to do more.

35:14And you find yourself learning shiurim, learning from books, learning with the rabbi, more and more every day. And little by little, you start realizing, "Wow, it feels good being an eved Hashem. It feels good. It's not really that hard. In fact, it's easy." Not only is it not hard. He says, the mitzvot, it's in your mouth, it's in your heart to do it. Meaning, all of the mitzvot are easy. The Zohar HaKadosh says, I swear to you on My name. Meaning, there's no, like, debate here. Hashem Himself said, I swear to you on My name, the holiest thing in the world, I swear to you on My name that the Torah is easy. The entire Torah, for you to fulfill the entire Torah is easy. If only you fear Me. You have one prerequisite, one condition to fulfill the entire Torah in a very easy way. What? Fear Hashem. That's what Hashem said in the Zohar HaKadosh.

36:27But they can't be because you see that in the Gemara and all these things, they go into every little thing. And if it's not this way, it's this way. And if this has this, then you say this. That's not easy because all of a sudden now it's like it's very to the T. You know what I mean? So that doesn't become easy. And then also each person has different urges. So a mitzvah for you might be easier to keep than for me, and a mitzvah for me might be easier to keep than for you. So whenever a person has... a difficulty in fulfilling a mitzvah, that means there's a difficulty in Yirat Shamayim. There's a chisaron, a lack of fear of Hashem in that mitzvah. It doesn't mean that the mitzvah is difficult. It means that we still don't understand the significance of that mitzvah to the point where we think, yeah, maybe I can do without this. It's not that the mitzvah is difficult. It's that we just think that maybe we can get away without this one. That we don't have enough fear in that specific one. Fear of Hashem is not all-inclusive. If you fear Hashem in general, then that means you fear Hashem in everything. No. For example, a person that knows the laws of Shabbat and knows the consequence of breaking Shabbat.

37:36If you look at the Rambam, Hilchot Shabbat, chapter 30, last halacha. The Rambam says that a Mechalel Shabbat, a Jew that violates Shabbat, is considered 100% an idol worshiper. What does it mean to be an idol worshiper? It means like these Christians that go to church and they pray to some moron that died 2,000 years ago. Same thing. they all pray to some idiot that died on a cross 2,000 years ago, thinking that because he died, they are allowed to be murderers, rapists, and thieves. It doesn't even make any sense, by the way. But they believe that because some guy died, they can do whatever they want. Anyone with a brain knows this is insanity. The guy in Chinatown in New York buys a statue, he calls it Buddha, some fat guy, and Doesn't know how to watch himself. Sits down all the time. Doesn't even exercise. They pray to him. Why? Because they say he saw the light. But you just bought the statue for $15. You're praying to the statue that you bought 15 minutes ago? Yeah, yeah, he saw the light. The statue, the statue, they just made it. You bought it for $15. They pray to the statue. In India, if a cow crosses the street, everybody starts bowing to it.

38:59Many houses in India collect and have it in their house. They have a special liquid in the refrigerator that you don't have in your house. You know, I know you don't have it in your house because you're not crazy like them. What do they have? They have cow urine. They have cow urine that some of them drink every day because they believe it's holy because the cow is their god, and... All of them wash their houses with it at least once a month to clean out all of the negativity. They wash their houses with urine, with cow urine. In another part of India, they have a temple for rats. For rats! I used to live in New York; anytime you go to the subway, you meet a couple of rats. But they have a temple for them. They have a temple of rats, hundreds and hundreds of rats. They make a huge pool of milk. the middle of this temple, and hundreds of rats, you can see on the internet. Hundreds of rats come and drink, and these tourists, these morons, actually pay money to see rats drink milk. You go to subways even for free, but they go over there, and people pray to these rats. They think it's God, the rat that is drinking milk. They're praying to it. People are crazy.

40:20People are insane. They pray for anything. They pray to anything. They don't have a clue in the world. How could somebody fall so far away from the truth to the point where they're praying to a rat? There's actually even a religion where people pray to a motorcycle, a Harley Davidson. They pray to a motorcycle. There's a group of people that pray to a Harley Davidson motorcycle in India. It's a whole religion. They pray. That's their god. A motorcycle is their god. How do you get so far away from the truth? Because the truth obligates you. Once you realize that the truth is from Hashem and that truth commands you to do a bunch of different things that are difficult to do, you start looking for a way out. You start creating new things. But even the things that he has to do are difficult. Even the things that he has to do are difficult. They're not easy. It's not easy to be a righteous goy. It's not easy. Now, the Rambam says this crazy goy that prays to a rat, to a cat, to a motorcycle, he's the same as a Jew who drives on Shabbat, as a Jew who works on Shabbat, as a Jew who lights cigarettes on Shabbat. Same thing. Why? The Jew is an eagle. The Jew is the best, the Jew is the greatest in the world. Yeah, but he's acting like a chicken. He's acting like the goy, so we treat him like the goy.

41:51meaning that even though he's an eagle, because he violates the foundation of Judaism, his Judaism is on suspension. Meaning he cannot be treated like an eagle. He cannot be treated as a superhero. He cannot be treated like the chosen one. Why? He's acting like the goy, the same goy that prays to the cow. So we have to treat him accordingly. So if he says He wants to be a witness in your wedding. You can't have him as a witness in your wedding. If he says, "I want to have a little bit of your wine. Let me pour it for myself," you can't give it to him. Why? Because if he touches the wine, you're not allowed to drink from that wine anymore. Because a goy that touches wine that's not mevushal wine, we're always afraid that it's part of his idol worship. That he's shaking the wine, maybe he's really giving it to his god or something. Meaning that the Jew that drives on Shabbat has to be treated the same way. Maybe he has some false god because, obviously, he doesn't believe in Hashem. So the point is, this is basic level Judaism. It's not Yaron Reuven. I didn't create this rule. They didn't ask me for my permission.

43:09When they wrote this rule, now, when I first heard this, I was very upset. There's no way. Somebody made a mistake here. You call me a goy? I'm more Jewish than you. What are you talking about? I love Hashem. There's a rule. You start seeing in one book, and another book, and another book, and another book, and another book. You see, everybody agrees. This is the rule. There's no difference of opinion. There's no machloket like we're talking about in the Gemara. There's no machloket. This is something everybody agrees on. Why? Because there are certain rules in the Torah that are the foundation. Meaning, there are many, many buildings you see in New York, you see in Florida, you see all over the world, and many, many buildings, but they all look different. They all look different. What is the common denominator in all buildings? What is one thing that all buildings in the world have, every one of them without exception? They all have a foundation. You cannot have a building, big or small, without a foundation. You have to have a foundation. There are certain rules in the Torah that are considered the foundation. Without them, there's no Torah, there's no Judaism, no God, there's nothing. Shabbat is one of them.

44:30Shabbat is one of them. Shabbat is what Hashem calls Brit. Brit means that's the deal. That's the covenant. You break this, no deal. To such an extent that our sages teach us, even if somebody found a way to keep all the mitzvot, but they decide, "No, Shabbat's not for me. I'm not gonna keep Shabbat." It's as if they kept nothing. If they kept nothing now, what are you gonna say? Listen, I'm ready to do other mitzvot, but not Shabbat yet. Okay, do the other mitzvot, but you should know at some point you have to keep Shabbat. Don't ever think that keeping the other mitzvot is gonna be enough when you get to Shamayim. If you're not ready to keep Shabbat right now, I'm not saying don't keep the other mitzvot. Keep the other mitzvot. Hopefully, they give you enough strength to keep Shabbat at some point, but don't think that if chas v'shalom End is closer than we think. Like my cousin that I was telling the story about before, his end arrived at 23 years old. He didn't think—he thought he's gonna live to a thousand, like all of us. We all think we're gonna live to a thousand years old, but he died at 23. Is that closer now? His end came before he started keeping Shabbat. That's a very serious problem to arrive to in Shamayim. It's a very, it's a very big hole. It's a very big debt. I

45:48We have to find a way because that's one of the foundations. Another part of our foundation is learning Torah. Every time you come here, the Rav told me you guys come here at 6 or 7 o'clock every night. I know you have fun. I know you have some pizza. I know you guys go on trips and do a lot of other things, but in reality, the whole thing, the whole thing that they do for you, is just so you can learn a little. That's the whole thing. The whole thing is just for the Torah. Yes, vacation, and the pizza, and this, and the buses, all that stuff. It's all great. It's all wonderful. It's all amazing that you're actually part of such an extraordinary organization. But in reality, the tachlis, if you ask the real Baal HaBayit, really, why did Hashem let such an organization exist? There are so many organizations in the world. Why add another one? It's because of the Torah. all of the money that's needed to pay for the books, the trips, the rabbis, and all of this, including you, is just for the Torah. It's all for you to learn 15 more minutes, a half hour, an hour, two more hours every single day. Why? Because if you don't learn Torah every single day, you cannot fulfill the obligation of being a Jew. You cannot eventually arrive at the conclusion that you are the best eagle in the world. Not only are you an eagle, you are the best one in the world.

47:12You can be like Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov. It's not too much for you. It's not too much for you at all. You just have to want it. And the only way we can get to a point of wanting it is if we realize that it's something good to have. Something good to have. Now, how come we don't arrive at that conclusion by ourselves? Because we all have some question inside our heart that's bothering us. Sometimes we don't even know what the question is. But something is bothering us. We'll be right back.

48:49Maybe it's because some rabbi insulted you when you were like six, and you still remember it. Maybe it's because you failed some tests and you really think you should have passed. Maybe it's because they didn't invite you to some, I don't know, bar mitzvah. Maybe it's because you're not really sure if there are dinosaurs in the Torah. Maybe because you don't really understand how God could be God, and He doesn't have a God Himself. All types of philosophical questions. We all have something. How do I know this? This is what I went through. When I first started learning, I thought I had a few questions. I thought maybe I had five, six, ten questions. I had nine months' worth of questions. Nine months. For nine months, seven hours per week of questions only. A lot of questions. Lots and lots of questions. Since then, Baruch Hashem, I've answered and asked Many thousands of questions, which means that very rarely is there a question I haven't come across. Not saying I know everything, chas v'shalom, it's not even a remote chance. But the regular stuff that regular people have, most likely either I asked it or somebody asked me, which means that at some point I've seen it. So now, after I talk for a little while, I would really like for you guys to give me a question that bothers you, something big. Good. I

50:17It's not that it bothers me, but I like to understand things while I'm doing them. Okay. This is mine, right? Not mine. Yes, that's mine. This is a question about Kaddish. So I already learned and I know that Kaddish is, it's nothing to do with, you don't say that it has to do with the dead. It's more like trying to praise HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Okay. Right. Now I also know that it was originally created for the Beit HaMikdash. Okay. Not for the dead people. Okay. So now, there are a lot of things that we follow and we keep. But sometimes they say it's not as serious as from the Torah. We have to. Okay, so my question is kind of, how did Kaddish become such a thing that's taken so seriously that they say it has to be done every day, and if not, then the neshama won't go up, but it was a rabbi who said it at the end of the day, that it wasn't even created for that person, but rather for the Beit HaMikdash. Versus, like, there's the Rabbanan things that, you know, aren't as, like, you know, not forced on, but aren't as, like, you know, crucial to the person, you know what I mean? Okay.

51:25page 55b. This story was not only very, very rich. When I did the cheshbon, I did the math. of how much money he would give as maaser, as 10%, he would give, in today's money, 1.2 billion dollars, maaser. That's how rich he was. Meaning he was richer than any hedge fund manager today. But this Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah was a big talmid chacham, big kodesh kodeshim. There was a mitzvah. It was a mitzvah that the rabbis made. They said, listen, you're not allowed to violate Shabbat. You're not allowed to drive on Shabbat. You're not allowed to light fire on Shabbat. But also, it says that your animal also shouldn't work on Shabbat. Your animal shouldn't work on Shabbat. He agreed with all of it, but then the rabbis said

52:49The animal also shouldn't carry on Shabbat, letaltel. Meaning if you have a cow or a bull and you have bells on it, you have special bells, some cows, you know, to beautify them, you put bells on them and so on. Take the bells off. Rabbi Elazar says, you guys are machmirim a little bit. It's a little too much. You care about the cow? Eh. The Gemara says Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah violated Shabbat one time. What? Rabbi Elazar violated Shabbat? It's like saying Rabbi Akiva violated Shabbat. It's like saying Moshe Rabbeinu violated Shabbat. What are you talking about? Rabbi Akiva? When did Rabbi Elazar violate Shabbat? What are you talking about? He goes, no, it wasn't really him, it was his cow. Cow? He had one cow? He had hundreds of thousands of cows. One cow violated Shabbat? What are you talking about, the Gemara says. He goes, no, it really wasn't even his cow.

53:50Maybe it wasn't his cow. It was his neighbor's cow. His neighbor was this widow. Her husband died, and she had a cow. She didn't really know all the rules of Shabbat, and she left the bells on her cow. Rabbi Elazar saw the cow with the bells and thought, "Listen, she's a widow. She doesn't really know anything. Anyway, it's a rabbinical mitzvah that the cow carry or not carry. I'm not going to say anything. I'm not going to say anything." In Shamayim, they did a pesak and Rabbi Elazar learned, "Rabbi Elazar mechalel Shabbat." When Rabbi Elazar, because he had Ruach HaKodesh, heard this about himself, he started fasting for the rest of his life until all of his teeth turned black. All his teeth turned black. He fasted to do teshuvah for this one time of violating a rabbinical mitzvah that wasn't really his. Somebody else did it—his neighbor. He just didn't rebuke her. He didn't tell her, "Listen, lady, take the bells off. You're not allowed on Shabbat. Your cow is working on Shabbat. It's not allowed." From here we learn, Rabotai, that Hashem has an enormous amount of patience when it comes to violating His

55:10mitzvot. Meaning, if somebody violates Shabbat, unlike the case of the mekoshesh eitzim, which was three thousand three hundred years ago in the Torah where Hashem killed him on the spot, the average person could violate Shabbat a few times before Hashem reacts, sometimes many years. The average person can eat non-kosher for many years before Hashem reacts, and... The average person can do a lot of big sins against the Torah, against Hashem, before Hashem reacts. But when it comes to the rabbis, the Torah tells us Hashem punishes on the spot. He's much less lenient and liberal with the rabbis. In fact, to such an extent that He punishes the rabbinical mitzvot similarly to what we said about how He punishes the glean, meaning that... If a person steals money, that's an issur from the Torah. The Torah says don't steal. If you steal, the punishment is you have to pay double. But if you violate a rabbinical mitzvah on purpose, it's the death penalty. Even though it's a rabbinical mitzvah, if you do it on purpose, it's a death penalty. Why? But it's only rabbinical. There's no such thing as "only rabbinical." That's a misunderstanding that people have. "Oh, it's only rabbinical, I don't really have to do it." No, there's no such thing.

56:32Why? Because Hashem says, these are my best egel (calves). These are my favorite kids. These are my soldiers. This is who's representing me in the world. If I let you disrespect them, it's only going to get worse with me. The point is, first and foremost, we need to understand that there's a lot more kavod that we owe to the rabbinical mitzvot than people think. When people just say, "No, it's only rabbinical," they are automatically making a mistake. Whatever they say after that, you have to double-check. Why? Because your rabbinical mitzvot are a big deal regardless of what they are. The second thing is... When it comes to Kaddish, we have to understand what's the point of Kaddish. Like you said, to sanctify Hashem's name. When do we say Kaddish? We say Kaddish when somebody dies. We say Kaddish after shiur Torah. We say Kaddish at specific times. We sanctify Hashem's name. But why is it connected to somebody's death? I said a chiddush last night.

57:54That is a myth. It's tough to hear though, but hopefully, it will give you a little bit of the right perspective on why Kaddish is so important. When somebody dies, it's unfortunate. It's sad. It doesn't matter what age it is, whether it's a Shemirahem two-year-old baby or a 95-year-old person; it doesn't make a difference. It's always sad. There's always somebody crying, hopefully. There's always somebody that's gonna feel like, "Oh, I lost somebody." There's always someone who's gonna miss them. Sad. But we say Kaddish. But when you tell somebody, "Listen, such-and-such person died," what do they say? Baruch Dayan HaEmet. What is Baruch Dayan HaEmet? May the righteous Judge be blessed. Meaning... Instead of saying "Oy vey vey, why did Hashem do it?" we're not allowed to say such a thing. We're not allowed to say, "Why did Hashem do it?" We're saying, "Blessed be He for being a righteous Judge." Let's say Kaddish. Let's sanctify His name. Why? Because when someone dies, it's actually a Kiddush Hashem. It's strange to hear, it's strange to say, but it's emet.

59:10When someone dies, it's a Kiddush Hashem. Why is it a Kiddush Hashem? Why is Hashem's name even greater? If they die because they're righteous. Tzaddik, Moshe Rabbeinu, Rabbi Akiva, big rabbi, they die, it's Kiddush Hashem. Why is it Kiddush Hashem? Because now Hashem is going to deliver the promise. He said to that person and to everybody else, "If you keep My Torah, you're a tzaddik. Okay, now I'm taking you from this world to the next chapter. Now I'm finally going to give you the reward you've been working for your whole life. There's nothing greater than that. Hashem is delivering on His promise. The guy has been working for 80 years to get to Gan Eden. Hashem says, 'Welcome to Olam HaBa.'" Is there a better thing than that? Imagine you've been working for 80 years to finally get something. And Hashem says, not only am I going to give it to you, I'm going to give you even more than you thought. Is there something better than that? You've been working just to get a job. He said, no, no, you're not only going to work here, we're going to make you CEO. We're not only going to give you a job, we're going to make you the CEO making $20 million a year. Me? Really? You sure? I just want to be a busboy. No, no, we're going to make you the CEO.

1:00:23When a tzaddik dies, it's a big Kiddush Hashem. Why? Hashem is delivering on the promise of giving him the schar, the reward. Of course, it's a big loss for anyone that's left behind, which is all of us. And we're all supposed to cry over it because there's less Torah in the world now. We're not going to be able to learn this Torah anymore. But for him himself, it's a big Kiddush Hashem because he's getting paid now. On the other hand, if a wicked person dies, it's also Kiddush Hashem. But it's a much sadder Kiddush Hashem for us. It's a Kiddush Hashem nonetheless. Why? Because Hashem is also delivering on the promise. Which is that at some point, when you violate Shabbat, when you violate some parts of the Torah, Hashem is going to kill you and start punishing you seriously. And now it starts. Now the punishment really begins. Sometimes people violate certain mitzvot, they think it's not a big deal. The Yavetz, Chassid Yaavetz writes in his autobiography that when you violate the mitzvah of honoring the rabbis, you are guaranteed to suffer worse than Gehinnom in this world. If you go against a rabbi because you think he is, whatever, in reality, you are wrong. He is a tzaddik, and you are wrong.

1:01:50says the punishment the person gets in this world is even worse than Gehinnom. He's going to pray for Gehinnom, which means that we all have to double-check ourselves constantly, constantly, constantly to see what's the real purpose for this mitzvah. Why are we doing this? Why this? Why that? When you're saying Kaddish, you're technically raising Hashem's name higher and higher and higher. Sanctifying His name, why? Because he's delivering on a promise. And that's why when a person who violates Shabbat says Kaddish, when this person who violates Shabbat says Kaddish, you don't say "Amen." A person who violates Shabbat says Kaddish, you don't say "Amen." Now, how come there are a lot of batei knesset that do say "Amen," and... Because you're always going to notice, even though there are 20 people saying Kaddish and most of them don't keep Shabbat, there's at least one guy who keeps Shabbat. So in reality, the whole kehillah is not saying "amen" to all of them; it's saying "amen" to the one guy that keeps Shabbat. There are some people that keep Shabbat, but then they walk on grass. Oh, it broke Shabbat, so does that not count for keeping Shabbat? Walking on grass is not breaking Shabbat. Why is walking on grass breaking Shabbat?

1:03:08Halacha is that if you walk on grass, you're not intending to break the grass. You only break it if it depends on when I talk about hilchot Shabbat as far as being, you know, a person being an idol worshiper, a person being punished severely. I'm specifically talking about people that violate Shabbat knowingly, where they know they're violating Shabbat, and they couldn't care less. And it's with the big things, not with, you know, things that are, you know, like some of the things you mentioned. I'm talking about them driving, lighting a fire, working, and so on. I'm talking about people that violate Shabbat intentionally, not talking about somebody that just doesn't know all the halachot of Shabbat and made a mistake and... Now, there is a Mishnah in Pirkei Avot that says that sometimes we're going to make mistakes and we're going to violate Shabbat or something else, but it's not because we want to violate Shabbat. We just didn't know that we're not supposed to do it. I could tell you a personal story. When I first started keeping Shabbat, obviously, you don't learn all of the halachot of Shabbat in one day. If you learn them in a lifetime, you're already doing good. Now

1:04:24Thought it's very, really important. I was right on my first part that you have to keep Shabbat. I also thought, and I was right, you're supposed to have Oneg Shabbat. Oneg Shabbat is to make Shabbat fun, beautiful, and magnified—much more magical than the rest of the week. You're supposed to wear special clothes that you don't wear the rest of the week. You're supposed to do a lot of things special on Shabbat. You have to eat hot food. You have to take a shower. You have to wear something nice. You can't walk around in pajamas and shorts on Shabbat. You have to look good. Why Shabbat? So you have to have Oneg Shabbat, special food, special things. So I thought I was doing a mitzvah by making special sauce on Shabbat, which required me to grind the tomato and... I want to make the sauce fresh on Shabbat. If I make it on Friday, it's good, but it's not fresh. So for Oneg Shabbat, for the magnified Shabbat, I said, not only am I going to make the sauce, but I'm going to make it on Shabbat. You know what the problem is? The problem is, you're not allowed to grind. You're not allowed to grind on Shabbat. So my Oneg Shabbat was a chilul Shabbat. Now, I didn't know this until I learned later on.

1:05:44Was it a Chilul Shabbat? Yes. But it wasn't b'mezid. It wasn't something I did on purpose. It was simply because I didn't learn it yet. As soon as I learned, I immediately stopped and felt terrible about it. But the point is, Rabotai, I'm teaching you this, is that there are two different types of sins. The sin because you didn't get to that halacha yet. You're learning, you're learning, you're learning. You just didn't get there yet. You didn't get there yet. So until you get there, at some point, you're going to make the sin because you don't know it's a sin. You don't even know it's a sin. The Gemara even has a machloket of, if you don't know it's even a sin, it isn't even considered a sin. It is considered a sin, but nonetheless, it's not considered on purpose. But then there's a sin where you know it's a sin, and you still do it. That's a different story. That is a big deal. So again, riding a bike, you know it's not allowed, but some people aren't so strict on it. That's a problem. It's a very serious problem. If a person—put it this way, I'll tell you something. Forget what the sin is. Forget what sin is. It doesn't make a difference if it's riding a bike or it's any other sin in the Torah. There is something that every Jew knows, or at least most of us know, we're not allowed to do, which is to shave with a razor. We're not allowed to shave with a razor. We're not allowed to shave with a razor because then you're going to destroy the roots of your hair, which is

1:07:12Asur from the Torah. If a chazan, if you know that a chazan, he's a professional chazan, but he likes to have a baby face, and you know that he shaves with a razor, you're not allowed to make him chazan. Not allowed to make him chazan. Why not allowed to make him chazan? Because he is now in the same class. He keeps Shabbat. He keeps the entire Torah. The only thing he does is he shaves with a razor. Razor everything else he keeps, you're still not allowed to make him chazan. Why? Because you're not allowed to say amen to any of his blessings because he decided this one mitzvah, I'm simply not going to keep it. Not that I can't keep it — I don't want to. Again, everybody gets it. I don't want to. As soon as a person decides, "I don't want to keep this mitzvah. I'm going to violate this mitzvah because I don't care," then that changes everything. Because then it's meizid.

1:08:16A person has a very serious problem if he doesn't know he's not to be on a bicycle. He doesn't know he's not allowed to do this or that; it's a different story. But if he says, "I know and I don't want to keep it," that's a very, very, very serious problem. That is a problem that we have, unfortunately, a lot with people that simply grew up half-religious and Their parents were 75 percent. They're 25 percent. Their kids are probably going to be zero. Their grandkids are probably going to be gone. That's how Reform Judaism started. Mendelssohn, yimach shemo, was someone that originally was a person that was keeping mitzvot, but he said, "Listen, keep the mitzvot at home. Keep the mitzvot at home—all the mitzvot. Keep them at home. Outside, be like everybody else." I So that's what started the whole Reform movement, with people pretty much saying it's okay to be homosexual, it's okay to violate the entire Torah, as long as you're a good person, and all types of craziness that are against the Torah. Now, he said it himself: Keep the Judaism at home, be a good person outside, because he figured that that's more modern, that's more good, and everything else. This was only a couple hundred years ago, in his own lifetime.

1:09:39four out of his six kids converted to Christianity, meaning they became idol worshippers. Four of them. All of his grandkids were gone, meaning even in one generation, every seed that was a zecher (remembrance) of him was erased from the world. Why? Once you decide, "I'm not gonna keep one yud from the Torah on purpose," everything changes. ...working towards something, that's a different story. You're saying, listen, I want to keep it. I'm just a little bit of a loser about this one. I'm just, I'm not good at this one. It's hard. It's hard for me. I have a yetzer hara for this. I have a yetzer hara for that. Some people have a yetzer hara for girls. Some people, they look at everything that moves. Everything that moves. Even if their wife is next to them, they look at it... It's a very big problem. Why? Because if the Gemara, Masechet Avodah Zarah, says you have to watch your eyes during the day because it's gonna lead you to sins at night. Sins at night, every guy knows what sins at night means. Sins at night means having wet dreams. Sins at night means wasting seed. Sins at night means being promiscuous, and so on and so forth. So if you look at girls all day, it's gonna lead you to sins at night.

1:10:58You tell a guy, "Listen, you have to watch yourself." Okay, I want to watch myself, but I can't just change myself overnight. I'm a guy; I'm used to it my whole life. I've been looking at everything that moves. Now you tell me I'm not allowed to? Okay, so I have to work on that. Okay, so work on it for a week, a month, a year, two years. Work on it little by little. You're gonna start doing something. But if you say, "No, no, listen, this is just not for me..." It's not for me. It's a different story. All of us are working on it. There's no such thing as a righteous person who doesn't make any sins. Everybody sins. The point is we're all supposed to be working on it. Meaning, we have to say, listen, there are things that I do well. All of us are good at something. One guy is generous. Another guy is a good davener. Another guy is a good learner. Another guy has a good heart. Everybody is good at something. Because you're a Jew, you have to be good at something. But then we all are a little bit of a loser about something else. We're all a little bit of a loser about something else. There are plenty of things. I'm probably a bigger loser at something than you guys. Why? Because that's unfortunate. I'm a loser. But in some things, I'm a winner. That's okay. Why? Because I'm working on it. I don't want to stay a loser. I'm working on it. That's okay. Hashem says that's okay. Why is it okay? Because once a person admits that...

1:12:16This is the emet. I'm just not there yet, but I'm working on it. Hashem treats them accordingly. He expects you to fail in the beginning. Why? Because He's your Father, after all. Baruch Hashem, I have two little kids, and b'ezrat Hashem, we're expecting a third one. The most beautiful thing in the world is seeing your kids walk for the first time. It's absolutely amazing. If you haven't seen it, you gotta see it. It's worth it to have kids just to see that for the first time. It's mamash unbelievable. But there's one thing: in the beginning, they fall a bunch of times. Why? Because they still don't know how to walk and... Now if, as soon as they fell, as soon as my little Sarah fell the first time, if I said, "Oh, stupid, what are you doing? Crazy, I can't believe you can't walk already. You're already a year and a half old. I'm staying a baby. I'm crawling forever. Don't talk to me anymore. Don't talk to me. I'm just a baby." You know, my son says, "I'm just a baby." He's a year and a half old. He says, "I'm just a baby." It's the funniest thing in the world. "I'm just a baby."

1:13:34climbs the walls. The little kid said, "What are you doing?" "I'm just a baby. It's the greatest thing in the world, just a baby climbs the walls." I stopped boxing a lot. I've never seen something like that. Every dangerous thing he does, he's done. "What are you doing?" "I'm just a baby. It's amazing. But anyway, al pi zman, we're just babies. We're just a baby. You're just about... I just started waiting. I don't know it. I... he's expecting you to fall in the beginning, he's expecting you to fall. But you know why he doesn't get angry at the fall? Because you're trying. When you're trying and you fall, it's cute. It's cute because you're just a baby. But once you're 27 years old, 29 years old, 39 years old, and you're still falling, then you're not a baby, you're just drunk. Understand when you're just starting out and you're trying and you're trying and you're trying, it's cute. Why? Because you're just a baby trying, and eventually, you're going to walk, and eventually, you're going to run. But that's because you're trying. But if you say, "No, no, it's not for me. It's not for me. I give it to somebody else. You run the show. Look at your rules. You could break whatever you want," then it's not a baby. Then you're just drunk.

1:14:55You're drunk. So this is the difference. We all have to keep trying. Try more, and it's hard at times, and it's easier at other times. But that's why, when it comes to the foundation, never ever give yourself any leniency when it comes to it. Meaning, the emet is the emet. I have to keep Shabbat. Even if you're not keeping Shabbat right now, I... I have to keep Shabbat. I have to find a way to keep it. Even after you violated it again, I have to find a way to keep it. It's a mitzvah. It's to admit, I have to keep it. I have to find a way to do this. I have to find a way to do it. Don't ever say no. No, it's not really, I don't really have to do it. Always remind yourself you have to do it. Don't give yourself any fake rules where, no, no, since you're not doing it, maybe you don't really have to. Don't give yourself a participation award like the Americans give themselves. The guy's in 30th place, and he gets an award for some reason. These kids, they're breeding a generation of losers. You are in 30th place, you're in first place, you're in 90th place, a thousandth place, everybody gets a trophy. That's why they're all losers in rehab. Where are the eagles, Abutai? You can do anything you want.

1:16:11But don't justify your mistakes. Say, I have to do it. I have to find a way. I have to find a way. If we keep pushing ourselves, pushing ourselves more and more, eventually we'll find a way. Eventually, you're going to win. Once you have the beautiful feeling of success, it's going to give you energy to do it again on something else. In the beginning, everything seems too big. My rabbi first told me I have to keep Shabbat. I thought he just gave me, like, the plague. I thought in my mind, you know, Shabbat? I work all week, I don't stop. Shabbat's my time that I go here and I do this and I do that, and I give all the excuses in the world of why Shabbat just cannot be for me. But Baruch Hashem, after I was learning Torah for a little while, maybe six months or nine months, and... And after I listened to myself talk for a good 15-20 minutes, coming up with every excuse in the book of why Shabbat's too big for me, I didn't even wait for him to respond. I just said, "By the way, I'm full of it. I'm full of excuses. I'll find a way to keep Shabbat. I'll find a way." You know when you're full of it. You know when you can do it and when you can't do it. So yes, in the beginning, it's hard because we still don't know how beautiful it is yet.

1:17:33once you start doing it and you push yourself, you'll start enjoying certain parts of the Torah. You'll start enjoying certain parts of the holidays. And just so you know, if you're not enjoying the mitzvah, that only means you're not doing it right. That's all it means. It doesn't mean that the mitzvah is hard. A lot of people, you know, I remember myself when it was like a three-day holiday, you know, when a holiday was connected to Shabbat. In the beginning, I was like, oh man, what a long holiday. I can't believe it. This is gonna be tough. What are we gonna eat? What are we gonna do? What are we gonna do with this? It was always tough in the beginning because I couldn't believe I wanted to go back to the regular day so I could do all my stuff. That's only because I wasn't keeping the holidays right. I wasn't enjoying them. Baruch Hashem, today, give me a year-long holiday. I can't wait. I can't wait. I wish Shabbat didn't end. Because it has different significance today. That's what we're supposed to get to with every mitzvah, whatever mitzvah, meaning until you're enjoying the mitzvah, you're still not doing it right. So you have more work to do. Give me some more questions. I

1:18:47I know, or I heard, that God judges you the same way you judge others, like nonchalantly, you know, like not when you're really scrutinizing the person and trying to come with a good judgment, but just like on a passive judgment. First off, I want to know, is that true? And if not, how does He judge you? Because I know also He judges everybody differently. So there's a Gemara, it's the Oral Torah, it says, anyone that overcomes his own limitations, Hashem will overcome His own limitations. Better said, Hashem doesn't have any limitations, but He has rules that He made for Himself. He has rules that He made for Himself when He gave them to us. It's not just rules for us; it's rules for Him too. Why? Because He is good and which, by definition, means He creates good. To be good, that means you have to create good. You can't just say, "I'm a good person," and all you do is kill people. You can't just say, "I'm a good person," and all you do is steal. All you do is hurt people. In order to be good, by definition, that means you have to create good.

1:20:00So anyway, it says, no, no, but I'm a good person. You ask him, why do you think you're a good person? Oh, I'm nice to people. So is the cow. Does that make you nice? Does that make you a good person? Oh, I don't know. I don't yell at people. Oh, neither does the monkey. He yells at his only monkey. He doesn't yell at people. Does that make him nice? People have to understand what good really means. So, the point is that Hashem is good, and He creates good, and but He also gave Himself limitations, meaning that He cannot allow Himself to give you good for something bad. Meaning, if you do something good, eventually He's going to give you good. But if you do something bad, He has to give you bad in return at some point. That's a rule that He made. That's one of our 13 principles of faith, which are the 13 rules that are the foundation of Judaism. There's reward for the good, and there's punishment for the bad. So even though He doesn't punish right away, at some point He has to. Why? Because if He gave you good for something bad, the whole system would fail. He would just give everybody good and there would be no point to the world. But now, since He has these rules, He also has exceptions to the rule, which is that if you overcome a limitation that you have, He'll overcome a rule that He has. Meaning, let's say you are normally a very angry person. I don't know you, but I'm just giving an example. You're normally a very angry person, and as soon as somebody looks at you the wrong way, within three seconds they have your hand attached to their face.

1:21:21also has exceptions to the rule, which is that if you overcome a limitation that you have, He'll overcome a rule that He has. Meaning, let's say you are normally a very angry person. I don't know you, but I'm just giving an example. You're normally a very angry person, and as soon as somebody looks at you the wrong way, within three seconds they have your hand attached to their face. And That's your personality. You're just one of those angry people. But now you're working on yourself. You came to a shiur. You got some chizuk. You're saying, I got to work on myself. Hashem doesn't want me to be an angry gremlin. Hashem wants me to be a human being. I have to control myself. At least, I'm not going to hit people anymore. And then eventually, at least, I'm not going to yell at people anymore. And eventually, at least, I'm going to try not to be angry, or at least not express my anger that way. Then one day, somebody really annoying comes to you. Not somebody that's not. Somebody mamash like the most annoying person in the world. The person just loves to ask you the questions that are really, really personal. And he's annoying you, and he's annoying, and he's annoying, and he's annoying. And he comes to you. When? When you're stressed out and there's no money in the bank. And your wife yelled at you. And it's really at the worst possible time. Which means that if you're ever going to express your anger, right now is the time.

1:22:50right now is the time. But you, right before you act like you used to, you decide, let me hold myself back. Even though really he deserves me to slap him. Even though he really deserves even worse than what I used to do. I'm going to overcome it. And it's hard for you. But you do it. Hashem says, I'm going to also make an exception. like you overcame something extremely difficult for you, even technically when you had a justifiable reason to do it, I'm gonna also do it. Meaning that even when there was a sin that you made, that technically I was supposed to punish you for it, I'll erase it. Why? Because you overcame something and acted supernaturally on your level, Hashem is gonna act supernaturally at His level. So, when you judge people favorably and Doesn't mean you're judging them favorably because it's easy to judge them favorably. You're judging them favorably because you have no reason to judge them favorably, meaning the guy just came out of a non-kosher restaurant with his wife, and you're gonna find an excuse of why he didn't eat at this non-kosher restaurant. Not only didn't he eat, but there's some type of mitzvah associated with what they did.

1:24:13It doesn't make any sense really. He just came out of a non-kosher restaurant and you actually see ketchup on his shirt. You see ketchup on a guy's shirt, meaning you have all the reasons to say this guy really ate in the place. Until now you thought he's a good rabbi, tzaddik, great, wonderful. You had all the reasons to say he's a tzaddik. But now you saw him and you have all the reasons to say, no, no, this guy, he ate. He has ketchup on his shirt. He came out of the restaurant. His wife says, "Wow, what a meal." It's hard to make that case, and when you do, Hashem says, "Okay, you overcame yourself. I'll overcome Myself." So it is a very, very big level to reach. But also, you have to remember, if you can't do it with everybody, you have to do it with specific people. If the person was kosher until now... You have to find a way, a creative way, to keep him kosher, meaning to justify why he is still kosher. For example, you might say that he has ketchup on his shirt probably from his earlier meal. He just didn't have a chance to go back home, and his wife is saying, "Wow, what a meal they were talking about the meal they had earlier today." And he only came out of that restaurant because he had to go to the bathroom, and you can't go in the car. So you're coming up with a whole, you know, Walt Disney story in your head.

1:25:39keep him kosher. But if the guy is a rasha, if he's a thief and a violator of all the mitzvot, and he kills people on the side, and so on, and all of a sudden you started seeing Hitler giving sandwiches to homeless kids, what do you have to say? Say no, no, he has poison in the sandwich. You're not allowed to give him the benefit of the doubt. Why? Because until now he's been wicked and against everything. You're not allowed to change it. He cannot turn colors overnight. There has to be something wrong with his actions. Esav cannot turn into Yaakov overnight. Hitler cannot turn into Rabbi Akiva overnight. Not possible. I So we have to know who we are dealing with also. You can't just, but the point being is that we have to overcome ourselves because there's a very, very big benefit to it. It's a very big benefit to it. If you guys want to eat, get the pizza, get the pizza. I'll continue talking. It's fine. I don't mind you guys eating. Go ahead. Next. I don't get offended. That's fine. People eat all the time. It's fine. Get your pizza, eat, eat. It's fine. No, no, no. Go ahead. You said that there would be no point in the world if you...

1:26:54If Adam didn't eat from the fruit, then what? No, there would be different tests. There would be different tests. If it wasn't that test, it would be a different test. Obviously, Hashem knew what He was doing when He put the tree that was forbidden to him, meaning He put an obstacle... inside the Gan Eden because you know that there has to be some level of success and failure possibilities, but we don't really delve into the "what could have happened" world. We delve into what actually happened because "what could have happened" we don't really know. Like somebody told me once, "Listen, if I did this, if I wouldn't have done it, something else would have happened."

1:27:55This, by the way, is kefirah. It's actually called heresy. Why? Because everything that happens in the world is decreed by Hashem. Everything that happens in the world is something that Hashem is in control over. Hashem knew it was going to happen. So, one time, one of the tzaddikim got injured in his leg. He went to the hospital and they told us, "We're sorry. We have to cut your leg off. Amputate your leg." So, if you have to amputate my leg, you have to amputate my leg. I'm predestined. You know, it's a horrible thing. It's painful. It's terrible. But what can you do? So, they amputate his leg, Hashem yishmor, and as he's recovering, the family comes to visit him. Over here, the doctors were really, really scared. Why? Because the file that the doctor was reading when he decided to amputate the leg was somebody else's file. We didn't have to amputate his leg, but they already amputated it. What are we going to tell this guy?

1:29:21I just cut off his leg, there's no attaching it back. It's not like today; today, you can attach somebody's head back. What am I going to do? Who's going to tell him this? That we just chopped your leg off, you're going to walk around with one leg for the rest of your life, walk around, hop around, for the rest of your life, because some moron doctor read the wrong file. Who's going to tell him this news? Forget about how we're going to deal with the lawsuits, the problems, forget all that stuff. Who's going to tell him this? So one of the b'nei mishpacha, one of the... Family member that wasn't exactly able to control his mouth. He decided to be the first one to break the news, so he came to visit the rabbi and he says, "You know, it's a mistake, right?" The rabbi looks at him. "They weren't supposed to chop your leg off. They weren't supposed to do it. It's a mistake. They made a mistake and..."

1:30:28somebody else. It was somebody else's leg that was supposed to be taken off, not your leg. The rabbi at this moment looks at his family member very seriously and says to him, "What I learned from my rabbis, according to them..." You are a kofer. You're a heretic. What you just said is heresy. There is no way in the world that Hashem would allow my leg to come off if He didn't want it to. Yeah, but the doctors made a mistake. You think they made a mistake. Hashem doesn't make mistakes. Hashem just made it look like it's a mistake. To test me. But I know, according to my rabbis, there's no mistakes in the world. There are no mistakes. Everything is perfect. Everything is perfect. This is where we're supposed to be. This is where we're supposed to get to. To understand that everything that's happening in your life, having emunah means that you realize that there's no such thing as a mistake. No such thing as a mistake. Everything that's happening, it's happening because Hashem is dictating it to happen.

1:31:55It's very, very important to live like that, to get to that level. Because if you get to that level, automatically, you have zero stress. No more stress. No more nerves. You're not upset anymore. You're not mad anymore. You're not depressed like most people. There's no Prozac. There's no painkillers. There's no nothing. Why? Hashem runs the world. Hashem runs the world. Who am I to interfere and tell Him how to run His office? Who am I to tell Him how to run His company? He's running the world. There's no mistakes. Yeah, but the doctor said it's a mistake. The doctor can say whatever he wants. Who gave this doctor the breath in his lungs? Who gave the doctor the wrong file? That's the first thing that we've taught, Baruch Hashem, my wife really, not me. The first thing that... We taught our kids. I say "we" again because I want to share in it, but I really didn't do anything. Between us, I didn't do anything. The first thing she taught our kids—do you know what she taught them? She asked them, "Who gave us food?" My daughter says, "Hashem gave us food."

1:33:07Who gave us the house? Hashem gave us the house. Who gave us this? Who gave us this? Hashem gave us this. Where does this come from? Hashem made it. Everything is from Hashem. Why? That's the first part you need to do as a Jew. Who gave you the car? Hashem gave you the car. No, no, my boss gave me a car. Your boss is nothing. Your boss is here today, gone tomorrow. Who gave you the car? Hashem gave you the car. Who gave you the house? Hashem gave you the house. Who put this camera? Hashem put the camera. Yeah, but he pressed the button. He didn't do anything. Hashem pressed the button. Hashem did everything. Once you get to that level of understanding, realizing that Hashem literally does everything, then we can start building on something and becoming something special. Because then, you know what? You have some tools to work with. But as long as we think that we're doing anything... ...Then we believe that we're really like partners with Hashem, and that's a problem. That's where the problem is. So, it's important to know that we have a role. We have a job. We can do a lot more than what we're doing. But Hashem is really doing all of it all along, which means that all He needs us to do is just try. Just try to do something, and He'll really do the rest but still give you...

1:34:28actual reward as if you did it yourself. You just try, try to keep Shabbat, and Hashem is going to give you the strength to keep the whole thing. Try to watch your eyes; Hashem is going to make sure that no girls come your way that's going to give you a big test. Try to do this, and He'll give you all these different types of benefits because you tried. All we really have to do is try, so... The way to stay straight, the way to stay focused, is by simply understanding that whatever is happening in the world, it's because Hashem decreed it to happen. So even though Adam HaRishon made the sin of eating something that he wasn't supposed to eat, Hashem still allowed it to happen. Even though... Hitler, yemach shemo, killed six million Jews and many, many more. Hashem let it happen. Even though there were pogroms, inquisitions, destructions, murders, and so on—a lot of bad things in the world—it's very, very important to know Hashem made it happen. When somebody asks you, "Where was God during the Holocaust?" the answer is Hashem did it. What do you mean? Where was He? He was there. He was present.

1:35:46Why would He do such a thing? He wrote it in the Torah. Why would He do such a thing? He wrote it in the Torah. When you violate My Torah, this is what happens. And He has two parashot in the Torah, Parashat Bechukotai and Parashat Ki Tavo, that discuss exactly what happened in the Holocaust. Which means that nothing in the world is separate from Hashem. Nothing. Nothing in the world can happen without Hashem signing off on it and saying, permitted to such an extent that the Zohar HaKadosh says that if an aleh, a leaf, gets tired, he's stressed out, his wife is annoying, the kids are jumping on the walls. He's really this, he's really that. He wants to fall off the tree, wants to retire. He can't retire. Why? He has to ask Hashem for permission first, meaning the tree has 20,000 leaves. 20,000 leaves. If one of them falls, you're not going to notice. No one's going to notice. But still, Hashem says you have to ask for permission first, meaning that the leaf cannot fall off of the tree until Hashem says, "allowed to fall, allowed to fall." There was a prophet who was not Jewish by the name of Iyov (Job), and

1:37:14Job was tested with a very big test. Hashem took all of his money. Hashem took all of his kids. Hashem took his health. It was a very, very difficult test. And Job thought maybe Hashem made a mistake, even though he was a prophet, even though he was righteous, and he didn't understand why Hashem had given him such a difficult test, killing his ten children, taking all of his money, and making him so sick that he couldn't move. It was a horrible test because, up to that point, he was a tzaddik. He was righteous. He was a good person. So why should Hashem give him such a horrible punishment if he was doing good? So he thought maybe Hashem made a mistake by looking at his name as Iyyov, which means Job, and... Hebrew Job is an "oyk" maybe the letters of the word "oyk" were changed where it's spelled "oyev." Because "oyk" means Job, but "oyev" means enemy. So maybe there's like a mistake where it's the same spelling, but it's a little bit of slightly different order, slightly different vocalization, small difference, but changes the whole meaning of the word.

1:38:37And that's when Hashem spoke to him. At the moment that he thought that Hashem made a mistake, he had the merit where Hashem actually spoke to him. And Hashem said to him this: All of the stars in the sky, all the stars, there's an extraordinary amount of stars in the sky. The Gemara in Masechet Berachot, page 32b, says an exact number of stars that are in the sky, which anyone that does the calculation will arrive at the number of 1,064,340 with 12 zeros after that. A huge, huge number. 10 to the 18th power. All of those stars, they have names. I repeat their names every day. Your hair on your head. Each one of the hairs on your head has a name. I gave him the name. In fact, the hair on your head, you'll notice that no two hairs ever feed off of the same hole. No two hairs feed. They feed off of sweat. The hairs feed off of sweat. But no two hairs share their parnassah.

1:39:47Why? Because if two hairs fed off of the same place, according to Hashem, you could lose your ability to see. Your vision somehow is affected. You become blind in a second. I named all the stars. I named all the hairs on your head, and I made sure that all the hairs on your head have their own company, have their own parnassah. And you think I made a mistake in your name? Meaning it's such a ridiculous thing to say. He rebuked him. Hashem made Iyov do teshuvah, and that's why there's a book in the Tanakh called the Book of Iyov. He wasn't Jewish. He did teshuvah in the sense that he was a prophet, he was righteous, he made a mistake, he suffered for it, and Hashem rewarded him for it. There are many prophets who weren't Jewish. There are different levels of prophecy. There's a book by the Rambam called Shemona Perakim. In chapter 7, he talks about the different levels of prophecy that different prophets had in comparison to Moshe Rabbeinu, because we say that Moshe Rabbeinu is the prophet of all prophets. No one was like him, and no one will ever be like him. Even the Mashiach is not going to be like Moshe Rabbeinu. So, what's the difference between all the prophets? The difference is that...

1:41:13Each one was a tzaddik. There were 55 Jewish prophets, as the Gemara in Masechet Megillah mentions. They were mentioned in the Tanakh—55 prophets mentioned in the Tanakh. However, there were over a million prophets in history, but these 55 are mentioned in the Tanakh. Why? Because what the 55 prophets said affects us today. Whereas the other million, it only affected their day. So Hashem didn't include them in the Torah. Which means that anything that's in the Torah, it's not just for that generation 3,000 years ago. It's for today. It's for tomorrow. It's for the next generation. It's for until Mashiach comes. Now, what's the difference between all the prophets? The difference is that each one had a different level of prophecy. where the more perfect a human being they were in terms of their character traits, the clearer their prophecy was. So, if a person was angry, then their prophecy would be much less, if it existed at all, compared to someone who was not angry. Every bad character trait that a person had would be like a wall separating him from Hashem.

1:42:41if, let's say, someone had, let's say, 20 bad character traits—let's say there's a hundred good and bad ones—and out of a hundred, he's 80 good and 20 bad, which is amazing. He's 80 good and 20 bad. So those 20 are 20 walls, 20 sheetrocks, 20 separations between him and Hashem. There's another prophet. He's not 20. He is even better. He's 15 bad ones, meaning he's 85% good and 15% bad. So now he only has 15 walls between him and Hashem. And then there's another one, Avraham Avinu, who, let's say, has much less. He only has, let's say, three. So he only has three walls between him and Hashem. All the way to Moshe Rabbeinu, who had something that was the equivalent of a piece of glass between him and Hashem, meaning virtually nothing. So that's when Moshe Rabbeinu asked Hashem

1:43:49Let me see Your honor. Let me see Your holiness, Your glory. Show me Your glory. Meaning, let me see what's behind this glass. I reached the highest level, Moshe was telling them. Hashem says this is the highest level of a human being. You cannot see beyond the glass as a human being. Meaning, you have reached officially the highest level of a human being. There's just a tiny little separation where it's like a glass that technically you could see through it, but it's not as clear as no glass. Everybody else can't see as much at all because they have walls. This means to us that every single negative character trait that we have — if we're cheap, if we're arrogant, if we're angry, if we are, I don't know, all types of negative things that a person can have. Each one of them separates us from Hashem further and further. This means that the Gaon revealed that one of our sages from just a couple hundred years ago said the purpose of a person is to fix their midot, to fix their character traits. Why? Because that is the purpose of your life and

1:45:02because the more you fix yourself, the less angry you become, the more generous you become, the better person you become, the closer you get to Hashem. The closer you get to Hashem, the more righteous you're going to become, and the easier the mitzvot will become. So, the only reason why we have certain things that are difficult for us is because we have some type of negative character trait that's connected to them. And you'll see that a lot of times, The root of all evil comes from one character trait, which is called arrogance, being an arrogant person, thinking that you're better than everybody else. Exactly. The Ramban says it's the worst middah of all, it's the worst character trait of all, because it leads to anger, which is the worst thing ever. Anger is like you just gave a korban to the Satan. These character traits are terrible, but when it comes from ignorance and arrogance, this is a person that has turned himself into an idol. Not only does he worship an idol, but he worships himself. So, a person needs to make sure that he always checks himself. He always checks himself, asking, "Am I being arrogant here? Am I thinking that I'm really better than everybody else?"

1:46:25What makes you better than everybody else? Why? Because you're smarter? Maybe Hashem gave you a better brain than him, but He made him more righteous than you. Meaning, yes, it's true that you may be better than everybody else at something, but that doesn't make you better. That just makes you better at that thing. It doesn't make you better at everything else. So the Ramban in Iggeret HaRamban Writes to his son, whatever you see that's positive in you, always think that the other person has something better and something else in you. So that way, okay, you're better here. There's no question about it. You can't say, no, no, I'm not smart. I'm stupid. When in reality, you're smart. You're just lying to yourself. You can't say you're a chicken when you're an eagle. You're an eagle, and he's a chicken. Fine. But there's something good about him too. So that makes you even anyway. Yes, then so yeah, you're smart, but he's, uh, you know, I don't know. He's more of a tzaddik than you. He has less of a yetzer hara than you, so he's able to keep mitzvot better than you. You're rich, but he's more generous, or he's this, you know, there's something better. So that's why you always look at everybody else where there's something better about them. And in essence, technically, you're not better than anybody else. In fact, they all have more maalot than you.

1:47:40a person can work on himself and humble himself and stay away from arrogance. He can become a tzaddik. But if a person doesn't work on himself, even if he keeps the entire Torah, he'll still have serious problems. Because you see a lot of times people keep mitzvot, but they have terrible middot to such an extent that many of their mitzvot cause other people harm; their mitzvot cause other people to suffer and... Like, sometimes you see a person that does teshuva, he starts keeping mitzvot, then he starts yelling at people. His wife wants to divorce him, his kid wants to leave, this one wants to leave, everybody wants to leave, everybody hates Judaism because of him. He did teshuva, now everybody has to suffer. Why? Why do I have to suffer? Why does this happen? Because in reality, he never did teshuva. He started as an arrogant person. He's still an arrogant person. The only difference is he changed what he's arrogant about. Before, he was arrogant about his job, his money, or this or that. Now, he's arrogant because he knows a few laws you don't know. That's it. Meaning, it's the same thing. Nothing changed, just the message changed. So, it's very, very important to do teshuva for our character traits. Because once you do teshuva for character traits...

1:48:58Then you're going in the right direction. Then the mitzvot are really done for the right reason. To do that, you have to learn something called mussar, which is pretty much what we've been doing. Learn books that are mussar. Behind you, there's a bunch of them. There's a whole series over there. The whole 49 over there, all of them are sifrei mussar. I've been looking at them the whole time. Way of Torah, the Mesilat Yesharim, the Knowing God's Plan. Oh, you have an amazing one also over there that's very rare for many people. I think it's by Rabbi Yisrael Salanter, the blue one. It's a lot of Strive for Truth by Rav Dessler. All of these books, by the way, each one of them, every page is going to get you closer to Hashem. Every page, not every book, every page. You read every page, you think about what you just read, it's going to get you closer to Hashem. It's going to make you a better person. Because you see the level of chokhmah that these sages had, it's unbelievable. And Rav Dessler, in that book, Strive for Truth, The intro he says something that's only a giant can think of. He says sometimes parents like to play terrible games with their kids. What do they do? They take away all their toys just to pretend like it's gone, just to see the kid cry because some parents think it's funny to see their kids cry or they want to punish the kid.

1:50:27Kid did something bad. So they take away all of his toys. He says this is a vicious punishment. Taking all of the child's toys is a vicious punishment. He says why? He says imagine you, a big adult, have a stock portfolio. You have a real estate portfolio. You have a car, you have a house, you have a few diamonds, and have a company, you have a business, and somebody says, "Hey, it's all gone." He says, for that kid, it's the same thing. Those toys hold the same value as your assets. The only thing that changes is the value, but for the kid, it's the same significance. This means that even when we punish our kids, we need to be careful. They thought about it and said, "We have to be careful how we treat our kids." Yeah, but he's only five. Exactly. Because if you're vicious with him at five, he's going to remember it at 15. And he's going to do it himself at 25 and 35. So even how we punish our kids, how we treat our kids, they think about this. Why? Because it's part of our avodat Hashem. It's part of our service of Hashem. All of it is a part of our avodat Hashem. Everything. It's perfecting yourself, making yourself into a diamond. Next question. Now you guys are full with nice pizza.

1:51:49Two-fold. Two-fold to ask questions. Yeah, I got a question. Go ahead. You said... same price... being angry. Okay. And all these other things that, you know, most people do on a day-to-day basis. Okay. How is it that if it's seen on such a bad level, you can compare it to avodah zarah? Okay. It says that if the whole world is to do avodah zarah, or, you know, a majority or whatever, because that's why they don't do the majority, you would... Because Hashem, when He first created the world, He created the world with midat hadin. When He created the world, He created it with just punishment, meaning with justice, meaning that you do something good, you get reward; you do something bad, He punishes you. But He saw in His infinite wisdom and... that the world would not be able to survive a day, one day, if it was just based on reward and punishment. So He added midat harachamim, which is the trait of mercy, giving us the opportunity to do teshuva. So even though we're not allowed to sin, Hashem allows us to continue because of our potential to do teshuva. So many times you see there are people around us

1:53:18Hashem allows evil, horrible, terrible people to continue living. Some of them even pretend to be happy. Why does Hashem let them live? Because each one of them actually has within them the opportunity and the potential to become the greatest rabbi in the world. Believe it or not, some of the most special people in the history of the world used to be terrible people. We'll start from the top. Moshe Rabbeinu. Moshe Rabbeinu. If it wasn't written, I wouldn't be allowed to say such a thing. There was a king who heard about Moshe Rabbeinu, and he said, "Such a person, I must have a painting of him, must have a painting of him in my castle." So he sent a group of people to go draw him where they found him in the desert. They drew him, brought him back, and he wanted to test some of his other people that had the chochmah, had the wisdom of how to read faces. There's a certain wisdom of how to read faces. I can read your face and I can tell you if you're lying, if you're angry, if you're this, if you're that. Chochmah, there's a wisdom that you can tell by somebody's face. There's also wisdom based on their handwriting. My rabbi knows how to, he looks at your handwriting and can tell you a lot of things about you from your handwriting.

1:54:47different wisdoms in the world. So he asked these people that were working for him about this, "What do you think of this person?" He didn't tell them it's Moshe Rabbeinu. He said, "What do you think of my painting?" "Oh, that's an angry, vicious person. He's a murderer. Why would you have such a thing, your highness? Was he a soldier? Is he a big commander? Who's this vicious warrior?" "It's not a warrior; it's the biggest rabbi in the world." Because, Rabbi, what are you talking about? I'm going to kill all of you. You lied. You've been cheating me all this time. Because, no, no, Your Highness, what are you talking about? This is a vicious person. We're not lying to you. It's not possible. You're telling me one after another is telling me these are vicious? What vicious? What angry? What are you talking about? Something's wrong. Bring all the painters. He brought the painters. He didn't go. You didn't find Moshe Rabbeinu. You're drawing somebody else. You're drawing a vicious person. He goes, no, no, Your Highness, we really drew him. It's him. It's him. We went. It's right, left, right. We drove five miles this way, five miles that way. We went there. I saw him. We know exactly where he is. We'll take you there. Meaning, we didn't just draw anybody. It's really him. Because it's not possible if you drew him and they're saying he's vicious because he's Moshe Rabbeinu. I heard about Moshe Rabbeinu. He's kodesh. Hashem speaks to him.

1:56:04I can only verify by seeing him myself. The king goes to the desert, finds the camp of Am Yisrael, gets a meeting with Moshe Rabbeinu. He looks at the painting, he looks at Moshe Rabbeinu—identical. Identical! So now, immediately, he wants to kill the people that were telling him, "Oh, he's a vicious person." Moshe Rabbeinu says, why are you so angry? He says, no, no, these people are lying to me. They're telling me that this was you and it was you, but they're saying you're vicious and angry and this and that. He goes, they're right. They're right. All of those things were really in me. That's the way I was born. I was born angry. I was born a murderer. I was born, all of the things they said about me that were negative, they were right. But I worked on myself and became Moshe Rabbeinu. All of that, all of those things, Hashem put in me. But you can use those things for good. You can use them for that. Some people have the desire to see blood. They can become a murderer, or they can become a butcher, or they can become a surgeon. It can be used for good or bad. Some people have a...

1:57:28Disposition where they are very curious people; they can either become shamim (perverts) or they can become investigators, investigators of some kind—biologist, chemist, diagnostician, you know, a person that tries to find unusual diseases of some kind. Point is that every trait that Hashem gave us, you can use for bad and for good. Every tool that Hashem gave us, you can use for bad, you can use for good. Do you know how much garbage is on the internet? There's no end to the amount of garbage on the internet. As a matter of fact, the internet only became something to the massive world because of garbage, because of things that are completely forbidden to even think about. That's how it started, the internet. The internet originally started for government, but only went to the average house because there was garbage on it. Initially, that's all that was on the internet. That's it. There was no Google, Yahoo, or eBay. There was nothing. There was only garbage, like pure, pure filth of the world. That's it. But why did Hashem allow such a thing to exist?

1:58:40Because that is how thousands and thousands of people are watching this shiur and other shiurei Torah and doing teshuva in every corner of the world. Right now, there are people in Alaska watching this shiur. Right now, there are people in Tahiti. Tahiti, you guys even know what Tahiti is? It's next to, it's like an 18-hour flight. On a plane, it takes 18 hours to get there. There are people literally from all over the world watching shiurim Torah and doing teshuva. I have students in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia. They learn Torah. All over the world. Why? Internet. Meaning the same tool that has garbage has good too. Everything can be used for good. Everything can be used for bad. This pizza can either be something good or it could be something bad. Good, you're using it to motivate people to come to a shiur Torah. Bad, you can motivate people to go to a bad place. Good and bad. Everything is good and bad. So, once we start looking at the world with the right set of eyes,

1:59:49Everything changes. Our perspective of life changes. The meaning of life changes. We change. We want to change. We say, okay, listen, I like to do certain things. How could I use this talent that I have for good? Certain people, for example, used to like playing video games. Today, I don't know, in my days, once you were like a teenager, you stopped playing video games. You know, you had to get a job at some point. Today, you're 35 years old, still playing video games, people. It's insanity. Yeah, there's a whole career. You're like a career video gamer. But in reality, it's a waste of life. It's a complete waste of life. You're in front of a screen. You forget to live. You forget to be in front of a computer or something, a machine. Playing with the digital world all day will make you very, very antisocial and very, very disconnected from the real world. It's unhealthy. Point being, so what do you do with this skill?

2:00:57Somebody asked me this question just yesterday. He said, use the skill for something else. Okay, you're good at video games. That means you have some type of connection to the digital world. What can you do that's actually useful for it? He said, become a programmer. Make websites that are for Torah or for something useful for business. You can use this talent for something good. Or you continue wasting your life thinking that you're an X-Man. Like, continue your life playing like you're Messi, 20 years after he retires and breaks his legs. People are crazy. They just play with these characters. They play all day, all day, all day. Okay, it's fun for 5-10 minutes, but you gotta get to the real world. Stop pretending you're Messi. You're not Messi. You're just some guy that's 50 pounds overweight and can't kick a ball for your life. Get a real job. The point is, you can use that talent for something good. You can use that talent for something good. Everything can be used for good. Once we see that Hashem gave each one of us a special talent, a special gift, then we can start figuring out: Okay, how do I use this gift? How do I use this gift? I tell you, I thought that I was meant to be a very, really rich person that, you know, was able to donate a lot of money and do a lot of things. In reality, that was not the gift that Hashem gave me. What did He give me? He gave me the ability to speak.

2:02:20give me the ability to speak, an ability to think differently. I think differently than most people. Most people could look at something and see a specific thing. I look at it in five, six, seven, eight different ways, and I try to make those five different ways all connect and explain to you in a very simple way. We understand all five ways. That's the way I think, a little bit of an explanation of it. The point is that there's a lot of people that could speak, there's a lot of people that can think, but there's very few that have both, and It's very few that have both. So when Hashem gives you that gift, you can use it to be a good businessman. Or you could be a Mezakeh HaRabim. You're a businessman, you live in this life, you make a bunch of money, then you die, the money goes to somebody else and doesn't help you at all. You help people do teshuva, all the things you do in this world come with you. So the same gift can be used in different ways. Not everybody has to be a rabbi. Not everybody has to be a speaker. Not everybody has to be Moshe Rabbeinu. But everybody has to use their gift for the purpose of sanctifying Hashem, for the purpose of honoring Hashem. If you're very good at making money, find a way to make that money honor Hashem. If you're very good at, I don't know, anything, find a way to use that skill to honor Hashem. That's the point. That's the point of that skill.

2:03:47If you do that, you'll see that you'll actually even become better at that skill too. So I mean all of these things, I mean this: I'm hoping that today each one of us will take something from the shiur and use it to become closer to Hashem. If all of us stayed the same, this was a complete, you know, it was nice, but it was a waste of time. But if we all decide to do something You're going to learn 15 more minutes a day. You're going to learn 20 more minutes a day. You're going to learn an hour a day more. You're going to start keeping. He's going to start keeping. People are going to start keeping mitzvot. Start developing yourself. Then you say, oh, we got to do this more often. Why? Because it led to something good. You got the message. And that's the way you're supposed to treat Torah. You're supposed to treat it as something precious. I got the message. I can't do all of it. I can take something. After all, I'm an eved Hashem. Don't think that anything is too much for you. And that's the key. That's the point. That's the point of life. That's the point of why you're in this world. Once you start deciding to take advantage of the tools that Hashem gave you, you'll see that your life will become much, much more blessed. You'll become much happier, much more successful in things you do, much calmer, and in general, much happier to the point where other people are going to ask you, what's your secret? In the beginning, they're all going to call you crazy.

2:05:11You're crazy. You're fanatic. It's a big change. Relax a little bit. It's too much. Give them a year, give them two years, give them three years. They're gonna come to you and ask you for bracha. Why? Because after all, success doesn't have to speak. Success you can see. You see a person, if he's happy, you can tell. And once people see somebody happy, they want it. They want it. They want to be happy. That's what everybody wants in life. After all, that's why people want all these things. They want money. They want all the things that they desire because they think it's going to make them happy. Once you arrive at happiness, you're the biggest winner in the world. And that's what the Torah is supposed to instruct us to do. It's supposed to instruct us to be happy. If you're not happy, you're not doing it right. You're not doing it right. So that's what we have to work on. So, b'ezrat Hashem, this gives us a little bit more chizuk. Gives you guys more chizuk. He gave me more chizuk b'ezrat Hashem. Hopefully, we have even more people next time. You can share this with others once we post this online b'ezrat Hashem tomorrow. Share it with some of your friends. This is also something you can watch again for yourself because it affects you in a positive way. It's good to be reminded of the same thing that worked for you. You know, you do it again, and each time you have a yetzer hara to do something, remember...

2:06:33Hashem knows that you're gonna fall once in a while. He knows you're gonna fall; it's natural for you to fall. But don't do it on purpose. Don't say, "I don't care." Don't be one of those people. It's okay to fall, but not to push yourself and jump off. That's not okay. You know, so it's important to know the difference. Hold on, hold on tight. And if you get to a really, really difficult test... Scream out if you want: "Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad." That's what the Gemara Masechet Berachot says. You have a big yetzer hara, something's about, you're about to sin in a big way. You're about to violate Shabbat. You're about to steal from somebody. You're about to cheat on your wife. You're about to cheat on God. You're about to do something—scream "Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad." If it doesn't work, take a Sefer Torah; just start reading anywhere. Open it anywhere, start reading. Doesn't matter if you understand or don't understand; just start reading. Start reading as soon as possible. If it doesn't work, just remember: one day you're going to die. That's what the Gemara says. Why? Because if you think about the day you're going to die, you'll realize who eventually might have to pay for this. The price is high. It's important to know that at some point, we have to pay for it, or we get paid. We want to be the ones that get paid.

2:07:58Baruch Adonai le'olam. Amen ve'amen.