Rabbi Yossi Mizrachi - Tikkun Habrit - Wasting Seed, Self pleasuring, English Important Lecture

0:00Good evening, everyone. Welcome to another Chazak event. And the topic we chose tonight is Shmirat HaBrit, which means the obligation of the Jewish man and woman, of course, to live in modest standards. And I would encourage you to ask all your questions, because I know I get a lot of questions, and they always repeat one of each other. Maybe if I answer it online... It's called Shmirat HaBrit, which means the obligation of the Jewish man and woman, of course, to live by modest standards. And I would encourage you to ask all your questions, because I know I get a lot of questions, and they always repeat one another. Maybe if I answer it online... It will give me some time to breathe. Every Monday, like tomorrow, I'm speaking right here, a few blocks away from here, routinely. Every Monday, 8 o'clock, on different topics, every week a different topic, at 9907 66th Avenue. Just remember, 66th Avenue, corner of 99th Street.

1:09In a big shul. The shul has a side entrance. You go in every Monday at 8 o'clock. Everyone who wants to know where I speak, instead of sending me texts and emails, all you have to do is go on divineinformation.com. At the top, you have events. It's updated. 99% of the lectures I put in, unless it's a private event. But all the public lectures are there. You don't need to call. You just go in, you check, it shows you the date, the address, the topic, everything you need to know. If there's going to be Chinese food, it's also safe. It's not going to double the number of people who come. This is the world we live in. The food brings the people more than what the Torah does. All right, anyway, before I start, any questions up to now? Everything is clear? What I said about the announcement? Okay, so let's move on. Reviewing, starting, everything I'm going to say is based on the book of Rabbi Aharon Rata, who published a very important book when it comes to modesty. It's called Shomer Emunim. What's great about that book, besides speaking about the high level, the high standards of modesty in the eyes of Hashem,

2:29It's also speaking about the afterlife, heaven, and hell, and some of the things that happen to wicked people. If they're brave, they can go and read this book and see where they're headed if they do not change. But this book is not recommended for an average learner or beginner. It's more for people at a high level of learning. They should go to these kinds of books. I once made a lecture, a video, About the seven different places in Gehinnom, seven different places, and I never published it. It's not on the website; it's not on the internet anywhere. The reason is, for every ten people who would listen to it, three will be extremely encouraged. And seven will be extremely discouraged. It will take them away from the love of the Torah. They will be so upset by how strict the judgment is. So it doesn't pay because not everyone can handle the truth. Some people cannot handle the truth. You have to give them 10-20% of it, not more. If you give them too much, they see how strict it is, and they run away. They don't want to know.

3:38Unfortunately, people live in a fake generation. Everything around us is fake. Society is very, very rotten. The music we hear, it's worse than garbage, but we are not aware of it. The way people dress, the way people talk, all the lies you hear from morning to night. No faith in God. Nobody really believes in God. Even people who work with yarmulkes and beards, they have doubts about certain things in the Torah. People who can keep Shabbat for three or four years, after four years, they send me an email asking if they can keep only part of the Shabbat. After three or four years, he keeps Shabbat fully. It's very hard for him. He's a single guy. His parents don't keep. So he's saying, "I'm sure God will understand if I keep some of Shabbat. Better than nothing." Do you understand where we live? A person knows that this is the eternal covenant. And after three or four years that he was able to keep, you know, since his family doesn't keep, I understand. It's not an easy test. So he's considering now going back to square one. You understand? So this is where we live. But since this is where we are, it makes the situation much, much harder. That's why not everyone is capable of hearing it. Someone who is connected to Torah, he has a rabbi, he's close to his rabbi, his rabbi gives him the right information that he needs to know, and he's a seeker of the truth, because it's also natural. Some people are born like that.

5:07I look at my own children. I see there are different souls. One, all day, speaks to me about the Parsha. All day, five years old. Every five seconds: Who is the father of this? Who is the father of that? Who was born first? Which Parsha is first? What Parsha comes after this? 500 questions per day. If I'm at home. And the other one, even if you talk to him about it, is already counting the second when it's going to be over. So you see, from a young age, it depends on what soul came from a previous life. If it's a filthy soul, or if it's a pure soul. Some souls have small corrections to make. Some souls have a lot to correct. The harder the job is, that means this is your particular mission in life. If it's hard for you, Shabbat, that's your main test. If modesty is hard for you, that's your main test. If kosher food is hard for you, that's your main test.

6:09You know, believe it or not, for some people, everything can be easy for them. Tefillin, it's hard for them. Two minutes a day to put on tefillin. Shema, perhaps the easiest mitzvah, is hard for them. For some people, praying is very difficult. Just to stand ten minutes in front of Hashem and pray is very hard for them. They can never focus. They're always thinking about what's outside, what's going to be in their business, and so on. So everyone has their main test in life. I want to start this lecture with the words of the Rambam. The Rambam, in chapter 21, in the laws of Isurei Bi'ah, forbidden relationships, the Rambam says like this. Of course, whatever the Rambam says, not one word comes from his own opinion. Judaism, it's not about expressing your emotions and your opinions. It's not like when you go to college and study a novel. Somebody wrote, I don't know, Shakespeare, whatever. He wrote a novel, and now they teach you in college, or in school, or in high school, and you learn the story of whatever it is. Okay, so now...

7:17Nobody really cares if you go deeply into the mind of the author and know what he meant while he was writing it. It doesn't matter. As long as it brings the greatness out of you and you are impressed, and you express it in your own ways and your own words, and everybody says their own story about what the author meant, it's fine. You cannot learn the Tanakh like this. The Tanakh is not Macbeth. Or anything else of Shakespeare or all the other things. No. With the Tanakh, you must know what was the intention of the writer. If you don't know what God meant, everyone will interpret it in his own way, based on his emotions and his opinion. You're going to have 5 million different kinds of Judaism. Which one will you belong to? As it is right now, there are so many cults in Judaism that are going off the way. They think they are extremely righteous, but they are dreaming. They are not in the right direction. They think we are extra. We are the commanders of Judaism. We are like this. We are like that. We fight on the street. We throw stones. We burn places. They think this is the way of the Torah. Nobody is going to mess with us. If they are not going to accept it in a nice way, we will force them to do it. That’s not the way of the Torah. That’s not what God is interested in.

8:38But anyway, so the Rambam, this is what he writes. He writes, every person who had a forbidden relation or even hugged or kissed with desire or body to body, Anyone of the forbidden, not talking about his own wife—his own wife is a mitzvah, it's no problem—touching anything that is forbidden to a person at the time of the act. He is violating many, many sins from the Torah, not one or two, many, many different sins. One sin is, don't come near to having a forbidden relationship. Then, it’s restoring the holiness of the person. Then it is, "Don't follow your eyes and your heart that make you sin, sins of prostitution." Zonim comes from the word zonah. Zonah means a prostitute in Hebrew. So the Torah uses an exact word. Now, it didn’t say that you are violating

9:56No, it says that this is prostitution. This is what it is. The Torah is very precise. A person is not allowed to wink at a woman, to talk to her on the street, to give her compliments on the street, to give any hint, to tell her jokes, to be friends with her, to be her psychologist. "You can open your heart to me. I'm a good friend. We went together to school 10 years." "Rabbi, no, she's only my friend. What's the problem?" is not allowed to wink at a woman, to talk to her on the street, to give her compliments on the street, to give any hint, to tell her jokes, to be friends with her, to be her psychologist. "You can open your heart to me. I'm a good friend. We went together to school 10 years." "Rabbi, no, she's only my friend. What's the problem?" She is in a crisis. She left her boyfriend, Vinny. You know, she's very depressed. I'm afraid she's going to do something to herself. So all of a sudden, Baruch Hashem, he became the psychologist. "Tell me, open your heart. You can count on me. I'm very confidential." The next thing she sees, everything is on the internet. Trusting this kind of person or blackmail begins. "Oh, I know all your secrets. If you're not gonna do this and this, people are very naive today." You gotta be very, very careful because you have to understand even if a person is really a good friend of yours, male or female, and really at this given moment you can trust him 100%, always remember that in one year from now, things can be the opposite and

11:21Yeah? This person that is your best friend can become your biggest enemy in a year. Why give him material that can be used against you? A clever person never tells anyone his private secrets. Never. Even sometimes to your own wife or to your own husband. Not everything you can count on them to accept. Certain things they pretend they understand you. They pretend that there's no problem. They can live with that. And two years later, it breaks the marriage. Why? Because it constantly kills them from inside. And then somebody else talks about it. And somebody else. And then they watch something. And they put everything together. And they say, that's it. I can't go on like this. You've got to be very careful about telling your secrets to whom. Sometimes even people come to their own rabbi and open their hearts to them, and rabbis are human beings. Yes, they're on a higher level than the average person, it's true. But certain things that you may tell your rabbi would make your rabbi lose your value in his eyes. Why? Because...

12:31It will be very hard for him, very hard for him to teach you or to be close to you knowing you're doing certain things. You've got to be careful. So whenever you have to ask a private question, never admit it's you. Never. Don't tell him, "I'm talking about me. I cheated on my husband two years ago." Don't ever do that. You tell him, "I have a friend." And yes, yes, that's the right way to talk. I have a friend that she did this and this and that. Now she's driving me crazy. She wants to know what to do. She can stay with her husband. She has to get divorced. She has to tell her husband. There are a lot of questions in life. Don't ever confess that it's you. We are not Christianity. You go, you put $50 in the box, and the father stands on the other side and pretends he doesn't know you. You understand? That's not what it is. Also, men, you've got to be careful what you say. You know, if confession was a public thing, it wouldn't be whispering. Why? It would scream, everyone together, like we do: Hashem, Hashem, Kel Rachum veChanun. Everyone screams. Right before that, it's whispering. Then sitting down,

13:43What you need to scream, you scream. What you need to whisper, I say, I gave a lecture about davening. And I say, what's the most important part of the davening? Everyone screams something. And in the end, the conclusion is the Shemoneh Esrei, whispering. When we stand in front of Hashem, whispering. So I say, why is it so important? The most important tefillah is whispering. Nobody hears you. Why? Imagine a person now in Shomea Tefillah, Right? He's going like this. He begins to scream, "Hashem, You know I'm tired. I'm tired of my parnassah. My wife doesn't help me. Nobody understands." Everyone in the shul is going to scream, "Hashem, I'm broke. Send me money." This guy says, "Sarah doesn't want to marry me. How many years am I going to wait?" The whole shul, everyone screams like this. How can anyone focus on his prayer? It has to be private. And it has to remain private. You don't make your confession in the middle. You want to add words. And everybody has to hear your problems, you know? So the Rambam says like this.

14:53any kind of friendship, even if you really think this girl is not your style, you don't think there's a chance you will ever be attracted to her, to make a scene with her completely. She's not your style. You say, ah, the chance that I ever like this girl is... Zero. Or she thinks the same way. Or there's a big difference in the age. She can be your daughter or anything like this. People think, ah, she's 10 years older than me. She's 20 years older than me. Well, I don't have desire. She can be my mother, this one. Believe me, the world is full of forbidden relationships that you never, ever believe are possible. Never believe it's possible. Things that the Torah warns about. Thank you. Things that the Torah warns about... When you read it the first time, you say, why did the Torah have to waste so many warnings? What? The Torah is talking about psychos? But today, you see how people are doing exactly what the Torah warned about. God knows what He's talking about. He knew that there would be crazy people who rape children. There would be crazy people who rape old people in hospitals. He knew all these things. That's why everything is in the Torah.

16:04Why? To tell you, even though it's not logical that somebody will commit these sins, but when he commits the sins, I'll punish him severely. So the Rambam continues. The Rambam says, even to joke around. You hear what they say on the news? This, that, jokes. And to look at their beauty. To look at her face and say, "Wow, what a beautiful girl." Enjoying the beauty. I know I cannot marry her. She could be a married woman. But just to enjoy her beauty. So what am I doing? I'm not talking to her. I'm a religious guy. Just thinking to myself, "What a beautiful woman Hashem created." He thinks it's a mitzvah. In the beginning, you say, maybe I'm doing something wrong. Two or three weeks later, you say, wow, every day I'm making a mitzvah, kiddush Hashem. What mitzvah are you doing? I'm impressed by the beauty of the creation of Hashem. Next time you want to be impressed, be impressed by the trees, by the animals in nature. From that, you're allowed to be impressed. Don't be impressed by things that the Torah says, watch your eyes, don't look. Then...

17:10Someone like that, whom the Beit Din, the Jewish Beit Din, gave a warning to. You are talking to the girls on the street; you have to be careful. And he did not accept the warning. Somebody like that, what do you think they do to him? They take him to the Beit Din and whip him with a whip so that everybody will see that this person is not a modest person. Imagine if we tried to do it today to someone. What would happen? Iran, crazy religion, what's going on? But that's what Hashem said, that a person like this has to get a warning. Sometimes the only way a person understands is when he feels physical pain. When he knows, if I'm going to do it, it's going to hurt me, he doesn't do it. And then the people get saved. You understand? How many of us make sins? Imagine if there was a system that every time you're about to touch food that is not kosher and eat it, you get electrocuted. And you fall on the floor with horrible pain. Every time you try to take shrimp, oh delicious, whoop!

18:17like right away, whenever you eat something that is not kosher, then you never make a sin. So all the physical pain, one, two, three, that's it. You'll never do it. Because nobody wants to feel pain. So now, is it a positive thing or a negative thing? Depends who you ask. Some people say, "Better I make sins and you don't force me to do mitzvot." Some people say, "Yes, I want to subscribe to this program." To save my soul, I take the pain once or twice, and I'll get the point. So far, I've been trying for ten years and I'm not getting the point. Maybe that's going to make me a better person. Right? Or wrong. So it's helping. Same thing with kids. You ask your little kid, "Don't touch without permission. Don't touch, don't touch, don't touch," it doesn't help. Two minutes later, he's by the chocolate again. What happens when the father hits him like this? It's not such a painful thing, but it embarrasses him. He hits him a little bit on the head. No, no, no. What happens? He gets the point. Talking to him doesn't always help. I'm not encouraging anyone to become violent, don't get the wrong impression. But I'm just saying that in certain places, the Torah says that a person has to get a warning—a warning before he gets a bigger punishment from God.

19:34is to give him one or two smacks for everyone to know that this person is a sinner. Believe me, to avoid the embarrassment that people know that they took you to court and had to smack you because you talked to a married woman in your office or on the street, or you sit on the street and watch the girls go to school, right? Or you do other things that people do today. Many of the sinners today wouldn't do it. You have to know one thing. There is a very simple rule in every society and every courtroom that we go to. What is it? The bigger the punishment is, it indicates that the sin that was taking place is greater. If a person got 20 years in prison and one person got only three years in prison, then we know right away the person who got 20 years probably did something much more severe. You cannot compare three years to 20 years. If a person got one smack in court or 50 smacks, there's a big difference. Probably this one did something much greater.

20:36Same thing over here. From all the sins of the Torah, 613 commandments, 365 restrictions. Which restrictions are subject to the biggest punishments of the Torah? Forbidden relations, all kinds of prostitution, all kinds of immodest acts—they are in the highest category of sins. Bigger than eating non-kosher, sometimes bigger than murder. Even the punishment of the murderer does not always reach sex crimes. So what do you see from here? That in the eyes of the Creator of the world, lack of modesty, it's not a joke, like some people think. It's a very, very serious point that brings many tragedies to each one of us personally and to all of us as a nation. I make sins, he suffers. He makes sins, she suffers. She makes sins, I suffer. That's how it goes. We're all one unit. In the army, you have 50 soldiers. One or two are high on coke now. They cannot fight. We're all going to die. What are you going to say? Leave me alone. It's my own life. No, you fool. You messed up in your responsibility in life. All of us go down with you.

21:56That's why there's an obligation in the Torah that every Jew is a guarantor for the other. Everyone has to do whatever they can to help the others to come up. Somebody called me yesterday. He says, "I want to clarify with you if I did a good thing or a bad thing." What is it? "I went, I saw a religious guy. A quarter yarmulke. You know, he saw a religious guy walking with a girl on the street. The girl was dressed worse than a prostitute." He just couldn't see it. So he said, I think it's what I said to the guy. Should I not say it? Should I say it? So he called him on the side. He was afraid to tell him clearly what the problem is. So he hinted to him. He said to him, maybe you should think because you are going in the wrong direction. The guy said, what are you talking about? I'm going in the right direction. What am I doing wrong? So he's calling me, maybe he went too far. So I told him, not only you didn't go too far, you didn't go far enough. Next time you have to call him on the side and tell him, listen, I'm not your father, I'm not your brother, I'm not your teacher. It's not my job to give you musar. But I just want to keep what the Torah says.

23:06You are walking with a yarmulke, with a girl that is naked on the street. This is a very big chilul Hashem. Did you ever think what damage you're making? That's it, and leave. He wants to get the mussar, fine. He doesn't want, let him scream while you're running away. That's all. If everyone will do it once a day, the world will be a better place. Because remember, many people here, on the way here, I got an email from a religious woman. "Thank you for waking me up. I'm religious from birth, but after I started to listen to your lecture, I came back to life. Everything I was doing is like a robot. Obviously, when you do things like a robot, you are not doing it right. The heart is not there. Just being a robot, that's not religion." So, let's move on. So, the Rambam says like this: Someone who looks at the finger of a woman, not only hugging, kissing, joking around, and listening to her private problems on the phone at two o'clock at night.

24:09Looking at her finger to enjoy the beauty of her fingers. A pedicure, manicure, all this nonsense. Not like today, the women, they glue all kinds of long nails, like witches. Each one of them has a dream; she wants to be a witch. Good thing she doesn't go with a broom on the street. So she puts on all these nails. And she puts stars on them, like these. All kinds of strange things. But what can I do that this is the fashion of the goyim, not of God? According to God, you are ugly by pulling these nails. Where does it say it in the Torah? Who knows? Where does it say in the Torah if you have long nails, it's ugly? The Torah says if a Jew went to war, a religious Jew went to war, and he saw Christine over there. Somewhere in Europe, there's a war, and he saw Christine over there. And he fell in love with her. They cannot think now about the war. Wow, what a beautiful Christine. So the Torah says, oh, you want to take her back? You want to make a sin with her? I know, Hashem says, I know you're not going to listen to me now. You're far away from town. You're somewhere in a non-Jewish country. You're going to make the sin with her. So since you're going to make the sin with her, let me help you.

25:13They cannot think now about the war. Wow, what a beautiful Christine. So the Torah says, oh, you want to take her back? You want to sin with her? Hashem says, I know you're not going to listen to Me now. You're far away from town. You're somewhere in a non-Jewish country. You're going to sin with her. So since you're going to sin with her, let Me help you. It's called rehab in our days. Let me try to get you out of your addiction. So, what is it? Okay, you want to touch her? No problem. But there are a few conditions. One, make her shave her head. So, this is the answer to all these Jews who think that the woman has to shave her head. That's wrong. It's against the Torah. But that's their culture. I cannot tell them what to do. They have been doing it for hundreds of years. According to the Zohar, a married woman must have hair and has to be pretty to her husband. But no other man should ever see her hair. That's what the Torah says. The Torah didn't say a woman has to look like Kojak. It doesn't say it.

26:15A woman has to be pretty to her husband, and no bald woman is pretty for her husband. The Torah didn't say that Hashem gave the woman beautiful hair for her husband; she has to shave it and put on someone else's hair. Use your head. And where is the proof in the Torah that a woman is not allowed to be bald? Proof in the Torah. Where is it? That if a husband suspects that his wife is cheating on him, he has to take her to the Kohen in the time of the Beit HaMikdash, 2,000 years ago, and he takes her to the Kohen, and the Kohen takes the cover off her hair, and they open up the hair. The Torah says, it's a verse in the Torah. The Kohen opens up her hair. If she's bald, If the truth was that she has to be bald because of modesty, there's a mistake in the Torah. Well, Hashem didn't know that women have to be bald? Why say to open up their hair? Because women have to have hair. And I'm not disrespecting anyone. We have to know the roots of their custom, where it comes from. I heard a rumor, which makes a lot of sense, that the reason some of the European ladies...

27:25Not all of them, but some of them shaved their heads because, in the old days in Europe, they used to make pogroms and come to rape the women. The only way to get safe from the rape was to take off their wigs. Then these Cossacks would come to rape, and when they saw all the women suddenly bald, they would run away. They got scared. The women would make a face like this when they were bald, so they got safe from rape. If that's the source of the custom, Then we understand where it comes from. There could be other sources. Some of the things that look very strange have a very serious root. You have to go back and see where it comes from. But literally from the Torah, that's not what the Torah says to have. So anyway, the Torah says like this: If a person looks at the finger of a girl, enjoying, trying to enjoy from the beauty of her hands, it is not allowed. If a man goes to war and he finds a non-Jewish woman over there, and he tells her, "Okay, I want to convert you, and I want to bring you with me, but you have to first shave your head, you have to be bald, and you have to grow your nails long." enjoying, trying to enjoy from the beauty of her hands, is not allowed. If a man goes to war and he finds a non-Jewish woman over there, and he tells her, "Okay, I want to convert you, and I want to bring you with me, but you have to first shave your head, you have to be bald, and you have to grow your nails long."

28:48and then wear a prisoner's outfit. Prisoners, like they take the prisoners, so they all, like today in jail, they wear a special outfit. You know? And after she sits at home for 30 days to cry for the death of her father, whatever. After all that, if you still want to be with her, fine. You marry her, you convert her, fine. But you should know that when you have children, they will be wild beasts. So many warnings, and some people still did it. Some people still did it. And what happened to them? I don't want to mention names because of the reputation of these people. Some of them that did so, they had wild beast children. And they suffer from those children for the rest of their lives. How much can a man suffer for 10 minutes that he wants to enjoy with a woman and then he suffers 40 years for it? How stupid people can be. If the people would use their heads, say, wait a minute, this one-hour pleasure will cost me forty years of aggravation. And then in the afterlife, and then who knows what impact it's going to have on my descendants. This stupid desire. That's why the Torah says, watch your eyes. You watch your eyes, all the other problems that follow do not come.

30:12So if he looks, even if he goes into the office and the receptionist is working on her computer and he looks at her hands, assuming she's a very modest woman, so there's nothing else to look at, only to look at her hands, even that is a very big sin. And people think, ah, come on, you're crazy. Looking at a woman's fingers is a sin? Yes, it is. If you look to enjoy her beauty, whatever it is. and the Torah says, the Rambam said, that according to the Torah, it doesn't matter where you look on a woman's body. Any part of her body that you look at to derive enjoyment from, even ankles, even toes, whatever—if she walks barefoot and you look at that, it's like looking at the most immodest part of her body. There's no difference. Why? It's not modesty, that's it. You cross that red line, you cross the red line. Then the Torah says, Not only are you not allowed to look at the actual woman, you're not allowed to look at her pictures. Today, you go, sometimes I go to people's houses to give a lecture.

31:17It's very common around here. You come in, 15 pictures, all big. The chatan and the kallah in their wedding. The wife is half naked with her wedding gown. And every man, every crazy person, has to come to the house and see his wife, before she was religious, on the wall. You became religious, remove the pictures. You're not embarrassed that people come and see how your wife dressed at the time of the wedding? Hashem yerachem. And if not your wife, some uncle or your aunt that they have naked on the wall or in a family album. Why do people have to come and see your aunt, your sister, or whoever, when they forgot to dress? Why? Why? There's another problem. What is the other problem? In America, it's not common, but in Israel and some other less modern countries, it's still an issue. What is it? It used to be that everywhere in the world, women hung their clothing outside to dry.

32:21It's not like today, dry air and this. So people put their clothing. So she puts her clothing on the wire, and the neighbor all day is like this: "Wow, beautiful outfit." Sick person. It's a sin from the Torah to look at this. Why? Because he has all kinds of imaginations in his head. He's imagining bad things. You know, the secular people in Israel, they're very ignorant when it comes to religion, unfortunately. So, since some of them are nosy, they came up with a theory that a male and a female religious husband and wife are not allowed to have a close relationship. This means if they want to be together, if they want to have relations, they have to have a separation. So what they do, they put a sheet between their bodies, and there's a hole in the middle of the sheet, and that's how they bring children to the world. What made them come to this mistake? They saw hanging, hanging on the wire. These ignorant, genius ones. They came up with that theory. Even when I was a kid, I heard that nonsense.

33:40Why? They saw big tzitzit. You know, the Chassidim have very big tzitzit. It goes all the way to the floor. So they say, it doesn't look like tzitzit. It's probably that sheet that we're talking about. Then the Gemara continues. The Gemara says, someone who closes his eyes not to see bad things. he does not look at the women when they do laundry. When women used to do laundry in the time of the Gemara, either in a lake or by the river, or if there is a well somewhere, spring water that comes out, but most of them used to have their own laundry room. or if there is a well somewhere, spring water that comes out, but most of them used to have their own laundry room. Not like today, don't get excited. No dryer, no washer, no Bounty, none of these powders with great delicious smells, no. How did they used to do laundry? They used to take a shovel and dig a hole in the ground. After there's a hole,

34:49It looks like a grave. They take whatever, cement or anything like that, and they put it on the side of the wall and at the bottom. And it becomes a hole. Now they fill it up with water, and they put very, very primitive soap. You don't want to smell it. Very bad. And that's how they do the laundry. So the Gemara asks a question. We know that the Jewish neighborhoods were always in the shape of a hat. Shape of a, like a U, but square. Right? Four walls and one open. So if you have, let's say, ten houses, you have one, two, three, four houses, and then four and four, twelve houses, four, four, and four, and then it opens to the major road. There's a major road with all the horses and the donkeys and the camels, they're all riding on a major highway. But the neighborhood, the neighborhood has a field in between. What are they doing over there? There are roosters. There are donkeys, cows, sheep, and all the things that people own.

35:55So the BMW of that time used to be a donkey. The Mercedes was the horse. And the minivan was a camel. That's what it was. Everyone is putting his animals over there. One of the things they used to do in this field is to do their laundry. Now, everything you want to do, this is not a private territory. This belongs to the entire neighborhood. So if you want to do something there, you have to get permission from the neighbors. So the Gemara says, if a woman wants to do laundry over there, she wants to dig a hole and make herself a laundry room in a neighborhood yard over there. Does she need permission from the neighbors, or can she go ahead and not care what they think? She can make herself a hole and do the laundry. The answer is, she doesn't need permission. What do you mean? If you use someone else's property, you have a few partners, and you do it without their permission, you're a thief. You're nothing but a thief. So why did the Torah give permission to the woman to make the hole? The answer is, shocking as it may sound, what's the alternative? What's the other option? Would you consider that a Jewish woman would go to the public lake to do laundry? Has anyone ever heard of such a thing?

37:19That a Jewish woman would go by the lake and bow down like this and do the laundry when all the goyim go on their horses and they may look at her when she's in a public area? This is just to show you the average level of modesty 2,000 years ago. Now you understand how low we have come. A complete cover. Not like today. Covered completely. She's covered, you know, one hundred percent. When she bent down, you don’t see anything. You don’t see body. You don’t see anything. You just see like someone is covered with a blanket. But she’s doing the laundry. And she bent down, and somebody may come from the side, from behind, all kinds of things, and may look at her. For one second, there’s already no modesty for the daughters of Hashem. for the holy nation, would you consider that she's going to go to the lake? Everybody understands that no woman will go to the lake to do it. That's why the women don't have to have permission. Everybody must agree; otherwise, nobody will do laundry. This is to show you who our mothers are. Now you understand why there's so much problems today. So, the Gemara says...

38:29One man fell in love with his neighbor. Both of them are single. She has a neighbor on the street. She walks on the street. He comes to his doctor and says, "I want to get married to this girl, but she doesn't want me. Now I tell you, doctor, if she doesn't take me to be her husband, I will kill myself. I will die. I already cannot function. I cannot focus on my life. That's it. I'm sick already. That's what I am." The doctor said, "Wow, it's pikuach nefesh, really a life risk. Let me speak to the rabbi to see what the law says in a case like this." I come to the rabbi and say, "Rabbi, Moshe fell in love with Miriam. What can we do about it? She doesn't want him. Maybe you can talk to her. Maybe he will go with her one time. They will do whatever they have to do, and that's it, just to save his life." She's going to do a very big mitzvah. She saved the life of a person, no? The doctor is thinking now. The Torah says, pikuach nefesh, no? Life risk. Life risk, docheh Shabbat. Maybe it’s also proven this. The rabbi says, let him die, and she won't agree to do anything with him. What's the question?

39:46Next day, the doctor was being creative. So he comes to the rabbi and says, okay, rabbi, not a full sin. How about if she walks in front of him? She walks like this. How are you, Moshe? He looks at her for two minutes, and that's it. No? It will relax him. She smiles a little bit. We're not talking about her walking in a bathing suit. She's 100% modest. Women were modest. What's the question? The rabbi said, let him die and she won't walk in front of him. Fully modest. Why? What's on his mind? He looks at her beautiful gown. His mind is somewhere else. She should not be allowed to walk near him. So the doctor was trying to be more creative. He said, okay, rabbi, let them talk on the phone. 2,000 years ago. Now you're thinking, what phones? They had phones 2,000 years ago? The answer is, according to Tehillim, Tehillim said that there were phones. Where does it say in Tehillim that there are telephones? Who knows in Tehillim?

41:00That's good. I have something better. It says, all over the world, the line spreads, and on the other side of the world, you hear their voice. This is a prophecy about the telephone. There's a line all the way from one side of the wall to the other, and you hear the voice of a person on the other side of the wall. That's what it says. Today we have it. So anyway, how were they going to talk on the phone, Moshe and Miriam, in the time of the Gemara? The answer is, the doctor said to the rabbi, he will stand on one side of the wall, and she will stand on the other side of the wall. No physical contact, no eye contact. This is how it's going to be. How are you today, Moshe? Great, Miriam, thank you for giving me five minutes of your time per day.

42:03What are you planning today? What are they talking about? Ah, and da. Beautiful weather. It was great on Shabbat. I don't feel good today. I'm going to my doctor. Nonsense. Just to relax mentally, to take the pressure off his head. To give him a little attention, the poor guy. So maybe now the rabbi will agree. The rabbi answers halacha, the law. let him die, and she won't talk to him on the phone. Definitely not on Facebook with pictures. "Send me some pictures. This is my sister's wedding. My cousin came from Israel with their friends. Look, maybe one of them is good for you. For Shidduch? Yeah, I also have a few friends. Let me send you pictures." And then two months later, somebody is getting murdered somewhere in a hospital, in an abortion. This is what it brings to the world. Everything can be used for good, can be used for bad, depending on what you do with it. All this technology that Hashem gave in this generation – Internet, Facebook, all these networks, marketing, network, whatever companies that we have today – can be doing the greatest thing on earth.

43:23...and can destroy the world. It depends on what you want to use it for. You can use it to make a massive amount of Jews religious. Massive. Radio, I'll give you an example of a radio. Last week I told a story, last Monday, but I couldn't tell the full story because I didn't have permission from the person to use his name. I don't like to tell stories unless I say their name on the air. Because when I say the name, everyone can go and check if the story is 100% as I said. If I don't say the name, it's enough for me that some people think I'm making up stories or exaggerating. That's already not worth it for me to tell the story. So, what happened? Last week, actually, the story started a month ago. Listen well to what happened. A month ago, I got a telephone call on a Tuesday afternoon from a person named Michael Bitton from Brooklyn. Never saw him in my life, never spoke to him before. He calls me up about a month ago, maybe by now, maybe 40 days ago, something like that. He said to me, "I just heard you on the radio. Every Tuesday between 9 and 11, I'm on the radio. It's all over Brooklyn." So that week, it was Shabbat. I'm speaking about Shabbat.

44:39Probably you know my lecture about Shabbat. If you didn't hear it at least three times, make sure you do. You must hear it and know it by heart. If you argue with other people about Mechalel Shabbat, you know what to answer. So they listened to the lecture about Shabbat, and he calls me up. He said, me and my wife are sitting here in a car, and I'm shaking now. I don't know what to do, he says. He said, I have many kids, all of them religious, Baruch Hashem. One of them is completely not religious. He's 20, 21 years old. He became completely not religious. He even went to crime without saying exactly what he was doing. Hashem Yirachem. He said to me, he lives in my basement. He's not Shomer Shabbat. He's doing laundry in the house on Shabbat, knowing we are all Shomer Shabbat. I cannot do anything with him. What should I do? Am I allowed to keep him in my home or not? Maybe I'm helping him to make his sins.

45:40By keeping him in my own facility, he used my stuff to be mechalel Shabbat. Maybe I'm a part of the sin, I don't know what to do. I know my heart will tell me it's my son, I have to help him. But maybe I'm destroying him more and myself with him. It's a halacha question, what should I do? Should I tell him, find yourself a place? Or should I continue to close my eyes like I don't see what he does? My heart is burning. So I started to talk to him. I said, instead of thinking about what to do with him, why don't we make him religious? He said, no, he was in yeshiva when he was a kid. He was very good until a certain age. Something went wrong, and he went all the way to the other side. He doesn't want to hear anything about religion. If I tell him a rabbi wants to talk to you, there's no chance. I say, okay, let's send him CDs. No, he won't even listen. Don't waste your time. So I'm thinking. I say, I tell you what, I have an idea. I have this debate with the priest. Don't tell him it's religion. It's very entertaining. Tell him the rabbi against the priest. It's a show. Let him watch. He will watch 10 minutes. He's going to like it. And he's going to listen to the whole thing. He says, you know what, let's do it. So we send him the debate.

46:55Then a week later, he calls me up. He said, "You know what? It worked. I watched it first. I really liked it. I came to him. I said, 'You have to listen to it.' OK. So he agreed to listen. He put it in the computer. He watched the debate. He even brought his friends to watch it with him. You have to see. He said, 'Now he's excited. He really liked the show there. So now, since he already likes you, don't you have other videos?'" I said, of course, I'll send you Torah and Science. See, if you watch Torah and Science, it will bring him back to life. I said, okay, send it. Right away, I emailed my shipping guy, send him another video. No, send him Torah and Science. We send him Torah and Science. Four hours film. Watch it ten times, he said. Now I went to Canada. I sent him Torah and Science. Three days later, I went to a seminar weekend in Canada. Motzei Shabbat, Saturday night, I checked my messages. I saw Mr. Michael Bitton left me a message. "If you can call me back, you sent me the Torah and Science DVD. If you can call me back tonight, it's better."

48:03Then tomorrow. Tonight. But I'm very busy. I have two lectures that night, so I couldn't call him back. Monday night, I came back to New York. I drove ten hours from Toronto to Queens. Ten hours, right? I had two lectures. I didn't have time for him. I didn't have time. So right away I came here. I did two lectures. The next day, I forgot about him. Tuesday. The next day, Tuesday, 6 p.m., my son comes to me, Abba, someone is at the door for tzedakah. So a man with a long beard, Haredi. So my son, what does he know? A little kid. He understands, it's tzedakah. He tells me, tzedakah. I come to the door. So he said to me, "No, no tzedakah." He grabbed my hand, hugging me, kissing me, tears in his eyes. He said, "Come, come, let's go to the library room." We go into the library room, and we sit there. "I'm Michael Bitton, a member who spoke on the phone." I said, "Sure, how can I forget? You're not going to believe what happened. My son kept the whole Shabbat."

49:06The whole Shabbat he kept with us, everything. Now he told me yesterday, please take me to Eichler's. It's a bookstore, gift store in Brooklyn. I said, what do you have to do in Eichler's? He said, don't ask questions, let's go to Eichler's. I take him to Eichler's in Beit Tzitzit, Beit Tehillim. Reborn. So I said to him, listen, tomorrow I'm giving a lecture in Brooklyn. That was last Wednesday. Tomorrow I'm going to be in Brooklyn, in Mill Basin. Why don't you bring him to the shiur, to the lecture? He said, no, you know, he has to go to the Bronx. They have to check him over there. He has to go to sleep very early. But you know what? I'll mention it to him. The next day, I'm on my way to Brooklyn. I said, let me give him a call. I called him. He said, I'm for sure coming, but him, I don't know. You know what? Let's put him on the line. He put his son on the line. You know, I spoke to him. I do like the CD. It's great. I love it. He said, you're going to come tonight?

50:08He said, I really want to, but I have to go to sleep early. I have to be early tomorrow in the Bronx. I said, okay, no pressure. As long as you watch the CDs, I'm happy. In the meantime, we sent a bunch of all the MP3s, all the CDs. He's equipped already. So I said, as long as you say no problem. Two hours later, he showed up. The first, him, his younger son, and him sitting first one in the lecture. I arrived there. I see a nice, handsome kid, 21 years old. already looks like a tzaddik. Who would believe a week ago this one who was where he was? So he came to me after the lecture, he said, I'm very inspired. What do you think I should do now every day to keep it going? Give me, tell me what to do. I said, only learn two hours of Torah a day, that's it. Everything else will follow. You learn Torah, it will build up your holiness. This is the soul of a Jew. The diamond can be deep in the mud, you take it out, you clean the mud, one, two, three, right away it shines again. We have to understand, we're destroying our neshamot. If we die, we die with the mud, we die with the mud very bad. But as long as we're alive, we can clean it very much. Then, we continue, the Rambam says here, the Rambam says like this:

51:32if a person can prevent himself from not meeting, listen to the words of the Rambam. I'm sure you respect the Rambam, no? Even the secular Jews in Israel respect the Rambam. How do I know? The only rabbi in the last 2,000 years that the secular Jews know is the Rambam. You know why? Because in every city in Israel, you have Rambam Street. Hospitals called Rambam. Many places, schools, Rambam School. Why do the secular admire the Rambam? Even the goyim here in Washington made a statue of him. Why don't they make a statue of Rabbi Akiva, who was much greater than the Rambam? Why don't they honor any of the Tannaim? They don't do it because they only recognize Rabbis who were also philosophers, astronomers, mathematicians, or great doctors. But Rambam was a philosopher, an astronomer, a mathematician, a great doctor. Oh, he's an educated person. The Torah part they don't care about. They only care about the nonsense. So still they admire him very much. Everybody understands he's one of the greatest doctors who ever lived. Listen to the way he described girls, no offense, girls that dress not modestly.

52:54This is his words. I'm going to read it to you in Hebrew and then translate. If a person can prevent himself. Not to meet with the wicked and the girls with the chutzpah. Chutzpah, arrogant. Ha'olchot b'giluy basar. that walk in the street with some of their skin exposed, not covered. He must change his way. Rabbi, that's my only way from my house to the bus. Why do you want me now to go through the field? It's ten times more to walk. I have to walk. It's a shortcut. But the women are not modest. He must go a different way or close his eyes and turn to the side when he walks.

53:54How does the Rambam know that? The Gemara says like this: If a person has two ways to his destination, one short with women there and one long without any women, which way does he have to go through? So the long way. If a person took the shortcut and closed his eyes and did not look at the girls who are not modest, is someone like this wicked or righteous? Huh? Someone like this, he went 10 minutes on a street full of ladies and closed his eyes or looked at the floor, he did not see one of them. If we had a candid camera follow him, Let's see, we had a video guy, and he doesn't know he's been followed. He walks in the street, and everybody sees him like Yosef HaTzaddik in Egypt. He walks like this, and they see him. And the girls call out to him on the street, yet he doesn't lift his head. And they show it on television. Is this a Chilul Hashem or a Kiddush Hashem? Kiddush Hashem, no? The Gemara says Rasha. Wicked. Why? I'll tell you why.

55:15If you already take the risk that you enter this minefield, Yeah, this time you have no casualty. You went through. But the fact that you enter that place when the girls are there, and you know, there's no guarantee when it comes to forbidden relationships. There's no guarantee. You cannot rely on yourself a minute before you die. Eighty years you lived, you're a holy man. All you saw is books and Torah. The last day of your life, don't be sure about yourself. If a woman comes and seduces you, the next thing you can make a sin and lose everything. No guarantee. So the Gemara says, Rasha, if he went in a shortcut, why? Maybe something could have happened, you're not worried? By us, it looks very strange. We say, what's going on here? Well, I cannot leave the house now, based on what's happening in the street. It's true. They're speaking about generations where women didn't dress like today. How many women 2,000 years ago dressed like the women today? Not even one in the whole world. No guarantee. So the Gemara says, Rasha, if he went in a shortcut, why? Maybe something could have happened, you're not worried? To us, it looks very strange. We say, what's going on here? Well, I cannot leave the house now, based on what's happening in the street. It's true. They're speaking about generations where women didn't dress like today. How many women 2,000 years ago dressed like the women today? Not even one in the whole world.

56:23If you don't believe me, go to the library, ask them to show you books with pictures from 100 years ago. 100 years, three generations. Your grandmother's mother. And back in time. If you're able to show me one black-and-white picture of a non-modest woman, I'll give you a prize. Any book, Jews, non-Jews, doesn't matter. But from the 1900s, back in time, if you can find one lady in any picture who was not modest like the ladies today, you know what, I'll go even further. Even the religious girls today don't dress modestly like these secular women or the goyim of 100 years ago. The secular Jews in Hungary, 1933. One time, if I have patience, I'll connect my laptop and show you a five minute film. The women of the Shomer HaTzair in Hungary, dancing with the guys, hora, one guy, one girl, one guy, one girl, in circles, they go in circles, and you should see how they dress. Dresses like this wide, like this. Cover up to here, everything up to here, 100%, not one inch of her body you can see.

57:37Think about it. Wicked women dance together with the men. It’s not nothing whatsoever, but modesty is modesty. It’s the dignity of the woman. Who knows what the reason is that women have to be dressed modestly all the time. Everybody says it’s not to make the men sin. What happens if she landed on an island and there are no men there? Only monkeys and baboons. One girl once told me, "Why? Why do you say that I should not be too pretty when I leave the house? I do it to feel great about myself. You know, I do my hair, I put on makeup, I dress nicely, and I look at myself in the mirror. It makes me feel good." I said to her, "Yeah, because you do it for the men to look at you on the street." She said, "No, not necessarily. I want to feel good about myself." So I told her, "Let me tell you, if you're going to be landing on an island and there's no men over there, only baboons and elephants and some giraffes, and now you have your press with all your makeup stuff and your hair blower, everything you have with you. You come out onto the island, you look around: one zebra, a crocodile, five baboons in the trees, no people, nothing, no man, no female, nothing."

58:40only baboons and elephants and some giraffes, and now you have your purse with all your makeup stuff and your hair blower, everything you have with you. You come out onto the island, you look around: one zebra, a crocodile, five baboons in the trees, no people, nothing, no man, no female, nothing How many minutes every day do you sit by your mirror and fix your appearance, the way you look? Not even one minute. Why? There's nobody to impress. Who are you going to impress, the baboon, the chimpanzee? Did you ever think why all the chimpanzees look alike? Why are all of them twins? 10,000 chimpanzees, all of them have the same face. 10,000 people, all of them are different. unless they're born in China, then they all look the same. They all look the same. All straight black hair, same eyes, same skin, everything the same. But other than that, every person has something unique about his face.

59:48The answer is, the Gemara answers, the same way the images of people are different, their opinions are different, their voices are different. Why? Because every person is a unique soul. A soul is a soul; it has a test in life. And its image depends on its correction. Which means, when you're born, when you're created as a baby, God already decided for you in the first 40 days of the pregnancy if you'll be handsome or not, if you'll be pretty or not, if you'll be very tall, very short, or average. It's all decided. How is it decided? They have dice over there in Shamayim, and Hashem says, "Let's throw." Very good. This guy will be very nice-looking. Oh, 2-1. Okay, ugly. 2-1. What's going on? It's not working like this. How does it work? I'll tell you how it works. It works based on how you died. You died modest; you don't need to be pretty anymore. Why? Your test is over.

1:01:01You're already modest. You're now pretty. You died very pretty in your life. Men gave you lots of compliments and attention. You were a devoted wife, modest, and faithful to your husband. You did everything according to the Torah, like Sarah Imeinu. But you need to correct other things. You have to be reincarnated. Why are you going to need to be pretty again? It's only going to bring you problems. More attraction, more desires, more tests, more problems. You don't need it. I want to help you out, so I make you below average. Doesn't attract so much attention. All the pretty girls, what’s happened to them? All of them have tznius problems. Almost all of them. So the beauty, it's cancer, spiritual cancer in their life. They think, wow, I'm so lucky, Hashem, you made me so pretty. You fool, it's destroying your eternity, this beauty. Why are you so happy from it? It would be better off if you don't attract attention. Ah, if you're very pretty, okay, be like your grandmother, Sarah. She was much prettier than you. You look like a monkey compared to her. How do I know? The Torah says, everyone compared to Sarah looks like a monkey.

1:02:09Why? Their beauty was breathtaking. Four beautiful women ever lived. Sarah is one of them. Compare the women today to her; it's a joke. But Sarah was 100% modest. Nobody knew her beauty. Even her own husband didn't know what kind of treasure he had in his hands. Why? Modesty was a very important thing. You never find any compliment to a woman in the Torah besides modesty. Isn't it strange? Did you ever hear Hashem compliment a woman for keeping Shabbos? I never saw anything like that. For being ba'alat chesed, a little bit here and there. For being kind and helping. But most of the time, always modesty. Tznuah, ba'ohel, this, modest, the Gemara, full of modesty compliments. Or complaints. But it's all around modesty. Let me read to you Some of the things that Rabbi Aharon Rata says about the horrible sin of a man who commits this sin. Before, let me first explain to you. When a wicked person dies—not evil, wicked. Wicked means he could have a good heart but made a lot of sins in his life. There are

1:03:29There is this sin that's called wasting seed, which means a person that wastes his seed without his wife in a kosher way. Every drop of seed is a horrible sin, even if it was not intentional. But not intentional is the third section in Gehinnom. Person goes in, he cleans, his soul gets clean, like a dry clean for the soul. And one day he comes out of there and goes to heaven and cashes in on his rewards that Hashem owes him. But if it's intentional, everybody should know. if it's intentional waste of seed, he goes to the seventh section, which is the lowest, and the Zohar, and it appears in Reishit Chochmah, in the chapter of Yirah, it appears over there that there are three sins, that once a person commits them, he goes to the seventh section if he dies without teshuvah, without repentance,

1:04:30If he died without teshuvah, he goes to the seventh section and never, ever comes out of there for eternity. I know it's hard to believe, but that's what it says word for word. And I'm not the one to modify the Torah. I'm not reforming it. This is what the Zohar and the Reishit Chochmah say. First, one who is mechalel Shabbat on purpose, not keeping Shabbat, knowing it's the eternal covenant with God, and he goes to work in his barber shop, cutting hair. Okay? It's not funny. It's very sad for this person. Making $200 or $300 a day and loses eternity. Very bad investment. Male or female? Shabbat is an eternal covenant for everyone. Even converts. Converted? Too late, my friend, to go back to Vinnie and Tony. No, that's it. You're in now. No, no, but it's too hard for me, Rabbi. I didn't know it was going to be so hard. You have a Jewish soul already. You cannot go back. You have to keep Shabbat. If you don't keep Shabbat, you get punished just like a Jew from birth.

1:05:34No way back. That's why we have to tell the converts a hundred times before, make sure you understand what you're doing. Don't put yourself in jeopardy. You can stay a righteous Gentile, you have no problem. No wasting seed by the goyim, even though it says that it's an ugly thing for them to do, and they will get punishment, but they don't have anything like a Jew. The holiness of the seed of a Jewish man compared to a non-Jewish man is incomparable. You understand? But for them, there's no sin. He meets Christine in a bar. He goes in with her. They live like husband and wife tonight. They met five hours ago, two hours ago. It's not a sin for them. A Jew that does it with another Jew, horrible, horrible sin. No words to describe how big the sin is. All the other ways. And keeping Shabbat. And even in modesty. The goyot, the Gentiles, also have to be modest. But nothing like the Jewish females. An act of a non-modest Jewish girl compared to a non-modest Jewish girl is nothing to compare. God expects from His children a lot more than from the rest of the world. The reason we made this topic tonight is because we are entering days that are called days of Shovavim.

1:06:49Shovav in Hebrew means someone who does tricky bad things. Like the kids, who is a Yeled Shovav? What a Shovav kid making problems. Why is it called Shovavim? Because we are now going into the chapters in the Torah starting from Sefer Shemot. So Shemot, Va'era, Bo, Beshalach, Yitro, Mishpatim. So the six parashiyot that give the abbreviation of the word Shovavim. According to Kabbalah, Kabbalah only, you don't find it in Shulchan Aruch or in regular learning, it's mainly a Kabbalistic thing. According to the Kabbalah, those weeks, also the days of Elul and the Aseret Yemei Teshuvah, are days when the male and female can make repentance more easily, easier than the rest of the year. That's why many Jews fast on Monday and Thursday now in the next six weeks. And they do teshuvah, and they give tzedakah, and they learn about the holiness of the seed and the relationship. Many things to show Hashem, "Now I came to correct, help me out." Now, let's read some of the things that Rabbi Aharon Rata, Shomer Emunim, wrote in his book. It says like this:

1:08:17And all the problems that every person has, in private and in general as a nation, are all coming because of that sin. Modesty and wasting seed. It's destroying the foundation and the life of every person. The Rambam writes... ...that first of all, it makes the teeth weak, the roots of the teeth. It makes the person smell from his underarm. It causes bad smell in his gums and his breath. It makes his hair loose. He loses hair, even from his brows and from his eyelashes. That's how weak it makes the roots of the hair. It brings all kinds of sicknesses. It destroys the parnasah, the livelihood. A person is looking for a job, he goes crazy for months, and he cannot find one because of that sin. Even if he has a job, even if he makes a lot of money, he sees no blessing in this money. There's no blessing in anything he does in his life. Why?

1:09:28Because of the horrible sin of g'mat brit. Annulling, that's the right word, annulling or annulling? Annulling the holiness of the covenant of the brit milah. There are three covenants that the Jewish nation made with G-d. Breviation, Shabbat. Shin betaf. Shin betaf Shabbat. Shin for the word Shabbat. Oti v'ni u'v'nechem. Shamru b'nei Yisrael et haShabbat. What does the pasuk say? Le'asot et haShabbat le'dorotam brit olam b'ni u'vein b'nei Yisrael. Ot. Ot means a sign, an agreement. Ot hi le'olam. It's a sign for eternity. That you are my children. That's one covenant. What's the second covenant? Brit Milah, circumcision. What's the next covenant? Tefillin. Those are the three commandments in the Torah that the word Ot was used for them. Shabbat, you find the word Ot. Brit Milah, you find the word Ot. Tefillin, you find the word Ot. These are the three mitzvot. These are the three covenants that we made with Hashem.

1:10:43For a person to be a Jew, a kosher Jew, every day to belong to this VIP club called Judaism, he has to have two witnesses that testify about him that he's a Jew, that he's a kosher Jew. So if he keeps Shabbat every week, he has one witness. He keeps one covenant. If he puts tefillin every day, this is the second covenant. What's the third covenant? Brit Milah. Not that he was circumcised when he was eight days old. No, that's his father's mitzvah, not his. When he grows up, he should guard his brit milah, not commit sins with girls or any other kinds of sin. This is a very important subject. So now, on Shabbat you don't put tefillin. So you have the Shabbat and the circumcision too. On weekdays, you don't keep Shabbat. So you have tefillin and circumcision. So from the three covenants, which one is the most important one? The circumcision, the Brit, why? It's seven days a week, 365, all the time. Shabbat is every seven days, this covenant. Tefillin, six days yes, one day no. Brit Milah, all the time. Now the girls here are thinking, well, in that case, we can never be kosher Jews.

1:12:03We only keep Shabbat? Wrong. Yes, you don't put tefillin. One day, when you get married, you become one unit with your husband. Your husband puts tefillin, it counts in Shamayim as if you put tefillin. Your children will put tefillin, and it counts that you taught them, you raised them, you put tefillin. If you're not married, your soul is not completed. It can only be completed when the man and the woman unite. Up to now, you have completed. You cannot complete it. I said in my lecture a few days ago about the role of a woman in Judaism. You must watch this lecture. Once and for all, you will understand the level of a Jewish woman in Judaism. That a man is a male and a woman is a female. The man is compared to the six days of creation: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. That's the man. The woman in Judaism is Shabbat. Shabbat HaMalka, it's female. Shabbat, in Hebrew, every word has male or female. Yom, Yom Yafeh, male.

1:13:07Shabbat Yaffa, not Yafeh. Yaffa means female. Woman is Shabbat; man is weekdays. That's why the woman doesn't have to keep the laws that apply to time, that are subject to time. Why? The woman is above time. She is 100% spiritual and connects to Hashem with no limitation right away. A man cannot connect to Hashem from now to another hour. No. He needs a lot of learning, lots of hard work until he feels a connection. A woman doesn't need all that. One, two, three adjustments in her life. Two, three chapters of Tehillim. One good story by the Rabbi. She begins to cry. She becomes Rachel Imeinu. One hour. Shortcut. That's the way it is. Why? Because she connects to Hashem from the heart. And the man connects to Hashem mainly from the head. Also from the heart, but mainly from the head. And it's much harder. The heart works right away. Many times I tell people certain things that the Torah says. Twenty years they don't understand what I say. They don't digest it. They say, I understand what you say 100%. I understand the logic. But my heart, my heart doesn't let me. The heart has a very, very big influence on our life. Usually for the bad.

1:14:24Usually, it tells you to do the wrong thing all the time. So we continue, it says like this, it's needless to say, not only does it bring so many problems and sicknesses to the life of a person here, it's needless to say what he's subject to in the afterlife for all these sins and all these wasted drops. And if he's not putting all his efforts into correcting this sin, the sitra achra, the power of the devil, of the Satan, is getting their food from his mitzvot, because they are not complete. Yonkim mitorato umitzvotav. That a person, a person that makes mitzvot, but also violates this rule of kedusha, of the holiness of the circumcision, The sitra achra, the Satan, they receive their power from his mitzvot. Why? Because of this sin. This is what we say in the tefillah. We say in the morning, some people say, that's a mistake. You have to say, you have to say,

1:15:43like the Iraqi speak, or the Persian. Why? Because nigah means lagaat, to touch. We are not talking about touching here. We're talking about hard effort. Nigah comes from lashon mitga'ea, yagea, ayeif. Please don't make us lose our energy larik, for nothing. Make sure that our energy goes to the right place. If you say, it's like you are saying, please don't make me touch for nothing. Touch what? The sentence loses the meaning of it. What does it mean? What does it mean? The seed. If you flip the order of the words, of the letters, okay. A person has to cry a lot. The more he cries for this sin, the more he corrects the sins. Why? A drop for a drop. Tears—what's the correction for that? In the old days, people used to fast for months and months. Horrible corrections. Today, no one is at the level they were 500 years ago. So what's the only way to correct it today, really the only way? Please do not be fooled by all kinds of people who offer you to do all kinds of tikkunim by giving money and buying silver coins and all kinds of things like this. There's no hocus pocus in the Torah.

1:17:11You have to correct your own sin. Nobody will do the correction for you. So what do you have to do? Besides crying and begging Hashem to forgive you, first of all, you must stop the sin immediately. Don't delay. What's the point? Trying to correct a hole while the water is dripping is impossible. You have to first stop the sin. Now, you can correct the damage you made. How? By learning Torah on a high level. Don't run to the easy lectures where you don't have to think. Oh, that's easy to understand. Learn Torah on a high level. It corrects the sin. Why? Because the sperm of the man comes from the brain. The brain creates it. And if you see that a person looks at things that he's not supposed to, he creates a lot more. It's all 100% spiritual. It goes from the spine. It's 100% in the brain. So, the damage is in the brain. That's where the soul is. And the Torah is in the brain, in the same place, like a root canal, right attacking the root. You do everything around the root, it's not going to cure the tooth. It has to go to the root of the problem. The root of the problem is in the brain. The correction for wasting seed is Gemara, hard, Mishnayot, efforts, things that make your brain sweat. But you feel, wow.

1:18:34My head is smoking already from such a high level of learning. More and more and more until it purifies the soul of a person. Then, when a person finally cries with a broken heart, not because he lost a $100 ticket today, he cries because it really upsets him that he got to such a low level to make such sins. Don't ever let the evil inclination fool you right after. Because most people that finally cry about the sin, the Satan takes advantage of the situation and comes to you and says, how great you are. What a tzaddik. Look, no one in the shul cries like you in the prayer. You're the biggest tzaddik here. Even bigger than the rabbi. Look, the rabbi, Yom Kippur, he didn't cry one drop of tears. You cry non-stop. You're the biggest tzaddik here. Next time you tell everyone they want bracha, they have to come to you. He has all these thoughts in his mind. Not only did he not do a mitzvah, but the sin of pride is even worse than everything. Don't let him fool you. If you finally cry with a broken heart, which means you reach a high level, don't ever let the Satan fool you, making you think you're righteous. Don't forget who you are. You are crying for a reason.

1:19:58You're not crying because the Mashiach didn't come. If you cry because the Mashiach didn't come, then you're really, really a big tzaddik. If you cry because you murdered, you're not a big tzaddik. If you cry because you're mechalel Shabbat, you're nothing, nothing. You're not a tzaddik. You must cry. And if you're not crying for that, that means you're not normal. Not because you're a tzaddik. If you don't cry, something is wrong with you. A person just murdered a thousand people by mistake by hitting the wrong number. He can go back to eat his sandwich. If he takes his sandwich and eats, that means this person is a monster. It's not normal. How can he eat when he knows he just killed a thousand people? Person hit somebody with a car. He jumped into the road. It's his fault, but he died. Can you eat a month after? If you're a human being, no. If you're a monster, yeah. The Nazis putting babies in the oven, ten a minute, and they were eating their sandwiches and hugging their dogs while they were doing it. And they never forgot to say "Danke schön." Maybe by mistake, they won't be polite. Putting babies inside the gas chambers. It didn't bother them, these monsters.

1:21:06You understand? Because you have to know one thing: to correct it in this life is much easier than to correct it in the afterlife. Because over here, God is mixing a lot of mercy. Once the soul comes out of the body, no more mercy. Over there, there is no mercy in the court of Heaven. Only in this physical world is there mercy. Over there, remember, there is no mercy. The Gemara says... if you dare over there to think that God will forgive your sin just because you have beautiful eyes, it will only make your situation worse. In Jerusalem, and in many places in the world, the Chevra Kadisha, who are in charge of the burials, don't allow the men to follow the father's body into the cemetery. He is only allowed to go to the gate of the cemetery. Then the rabbis over there say, "Who are the sons of this deceased man? Here, one, two, three, four, five, all of you stay out. Don't go into the cemetery."

1:22:13Why? He wants to stand by his father's grave and say Kaddish and cry over there. No? Or to cover the body. Why don't you let him in? Why? Because we love him. We don't want to cause him damage. That's why we don't let him in. Why? Pay attention to what's happening here. Every man who wastes seed, every seed has millions of sperm. Millions. Each one of them is a potential neshama. Each one of them is a soul. Soul X, soul Y, soul D, soul L, soul A, whatever. Every one of them is a soul that's waiting to come to this world. One of them, in the end, will come to the world based on God's decision, depending on who the parents are, depending on the act, if it's a kosher act or not, you know. And then God decides which soul will come to the womb of this woman. Which baby, how it's going to look, how its life is going to be, everything is decided based on the moments and everything around the scenario.

1:23:16So now, when a person wastes his seed, all of this goes to the garbage. It creates black demons, black neshamot, that all of them are potential souls that are supposed to come to the world. And because of his father's sin, they didn't come to the world. But they are here. They never went to the garbage like some people think. They all remain and wait for the day of his funeral. The Zohar says, as soon as they put the body inside, they come to the soul of that person, like millions of them, and grab each one of them a piece of him with no mercy. "You didn't give us a chance to come to the world because of your sins." If they see his own children going next to the body inside the cemetery, which is an impure place, they can damage them as well. That's why they don't let them in. Don't go in. "You came to the world." They see you, they go crazy. It's a spiritual thing. We don't understand what it is, and we will never understand. We know a little bit. That's enough. No need for more than that.

1:24:19The Ramchal says, why don't we know all the secrets of God? Why? Why do we know just a little bit? 2% here, 5% there, 10% there. Why don't we know all the secrets that we will know when we die? When we die, we will know everything. Right now, we understand very little about the things that happen in our lives: why we miss the bus, miss the plane, miss the shidduch, get the shidduch, my friend has kids, I don't have kids, and all kinds of things like this. We don't understand, and we will never understand. So the Ramchal says every person has a test that God designed for him. Whatever he needs to know in his life, God made sure he will know. Everything he doesn't know, it's better for him not to know. It would ruin his test. It would ruin his mission in life. This is from an individual point of view. But what about the general? There are certain things in the Torah we don't understand. About the creation, how exactly it was, we will never understand. There are certain things about the afterlife we don't understand. There are certain things about what happened before the world was created. What will happen after the earth is destroyed. All this, the world of the souls. There are certain things that we will never understand. The Gemara in Chagigah speaks about it. Certain things, don't ask. Because anyway, you cannot understand. Why? This is where the Ramchal says...

1:25:46what God wanted you to know for your test, for your own benefit, He gave you permission to reach that knowledge. If it's above your reach, above your understanding, don't worry. It's only curiosity. Don't be curious. It's better not to know. This is what happened when King Solomon had a person in his generation that begged him to teach him the language of the animals. told him, "No, no, it's not good for you. No need to know it. If God wanted people to know the language of the animals, He would make us understand their languages. It's not good for you." Yeah, yeah, yeah, every day. In the end, he said, "Okay, let me teach you. When the roosters go like this, it means this." This means he told him all the things. A few days he came to learn, now he knows. He got the idea. One day he goes, you see the chickens are talking, "Today a thief will break into our master's home, break into the safe, and steal the money." He said, "What a great idea, I know they're lying." Right away he put bars, waited with his gun over there, with his sword. The thief came, he said, "Wow, how did this guy know that I'm coming?" Nothing. Next day it says,

1:27:05Today, the son of our master will walk in the street and fall and break his leg. He comes to his son, Moishi, and says, "Today you have a day off from yeshiva." "Abba, are you crazy? You never let me take a day off, even when I have a high fever." "No, today you and I are sitting at home and eating cream cakes. You're not going anywhere." Now he got safe. He didn't go out of the house. He didn't break his leg. King Solomon is telling me it's not good. My life is great since I know the language. Every day they warn me about my problems. Four days later, the boy died. Now, how did he die? Before he died, he walked in the street and he heard that the chickens were talking. Today the Malach HaMavet will come and take the soul of the boy. So he runs. What am I going to do? What can you do? You put bars? So he comes to King Solomon and says, "You fool, you see, if you wouldn't know the language of the animals, what would happen? They break into your house. They steal the money from the safe. You feel horrible. You say, 'God, what sin did I commit that You did this to me? Okay, let me repent. I'm sorry. No problem. I'll give more tzedakah. I won't steal anymore from my employees. I promise. I'll start. I'll be good.' Then you wouldn't have to break his leg, and he wouldn't have to die." So he comes to King Solomon and says, "You fool, you see, if you didn't know the language of the animals, what would happen? They break into your house. They steal the money from the safe. You feel horrible. You say, 'God, what sin did I commit that You did this to me? Okay, let me repent. I'm sorry. No problem. I'll give more tzedakah. I won't steal anymore from my employees. I promise. I'll start. I'll be good.' Then you wouldn't have to break his leg, and he wouldn't have to die."

1:28:24Now, what happened? You prevented that. So I'll give you a bigger hint. You prevented that. No more hint, my friend. Do you understand what's happening? Just when you think you want to know more, think again. Maybe it will be against yourself. Time is running out. Give me two, three more minutes to conclude here. A person has to know, one of the ways of the Satan is after the person made that horrible sin, he takes his spirit all the way down, and he falls into depression, what we call marah shechorah, black bitterness. Why is it? Because the way of the Satan is like this. First, he makes you commit the sin. And then he becomes a tzaddik all of a sudden. He gives you a mussar drasha in your head. "What a sinner! Shame on you!" He was the one who made you commit the sin. And right after that, he goes into your head and says, "What a sinner! Dirty! Shame on you! You walk with your beard and yarmulke." Imagine if I publish you to the whole world. They know what a sinner you are, and it makes you so depressed. And you now don't want to get up for davening. You lay in bed. What happened? Get up. "No, Mom, leave me alone. I'm depressed. I'm sick. Don't talk to me for a week now." Doesn't pray. Doesn't learn Torah. Doesn't care.

1:29:43Why? Because this is what he wants to get. The depression that follows the sin, even though it's the most horrible sin, the depression that comes after that is a bigger sin. First, he makes you lose a hundred and then he buries you with a thousand. Why? Because a person must always be happy. One of the biggest principles, and a very important individual way to correct the sin, is to be in simcha, in happiness. Never be sad, because that brings more impurity to your life. As soon as you make the sin, right away begin your teshuva. Don't fall into depression. Right away. And now you may be thinking, okay, okay, I make a sin, make teshuva, make a sin, make teshuva, I'm tired of this. How many thousands of times? Up, down, up, down, what's better? Just to go down, down, down, down, down? At least up, down, up, down, you're floating above the water eventually. This is the advice of the Satan. Why are you making teshuva? Anyway, in two days you do it again.

1:30:57You're a single guy. It's Hashem's fault. It's not your fault. Don't worry. Hashem will understand you. Why? You're already 27. For six, seven years you were looking for a girl. Every one of them turned you down. You do everything you can to get married. You call the shadchanim. You're giving all your life for it. Hashem doesn't give you a shidduch. Let Him deal with the problem. That's how the Satan draws it in your head. It's not your fault, you tzaddik. How many guys like you in Israel are watching the brit? Don't let him fool you. No discounts when you come. But I'm 40, 20 years. A few times in the past, I have told this story. My heart tells me that it's the right place now to say it again. One time, I received a phone call from a person not from New York State. So don't suspect each other. A person from a different state. And he said to me, I heard your lecture about Shalom Bayit, peace in the family, and I feel horrible. I said, why? He said, maybe I'm not, maybe I did horrible things to my wife. I said, what did you do? He said, maybe I did not do the right thing. I said, why? What's the problem with your wife? He said, listen, now when I heard you, how a husband has to behave to his wife, I know some of these things I'm not doing.

1:32:22I said, be more specific. Give me an idea of what you're saying. So he said, listen, I got married 20-something years ago. I don't remember, 22, 24, something like that. And I have three children. But only one of them came from natural relations with me and my wife. Why? Because after the marriage, I was with her once, and after that time, she never ever let me touch her one more time in an intimate way. That was the first and last time. One time she became pregnant, and after that, in order for us to have more children, we had to do it through a lab. Why? Right away, the story looks very shocking to me. I said, but what happened? He told her something. She had a trauma. Maybe she was raped one day. It has to be a psychological problem. So I will never know the answer. But this is what happened. So for 20-something years, I lived with her. She never let me touch her. I said to him, but who told you that you have to stay with her? It's against the halacha. He had to get divorced a long time ago. Wow, what kind of man can live with a woman in the same bedroom, in the same house for 22 years? She doesn't let him touch her. Who knows how many sins you're doing out there?

1:33:40So then he told me perhaps the most shocking thing I heard in my entire life. Believe me, I was shaking when I heard that. He told me, "Oh, no, no, no, God forbid, not this. I don't make any sins out there. I'm very careful with that. I know how horrible this is. I will never make that sin." So I asked him, I told him, what are you saying? That you live with your wife for 20-something years in the same house, she doesn't let you touch her, and you never ever made any waste of seed ever since then until now? Is this what you're saying? He said, yes. I never did it even once, Baruch Hashem. I'm very careful with that. I'm very afraid of Hashem. I'm never going to do such a thing. So I told him, you're calling me to tell me that you're maybe not good to you. If I were like you, I would beg you to give me a bracha. You are Yaakov Avinu of this generation, I said to him. Only the Torah speaks about Yaakov Avinu, 86 years old. The first drop of seed was his son Reuven.

1:34:44Never made a sin once. This is in the Torah. Not stories over the phone by Rabbi Mizrachi. This is in the Torah. With this, you can argue, but I swear to you, this is what happened. This man, I said to him, I'm shocked. Maybe the whole nation survived thanks to this man. You know what it means? Yosef HaTzaddik was with a pretty woman for not a long time. One year maybe, at most. Then he went to jail for 12 years. Then he became the King of Egypt. But he was with her for a few months. And the Torah is praising him so much. He's changing clothes, putting on perfume. A man is 22 years with his own wife, permitted. Yes, she's trying to make a scene with me, but I'm afraid of Hashem. No, run away, avoiding her. No, fine. And Hashem says, "Yosef is a Tzaddik." Hashem put a stamp on him, Tzaddik. What other person in the Torah did Hashem call a Tzaddik? No one. Only Yosef. Why? Because he had that test of Tikkun HaBrit. And guess what? This man who called me,

1:35:54This is it. We have people like this in the world. If he can, that means everybody else can. So, of course, not to fall into depression. You should know that every time a person makes it, he destroys buildings. He takes away the spiritual light from his life. He's affecting the entire creation and horrible things. He's destroying and spoiling and... Defecting the name of God. The spiritual light that comes from the name of God is making the power of the Sitra Achra of the Satan much stronger in the world. And all these things start with one thing. Why? That he looks at the ladies when he's not supposed to, he's not allowed to. If he would watch his eyes, it would never happen. It all starts with the eyes. Watch your eyes, no bad internet sites, no bad movies.

1:36:57There are no kosher movies today. Don't let anyone fool you. There are no kosher movies. Even the History Channel and cartoons have immodest figures, immodest talking, and immodest ideas. Even the Discovery Channel shows relationships between males and females. It's also bringing bad thoughts. It's not kosher. A Jew cannot go into secular television. Cannot go. Not to talk about the internet and any other clips that they put out today. It's just not kosher. You have to decide. Do you want to be with Hashem or do you want to be half and half? Half and half, maybe you have half heaven, half the other place. If you're lucky. You cannot leave one leg in the real world and one leg in Sodom. One leg in Beit HaMikdash, one leg in Sodom and Gomorrah. It cannot be. You understand? And the ladies should know one thing: Many of the sins that men commit are 100% their fault. But for many of the sins they commit, you are just as guilty. This means one woman can be much more guilty than a man. Because if one man sinned because of her, he gets his punishment, and she gets the same punishment. But what happens if 500 guys looked at her today on the street, walking with their high-heeled shoes, suffering for five hours to attract attention like this?

1:38:19Hard to believe how women would suffer so much to attract attention. It's crazy. Crazy. How much? And if the skirt is very tight, now double suffering. Not only can she not walk, she is bent like this. You know, now she wants to get up. What happened? Help me out. I can't walk. Why? Five hours until she wore the skirt. Why? That maybe another José or amigo would look at her and say, ooh. ¿Qué pasa, amigo? How stupid we can be. It's crazy. And we are stupid not because we are naturally stupid. No. We have enough intelligence Hashem gave us. We just don't use it. We think that this compliment that she gives, the Gemara said there was one tall woman, she put rings, bells in her shoes. Why? And she walked in the street with two midgets, girls, you know, very short girls, and she's very tall.

1:39:26It's very interesting. It seems to me that the taller the girl is, the taller the heels are. It should have been the other way around. If you're very, very tall, you don't want the heels like this. Where do you want to be, a giraffe? There's no limit to how tall they want to be, like the Empire State Building, walking in the street. The short girls, I understand why they have heels. Fine. They want to look a little bit taller. But the tall ones, she’s 6'5 already. She has like this, another 10 inches. What's going on? It's hard to believe. It's all in the head. What society, the rotten society sells, the magazine she looks in, drives her crazy. To attract ourselves to Hashem, we’ve got to get clean from all this dirt around us. It's affecting us. It's destroying us. And then we'll pay the price. Chaval. I will finish with a one-minute story. One time I went to Queens Boulevard. and the owner of the restaurant, he comes to me and says, "I have some fresh bread for you." Which means, easy target. A guy, curly hair, Yemenite guy, has a bag on his back, just came from the East, somewhere, I don't know where he was, India, Costa Rica, I don't know where he came from. So he has this tarmil on his back, jeans, curly hair like this,

1:40:49He's in a restaurant. Here, meet. Yeah, Oren, nice to meet you. Secular guy. So take him to the yeshiva. He doesn't have a place to be. He needs a place to sleep. He needs some good meals to eat. He doesn't mind learning Torah, no? So the guy, you know, he doesn't care about Torah, not Torah. He's thinking, where will I sleep tonight? And right away, the sheriff arrived. Come, we'll take you. Don't worry. We'll take you to jail. You'll have a place to sleep. So I say, you want to come with me to Monsey? He says, what's Monsey? I say, it's about an hour away from here, north. Beautiful place, trees, nice, you know, you have a lake over there, you have a soccer field. I don't start right away with Torah, yeshivot, Gemara; I see how he looks. So I'm thinking, what does this guy like? I say, a good restaurant, everyone speaks Hebrew there. Wow, there's a place like this here? I say, yeah. He said, you know, you also learn Torah a little bit. They teach you interesting things in yeshiva, in thinking. I said, you know what, why not? Let me try. Okay, you have your stuff? He said, that's all I have, this bag. I said, let's go. On the way there, on the Palisades Parkway, he looks at me, he said, probably everyone there is black, huh? Black, black hats, this, like Bnei Brak, like Meah Shearim. I said, black more than you can imagine.

1:42:13No, it's too late, my friend. You're with me. What are you going to do? Get off of the Palisades? He said, wow, maybe I should have thought more. I said, don't worry. You'll be there one week. You don't like it? I'll bring you back to the restaurant of your friend. He said, OK, fair deal. I brought him to the yeshiva, finished. A month later, a month, maybe a month and a half later, I come to the yeshiva, I bring another guy, one something at night, one o'clock at night, I hear, in the yeshiva, noise. In the room of the yeshiva, the dorm is upstairs. I hear from the hallway, who's in the yeshiva? One o'clock, everyone's supposed to be sleeping now. I am crying. I see this guy that I brought a month and a half ago, sitting on the floor with the Sefer Torah, crying for Beit HaMikdash. Forget about it, a beard like this. Mamash, a holy person he became. Another few weeks later, I walk in the street, he comes in front of me. I walk like this. Mamash, I'm ten steps in front of him.

1:43:18He ignores me. I walk. Mamash, I'm now almost face to face with him. I say, Oren, who is this? He takes his glasses. He puts his glasses on. "Oh, Mizrachi. Sorry." I said, "You don't see anything without your glasses?" He said, "Nothing. Nothing." I said, "So why don't you walk with your glasses?" He said, "I watch my eyes." I don't want to see by mistake a woman, everything. I'm working on my holiness. So I told him, but you're in Monsey. At that time at least, 12, 13 years ago, you didn't find anybody not modest on the street at that time. Today you cannot swear on it anymore. So I say, so you walk like this, you don't see anything? Like a blind person. So yeah, better like this, like this, by mistake I don't see anyone. Maybe two or three months he was in yeshiva at that time. So I said to him one day, what about shidduch? You don't want to get married? He said, no, not here. Here I want to learn. The day I decide to go to Israel, then I would like to get married. I promise you, one day he comes to me and says, next week I'm going to Israel. That's it. I already found a yeshiva in the north, in Israel. The day he landed in Israel, a week later he was engaged.

1:44:38And who? To someone very good that I know very well here: his sister. Got engaged right away. And you have to understand, the chance that somebody like this will find a girl is one in a billion. What girl will want such a holy man? She knows she and he are not in the same league. Watch his eyes, beard like this, like the Yemenite from 500 years ago. Became like a Tanna, this guy. What a serious Avodat Hashem. In a few months, what people do not do in 30 years, he did in 3-4 months, this guy. Such holiness, I was scared to stand around him. Much like this, and I'm not exaggerating. Shemirat HaEinayim. If you do what he did, watch your eyes, everything else will come and absorb into your soul and remain there right away. And you will see a complete change in your life. Complete. But if you continue one day Torah, one day looking. One hour Torah, two hours looking. Three hours Torah, three hours looking. It's like putting the teapot on the fire. Ten minutes, taking it off. Two minutes, taking it off. Three minutes, taking it off. The water didn't boil one time in 20 years. That's what it is. Any questions before we finish?

1:45:59If yes? From Brooklyn to Queens, how are you? You drive on the highway, huh? First second is not affecting you. First second. Before you drive, and Christine jumps into the road while she's jogging. First second you see her. Then you don't look at her anymore. You turn your face or you close your eyes. You understand? After the first second, it's a sin and it's affecting you. Before that, it's not affecting you. i just want to remind everyone, this coming Shabbat, we have a weekend seminar for Hebrew speakers, for beginners only, for secular people, non-shomer Shabbat. If you have any relatives or friends that speak Hebrew, it's 60-70% subsidized.

1:47:03But for a hundred and something dollars, you get two nights in a nice hotel in Jersey with glatt kosher food, the best lectures, and another great speaker, Tzvika Ben-David, coming from Israel, and myself. It's going to be a great weekend of proofs, one after the other. Anyone secular you know who speaks Hebrew, please let me know on my Facebook page. If you don't have Facebook, please don't get into it. Much more bad comes from it than good. But if you already own it, at least come to the right place. On my Hebrew page, Baruch Hashem, we have 53,000 and change people, which generate more than 2 million views every month, Baruch Hashem. The English is much, much slower, Baruch Hashem. In one way, I'm happy. That means the Americans here that come to the lectures have already become more religious. What's the point of having it? This is a tool to make people religious. So it's two and a half thousand people which generate more than a hundred and fifty, hundred and sixty thousand views. Which means there are much more serious people, percentage wise. Anyone you know who is already on Facebook and is going to bad pages is not religious. Please recommend my page to them. We put something there every hour or two: clips, YouTube clips, articles. You know, many people have started to become religious from these pages.

1:48:05two and a half thousand people, which generate more than a hundred and fifty, hundred and sixty thousand views. Which means there are much more serious people, percentage-wise. Anyone you know who is already on Facebook and is going to bad pages is not religious. Please recommend my page to them. We put something there every hour or two: clips, YouTube clips, articles. You know, many people have started to become religious from these pages. And also, I recommend all kinds of lectures that we put on the website. All the lectures that I'm making right now, the next day, they're already on my website. Which means this lecture, tomorrow afternoon, will already be on divineinformation.com. In about a week or so, it will also go to Torah Anytime. These are perhaps the only two websites that get all my lectures. There are other websites that have a lecture here, a lecture there. But if you want to watch all the lectures, these are the two. Yes? Is the severity of looking at women the same when you're dating? Okay, well, I have a whole lecture about dating, kosher dating. It's a whole different story. A person goes with a girl on a date; he's allowed to look at her beauty and check her very carefully to know if he likes her or not. What's the point? You're coming to the date...

1:49:26What's going on? No, I watch my eyes. They told me you understand me. So why did you come to the date? No problem. Next time, my father will ship me in a UPS box. You can open me the next day of the wedding. Why do you need me? A person must love his future wife. After three dates, if he doesn't have attraction to her at all, he has to break the shidduch. Don't let any shadchan or any rebbe or rabbanit mess up your life. First date... Second date, maximum third date. By the third date, after sitting two hours, two hours, and two hours, it's plenty of time to start developing emotions. If not even a little bit starts in the heart—no attraction, no love. Sometimes you go with a girl on a date for two hours, and you already say, "Wow, when can we get married already?" And even she feels, "Wow, it's the man of my dreams." So you know right away, it's a perfect shidduch. Sometimes it takes two or three dates. And if after three dates it doesn't happen, it doesn't mean it will never happen. There's still a chance that it will happen after 15 or 17 years. But who wants to take the risk?

1:50:40Already now, there is more than a 50% chance that it will never happen. Do you want to live with a woman or with a man for 30 years in the house when you don't have feelings for them? The beauty of marriage is not only to have kids and share the bills. The beauty of it is to know you come home and you have a wife that you missed all day. And when five hours you're not with her, it drives you crazy, or the other way around. And if it's not happening, something is not right there. And sometimes it's not right because of your behavior. But many times it's not right because, in the beginning, it wasn't meant to be. If you ask me if a person can marry his wrong soulmate, the answer is yes. People marry their wrong shidduch. And the Zohar says, and the Steipler said in one of his drashot, that you can be married to a woman all your life and you don't belong to each other. And you have kids and it's all against Hashem's will. It doesn't interfere with your children. People warned you. They told you it's not the right one for you. You wanted to do it because of the money, because of different reasons. Now you're paying the price.

1:51:44You missed your chance in life. So it can happen. Yes, it can happen. So to check if the wife is for you on the first date is allowed. But after that, you don't need to. You already know she's pretty. What do you need? What happened? From yesterday to today, she became ugly for you? No. You have to check and make sure on the first date you go to a place with lights. Why? Because sometimes you go, it's dark, you don't see the color of the eyes, you don't really see the face, you don't see that much. You see everything dark. And then later, all of a sudden, you meet at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. That's the girl? That's not what I thought. I didn't think. You understand? So yeah, I'm telling you, I'm not joking. In this generation, people are very... Shallow? What's the right word? Shallow. Emptiness. Full of emptiness. And they pay a lot of attention to the look. It's not what it used to be. People in the old generation, they knew marriage is much more than just looks and relationships. No.

1:52:47Today, it's not the case. That's why it's just not going to work. What's the point of so much divorce? To have more and more divorce? Don't get married until you feel that you love the girl that you're going to marry, or that you love the guy. Not just because he's a great tzaddik and he knows so much Gemara. It's important. But you want someone who knows Gemara, you can go be the maid in the house of Rabbi Ovadia yourself. Don’t need a husband for that. No problem. One woman married Rabbi Kaduri. She was 30 years old. He was 105. Why did she marry him? To have a husband? He could hardly walk. Five people carried him. So he couldn’t be a husband. Why did she marry him? To serve the tzaddik. If that's what you want to get married for, then you don't care who you marry. You just find a tzaddik, no problem, in a phone book. One of the babot who put ads. Tzaddik is coming to town, you can go offer him to marry him and serve him. Marriage has to be real, kosher, with lots of passion and excitement in life, one for each other. Life has to be full of feelings and all kinds of things that marriage should be. It's not a bad word.

1:53:58The opposite, the Torah speaks highly about the relationship between a husband and his wife and always encourages renewing it and making things better and better. Any more questions? Okay, so like I said, thank you very much to Yaniv and to Chazak for another beautiful event. I'm glad that many people came today. But please, at the next event we have on February 5th, not only should all of you come, but make sure each one of you brings at least two more people. This way, maybe we'll move downstairs. Thank you very much. Good night.