Rav Avidgor MIller About Discussing Punishments & Holocaust

0:11As far as learning about punishment and things of that nature, people that say you shouldn't talk about punishment should talk to God a little more often because half of this Torah talks about punishment. Half the chumash you read every, every, every week talks about punishment. Weak. For them to come on weak people, according to our tradition, according to the way of the Sages, this only started in recent generations. In the old generations, the parashiyot of Bechukotai and Ki Tavo, the ones that are full of curses if we don't listen to Hashem, were actually read extra loud.

1:11Not only not low like it is today. We actually read extra loud with screaming to make sure everyone listens to it, gets scared to death, and does teshuvah. Today, we've gone to the opposite extreme. So this is obviously not a minhag of the Torah. This is a minhag of, unfortunately, that's wrong. It's not a good minhag; it's a bad minhag. It's not what we learned. That's not how I... if you actually read any of the books by the sages, even just from the previous generation, anyone that was considered a gadol, you see the words that they say. I was reading this article; it’s really more like a small book that should be printed into hundreds of thousands of copies, millions of copies, and given to every person in Am Yisrael and the world, I think. By Avigdor Miller, I love HaShalom. I mean, you see the words that he said. I mean, this was 15 years ago. This is not 200 years ago. You see the things that he said. Honestly, I think if he said it in any shul in the world today, they'd kick him out, even though he was one of the G'dolei HaDor. This was 15 years ago. He says, "I was in the Holocaust." He was there. He left Germany. He left Germany in 1938. He says, "Don't let people fool you."

2:38...make you think that the Jews were good before the Holocaust. They all said everyone had died in the Holocaust. So it's not true at all. He says many of them actually... You know what? I'll read his words so people don't actually think that I said it. It's mamash scary, scary, and... far we've dropped in just a very short period of time. In the beginning of Hitler's epic, the beginning of his regime, love your home, live off its corner, lever ha the mirror mesh gear was still alive. Hitler had already started concentration camps at that time, but he had not yet conquered Poland and he had not yet invaded Russia and In the beginning of Hitler's epic, the beginning of his regime, Rav Elchanan Wasserman was still alive. Hitler had already started concentration camps at that time, but he had not yet conquered Poland and he had not yet invaded Russia and

4:07But he had already begun taking Jews, those who were considered political enemies of the state, from their homes and putting them in camps and torturing them. He began that already at that time. Nobody dreamed, even in their wildest nightmares, of Treblinka, Auschwitz, and so on. All they knew of were these concentration camps that Hitler had set up, and You have to know the Jews at that time were no good anymore. The vast number of Jews in Eastern Europe were rotten already. They were atheists. They didn't believe. They didn't believe in God. Don't believe what they tell you that they were tzadikim. They were Bundists, they were Red Socialists, they were atheists, yes, that they were, but not tzadikim. Schools that were spreading everywhere were producing enemies of the Torah. There were atheist schools for the Jewish children. They were called the Tarbut schools. They were getting a lot of money from American Jews, and they were using it to build gymnasiums where they were teaching atheism and where they would learn to ridicule frum Jews and ridicule the Rabbanim and the Torah. And of course, Gehinnom was just a fable to them

5:33Doesn't it sound like today? And of course, Ge'enom was just a fable to them; it was the furthest thing from their minds. They said it was just a fantasy invented by the rabbis. They might as well say about your own ruin, "Invented Ge'enom." That by his hokey invented Ge'enom. Two people invented Ge'enom three thousand years before they came to the world. And so Rav Yerucham said that because people were losing sight of the principle of Gehenom, HaKadosh Baruch Hu is now bringing Gehenom to this world for them to see it. These concentration camps in Germany were terrible, even the early ones, and the ones later on were much worse. But even those, no matter how bad they were They were only a mashal, meaning they were only a parable for the real Gehenom. And it was a mashal that was supposed to be studied. And the Jews in Poland should have looked at the newspapers where the accounts of what took place in the concentration camps were reported and become afraid of HaKadosh Baruch Hu, meaning do teshuva after you see other Jews suffering. Look what's happening here.

6:57When the Jews in Poland and Lithuania read about these stories, they should have become all Shomrei Shabbat. They should have taken their children out of the atheist Tarbut schools and put them back into chederim, into little yeshivot. They had chederim, little rooms where they learned Torah. It wasn't like big schools like we have today. Big school, little Torah. Little school back then, a lot of Torah. The whole room, maybe five dollars. You have a five-dollar table, five-dollar table, five-dollar table, that's considered a big school already. You have three tables, a bunch of little kids sitting on top of each other, that's the cheder. That's how they learned Torah, became tzaddikim. But what do they do, instead of sending them to this, they send them to fancy-schmancy schools. Big school, no G-d. If they would have sent them to these chederim, they would have become Shomrei Shabbat. Should have stopped working on Shabbat, those so-called tzaddikim. They were rotten to the core. There were factories everywhere, big factories that were open on Shabbat. When I was in Lithuania, I came in 1932. So on Shabbat, every half hour a bus left Slabodka full of Jews to go to Kovno to work on Shabbat. In 1938, when I left Lithuania...

8:22It was every five minutes that the bus was leaving from Slabodka to Kovno, taking Jews to work. Now, I left because of Hitler. I was an American citizen; I didn't want to hang around any longer, but they were close. They were trapped and afraid. But did they change? No. Because they didn't want to look and understand the lessons that Hashem was teaching them. Here was a picture of Gehinnom on the shelf again. Oh, Gehinnom is much worse than the concentration camps. And they were expected to think about what was going on in Gehinnom in this world. So they come together in a Beit Knesset and cry out to Hashem to save them from Hitler. No, I yes, the yeshivot did, but the yeshivot were only a little drop in the ocean. I was in a yeshiva, and we'd said Tehillim with bechiut, with crying to Hashem, because Hitler was close. We saw Gehenom closing in on us. Hitler was just across the border. He could have, it could have happened any day. Hitler could have marched across the border into weak little Lithuania and conquered it. So we cried out to Hashem. But did the people of Europe cry out? No.

9:37They read the Zionistic socialist newspapers full of atheism. They read the Bundist newspapers, all atheism. Even the Revisionist newspapers were all atheists. And these were daily newspapers published every day. The frum didn't have one daily newspaper. Am Yisrael had one monthly newspaper. Every month, one newspaper. Meaning the frum and... That's how few the frum people were and weren't getting any better. Those who brought concentration camps and death camps and the crematoria to give people a picture of Gehinom. He didn't want Gehinom to be a vague idea, a foggy concept in the back of our heads. He wants us to inculcate it into our personalities. So He gave us a little glimpse, and that way it became part of who we are. We, just because we're living now 40 years after the fact, does that mean we shouldn't use that reminder? The Gehinnom that Hashem brought into this world is still etched in our minds. It's still a fresh wound even 40 years later. This is obviously 30 years ago, and Hashem wants it to be

10:58Hashem wants it to be that way. Hashem wants that tangible feeling of 1/60th of Gehenom to remain with us always, and in that way prepare to avoid the real Gehenom of the next world. Now, as any part of this is one of the Gedolei HaDor. This is Rav Avigdor Miller. There's no doubt that everyone accepts him as one of the giants. This is not, this is just a small token. This is not even one page. It's a couple of paragraphs of this Kodesh Kodeshim that he wrote here about Parashat Kedoshim. Thinking about how Hashem thinks, that's how this whole parasha is. Does any part of it sound like He's exaggerating, making things up, or saying things out of context, like it's His own opinion? Anyone that says that there's no Gehinnom or there's no punishment, or don't be too scared, or everything's okay, or... All of those things, these people are people you have to run away from because on them it's also written in the book of Devarim, "Shalom yiyeh li, shalom yiyeh li"—everything is okay, everything’s okay. Don’t worry, there’s no punishment, there’s no Gehenom. Hashem loves you. This is kefirah against the Torah, and the reason why Hashem allowed...

12:22vicious beasts like Hitler, yemach shemo, and anyone like him before or after? To do what they did was simply to tell us, "You better do teshuva. You better do teshuva in this world, or else. I can't do anything else for you." Killing brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, all of that. It's not that Hashem doesn't want to do it and... But if he has to do it in order to save the rest, that's what you have to do. And that's how he continues to write. He says, listen, the Holocaust, he says in his own words, Rav Avigdor Miller, and all of the giants from that time said the same thing. The Holocaust was a chesed from Hashem, a kindness from Hashem. Not that Hashem wanted six million to die. Nobody should get their twisted mind to think like that. But the reality is that the assimilation of Am Yisrael at that time, marrying goyim, intermarrying with non-Jewish women, intermarrying with non-Jewish men, was to such a high extent, the atheism was to such a high extent, the kefirah, the heresy,

13:38was such a high extent that yirat shamayim was non-existent. The teaching was non-existent aside from kefirah, to such a high extent that if He didn't bring the Holocaust, there would not be an Am Yisrael to give a Holocaust to. So unfortunately, this very painful medicine was also the cure. Same thing with Beit HaMikdash that killed many more people than the Holocaust, the first one, the second one, the pogroms, the Inquisitions, the Yetziat Mitzrayim. What, do you think Yetziat Mitzrayim was a walk in the park? Yetziat Mitzrayim was just a couple of guys hanging out over there building pyramids. Okay guys, let's get out of here. We finished the job. You know how many millions of people died? Why did Hashem do all of it? The only reason why we're here is because Hashem says, "You must be holy. You must be holy. Why? Because I am holy." Hashem says, "You be holy because I am holy." It's not like it's okay if you don't do it. So anyone that says you shouldn't be scared, either they're a baby still and they're still learning their first words and that's all they know: "Don't be scared," or they just never learned real Torah and...

15:02Including Parashat Shavua. They just skipped half the Torah that talks about many, many reasons to be scared. There are many reasons to be scared. Just read the Chumash. Half of it, scared to death. Scared to death. Even if you go to Parashat Bereshit, just in the beginning. Just in the beginning. You think about what happened with Cain and Abel. Cain, brother, he got jealous of his brother. He killed his brother. Okay, this is an innocent thing. Do you know what punishment Cain got for it? Even before that, even before that, look at what happened. Before that, Abel brought a korban to Hashem, and Cain brought a korban to Hashem, but Cain's korban, his sacrifice, was nonsense, garbage. Hashem says, "I don't want your korban; I am not accepting your korban." So he was upset. He says, "Do teshuva." Because the yetzer hara is sitting at the opening. The sin is waiting at the door, meaning you could do teshuva right now and eliminate this yetzer hara. Let him go away, go far away, do teshuva right now. Why? If you keep ignoring reality, he's going to stay at the door, you're going to continue making sins and so on and so forth. The same thing goes for the rest of the Torah. Hashem constantly reminds us through all of the prophets, do teshuva, do teshuva, do teshuva. When we don't do it, He punishes us.

16:31With plagues, with pogroms, with inquisitions, with wars, with poverty, famine, and so on and so forth. What's not to be scared of? What's not to be scared of? How can someone not be scared? Somebody who is not scared simply didn't learn or was blind. It was crazy, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know how anybody has the audacity to say that we shouldn't be scared. I'm scared of those people. I'm scared of people like that who say that you shouldn't be scared. Because they're a poison. It doesn't even look like poison. Save me from my brother, from Esav. Esav, I know he's Esav. My brother is worse than Esav. Why? He doesn't look like he's Esav. Looks like he's my friend, but he's telling me not to be scared. He's more dangerous, Yaakov says. I don't know. I don't know what these people are teaching. I don't know where they get their sources, but that's why I always tell people when they mention to me, "Why hasn't Jacobson responded to my emails or my messages in multiple ways?" When he did a shiur full of kefirah about Gehinnom being a place that there's nothing to be scared of, I responded to it.

17:46Sending him a private message, and then when he didn't respond, sending him again. And then, when he didn't respond, saying something publicly and he still doesn't respond. When someone asked me a question about, you know, who should I listen to: his shiur of 29 minutes of kefirah or your shiur that says that it's something to be scared of—this Gehinnom. I said before I even see the shiur, before I see it, just listen to whoever provides more valid sources and The person that said it said, "Oh, that's easy. That's an easy decision." Why is it an easy decision? If you listen, if you want to waste 29 minutes of your life and you listen to the shiur, he didn't use a single source. Not one single source in 29 minutes of a shiur. I don't know how you call something a shiur if you don't use any sources and there's no mekor whatsoever to anything you're saying. It's more like a meeting. ...It's more like a conversation between friends. A shiur is supposed to use Torah. He didn't use Torah; he used his opinion. So, to say there's nothing to worry about—are you going to protect me? Who says that? Moshe Rabbeinu says be worried.

19:01Moshe Rabbeinu says be worried. David HaMelech says be worried. Shlomo HaMelech says be worried. Everybody says be worried. So what, this little rabbi says not to be worried. That's okay. He's bigger than Moshe Rabbeinu. He's bigger than the Vilna Gaon. He's bigger than the Chafetz Chaim. He's bigger than everybody. Who are these people? Rabotai HaKedoshim, the people that say you have nothing to be scared of, be scared of them. They're the people to be scared of. They're worse than Gehenom. They're the Yetzer Hara's soldiers. Amash, no sugar-coating. They are the last soldiers. People like that run away from don't learn anything from them. Nothing from nothing, can't learn. Don't even learn how to play tic-tac-toe from them. I'm sure there's some level of fear. I'm not too serious. Dangerous people, somebody tells you have nothing to worry about, is against the Torah. 13 principles of faith. Hashem says there is reward and punishment, so what punishment am I not going to be scared of? It says in the 13 principles of faith, there are 13 things that you need to believe in order to be classified as a Jew. There's reward and punishment. If the punishment was nothing to be scared of, what's the point of the reward? Why shouldn't it all be reward and reward? Everything is reward.

20:18Shouldn't Moshe Rabbeinu say, "Guys, listen, you should do this stuff, but if you don't, there's nothing you should be scared of. It's on me. Don't worry. I'll take you out again home." Shouldn't he say that in some pasuk somewhere? Shouldn't there be some book that some big, giant Gadol HaDor wrote one day? "Don't be scared, the whole Torah is a joke." Shouldn't it be like a banner? Why are they religious, then, these rabbis? When they keep Shabbat, you can't tell me that they enjoy keeping Shabbat if they are not scared of anything. Why wouldn't they rather go to the casino? Why wouldn't they rather eat pork and shrimp? You can't tell me that it's not delicious. Rabban Gamliel says a person should never say, "I don't like milk and meat, and I don't like to wear shatnez, and I don't like to do the sins that are in the Torah." You should never say he doesn't like it. It's not true. He likes pork, and he likes milk and meat, and he likes shatnez, and he likes the sins. It's not sure that he doesn't like them. So don't ever say that. Say, "I like them, but what can I do that my Father in Heaven said I'm not allowed?" Because that's true. No one says that pork's not delicious. No one says that milk and meat's not delicious. No one said that every prostitute in the street is not somebody that every guy wants to be with, and...

21:42Because the guys are animals, no one says it's not true. It's true. But what if we're going to do what our Father in Heaven said no to? And when our Father in Heaven says no, it's scary. It's very scary because Hashem Yitbarach says when I say no, I mean it. When I say no, that means I'm going to punish you if you do it. I'm going to punish. I'm not your kindergarten teacher who says no, but if you do it anyway, says okay. I'm not going to teach him anymore. So who's not scared? Who's not scared of Hashem? That's kefirah. One of the mitzvot in the Torah is Yirat Shamayim. Rabbi Nachman miBreslov says that for most people in his generation, which is drastically better than ours, it's not relevant to talk to them about loving Hashem. to talk to them to serve Hashem out of love. To even talk to them about serving Hashem out of the highest level of Yirat Shamayim. It's not relevant. Rabbi Nachman says, most people in his generation, it's purely fear of punishment. Don't sin because Hashem will punish you. How? Gehinnom, cancer, AIDS, whatever. That's why. In his generation, Rabbi Nachman,

23:00Like, where did he... Show me. I'm willing. I don't want to do debates with the Christians and the Catholics and all that stuff. It's a waste of my time. There's plenty of material about that, but this, any rabbi you bring, I don't care, could be anyone. Anyone that wants to debate, I don't have to prepare. You could bring them here on a Tuesday without telling me, without notice. Bring me all of his sources. I'll debate him on the spot if he provides sources for what you're saying. For people, it's not you, for anyone that's saying that, you have nothing to worry about. I'm willing to do anything you want, anything. I'll change all my lectures. I'll delete everything. Whatever you want, I'll do in public. No problem. Problem, it doesn't exist. They want to debate. I'll do it publicly with no preparation. They can prepare for six months. Don't even tell me about it. They can hide; all the little gremlins can gather together in their cave and collect their three sources that they create themselves and come show up without any preparation on my part. No preparation, not because I'm home, but because I know it doesn't exist. There's no source for this information. There's no source. The only source is from Ben Gurion, maybe, and

24:10Zionists from the atheists and the socialists, not from Torah. Torah says you're supposed to be scared. So, whoever is telling you not to be scared, my very, very serious advice, without joking aside, is to stop learning from these people.