Religious Civil War, Motivational Speakers, Muslim & Jew, Dinosaurs & More - STUMP THE RABBI (37)

0:17In the name of G-d, let us do and succeed in the teaching of the Torah. We are back here in Sunny Isles, Florida. We're in Sharet Zion, our Wednesday night shiur with the Stamter Rabbi, the questions and answers. We get hundreds of questions and try to provide hundreds of answers every day for people on WhatsApp and emails and other places. We are back here in Sunny Isles, Florida. We're in Sharet Zion, our Wednesday night shiur with the Stamter Rabbi, the questions and answers. We get hundreds of questions and try to provide hundreds of answers every day for people on WhatsApp and emails and other places. But this is an opportunity for people to be part of the shiur. To be part of the shiur is a different ma'ala. It's a different extent. And tonight's shiur, B'ezrat Hashem, will be for a refuah shlema for Avi Mori, David Ben Esria, Doris Bat Jorah, Levana Bat Sara, Sara Bat Levana, and

1:17Rabbi Ephraim Ben Shulamit, Rabbi Sarah Bat Anat, Esther Bat Zipporah, Devorah Bat Mercedes, and also mazal tov to my little boy Ovadia for turning three years old today, Baruch Hashem. May Bezrat Hashem HaKadosh Baruch Hu give him the merit, give him the zechut, give him the koach to become a Talmid Chacham Gadol Be'am Yisrael Hazakot HaRabim. And may he give us the merits as well, Bezrat Hashem, to also one day, Bezrat Hashem, be Talmidei Chachamim. So, Today's questions, but I know that some of the things that have been going on in the last few days with all of these things that are happening with calling out one of the most popular speakers on the internet and otherwise in the English language, Manis Friedman, when we speak out against him already for a few shiurim, especially the last couple.

2:27many videos that showed him speaking things that are against the Torah, and as HaKadosh Baruch Hu said, that at the end of days, people are going to have a choice, like they always have, but with a very different meaning. If you look for Me, you will find Me, but only if you look for Me with all of your heart and all of your soul. HaKadosh Baruch Hu says in Sefer Devarim, in the book of Deuteronomy, He says if you're looking for the emet, you're going to find the emet, you're going to find it, but only if you look for it with all of your heart and all of your soul. many videos that showed him speaking things that are against the Torah, and as HaKadosh Baruch Hu said, that at the end of days, people are going to have a choice, like they always have, but with a very different meaning. If you look for Me, you will find Me, but only if you look for Me with all of your heart and all of your soul. HaKadosh Baruch Hu says in Sefer Devarim, in the book of Deuteronomy, He says if you're looking for the emet, you're going to find the emet, you're going to find it, but only if you look for it with all of your heart and all of your soul. So, you see now that many people are coming out of the woodwork, and some of them are very excited that this is happening, that finally somebody is speaking out against someone who is a mesit, a mediach, someone who causes people to sin by giving them a distorted version of the Torah. But on the other hand, other people, Baruch Hashem, not as many, but some people on the other hand, are upset by it. They're very, very upset by it. They're asking all types of questions, such as, did you speak to him? Did you get permission from someone? Did you talk to a dayan? How do you know? How did this happen? As if they didn't watch the clip.

3:49Because if you watch the clip, there's really no questions. If you watch the second shiur, there's even fewer questions than you had in the first, because I answered these questions. But, again, we have to answer these questions, because this has a little bit to do with all of our jobs in the world today. You see, the parashat HaShavua, parashat Bo, it says a lot of things, but at the end of the parashah, HaKadosh Baruch Hu tells Am Yisrael that the words of Hashem will be in your mouth. The words of the Torah of Hashem will be in your mouth. What does it mean that the words of the Torah are going to be in your mouth? How come He doesn't say it's going to be in your heart? How come He doesn't say... you're not actually going to pick up the phone, are you? Time to come to the shiur. Text them. So, what does it mean? What does it mean? Who can give me an answer? Who can give me an answer for a peirush, a commentary? Be Rashi for five seconds. Who can give me their understanding of what it means when Hashem says, "so that Hashem's Torah may be in your mouth"?

5:13What does it mean? Hashem's Torah is going to be in your mouth. How come not in your heart? How come not in your mind? How come not in your pocket? Maybe in the microwave, maybe in the fridge, maybe in the closet, maybe in the garage. How come it has to be in your mouth? No. Chavot Satan? Ah, yes. I forgot. Because when it's in your mouth, you're going to share that Torah with other people rather than just keeping it for yourself. But also, another thing I want to mention is that when somebody is learning Torah, it says they're supposed to read it and they also hear their own voice. And the Rambam says if they're not doing that, they're wasting their time, right? Multiple senses. When you read it with your eyes only, you're using one sense. When you read it out loud, you're using multiple. You're using your mouth. Speaking using your eyes, but you're also using your hearing. So that is as if you've read it three times, which helps you memorize what you've learned. Because the Mishnah says that someone who learns Torah and forgets it, it's not such a good thing. Not just telling us about the Torah, but how to attain it. How to attain it, but how come if it says to attain it, then it should be my brain? Because the mouth is the process. Process of what?

6:41You started the right way. You started at the beginning. Beginning of what you said. Teach it. Why teach it? Why do I need to teach it? Why can't I just be, you know, just by myself in a cave somewhere like Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai for the next 13,000, 14,000 years? Because when Hashem created the world, He created it with His mouth. And you say when somebody does a kiruv, it is as if they are creating that person with their mouth. Chazak. So, to expand on what the Satan told us, HaKadosh Baruch Hu says there's no such thing as religious in your heart. No, no, I love Hashem. I love Hashem. I love Hashem. So how come you go against Him? How come you make sense? How come you drive on Shabbat? How come you eat non-kosher? How come you look at girls that are not your wife? How come you do dishonest business? How come? You said you love Hashem. Hashem says don't do it. How come? You said you love Him. Why? Because "religious in your heart" is babkis.

7:42What about the guy that knows the entire Torah, he remembers all of it. Hashem says, it's not enough that you remember the whole Torah. It's not enough that you learn Torah. It's not enough. It has to be in your mouth. What does it mean, it has to be in your mouth? One of the other names that the Torah calls itself, in essence, another name that HaKadosh Baruch Hu gives the Torah is Sefer Milchamot. Sefer Milchamot, the book of wars. The Chazal says, what wars? The wars of Hashem, Rashi says. What wars of Hashem? It says, if you're going to learn Torah, and you're going to do what Hashem says, part of what Hashem says is that you have to fight for Him. Now, fools, heretics, what do they say? Hashem doesn't need you to fight for Him. It's not a matter of Hashem needing. We're not freedmen over here that say Hashem is needy. It's not that Hashem needs you to fight for Him. It's your obligation as part of your servitude to HaKadosh Baruch Hu to fight for Him. Hence what HaKadosh Baruch Hu says here. Don't just learn Torah. Speak it. Shout it. Fight for it.

8:55Talk about it everywhere you go. Someone says something that's against the Torah, you have to speak against them. It's not a, oh, you should, it's recommended, maybe. No, my friend. You have to. You have to. You have to defend the Torah. It's the honor of the Torah. I believe it's page 82a. But it may be 84. Either way, it's side a. And he says, in a place where there is desecration of Hashem, there is desecration of the Torah. Where the Torah was minimized, HaKadosh Baruch Hu's glory was minimized, you don't give any kavod to any rabbi. Even if he's the biggest rabbi in the world, he desecrated Hashem's name? The Torah has been desecrated by him or someone next to him and no one's doing anything about it? Don't ask him for permission to go against it. Why? Hashem comes first. So that is the first answer for those people that ask, "Oh, did you ask a rabbi if you are allowed to go against Manis Friedman or Dror Kasuto or Mirvis or any of these other reshaim?"

10:16If someone desecrates Hashem's name, you do not need permission from anybody. You have the permission of HaKadosh Baruch Hu. You have the obligation of HaKadosh Baruch Hu. But, because we're not sure of ourselves, Baruch Hashem, we do ask rabbis. We ask Rabbi Ephraim. We ask big, big chachamim. We double-check before we speak. We always check. In case we're wrong. So yes, we did ask. But, we also look at the sefarim too. Aside from asking the rabbis, getting a second, third, fourth, fifth, tenth opinion. We ask, aside from that, we also want to ask what our sages have said over the years about fighting against reshaim. Fighting against resha'ut. So, There's no sound on Facebook, so take off the microphone. Just take off the mic. There you go. Thank you. Very good. Start over? No, I'm kidding. So, what happens is, Rabotai, the Gemara gives you permission to go and fight against wicked people.

11:40Especially if you yourself are a public figure. You yourself have a little bit of influence on others. It's an obligation. Needless to say, even if you don't have, you have a certain obligation. For each person on his own level. But nonetheless, every person has to fight for the Torah. But you should always check with the Rav, which of course we always do. I speak to my Rav every single day, Baruch Hashem, and double-check everything that we do. But also... we double-check with the sefarim. We have to find a source for what we say. Now, when you fight against someone who claims to be a part of Chassidut, if you tell him what the Gemara says, he's probably not going to care so much. If you tell him what the Shulchan Aruch says, probably even less. You tell him what Rav Ovadia says, he doesn't even know who he is sometimes, even though he's the Gadol Hador. So you tell him, okay, let's see what the Chassidim say. So Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, alav haShalom, says in Sefer HaMiddot, Ot Meriva, Siman Pei Chet, ein melamdin zechut al ha-mayisit. Mi she-mesit u-madiach et azulat l'hitrachak me-haYahadut, alav ein shum limud zechut. And not only that, but what our Rabbi said, which is talking about Rabbi Nachman of Breslov,

13:07Don't even talk to the mesit about their proofs and their nearness. And therefore, we need to make a big difference between a mesit and a heretic, between a complete heretic and a heretic. Because a complete heretic overcomes his yetzer, and he can't stand trial, and stands for what he does, and so on. In all this, we need to judge him by zechut, because a poor person didn't receive Jewish education, and he doesn't know anything, or who overcomes his yetzer so much. So, Rabbi Natan writes in the name of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, he says the following: there is no benefit of the doubt, there is no leniency whatsoever when it comes to someone who influences the public to go against Hashem. When someone says, Like Manis Friedman says, Hashem only mentioned heaven one time in the Torah, in the beginning, and then He never mentioned it again in the Torah. And that's the reason, according to Manis, why we do not serve Hashem to go to heaven. We serve Hashem, why? To bring Hashem here, to the world. Because we don't care about heaven. Why? Because we need to die in order to go to heaven. That's according to what he says.

14:31There's a recording out there. It says 10 minutes with this rabbi will change your life. You're right. He'll change you into a rasha gamur in 10 minutes. That's what he says. Someone that tells people such kefirah, things that are the opposite of the Torah, and he does it publicly, there's no benefit of the doubt for such a person. Further, he says, this is so extreme, this is so dangerous, when someone is influencing the public to lower their servitude of HaKadosh Baruch Hu, you're not even allowed to speak to them, to rebuke them, or to actually get them to come back and do teshuva. Don't speak to them either. Don't call him and say, listen, there's... No, no, nothing. Stay away from him. He's dangerous. Maybe he'll trap you too. says, that's why there's a very big difference between someone that's like a missionary, either a Christian missionary, or a Manis missionary, or a heresy missionary, and someone that's simply a rasha, someone that's wicked, someone that's a mechalel Shabbat, someone that eats pork, someone that drives on Yom Kippur, and so on. There's a very big difference between the two.

15:59What's the very big difference here? He says, someone that's a rasha is simply somebody that didn't overcome his own yetzer hara. He has a test and he failed. He failed his test. And he does what he does. With all of that, we still have to give him the benefit of the doubt that maybe he could do teshuvah, maybe he'll stop driving on Shabbat, maybe he'll leave the goyah, maybe she'll leave the goy, maybe she'll start putting some clothes on. Don't go against the regular people just because they were acting like goyim. They're resha'im according to the Torah, but you're still obligated to try to help them come back to Hashem. He says, he's a poor person, this person that's going against Hashem. Poor person, he doesn't know what the judgment is for driving on Shabbat. He doesn't know what the judgment is for smoking a cigarette on Shabbat. He doesn't know what the judgment is for lending another Jew money and charging him interest. He doesn't know. And even if you told him, he doesn't know if he believes what you just said. Because he doesn't know if the Torah itself is even real. So he's a poor person, he says. The Shabbat poor person.

17:06He didn't get the right education. He didn't get the right Jewish education. And he doesn't know anything. Or simply, the Yetzer Hara overcame him. That's why you have to give him, the wicked person, the benefit of the doubt. Be patient with them, be patient with her. Tell her, "Listen, I know you've been going the wrong way your whole life—20, 30, 40 years, you're doing all types of things that Hashem said no. Of course, you didn't do it because you hate Hashem. You didn't do it because you hate Hashem. You always say B'ezrat Hashem. Why would you say B'ezrat Hashem if you hate Hashem? Why would you kiss the Mezuzah if you hate Hashem?" Why would you pray to Hashem, read Tehillim once in a blue moon, or go to the synagogue once or twice a year if you hate Hashem? You don't hate Hashem, I know. But you did things that are against Hashem. Why? Either you didn't know what you're doing is against Hashem, or you didn't know that the judgment is so heavy for going against Hashem. So let's do this. I'll tell you what Hashem says, provide you the sources that you can reach for yourself if you want,

18:10And you stop going against Hashem. You do teshuva. You try to fix yourself as soon as you possibly can. As soon as you learn something, you overcome it. You do it. You do what you have to do. Little by little, you get closer to Hashem. And that way, you could arrive and be rest assured that one day you're going to arrive at Gan Eden and not have to deal with Gehinnom at all. Why? Because you did teshuva. And the level that a Baal Teshuva can get to is higher than someone who has been religious his whole life. Even though you violated Shabbat and every mitzvah in the Torah for the first 30 years of your life, no problem. 40 years, 50 years. You do teshuva right now, you fix all those things, you could arrive at Gan Eden. Gan Eden. No problem. It's not only that. If your teshuva is high enough, you're really, really serious, you could even get to such a level that you could turn all of the past sins that you've made into merits. That's how much HaKadosh Baruch Hu loves Am Yisrael. Not only does He give us the chance to do teshuva for crimes we've committed against Him, but He actually rewards us for it too. It's like you rob a bank and the judge says, you know what, keep the money, just stop doing it. And you say, yes, okay, you know what, I'll give you another 100 million.

19:27I mean, it's absurd. That's how much HaKadosh Baruch Hu loves us. But at the same token, Rabotai, if you don't do teshuva, no one in the world can help you in Shamayim. No one in the world can help you. So you tell the Rasha to do teshuva and b'ezrat Hashem to go to Gan Eden. But if somebody like Manis Friedman tells people no one is going to get punished for no reason whatsoever because the exile has been 2,000 years and there's a Holocaust and there's suffering, so no one's going to Gehinnom. No one is going to get punished. No Jew deserves any punishment. Hashem needs us. We don't need Him. He needs us. What is that? That's the opposite of the Torah. That is giving people the idea, "I don't need to change." Man has just told me that I'm like God, and God is like me. I don't owe Him anything; He owes me. He created me hungry, so He has to feed me. He created me in a world that needs money, so He has to give me money.

20:29So that's a person that gets people away from the emet. Away from it. And that's why, Rabotai, the biggest chassidim in the world fought heavily against such people. Now, the problem is today that people do not know their right from their left. They don't know the difference between truth and sheker because they judge things based on their feelings and not based on their brains. But we have to understand that when we speak about reward and punishment, we're not doing it because we get some type of joy out of it. We do it because we're obligated. We're obligated to tell you that there is reward and there is punishment. Now, because psychologically speaking, HaKadosh Baruch Hu created all people in a way where we operate faster, more seriously, and more dedicatedly when we're afraid than when we're promised a prize. Meaning, we're more motivated to do something because we're afraid.

21:46then motivated because of a reward. If I told you, "Listen, if you come to this shiur, I'll give you a hundred bucks," okay, you say, "I'm coming to this shiur. Why? I want a hundred bucks." But five minutes before the shiur, one of your friends says, "Listen, forget the hundred dollars. Let's go watch a game at my house. A couple of beers, a few girls are going to come, and we'll have a good time. No money though." 100 bucks is way in the garbage. You're going to the girls. Why? Yetzer hara, I just told you, the girls are better than money. But if I tell you, Rabotai HaYekarim, we're going to have a shiur on Sunday. And this shiur, if you don't listen to it, and you don't learn it, and you don't learn it to the extent where you know it by heart and operate based on it, you're guaranteed 100% to go to Gehinnom. No money though. How many people are going to miss the shiur? Nobody's going to miss the shiur. For years, people asked me to make a shiur about Gehinnom. I didn't want to do it because it's a very scary subject that I know certain people at that time really were not prepared for yet. But after seeing how fast the world was deteriorating, my Rav said, it's time. You have to do it. I told people that we're going to have the shiur, even though it's the scariest subject in the Torah, the place was packed.

23:12The place was packed. We used to do the shiur at the Breslov Center in Aventura. The place was packed. People I never saw in my life, I never saw them again after. Never before, never after. Showed up. Why? They wanted to know about Gehinnom once and for all. And guess what? It became one of the most popular shiurim we have on the internet. Tens of thousands of people. Tens of thousands of people have done teshuva because of this shiur. A three-and-a-half-hour shiur. The whole thing is scary, especially the last hour and a half. One talmid chacham that I know from Eretz Yisrael is a serious talmid chacham. He wrote himself about Gehinnom. He has on his website some things about Gehinnom. after he watched my shiur, he says, "Wow, it's really scary." I said, "Yeah, but you have stuff on Gehinnom." He goes, "Yeah, not like you. What do you have with this scary stuff?" I said, "Yeah, indeed it's scary." He goes, "No, but it's scary. So why do we teach about Gehinnom? Why do we have something... but was it a scary movie?" No, Rabotai, that's the number one motivation that people have. It motivates people to change, it motivates people to do certain things.

24:20But we also have proof. Rabbeinu HaKadosh, Rabbi Chaim Vital, Zecher Tzaddik Livracha, in his book Shaarei Kedusha, says, "Every single person must delve into the fear of punishment." וסגולה לזה ללמוד אלו העניינים המדברים מהעונשים הגדולים אשר מענישים בעולם העליון. And it's a very big segula, it's a very special thing in heaven when a person learns specifically about the punishments that happen in the upper world. אשר אין קץ וגבול לאיסורים הללו. a place where there is no end and there's no limitation to the suffering that could happen there if a person does not do teshuva. So he will know that there is judgment and there's a Judge, and this world is not where you could just do whatever you want.

25:37And that's what the talmidim of the Baal Shem Tov warned us against. Who's the Baal Shem Tov? Anyone want to answer? Who's the Baal Shem Tov? Anybody heard of him before? Who's the Baal Shem Tov? You don't know the Baal Shem Tov? Baal Shem Tov. Why do you say yes? You embarrass yourself. Why? Baal Shem Tov, Rabotai Yekarim, the Baal Shem Tov started Hasidut. Chabad, Breslov, Gur, Bobov—all of the Hasidut in the world started with the Baal Shem Tov. Meaning, if you call yourself a Hasid, you have to know the Torah of the Baal Shem Tov like you know the back of your hand. There's no, no, no, but it's my Rebbe. No, no, no, your Rebbe. Your Rebbe's Rebbe is the Baal Shem Tov. There's no Hasidut without the Baal Shem Tov. And here he says, Rabbi Chaim Vital says, we learned that we have to learn about punishment and what happens in the upper world if you don't do teshuva, all this stuff. Where do we learn it from? The Baal Shem Tov. How many chassidim you hear today teach about the fear of punishment? Almost none. Why? I don't know. Apparently they skipped this chapter. Manis Friedman didn't skip this chapter. He rewrote it.

27:02He wrote a whole new Torah. So that's why, Rabotai, it is very, very important to speak against evil. Now we're going to go back to our question. What is HaKadosh Baruch Hu saying here where He says that the Torah will be in your mouth? You're saying, "I love Torah." You're saying, "I learned Torah." You're saying, "I'm going to live by Torah." What's the problem? So now we have to define what it means to love Torah. Yesterday we answered the question of living by Torah. We got it from the Chafetz Chaim. The Chafetz Chaim told his talmidim, what does it mean to live by the Torah? And the talmidim said, to live by the Torah means to follow the rules. He says, no. To live by the Torah means that there are going to be certain things that you have to follow. He says, no. The Chafetz Chaim says, I'll help you. How do you know that tomorrow there's going to be day and there's going to be night. And they tell the Chafetz Chaim, well, we had day and night yesterday, we had day and night for the last almost 6,000 years, so that gives us the confidence there'll be tomorrow. The Chafetz Chaim says, no, that's not the right answer. The right answer is that it says it in the Torah, in Parashat Noach, "v'yom v'layla lo yishbotu."

28:30The day and night will not cease to exist. And because it says in the Torah, a promise from Hashem that there's always gonna be day and night, that's how I know tomorrow's gonna be day and night. That's what it means to live by the Torah, where you find the answers to all of the issues that you have from the Torah itself, and not from people that are against the Torah or say things that are the opposite of the Torah, or even perhaps saying from their own opinion. Like someone asked me today, are you allowed to teach? group of people Torah, but during your teachings, you're gonna also quote, along with big tzaddikim, you're gonna quote, let's say, someone like Tony Robbins. Are you allowed to do it? Let's ask, let's take a vote. How many of you think it's not a problem to quote Tony Robbins in a shiur Torah? How many think it's not a problem? Be honest. Tony Robbins, you don't know, I want to kiss you right now. I love you. I love you. My love for you just increased 50%. The rest of you that know who Tony Robbins is, I don't love you less. I love you the same, but he got a 50% increase. No? Give me an answer. I'm looking for an answer. Are we allowed to mention Tony Robbins as a source of information in a shiur Torah? Okay, we have Naomi in the back who says no.

29:58Over here it says, why not? You're asking the same question as me then. Okay, so your question is a question. That's typical. A Jew typically answers a question with a question. Oh, so you don't know who he is? Okay, so my love for you also increased 50%. The rest of you that know who Tony Robbins is and listen to him on the way here, get out. Okay, no, come on. No, can we quote him? In the back, the ladies, the ladies say yes. Apparently, it seems like all of them are saying not allowed. And the guys are not even sure. Okay, so let me just save us time. Let me answer the question. If you don't know who he is, Tony Robbins is one of the most famous motivational speakers in the world. Perhaps the most famous. Many people learn from him and get motivated to do different things. Am Yisrael, on the other hand, is not supposed to be motivated by Tony Robbins. And there are a few reasons. Number one, Tony Robbins, if you delve into his teachings, which when I was in the business world I did, at some points in his teachings, mentions his religious beliefs in Jesus. And he becomes a motivational speaker slash missionary. Indirect missionary. That, by default, makes him...

31:27a non-valid, absolutely forbidden source of information for any Jew to teach his information and quote him. Two, when you mention one of the sages on the same stage as mentioning Tony Robbins, what did you just do? You just put Tony Robbins on the same level as one of our sages, chas v'shalom. Anyone that thinks that this giant imbecile is on the same level as any of our sages, is simply a fool who does not know our sages. One of the proofs is that if, the Gemara says, if you're gonna teach something, but you yourself will do the opposite, It is better that you would have choked inside your mommy's belly and never come to the world. Why? Because HaKadosh Baruch Hu hates hypocrites. Don't say something and do the opposite. Don't teach people not to smoke cigarettes and then smoke right after. Don't teach people not to cheat on their wives when you have three girlfriends on the side. Don't teach people to keep Shabbat while you are driving on Shabbat yourself. Don't be a hypocrite. Hashem hates hypocrites. Tony Robbins

32:42teaches people about love and how to have passionate love, how to have a passionate marriage, how to have peace in the home. What doesn't he teach? He doesn't teach that he's divorced four times and currently accused of molesting some of his employees, female employees, for walking around naked next to them and other things. To learn from such a person, even if you're a non-Jew, is forbidden. It's stupidity for someone to teach and mention this guy. On the same level as one of our holy sages that did not even look at their brit, our holy sages that watched every step that their eye took, every word that came out of their mouth, you're putting them on the same level? How much did you desecrate Hashem's name there? So, when HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, what does it mean? What does it mean?

33:55It means, rabotai, it means, rabotai, that the Torah has to be in your mouth at all times. You have to love the Torah. What is loving the Torah? Rav Baruch Ber Leibowitz, in Birkat Shmuel, Siman Chaf Zayin, in a lengthy teshuva, says, you cannot love the Torah, you cannot claim that you love the Torah. You cannot even think that you love the Torah until you get to a point, psychologically, emotionally, in every aspect of your body, that you hate sheker, that you hate lies. Why? Because lies are the opposite of the Torah. Hashem's signature is emet, truth. You cannot say you love Hashem. You cannot say you love His Torah, His signature of Emet, and you still love lying. You still love the lies. You still love the world of lies. It's not possible to say you love Hashem and you love the sheker at the same time. It's like saying, "Honey, I love you, but I'm just dating on the side." It's not possible to say I love Torah and still enjoy the sheker. It's not possible.

35:19The Gemara, Masechet Avodah Zarah, has the Rabbi of Rabbi Akiva, Rabbi Eliezer HaGadol, Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, saying that he himself almost got a death penalty from HaKadosh Baruch Hu one time. Why? He heard some heretic, some Christian, say something. He heard him say something that he liked the idea. He didn't respond to him, he didn't engage in a conversation with him. He just heard the idea that this heretic, this idol worshiper, said, and he enjoyed it. Shortly later, the Romans captured him and tortured him for days until he realized his mistake and did teshuva for it while he was under torture. He says, ah, HaKadosh Baruch Hu is punishing me. Why? Because I enjoyed sheker for a second. I enjoyed a lie. Not he just raped somebody. Not he just murdered somebody. Not he just drove on Shabbat. Not he just ate pork. No. I enjoyed lies. Why? It cannot be that I love Hashem, I love His Torah, and I like lies also. Not possible. So Rav Baruch Ber Leibowitz says, you want to get to a point

36:38loving the Torah, you want to have the Torah in your mouth, you have to start going against the lies—the ones that you have inside you, the lies that you have emotionally, psychologically, the things you have around you. So when you see a public figure that calls himself a rabbi or otherwise lying to the masses, if you want to have at least a chance at acquiring a love for the Torah, you no longer have a choice of being quiet. Why? Because you hate the lies so much, you cannot sit quietly while the guy is lying to people. He's murdering your brothers and sisters in public. He's murdering them. And they don't even know that they're dying slowly. They don't even know. You see some of these people's comments? They don't even know that they're dead right now. They don't even know that they are mamash captured in a jail by the Yetzer Hara himself. They don't even know. Why? Because they are misled. And people like him. This, Rabotai, is one of the most critical lessons that a person needs to have.

37:54In order to acquire Torah, in order to acquire devekut b'Hashem, gluedness to Hashem, in order to have a chance to really be in Gan Eden and not have an ounce of suffering in Gehenom at all. Why? You have to eliminate the lies in your life. You have to. All of us have a little bit. All of us lie a little bit. All of us like lies a little bit. All of us lie to ourselves a little bit. All of us. One of the most important missions that a Jew has is to eliminate these things. These are Amalek. These are inner Amaleks. Because these lies, one after another, they develop doubts in your mind. And the word doubt in Hebrew is safek. And it has the same numerical value as the word Amalek. So here we see that when a person wants to aspire to have the Torah Hashem in his mouth, it's not just about knowing the verses by heart or the Gemara and the pages or the rabbanim names. No, no, no. It's about living that Torah and speaking it, speaking against the lies at all times. You cannot be surrounded by a bunch of liars. You either walk away or say something.

39:14Walk away has a price, saying something has a price. The Midrash tells us that Paro HaRasha had three advisors. When he was deciding what to do with Klal Yisrael, what to do with Bnei Yisrael, Before he decided to say, "Let's fool them into becoming our slaves," he asked his three advisors, "What should I do with these people? There are so many of them. So many of these Jews, what do I do with all of them?" Pharaoh asked. The first advisor was Bil'am HaRasha. Bil'am HaRasha said, "Make them all slaves, kill all of them, destroy them, or they'll destroy you." Torah says Bil'am got his punishment. Pharaoh listened to him, made them all into slaves, and eventually HaKadosh Baruch Hu took revenge against Bil'am and killed him. Pinchas killed him. The second advisor, the second general for Pharaoh, his name was Yitro. Yitro says, don't touch them. Why? They're good people.

40:29They bring value to the country. They made a lot of money for you. Leave them alone. Pharaoh didn't like this answer, so he ran away. Why? He was going to kill him. But because he spoke out, he had enemies. His life was on the line. HaKadosh Baruch Hu rewarded him. How did He reward him? He says, you fought for the emet. Your son-in-law is going to be avi ha-emet, the father of emet. Who? Moshe Rabbeinu. Moshe Rabbeinu is going to be your son-in-law. And you, the entire parasha, that's the parasha of Emet, the parasha of Matan Torah, is going to be named after you, Yitro. The parasha of Matan Torah is named Yitro. Why? You fought for the Emet. And you'll be part of the people of Emet. You'll be part of Am Yisrael. But he had to fight for his life. He almost got killed. The third person was Iyov. And Iyov didn't say anything. He didn't say kill them; he didn't say save them. Nothing.

41:34Hashem says, you stayed quiet at a time that My children were on the line, although you didn't go against them like Bilaam HaRasha. Staying quiet wasn't good either. So HaKadosh Baruch Hu tested Iyov with difficult tests for a year, suffering and anguish for a year. Ten of his children died in one day. He lost all of his money. He became sick, so sick that there were maggots and worms coming out of his body. His friends turned into enemies. They tried, they meant well, but it didn't sound so well. And he almost got judged in Shamayim as a kofer gamur, because he made a mistake and he said something against Hashem, but we say in the Torah, we don't judge a person at the moment of pain. That's why HaKadosh Baruch Hu judged him leniently at the time that he had pain and he said something that he wasn't supposed to say. But he got all of that. Why? Because at the moment of truth, he didn't fight for the truth enough. He fought for it by not saying something, but he didn't have the Torah b'fiha, meaning he didn't speak up for it. So yes, he got, he was saved. He's in Gan Eden. Don't worry about him. But there was a price to pay for that.

42:58Yitro had it much more difficult. Why? He had to fight for his life. People wanted to kill him. But there was a price for that too. And he got a reward for that too. He's also in Gan Eden, but a much different Gan Eden. Why? He fought for the emet. He fought for the emet. His daughter is Moshe Rabbeinu's wife, Tzipora. His grandkids, his grandkids, his grandkids are the grandkids of Moshe Rabbeinu and Aharon HaKohen. One of his grandkids is Pinchas. The messenger of Mashiach, the one who's going to announce Mashiach is coming, is who? Yitro's grandson. You don't have such grandsons in Iyov's life. He's good, he has a sefer in the Torah about him. You see the reward that Yitro got for fighting. So that's what HaKadosh Baruch Hu wants to give us. He wants to give us an opportunity to have the Torah in our mouth. And that's why it's very important for all of us to fight for it as much as we can, each at our own level, each with our own knowledge. What I tell most people is don't do the fighting yourself. Let me do it. I'm a professional.

44:22So how do you fight people? Just send them links. Send them a CD. Send them a shiur. That's it. Don't go into keyboard wars on the internet, one comment after another for five hours, and at the end, everybody dislikes each other and nothing came out of it anyway. I've never seen anybody do teshuva from those keyboard warriors. Never seen anything like that. Everybody wants to state their opinion. No one listens to each other. Everyone pretends as if they know the entire Torah kulah. Everyone makes sure that you know that they know a lot of stuff, even though it has nothing to do with the answer. So they write you a six-page response to something that should have just been yes or no. ...because they want to show off their knowledge, and they already, at this point, have done it so much they already have it saved. So don't feel bad for them; they didn't type the whole thing. They typed it once, and they saved it from that point on. There's one guy that makes a comment in every single one of my videos. We've already turned them into spam. We can't have this in every video. He has like a two or three-page write-up that apparently he wrote or somebody wrote that he wants to put in every one of my videos. It has nothing to do with the video, has nothing to do with anything, but he wants it everywhere.

45:33He wants people to know that he knows something. People are sick; don't waste your time. You want to help people, provide them the information through a third party. That's how you help people the best. Because a lot of people that spend a lot of time fighting other people, most of the time, people can't hold up. Either they get tired, spiritually, physically, or they simply just get to the point where they're so stressed out and angry at people for not listening to the truth that the battle turns into something else. That'll turn into something else. Listen, if somebody wants to know the truth, provide it to them. If they really want it bad enough, they'll listen. If they don't want it bad enough, they'll tell you, "No, no, it's too long." If they say it's too long or they don't want it too long, okay, that means you don't want it enough. If you wanted it enough, there wouldn't be a question of too long, too short. This guy, that guy, it doesn't make a difference. If I told you there is a treasure that I hid in Florida with $500 billion dollars, And I hid it somewhere in South Florida. And I want each one that wants a map that kinda gets you close to it to pay 1,000 bucks each. Anyone here gonna second guess it? Anyone here gonna say, "No, you know what, it's expensive, this 1,000 bucks?" People are gonna start throwing 5,000 just in case the first map gets lost. Why? Because you're looking for a treasure.

47:02If you're looking for the emet, that means you're looking for a treasure. There's no price in the world that you wouldn't be willing to pay if you're looking for the emet. But as someone very wise said today, when someone is looking for the emet, when they're looking to comply with Hashem's rules... Nothing is too harsh. Nothing is too extensive. Nothing is too difficult. They just know, okay, this is what it is. I've got to find a way to do it. But when someone is not looking to comply, when someone is not looking for the emet, it doesn't matter how you serve it to them. You could serve it to them on a silver platter. You could serve it to them as a video. You could serve it to them as a text message. You could serve it to them as a nice speech, yelling, screaming, whispering, you know, through dove smoke signals, telepathy. It doesn't matter. They don't want to listen. It doesn't matter how you give it to them; they're not going to listen.

48:04This is one of the things that each one of us has to calculate. How do we spend our time? Yes, you want to do kiruv, but you want to invest your time in a place that's worth investing. So this is why it's important for us to fight for the emet, but do not waste your time fighting with people that are not looking for it. Not looking for it. With that being said, who wants to start with questions? Well, I answered all your questions in an hour. Well, Yehoshua has some questions. In this parasha, Moshe, in the situation with Am Yisrael about to leave, why did Hashem... Can you...

49:06If I speak like me, loud, it's going to be loud and the walls are going to hear me. Why did we have to take the money from the Egyptians? HaKadosh Baruch Hu, is that the whole question, or is there a second? There's the question. Okay. Why do we have to take the money from the Egyptians? Couldn't HaKadosh Baruch Hu just give us money another way? Once we get to Mount Sinai, give us a nice treasure over there. I mean, in fact, when we got to Yam Suf, the Sea of Reeds, Am Yisrael found one of the treasures of Yosef HaTzadik. And everybody became a millionaire. Everybody became a millionaire. So if HaKadosh Baruch Hu already knew that we're gonna find a treasure at Yam Suf before we cross the ocean, we're all gonna become millionaires, then what's the purpose of telling us to go get some money from the Egyptians? You're gonna make millions, you're gonna be a millionaire in a few days anyway.

50:16It's like someone who wants to give you a blessing and your boss gives you a raise. Joshua, I'm gonna give you a raise from now on. You're gonna make a million dollars a year. Two days later, you win the lottery for $500 million. You're not going back to work. Let's not kid ourselves. You're not going back to work. Mr. Boss, thank you very much for the raise of a million dollars. I quit. The guy's heart is gonna be broken. What do you mean? I just gave you a million dollars. He goes, yeah, I got 500. What's the point? The point is, Rabotai, as I said, HaKadosh Baruch Hu's signature is emet. HaKadosh Baruch Hu promised Avraham Avinu almost 400 years before this, that when his children eventually become slaves, they're not going to be slaves forever. Eventually, He's going to free them. Eventually, He's going to free them, and when He frees them from slavery, He's already going to reward them. He's already going to show them blessings due to their grandfather Avraham Avinu, so they're going to leave slavery as rich people. This is something that never happened before and never happened after. No people that were ever slaves ever became masters overnight. No people.

51:38Even the people that freed themselves from slavery, one way or the other, they started as slaves and they left as slaves or as poor people at best. No one left as a master, as someone that's rich. Except Am Yisrael. Why? HaKadosh Baruch Hu promised that to Avraham Avinu. who says even though I'm gonna make them even richer in a few days when they get to Yam Suf and even I'm gonna make them even richer when they cross Yam Suf, when they get even more old treasures from the Egyptians after all of the Egyptian treasure comes up to the beach. There's even another treasure over there. Even though all of that's gonna happen, I promised Avraham Avinu that they're gonna leave Egypt with money, they're gonna leave rich and I have to deliver on my promise. The fact that they're going to get richer is good, but it's not really delivering on the promise 100%. It's delayed by a few days. HaKadosh Baruch Hu doesn't delay. Everything happens at the exact moment. Just like we learned from Yosef HaTzaddik, when he was freed from the jail,

52:46What does it say? They hurried him up from the hole, from the jail. What do you mean they hurried him up? The time for his salvation, for his personal salvation arrived. That moment, that moment was the end. So they had their, HaKadosh Baruch Hu made them make sure to run him out of there. Why? Because within the next few minutes, he's going to become the king. Same day, a few hours difference, he went from being somebody in the middle of nowhere, in a hole in the ground, with no end, to being the king, to being a billionaire. Why? The time of salvation came, arrived, that's it. That means that it's not allowed, the creation is not allowed to hurt yourself for an extra second. Salvation came, that's it, it comes right away. So HaKadosh Baruch Hu, when His salvation arrives, You don't need to worry about it. Why? It's going to arrive exactly at the time that it needs to come. It didn't arrive yet. That means it's not time yet. It's not time yet. For whatever reason, either we don't have enough merits for it to arrive, or perhaps we didn't pray enough for it to arrive. Or other reasons that HaKadosh Baruch Hu knows that we will never know. Next question. Shatnez.

54:17Why were the dinosaurs killed during the Flood? So there is a Chazal that discusses that a couple of the sages were once walking, and they were discussing Torah, and they arrived at a place where they saw enormous bones of animals. To the extent that they were walking through it, they didn't know it initially. They didn't know that they were walking through the bones, the skeleton of some huge animal. So we see that the issue of dinosaurs, the Taninim HaGdolim, as the Torah calls it in Sefer Bereshit, the enormous or giant reptiles, is already mentioned in the written Torah; it's mentioned in the Gemara; it's mentioned by David HaMelech when he was a shepherd, and he was taking his sheep on a mountain, only to find this mountain start shaking. And then he found out that this mountain is not a mountain, but actually a huge, enormous animal, a dinosaur, bigger than anything the movies have shown. But the point is that we see that dinosaurs are very much a part of the Torah. They existed, perhaps not like the movies say, but nonetheless, huge animals did exist.

55:36Most of them were destroyed because they fulfilled their purpose. There was no longer a purpose for them to exist. At the time of Noach, they were able to exist because of a few reasons. Number one, they had a certain purpose. Plus, they had an ability to coexist with people because there were big people and there were small people. There were people of all sizes. They were giants at the time. The Nephilim, the Gibborim, they were giants in the world. Big, big people. Similar in size to two dinosaurs. The heretics can laugh as they may, but this is written in several places. We had Nephilim; we had giants in the world. Adam himself was a giant, so These big animals were able to coexist, but if they continued existing after that, Hashem would have had to make a special miracle for them, aside from what He already did for Noach.

56:36And Hashem calculated in His own calculations and determined that it's not worth it to keep these animals alive, the majority of them alive, and therefore the vast majority of them died. The vast majority of them died. There were some that survived, like, for example, there's an animal in the sea called the Leviathan. The Leviathan translates in English to a whale, but it doesn't actually mean whale. Leviathan is an enormous animal that has a size that's incomprehensible to people. We're talking about miles in size. But this is going to be the animal that we eat at the time of Mashiach as a celebration. So that's Odeyah. There were two of them initially, but Hashem killed the female because He knew that if these two animals procreated, they would destroy the world. And in Sefer Iyov, in the book of Job, Job says to Hashem, "You're so magnificent; You play with Your pet every day, the Leviathan." So this has a makor in the Torah, also this huge animal. And like I said, there are different places in the Torah where huge animals are mentioned. They do not look or act like what they do in the movies.

57:51In fact, even today we actually spoke about it, where I told a few people that, you know, the vast majority of people, and by vast majority, I'm talking about 99.9% of people, when they think of dinosaurs, they think of the movie Jurassic Park. Why? Because Jurassic Park is the first visual illustration that the world at large got of what people thought dinosaurs looked like. So when you think of a dinosaur, you're thinking of a reptile that looks like one of these dragons you guys have here in Florida on every corner. What are these things called? Iguanas. and uh, looks exactly like him but just much bigger, with little, little hints of Tyrannosaurus Rex. And then there are small versions of him, and there are spinning versions of him. There are all types of versions of this iguana. That's what people think dinosaurs look like. Why? Because scientists theorize that that's what they look like. And then Hollywood made it into a movie. And from that moment on, since people learn from movies and not from books, they said, okay, so that's what dinosaurs look like. The funny thing is that most people don't know that the science world quietly updated their own system about four or five years ago.

59:04Quietly, the scientific community updated their understanding and acknowledged that they were completely wrong about how dinosaurs looked. Until now, they thought dinosaurs resembled little iguanas, but in reality, they look more like lions. Why? Because they are full of hair. Dinosaurs are full of hair. They're not little snakes or reptiles. No, no, they're huge and full of hair. So now the scientific world is confused. There's a machloket in the scientific world. But this is the most commonly accepted opinion now, that they had a full body covered in hair, which means that Jurassic Park has to be remade. Jurassic Park 19—with hair. So, the Torah is not confused. The Torah tells you something, that's what it is. The Torah says something, that's what it is. Torah says that they existed, certain parts of them existed, not like the movies. They served their purpose. As soon as they met their purpose, they had no reason to exist. Some, like animals now. There are animals that go extinct every so often.

1:00:06know whether it's certain types of tigers or wolves or foxes or birds, and the reason why—even though people think it's because mankind is so evil and people eat too much, don't eat the animals—no, it's because that animal served its purpose. Hashem has no purpose for that animal anymore in the world, and therefore there's no reason for it to exist. There are even animals that we need that we need, but don't exist. We need them. A red heifer. We need a red heifer. Why? We need it for the Beit HaMikdash. But we don't need it now. Therefore, it doesn't exist. For 2,000 years, we haven't had a red heifer. Until the last few years, they have found a couple of red heifers now. But still, we're not 100% sure that these red heifers are going to be okay at the time of Mashiach. Why? Because they may get too old. Somebody may ruin them. There's also the Tachash. The Tachash was a beautiful animal that had a unique skin like no other. It looked like a rainbow, a beautiful, gorgeous animal. They made the Mishkan in the desert. The Beit HaMikdash of the desert was made out of its skin. Huge, beautiful, something that was literally a creation of its own. You cannot even define the beauty of this animal. This Tachash, you're not going to find them anywhere in the world, not even in cartoons.

1:01:23doesn't exist. Why? There's no reason for it in New York. Will we have a reason for it in the future? Yes, in the time of the Beit HaMikdash, there will be a reason, and they will come back. There's another animal. There was an animal that they made the tchelet from. The ptil tchelet, that's a bluish color, not purple. so no, it wasn't a fish, and this particular animal was of some kind that existed, and we needed to make the ptil tchelet, or the blue string in the tzitzit, but that no longer exists. We don't know what it is anymore. So, all the people that wear tzitzit with a blue string on them That's not the accepted opinion by the Gedolim. That's why you're never going to see Rav Kanievsky or Rav Elyashiv or Rav Ovadia, the Gedolim, ever walking around with a blue string. Why? Because they know that the blue that we have today is a guesstimate. It's a guesstimate of what it really was. So why even guess? If we don't know, why guess?

1:02:31Because that blue came from a specific, unique animal. We don't know what it is yet. We don't know where it is. It doesn't exist. There's also another creature that we needed to build the Beit HaMikdash. There was a special creature that was able to excrete radiation and cut the stone. Because we weren't allowed to cut stones with metal. So how do you cut stones without metal? You do it with wood? The wood's going to break. So how do they cut, how do they make the Beit HaMikdash, the entire Beit HaMikdash, how do they make it? They use this special Shamir worm, that actually cut the stone because it excreted radiation. Anyone here that got the cube package from me and got the book "Science Comes of Age," there's a section in that book about that animal, where it actually proves that it existed. There's a proof that this is something real, and scientists recently discovered a similar species. believe in Australia somewhere, a similar species where, you know, people said, "What? There's a worm that could actually go through stone? How could that be? A worm is nothing; how could a worm go through stone?" It was recently, just in the last couple of years, that a group of scientists discovered a worm that eats stone boulders, eats it, and goes through it.

1:03:54And it's extraordinary how this is perhaps in the same family as that worm, but obviously, it's not the same thing. But the point is that what we thought is real in science is constantly being proven as false if it contradicts the Torah. So, there are many, many things that exist in the world. There are many things that existed and no longer exist. The question is, do they have a purpose in the world? If they have a purpose, then they exist. If they don't have a purpose according to Hashem, then they don't exist. So that's, in essence, the conclusion as far as why dinosaurs do not exist on a massive scale today anymore, because they would not serve the purpose that they originally had at creation. Next question. That's it. You guys know the rest of the Torah? In the back, you guys are on strike. Hey, he has, Ari Ovi has a question. It seems like from the beginning, maybe almost until now...

1:05:09Rebelling against Hashem. Not only rebelling, but for example, when Am Yisrael went out to gather manna on Shabbat, He says, "How long will you continue not to heed My commandments, My words?" Right after splitting the sea. How can this be? Over and over again. ...says "Barati yetzer hara, barati Torah tavlin. HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, 'I created the yetzer hara, but I also created the Torah as a tavlin.' How do we know that HaKadosh Baruch Hu created the yetzer hara? I just opened the page here in Sefer Bereshit, in chapter 2, verse number 7. It says, 'Vayitzer Adonai Elohim et ha'adam afar min ha'adamah...'" It says that Hashem formed the man of dust from the ground, and He blew into his nostrils the soul of life, and man became a living being. So the Gemara in Masechet Berachot says, wait a minute, hold on a second here. The word "Vayitzer" (formed) is misspelled.

1:06:32there could be such a thing that there's a misspelling in the Torah? It's written by God! He says, no, there's no misspelling. The word "formed" in English doesn't mean anything. The word means a lot, especially if it's spelled this way. He says, look, the word is spelled instead of with one yud, it's spelled with two yuds. Two yuds. Why two yuds? The Gemara says, one for the yetzer hatov and one for the yetzer hara. So HaKadosh Baruch Hu created man when He blew the neshama into him. He also created him with a yetzer hatov and a yetzer hara. That's why there are two yuds. That's why there are two yuds in the word yetzer. Yetzer and yitzer have the same spelling. So HaKadosh Baruch Hu put us in this world with an evil inclination, yetzer hara, and also a good inclination, yetzer hatov. And that's why the Gemara in Masechet Shabbat says, "Everything is from Shamayim, except the fear of Shamayim," except the fear of Hashem.

1:07:40Which means, whether you're rich or poor, Hashem decides. Whether you live or die, Hashem decides. Whether you get married or not, Hashem decides. Whether you're a boy or a girl, Hashem decides. Everything Hashem decides, except if you're going to listen to Hashem or not. That's in your hands. Everything else is in Hashem's hands. And that's the confusion that the yetzer hara puts in our mind. What does the yetzer hara say to us? He says, listen, you want to go make money? You got to go get it. You want to go get the girl? You got to go find her. You want to do this? You got to do it. What about teshuva? What about doing? What about getting close to Hashem? God help me, I'll do teshuva. Meaning, the mitzvah, the Torah, we think that's God's. That's in God's control whether I do teshuva or not. That's in God's control whether I get closer to Him or not. But to make money, to find a wife, to find a husband, to do certain things in the world, no, that's up to me. And that's the exact opposite. It's the exact opposite of reality.

1:08:49To go find a wife, to go find a husband, to be rich, to be poor, to live, to die, all of those things, that's Hashem. That's Hashem. Hashem controls all of that. Whether you do teshuva or you get closer to Hashem, that's the only thing that's in your hands. And the Yetzer Hara's job is to constantly confuse you, to tell you the opposite. So Am Yisrael, every single time Am Yisrael listened to the Yetzer Hara, they rebelled. They rebelled. They said, listen, I can't find a husband, so you know what, I'm gonna go out with a Goy. Why? These Jews are too picky. These Jewish guys are too picky, I'm gonna go out with Mustafa. Why? Mustafa likes me. He treats me like a princess. Yeah, he treats you like a princess so long as you're not married to him. The second you're married to him, you become Fatima. And Fatima gets locked in the kitchen. Literally. What, you think I'm joking? Over 60,000 Israeli girls. 60,000 Israeli girls that fell for Arabs in Eretz Yisrael. They fell in love with Mustafas, with Ahmads.

1:09:58Why? Because Mustafa and Ahmad had a few dollars. They said, listen, come with me. I'll show you my family in Saudi Arabia, in Egypt, wherever they are. I'll show you my family. My family is king. My family is sheikhs. My family is important. Come with me. We love you. Look, here's a new car. He gives her a new car. Gives her a bracelet. Gives her whatever she wants. Come, come, come. Gives her drugs too. Come. She comes. The second, the second she comes, arrives, now you know how you're gonna be from now on. And then she finds out that he's also married to five, six, eight, ten, fifteen other women. He never told her about those people. And every one of them is regretting the day they were born. regretting the day they were born. One of the biggest Mezakeh HaRabim, Kiruv Rabbis in Eretz Yisrael, Rabbi Edri, used to be one of the most scary people in the world. You hear his personal story. I mean, it's like, mamash, an action movie is not as exciting as his personal life. He used to have a team, a team of commandos.

1:11:17His job was to go find Jewish girls who fell for these Arabs and then found out that the whole thing is a lie. They are being abused, raped by the husband, by the husband's family, by other people, by his friends. They are being tortured and beaten, all types of things. His job was to go into the different places and free the girls. But he says, my first priority was to kill the Arab. That's the first priority before the girl. He said, I come there with metal. He spent 10 years in jail, by the way. This is not a fairy tale. It's legit. You can find this on the internet. He says, I come there with two metal bars. And the way he says it, he's such a holy person. You see this holy person saying these words, it must be a joke. It's unbelievable. He's such an amazing person. He says, I come there with a couple of metal bars. With my team, my first job is to do a tikkun on the guy. Give him a nice tikkun for Shabbat. And the tikkun that he's talking about is, he's not coming out of there alive. Permanent tikkun. He says one time,

1:12:24He comes into a house, he finds out one of the Arabs. He pays him a thousand bucks, tells me where the girl is. He tells him where it is, the girl's being abused and so on. He comes into the house, finds the girl. There are other people, finds the girl, she's tied with handcuffs to the kitchen. She's not allowed to go 15 feet. She's allowed to go as the chain goes to the bathroom, the kitchen, to sleep on the floor. That's it. She has a scar around her face, a brand new scar, blood everywhere. She gets beat up on a regular basis, all types of marks. Hashem, what they did to this poor, poor Jewish girl. And he says this was happening on a regular basis. I see the girl, you want to, you want to, you start crying. sees the guy, takes the tikkun on the guy, frees the girl, Baruch Hashem, she ended up doing teshuva, this girl became a tzaddeket. And he says, many of those girls that he freed, did teshuva, became tzaddikot. And he did work, this was a very, very big job, very scary, very dangerous, but what a lot of young girls don't understand is that even if the Arab guy seems nice in the beginning, and even if he is nice,

1:13:39Doesn't mean his family is. Doesn't mean his tradition is. Doesn't mean it's always gonna be this way. Why? Because their book allows them to act this way. Allows them to abuse their wives, allows them to rape them, allows them to torture them, allows them to marry multiple women without permission, allows them to do whatever they want. That's their book. whereas we, when we marry, even though polygamy is allowed according to the Torah, we forbid it. Why? Because we know that if a man marries more than one woman in this generation, he's not marrying her for the right reason. So we forbade it already for a thousand years. Rabbeinu Gershom already forbade it a thousand years ago. And that's why in the Ketubah, you're writing that she's the only one, that's it. You're signing off, she's the only one. And even if there was permission, somehow the Beit Din in Eretz Yisrael, says you specifically you are allowed to marry another woman? Guess what? You still need the original wife's permission. You still need the original wife's permission! Polygamy in Judaism doesn't work like the Arabs, where you can just marry whoever you want. You need the original wife's permission. She needs to also want it. She needs to also say, "This is good for us."

1:14:53Not for the lustrous, disgusting reasons that are in people's heads right now, but for the right reasons. But because we have these disgusting reasons in our heads as we're speaking right now, that's the reason why it's not allowed anymore. That's the reason why it's not allowed anymore. But that's why in the Ketubah, if you actually learn the Ketubah itself, you see that this is in it as well. You're only one woman. Now, Young Jewish girl that did not get the right education, the right ideology in our mind, she doesn't know all this stuff. She thinks that this Arab guy is a nice guy. She doesn't know who his father is, who his mother is, who his cousin is, who his uncle is. She doesn't know, maybe he's related to Osama bin Laden, Hussein, and all these people. She doesn't know. She doesn't know that a day after the wedding, everything changes. She doesn't know. Why? He was nice to her for seven years. But Rav Edri will give you proof. Why? He dealt with them for years. He dealt with them for years. And there are literally tens of thousands, about 60,000 young girls right now that are prisoners, prisoners, prisoners in these places. They want to get out, but they know that if they get out, most likely they'll get killed on the way out or their kids are going to get killed. There are many, many, many Jewish people that don't know they're Jews. They think they're Palestinians. They think they're Arabs. They grow up thinking they're Palestinians. They don't even know they're Jewish.

1:16:17They're bombing the Jews. They don't know they're Jewish. There are many famous stories of terrorists turned into tzaddikim. Why? They found out they were Jewish. A guy wakes up one day and says, "I don't know, why do we hate the Jews?" He finds out he's a Jew. Why? Because his mom is a Jew, but she wasn't allowed to tell him she's a Jew. either because until the father died or he was running away or whatever it was, but there are several, several fantastic stories of how Hashem saved certain people. But rabotai, you have to understand, Am Yisrael is like no other. We're called the chosen people for a reason. We're called the chosen people for a reason. There's no other nation in the world like us. There's no other nation in the world that even resembles us. They may wear similar clothes. They may even say similar words. They may even say they pray to the same God. There's no other nation in the world that's like us. Why? Because we're the only ones that have Torah Hashem b'fikha. Torah Hashem b'fikha also means that you have to live by the Torah 24 hours a day, seven days a week, no break. In your business, in your marriage, in your life, in your character traits, in your mind, in your eyes, in your pocket, in your everything. If you see a Jew that dresses like a Jew but doesn't act like one, don't judge Judaism.

1:17:37Based on him. Don't judge the Torah based on him. Judge him. He is wrong. He has a yetzer hara just like you. He made a sin. He's wrong. Try to help the guy out, hopefully. But the Torah itself, a nation of people that for the last 3,300 years live with the Torah and is willing to sacrifice their life just for the sake of the Torah, there's no other nation in the world that's like that. No other nation. Next question. I forgot the original question, but I think I answered it at some point. Oh, I answered it? Somewhat. I'm unhappy with the response. What did I answer? Basically. Oh, the punishment. No, I answered it. Actually, I gave you the yetzer hara. Yeah, that was in the beginning. Yeah, but let me ask you a different way. What's wrong with these people? What's wrong with you? How can they do this? Do you sin? Yes. Same thing? But after, if I saw the sea split, and then Hashem said,

1:18:38don't go out of your tent to get, you know, Shabbat, to get manna, I would be a little bit scared to do that. You're right. But we cannot judge Dor HaDe'ah. We cannot judge the generation of knowledge. The generation that received the Torah, they had the ultimate knowledge superior to anything that anyone in the world could ever have today. The average shifchah made saw prophecy even higher than the prophet. They were all prophets. They all heard and saw the voice of God. But yet, they sinned with the golden calf, they sinned with the manna, they sinned with several different things. How could it be? Just like there was a high level of Kedusha, a high level of inspiration and knowledge and so on, there was also a very, very high level of Yetzer Hara.

1:19:39HaKadosh Baruch Hu always creates measure for measure. HaKadosh Baruch Hu always has a certain amount of equal. So when people say, yeah, but this generation is unique. It's a much bigger Yetzer Hara. Wrong. It's not a much bigger Yetzer Hara. It's a different Yetzer Hara. The Yetzer Hara of the generation of knowledge was idolatry. The generation today, it's znut. It's immodesty, immorality, wasting seed, prostitution, things of that nature. In those days, it was idol worship. So you're going to say, wait a minute, at least we have an excuse. He likes the girl, she likes him, he wants to do something. What excuse do they have to worship idols? Once you learn what the Gemara and the Midrashim say about the idols, then you'll realize you would have worshipped the idol even worse than they did. Why? Because the idols weren't like the idols you go buy in Chinatown for $15. The idols in those days, Hashem instilled power in them and allowed them to talk and walk and speak and do stuff. You prayed to the idol, and it healed you. Like it worked. Idol worship actually worked. So you weren't praying to some statue that did nothing. You prayed to it, and Hashem put enough tumah in this thing that it actually could work.

1:21:00And it did. The golden calf wasn't built. The golden calf was created. They threw all of their gold into the fire. Micha, this young boy who had a tool that Moshe Rabbeinu used, which had the name of Hashem written on it and engraved on it along with the verse "Alei, shor, alei," threw this mateh into the fire, and all of the Gold miraculously formed into a bull, and the bull came out of the fire and said to Am Yisrael, "I am the God that took you out of Egypt." You tell me you wouldn't worship that idol? You talk, you're right, you're God, whatever you want. Well, all of us, all of us see that bull talking to us and say, "Okay, bull's talking, bull says he's God, who am I to disagree?" So, you have to know what test they had. In order to judge them, we don't know their test because we don't know their Yetzer Hara. We don't know the Yetzer Hara. So they weren't fools. They were the most knowledgeable generation in history. And Halvai, we had such knowledge. But nonetheless, all of us have a Yetzer Hara; that doesn't give us a license to steal or a license to sin. It just gives Hashem a reason to allow us to continue existing while sinning.

1:22:23Until the time runs out, meaning to give us enough opportunities to do teshuva. In that generation, people did not have as much time as we do because they knew a lot more. Hashem punished them much quicker. When a guy violated Shabbat, he got killed right away. Today, a person could drive on Shabbat for seven years and not get killed. Why? He saw the words of God; you perhaps never did. So that's also a difference. Netanel, next question. We learned that at the beginning, before Hashem created anything, when He kind of retracted Himself and created the souls first before He created anything. And the souls were in heaven, benefiting from Hashem, only receiving. And as a result, when you receive too much, you can't give anything. So therefore, they wanted a way to at least earn this. Right.

1:23:30And so, as a result, they decided they wanted to come down here after Hashem created the world, at least to earn it. So does that mean, or somewhat infer, that the fact that Adam, you know, came here to benefit, at least to earn it, I'm assuming at least you need to do that? sin, would that interfere? Was it like something purposeful? It was purposely just to at least get to that level so he could elevate himself in a way, I think. Um... it seemed like this, so I don't want to, you know, because I've heard this, I've heard this. So perfect, why did he sin? Tachlis, bottom line against us. If he had knowledge beyond anyone else in the world to the extent where he named all the animals, and he named each animal not based on what rhymed and what reason, but rather what was the mashma'ut of the animal, what was this animal? When he says sus, a horse, the name horse also describes what a horse does, which is run into a war.

1:24:42each animal in the Hebrew language, in Lashon HaKodesh, is not just a random name like in English or Arabic or Spanish or other languages, but rather the names that we have in Hebrew, in the holy language, also describe what the animal is. And Adam HaRishon was the one who was given this job, meaning that his intellect was beyond anything that we can comprehend. When he named the bear, dove. That means that he knew everything that the bear was about, everything about bears. He didn't have to watch National Geographic and Discovery for a few seasons in order to, uh, in order to know about bears. In a second he looked at the bear, he knew everything that has to do with bears: what they like, what they don't like, what they eat, what they don't eat, what drives them, what doesn't drive them, what's the whole purpose of the bear, what's the essence of the bear. The same thing with the lion and everything else. So the intellect of Adam was far beyond anything that we can imagine. Needless to say, he spoke to Hashem. Hashem spoke to them. We see it literally. He spoke to Hashem. So he was a prophet. On top of that, he was in Gan Eden. On top of that, he knew that this world has a purpose. He knew that Hashem has a Torah. So how could he sin?

1:26:05especially since we know that before we came to this world, Hashem created souls first, but the souls were only getting benefit from Hashem. And those souls, since they are part of Hashem, if you will, Whatever that actually means, since Hashem has no body or even a likeness of a body, but in essence, the souls are part of Him. Those souls are the ultimate good. And good needs to be good. To be good, you have to do good. So the souls were suffering because they couldn't do good. Why? Because Hashem has everything. What good could they do for Him? So they asked Hashem, please give us an opportunity to do good, to earn this good that You're giving us. So Hashem says, okay, I'll put you in a world where you'll have to fulfill a mission. You'll have obstacles to overcome in order to earn the good that you receive. That way, you can feel that you have provided enough good to earn the good that you're getting. So Neal is to say, knew this. Knew this. So how could he sin? The sages explain, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, before he died,

1:27:15He got a sign from Heaven that he was going to die. What was the sign? He went to sleep and had a dream. In the dream, he met Adam HaRishon. Adam HaRishon comes to Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, the Baal HaZohar, and tells him, "I beg you, I beg you to please, you are the only one who knows the real reason why I sinned, why I made a mistake. No one else other than HaKadosh Baruch Hu knows. You and HaKadosh Baruch Hu know, that's it. Nobody else figured it out, nobody knows the story for sure. They have certain indications, they have certain hints, they have certain things, but no one knows the real reason. If you think the basic reason is the pshat, you're mistaken." The real reason is much, much deeper than that. And he says, Rabbi Shimon, I'm so embarrassed over this. Already thousands of years I'm embarrassed about this. Please, when you arrive at Gan Eden, do me a favor, don't embarrass me and tell everybody. Don't tell everybody. So the ultimate reason itself, like I just said, only a couple know it. But there are certain indications of what it is.

1:28:23The indications match what it could potentially be ultimately because it shows how righteous Adam was. He sinned one time in his life. How many times do we sin today? Today, forget about our whole life—just today. Just on the way here, some of us sinned. During the lecture, we've sinned. Some of us, as soon as we leave the lecture, we're sinning. Some people come to the lecture just to learn how to sin. Oh yeah, that's a good idea. I'm gonna sin that way. So now Adam HaRishon made a mistake. He sinned. Why did he sin? He says, if the ultimate purpose of the Creator is for me to serve Him, if the ultimate purpose of the Creator is for me to serve Him by learning His Torah, by fulfilling His Torah, Then I want to do it. I want to do it at the highest level. I want to do it forever, Adam HaRishon says. But how could I assure myself that I will live forever? How could I assure myself that I will live forever? I have to eat from the Tree of Life. Where is the Tree of Life? It's in the middle of the garden. Where is the middle of the garden?

1:29:37No one knows. So how could I find out where the middle is? I don't know where the beginning of the garden is. I don't know where the end of the garden is. So how would I know where the middle of the garden is? Adam HaRishon decided, oh, wait a minute. How could I know where the middle of the garden is? Ah, I'm going to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. I'm going to eat from the Tree of Knowledge and the knowledge it's going to give me is where the middle of the garden is and where the Tree of Life is. Because if I eat from the Tree of Life, then I can learn Torah and do mitzvot forever and never die. That's why, rabotai, that's why Adam HaRishon ate from the tree, and that's why as soon as he ate, Hashem says to the malachim, "Let's kick him out of the garden, lest he eat from the Tree of Life and live forever like us." Now you have commentary by the sages that makes a lot of sense as to why such a righteous, holy person would commit a sin. It wasn't a sin like we commit sins for desires. What are our desires? What desires do we have? If a person just analyzes his own thoughts for a single day, what an embarrassment it is. Imagine you have...

1:30:47Your entire family, all the biggest rabbis in the world—everybody—is all with your family, with your wife, with your kids, with your ancestors, with your bosses. Everybody knows you. And they're all now watching on a big screen your thoughts for one day. You met with him and he overcharged you, and it shows what you thought about him at that moment. You said, "Oh, how did you make coffee?" and she said, "No." And it shows your wife what you thought about her at that moment that she said, "No." Your kid said, "Ah, but you want to go?" and he says, "No, I'm busy." But then your kid sees that you really weren't busy; you just didn't want to go. And all of the embarrassing, filthy thoughts you have. He said, "Honey, I love you. Why are you looking at another girl?" "Honey, I love you. Why are you looking at another guy?" "Honey, I love all types of garbage that we have in our thoughts for a day." a day. What an embarrassment it is. What an embarrassment it is. Adam HaRishon was Kodesh Kodashim. Kodesh Kodashim. What was his desire? What were the thoughts in his mind? His desire was to serve Hashem forever. That's his desire. That's what he wanted.

1:32:06That's what he wanted. But he made a mistake. What was his mistake? He used his logic. I'm going to serve Hashem the way I want. How? By doing something He doesn't want me to do. That's a mistake. That's the mistake. Hashem says in the Torah, Aharon HaKohen built the menorah exactly as I wanted it. He didn't change a thing. The Gemara says, the whole world existed for Aharon HaKohen and Moshe Rabbeinu. If you're going to give Aharon HaKohen a compliment, say Aharon HaKohen was really righteous because he did this, this, and that. What is Hashem complimenting him on? He says, Aharon HaKohen put the ptilim on the menorah, the whole thing of the incense, everything; he did it exactly as I wanted. That's the compliment Aharon HaKohen gets out of everything else in the world? He says, yes. Why? Aharon HaKohen could have used his own logic to serve Hashem. Hashem is telling us 3,300 years later, don't use your logic. I said to do it, do it. I said don't do it, don't do it. I said do it a certain way, do it a certain way. Don't do it your way, do it Hashem's way. When

1:33:29we do it Hashem's way, we're guaranteed success, we're guaranteed heaven. When we do it our way, that guarantee goes out the window. So if someone as great as Adam HaRishon, who used his logic, which was superior to any logic we could ever have, failed, He doesn't receive many compliments in the Torah. But yet, Aharon HaKohen, who was considered inferior in terms of creation and significance, receives a compliment. For what? For putting the Petilim. What are Petilim in English? Petilim are the wicks you put in to light the fire. He placed the wicks exactly the way Hashem wanted them to be. Baruch Hashem, my little kids can do that also. Your little kids can do it also. You can do it too. I believe in you. You can do it. But Aharon HaKohen gets a compliment for putting it exactly like Hashem wants. Why? He says, that's what you need to learn. Do it like Hashem wants. Exactly like Hashem wants. But what was so significant? It wasn't the shape and the size. Don't think like that. What does it mean he put it as the way I want? When a person prays, Rabbi, again, alav hashalom, says,

1:34:49When a person prays on Yom Kippur and starts crying, does that mean he's a tzaddik? A woman starts praying on Yom Kippur, she starts crying. Please help me. Does that mean she's a tzaddeket? Nine out of ten people look at that, "Wow, look at this, she's crying on Yom Kippur. Wow, look at this tzaddik, he's crying in the corner. Look, he hasn't stopped crying all day. Three, four hours already he's crying. Everybody thinks the guy is a tzaddik after Yom Kippur. 'Please give me a bracha, you cried all day, please!' That means he's a tzaddik if he cries on Yom Kippur? No, it means he doesn't want to die, that's what it means." A person cries on Yom Kippur, that means they know that their judgment is on the line, their life is on the line, and they don't want to die. That's what it means. You know what it means to be a tzaddik? You know what shows someone is a tzaddik? Someone that cries during an average Mincha on a Tuesday for no reason. No holiday, no Yom Kippur, no judgment, nothing. It's an average Tuesday. It's an average Wednesday. It's an average Thursday.

1:35:59Hashem, have mercy on me that I'm mentioning English names. An average day, no holidays. And he starts crying, bawling to Hashem, "Hashem, please, I can't do it. I'm a loser. I'm failing You all the time. Please, Hashem, give me the strength." But the guy is a tzaddik, though. He didn't fail. But he knows what he's supposed to do and what he's doing is not enough. She cries to Hashem. She wants HaKadosh Baruch Hu to be glued to her. She wants to be glued to Hashem. She cries on an average day. That's a tzaddik. That's a tzaddeket. That's a tzaddeket, tzaddeket. So what is so special about Aharon HaKohen when he put the wicks in the right place like Hashem wants? The Rabbi again explains a beautiful chidush. He says, just like Aharon HaKohen put the incense... In the Kodesh HaKodashim on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year, where if he would have thought one thought that's not godly in the Kodesh HaKodashim, on the spot he dies. So his concentration, his holiness on that day was the highest level of the year. When he made the incense inside the Kodesh HaKodashim, I mean, the level of Kedusha that was there, there's nothing else that's higher than that. He says, just like Aharon HaKohen did the incense on Yom Kippur,

1:37:24He had the wicks made on an average day. On an average day, same kavanah, same significance, same focus, same holiness on an average day. That's what made Aharon HaKohen a big deal. Nothing changed. He was 100% with Hashem at all times. Focused on Hashem at all times. There's no ups and downs like us. When we have problems, our prayer all of a sudden becomes much better. Everything goes well. I'm not going to pray tonight. I'm going to pray at home. I'm not going. I'm tired. My stomach hurts. I have a headache. I'm tired. I prayed already, I think. Why? No problems. Problems? Yeah. When's minyan? When's minyan? You prayed already. But no, no. Just in case. Just in case. I want to pray more. Why do you want to pray twice? Two Shacharit? What happened? No, you don't understand. I have to pray to Hashem. I have problems. Turn Hashem into a lotto ticket. Aharon HaKohen teaches us to do as Hashem says, which means to have the same high level of kavanah, high level of focus, high level of dedication, high level of sacrifice all year round, all the time.

1:38:44understanding high level of dedication, high level of sacrifice all year round, all the time, and that's a very, very high level. If we could even do it half the time, it's already a high level. But the point is, that’s why I want a kohen, and we’re not, I'm not at least. So, with that being said, next question. You guys always... Give me the quiet treatment. Silent treatment. No? Next question. I believe last week, Rabbi, we learned that after a while, in the process of telling us, you know, Moses is going to, you know, what Hashem told Moses is to go to Pharaoh. And we learned, kind of, they kind of break the... Hashem kind of breaks, you know, the sequence and talks about the leaders and the wives and so forth and so on, and that's when the name Elazar came up with Putiel's daughter. The sages refer, some of them say it's Yitro.

1:39:54I was wondering, Yitro is not in the picture yet. Did, for some reason, Moshe come with his wife and the other sisters as well? Or, so early we have Yitro's daughter here. How did she get there? Did the Midrashim speak about that? There were two instances that... Tzipora was on the way to Egypt. The first time it says in the Torah that when Moshe Rabbeinu first came to Egypt, on the way, when he left Yitro's house, Hashem almost killed him. And Tzipora saved his life by performing a Brit Milah on their son. But then later on, in Parashat Yitro, we see that Yitro arrives at Mount Sinai with Tzipora again. and the kids, and the grandkids. So wait a minute, if she was already with Moshe Rabbeinu, then how come it says she just arrived at Mount Sinai? Shouldn't she have arrived at Mount Sinai together with him? Because originally Tzipora went with Moshe Rabbeinu. The Midrash says originally she went with Moshe Rabbeinu, but when they arrived there, Aharon HaKohen told Moshe, "What are you bringing your family here? There's enough people suffering as it is."

1:41:24sent her back home to her father's house, and now we don't have more problems in our cases. She doesn't need to see all this. The kids don't need to be exposed to all this danger. So she ended up going back to her father's house. They only met up a little over a year later because the plagues took a year, and then another 50 days or so, or 50 days exactly, until we got Matan Torah, and that's when Yitro arrived. So, they didn't see each other for a little over a year. But, there are two instances where it talks about Tzipora. So, as far as an explanation of Tzipora, that’s one part. But, as for a more detailed explanation about your question regarding why Putiel or Elazar are mentioned, you have to understand that the Torah is not a history book where the beginning, middle, and end follow that order. So sometimes there's something that's mentioned completely out of order from the story itself. So that also means that somewhere random, you're gonna have, let's say, the story of what's happening in Egypt, and then Hashem decides, for whatever reason, to give you the lineage of certain people who are not even born yet. They're not even born yet according to the story you just read. They're only gonna be born in, let's say, four, five, six Torah portions.

1:42:52But there's a need for you to know about them already now, before they're even born. Why? Because the Torah doesn't have a beginning or an end, doesn't have an explanation where everything is in order and so on, historical order. There are certain things that are out of place. And in some cases, it's like your question. Next question. What, the women know the entire Torah? Maybe you guys should teach. Usually, I get questions from the women. No? Or do you guys want me to scare you a little more? A few of them are saying yes. You guys are saying no; they're only saying yes. Where do the berachot come from? And why not just one beracha? Yes, yes. Actually, we have Adama, which is interesting because Adam, Adama, Earth, everything basically comes from the Earth. So why not pretty much everything from Adama? Yes? After the dinosaurs? Yeah. That's why it's plastic. Okay, I'll answer your question.

1:44:09So, the Torah says there are a couple of differences. There's prayer and then there are blessings. Prayer, the three times that we pray, the Gemara in Masechet Berachot says that the prayer was originally started by Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov. Avraham started Tefillat Shacharit. Yitzchak started Tefillat Mincha, the afternoon prayer. And Yaakov, Arvit. But that's the prayer to Hashem. The blessings within the prayers are different parts of the Torah, different parts of the Tanakh. Much of it is Tehillim written by David HaMelech, Moshe Rabbeinu, Adam HaRishon. Tehillim is not just by David HaMelech, by the way. David HaMelech just put them all together. in the 150 order that we have, but some of the Tehillim were actually written by different people. They were written by Asaf, who is a descendant of Korach, and they were written by Moshe. Many of them, obviously, by David himself also, but not all of it—not all 150 are by David. Much of our prayer that we pray each day, and Arvit, is Tehillim.

1:45:27and also other parts of the Written Torah, and parts of the Oral Torah, the Gemara, the Mishnah, and so on, who put the whole structure of prayer like we have today—that's Anshei Knesset HaGedolah. Anshei Knesset HaGedolah were the sages of Am Yisrael, and some of them were prophets. Some of them spoke to God; some of them were prophets that you read about in the Tanakh. and each one of them was a person of the Hadracha Kodesh. Some had prophecy even; these are two different things. They knew that there are certain words or certain sounds that words make that Hashem wants us to make in order to open certain gates. To give an analogy, you can tell a person, "Listen, you can go into my drawer," Go into my drawer and just take the $200 there. Or you can go into the safe. In the safe, there's $50 million. Whichever one you want. Which one do you pick? Is that really a question? No, it's a rhetorical question. Everybody picks the $50 million. You can say, okay, I want the $50 million. You get to the safe, you say, oh, the safe is closed. How do I get the $50 million? Ah, you need a code.

1:46:54How does the code work? You have to do certain things at certain times. Twist it to the right to a certain number, twist it three times to the left to a certain number, twist it three times to the right, and so on, depending on how sophisticated this code is. The prayer is a code. It’s a code that makes certain sounds at specific times of the day that the sages and the prophets knew would open specific gates of heaven that would bring salvation, health, and so on and so forth to Am Yisrael. Hence the reason why they've added to the prayers of Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov. So, that's the prayers. The blessings are similar as well because we know, the Gemara says, that everything that's in the world, Hashem created. And the Gemara says, anyone who benefits from anything that Hashem created without a blessing is stealing from Hashem. Stealing from Hashem. If you eat without saying thank you to Hashem, you're a thief. You benefited from His creation. How could you be so ungrateful as to not at least say thank you? But unlike the Christians that only bless before, we bless before, and we bless after. Now, there are several reasons why we bless things. Part of it is to say thank you. Part of it is to do a tikkun.

1:48:15this item, let's say, for example, if you eat a carrot—to you, it's just a carrot that may taste good. But that carrot may actually have a neshama in it that was punished by coming back as a reincarnation as a carrot. The only way that it can elevate to be something higher is if you do a blessing before you eat it. Rabbi Yehuda Petaya writes In his sefer that talks about all the conversations he had with spirits, dybbukim, and so on, it's called Minchat Yehudah. He writes that there was a woman who one time went to the market, bought some vegetables, and took a cucumber, made a blessing, and ate it. And later that night... A neshama came to her in her dream and said to her, "Thank you very much for making a blessing on the cucumber. I only wish you would have done the right blessing. You did the blessing of ha'etz, of tree. But the blessing for a cucumber is ha'adamah. So thank you, but I wish you would have done a little bit better. It would have helped me more."

1:49:32So she went to a rabbi and said, "Rabbi, am I losing it or is this real?" He says, "No, it's real. There was a neshama in your cucumber, and that neshama needed somebody to bless the cucumber in order to elevate the neshama. And because you made the wrong blessing, although the neshama was elevated, it wasn't elevated as much as it would have had you blessed it the right way. So the second reason why we bless the food that we eat is because it elevates the neshama that could potentially be in it. Not all fruits and vegetables have a neshama in them, but nonetheless, it does exist. Also animals and so on. There's the trees, plants, fruits, vegetables, stones, rocks, wood; all types of things could potentially have a neshama in them. So another reason is to do a tikkun." as it would have had you blessed it the right way. So, the second reason why we bless the food that we eat is because it elevates the neshama that could potentially be in it. Not all fruits and vegetables have a neshama in them, but nonetheless, it does exist. Also animals and so on. There are trees, plants, fruits, vegetables, stones, rocks, wood; all types of things could potentially have a neshama in them. So, another reason is to do a tikkun. but the third reason is also that the more grateful you are, the more you show your gratitude. For example, if you are grateful to your boss for giving you a raise, what do you do? Say, "Boss, thank you." But if your boss just gave you a life-changing raise, he gave you a million dollars,

1:50:50Do you think that saying thank you the same way as you would say thank you for $500 is sufficient? You change it a little bit. You say thank you very much. Now, your wife or your husband who has dedicated their life to you—when you first marry them, you say thank you for marrying me. After she is together with you, tolerates you, helps you, and supports you for 20, 30, 40 years, gives you children, and raises them to the point where they all get married, do you think that saying thank you to her after 30 or 40 years is sufficient if it's at the same level as when you first got married? Probably not. Same thing as the other. The more grateful you are, the more precise your gratitude has to be. Hence the reason why we have different blessings. To show Hashem our different levels of gratitude for the different things that we benefit from. If we eat something, and we're not really that hungry, but we just desire something sweet, we'll do a blessing. Most likely, we forget if we blessed or not. But if you are starving and you haven't eaten in three days...

1:52:15That next thing you're gonna eat, that next carrot, that next cucumber, that next piece of sandwich, that next whatever it is, the beracha that you're gonna make on that food, it's gonna be like you never ate before. Why? Because you feel like it saved your life. A righteous Jew tries to make that the average beracha. the average blessing. But since Chazal knew that we are not necessarily always succeeding at this, they gave us different blessings for different things to at least show that there's a different level of gratitude for different things. If you see lightning, hear thunder, it's a different type of blessing. It cannot be borei pri ha'adamah. Why? Because the lightning and the thunder is not from the adamah. The Gemara says, why did HaKadosh Baruch Hu create thunder? Just to scare you. That's the only reason thunder has in the world—to scare people. To show you that Hashem could shake the world and make sounds. When there's really thunder out there, everybody gets scared. Even the people from the Weather Channel. They also get scared. They don't show it on TV, but they get scared. Why? The world is shaking. It feels like the whole world is breaking. So the Gemara says, why did Hashem create this? To scare you. But you're supposed to also do a blessing.

1:53:33So, let's do a blessing. When you eat something, you say a blessing. You eat different things, you have to say a blessing. You get married, you have to say a blessing. If you listen to me and you bought the book Birkot Eliyahu, you have blessings for a lot of things, including seeing beautiful people, smart people, ugly people, strange people, strange animals, and certain types of fruits. Every Jewish home that speaks English should have this book, Birkot Eliyahu. I'm sure they have it in Hebrew as well. I mean, it has Hebrew and English. It should be on your dinner table. It should be on your coffee table, not even in the library, because you're constantly going to look in it. ...it has the blessings for everything that you need beyond just food. It's a fantastic book. I've given it out to several people who didn't have it, and I always recommend it to others. It has a lot of interesting things that you'll learn about the blessings—why we bless certain things, why we don't bless certain things, and so on. Next question. We can see all these blessings... Yes, there are several websites that have blessings, but it's better to have it in one place that you can use on Shabbat. The internet you can't use on Shabbat. And the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch? The Kitzur Shulchan Aruch will help you with that. Next question. Anybody that didn't ask a question. You. Good. What makes a whale kosher?

1:54:56What makes a whale kosher? A whale is not kosher. When Mashiach comes, we're going to feast on the Leviathan. A whale is not kosher because, in order for a fish to be kosher, it must have fins and scales. A whale does not have fins and scales. It has fins, but no scales. Call it what you will. Mammal, non-mammal. Fins and scales. Has it, doesn't have it. It's not a kosher fish. Now, the word leviathan translates to the word whale, but it's not really a whale. It's not really a whale. It is a kosher fish that has fins and scales. It's just enormous. It's an enormous fish. It's a fish that we learn about in the Midrash in Sefer Yonah. Sefer Yonah, where Yonah was told by Hashem to go to Nineveh and warn the people to do teshuva, and he tried running away. And the story goes where he went on the boat and then got thrown off the boat and a fish swallowed him.

1:56:21So the Tanna Devei Eliyahu says that the whale that swallowed him spoke to Yonah. I don't know how they spoke. I don't think that the whale spoke Hebrew, but they spoke in a certain way that Yonah understood, through prophecy. Obviously, if you could speak to God, you could definitely speak to a whale also. So the whale says, "Wow, Yonah, you really have bad luck." And Yonah says, "Why do I have bad luck?" He says, "because today is my turn, my turn to be the dinner for the Leviathan, for Hashem's Leviathan. Today is my turn. So I'm going to go right now to be his dinner." Why? Everybody's scared. When it's the Leviathan's turn to eat, everybody's scared. You have to go. There's no running away. Today's my turn. This giant whale that swallowed Yonah, to the extent where Yonah was able to stand and walk around. It was a huge whale. He says, I'm his dinner. I'm like a little sardine to him. I'm his dinner. So Yonah says, bring me to him. I want to see him. I want to see him. Don't worry, I'll take care of you. I want to see him. And it says that Yonah...

1:57:26went in front of the Leviathan and showed the Leviathan his brit, his brit kodesh. The Leviathan got so scared he went to the other side of the world. Other side of the world. Left, the whole right. Saved the whale's life. So he says, ah, whale, now you owe me a favor. I want you to show me some stuff. He says, what do you want me to show you? He says, I want you to show me the Petach Gehenom. It says there are three entrances to Gehenom. I want you to show me. One of them is in Yerushalayim, one of them is in the desert where Korach is, and one of them is in the ocean. And I want to see the one that's in the ocean. The whale says to Yonah, okay, let me show it to you. And he showed him Gehenom. And this is all in Tanna Devei Eliyahu. Midrash Devei Eliyahu. So, whale, you got the answer, but a little extra too. Next question. Satan. What significance does it have when somebody sees deceased loved ones in their dreams? When a person sees someone who died in their dream? What significance does it have? Yeah, like I saw my grandpa.

1:58:32Depends if the person is righteous or wicked. If the person was righteous, it could potentially mean that they're bringing you good reports, that in Shamayim they're happy with you. Again, I'm assuming that this person is not talking to you, you just see them. If they were righteous... And they're coming to you in a dream. It could be they're giving you a message, either that they are happy with you and what you're doing in Shamayim. If they were wicked and they died without teshuva, then most likely they are coming to you for a favor. They're asking you to do some mitzvot to help them out. So there's a very famous story. Well, there are many famous stories, but one of these stories I heard from Rav Yagen himself that he says in the lecture. He says that there was a woman that did teshuva and her husband did not want to do teshuva. And for two years she tried convincing him to go to a seminar by Rav Yagen. And she sent Rav Yagen the money.

1:59:48said, "Okay, finally signed up. Time came up. The husband came up with an excuse. He says, 'No, no, no, I can't. I got to go back to the army. The reserves. Can't do it.' Next seminar. She calls Rav Yagen. 'I'm sorry, my husband can't do it. Please reserve us for the next one.' Some time passed. Next one. Again, another excuse. Didn't go." Next one came, didn't go. For a couple of years, this went on. The guy would always have an excuse when push came to shove, time to go to the seminar by Rabbi Nissim Yagen. He always had an excuse and didn't go. One day, Rabbi Yagen says, they had a Shabbaton, a seminar, packed, sold out. They call him at the lobby of the hotel, Kvoda Rav, There's a woman that's calling you, crying. Hello? She says, "Yeah, please, I'm so excited." "What? What happened?" He goes, "My husband agreed to come to the seminar. Please, give us a room." He says, "I'm sorry, I can't. There are no rooms." She starts, the happiness, because the husband agreed, the happiness turned into sadness. She starts hysterically crying. He goes, "No, for two years, I've been trying to convince my husband to finally go. Please, please, you can't do this to me. You've got to give me something."

2:01:11Again, he was an ish kodesh, and he couldn't take this woman's crying. He couldn't take that there was going to be a missed opportunity to help somebody do teshuva. He says, "No problem, don't worry, come, I'll give you two rooms. I'll give you my rooms." He comes and he tells his wife, "Honey, we got to get out of the rooms." She says, "Where are we going to go?" He says, "I'm going to go to the lobby and talk to the hotel manager to see what he can do for us." He goes to the hotel and says, "Listen, my rooms, they're going to be for somebody else. Do you have something else for me?" He says, "Rabbi, you know it's sold out, right?" The rabbi responds, "Yeah, I know it's sold out, but do you have something else for me? Somebody else took my room. Do you have something else for me?" The manager says, "Listen, Rabbi, because it's you, I can give you trailers. In the back, we have trailers where we put all of the broken beds, all of the broken furniture, and stuff like that. I can empty it out for you, clean it out, and put some good beds there for you to stay in the trailers." He says, "Okay." They go to the trailers together. They open it. He says, "Hundreds and hundreds of rats run out." His wife starts crying. Rabbi Yagen's wife starts crying hysterically. And then he says, "You know why the rats ran away? You know why the rats ran away from the trailer? Why they ran away?" He says, "They were scared. I'm going to make them do teshuvah. That's why they ran away. Only a rat runs away from emet."

2:02:38So now he's willing to go sleep in a trailer outside, no air conditioner, no heat, nothing. Rats were everywhere. Why? To help somebody do teshuvah. They're settling in, they call him back from the lobby. Kvodo HaRav, we're sorry, we have another phone call. Sorry to bother you, you have another phone call, the woman's crying. He picks up the phone, it's the same woman. Says, "Rav, again, I'm sorry to tell you..." But see, my husband is not going to have an opportunity to do teshuvah. He died in a car accident on the way to your seminar. Hashem saw that he didn't really want to do teshuvah. Excuse after excuse after excuse. Hashem says, someone says, I'm going to sin, then do teshuvah. I'm going to sin today, I'll do teshuvah in a few weeks. I'm going to sin today, I'll do teshuvah when I get older. Hashem says, the punishment is, you're not going to do teshuvah. I'm not going to let you. But the story doesn't end there. The Rabbi again says, time passes, a few months pass. The woman calls him again. She says,

2:03:55You need to help me. What? My husband keeps coming to me in my dream every night. Says, please help me. Please help me. What does he want from me? He says, somewhere else. He doesn't look good, but I don't know. He says, come to my office. He says, your husband is in Gehenom and he needs you to help him. So what can I do? He says, you need somebody to learn Torah for him every day. I don't have any kids that tell me the chalom. What do I do? He says you give me some money, and I'll have a Talmid Chacham learn for him every day for a year. See what happens. She gave him some money, person's gonna read, learn for him every day, read Kaddish for him every day for a year. Agreement, monthly payment, like a salary. We did it, Baruch Hashem, for some woman recently. similar situation to help the situation. Certain people learn for, certain people read Kaddish for somebody that died. You don't want just anybody reading Kaddish or learning for some loved one. You want someone that knows what they're doing. And it costs money. You want it for free? Do it yourself. You want somebody to do it? They need to get paid. It's a lot of work. Certain types of reading, you remember, and so on. Long story short,

2:05:18The woman pays the money every month after a year. She calls Rav again and again. "My husband is back in my dreams again. He was gone for the last nine months. Now he's back." He says, "Hold on a second." He calls the Avreich. "Hey, listen, what happened with the learning?" He goes, "Oh, it ended yesterday." It ended yesterday, the contract for a year. It ended yesterday. I'm not going to assume that the lady wants to continue. She said, for a year. So I stopped. He says, okay, start again. Apparently, it wasn't enough. It wasn't enough. Do you understand? Now, anyone that has a problem believing such stories will probably have a problem believing the rest of the Torah. Why? Because the Torah is completely mystical. And people who are involved in Kiruv, they help Neshamos do Teshuva, constantly see things that are out of the ordinary, that are supernatural, and so on. Obviously, some much more than others, but nonetheless, in our world, this is everyday business. It's not fun; it's not as exciting as it sounds in a story, but nonetheless, this stuff happens.

2:06:40This stuff happens, unfortunately, and people need to take their life seriously. If they take their life seriously and do the will of Hashem while they're alive, they don't have to worry about any of this stuff. But if they don't, They can just hope that somebody righteous is left after they pass away who can hopefully help them. Because there is a De'ah, there is a Posek from 800 years ago, 900 years ago, that writes that after somebody dies, you can't even help them. There is an opinion like this, that you can't even help somebody who died. So, the point is, first, help yourself. Then help the living. Hopefully, you do enough, Well, you won't have to worry about the dead, and the living won't have to worry about you after you leave this world. One more question, and then we'll call it a night. Is it in any way disrespectful to the Torah or Hashem to use the lectures to sleep? You fall asleep while listening to them?

2:07:46Is it disrespectful in any way to the Torah or Hashem to use the lectures to sleep? You fall asleep while listening to them? In any way is that disrespectful? I've had some thoughts about that and I don't know. That's a fantastic question. Can you listen to the Torah until you fall asleep, and then it's continuing to play? It's continuing to play. When I first started learning Torah, The foundation of most of my original learning, before I started learning Gemara and the books and so on, a big part of my learning was, aside from Rabbi Ephraim, was lectures. I listened to a lot of lectures. And I would listen to so many that I would do exactly that. I would have the headphones on and go to sleep with a lecture on. So I figured that even after I fall asleep, my neshama could still listen. My neshama could continue learning. And I would do this every single night. Problem is that many times I couldn't fall asleep if the shiur was interesting. And many times, Baruch Hashem, it was. Now, at some point, I had a similar question. Similar question. What's the... Is this allowed? Because, you know, you go to sleep. Torah, aren't you supposed to have a certain amount of kavod? So Rabbi Ephraim says in the Gemara...

2:09:10That says, what is the dew? The dew, there's a dew that covered the manna. The manna bread. A special dew that, when the manna fell on the earth, prevented bugs from hitting it and kept it clean and so on. The special, beautiful dew that covered it, which you would have to open in order to get the manna from there. It says that at the time of Mashiach, we're going to have similar things. So, what is the dew from? What is Hashem's special dew? Fools will find this disgusting. The righteous will find this beautiful. It says the dew is made, the dew that Hashem favors. The dew that Hashem beautifies. The dew that Hashem thinks is the best thing in the world. is the spit that comes out of the mouth of a Talmid Chacham who learns Torah and falls asleep on his Gemara because he's so tired. It's 3 o'clock in the morning, and a little spit, a little drool, comes out of his mouth. Hashem says, "That I want. Why? That's a holy spit. I like that. I want to take it to Shamayim and make dew out of it."

2:10:30So when a person learns Torah and loves Torah, loves Torah so much, he doesn't even want to go to sleep. But he just has to because he's got work tomorrow. He has to because he's got to pray tomorrow. He has to because he's got life tomorrow. But he doesn't want to leave the Torah. I want to listen all the time, Hashem. I want to listen all the time, Hashem. What's better than You, Hashem? All day I talk about Your Torah. What's better than You? Nothing. All day I tell You. A person practices this by listening to Torah all day, reading books, and listening to Torah lectures. It's the best thing in the world. The best thing in the world. The best thing in the world to seriously learn to the extent where you are energy-less. That's the best thing. But it requires mesirat nefesh. Some of the sages would do a lot of different things in order to keep themselves up, in order not to sleep. The Maharsha, the Maharsha HaKadosh, grew very, very long hair specifically for this purpose. He grew it long enough so that he could tie it to the walls, to the chandelier. So as soon as his head fell asleep, his hair would pull, and he'd wake up, allowing him to continue learning for longer. Now, we laugh because it's funny to us; it's crazy, right? But that's why the Maharsha is on every page of the Gemara, and we're not.

2:11:55Every page in the Gemara has the Maharsha in it. You cannot understand the Gemara without the Maharsha. You can't understand anything. You don't know Aleph Bet without the Maharsha. Why? He knew what Torah was, and he knew what sleep was. He said sleep does not mean anything. Nobody goes to Gan Eden for sleeping. But staying up late at night to learn Torah like you're supposed to, for that you're going to go to Gan Eden. Last question, last question. You guys have good questions today. Good questions. Anything else? We're finished? We know the rest of the Torah? Okay, I'll get you. I know some of you guys are tired. We learned well today. Next shiur is going to be on Sunday. One more? No? I didn't say the... I'm not sure I'm asking you this because... Oh, the rest of the questions you were sure. It seems like a lot of people are gravitating towards Judaism more than ever before. I'll make this a short answer. More than ever before. Is that right? More people want Torah, yes. What's happening? Is it something to do with the Mashiach coming? Gemara. The question is, how come so many people are driven more towards Judaism now? Gemara, Masechet Avodah Zarah.

2:13:14Page 3b beginning 4a says, before Mashiach comes, it is a prophecy there will be many, many converts, meaning many people among the nations will suddenly want Torah, will suddenly want mitzvot. Even the nation of Israel is going to be hungry and thirsty, but not hungry and thirsty for food—hungry and thirsty for Torah. There's going to be spiritual hunger in the world. Why? Because the neshamah knows, this is our last chance. It's our last chance. So each one of us is being given our last chance, a fair chance, and b'ezrat Hashem, we all take advantage of that chance to publicize Hashem's name, to live by His will, do what He says, and to have His Torah in our mouths. Baruch Adonai le'olam. Amen ve'amen.