Secular vs. Religious Life at Ohr Chana Jewish Institute of Queens

0:14in Florida, although we're giving him some peace from the hot sun, to really share with him some words of inspiration, as we are only a few days away from Matan Torah, where we're able to finally get to the level of receiving the Torah, and once again we should feel that way as well, that as we get ready for such a pinnacle of our year to work on our and work on our observance of since Pesach to finally be able to accept over once again fully with full heart and a full mind get ready for such a pinnacle of our year to work on our observance since Pesach to finally be able to accept once again fully with a full heart and a full mind and, of course, a full neshamah that is able to connect with us. On that note, we're going to be hopefully once again hosting the older division

1:14uh... uh... uh... both on Sunday and Monday to the Two Gardens area. We will be hosting girls throughout the day where I live, and we'll just kind of do the sign-up sheet so I know how many girls are there for us. Okay? Ready? Yeah. B'Shem Hashem, let's do it and succeed. First of all, thank you very much for having me. It's a big kavod. It's a big zechut to be here. We try to go anywhere and everywhere that Hashem sends us to help people see light, see the clear truth for what it is. And the reason why is because this generation, like every generation before it, has a big yetzer hara.

2:39But the Gemara says that the yetzer hara has seven names. In reality, the yetzer hara has a lot more names than seven. There are other places where you see that it has more names than seven. So what is the Gemara trying to teach us? Trying to teach us that the yetzer hara is going to come to you in every single direction: right, left, up, down. Sometimes your religious cousin that goes off the derech all of a sudden wants you to go off the derech. Sometimes, you know, the news that's supposed to be good news and kosher news becomes bad news. Sometimes the book that you thought was a good book ends up being by not such a good author. You know, the yetzer hara comes in different ways to confuse us and to make us think that maybe... we, the ones that are trying to keep Torah and mitzvot, should be jealous of the ones that are not keeping Torah and mitzvot. So the Mesilat Yesharim says that if you ever want to learn Torah, you want to learn Torah also from a baal teshuva. Why do you want to learn Torah from a baal teshuva? Technically, if somebody was religious their whole life, they learned Torah their whole life, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years.

3:51Why shouldn't you just focus on that? Why should you learn Torah from somebody that used to be a rasha? Used to be not such a good person, according to Hashem's definition. According to regular people's definition, he could be a wonderful person. But according to Hashem's definition, he wasn't exactly an angel. Because the Mesilat Yesharim says, if a person already did teshuva, that means that he can tell you about the yetzer hara that the religious guy from birth is not going to be able to tell you, because he never met him. He never met the yetzer hara of Wall Street because he was never there. So, over the last six or so years that we've been giving shiurim all over the world, I have lived in Florida for the last five years. There's nothing to be jealous about. It's always hot, and there's an enormous amount of yetzer hara over there for people. So, my two destinations are either the Beit Knesset or my house. If you want to stay kosher, that's the only way to be over there. Because as soon as you go outside, Hashem, let's say, every yetzer hara known to man shows up. I tell people I feel bad for people that have to be outside, work outside, because sometimes people leave the house and they forget their clothes at home. I told people, "Listen, if you ever want to get into a good business in New York and in Florida, there's a very good business opportunity: sell people clothes and encourage them to wear it. Today, people forget to wear their clothes."

5:17Anyway, over the last six years, we've been giving shiurim in Florida, California, New York, Arizona, and Eretz Yisrael—everywhere and anywhere that someone is willing to listen to the Torah. Most people that get to know us usually do so through our personal story. Personal stories are what we'll try to go over a little bit today to give you a bit of encouragement but also to provide you with some insight on of why there's absolutely nothing to even think that's better on the other side. Because at your age, I remember, a long time ago, that if somebody wanted to start doing teshuva, or somebody wanted to keep mitzvot, somebody wanted to go and start learning Torah at 16, 17, 18 years old, you always ask them, why? Like, why would you do it? Why wouldn't you want to go and do this, this, and that? Because the reality is that people who are not religious don't know the privilege of learning Torah each day and being an Eved Hashem. Now, my life wasn't like this for most of my life. I was born in Israel. I came to the United States when I was 10 years old. In Israel, we went to what's called a Masorti school.

6:32Masorti means that we keep some mitzvot, and we don't keep some mitzvot. That's really what it means. Every semester, they use a masor. Masor in Hebrew means a saw. Every semester, they cut a few more mitzvot from the Torah. Whatever they like, they keep. Whatever they don't like, they throw away. That's what happens, unfortunately. So we went to a Masorti school. In school, you wear a kippah. At home, you don't wear a kippah. So we came here, we thought that, you know, here it's called traditional. So we came here, we figured we're traditional, you know, we'll do kiddush, but as soon as we finish kiddush, we watch TV. You know, we go to the Beit Knesset on Yom Kippur, but as soon as the fast is over, we're back to regular life as if nothing happened. Like we did Teshuvah for one day, the rest of the year, we're not even thinking about Teshuvah. So we came to the U.S. almost 30 years ago; I was 10 years old. Since I didn't speak English, they thought I was retarded, so they put me in special ed. No, really, they really did. They put me in special ed. And one kid in my class in sixth grade had a beard. I thought he was at least 30 years old. And by seventh grade, one of my teachers...

7:39My math teacher told me, "Did you really do that badly in all your other classes that you're here with the rest of these kids?" I said, "No, no, actually I'm getting A's everywhere else." He said, "So why are you here?" I said, "Because the system thinks that if you don't speak English, that means you're mentally deficient." He said, "But you speak English fine." I said, "Yeah, but when I first came to the country two years ago, I only knew ABC because it was on a cereal box." So, Baruch Hashem, I worked up the ladder. By eighth grade, I was already taking advanced placement classes in high school. I was a very good student. I was taking college courses already. I was an athlete also. I played football. But as far as Avodat Hashem, as far as being a Jew, that was only a few times a year. Whenever there was a holiday, we'd keep it, at least to the best of our ability. We'd eat matzah on Pesach. We'd fast on Yom Kippur. On Rosh Hashanah, we didn't really do very much, but that was a vacation from school, so that was fun. And that was our Judaism. Now, what most people don't know is that

8:48When our Chachamim say something, they're serious. They're not giving any advice lightly. So the Chachamim say that there's something called Yeridat HaDorot, that each generation is lower in Kedusha than the one before it. So if the grandparents were Talmidei Chachamim, Once the parents are slightly less, the kids are going to be slightly less. If the grandparents talk business on Shabbat, they keep Shabbat. They don't drive on Shabbat, but they talk a little bit of business. They tell each other, "Listen, you know this building that I bought? You know this diamond that I bought?" They talk business, but they don't actually do business. By the time it gets to the grandkid, the kid already does business on Shabbat. That's how it works, unfortunately. My parents did not know that this is how it's going to work. So they sent us to public school, and little by little, we became like everybody else. We became "green." Now, "green" is not a derogatory word about non-Jews.

9:53Because "goy" means "nation," even Am Yisrael is called a nation. The only difference is in the Torah. HaKadosh Baruch Hu says to Am Yisrael, "You are going to be to Me a great kadosh." There's the goy and there is the great kadosh. There are the nations, but then there is the holy nation. What distinguishes the nation from the holy nation? The holy nation has to keep six hundred and twenty mitzvot: six hundred and thirteen from the Torah and seven from the rabbis. The non-Jews, the regular nations, they're fine. They have seven Noahide laws. They have much less. So they're not as holy as you. That's as simple as it gets. It's like, for example, you have an astronaut that went to school for many years just to be an astronaut and one day be in space. And then there's the janitor. They're both perfectly fine people, but the astronaut has a higher responsibility. That's the difference between Jews and non-Jews. The problem is that the astronaut, if he becomes an astronaut, he maybe gets a bigger salary. But if he doesn't want to be an astronaut, there's no risk. There's nothing, no downside. He could be anything he wants. He could be a plumber. He could be a Wall Street banker. He could be anything he wants. A Jew, Rav Dessler, alav ha-shalom, says in Michtav Me'Eliyahu, a Jew doesn't have another option. A Jew is either a good Jew or a bad Jew.

11:06A Jew doesn't have the option of being a goy. He could be treated like one in Heaven, meaning that if he acts like one and doesn't keep mitzvot, in Shamayim they're going to say, "Listen, you have a decree that you are going to be treated like that." It's not good. Not a good report card. But... If he wants to be a good Jew, if he wants to be a holy Jew, then he could bring light to the nations. So we didn't know any of this stuff. By the time I was 17, I went to college. I went to Binghamton University. I had a 3.9 GPA. I did very well in school. I liked learning, I liked studying, but I didn't want to be in school for 100 years. So I decided to drop out of Binghamton University. The reason why is because I realized that I didn't want to be a doctor or a lawyer. And I didn't want to be in school for many years. I wanted to make money, and already as a kid, when I was 11 or 12 years old, I had already started working. By the time I was 17, I was selling all types of electronics and was already making money. So, going to college and being surrounded by a bunch of guys that do drugs all day, in hopes that maybe by the fourth year they'll pick a major, didn't really seem like fun to me. So I decided to go back into the business world and eventually joined a Wall Street firm to become a stockbroker. Now...

12:24Even though we weren't religious, it didn't mean that we were crooks. So when I saw the first couple of firms that I worked for, within a matter of a couple of months, I realized there's something shady about this operation. They're doing something wrong. So I left those places and eventually went to a big firm. And I started working there. The problem is, on Wall Street, there's no middle class; it's either you're extremely successful, or you're as poor as dirt. There's nothing in the middle. There's nobody that's just making it. It's either you're really, really doing well, or you're hoping to survive this month. And that's where I was in the beginning. I was working for other people, trying to do the best I can to learn the business, to make some money, and hopefully one day become just like them. This took me about three years. So for the first three years, I did what's called paying your dues, meaning you're pretty much just working for almost nothing, making everybody else rich except yourself. After three years, the owner of the branch said, "Okay, you know what, you can go on your own and start your own book of business, your own clients."

13:31Just make sure that you pay the rent and all the bills and all the fees for the office. I said, "How much is that?" He said, "It's four thousand dollars a month. Do you have it?" I said, "I have about four dollars. About four dollars." So he said to me, "How are you going to pay me the four thousand dollars in a month?" I said, "I don't know, but if I have to, I'll come up with the money, and..." So, for the first several months, literally every single penny that I made from these new clients went to him. I also got a second job. I would work to make some extra money. For the first six months, I was literally as poor as dirt. I would have to borrow a dollar from this guy named Dimitri every day so I could buy a donut and coffee, because that was what I could afford to eat for the day. This was about six months. Each day I would have to sneak on a bus in order to get to Manhattan, an hour and a half each way. I would get to the office somewhere around 6:30 or 7 o'clock in the morning, finish the day at around 1 o'clock in the morning because that was the last bus. I would get home by around 2:30, sleep for a couple of hours, and do it all over again the next day. That was for the first six months, and this is already three years into the business. I

14:51During this time, it was a very difficult economy because the market crashed, and plus, September 11th happened. So it wasn't exactly the best time to convince people to invest in the stock market. People were jumping out of windows; people weren't exactly happy about their financial advisors. But for me, I saw it as an opportunity, and the reason why is because, since I didn't really have any clients, nobody hated me, but everybody hated their broker. Everybody hated their guy, so I was able to convince them to start doing business with me. Their broker was hiding from anything their clients. I was trying to capture clients and, little by little, getting them to do a little business with me. I started making them some money, and they became very happy. By the time it got to November of 2002, just a year after I started becoming an independent broker, I broke a company record and made $116,000 in one month. For me, this was like all the money in the world. I took of it. I bought my parents a house. The rest of it, I put a deposit on getting myself an apartment, renting an apartment in Manhattan so I wouldn't have to spend three or four hours a day commuting. I continued my life, but from that point on, life was never the same because all the clients that I'd been getting over the last year were very happy. They made money with me, so they started sending me their friends.

16:11By the time I got to August of 2003, just about a year later, I became the number three top-producing broker in the entire country for the company, which had about 5,000 people. The average person on that list had been in the business for 25 to 30 years. I was only in it for a couple of years. So at that moment, I decided that it was time for me to go and start my own company. So I started hiring a bunch of people, not that much older than you—18, 19, 20-year-olds, 21-year-olds, some a little older, but most of them were very, very young. Like-minded people that wanted to work, wanted to make some money, had some analysts, had some brokers, salesmen. I trained over 135 people to become good salesmen throughout my career. And all this time, just my top priority was business. I figured that I'm gonna become the next Bill Gates. I'm gonna become somebody that's gonna do something good in the world—build buildings, build empires, build bridges, do something useful and... Now, I didn't really care for money. I just liked making it. So when people come to me and ask me for money, I always gave it to them without really thinking. I have a policy to this day, baruch Hashem. Anytime somebody comes to me and they're in need, I take whatever is the first bill in my pocket and give it to them. Sometimes it's a dollar bill, sometimes it's a hundred, sometimes it's five. It doesn't make a difference. Whatever it is, that's how I give it. For my whole life, that's the way it's been. Now, this is very easy when all you have is dollar bills and...

17:34But it becomes a little more difficult for people if you only have $100 bills. But if you realize that money is just a tool, similar to a hammer, it doesn't mean much. So it's easy to give. So when people come to my office, different rabbis, different communities, Jewish communities will come, ask for money. It was very easy for me to give because, again, I like making it, not necessarily having it. built a company, started doing extremely well, got to a point where, on a bad month where we barely worked—maybe if I went on vacation for a few weeks and I only worked a few days—I’d still make a few hundred thousand dollars. By May of 2006, I broke my own record and made $1.6 million for one month. Really, it was one day. Really, all of it was one day. But we counted it for the whole month because technically I got paid at the end of the month. At that point, money became simply nothing. It just became like sand—meaningless. Whatever you want, you buy. You don't even look at the price. You need something, you just press the button and it comes. You go to a store, you don't look at the prices like people who go and look at price tags. "Oh, how much is this? Can you get a discount?" You don't. You just buy it. Sometimes, I take my little brother, who's not so little anymore, shopping and...

18:48He liked electronics. I would take him to all these electronics stores. In those days, there was a store called Sharper Image. I don't know if they're still in business. I don't think they are. And a few other stores that he liked. And I'd take him and say, okay, so what do you want? And he said, I don't know. Which one do I pick? I said, just pick everything. So as soon as he picked something, we just started taking a bunch of it. Just take doubles, three times, four times. Why? Because maybe you'll like it. Have a few of it. That's how little money meant. Simply, if it makes you happy, go buy whatever you want. The problem is that HaKadosh Baruch Hu gave you a neshamah. And that neshamah does not become happy with money. In fact, the more connected you are to money and material, the sadder the neshamah becomes. And the reason why is because the neshamah knows that you're making a mistake. A very, very serious mistake. So that's why you see, for example, the U.S. government did a study a few years ago, I believe it was 2017, and they researched suicide—people that commit suicide. They found that over 71% of people that kill themselves and decide that there's nothing to live for are middle and upper-class people, meaning that suicide and depression is a rich person's problem. Poor people don't do it as often.

20:04Now, I could explain it, by the way. Let's say, why is it that the rich person is much more likely to become depressed than the poor person? Because the rich person figures that he could buy whatever he wants, and he's still not happy. So now he doesn't know what to do. The poor guy always has hope. He says, listen, I'm unhappy now, but wait till I win the lotto. Then I'll be happy. He always has this fake dream that one day he's going to have a lot of money and that's going to make him happy. So, he has some hope. Reality is that neither one of them is in the right direction. So what happened to me is that I started trying, looking for different hobbies, different things to do. I like to gamble; I like to do all types of things that would use my mind. I never did drugs or anything like that. But I would do anything that would stimulate my mind, to read all types of philosophical books, all types of psychological books, study different subjects. But even this never made me happy. Now, so at that point, I figured maybe I should work on my health. I have all the money in the world.

21:05I went on vacation to Las Vegas for two months. I tried all the different things that people like to do. I'm still unhappy. So maybe if I became a little healthier, that means that I'll be happier. So in November of 2006, I decided that it's time for me to have surgery, an elective surgery for something that annoyed me twice a year. It wasn't a heart problem. It wasn't a brain problem. It wasn't even a problem. It was just something that annoyed me that two-thirds of the population have called hemorrhoids. Now, it's not really a big deal, and the reality is that it's a very common issue among many people. It's an everyday conversation. I went to a doctor, and the doctor said, "Listen, I've been doing this for 20 years. It's not a problem at all. You come to the doctor, you feel a little uncomfortable for a couple of days," which, by the way, means pain and you go back to work. I said, "How long is it am I gonna be out of work?" He's like, "Are you gonna come to have the surgery on Wednesday? You're gonna be back to work on Monday." So I figured at this point, I'm making about $3,000 an hour. So how much is surgery really gonna cost me? I start doing the math and say, "You know what? Okay, let's do it. It's like a vacation." So now I thought that I'm gonna get rid of this problem, so that way I'm not even going to be annoyed twice a year. That was my first mistake.

22:26I go to the surgery and I don't wake up the same. Something went wrong in the surgery. Now, for anyone that's asking what went wrong, we are now almost 14 years, 13 and a half years after the surgery, and they still haven't figured it out. But I'll give you some details of what happened. When I woke up from the surgery, I was screaming and yelling, Because I felt as if somebody was electrocuting me while they were cutting me open over and over again. But not cutting me open just in that part of the body, but the entire body. Simply everything, while being electrocuted. So I asked them to kill me. I asked them to relieve me of my misery. My wife and my mom were crying hysterically right next to me. I asked them, please do me a favor and kill me. They didn't want to listen, unfortunately. And the doctors have no idea what's going on. They've never seen such a thing before. They started giving me morphine to calm my body down. My body rejects it. It doesn't work. Then they asked my wife, "Is he a drug addict?" And she says, "No, he's actually anti-drugs. He sends some of his employees that have drug problems to rehab because he hates drugs so much." So the doctor says, "So how come his body's not accepting it?" She says to him, "You're the doctor."

23:51So they give me more morphine. It doesn't work. They give me more morphine. It doesn't work. They give me more morphine. Five different doses of morphine, and then they say to my wife, "Ma'am, we're sorry. We gave him the most amount of morphine legally allowed. Everybody else would have already died two dosages ago. If it doesn't work by now, there's nothing we can do." Hashem had mercy on me, and it worked, but only for a short period of time. My body calmed down enough to give these doctors the genius idea: "Let's get him out of here." So they said, "Sir, you're perfectly fine. Something went wrong, but obviously you're calmed down right now. So just go home, relax. It's all behind you." I said to myself, "Well, I suffered so much over this last hour or two hours, what seemed like a lifetime. It's calm. I feel fine. I can walk. Okay. See you guys later." What Gehenom looks like. This is what hell looks like. Okay, so at least I have a nice visual. We leave and go on the way home. We pick up some shawarma, and we get to the house. I lived in Manhattan, in Battery Park City, on the 19th floor over there, looking at the Hudson River. We had our sandwiches. I told everybody, "Thank you, everybody, for coming. It was an adventure, but I'm going to sleep now. See you tomorrow."

25:17Went to sleep and I woke up about 45 minutes later because the morphine wore off. But this time, the screaming didn't stop. It didn't stop after an hour. It didn't stop after two hours. It didn't stop after ten pills of painkillers. It didn't stop after 20 pills of painkillers. It didn't stop after 50 pills of painkillers. It just didn't stop for 62 days. Now, when you're in that much pain, you can't sleep. And when you can't sleep, you start dying, slowly and viciously. And the only thing that would calm me down was creating different pain. So I would put boiling water on different parts of my body, which could create different pain in order to numb this pain. And that would give me enough rest that I would sleep for 15 minutes. then wake up in massive pain again and scream and yell and eventually it would work again. Over and over again, after doing this for a few days and not being able to sleep for more than 15 minutes, your body starts to fail. And when your body starts to fail, it's not like the movies or some fairy tale story; it doesn't look good. So you start undoing what's supposed to be done in a good way.

26:38things that are supposed to stay in your body start leaving your body. For example, blood. Blood, as long as it's inside your body, is a good sign. Once it starts leaving your body, it's not usually a good sign, especially if it starts leaving through your eyes. So, I started bleeding from every hole in my body. I'm sorry for being graphic, but this just gives you an idea of what it means to be really sick. So everybody, when they say, after you go to the bathroom, you thank Hashem for being healthy, that's what you're thanking Him for. And I brought you a bunch of free posters in the back, along with many CDs, that could remind you every day that you're able to go to the bathroom, every day that you're able to be healthy, to thank Hashem for being healthy. Because not being healthy is not a good look. So, everything that could fail, fails. My liver starts failing, my eyes start bleeding, my ears start getting infected, I'm not able to walk. I'm barely able to speak, life is hell. I go to the hospital every other day; they make it worse than what it was. Long story short, this continues for a couple of months. After a couple of months, the pain starts subsiding.

27:48I started going back to my life now. I still have to take painkillers, about 20 to 25 a day, but nonetheless, it's much better than the hell I was living in for the last couple of months. At this point, I figured that I have bad luck but also good luck; bad luck that the whole thing happened to me, but good luck that it's better now. Okay, I have some pain, but it's much better than before. So you look at life that way. I'm not thinking, "Oh, do I have to do this?" or "Oh, maybe I should start praying every day," or "Oh, maybe I should start keeping Shabbat." None of this ever came to my mind. The reason why is because I had different rabbis come to my office every week, three times a week. At this point, I figured that I have bad luck but also good luck; bad luck that the whole thing happened to me, but good luck that it's better now. Okay, I have some pain, but it's much better than before. So you look at life that way. I'm not thinking, "Oh, do I have to do this?" or "Oh, maybe I should start praying every day," or "Oh, maybe I should start keeping Shabbat." None of this ever came to my mind. The reason why is because I had different rabbis come to my office every week, three times a week. Every week, three different types of rabbis would come to my office. They would ask me for tzedakah. I gave them tzedakah. Sometimes I paid their mortgage. Sometimes I paid their rent. Sometimes I paid for camp. Sometimes I paid for something that I didn't even know what it was. But every time they came, I gave them money. I had it. They needed it. Baruch Hashem, why not? Not one time did anybody ever say, "By the way, Yaron, maybe you should start keeping Shabbat." "By the way, Yaron, maybe you should start keeping kosher."

28:53Not only in the house, outside the house also. You know, because Hashem is inside the house and outside the house. You know, some people, they keep kosher, but they keep kosher only inside the house. As soon as they go outside, they start eating treif. Or they say, no, no, I only eat salads in non-kosher places. I only eat salads in non-kosher places. They think that's okay. By the way, you eat salads in non-kosher places, you should do, not borei pri ha-adamah, but shehakol. Why shehakol? Because there's bugs. The bugs in the salad, that's shehakol. That's not from ha-adamah. Because the non-Jews do not have to wash their vegetables like we do. So if you eat salad in a non-kosher place, there's very likely two, three, four, five hundred different bugs that went in there. For them, it's not a problem. Some of them eat bugs on purpose. You go to Chinatown, you have entire markets. They sell you all types of cockroaches and things like that. That's not a problem for them. No, I'm serious. Some people, that's what they like. That's their diet. They say it's protein.

29:54There's actually a new chocolate they sell in America. They call it organic. Why organic? It's made from cockroaches. For them, it's okay. For us, it's not okay. Am Yisrael is not allowed to eat stuff like this. Now... This is a reality. This doesn't make you good or bad. This is the difference. Hashem says Jews are not allowed to eat bugs; non-Jews can eat bugs, eat whatever you want as long as it's not alive. That's one of the seven Noahide laws: as long as it's not alive, don't eat it. Don't be vicious and eat the animal while it's still alive. As long as it's not alive, eat whatever you want. Jews, you can't eat whatever you want. It has to have split hooves and chew its cud if it's an animal. If it's a fish, it has to have fins and scales, and so on and so forth. So now... Have all these different rabbis, all these different religious people, come to my office on a regular basis, and not a single person ever tells me, "Maybe you should change your life. Maybe you should do this. Maybe you should do that." So it never came to my mind that maybe I should change my life. I figured that I'm fine. I'm generous. I help people that need help—a perfectly fine person with bad luck.

31:02So Hashem didn't agree with me. How do I know? Because nine months later, after this nightmarish surgery, I have a new pain. Different body part. Back of my leg. But this pain is not like a regular pain. In the beginning, I thought I pulled a muscle. By the next day, I couldn't walk. By the next day, I was in such massive pain, I had to go to the emergency room. And then they told me, we have good news and bad news. I said, okay, what's the good news? He said, the good news is you're not dead. Okay, thanks. I kind of knew that without you, but okay, fine. I said, what's the bad news? He said, you're probably going to be dead in an hour if you don't do a surgery. I said, what happened? He said, you have an infection that's about to explode inside two muscles. If it explodes, it's going to go into your blood system. Within an hour, you're dead. said, "Okay, so that doesn't really leave me with many choices, does it?" They didn't find me so funny though. Anyway, we had a surgery. This surgery was much more difficult than the first one because here I had to stay in the intensive care unit for three weeks. Now, an intensive care unit is pretty much where it's 50-50 if you're gonna make it. My father, God bless him, was in an intensive care unit for the last few days. He had a mini-stroke, but Baruch Hashem, he's doing better and

32:25It's not a fun place. When I went to visit him last night, you know, it brings back memories of things that you don't want to remember, but you have to. So, I was in the intensive care unit, with morphine constantly connected to me, and all types of doctors giving me shots. You're not allowed to sleep for more than an hour because they have to do something. After a month or so, a month and a half of this, they released me from the hospital. I go back home. The recovery is very difficult, but I... Again, I just figure I have bad luck. Hashem didn't agree. Six months later, new pain, new infection, different body part. I'm back in the hospital. They said, "We have good news and bad news." I said, "Ah, forget the good news and bad news. Just do the surgery. I know your story already." I was like, "Oh, you heard this before?" They said, "I have to have a surgery, don't I?" They said, "Immediately." Okay, they put you to sleep, have another surgery, you wake up not knowing where you are, you're connected to all types of tubes, oxygen, not so much fun. Almost another month of this stuff. Go back home, same unlucky person, try to go back to work, try to go back to making money. Three months later, I'm back in the hospital. Good news and bad news.

33:56Another surgery. One month later, another surgery. Another month later, another surgery. And then it gets to a point where I'm in a doctor's office or a hospital every single week. I'm in pain 24 hours a day. No Shabbat for the pain. No Shabbat for me either. No break for the pain. No break for me either. 24 hours a day. Once in a while, the pain subsides for a few days or even a few weeks. But then it comes back with a vengeance. And life turns upside down when you're not able to work. You're not able to make money. The business starts going down. The people that I thought were my friends become enemies. They start taking my company down, start stealing stuff, start stealing clients. All types of wonderful things. This company that at one point was worth $45 million literally becomes ashes. Somebody wanted to buy the company. it ended up, the deal ended up going sour as the market crashed and my life crashed. Literally, everything that I used to touch that used to turn to gold is now going back from turning gold back to ashes. Everything fails. I'm losing money faster than I made it. I

35:14Spending every penny that I have on different types of doctors, and over the next seven years, I'll go to over 50 different doctors just to try to diagnose the problem. Forget about curing it, just figure out what happened. Why can't I walk? Why can't I function? Why am I constantly in pain in different body parts that have no association whatsoever with the original body part? Like, why is my leg numb? Why does my leg all of a sudden get shooting pain? Why does my arm hurt? They're not connected to that body part. No one can explain it. I start becoming part of a study as part of a research. They started investigating my body, giving me different types of medicine just to see what works. Some of it is free because they're benefiting from the study; some of it I have to pay for. Since I had money, I was willing to try everything. Trust me when I tell you, when you're sick and you're in pain, money becomes literally worthless. During this time, there wasn't a thought in my mind about, "Oh, I wish I was successful."

36:23I wish I became richer. Oh, I wish that, you know, I had more buildings. None of this stuff actually matters. The only thing I wish is, I wish I was normal. I wish that I didn't scream and yell every time I woke up or every time I moved, and it became very uncomfortable to be next to me. Because literally, you'd sit next to me, we're sitting together, everything is calm, and all of a sudden, I'm screaming and yelling out of nowhere for no reason. Because I have pain, but you can't see the pain. It's not like there's blood gushing out. It's just a lot of pain, and you can't see it, and it becomes very uncomfortable for people. Similar to some of the things that I say to you that are uncomfortable to hear, but that's reality. Life is not always comfortable. So now I get to a point where life becomes very meaningless to me, and I start praying to Hashem, and I say, "I know I have no solution from doctors and..." What do I do? So my mom gave me some Tehillim books and told me, "Why don't you read this?" I tried it a few times; it didn't really work for me. Somebody told me, "Why don't you go to the shiur Torah of such-and-such rabbi?" I tried going to the shiur Torah. I'd go there at nine o'clock at night. Five minutes later, I'd fall asleep. By the time I woke up, the shiur was over. Couldn't connect, couldn't do it. I tried all types of things, but I thought that maybe there’s some type of magic potion and...

37:46that if I do something, then it'll work. So maybe if I donate a lot of money, that'll work. So I donated a Sefer Torah. We had a Sefer Torah made in Eretz Yisrael. Cost like $60,000, $70,000. I figured, oh, I bought a Sefer Torah. This is a great thing. It's a big Kiddush Hashem, big mitzvah. That should solve my pain. It got much worse. Nothing changed. I said, okay, so maybe if I start putting tefillin on. Put tefillin on a few times a week. Put tefillin on. That should work. I do that. Nothing changed. Thank you. Excuse me. Nothing changed. In fact, it got worse. Everything I do keeps getting worse. And the reason is, Rabotai, because HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, "You be holy because I am holy." Being holy is not a magic potion. Being holy is not something you just press a button and you become holy. If a person touches a Sefer Torah, he doesn't become holy. The Sefer Torah is holy. A person stays the same. If he was holy before, he remains holy. If he's not holy, he remains not holy. The Sefer Torah does not make a person holy. Rav Ovadia Yosef, zatzal, said that if you look at tumah and impurity, if a person is holy or just neutral, if that even exists, and...

39:12touches something tamei, he touches tumah, he becomes not pure, he becomes impure. Meaning that to become impure, to become defiled according to the Torah, is very easy. If a person touches a dead body and Something that's impure becomes impure, but to become holy, you can't just do it by touching something. Why? Because like it says in the book, "Kedoshim Tihyu Ki Kadosh Ani"—you be holy because I am holy. Meaning, you have to raise yourself and act like Hashem. Be generous like Hashem, be forgiving like Hashem, be good like Hashem. Follow the Torah like Hashem, then you'll be holy just like Hashem. But just to think that just because you were born Jewish, or you were born a woman, or you were born a man, or you were born some way or another, that's going to make you holy by default? Absolutely not. It doesn't make you. Why? Because you could be a good Jew, you could be a bad Jew. You could be a good non-Jew, you could be a bad non-Jew. Simple. You want to be holy? You have to work on it.

40:15There's no easy get-out-of-jail-free card where you can just press a button and all of a sudden everything works. So that's the part I never knew. I thought that if I just did one big act, it was going to work. It didn't work. One day, my mom sees me and she realizes that I'm becoming suicidal. I'm not really healthy psychologically or physically. She starts calling different rabbis all over the world, trying to ask for brachot. She goes to Eretz Yisrael, talks to different rabbis. She starts making different phone calls, and one day, she has a little book of different rabbis' phone numbers from all over the place. She starts calling them, one number after another. For an hour and a half, nobody picks up. It seems like all the rabbis went on vacation. Eventually, after an hour and a half, she calls a number in Eretz Yisrael, and a woman picks up. She asks, "Is Rabbi so-and-so there?" and the woman says, "I'm sorry, but it's the wrong number." Now my mom, after trying to get a rabbi on the phone just for a simple bracha for almost two hours, finally got to somebody, but it's the wrong number. She breaks down. She starts crying hysterically to this strange woman. Now, HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, "I'm gonna give you tests because you need to become holy; you need to get to a higher level, and you need to overcome these tests in order to do that. But I'm not gonna break you." I

41:42i'm only gonna give you tests you can handle, and as soon as you're at that breaking point, that's when I'll come to save you. My mom was getting to that breaking point. She starts crying hysterically to a strange woman, and Hashem shows up on the spot. That strange woman wasn't so strange after all, because she identified my mom's voice and said, "Doris," which is my mom's name. My mom is shocked. She stops crying immediately. She says, "Who are you? How do you know my name?" She says, "It's Penina, your niece." Says Penina, "How did I get to you? I don't have your phone number, and we've never ever talked on the phone." She says, "I don't know how you got to me, but if you got to me, that means that Hashem wants us to talk." She was the only part of our entire family on both sides who is actually religious. She says, "Why are you crying?" She's listening, "My son, everybody knows he's not doing good. Well, truth is, he's doing worse than not good. He's dying." I need somebody to help him. I want to talk to some big rabbi, somebody. She says, why don't you talk to my brother, Rav Efraim? He lives a couple of buildings away from Rav Ovadia. At the time, Rav Ovadia was still alive. Maybe you could talk to the Rav. Maybe you could do something. Call him. She says, I'll talk to him. She says, of course I'll talk to you. You're Aunt Doris from America. You know, of course I'll talk to you. So she calls Rav Efraim. Rav Efraim is in a kollel. He calls her back.

43:11The other five and I have almost a ten-year difference between us. So when we left America, when we left Israel, I didn't even know who he was. He was a baby. So I never knew he existed. So he talks to my mom within a matter of minutes. He asks my mom, "Can I just speak to him directly?" She says, "I don't think so." "Why not?" He says, "Because he doesn't want to speak to anybody anymore." At that very moment that she says he doesn't speak to anybody, I only found this out, obviously, later. At that very moment, I decided, out of the blue, to call my mom on the other line. I call my mom and I hear her crying hysterically. I ask her, "Why are you crying?" and she says, "Talk to him, talk to him." I said, "To who?" She says, "Rabbi Ephraim." I said, "Who's Ephraim and why is he making you cry, this guy?" So she says to me, "Oh, it's your cousin. He's a tzaddik. He's a this, he's a that." I said, "Okay, listen, if it's going to stop you from crying, have him call me. I'll talk to whoever you want. Just stop crying for heaven's sake." So Rabbi Ephraim calls me. And right off the bat, he asks me, "Do you like stories?" I said, "Sure, why not?" He said, "I'll tell you a story." And he tells me the story of Yehuda and Tamar.

44:26Now, for years, I never knew why he picked this story out of all the stories in the world. But the Gemara in Masechet Megillah says that it took Am Yisrael 40 years to understand what Moshe Rabbeinu said to them. They understood plainly what he said. The deeper message took them 40 years until they got to the end of the desert to finally understand. From there, we learned that sometimes it’s going to take us 40 years to truly understand what the rabbi's message really is. That’s why, to this day, for example, people are still learning from the Rebbe's messages from 30 years ago. I... The message never changed. It was the same message 30 years ago. It's just that we're understanding it after going over it so many times. Eventually, our neshama becomes more and more purified, and we can truly understand the deeper message. So he tells me the story, and I find it very fascinating, so I start asking him questions and he makes me feel good about my question. He says, "Wow, that's a fantastic question! You know who asked the same question?" I said, "No." He says, "Rabbi such and such asked the same question 850 years ago, and the answer is written in this book on this page." And I said to myself, "How does he know the book by heart and the page number too? I never knew that's how Talmidei Chachamim think. They know page numbers and book names." So I said, "Oh, maybe he just happens to have the book in front of him." He makes me feel good about my question. He says, "Wow, that's a fantastic question! You know who asked the same question?" I said, "No." He says, "Rabbi such-and-such asked the same question 850 years ago, and the answer is written in this book on this page." And I said to myself, "How does he know the book by heart and the page number too? I never knew that's how Talmidei Chachamim think. They know page numbers and book names." So I said, "Oh, maybe he just happens to have the book in front of him."

45:44So he answers the question. So I ask another question. He says, "What a wonderful question you have. You know who asked the same question?" I said, "No." He says, "Rabbi so-and-so, a different Rabbi, in this book 420 years ago, on this page number, and this is what it says." I said, "What's the chance that he has both books in front of him?" So I ask him another question, and he says the same thing. I said, "How do you have all these books?" He goes, "I don't have the books in front of me." I said, "So how do you know the answers?" Because you asked the question and Hashem gave me the answer. So what do you mean Hashem gave you the answer? I never understood this stuff. It took me a while to understand what does it mean, siyata dishmaya. So this might mean special assistance from Heaven. You asked, so tell me, does it matter if he knows or he doesn't know? Hashem gives him the answer if there's real significance for somebody to know this answer. We have a teenager program in Florida three times a week, but the Wednesday shiur, the Wednesday program, is questions and answers and 40-50 kids come to the shiur, all ages 14, 18, 19. Some of them are even approaching 20, and they ask any question they want. I tell them, "Ask anything you want. There's nothing I could provide you the answer since you have all the books." They said, "No, I don't have all the books." I said, "You have all the answers?" They said, "No, I don't have all the answers." So how are you going to ask the question? Are you going to know the answers? No, if you really need to know the answer, Hashem is going to give me the answer, and I'll answer the question. And if not, that means I don't have any siyata dishmaya. So I'll just have to pay you 50 bucks.

47:11Because I'm sorry, I can't, I don't have enough skill to give you the answer. So people come to the shiur and, baruch Hashem, so far, I haven't paid anybody 50 bucks. But that's the program. You come to the shiur, ask the rabbi. If the rabbi has the answer, good, then we move on to the next step. If he doesn't have the answer, at least you benefit and get a few dollars in your pocket. So anyway, I start asking questions for an hour and 40 minutes. Whoever finds me gives me answers. It's unbelievable. For the first time in my life, I ask questions and somebody gives me answers with sources, not just opinions, not just what he thinks. Something that's written in a book, and he can prove it to me. So I like the conversation, and I can't wait for him to call me again next week. He calls me Thursday, four o'clock. We speak for three hours. I Same thing, questions and answers. I ask questions, all types of questions, whether it's about dinosaurs, chemistry, business, or marriage. Anything and everything I come up with. I didn't even know I had so many questions, but if I have answers, I might as well ask. Next week, Thursday, four o'clock, five hours of questions and answers. The week after, Thursday, four o'clock, seven hours. And then it becomes every Thursday, four o'clock, a seven-hour conversation, and...

48:29My wife knows that at that moment, every Thursday, the office shuts off at 4 o'clock. Why? Yaron is learning Torah. The whole world could explode; don't bother Yaron on Thursday at 4 o'clock. He's getting answers. She was the biggest promoter of this shiur, as if she was some rabbanit. Now, we do this for the next nine months. This time, I start learning different things and getting a lot of answers. I started keeping different mitzvot. One day, the rabbi tells me, "You know, you have to start keeping Shabbat." I said, "Well, I don't work on Shabbat. I just go to the casino." He says, "No, you're not allowed to go to the casino." I said, "Why? But it's resting." He said, "No, it's not. Resting doesn't mean going to the casino; it doesn't mean not working." And he starts explaining to me Shabbat and... I have a few excuses, but eventually, I realized that I'm full of excuses, so I said, "Okay, no problem. I'll start keeping Shabbat." So, I start keeping Shabbat, I start keeping kosher, I start learning Torah more than just that Thursday at four o'clock for seven hours. I start learning a little bit every day, 15 minutes a day. Then it becomes half an hour a day, then it becomes a little bit more each day. I increase a little more, and then one day, he calls me and he says, "Listen..."

49:48I just found a chiddush. Chiddush is like a new insight in the Torah. Now, it's not really a chiddush, but he wanted me to feel good. So it's like as if he just discovered it, and that's why he didn't tell me till now. And he says, listen, the Zohar says that if you're married to a non-Jew, a lot of problems are going to happen to you. Now, we already know this from Sefer Bereishit, but he wanted to make it seem like he just found this out. I didn't know this. So I said, okay, what do you mean? He says, well if you're married to a non-Jew, you're gonna lose all your money. You're gonna get sick. I said, who said this? He said, Rabbi Meir said, Rabbi Meir. What does he know? Anyway, I don't know who Rabbi Meir is. That's why I said, what does he know? Why is he talking about this? Why am I so offended by this? Why do I care what Rabbi Meir says? Everything else he said: keep Shabbat, no problem; keep kosher, no problem; give tzedakah, no problem. Learn Torah, no problem, whatever you want, I'm doing. But now, all of a sudden, nine months later, he tells me, "Listen, Rabbi Meir says such and such," and all of a sudden, I have all the problems in the world. Because everybody loves the truth until it obligates them, and for the first time, I heard something that obligates me. What does it obligate me to do? Get a divorce. Because I'm married to a non-Jew now.

51:12This time that I'm going through surgeries, the only person that's helping me is my wife. The only person that tolerates me is my wife. The only person that's supporting me is my wife. Obviously, my mom also does to the best of her abilities, but as far as friends, co-workers, and all this other stuff, everybody disappeared and ran away. Every time there's a surgery recovery, she's my personal nurse. Every time I'm depressed and want to jump out of a window, she's the one that encourages me not to jump. She's the best thing in the world. So I'm gonna say, well, I'm gonna divorce this, go find me somebody like her. So I said, is there another way? He says, well, listen, I mean, conversion is allowed if she wants to convert on her own though. I said, okay, sure. Well, what's the, what does it take? What do we have to do to convert? She goes, well, she just has to abandon her beliefs, whatever belief she has, and she has to learn to fulfill the mitzvot and that's it. So I tell my wife, because she's been learning with me all this time also, and... said, "Well, listen, why don't you, uh, what do you believe? We never really had this conversation." And, uh, she said, "Well, she had some crazy belief, you know, some version of Christianity. Some guy died two thousand years ago, and, uh, that makes him a good person and therefore absolves you from any mitzvot. A lot of people die every day. According to statistics that I read one time, 18 million people die every year."

52:3418 million people die every year. How come nobody starts a new religion? I don't understand. Why does somebody dying 2,000 years ago absolve somebody today of mitzvot? I never understood this, but for some reason, people have an excuse for everything. So 2,000 years ago, some guy that, according to our Torah, was not exactly a good person—actually a very evil person—died, and therefore they canceled the Torah. So I said, "Man, this doesn't make any sense. Why don't you just throw this in the garbage?" She says, "Listen..." Can't just stop believing something. So that's when I realized, okay, you can't just stop believing, and we can't just stay the same. So what do you do? I said, the only way is that we have to find out what's the truth. I like Torah, but I'm not a hundred percent sure that this is it. I figured that Torah is number one, Christianity is number two, and the Muslims are somewhere along the line. I figured they're all okay, you know, like equal opportunity. They're all okay, but they all have their own versions. None of the other ones really made sense to me. Torah is the only one that made sense to me, but at this point, I'm not like a hundred percent in. Hashem says, know that I am God, not believe that I am God. Only once in the Torah does He say, believe that I am God. The rest of the time, He says, know that I am Hashem.

53:51I didn't know yet. So, how do you get to knowledge? So then I started to see, okay, let's see if Christianity is true. Then we're going there; if it's not, then we're obviously all going to be Jews. So I started learning about Christianity, and within a very, very short period of time, I realized that Christianity is not only not true, but it's the biggest falsehood that's ever hit this earth. It's 100% idol worship. It's 100%... opposite of Torah. And now that I know this, I simply have to show it to her. Little by little, we start learning together. She starts finding things on her own and she starts realizing, yes, this belief is shaky. There's something wrong with it. But I still need some type of sign from Hashem that He wants me to become a Jew. All right. She already got to a point where Christianity is not really the same thing, but still...

54:52Really the will of Hashem, is it not? So we continue learning, we continue doing mitzvot, we continue growing, and then one day we discover a debate by Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi against a Christian professor, someone who trains different priests and reverends and so on. I watched the whole three or four hours of it. I loved it. I tried to show it to her; she doesn't like the debate so much. She only watched the first two parts and... But then we find another movie by the same Rabbi Mizrachi, and it's called "Torah and Science." Now, this movie has changed the lives of countless people who actually watched it objectively. Now, if you watch it and it's just in the background like music, it's not going to do anything for you. But if you watch it and actually listen to what he says and... you'll see how you could literally scientifically prove the Torah, prove that God exists, prove that it is a hundred percent emet and everything else is sheker. It's not just about believing that the Torah is good and the Torah is helpful and the Torah is true, but it's also a clear understanding that everything else is nonsense. So we watched a couple of parts out of the three, and then by part three, my wife...

56:15Gets to a part where it talks about Torah codes, and in there, he provides different Torah codes, which are hidden secrets within our Torah where Hashem gave us messages. Now, over the last 60 years, different professors and mathematicians have been able to uncover many of these Torah codes, different secrets in our Torah. This Torah code is one of the most exceptional ones where Hashem says a prophecy about the end of time, what's going to happen before Mashiach. Before Mashiach, Am Yisrael is not going to be exactly tzaddikim. We're going to make a lot of mistakes, and as a punishment, Hashem is going to send us to the four corners of the world: to America, to Africa, Europe, all over the world. There are going to be Jews everywhere. There's good and bad in this. But nonetheless, in those places, we're going to be confused. And now, in those places... Some of the Jews are going to stop worshipping the god of wood and the god of stone. So we know the god of wood is the cross. The god of stone is Mecca, the stone that the Arabs worship. But then inside that verse, there's a Torah code that gives the name of those two religions, Christianity and Islam. For Christianity, it actually has the name for their god, yimach shemo v'zichro, Yeshu.

57:37Then, for Islam, it has the name of their place, which is Mecca, where they worship. So here we have a very clear sign of what Hashem doesn't like, what Hashem considers the opposite of the truth. Now, I've seen Torah codes by this point, but for her, this was the sign. So, at that point, she decides this is the sign she needs. We continue learning little by little and... We start becoming more and more religious. We obviously abandon all of the beliefs of the past, whether it's secularism or anything else. But eventually, we get to a point where we go to the Beit Din, convert, get married, both of us in a kosher way, and go back to business. Now, I'm still sick and money is running out the window, but I still have a few hundred thousand dollars. Now at this moment, my rabbi told me, "Listen, why don't you start sharing the message?" I said, "What message?" He said, "Your story, different things that you learn, share it with other people." I said, "But I don't really know him very much." He says, "Whatever you know, teach. You learn every day. Whatever you learn, teach it." So I started doing a shiur once a week. I invited some people to my house every Tuesday, and they'd come at 8 or 9 o'clock at night, and I'd give them a shiur about Parashat HaShavua.

59:01Almost done and, uh, so I started with one guy, and I told him, "Listen, I'm not going to tell you what to do; I'm just going to tell you what God said. You do whatever you want. I'm not judge; I'm not jury; it really doesn't affect me what you do. I'm just going to tell you what God says, and you do what you want." He said, "Okay, fair enough." After the first shiur, at one point, I said, "You know what? God says that if you drive on Shabbat, you have a very serious problem." So he looks at me funny and says, "What do you mean?" well, God says no fire, and cars involve fire. It's a lot of fires. So he says to me, "Wait, yeah, but you're allowed to drive to shul though, right?" I said, "No, no, you're not allowed to drive, period, unless it's pikuach nefesh." He says, "What do you mean? I've been driving to shul for 20 years. How come nobody ever told me this?" I said, "I don't know. Nobody ever told me either. I had rabbis come to my office and..." Three times a week for 15 years. You do the math—how many times they had an opportunity to tell me the truth and, unfortunately, didn't tell me. I don't know why; maybe it was money, maybe it was something else. It doesn't make a difference. The point is that now, you know. Now, you know these people sometimes have a yetzer hara, sometimes a yetzer hatov. It doesn't make a difference. Now, you know. Hashem gave you the message—you are not allowed to drive. You want to drive, drive. But now, you know you're not allowed. You don't want to do it? Then you have a solution.

1:00:27He was the first student. The next week, we had two people. The same thing happened, and the next week we had three people. Little by little, we started building it. We started putting the lectures online, and people started watching them. People started sending messages that it was helping their lives from all walks of life—people from Australia, from England, from Israel, from all places—who would watch these shiurim on YouTube. They would say that this ba'al teshuvah, a brand new person to the religion, was influencing them. I was amazed. But, you know, still, my plan was to work, make some money, rebuild my business life, and, you know, do something good—teach Torah once a week. I never planned on being a speaker or starting an organization or anything like that. I figured this is what Hashem wants me to do: something good in my life. Well, when Hashem wants to give you a message, He makes sure that it's very, very clear. So, He had to destroy all of my business hopes and... After some time of giving shiurim and becoming a little bit more popular, with people getting a few individuals to learn on a regular basis, Hashem gave me a clear message. On a Tuesday, at 9 o'clock in the morning, we found out we had a small fund where we were investing our money and other people's money, and...

1:01:47Wasn't very much, but still, it was a few hundred thousand dollars that we had left, which is pennies in comparison to the millions that we used to have. But still, it's enough to live and have a business. Well, at nine o'clock, we found out that our biggest investment just announced horrible news. The market was overreacting as it is. What's going to happen doesn't look very good. I... 9:30 in the morning is when the market opens, and at 9:36, the balance of my account is zero. Nothing, nothing left. Zero balance. The bank sells all the investments. Everything is gone. We literally have a zero balance at 9:36 in the morning. I have a shiur later that night. Now at this point, Baruch Hashem, I've arrived at the conclusion, not an assumption, not an ideology, not a hope or a dream, but I arrived at a conclusion that Hashem runs the world. And if this is what He wants, perfect. So 9:36 is what happened. At 9:37, the computer turns off.

1:03:01I say, "Hashem natan, Hashem lakach, yehi Shem Hashem mevorach," which is what Iyov said after Hashem took all of his money, all of his kids, all of his possessions, and everything that he had. He said, "Hashem gave, Hashem took, may His name be blessed." Why? It's His anyway. He decided to take it back. Okay, it's Yours. I have a shiur to do. Shut off the computer, go learn from my shiur. The guys that came to the shiur that night didn't even know anything happened. We had a shiur Torah. To this day, those guys don't know what happened that day. But all of a sudden, everybody saw that I don't work anymore on Wall Street. All of a sudden, I'm not doing business anymore. All of a sudden, I'm doing more shiurim. All of a sudden, I'm studying all day. All of a sudden, the only thing that matters in my life is Torah. Now, how are we gonna pay the bills? I said, listen, Hashem wants me to help people do teshuva. Hashem wants me to give people chizuk. So that's what I'll do. I'll do this 24 hours a day. As long as I'm awake, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to put shiurim, my shiurim, Rav Chaim's shiurim, try to spread the message. I'll do this. Money? That's His problem. How are we going to pay the bills? That's His problem. We don't ask for tzedakah, but obviously, people donate.

1:04:12We don't charge for lectures, but sometimes people give us for the travel. Sometimes people give us for the cause. Sometimes people don't give at all. It doesn't really make a difference. Why? I know that I'm going to do what Hashem says. The rest of the problems are His. And this is how we've been living for the last six years. Now, I can tell you that if you come to my house in Florida, you're going to think I'm still a millionaire and I'm lying a little bit because my house is a nice house. My kids, Baruch Hashem, are well fed. My wife is very happy. Our life looks like a regular person that's perhaps even doing really well. But if I show you my bank account, you're going to start laughing. I said, are you serious? This is it? It has to be like a secret account. No, it's no secret account. If you look at what we're doing on the internet in different places, how much money we're giving to people, we just did a giveaway in Eretz Yisrael. 200 families that are poor families, we gave them all types of ma'akhalei chalav. milk products for Shavuot. Now, we're not talking about millions of dollars, just a few thousand dollars. But the point is that we try to literally do good everywhere we can. For Pesach, we helped about 450–500 families. We give out CDs for free. We give out the shiurim on USB drives for free. Everything is free. Of course, people donate, but we don't have any major campaigns. We don't charge for lectures. We simply do our job, and it works.

1:05:35At the end of every lecture, no matter whether you liked what I said or you didn't like what I said, you arrive at a couple of conclusions, and that's when we'll finish. One conclusion is that everything I said when it comes to the Torah is verified. You can check, you can see the verse, you can see the Gemara, you can look at the page; it's not something from my opinion. It's not my shittah, my strategy, or I'm Sephardi and he's Ashkenazi, or I'm Ashkenazi and you're Sephardi, I'm Chabad and he's Breslov, none of that stuff. I don't care about any of that stuff. I care about Judaism. What does the Torah say? What does God say? Not what Yaron Reuven says. I always tell people, don't judge Judaism based on the Jews because sometimes they're not exactly the best representatives of Judaism. Judge Judaism based on the Torah. What does it say in the Torah? What's God's opinion? Once you look at God's opinion, that's all you need. Why? Because His opinion doesn't change. So, everything we say in the Torah, we try to quote where it says it in the Torah, whether it's in the Chumash or Tanach or in different Gemarot. The second thing is...

1:06:42People arrive at the conclusion as they realize we literally have no interest. We're not coming to become popular because if we did, we would tell people that they're doing perfectly fine and... That's the popular thing to do today. Tell everybody that he is a good tzaddik. "Yeah, but you know, I drive on Shabbat." "Yeah, yeah, but Hashem knows that you can't," you know, make all types of excuses. You realize that there's no excuse. I'm not trying to become popular. All we're trying to do is give you a message that Hashem wants you to know. You follow it? You don't follow it? You don't follow it. But also, most importantly, to know that when Hashem gave us the Torah, He meant business. He's serious. We may not take Him seriously sometimes, but He's serious. Now, anyone that read the parashat hashavua last week, parashat Bechukotai, and reads about the punishments that are in there, they're very heavy punishments. Which means that Hashem is not joking. Anyone that looks at the story of what happened in my life realizes this happens not just to me; it happened to other people. Now, punishment is not necessarily a bad thing.

1:07:51If you look at it the right way, Hashem is not trying to punish us because He wants to hurt us. Hashem punishes us because He's trying to get our attention. Now, if you continue doing good... have His attention, He has your attention—perfect relationship. Of course, you can have ups and downs in life; that's life. There are trials and tribulations, but in general, it’s a perfect relationship. But when somebody abandons Hashem, someone decides that they're going to do something else, or someone decides that maybe they're going to do this, maybe they're going to do that—that's the opposite of what Hashem says. Hashem says, “I have to give you a sign. So, I'm going to send you a text message, I'm going to send you a WhatsApp, I'm going to send you a Facebook message, I'm going to send you an email, I'm going to have somebody send you a letter. I'm... I'm gonna have somebody knock on your door. I'm gonna bring a CD. He's gonna send you messages in different ways, whether it's from a rabbi, a CD, a shiur, or something else. You know, something's gonna happen. He's gonna send us messages many, many times. Sometimes those messages hurt, but if we understand that the ultimate purpose of that message is to get our attention in order for us to do good for ourselves, then the reality is we realize that it's just like a parent and

1:09:05cares about their kid. Sometimes that kid is not so smart. He wants to put his fingers inside the electric socket because it looks like fun. Because he's only three or four years old, and the electric socket looks like it's a perfect fit for his little finger. But the parent knows that if he puts it there, he's not coming out the same. So, after he yells at the kid and the kid doesn't respond, and he knows that he can't continue yelling again. Yes, do something else, maybe pulling the kid. Pulling the kid may hurt the kid a little bit, but it's better to hurt the kid a little bit than for the kid to hurt himself much more. That's the point of the whole story. Hashem does not want to hurt any of us. He loves all of us. We just simply need to understand that life is not a walk in the park. It's not so simple. We have a mission in the world: to be a light to the nations and You, Baruch Hashem, are going to a fantastic school. You learn Torah every day. So many of you, Baruch Hashem, are praying. You have all the tools in the world to do good. Sometimes you're going to see the other side, and it looks like the other side, people that are not keeping Torah and mitzvot, are having more fun. It looks like the other side, maybe they have a better life. You're not alone when you think that.

1:10:30Even the Navi Asaf, the Navi Asaf in Tehillim number 73, says he thought the same thing. He saw some wicked people that were doing all types of things against Hashem, but he saw that they were living the life of luxury. And he says it gave him a little doubt. It made him weaker for a second. He says, "Hashem, I saw these people that are going against You, and I don't understand." But then I started realizing, wait a minute. What happens at the end? Okay, so in this life, he has a Ferrari. He has a fancy-schmancy house. He eats a whole cow every day, wears the finest clothes, eats everything he wants, and does everything he wants. He has everything he wants. But in reality, what happens in the end after this life? That 70, 80 years, however long it is—what happens then? Then you have heaven or hell. There are only two choices. No third option. If you do good, Hashem says, heaven forever. If not, there's only one other option. So obviously Asaf said, wait a minute, it looks good now sometimes. But in reality, if you think about the end of what happens after this corridor of a life, you realize it's not worth it. Why? You enjoy yourself for a little bit and then eventually time runs out. Now, because Hashem loves us, He doesn't want us to wait till the end. So He'll give us signs like He gave me.

1:11:58Sometimes those signs of sickness, money loss, and all types of other problems—trust me when I tell you—when you have problems, it's simply Hashem showing you affection, showing you He loves you, showing you that He wants you to get even closer to Him. Because if He didn't care, He'd give you no problems; you'd just live your life, do whatever you want, and... We'll meet at the end. Hashem loves you too much to do it. This is why we decided that Am Yisrael doesn't need more business people. I can go back to Wall Street, go back to making millions of dollars. But Am Yisrael doesn't need more business people. We have plenty. Am Yisrael needs stronger Jews. And that's our mission today. Our mission is to give each and every Jew a little chizuk. It doesn't matter what your past is. It doesn't matter where you are today. Our goal is to, b'ezrat Hashem, give each person a little chizuk. I brought you a bunch of CDs in the back. It's all free. There are four different CDs. Each package has two. Shiurim similar to this, on different topics, all types of topics, short shiurim, long shiurim. Also, there are Asher Yatzar posters, like I said before. If anybody uses the internet, you can watch this on the internet. You can watch all of these shiurim on the internet. If you don't, good for you. Just listen to them on CDs.

1:13:09Point being is that the key to constantly getting closer to Hashem is to constantly learn more and more of what He wants from us. Not just the prayer, but the meaning of the prayer. Not just the parasha, but the meaning of the parasha. Not just be robots. If Hashem wanted robots, He'd make robots. But try to go deeper. Deeper into everything, and I promise you, your life is going to be the life that's admirable by everybody else around you. And b'ezrat Hashem, admirable for all of the nations around us, And b'ezrat Hashem, also making Hashem proud of us for what He made. Baruch Adonai l'olam. Amen ve'amen. Anybody have any questions? I know you guys have classes now, but I didn't know what my time was. I just tried to do the best I can. If you have any questions, I'm more than happy to answer.

1:14:13I have Sarah, who is turning four on Shavuot. I have little Ovadia, who is a little over two years old, and I have Yosef, who is a couple of months old. Hashem to your little cuties. Yes, so the number one thing I was talking to somebody that was very important to me last night, and I've been trying to get this person to do teshuva for a while. But if you tell somebody that's not keeping mitzvot to start keeping mitzvot and gonna tell you why. Why should I do it? For what? What is it, hocus pocus? If I start keeping Shabbat, all of a sudden my life is going to become heaven? They don't understand. So the most important thing in Judaism is to learn Torah. So my number one advice is that if this person is somebody that's really important to you, somebody that's really close to you

1:15:33If it's a parent or a brother or a cousin, somebody that you have a really, really close relationship with, don't teach them yourself. Why? Because they're not gonna take the message from you. Once you're too close to somebody, they're not gonna be able to see it from you. It's a little bit of pride, a little ego. So what do you do? You send them a video clip. You give them a CD. Give them the Torah in a simple way. Give them a CD, give them a short video. We have, Baruch Hashem, hundreds and hundreds of lectures online and probably about five or six hundred short clips that you could take any one of those short clips and send it to them via text message or something like that. That way, they could see it for themselves. Every day, send them another clip. Whether they watch or they don't watch, don't worry about that. Don't do any type of accounting. Oh, this is a strong clip. This is a weak clip. Don't do anything, just set it. Be almost like a robot. Take a short clip and send it to the people that you care about because that way they're gonna learn Torah but not from you, from somebody else. That way they figure that if they like it and they want to do something about it, it's almost like they discovered it themselves, even though you really were the mailman.

1:16:42The key is that if you give a person Torah, you give them actual education. You're gonna give them a reason behind everything: a reason behind his problems, a reason behind the solution, or a reason for life. And that's what most people don't have—they don't have a real reason for why they're alive. You know, people think that you're here, you make money, you live, you eat, you drink, you have kids, you get married. Today, 80% of people get divorced. Unfortunately, people just live like animals. Though I say, you don't have to live that way. You have an instruction book from God that gives you a wonderful life. You just have to follow it. The better you follow it, the better your life is. Most people don't know that, so if you tell them, "Listen, here's a book with 304,805 letters..." You say we have your mind. This is too much, Tom. Okay, why don't you take a smaller book? You know, a hundred thousand. No, that's too much. Okay, why don't you take a three-hour, you know, that's too much. A two-hour, too much. A five-minute lecture. Okay, I could do that. That's what you do. Take our short clips, five to ten minutes, and send them. Once they start liking those five to ten-minute clips, send them the full lecture that's two hours sometimes or even longer, and...

1:17:57they'll watch it on their own whenever they want. The more education you provide them, the easier it's going to become for them to want to do the mitzvot and not be robots. There are many robots and they do mitzvot because their parents tell them to do mitzvot, because they were born that way. Similar to sometimes, you have people that literally don't know why they're even doing what they're doing. It's very important for a ben Yisrael and a bat Yisrael to know why you're doing the mitzvot, because eventually, your brain develops and you want to know what's the purpose of all of it. I met a kid that went to yeshiva for 15 years and The reason why I met him wasn't good news. His father came to me and said, "Please, I want you to meet my child. He's 27 or 28 years old, and he's planning on marrying a non-Jew." I said, "But did you send him to a good school?" He says, "I sent him to the best yeshiva." I said, "He went to yeshiva for 15 years. So what happened?" He said, "You have to meet him." So I met the kid and

1:18:57And I asked him, "What happened? How did you go to yeshiva for 15 years and now you're going with a non-Jew? How could that be?" He said, "Listen, all I learned is that you have to do stuff." I said, "Okay, you know why, no?" He goes, "No. I don't know why." Sometimes we do things without searching deep enough to know why. It's very, very important to know why because if you know why, you'll be stronger for it, and over time, you'll be able to get other people to become stronger. So these short videos, what we try to do constantly, is give a person a reason why. Every mitzvah has a mitzvah, and really, at the end of the day, the reason why we do everything is because Hashem said so, but that's not enough of an explanation for most people. They need more details. Those short videos help a lot, and I think that's the most effective way because once they see that the Torah is relevant to their day-to-day life, they can apply it to business, they can apply it to marriage, they can apply it to education, and to everything else. Then they'll know that this is where the cure is, and that's how you help. Next question, anybody? Same price, yes?

1:20:11Again, I can't hear you. Yes, there's another shiur, yes, yes. Everything that we do, we try to video because this is Hatzalat Harabim (saving the public), so we try to reach as many people as possible. Sometimes your questions or the things that I said to you can help somebody in the middle of the world somewhere, so we try to put everything online usually within about a day or two. And all the same, it reaches thousands of people. Yes, I... Okay, so we have a website called BeEzratHashem.org. I have a bunch of business cards here that on the back of it, if anybody has smartphones or you have a way to go to the internet, we have an app. We have an app and all you got to do is take a picture of this thing. It'll get you to the app. It's a business app, so it's a kosher app, so you don't have to worry about all the garbage that's on the internet. You don't have to go to YouTube. You just go, all of our lectures are on this app. Now, if you don't have the ability to go on the app, it's available both on Google and on Android and also on the iPhone. But you can also find us on YouTube. You just type my name, Yaron Reuven. My name is on here. It's on the CDs. And you'll have a whole channel literally full of thousands of lectures.

1:21:25YouTube. We have some on Torah Anytime. We have on our own website, BeEzrat Hashem. If you just type my name anywhere, you'll find many, many lectures. This one will be on there, hopefully within the next few days. Thank you very much for having me. Thank you very much to the Rabbanit. We'll keep learning. Anybody that needs anything, it's all over here. If you have questions, we have WhatsApp groups also. You can ask questions on the WhatsApp groups. Very accessible. We're trying to do everything possible to become very, very accessible. So, we have the CDs in the back and the cards. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. Usually, it can go on for a couple of hours, but I know you have a schedule, you have the test, you have everything, so thank you.

1:22:48You have precious neshamot under your control here, so God bless you. Also, they just came back from a four-day retreat, so they're already, like, uplifted, you know, so... God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. So, there are different subjects to learn and understand. You know, you like the Torah, but you want to like the mashal. We have a series... That series is very good because it shows you how the learning can be applied to your day-to-day life and connect to Hashem on a deeper level. We just started, maybe 10 lectures in. So there are different things you can learn like that which will help you. I think that the more you try to connect the mitzvot that you do to Hashem, the easier it's going to become. But in the beginning,

1:24:00It takes a little work. It takes a little more learning about the mitzvot. What's the meaning behind the mitzvah? So I think the Bitachon series will help you with that. And also the Mussar series. We have a couple of CDs in the back. That's also going to help. But in general, it's asking questions. Asking questions like, why do we do this? What's the point of this? Everything that you have a question about, that you have difficulty with, ask. Ask a question. Find the answer. And if, let's say, the teacher doesn't have it, then try to find somewhere else that has it. Because sometimes we'll ask a question, and if we don't get the answer, it creates what's called a safek, a doubt. And that doubt is like, oh, okay, so I don't know. Okay, so no big deal. No, it is a big deal. You have to try harder to get that answer. Because the harder you work on finding an answer to something, the more meaning it's going to have. And when you finally get that meaning, that meaning is going to help you connect to Hashem. Because now you know, oh, everything has an answer. I just have to find it. Sometimes it's easy. Sometimes it's right, you open a book, and it's there. It's black or white. Sometimes you have to work on it. You have to open a few books, or you have to ask several rabbis, because not all rabbis have the same knowledge. Some rabbis are experts, let's say, in halacha. Some rabbis are experts in mussar. Some rabbis are experts in something else. So you have to ask the right rabbi, just like you have to go to the right doctor.

1:25:19So always, always make it a policy in your life to go after the answer, to work hard to get the questions you have answered. So if the first place that you go to doesn't have the answer, go to another place, go to another rabbi, and try to get these answers, because those answers are going to help you eliminate any doubt that you have, and it's going to help you also connect to Hashem. What if I ask questions? Like, let's say I ask a question to my dad, he said something, and then I ask a teacher, and then they say something else. So the most important thing is to make sure that whoever gives you the answer, it's not their answer, it's Torah's answer, meaning they give you an answer with a source. Okay, thank you. You ask him, what is such and such? And he says, it's this. Okay, where did you get that answer from? Like, where did he get that answer from? And he has to tell you, oh, I got it from the Gemara. Okay, where in the Gemara? You have to look at it now. You have a source because you know if it doesn't make sense, that's it. That's a mashal. But if it's just his opinion, then that's not worth anything. So that's why whoever gives you an answer, whether it's your father, your teacher, or a local rabbi, always ask for a source. Because if there's a source for it, then you know this is valid. If there's no source, then it's 50-50.

1:26:34Maybe it is about maybe to the opinion. Maybe you have to have a source. That's why it's very, very important to have sources. It has to have a book with a name and a page number and exactly where this answer is, because if you have that, then you know, okay, this is the word of Hashem. If you don't have it, then sometimes it's not. A lot of people say things because it makes sense to them. It's wrong. So always make sure that there's a source, whoever gives you the answer. It doesn't matter who gives you the answer; you have to have a source. And it's a good policy. That's what the Mishnah in Avot says: that anytime you say a Dvar Torah, you have to make sure that you mention the source. Because that way, we know that we can track that answer all the way to Mount Sinai. You know, we know that he got it from his rabbi, his rabbi got it from that rabbi, and that rabbi got it from that rabbi, all the way to Mount Sinai. But if you don't see the source, then we don't really know where it came from. We don't know if it's your opinion, his opinion, or if it's something a non-Jew made up. We have no idea what it is. There's a website right now that started publishing commentary, and the people viewing it didn't even know that some of this commentary is coming from Christianity.

1:27:40That's a Jewish website, but they're providing commentary from Christians. So it's like you're causing people to sin because the commentary is from a wrong source. It's not a good place; it's a place of Tumah. So it's very important to know who the source is. And when you have the source, then you'll have a lot of confidence in what it says. know, and anything you have as far as questions, you could always ask. Send a text message. WhatsApp is usually the fastest. Any questions you have, send them to us. We'll try to answer. If it's a real, true life, it's a full, true brother. Yes. If you did full teshuvah, then you can even get to a point of turning the bad angel into a good one. If it's full teshuvah, but if it's like half a teshuvah, then the angel stays. It depends. By realizing just by thought, no.

1:28:53by action, you have to take action. So, for example, if somebody stole and they realize, "Oh, it's wrong to steal," realizing it's wrong to steal is not enough. You have to return the money. Once you return the money, then you've completed your teshuvah as far as the first stage because you felt it was wrong, you gave the money back, and now you have to get to a point of regretting it and committing to never do it again. At that point, Hashem could put a stamp, saying, "Oh, this person did full teshuvah." You destroyed that bad angel; you actually even turned them into a good one. So, the full teshuvah is, number one, stop the sin and don’t do it anymore. Second thing is if you could undo it, meaning if it's money stolen or something like that, or if you said something bad about somebody, you come back to that person and say you apologize to them and tell all the people that you said something bad about them that it was your mistake. You didn't, you know, this is what you did and it's wrong and so on and so forth. So, anyone that knows this information, you tell them that this is really wrong, so you undo as much of the damage as you possibly can and

1:30:04that's the second thing. Third is to regret it to the point of feeling bad about it, to commit to never doing it again, and never do it again, and then try to encourage other people to also not make that sin. So, if let's say, for example, somebody comes to you and says lashon hara about somebody else, don't just do nothing. Tell them, "You know what? Actually, I heard if you say lashon hara, try to give them a little bit of mussar, a little bit of rebuke. Tell them it's not good to do because then it's going to create problems. She's going to be embarrassed. He's going to be embarrassed because of this. Let's just not do it." And try to encourage other people to not sin. When you encourage other people to not sin, that is the ultimate step of doing teshuva. No, it doesn't have to be like every single word, but the general, general, general idea of what you said, yeah. Hi. I have a question. My dad is Israeli and he only knows Hebrew. He speaks Hebrew. I want to know if you have a lecture in Hebrew. Yes, I do. You go to my channel, and I have about maybe 50 lectures in Hebrew. Also, this is a CD in Hebrew from my rabbi, Rabbi Ephraim. It's in Hebrew, but I myself also have many lectures, this story in Hebrew, and many other lectures in Hebrew. Just type my name on the same YouTube channel or the same website, just type my name in Hebrew, and you'll see many lectures in Hebrew.

1:31:24I have about maybe 50 lectures in Hebrew. Also, this is a CD in Hebrew from my rabbi, Rabbi Ephraim. It's in Hebrew, but I myself also have many lectures, this story in Hebrew, and many other lectures in Hebrew. Just type my name on the same YouTube channel or the same website, just type my name in Hebrew, and you'll see many lectures in Hebrew. She says she doesn't know what to do because if they don't listen to her, they can self-destruct. so what you can do is you can give them some of these CDs or send them some of the lectures that I have and share the information with them without telling them directly what to do. Just share the information with them, and little by little, people will start watching. Little by little, people will start doing. Most people are not sinning because they hate Hashem. They sin because they simply don't know the consequences. They don't know what to do. They don't know what not to do. They don't really know what's going on. So if you educate them, you give them the information, then they have the ability to make a real decision because now they have both sides. So the best thing to do is to share lectures with them and different videos, CDs. You can take as many extra as you want to give to people. And that way, you're giving them an opportunity to at least learn. And it works. It works with a lot of people.

1:32:49Yes, hi. So I have an uncle, right? And he's not religious. And he has a non-Jewish mom. We're all telling him, oh, like, if she converts, then it's going to be all fine, like, you're going to have a Jewish family. But I'm like, we're all afraid of that. Right, well, if he goes to a real Beit Din, they won't convert her unless they're both religious. They both have to do teshuvah and be really religious before they allow the conversion. My recommendation is to send him this. Give him a copy of this CD, the black one. There's two CDs in here in that little package. There's one black one, and then there's one blue one. Give him the black one. Take an extra copy. Give him the black one, and it's the first lecture on there. It's my full story that's a little longer than what I told you guys today. Have him and her listen to it. Or if he watches things online, you can just look up the name of that one on the Internet and send him the link to that lecture. What if they get married in the civil court?

1:33:58Right now, they're technically considered, you know, there's no such thing as marriage with Jews and non-Jews. I mean, they could get married through the city, but as far as no rabbi, no real rabbi will marry them. There's no chuppah and kiddushin. So right now, whether he gets married through the city or he doesn't get married through the city, it's still a huge sin in Shamayim. It's the same thing. Nothing changes. The problem is that the longer he's with her, the more he could create more damage because eventually, they could have kids. And those kids will be non-Jewish. So that means that even if she does convert, there's still a problem. There's still the kid that's not Jewish. Maybe the kid wants to convert. Maybe he doesn't want to convert. The point is, the longer it lasts, the more problems he creates for himself. The only way to get him to realize his mistake is by educating him, not by telling him he should get her converted. You have to tell him why. And usually, people don't understand why by telling them nice stories. You have to tell them what's going to happen in a bad way.

1:35:01if to warn them. And my story, Baruch Hashem, has helped thousands and thousands of people because they see that bad stuff can happen here. It's not just like this Gehinom that people don't know what it is. It's actually bad stuff that can happen in this world. And this lecture has helped thousands of people because they realized that, yeah, this could happen to me. This can happen to everybody. So I think you should give him that CD. You can give it to him directly or anonymously. Just leave it in his mailbox if you feel uncomfortable. No problem. Just leave it there in the mailbox and hopefully pray for him to watch it. And b'ezrat Hashem, it works. Thank you so much. How do you make someone want to keep Shabbat, for example, like your dad, and make him keep Shabbat? Or does it not work? The best thing is, the same thing I was telling her, to give people these CDs. Give them the lectures to watch. give them an, you know, education about it. Meaning, they have to understand not only why they should do it because it's good, but why it's bad not to do it. There has to be a punishment. For example, if somebody's on the highway and they want to drive 100 miles an hour, most of the time they don't. Why? Because they're afraid that if they drive 100 miles an hour, they're going to get a ticket and lose their license. So, knowing that there's a risk...

1:36:21There's a risk to driving really fast. They don't do it. Same thing here. What I teach in my lectures is basic stuff that explains to people that if you don't do what Hashem says, there is a risk, but it's not a small risk. It's a big one. It's a really big one. And for people that are advanced, I even have a whole shiur about Gehinnom. It's not a good place. It's as horrible as it gets, and all the horrible things that people could imagine—it's even worse than that. So the point is that when people watch that shiur, they realize, oh wow, Hashem's not joking around. He's not our friend; He's our God. So most people don't understand, oh listen, you know, if you keep Shabbat, maybe Hashem's going to give you money, or maybe He's going to give you good health. They don't understand that stuff. They say, listen, I already have money, I'll just make money another way. But if you tell them, listen, if you don't keep Shabbat, Hashem's going to kill you. Hashem is going to punish you. So it says in the Torah. Then a person may get, you know, you'll get his attention. But if you just say it like that, it's not enough. So that's what we do in the whole shiur. We give them examples of what it says in the Torah, different things, and it works. If he doesn't want to watch it, then it becomes almost impossible to help him, because a person needs to want to help himself.

1:37:38He needs to want to help himself. So what I suggest with most people is to send them short clips. I have on YouTube, there's one playlist that has short movies. Movies like lectures, but it's like five to ten minutes, but it's like a movie. The guy has all special effects and stuff like that. Everybody loves it, whether they're religious or not religious, everybody loves that stuff. Usually, those things are a good bait to get people to start watching some of the other lectures. So if you want, you could send me a text message, and I'll send you that playlist. You could send them one of those, and that's usually the best way to get people started. We pray... it depends on what the habit is and it depends on what's holding you back.

1:38:40If what's holding you back is peer pressure, for example, somebody that, let's say, doesn't want to say Lashon Hara anymore. But our friends like to say it. Then she has to start thinking, okay, what am I really getting out of this? She just has to do the cheshbon nefesh. We have to start counting. What am I really getting out of this Lashon Hara? The person that I'm saying Lashon Hara about is taking all of my mitzvot. So all day I work to get mitzvot. I say Lashon Hara about them, they're getting all my mitzvot. So now, I already lost. The second thing is, it's a sin. Third of all, they're going to get embarrassed. If they embarrass me, I wouldn't feel good. Why would I want to embarrass somebody else? Fourth of all, which is the worst part, is that one day I'm gonna have to go up to shamayim and Hashem is gonna say, "How come you said lashon hara about so-and-so?" and I'm gonna feel... I'm not gonna have a real explanation. Now, if I'm gonna ask my friends to come out, "Please defend me because you're the one that said it," they're not gonna be able to defend me. So once you start really going deeper into the action, you start realizing it's not worth it. It's the same thing with everything. You have to analyze: What's the point of anything that you do in life?

1:39:47Why say lashon hara? Why drive on Shabbat? Why eat non-kosher? All these different things, and usually most of these things don't have a point. Like there's no real benefit out of it. Ah, makeup. So Hashem says that to draw on Shabbat, to paint on Shabbat to such an extent that a person that violates Shabbat is judged as if he's an idol worshiper. Somebody that prays to Buddha and somebody that drives on Shabbat or paints on Shabbat—same thing. And that's not a good look. That's not a good thing. You go to Shamayim and say, "No, I prayed to you, Abishter." No, no—you Buddha statue section, not Hashem section. Why? Because you're drawing on Shabbat. So we have to understand there's a significance to the sin. We may not think it's a big deal because we don't know all the details, but Hashem knows for sure it's a big deal. Now, once a person realizes that the halachot that we have in the Torah are...

1:40:48have a consequence if we don't follow them, but you have to know this: If you follow it, good. If you don't follow it, there is a serious consequence. That's why we have 13 principles of faith, and one of them is reward and punishment. All Jews have to believe this: everything has a reward or a punishment. It's not nothing. No thing that has nothing. Like it's either this or it's this. There's nothing neutral. So either you get rewarded for something, or you get punished for something. Sometimes you get punished here, sometimes you get punished there, or both. Sometimes you get rewarded here, sometimes over there, or both. But the point is, it has to be one of them. So if a person is going to do something that Hashem says is not allowed, it’s not even the rabbi who says it’s not allowed, Hashem says it’s not allowed. So that means it doesn’t mean reward. Punishment now, is it really worth it to get punished? For what? To put on a little bit of lip liner or gloss or something so that somebody looks and says, "Oh wow, she looks better"? The reality is, I'm telling you as a guy, most guys don't even notice this stuff. Most guys don't even care.

1:41:54And that's the reality. Second of all, the people that care are usually other girls. And you're not marrying another girl, so that doesn't matter anyway. And most importantly, at the end of the day, the only one that's going to be able to help you when you're down, when you're depressed, when you're alone, when a person is sick, when a person needs something, when a person wants something, the only one that's going to help you in the world is HaShem. So how are we justifying that HaShem is going to help us if we're constantly doing things that are against Him? So always think, what does HaShem want from me? If He wants this, if I do what He wants on a regular basis, then when I ask for something or I need something, then He has a reason to give it to me. But if I'm constantly going against Him because I'm trying to impress my friends, then my friends can't help me. Hashem, I gave Him a reason not to help me. Why? Because I'm doing things that are against Him. So you have to, you know, just do the accounting. Is it really worth it? A lot of this stuff is not worth it, especially the big things. Make sure there's a few really big mitzvot in the Torah you don't mess with. Shabbat is one of them.

1:43:02There's no exception. There's no such thing as a half Jew. There's no such thing as a righteous Jew that violates Shabbat on purpose. If you make a sin by accident, that's a different story. But makeup doesn't look like an accident. Makeup is not an accident. If you turn on the light by accident because you woke up in the middle of the night and you forgot it's Shabbat because it's the middle of the night and you turn on the light, that's shogeg. But a person that puts on makeup or watches TV or plays with their phone on Shabbat, that's not an accident. So Shamayim says this is 100% the same thing. Thank you. This is the same thing as if she was driving on Shabbat. And Hashem says that's a very serious violation. So you don't want that. You don't want that on your account. Because, Baruch Hashem, you go to a good school. You learn good things. You pray every day. You talk to Hashem. You do all good things. Why ruin all of it? Just for one small thing that, in reality, doesn't really mean that much. So you have to learn that some things are just not worth it. Like people that usually, for example, go on a diet. They go on a diet and keep a really, really strict diet. They eat protein, protein, protein for a long time.

1:44:24They lose some weight, and they feel better about themselves, but then one day their friend says, "Do you want to come out for a burger? It's kosher and everything, but it's a nice, juicy, fat burger," and they say to themselves, "Is it really worth it?" Now, yes, the burger is delicious. She'll find it delicious, but the problem is that it's not the burger that's the problem. It's what happens after the burger. I've been working so hard for six months, a year, two years to become healthier and But now I'm going to eat this burger. Now, the burger by itself is not a problem. But now it's going to go back into my mind that it's an option. And then maybe I'm going to want it again tomorrow. And then I'm going to want it again the day after. And then what happens is after two or three weeks of doing that, my year's work goes in the garbage. So, then it's not even worth it. But you're eventually going to have to eat something. No, you can. But again, you have a choice. Is it worth it? I could eat, but I don't necessarily have to eat the burger. I could eat something else. Something that's healthier. I don't have to eat a burger. I can eat something healthier. So that's the point. The point is that sometimes there are certain things in our life that are just not worth it. If you think about what's the consequence of doing it. It's like, for example, if somebody speeds on a highway because they're in a hurry. Yeah, you're in a hurry. You want to get to an appointment on time. But if you hurry too much and you start driving 100 miles an hour, you're putting your life at risk. It's not worth it to put your life at risk just to get to some appointment.

1:45:53to put your life at risk just to get to some appointment. You know, so you just think about, you know, what's gonna happen after, what's the risk, what's the reward? And that's why the Mishnah in Pirkei Avot says, "Eizehu chacham? Ha'ro'eh et hanolad"—who is wise? Someone who sees what is born from what. Meaning, you see what could happen. What are the two options or five options or ten options of what could happen as an outcome of everything that I do? And once you look at things that way, 90% of the things that are like bad habits... You know, so you just think about, you know, what's gonna happen after, what's the risk? What's the reward? And that's why the Mishnah in Pirkei Avot says, "Eizehu chacham? Ha'ro'eh et hanolad"—who is wise? Someone who sees what is born from what. Meaning, you see what could happen. What are the two options or five options or ten options of what could happen as an outcome of everything that I do? And once you look at things that way, 90% of the things that are like bad habits they're going to go to garbage because you know this is not worth it. Mostly, how does it work? You know, we have to think about this. You know, not just act, but start thinking about things more. Yes. You said to one of the girls here that Gehinnom is really horrible. But yesterday one of our teachers told us that it's not like burning or anything. I don't know if that makes sense. It's not like burning. When you think of Gehinnom, you think like...

1:46:57every time you ask a question and somebody gives you an answer, you always have to make sure that the answer has a source. It has a source, because if I just say an answer, Answers 50-50 why it may be right, it may be wrong, but if it has a source in a Torah book, meaning in a Gemara, in a Mishnah, in a sefer tzaddikim, somewhere, then I know it's not my opinion. I know that it's Torah's opinion. So sometimes people don't know something and they say something that makes sense to them, or they say something that they hope makes sense to you, but they don't really know. A lot of people don't know about that topic. It's not a very common topic for people. Because of the life that I lived and because of what I do, I spent a lot of time studying the topic and I can tell you for sure that it's not an imaginary place.

1:48:13It doesn't hurt. It's quite the opposite. I have a whole shiur about it. It's called Gehinnom. And I don't recommend it for everybody because it's very, very graphic. You don't see anything, but just the stuff that the Torah says about it is not pleasant. And I bring Torah sources from the Tanakh, from the Gemara, from the Zohar, from Sifrei Tzaddikim, from Chassidut, all over the Torah. I think we went over 1,400 sources in the shiur, a lot of sources. It's not like it's one person's opinion and then everybody else contradicts them. This is a widely known opinion, and the problem is in our generation most people do not know anything about this topic and It just decided that, you know, Gehinnom doesn't exist, hell doesn't exist, or it's just a place that maybe you're confused a little bit. They make it like it's some laundry room and you go there for a few hours, and then everything is okay. That's not what it is. Gehinnom is a very real place. There are entire books written about it, sections, and so on and so forth. A person needs to know this at some point in their life. Usually, Chazal said you should start teaching your child that it exists at six years old and...

1:49:26Details maybe later on, maybe around your age, or a little older. The point being is that a person needs to know that it exists at least once in their life because now, you know that all of the sins are not worth it for sure. Why? Because you don't even want a 1% chance of going to this place. You want to do everything possible to avoid this place at all costs. And when somebody tells you that it doesn't exist, the only response you give them is, "Can you give me a source from the Torah that says what you said?" Show me a book that says it doesn't exist, or it's a place that people look, whatever it is that they said. Can I see it in the book? Can I see somebody? It's a big rabbi. Could be the Lubavitcher Rebbe, could be Rambam, could be Rabbi Akiva, anybody. He wrote it. He put his signature on the book that this is what it says. Can you show me? Nobody could show you that because it doesn't exist. Anybody that says those things doesn't have a source. They either don't know. They're scared to tell you the truth. Most of the time, they don't know, and that's because it's not a comfortable topic to study. When I studied it the first time, I wasn't comfortable. The second time I studied it, I started crying. That's how bad it is. It's not fun. The more you understand what happens if a person does not go in the way of Hashem, the more difficult it is. It's important to know that Hashem has reward and punishment. He does not want anybody to go there, but it's available.

1:50:54Because that's how you run the world. If everybody went to Heaven, then why should we keep going? If everybody goes to the same place as Moshe Rabbeinu, what's the point then? You know, why should we keep mitzvot? Why shouldn't we just all, like, you know, run around and start eating pork in the middle of the street? Like, why do anything if everybody goes to Heaven and everybody's best friends with Moshe Rabbeinu? So obviously, Hashem says, yes, there's a place of Heaven and there's a place that's Hell or Gehinnom or whatever you want to call it. There are seven names. There are different places. You want to go here? These are the options of how to get here. You want to go there? These are the options of how to get there. A person knows that this is a motivator for how we live our lives here. People who are scared of learning about scary topics don't understand that this is the motivation for a human being in general. For example, you don't drive fast on a highway, not because you don't want to drive fast. You don't drive because you don't want to get into an accident, you don't want to get a ticket, you don't want to put other people at risk because you're scared of stuff. You know people work not because they like to work; they work because they don't want to be poor, they don't want to starve, they don't want to depend on other people. You're scared that bad things are going to happen to you—that's why you do stuff. In everything in life, everything that we do in life is motivated by fear.

1:52:13That's human nature. That's how we operate our life. You study for a test. Why? Because you don't want to fail. You're scared of failing. Because if you fail, you're not going to move up to the next grade. So fear is a good thing. That's what motivates human beings. Hashem says, yes, you should be afraid of not only things in this world, but also things that happen after this world. Not because I want you to go there, chas v'shalom, but because you need to know it exists. And if you don't do good, that's the only option. But if everybody got good, if everybody went to the same heaven, then what's the point? Why do we even have to keep any mitzvot? You can't tell me that it's more fun. Because sometimes when a person starts doing teshuvah like I did, in the beginning it wasn't fun. After you do it for a while, it's amazing. You get to know the meaning of it, the purpose of life, and it's, you know, you live a life of kedusha. It's amazing. But in the beginning, not only is it not fun, it's hard. All of a sudden, you can't work on Shabbat. All of a sudden, you have to eat a specific type of food. All of a sudden, you can't look at anything that you want. All of a sudden, everything changes. It's tough. It's difficult. So if there's no reward and punishment, then what's the point? If I'm going to go to heaven anyway, why should I keep any Torah? Then why does it say in the Torah that, you know, Korach...

1:53:28Earth opened and swallowed him, and he's still there suffering to this day. So what? He's the only one in the world that ever got punished? It's not fair. And what about everybody else—Hitler and all the other wicked people—they don't get punished? Only Korach got punished? So obviously, we see that it's mentioned in the Torah many, many times. It's just that most people never study the subject, so they don't really know the answer. And sometimes people, you know, they're uncomfortable not giving you an answer, so they just make up an answer. And that's not good, but it happens. But in general, if you look at the Torah sources, you'll see that there are thousands of sources about it. It's one of the 13 principles of faith. Rambam writes 13 principles of faith. Reward and punishment. Reward and punishment does not mean this world; it means the next world. So there's no "bad heaven." There's only a good heaven, which means that the bad happens somewhere else. Name it whatever you want. That's not heaven though. So that's the thing. So if a person knows that this exists, he already knows it's not worth it to sin. It's not worth it to go against Hashem. And he's going to try harder. She's going to try harder to do good. Sometimes you fall. It happens. Everybody sins once in a while. But at least they're not going to do it on purpose. At least they're not going to continue with it. They're going to do teshuva. They're going to get better. And little by little, stop sinning. But at least they know that there's a consequence. Just like in life. Regular life.

1:54:54So that's the thing. So if a person knows that this exists, he already knows it's not worth it to sin. It's not worth it to go against Hashem. And he's going to try harder. She's going to try harder to do good. Sometimes you fall. It happens. Everybody sins once in a while. But at least they're not going to do it on purpose. At least they're not going to continue with it. They're going to do teshuva. They're going to get better. And little by little, stop sinning. But at least they know that there's a consequence. Just like in life. Regular life.