Shiur #122 Yom Kippur special shiur :Wake Up Call At The Breslev Center (Florida)

0:01Thank you for having me, the Breast Love Center, Baruch Hashem. Rafael and I have actually known each other for a little while, and we've always wanted to do something together. And, you know, you always plan, plan, plan, and God laughs. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me, the Breslov Center, Baruch Hashem. Rafael and I have actually known each other for a little while, and we've always wanted to do something together. And, you know, you always plan, plan, plan, and God laughs.

1:03He says, whenever I'm ready, then you'll actually work out. And a few hours ago, he calls me and he says, "Listen, last minute, any chance of you coming?" I said, "Well, I only have two other lectures today. I only have two other lectures." "Okay, fine. You have people?" He says, "I'm going to have people." I said, "Who are these people?" He said, "I'm going to come learn at 10 o'clock at night." I said, "I'm in." So, Baruch Hashem, we're here. Now, the question is, How do you go from being on Wall Street, CNBC, Bloomberg, fame, fortune, millions and millions of dollars, everything and anything that every one of you guys wants, and leave all of it to go work for free? Instead of chasing money, chasing tail, chasing the material world that we're all surrounded by, Becoming excited about teaching a group of 20-year-olds, or less or more, some Torah and giving you a little bit of an idea of why you're even alive. Now, I guess the first question I have is, does anyone have an answer to the question, why did you come to this world? Anyone? I'm sure you guys have asked yourself that question at one point. At some point, you guys asked yourself, why did you come to this world?

2:23No? Anybody have an answer? Okay, so this is the Torah question. This is the Torah answer. What's the real answer for you? What's the real answer? I mean, people have different answers. Some people say, "You know what, they came here to make money." That's what I thought. I thought that I was going to be the next Bill Gates. Some people think that I came here to have kids, have a big family, five, 10, 15 kids, 20 kids. I came to have a big family. In this generation, it's a little different. Most people want two dogs instead of two kids. Some other people, they want success. They want fame and fortune. They want to be on the show MTV Cribs. They want to be the next superstar. You ask people why they came to this world, usually they'll connect their purpose in life to their profession. their purpose in life to their profession. When people would ask me, "What is your ultimate goal in life?" I would say, "To continue working on Wall Street even when I'm 80 years old." Now, I'm not 80 and I'm not working on Wall Street. So something changed. And b'ezrat Hashem, I'm hoping to influence you just a little bit

3:39to go towards that same change that I went through. You don't necessarily need to get to the point of teaching Torah, but you need to at least have an answer when somebody asks you, "What's the purpose of your life?" Now, the real point of the lecture is for you guys to ask me questions. I don't prepare lectures. I have no idea what I'm going to talk to you about before I talk... So I can give you a lecture for the next 10 hours. But if you're not interested in it, then I've wasted my time and yours. So if you have specific questions, any question, Purpose of life. Why do people get sick? What's the point? Where are dinosaurs in the Torah? I don't know. Any question you have, ask. Science questions, logical questions, rational questions, stupid questions, smart questions, funny questions, any questions. The more questions, the better this shiur. Or you're just going to continue listening to me talk like a speech like I'm Obama. So it's up to you. Now, questions?

4:41Ready? No? Go ahead, ask. I know you're nervous. Somebody's got to break the ice. Okay, Wall Street, yes. Change everything. Okay, so we're going to start with that. In this week's parasha, Hashem answers your question and my question at the same time. If anybody ever wants to see a miracle, miracle, hashgacha pratit, hashgacha pratit means like Hashem shows you that He actually cares about you, specifically. Not just about the world, the heaven and the earth that He created, and everything in between, but you specifically. To give you an example of what hashgacha pratit is. Now, when you do kiruv, which is what I do, I try to help people do teshuva. One of the benefits of doing kiruv is that you see an enormous amount of miracles. Every day, I see miracles. Sometimes they're my miracles that happen in my life, and sometimes they happen in somebody else's life. And I'll give you guys a real-life example of what's happening right now. Today, it happened. Live. You're the first ones to hear it, other than my wife because she was there. Live miracle. About two months ago...

6:02I wanted to open another UPS account for my business, which is the kiruv business, the organization, non-profit organization. I wanted to open another account for it. This is something, I already have a long-standing account with UPS for, I don't know, many, many years. And I wanted to open another account, which is something that should take no more than five minutes. No more than five minutes. So I call UPS, I give them my regular account number, then who I am. Okay, we're gonna, you know, set up the account. It's gonna take a couple of days. Okay, this is already extended, but no big deal. I'm not under any pressure. So, as you would have it, a couple of days later, they say, "Okay, it's actually going to take two weeks." Why is it going to take two weeks? Oh, it has an approval process. You have this type of account, that type of account. Fine, two weeks. Not the end of the world. I wait two weeks. Two weeks are over. Okay, the account is set up. I look at the account. I review what the prices are supposed to be. I look at what the prices actually are in this new account, and it's completely wrong. There's a benefit to having a business account versus a private account. So it's wrong. Okay, these are the retail prices. Let's say $10. My price should be $8. It's still showing me $10. So obviously, you didn't set up the account. Two weeks, I'm waiting for no reason. So then I go back and forth with UPS.

7:27Long story short, this whole thing continues for the next two months. Instead of five minutes of setting up an account, two months I'm waiting to set up an account. And my representative, she keeps telling me, such a nice lady, she keeps telling me, "Listen, I have no idea what's going on. It's supposed to happen, it's supposed to happen, it's just not happening. It's not being fixed." After two months, I tell her, "Listen, we have to finish this. It's already been two months." She says, "Yes, but actually, you have somebody else now. I just got a promotion and I'm moving on to a different role. So you now have a new representative, someone else who is going to help you." I thought, "Oh, maybe I'll have better luck with this new guy." But at least you knew the story. I have to start this whole story again. nightmare, so everything, just like the Rabbi of Rabbi Akiva said, "Everything is for the good." So, they sent me this guy, and the guy calls me. He seems really nice. This guy's name is Steven, and we talked. We hit it off. He goes, "Oh, listen, I can fix this problem, no problem. It's just going to take a couple of days."

8:45And he's like, "What's the organization about? What do you guys do?" And I tell him a little bit about our organization. He's like, "Oh, wow, that's very interesting. I'm Jewish." Oh, wow, that's interesting. Out of 500,000 employees that UPS has, I happen to have the one Jewish guy that is actually interested in Judaism. As you would have it, This guy and I hit it off. He likes the stock market, so we start talking about the stock market. He left Judaism many years ago because he didn't get some answers. I didn't know he didn't get those answers. I didn't even know he left Judaism. So I tell him, listen, one of the things that we do is we send out these things called kiruv packages. Kiruv package. Every one of you guys can get one. I'll give you a kiruv package. Just text me your address and your name, and I'll send you a free kiruv package. A kiruv package has this book called The Coming Revolution. It's also called...

9:50no no no, you're confusing me. The Coming Revolution, it's also called The Coming Revolution. It's by Rabbi Zamir Cohen, but they also named it Science Comes of Age. It's the same exact book, just a different title. So it comes with this book. If you buy it in the store, it's probably $60. You get this for free. Don't sell it on eBay; read it. And you get a bunch of CDs. You get my CD called "From Wall Street to the Western Wall." It's about 30 hours' worth of Torah. It includes my personal story. And CDs from Rabbi Mizrachi, CDs from Rabbi Ilan Meirov, Rabbi Avi Wiesenfeld, and a few others. And a few other little trinkets in there. In so many words, each package, at the minimum, if I send it domestically, if I send it in the U.S., it costs me about $100. You get it for free. So I said, "Listen, if you want to get this package, send me your address, Steve. I'll send it to you." He gives me the address, and he says, "Thank you very much." I said, "You know what? In the meantime, you should watch this lecture. It's called 'Torah and Science' by Rabbi Mizrachi. It's a really good lecture."

11:03Oh, okay. So he starts watching this lecture. In the middle of the lecture, he stops the lecture. He texts me or sends me an email. He says, you don't understand. It's answering so many different questions I've always had. I left Judaism many years ago. I was in a part of the Reform movement where they make up their own rules. They decide that the Torah is no longer relevant, so they just create a whole new Torah. But they still call themselves Jews. So it's like Jews with a style. Remix. And he's like, it just never made sense to me. So I stopped altogether. So this lecture puts things into perspective. And then he gets the book. He's like, you have no idea. This is the one thing I've been looking for. The one thing that caused me to leave Judaism altogether is somebody came up to me and started debating me, science versus Torah. And I didn't have any answers.

12:03was telling me, "Listen, the world is 13 billion years old according to scientists. Judaism says it's 5777 years old. In a couple of weeks, it's a little bit of a difference. Science says dinosaurs lived on earth. Where is it in the Torah?" Science says all types of things. Where is all of this in the Torah? I didn't have an answer. So I said, you know what, it makes sense. I'm just going to leave the whole thing. He said, in the book that you sent me, it has the answers to all of them. Every question I wanted to, actually I needed to answer this debate, it's in this book. And not only that, I later find out that he is also in a relationship that, according to Judaism, is forbidden. He's with a non-Jew. A Jew is only allowed to be with a Jew. This is already something we know from Avraham Avinu. Now, unfortunately, in America today, 60% of the Jews in America are intermarrying. 60% are with non-Jews. And in some places in America,

13:25ninety percent, meaning nine out of ten couples, are going to end their Judaism. After that marriage, they're no longer Jewish. The woman is not Jewish; the kids come out not Jewish. It's the end of Judaism. Three thousand three hundred years we fought, we died, we bled, we cried to stay Jewish. The guy marries a non-Jew; Judaism ends with him. That's it. It's over. Done. One day he's going to go up to Shamayim. Moshe Rabbeinu, Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, all going to show up and say, "We worked so hard to keep you Jewish. Why'd you end it?" What are you going to say to them? It's a problem. So now, this guy tells me he's in a similar situation, but he doesn't even really feel Jewish because he never had these answers. And where's the biggest Hashgacha Pratit? Where's the biggest... private lessons from Hashem showing you that not only does He care, but He cares about you specifically. Not only did He send you the book with all the answers for the questions you had many years ago, not only did He provide you the lecture to make it easy for your spouse to hear, but He sent you the one guy in the entire world

14:48that is interested in the stock market, because that's what I did for 16 years, but is also someone that lived your life at some point, that was also intermarried, that also was with a non-Jew at some point and understands where you stand. So I told him, if you ever ask the question, "Does God love me?" Well, He sent you me. is the only one that can help you. Because I know how you feel. You go to a regular rabbi, the rabbi's going to tell you, listen, you're not allowed to be with a non-Jew. Come back to me when you left the goya. What can I tell you? But when you're in the situation, and you're already with her two, three, four, five years, you're in love, you don't think that you can deal with anything else. Leaving her, it says, wait, leaving her, Leaving something, you're not even a part of Judaism because you don't keep anything. You say, okay, you know what, I'd rather stay out and keep her. We have background music too, Baruch Hashem, it's not a problem. But only once you really understand the significance of everything can you make a rational decision.

16:10So I told them the important thing is you have to realize who you really are, where you really stand, and start learning about what Hashem actually wants from you. And what He says in this parasha, which answers your question. Parashat Ki Tavo, Hashem tells us in chapter 26, verse 19. So Hashem here is telling you the purpose of life. He's telling you to make you supreme over all the nations that He made, meaning the purpose of life is for Am Yisrael to be number one. no, we are not like the goyim. As much as we'd like to be fair and nice and politically correct, and we have friends that are goyim, and they're very nice, the reality is that the purpose of the world is the Jews. This is tough to hear and even agree with when we're far from Torah. Once you get closer and closer to Torah, it's easier to understand. But Hashem is telling you here that the purpose is for you to be number one.

17:37for renown and for splendor, so that you will be a holy people to Hashem, your God, as He spoke. In essence, answering the question of why do you live? Why did you come to this world? To be a holy nation. Now if you're a holy nation, it obviously means that we have to do things that are holy. So Hashem told us exactly what's holy and what's not holy. When I found out about this verse and I compared myself, I did a comparison. Look, at some point, you guys are going to do it. You guys are all relatively young; you may not have had your reality check yet. At some point, you'll have it, hopefully sooner rather than later. It's better it comes from me than from Hashem because when it comes from Hashem, it hurts a little bit. So... i compared myself to what Hashem defines as holy. Hashem says, keep Shabbat. I was going to casinos on Shabbat. I played Texas Hold'em with the best players in the world. Just to start the game, I'd put $50,000 on the table. Because if it wasn't any less, it would just be a waste of time. On a good month, I'd make a million dollars. On a bad month, I made $200,000.

19:02Playing for $50,000 is just a waste of my time. I make that in a few hours. You understand? So it all had to be relative. I had all the money you could possibly need. I didn't look at price tags. I was on television. I had fame. I had Harvard graduates working for me even though I didn't finish college. Everything and anything material you want, I had. I had a $3.5 million apartment on the 35th floor on 15 Broad Street, right across the street from the New York Stock Exchange. You can look it up on the internet right now and still see the pictures. It's still there. I still have it. No one lives there. It's just a waste. But nonetheless, materially, I had it. am kadosh (holy nation) had no idea what it meant, no idea. So one day, I went on to start learning Torah, embarking on a whole journey, which you guys should listen to the lecture either online or on the CD because it's a very long lecture. But I want to get to other issues today. After starting to do teshuva, I started comparing myself

20:21What is Hashem's definition of kadosh? And where am I? Hashem says keep Shabbat. I was going to casinos on Shabbat. That didn't really fit the description of kadosh. Hashem said eat kosher. I eat kosher sometimes. I eat kosher meat. I would never eat pig. Come on, I'm not that bad. But I eat pizza. Anybody here never ate pizza outside, like Domino's? Everybody ate Domino's or Pizza Hut at some point, right? There's nothing wrong. It's just cheese, right? The problem is it's not just cheese. The problem is it's actually not just cheese. Not only is it not just cheese, and not only is it cheese and meat, but usually the meat that's in the cheese is pig. Always. Usually. Most of the time. Why? How? If you look at the ingredients of cheese...

21:23You go to the supermarket, test this out for yourself. Go to a regular supermarket. You look at the dairy products. Look for kosher cheese, kosher cheese. You'll find five different types of kosher cheeses. Five, six, at most. Non-kosher, 150. What, they have special cows, they have more milk, what happened? It's because the non-kosher cheeses Number one, they're cheaper to make. And number two, they use an ingredient that can never be kosher. One of the ingredients that they use for preservation, for it to last much longer, and also for taste and for other reasons, comes from the stomach of animals, and usually the animal they pick is a pig. Why? Because it's very cheap. A pig eats everything. Unlike sheep, cows, chickens, or anything else, a pig eats everything. You throw a diaper at a pig, he'll eat it. You throw a dead animal, he'll eat it. You throw his own kids, he'll eat them too. Throw a human, he'll eat them. Everything. And the most horrific part about a pig is that it's the only animal that doesn't sweat. Doesn't sweat. And what's the big deal about it sweating? Who cares if it doesn't sweat? He's a model? What do we care if he sweats or not?

22:50And when you sweat, if you guys ever got sick in your life, which hopefully not, but if you ever got sick, then you realize that when you finally started getting healthy, and if you had a fever, when you finally started getting healthy, you broke the fever by sweating an enormous amount. You sweat a lot. Why? Why are you sweating? Because finally, your body is ready to release all of the toxins that are in your body, which are making you sick. This means that in order for you to get healthy, you have to sweat because you have to release these toxins. So sweat is necessary in order for you to release toxins. Meaning that when a pig doesn't sweat, it never releases the toxins out of its body. Ever. Which means that everything toxic stays inside it. This is why if a snake bites, a snake, a poisonous, the most poisonous snake bites a pig, nothing happens.

23:56The venom does nothing to the pig because the pig's skin is so poisonous by itself that the venom does absolutely nothing to it. This is also the reason why you could test this out yourself. You go to that same supermarket where you saw the non-kosher cheese. You go to the meat aisle. You'll see a steak from a pig, pork they call it. Take a steak. Or you can just save yourself the money and the headache and just watch this on YouTube. Take a steak, pour Coca-Cola on it. Pig. Coca-Cola on the pig. Within a matter of a few minutes, you'll see all the maggots and worms come out of it. It can never be cleaned. Ever. It's always poisonous. It's always bad for you. Always. So... But I finally found out that being an am kadosh means you have to eat kosher. I started looking into kosher and I found out interesting facts like this. This is part of the reason why Hashem told us you have to eat kosher food. And so, I started asking more and more questions about the purpose of life and how we can prove that God exists. Now a lot of people, myself included, enjoy science. You guys like science?

25:24So people that like science, huh? Like science. Yes. He digests, yes, he digests. But releasing the toxins doesn't happen in a regular way. Like, for example, a dog sweats through its tongue. That's why, and different animals sweat in different ways, but the pig never sweats. Never sweats. So it keeps all the toxins. So a lot of—go ahead. Yeah, I have a question. So since, like, you pour the Coke and everything on the pig and then the maggots come out, why would the FDA and the food administration allow it? Why would they allow it? Because there's a lot of money in it. Why do they allow oxytocin? they allowed drugs. They allow everything. You know that until it was verified that it was addictive, Coca-Cola, the number one drink in the world, you know why it's called Coca-Cola, right? Originally, the main ingredient was cocaine. But for many years, it was allowed. Until just a few decades ago, before you guys were born, smoking

26:45was recommended by doctors. Not only was it allowed, not only did it not have a warning, but the commercials on television would say, nine out of 10 doctors recommend this brand of cigarette. You could see commercials online, you could figure this, it's not stuff I can make up. So, meaning that a lot of this stuff that you see that's highly recommended It's not necessarily highly recommended because it's good for you. It's highly recommended because it makes good money. And this world is run by money. That's why, you know, people have exchanged God for money. And that's the reason why, if you look, if any one of you guys has a dollar bill, you have a dollar bill. On the bottom of a dollar bill, it says, "In God we trust." The problem is, most people think that the dollar is the God they're talking about. Understand? So, money has made people do all types of strange things throughout all generations. And it's the one driving factor that can make even a person who looks righteous, acts righteous, and was righteous...

28:02And turn them into a completely wicked person. Why? Because even the Torah says that money can make the righteous or the wise into blind people, meaning as if they don't see. Unfortunately, that's the reason why we have to make sure that we realize Hashem made rules. We have to look at those rules. We have to see what those rules are. Sometimes they make sense, sometimes they don't make sense. In the end, they always work. Any other questions? Go ahead. Yes, November 18, 2006. November 18, 2006, I was perfectly healthy. But I was going to have surgery. It was an elective surgery, meaning I chose to have the surgery. I didn't have to have the surgery. It was a surgery that was supposed to bother me for a couple of days.

29:03But the type of surgery where you go to the doctor, have the surgery, and they release you the same day. No, it wasn't like heart or liver or anything major. I went and had the surgery. Everything looked like it was going fine while I was still under anesthesia and asleep. But when I woke up from the surgery, I was a completely different person. I was in pain all the time. I was in such pain that it would be similar to the equivalent of if you put someone on fire, electrocuted them, and started cutting them up over and over again without stopping. All at the same time. And this continued for the next seven years. Yes? Hemorrhoids had nothing to do with the pain. The surgery was for a small, tiny part of my body. The pain was from my neck all the way to the bottom of my feet. No, we went to over 50 doctors and spent hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars on them because I had a lot of money. Until this day, I didn't have a diagnosis. The diagnosis was God. Oh, Hashem, everything is good. After I did teshuvah, everything started getting fixed. But this is why you guys need to watch my personal story because there's more details to the story. Go ahead, next question. Now it's getting interesting.

30:27Waiting for some more questions. Yes. So non-kosher pizza has pig in it. When you eat non-kosher pizza, you're eating milk and meat. Binghamton University. SUNY Binghamton in New York. Top state school with a 3.9 GPA. Where in New York did you live? I lived, when I moved, when my family moved from Israel to the U.S., we originally lived in Staten Island. I lived there until I was 17, went to Binghamton, stayed for a year, came back, moved to Manhattan in 2001, and lived there for the next 14 years. And now I live in Florida for the last two years. What about the stock market caught your interest? Money. Yeah, of course. Out of any profession that you could have chosen, I mean, what did you study in university? I studied psychiatry and psychology. And you went to stocks? And I went to stocks. Did you leave for stocks? Did I leave for stocks? No, I left because school was a waste of my time. You have to understand. The point of school, if it's secular school, is to do one of two things.

31:53Initially, the main point of you going to grade school and high school and so on is to teach you how to think. Teach you how to think because naturally, if you put a guy in a cave, or you put him in a zoo, or you put him in a jungle, he'll just become like his surroundings. He'll become an animal. They'll become like a wolf. They'll become like a bear. They'll become like whatever their surroundings are. You put them into a school environment, and they start teaching them how to figure out algebra, how to figure out different types of historical events and actually learn how to use their memory. You teach them different types of communication skills. Then you're teaching the person how to think. So I already figured out how to think. I was already a good student throughout all of my life. So the next purpose of school is to teach you a vocation, teach you a job. If you want to be a doctor, you want to be a lawyer, you want to be an architect, accountant, you need a degree. You cannot get that type of degree without going to school. It used to be that if you went to college for four years, that was enough.

33:04But in my generation, it got to the point where you started to need graduate school. In your generation, you have to have graduate school. Pretty much, college became like high school. But that's if you want to have one of those degrees in order to be a lawyer, doctor, accountant, or some type of specific profession. I didn't want to be any of those. I just wanted to make money. And I already knew what money was all about because I had already started working when I was 10 years old. I initially started delivering newspapers on two newspaper routes. I was already making a couple hundred dollars a week delivering newspapers. Then, in high school, despite going to school and playing football, I also had three jobs: had the newspaper route, sold shoes, and sold dresses or worked in different types of clothing stores. To you guys, this sounds like a renaissance man, but in reality, that was the norm for my generation. You guys are just spoiled. You don't start working until you're like 30.

34:11But that's just reality. That's your reality right now. That's what it is. You're not alone. All of your generation is like that. If you see an 18-year-old kid working, it's like, wow, that's admirable. In my generation, if you're 18 without a job, you're a loser. There's something wrong with you. What do you mean? How is your family surviving? You must be rich. Like something's wrong with you. An 18-year-old not working? Again, it's a different generation. It's not your fault. It's the fault of your parents and my parents and everyone else that we let it get to this point. Nonetheless, a... I didn't want to. I already knew what money was about when I was 17 years old. I was selling computers and different electronics. I was already making $100,000 a year. So, for me, to go to school initially was because I wanted to become a psychiatrist. I wanted to become something of a doctor. But then I realized that I'm going to have to go to school for another eight years, and I didn't want to do that. Especially when I found out that pretty much everyone else that was in school was more interested in going to a bar, getting drunk, getting high, and getting girls every single day, which, even though I enjoyed it for a part of the week, it definitely wasn't something I could do all day. Everyone else who was in school was more interested in going to a bar, getting drunk, getting high, and chasing girls every single day, which, even though I enjoyed it for part of the week, it definitely wasn't something I could do all day.

35:22I needed to be a grown-up and go make money. I was already grown-up when I was 15. For me to just go drinking every day, I just couldn't take it. I was surrounded by losers, and it just didn't make sense to me to just smoke, drink, and chase girls nonstop. To me, it just never made sense. Which, again, to most kids your age is like heaven. So I decided that school's not for me. I had to get out of it, and I went back to selling electronics. I worked there for a little while longer, and then eventually, I got into the stock market business. I became a stockbroker, went through that journey of becoming a stockbroker initially for the first couple of years, paying my dues, not making any money, getting beat up by the bosses—not physically, but pretty much they took advantage of me for the first couple of years. But eventually, I started making money, and eventually, I actually hired my bosses to become my employees. Um, did you open up, like, your own...? I opened up my own company. I had a brokerage firm, I had a hedge fund, and an insurance company. Um, and like I said, I hired some of my old bosses to become my employees. I grew up; I grew much faster than they did, and such is life.

36:41And I thought that money was the purpose of the world. Money was my purpose. I like to give, so I donated a lot of money. Donated money to the Knesset. I got a Sefer Torah written in Israel. Even though I wasn't religious, I still was connected in some way or another. If anyone came to my door and needed money, I really wouldn't ask too many questions. I'd just give them the money. I was what you would call a good guy when it came to that. I was very generous. But when it came to the definition of good based on what Hashem said, I was Rasha Merusha. But most people that are secular don't like to hear it and don't know what "Rasha Merusha" means. They don't know that being wicked doesn't necessarily mean you're evil. It doesn't mean you go murder. Most people think that as long as you're not a murderer, you're not a rapist, you're not a pedophile, you're a decent person. Yes, you're human, but according to God's definition, you're not a decent person. According to God's definition of who is His lover and who is His enemy, if you want the definition, you don't need to go to a dictionary. You go to the Torah. You go to the end of Parashat Va'etchanan, which we read a couple of weeks ago, and you look at the last three verses. The last three verses of the parasha. In the parasha, it says, to my lovers, the ones that keep My mitzvot.

38:06So here he's defining who he considers his lovers are. The lovers are the ones that keep the mitzvot. I will pay them for thousands of generations. Great. But to my haters, I'll pay them cash to their face to destroy them. Now, here you see that lovers and haters are obviously opposites. So, if the lovers are the ones that keep the mitzvot, the haters are the ones that don't keep the mitzvot. It's as simple as it gets. Once I saw this for the first time, I realized that I was in trouble. Even though I wasn't necessarily connected to Hashem every minute, I didn't want to be hated by Him. I didn't want to be considered His enemy. That's one enemy you don't want. But sometimes, I've heard this already several times in my life. I heard it when I was a teenager, I heard it when I was in my early 20s, but many times that I heard it, I wasn't ready. Sometimes people are not ready to hear the truth, and they get up in the middle of a lecture and they leave. But sometimes, all they need is truth. That's what they've been missing, like this guy Steve that I was telling you about. For all these years, he's been looking for the truth.

39:32And Hashem says in chapter 4 in the book of Deuteronomy, if you look for Me, you will find Me. If you look for Me with all of your heart and all of your soul. Meaning, if you're looking for Hashem, you're looking for the truth, Hashem will make it so that you'll find it. You won't have a hard time. You'll find it. But you have to show, you have to look for it. He says with all of your heart and all of your soul. Meaning, you have to actually try. Don't just open the book, say, "Eh, you know what, I don't understand," close the book, and go back to playing PlayStation. If you actually start reading the book, you start looking into it, you start actually caring about what Hashem's opinion is, you'll find out. So, a lot of people look for Hashem. I'll give you guys an interesting fact. Anyone here knows what DNA is? You know what DNA is, right? Okay. Now, if I was a painter, how would I let you know that I painted something? I'd sign it. So, what if I told you that God signed you?

40:32inside your DNA. Does that make it easy to believe in Him? No. I mean, unless... Coming from if you went up to any person and told them that. No. I mean, I don't know. How would you prove that? How would you prove it? Okay, so let's see. In 1983, Dr. Rubinstein moved from Argentina to Israel to do molecular biology research. Over the next three years of doing molecular biology research, he investigated DNA. He investigated DNA for multiple species: for rats, for dogs, for cats, for sharks, dolphins, monkeys, bats, and of course humans—25 different species altogether. And he had this interesting computer program that would analyze the information. and give him answers. So, he asked for the information. After looking at this DNA, he found out that the basic foundation of all DNA is the same. Whether you're a bat, a cat, or a human being, you're all the same. So, for example, if you look at that phone, and instead of looking at YouTube or some silly video of a cop collecting ducks in the middle of the street, you look at a picture of DNA, you'll see DNA is two squiggly lines.

42:01Right, it's two squiggly lines. Now, interestingly enough, whether it's a cat or a dog or any other species, it's always the same two squiggly lines. Just like every building, whether it's a small building like this one or it's the Empire State Building, they all have the same basic foundation. So, two squiggly lines are the foundation. Follow me so far? Another thing is that you'll see that the two squiggly lines connect. There's something that connects them; there are lines that go across that connect them. So Dr. Rubinstein asks, "What happens if I take the two squiggly lines and I disconnect them? I take it, I separate it, I make it two separate lines." So the computer program analyzes the... uh, analyzes... What's so funny?

43:01I feel like I'm in grade school. What? What's so funny? I don't want to waste my time. If you guys are not interested, then I'll just leave. This is not school. You don't have to be here. You want to go, go. I'm not your teacher. You don't want to be here? Don't be here. You want to laugh, joke, or smoke? Do it. Don't waste my time, though. You've been laughing in my face for the last 20 minutes, and I've been holding it in because I'm hoping that it's going to stop. But if you're going to make a joke of the whole lecture, you're just making it bad for everyone else here. So either grow some manners or leave. Again, I'm not your teacher. This is not school. It's not high school. You don't have to be here. And neither do I. You're not paying me. It's free. If it's a joke for you, I'm more than happy to leave. I have a family. I have other people to teach, Baruch Hashem. Tens of thousands of people are waiting for this shiur. If you don't value it, I can go there. If you want a joke, by all means. But if you want to learn, and actually learn that there's a value to life more than smoking hookah all day, then we can do something here. I was in your position. I was also a kid. I was also an idiot. I'm telling you, you have two options. You can either go through what I went through, which is probably the better story for you, or you can go through the shortcut and start where I'm at now. It's your choice. The two options are this.

44:30I lived your life. I lived your life. I went, I chased money, I had girls, I had money, I had fame, I had everything you want. Everything you want. Then in 2006, Hashem said, "Okay, that's not the reason why you came to this world." And He gave you a few wake-up calls and you didn't want to listen. First, Hashem sends you a text. Then He sends you a WhatsApp. Then He sends you a phone call. Then He leaves you a voicemail. And then another voicemail. And another voicemail. And eventually, you don't answer. Then He sends somebody to your house. And eventually that person breaks the door to your house. And then eventually he goes inside and he breaks your legs. And if that's not enough, then He gives you some type of shot with a disease. And you can't cure it because He's the only one that has a cure. And He just tortures you every single day. until this person has mercy to give you the cure. That's reality. That's what I had. So I had all the money in the world, but how much is $20 million worth when all you have is suffering? Zero. Nothing. Nothing. It's worth nothing because you're in pain all the time.

45:47So when I got the wake-up call, which Baruch Hashem you guys haven't gotten yet, I didn't think much of it, but then it just got worse and worse and worse, and it got to a point where I had to have a surgery every month. I begged people to kill me; they just didn't listen. My wife didn't listen, my mom didn't listen, no one wanted to kill me, so I'm still here. But really, that's where the wake-up got to. The reason why I do what I do and I left Wall Street and I left everything is because I'm scared for you. I'm okay. Baruch Hashem, I keep mitzvot, I learn Torah, I teach. Baruch Hashem, b'ezrat Hashem, hopefully, before I end my life, or Hashem takes it back, I'll complete my teshuva. B'ezrat Hashem. The problem is all the people that are still wasting their life away, having no idea why they're here. I'm scared for you to go through the hell I went through. Seven years of this. It wasn't a week. It wasn't like a bad foot. It wasn't like, you know, he had cancer for six months and then he died. It was living in hell just here. All the time. Pain all the time. Everywhere.

47:11That's what I'm scared of. I'm scared of people actually getting to that. And if they don't get to it here, it gets even worse, because the next world, which, Baruch Hashem, we're not going to talk about, because I don't know if you guys are at that level, is much, much worse. Hashem is not kidding. That's why I do what I do. You have two options. One option is to start finding out what He wants. The other option, He's going to force you to. Just like He did to me. Why go through the pain? Why go through the anguish? Why go through the tikkun? Why waste your life away and waste the next ten of your best years, doing absolutely nothing with it, when all you need to do are a few mitzvot, become a basic level Jew, and everything's fine. No one's telling you that you have to become a big rabbi, speaker, or travel the world to help people. Just become a basic level Jew. Find out what the Torah says about who's basic. What do you have to do to be basic? Basic cable. 60 bucks a month. You don't need HBO, Showtime, and everything else. Very basic. How do I get to basic? Once you're at basic, then you decide what you want to do after. But unless you know what the purpose of life is, there's no point. The Maggid of Dubno, one of the greatest sages that ever lived,

48:40Kehillah came to him and they told him, "For the love, teach us something for Rosh Hashanah." So the Maggid of Dubno said, "You know what? It's a good idea. I'm gonna tell you a story. For every question you would ask me, I'll give you a story, a parable." Rosh Hashanah is Judgment Day. Every one of us, whether you're a Jew or a Gentile, gets judged on that day. Most people think it's just a fun day, like I used to think. It's a fun day, you have a bunch of food, you go to the Beit Knesset, you see a bunch of friends you haven't seen all year. Everyone is dressed to impress. You know, the women wear extra mini-skirts just to make sure everyone knows what their legs look like. The men wear extra jewelry like they're 50 Cent. Everyone is dressed to impress. If somebody got a brand new car, they make sure to come right before the Chag and park right in front of the Beit Knesset so everyone the entire Chag can see what kind of car they have. It's the dress-to-impress holiday. They think that Judgment Day is in 10 days. It's Yom Kippur. Wrong. Judgment Day is Rosh Hashanah.

49:58Judgment Day is the day that Hashem decides whether you're going to live or die, whether you're going to have parnassah or not, whether you're going to be rich or poor, get married or not. Judgment Day is Rosh Hashanah. The appeal is Yom Kippur, meaning if your judgment is not good, chas v'shalom, your last chance to fix it is Yom Kippur. That's why everyone cries. Everyone cries on Yom Kippur because it's their last chance. But if we prepared for the first one like we're supposed to, we would have nothing to cry about. So the Maggid from Dubno said, "Listen, you have a couple of options. There were a couple of people on a horse and carriage after one of them just stole the national treasure from the city. So he was on a horse and carriage." And then he has the driver, and they get to a border, and they stop him. So immediately, the guy that stole the treasure gets very worried. Why is he worried? Because he stole the treasure. The thief, if they catch him, not like today, where they might give you house arrest for the next six months, they would kill you on the spot back then.

51:23He says, "Okay, this may be my last few minutes." He's very worried. He's sweating bullets. The driver, on the other hand, is also very worried. He's like, "Ah, you know, I didn't steal anything, but I knew about it. Maybe they're going to blame me like I was part of the whole act." He's also worried. "Okay, I'm not the thief, but I drove him all the way from there to here. Somewhat of a partner in this whole thing." Who's the only one in the carriage that's not worried? The horse. The horse. Why isn't the horse worried? He didn't do anything. So the Maggid from Dubno says, David HaMelech tells us in Tehillim, "Don't be like a horse or a donkey." Meaning, when you show up to Judgment Day, don't think you have nothing to worry about. You're the thief in this story. Or at the very best, you're the driver. You're definitely not the horse. You made a few sins this year. You screwed up a few times. You stole from Hashem if you didn't bless before you ate. Maybe you stole from a person too, by taking money that didn't belong to you.

52:44Maybe you weren't nice to your parents like you're supposed to and didn't honor your parents, one of the Ten Commandments. Maybe, Hashem, you drove on Shabbat and didn't realize that the minute you turned on the gas in your car on Shabbat, it's 6,000 fires. Not one fire, 6,000 of them. I have an engineer who is a student of mine, and he did an analysis. He said a six-cylinder car, six-cylinder, which is pretty much the lowest level in today's age, driving at the speed limit of 55 miles an hour. Every time you press the gas, it's the equivalent of 6,000 fires. Hashem said in the Torah, don't light fire. Not fires. He said, don't light fire on Shabbat. Meaning, one time pressing the gas, you violated Shabbat 6,000 times. Maybe somebody did that. Maybe they even drove more than one second. They drove 15 minutes thinking they're doing a mitzvah by going to Beit Knesset with the car on Shabbat. A lot of people think that. They think that it's okay to drive on Shabbat to Beit Knesset.

53:53It's not a mitzvah. So maybe we made that sin. Maybe we ate Pizza Hut. Non-kosher Pizza Hut. And just found out, oh wait a minute, not only did I eat non-kosher pizza, but it was pig too. All types of things. Maybe my girlfriend's not Jewish. My boyfriend's not Jewish. All types of things. We made all types of sins. Some big ones, some small ones. Some we know about, some we don't know about. So right now is an opportunity for us to wake up. Because we're either the guy that's in the carriage, the thief, or we're the driver. We're definitely not the horse. And it's much better that you wake up from my words than wait for Hashem's words. Because His hurt. If you look at this week's parasha, and I'm assuming all of you guys, your first language is English, right? Everyone's first language is Hebrew? First language is Hebrew? So you read Hebrew perfectly?

54:54So your first language is English? No. If you read better in English, your first language has become English. I was born in Israel too. I came when I was 10 years old. But after 26 years in America, my first language is now English. First language doesn't actually mean the first language you spoke. First language means what you're most comfortable with. Most comfortable with is English, right? That's why you come to an English shiur. So in this parasha, if you read it in English, which I highly recommend, you'll see what Hashem thinks about it. I'm not going to go over all of it, or any of it really, because you could watch last night's shiur or the shiur before that, or if you like Hebrew, you could watch the shiur from a few hours ago. Hashem says that if you don't do what I want you to do, you get cursed, you get punished. And He goes about all the details of the punishments, really, really horrific, horrific punishments. And each time we don't do teshuva, the punishments get worse. And we find out pretty quickly from this parasha, Parashat Ki Tavo, that Hashem is not kidding. He's not kidding. He's not joking. He's not your friend. He's not going to wait for you forever. At some point or another, He needs you to wake up. And when you see the details of these curses, you see how much He's not kidding. What's the question? Just in general, let's say...

56:17You don't keep, I don't know, let me think about how to word this question. Let's say a person who doesn't keep Shabbat, or drives on Shabbat, is he equally unholy as someone who doesn't do anything at all? Yes. So if you don't, it's all or nothing. Not all or nothing on Judaism, it's all or nothing on Shabbat. Chazal says, the sages say, There are certain covenants that Am Yisrael has. There are certain things that Hashem specifically said, that's the brit. That's the deal. That's the foundation of a deal. So, for example, if I were to hire you to work for me when I was on Wall Street, coming on time is important. Being smart is important. Being groomed is important. All of these things are important. But the most important is for you to be productive. Meaning that if you're smart, you're funny, you come on time, you even come early, you leave late, you dress to impress every two seconds. You're just amazing. Everyone looks at you and they're excited. But you're a lazy bum that kills the deal. You're not a model, you're a Wall Street guy. I need you to work. I need you to be productive. You coming here just looking good means nothing to me.

57:42But if you're the ugliest guy in the world, you come late every single day, you leave early, but you bring in a million dollars a day. Do I care about any of those things? No, right? So there's a deal breaker here. And there's a deal maker. Shabbat's the deal breaker or deal maker. Of course, there are other things that are very, very critical as well. But according to Chazal, Hashem made a special deal with Am Yisrael to make sure that they realize that He's the Master of the world and to pretty much assure Him that we believe in Him. He says, "I really created the earth and the heavens and everything else in a moment. In a moment. Hashem doesn't have time. Hashem is beyond time. He's before time. He's after time. As soon as He created the world, the world was over." For Him, it's the same thing. The past, present, and future are all the same. He's beyond time. Time is only something you have if you have matter, if you have material. Hashem doesn't have any material. He has no body, no image of a body, nothing. He's everything in essence. So Hashem says, "I really created everything in a moment." But according to the Holy Zohar, over the next six days...

59:10he put everything in its right place, meaning He created the sun and the moon and everything else, but they weren't in the right place until He decided on the fourth day to put the sun and the moon where they are right now, and so on with all the pieces of the world. Why did He do all of this? Why didn't He just create the whole world in a moment? start, finish, that's it. Khalas, go on vacation. This is because I wanted Am Yisrael to feel like me. If I created the earth, the heavens, everything in between, everything above, everything below, everything in a moment, then every moment would be the same. Nothing would ever be different for me.

1:00:11But because I extended it over a period of six days, that gave me the ability to make one day, the seventh day, different from all the other days. Because if I created something every day for six days, and on the seventh day I didn't create, the lack of creation makes it different. The lack of creation is a creation by itself. And that's the only thing that I can do, that a human being can also do. Everything else they can't do. They can't create a son. They can't create anything. A human being cannot create anything by itself. They can't create anything. Creation is to create something out of nothing. A human being cannot create something out of nothing. So the only thing that a human being can do, that Hashem can do, is to stop creating. So in essence, what Hashem did is that Hashem minimized Himself for us. Instead of showing His glory by saying, "I created everything in a moment. Here you go. You can't do it." He says, "No, no, no. You're My son. You're My daughter. I love you. I want you to feel like Me. I want you to have one day a week that's a vacation for free. You don't have to wait a whole year for it. I want you to have one day that you feel like God."

1:01:36And that's a day that you stop creating. So I give you Shabbat. So in essence, when we keep Shabbat, we're not only honoring the deal, but we're saying, "Hashem, we appreciate what You did for us, and we believe You did it." When we don't keep Shabbat, then Chazal tells us that what we're actually telling Hashem is that we don't believe that He created the world in six days. Which is another way of saying that we don't believe in Him at all. And He takes it pretty personally. And that's why He called it a brit. A brit means a covenant; it's the deal. There are three things that are the brit. The word Shabbat breaks up into three words. The Shin is the word Shabbat. The Bet, anybody know? Brit, the brit, brit milah. The Taf is tefillin. Those are the three things that Hashem called a brit, a covenant, in the Torah. So there are certain things that a Jew needs to do in order to be a Jew. Now if a Jew, chas v'shalom, idol worships, it's a very big sin, but they can still do teshuva, and even before they do teshuva, they're still technically considered a Jew. If a Jew...

1:02:59steals, he's still considered a Jew. If a Jew murders, he's still considered a Jew. Pretty much every single sin that he commits in the Torah, almost every single sin, he's still considered a Jew. The only sin that a koyen (priest) puts his Judaism on suspension is... When he's not keeping Shabbat, he puts his Judaism on suspension, meaning he's not considered Jewish based on halacha until he starts keeping Shabbat. When I heard this the first time, it became a very, very serious and personal problem for me because I like being Jewish. What was your question? Yes. I answered it already? What was the question? I don't remember. Okay, Baruch Hashem. I have a question. Yes. Since you've gone through this in your personal life, why does somebody get sick? We know, you see, maybe Hashem is expecting something from you, and the sickness may be one tikkun. In the case of a person who is not Shomer Mitzvot, but what about somebody who is... That is Shomer Mitzvot. Right. Why does he get sick?

1:04:10So Hashem answers this in the Torah. He says, "I test you to see if you love Me." He says this in last week's parasha, and the week before that also. "I test you to see if you love Me." Meaning that there are a few different types of tikkunim. There are a few different types of sufferings that Hashem brings us. different reasons for it. Not that we know all the cheshbonot of Shamayim, but there are a few. One is to give us a wake-up call, which is the most common one. There's no such thing as suffering without sin. Rabbi Arush wrote a very famous book, and he writes in detail about how there's no sustained suffering without sin. So, anyone who has read Rabbi Arush from Breslev, you know, who has read his book, will see from the beginning to the end of the book, he constantly mentions it: no suffering without sin. Meaning, if you have suffering, you have sinned. No questions asked. When did I sin? It could be in this life. It could be the previous life. It doesn't necessarily mean you sinned now. You may be a tzaddik in this life. But you lived here before. You were in a different gilgul. It's a reincarnation. Reincarnation is very much real, scientifically proven.

1:05:26Reality, it's not a theory like science. Most science, by the way, that people like to believe in, like evolution, is not called evolution; it's called the theory of evolution. Meaning it's theoretical. It's an educated guess, if you will. The Big Bang is not a Big Bang; it's called the Big Bang theory, meaning it's theoretical. They assume and believe that it actually happened, and But by the way, just so you know, the Torah also talks about those things. Like, for example, the Big Bang. Anyone heard of what the Big Bang is? You know, something similar to the Big Bang is mentioned in the Gemara, which is the Oral Torah. It's also mentioned in the Zohar. But the Gemara, Masechet Chagigah, page 12a, says that when Hashem created the world, He started with one point, and He let it expand until He told it to stop. This, in essence, is the definition of the Big Bang Theory. The only difference is that Hashem showed His glory by stopping it. He distinguished Himself from the world, from the universe, by one thing. Initially, He created the universe without any limitations. Just like He doesn't have any limitations, the universe didn't have any limitations. It continued growing. And eventually, He said, dai. Dai.

1:06:56Enough. Stop growing. And that's when it stopped. Go ahead. I have a question about how, like, the universe is so big and there are so many, like, it's not proven, but there are so many, like, planets and, like, stars, you know, obviously each star has a sun, like, what about everything besides Earth and, you know, our, you know, our, like, our planets? Right. What's beyond? Well, the Torah doesn't mention necessarily if there's life on other planets or not, but it also doesn't deny it either. It doesn't say that there isn't. it doesn't say there is, it doesn't say there isn't. The reason why is because the Torah only talks about what's relevant to us. If there was somebody on Mars, Pluto, Venus, or anywhere else that would affect our life, it would be mentioned in the Torah because Hashem was very didactic, very precise with the Torah to make sure that He doesn't put even an extra letter in the Torah that's not relevant forever. Meaning that everything is mentioned in the Torah, whether it's the story of Moshe, Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, the laws that we understand, the laws we don't understand, the laws we like, the laws we don't like. Everything is eternal. Everything is relevant until the end of time. So if aliens are not mentioned in the Torah, it's because they're not relevant to us, because apparently we're not going to see them or be affected by them, at least in our lifetime. That they're not real or that they... they'll never be discovered.

1:08:26No, they may be discovered, but it still won't affect us. It won't affect your purpose in life, meaning it's not going to be like the movie Independence Day where they all show up with their ships and they want to destroy us. That's not going to happen. But whether we're going to see it, there's going to be ships, I mean, there's plenty of evidence that makes it look like there is and they did come here or not, I don't really know. All I know is that no one's actually changed their life, you know, as far as Judaism is concerned or the purpose of their life because of an alien that came or didn't come. Go ahead. ...but it still won't affect us. It won't affect your purpose in life, meaning it's not going to be like the movie "Independence Day" where they all show up with their ships and they want to destroy us. That's not going to happen. But whether we're going to see it, there's going to be ships. I mean, there's plenty of evidence that makes it look like there is, and they did come here or not, I don't really know. All I know is that no one's actually changed their life, you know, as far as Judaism is concerned or the purpose of their life because of an alien that came or didn't come. Go ahead... You said there's scientific evidence of reincarnation. Yes. What is it? There are a few things. One, there are people that have died and come back from death. It's called a near-death experience, NDE. For people to be clinically dead, to be considered dead, what has to happen is that the blood that travels to your brain stops.

1:09:25If blood stops going to your heart, you just get a heart attack. But you can still be revived. But you're still considered alive. If your heart stops working, chas v'shalom, you're still considered alive. You're considered alive until, chas v'shalom, the brain stops working. And the only time the brain stops working is when blood stops traveling to the brain. Once the blood stops traveling to the brain, you're considered clinically dead. If someone is clinically dead for more than just a few seconds, They're dead. If they come back after a few seconds by some miracle, and if it's after just a couple of minutes, then they would never be the same. They'd come back, they'd be alive, they'd move, but they'd be mentally deficient. Half their body wouldn't move, they wouldn't be able to think, they'd have some type of deformity, some type of malfunction. They're not going to be the same person they were before they died. But there are miracles, proven miracles, millions of them, not like five. Millions of them, over 30 million people have died and come back to life, documented. And each one of them came back for different time frames. Some of them died for six minutes, some of them died for 15, some of them died for a whole day.

1:10:49came back. Some were even inside the morgue with the rest of the dead bodies and came back. Each one of these people didn't just close their eyes, go to sleep, and wake up a day later. Their neshama, their soul, went somewhere. It continued living, and they all reported what they saw, what their soul saw. And they all saw the same thing. I mean, some saw more than others. Some actually, you know, saw a light. Some saw a cave and then a light. Some actually went in front of a judge panel. Things that it says in the Torah are going to happen after someone dies. And they all reported the same story, for better or for worse, and reported that there is obviously more to this world than just this life. That's number one. The second thing is, there's a hypnosis process called regression. You hypnotize somebody and you tell them to go back 100 years, 200 years, 300 years.

1:11:55Meaning, they’re not alive for 200 years; they’re alive for 30, 40, 50 years. If you tell a guy who’s 50 years old to go back to 1800, go back 200 years, and the guy starts talking to you in a different language that he doesn’t speak in this life. He’s an English speaker, and now he’s talking to you in Greek. And he’s telling you a detailed description of where he is, what he sees, how many kids he has, a family, his whole life. as this Greek person. You tell him, okay, travel even further. Travel to the 1500s. Now he starts talking to you in a different language. He's speaking French or some other language. So you can see, it could also be in a different gender. He could be a male and speak to you in a woman's voice. So you see, obviously, this person has lived before. That's the second proof. The third proof is that there are certain people that are born that actually remember their life. You could look it up again also on the internet, the very famous case of a Druze Arab kid in Israel who was born and remembers his previous life. When he came back to his life as a baby or a little kid, he kept telling his parents that he wants to go visit his son and his wife. He was a soldier that died, an Arab soldier that died. Long story short, they brought him to this old house

1:13:20And he says, yes, this is my wife Fatima, whatever her name was. This is my son. And, you know, his son was 20 years old. And he's this little five-year-old kid. And he knows the kid's name, his wife's name. And his wife, Abi, has no idea who this little boy is and how he knows her name. And he says, did you find the money that I left for you before I died? She says, what money? He goes, oh, I hid it over here. And he goes into the house. This woman's house that he says was his house, he goes to this woman's house, and he goes to this secret compartment, and he takes the money that he hid for her 20 years ago that she didn't know about. And all types of things like this. So this is not one story; there are many like this. Go ahead. For, like, the near-death experience thing, like, most doctors, they say that the reason, like, people, like, have that vision is because, like, they're drugged and, like, hallucinate on it. not everybody died because of, uh, drugs. Why is it that not everybody died? Not everyone was on drugs.

1:14:27because they're in a coma, they're assuming that they have drugs inside. No, but not everybody had drugs in their system after they died. There are over 30 million people, regardless of the situation, over 30 million people. But aside from that, this is proven science; it's not theoretical. First of all, and aside from that, there is no way that you could explain this as a hallucination based on the knowledge they have. So, for example One person that died reported that when he came back, before he died, he was blind. Meaning, he was born blind, he never saw, ever. He never saw anything, didn't know what color was, nothing. When he came back, he said, He described his environment. He described the nurse wearing a red blouse, the doctor wearing, I don't know, green sneakers or blue sneakers. He described colors that a blind person cannot see. Another person that came back described things that they saw on the roof. How can you see something on the roof from the first floor of the hospital? How can you see something on a highway that's six miles away?

1:15:45When you're dead here in this hospital, and even the ambulance didn't pass by there, hallucination can't explain that. Go ahead. For your first claim, reincarnation is when the soul... leaves the body and goes to a new body. Yes, the whole term is that it's a new body, yes. So in a near-death experience, it's not going to a new physical body; it's the same body, right? No, but a near-death experience proves that there is a soul, but it wouldn't be reincarnation. No, it's not reincarnation, but a near-death experience proves that there is life after death. The whole aspect of reincarnation... That's difficult for people to believe because they have difficulty believing there's a life beyond this life. All of us want to believe that we're very, very important and that we are the most important creation in history. So, to say that someone before me is even more important than me, or someone after me is more important than me, kind of kills my ego. So, that's the key—to say that you came to this world to fix the screw-up of the last version of you.

1:16:56means you're a screw-up. Like me. Meaning? The first thing that happens after someone dies is that Satan comes to them in the grave and asks them their name. And because the pain of death is horrifying, people don't remember their names. So Satan takes his, whatever it's called in English—I don't know what it's called in English—but anyway, he takes this stick and starts beating him over the head until he remembers his name. He keeps beating him up over and over again until he remembers his name. Now there's a segula, something that you can do to remember your name. In Tefillat Shemoneh Esrei, in the Amidah, right before the end, there's a certain part of the Amidah where you need to say a verse in the Torah that begins with the first letter of your name and ends with the last letter of your name.

1:18:01And if you say that every day, then you'll remember the name. You'll save yourself some beating up. Then after that, after you've gone through that, you go up to Shamayim, you go to a beit din. I'm giving you the short version of it because the long version will take about 15 hours. You go up to Shamayim, you go in front of a beit din. And they judge you over a 12-month period. And they show you a movie of everything you ever did in your life. Everything. How you went to the bathroom, whether you were modest in the bathroom, whether you were modest outside of the bathroom, whether you cursed, whether you thought bad thoughts, whether you were kofer or heretic. Everything. Violated Shabbat. And they show you every single thing and they ask you questions about it. And alongside these questions, they don't just ask you questions, because each time you make a sin... They're not going to ask you if you sinned. They're going to show you you sinned. How are they going to show you you sinned? They're going to bring the sin. How are they going to bring the sin? According to the Gemara, it says that every time somebody makes a sin, they create a demon. And every time they make a mitzvah, they create an angel. And that angel is called the name of the mitzvah. So one day, somebody's going to go up after 120, they go up to Shamayim.

1:19:22and the angels say, "Hey, I was created on Aleph, the first of Tishrei." And then the other angel says, "Oh, I was created on Bet." But then, so you're like happy, like you got these two angels. Yay! You got these two angels. Baruch Hashem. And you got 300 million demons showing up. "Hey! Where's the wasted seed on January 1st? Where's the wasted seed?" So you got yourself a problem. So... When there's more sins than mitzvot, there's a consequence for it. How many gilgulim can a person have at most? No limits. No limits. And a person doesn't necessarily come back complete. Meaning, if part of you already fixed itself, if your soul fixed itself. Let's say a tikkun of the last generation was to keep Shabbat and fix stealing.

1:20:30And you fix Shabbat. Last gilgul, you fixed Shabbat. You come back in this gilgul, no problem keeping Shabbat. You know, because the soul, the part of the soul that kept Shabbat is already fixed. It doesn't have the yetzer hara for a violation of Shabbat. What's the yetzer hara that it has? For stealing, because it hasn't fixed itself yet. So that's the part, that's the tikkun that they'll have to go through, and that's what they have to overcome. So when people come back, do they always come back more religious than they were in the previous life? Not necessarily. Only the part that actually has to be fixed comes back. Sometimes the part that was fixed is not going to come back at all. A soul can be split into an infinite number of pieces. So the part that's completely fixed is not going to come back at all. It's going to stay over there. Why? If, let's say, 50% of the soul fixed itself, there's no reason for it to come back and be retested again for the same test because it could potentially fail. So if a person was Shomer Shabbat and that part would stay up, then it wouldn't be a Shomer Shabbat here? Not automatically, not by default.

1:21:31Not all the fault. Again, this is not a one-size-fits-all. This is a general statement. Go ahead. Like, yeah, it's about this, pretty much. Like, you know, when you die and you go to the Beit Din shel Ma'ala (Heavenly Court) for judgment. You know how you... There is... You come back for your next tikkun (rectification), your next life. Mm-hmm. But, like, there's also, like, the Gehinnom part. Yes. What comes first? Like, all of your life, like... Let's say a person, like your example, the Greek, you know? That guy. You guys told me it's a beginner's class. These guys already want to know about Gehinnom. Wow. That's good. Let's say he had, like, 70 lives, 70 reincarnations. Does Gehinnom come after the 70 lives or in between them? Yes or no. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Meaning that, again, like I said, there's no one size fits all. But Gehinnom, in this generation, people like to call it a washing machine. Mikveh. mikveh. In reality, it's no mikveh at all. It's as far from a mikveh as possible. The seven levels of Gehinnom, each one gets worse than the next. The Gemara says that, uh, anyone knows who Iyov is? You know, Iyov. Iyov is one of the 24 books of the Tanakh. It's called the Book of Iyov. And Iyov had a lifetime test.

1:22:56where over a period of a year, he lost everything. But not only money. He lost his health, body parts, 10 children, respect, and friends. He was so sick that worms were coming out of his body, not going in. They were coming out of his body. A horrible, horrible tikkun. But he passed the test, and everything worked out fine. And one of the books of the Torah is written about him. But he went through the most difficulty that we can possibly fathom. And the Gemara says, if someone gets the life of Iyov, like what he had for that period of time, not for one year, not for two years, but for 70 years, it's not equal to even one hour in Gehenom, in the lowest level. Not the hardest. The easiest one. What do you call easy? So, Gehenom is not a washing machine like people think. It's a horrible, horrible thing. Anyone that really wants to know about it should read Reshit Chochmah, Masechet Gehenom. But they say, sorry, every person goes to Gehenom.

1:24:09every person goes to Gehenom, yes, but it depends on which level. There are certain levels that don't end. There's a level, level seven, that never ends. But isn't it 12 months? No, no, no, eternity. No, the 12 months is the trial. The trial in Shamayim in front of the Beit Din—that's 12 months. after the 12 months, after you go to Gehenom. That's why we say Kaddish when somebody dies. We say Kaddish for a year. Why do we say Kaddish for a year? Why don't we say Kaddish forever? Because during those 12 months is when he needs as many good witnesses as possible saying Kaddish for him to help him out. He's in front of the judges, so he needs the Kaddish now. After that, it doesn't matter for him as much. He's in front of the judge right now; he needs as much as possible now. so after the judgment is finished, if he has to go to Gehenom, then it depends on which kind of sins he made. If he's in the first section of Gehenom, it ends after a certain amount of time. If it's in the second section, it ends after a certain amount of time. But again, also keep in mind that the time over there is different than here. An hour over there could be the equivalent of a thousand years here. Someone can go to Gehenom for 50 million years, and it's like the equivalent of a week here. There's no exact concept of time there.

1:25:24...but then there's one part that never ends. There's the seventh level. The seventh level never ends. There are three sins that someone commits in order to get to the seventh level—only three sins. Does anyone want to know what those three sins are? Oh yes, please. is that what we were talking about yesterday? Yeah, that's right. No, seventh level. Now he's talking about this is the sixth level. The sixth level ends eventually, after a few million years, but it ends. Three sins get somebody into the seventh level. It doesn't end. One, Chilul Hashem, desecrating Hashem's name. No, lashon hara also ends at some point. It's a lot of suffering, you know. They take someone's tongue, split it, and tie it to the ceiling. There are a lot of interesting details that don't make lashon hara worthwhile. It's a horrific, horrific disaster. For one lashon hara,

1:26:26somebody doesn't understand what kind of disaster he's going to have to go through. You have to keep your mouth shut. Better to speak less than half of what we speak just in general because of the natural inclination of a person to say Lashon Hara. But you can make teshuva for Lashon Hara. You can, but you can't fix it completely sometimes. It depends on what kind of Lashon Hara. So, for example, somebody who's a "hero" decides to write a comment on the internet, they can't fix that. 50 million people already saw it. Like some "hero" wrote a comment against me on the internet. Say, "Oh, look at da-da-da-da," whatever he said. How are you going to fix that? 1.7 billion people on Facebook. How are you going to fix that? It's there forever. You understand? So Lashon Hara is a lot more difficult to fix than we think. And even though, again, even if you told one guy, and the guy told five guys, and he went back to all the five guys, but those five guys already went to more people. You can't stop the Lashon Hara at that point. This is why one of the sages that actually went against the Rambam, burned his books because he thought that the Rambam was a kofer. Later on, after he actually read the books, he realized that the Rambam is the Gadol HaDor. The exact opposite. He went from being a heretic to the biggest giant of the generation. To fix his Lashon Hara,

1:27:39He went for the rest of his life, not for a year, the rest of his life he went from city to city, representing Rambam's book. He said, I was wrong for saying Lashon Hara about Rambam, he's the Gadol HaDor. The rest of his life, 40 more years. Every day he went from city to city to say, because he didn't know, he didn't know how far this Lashon Hara went. So for the next 40 years, he went from city to city, saying, Rambam is right, I was wrong. So, the three sins are this. One, Chilul Hashem. Somebody desecrates Hashem's name. You know, you see that sometimes, unfortunately, when you're secular, Hashem tests you in different ways. Like, for example, my test was, I would go to a casino, and I, listen, I didn't necessarily think the casino was the greatest place in the world, but for me, that was my life. That was my fun. when I saw a religious guy with peyos and the hat, I saw him in the casino. I'm like, that's wrong. Me, okay, it's not right, but you, you're wrong. There's something wrong with you being here. So that guy being in the casino with me, it's not good that I'm there either, but him with the uniform of God...

1:28:54Representing their religion in the casino with me, with the secular people, with all the green, with the prostitutes and everyone else— that's a big problem. So we have to make sure that we act appropriately. That's number one. Number two is wasting seed b'meizid, either wasting seed on purpose, knowing that you're not allowed to do it and doing it, which is pretty much a problem for 90% of teenagers today. Number three, violating Shabbat... Violating Shabbat. Violating Shabbat, knowing that Shabbat is holy. Obviously, if you were born in Siberia and you're surrounded by polar bears and don't know that you're Jewish, then obviously it's different. But if you're born in America, you're born in Israel, you know that you are Jewish and you choose not to practice, you have a serious problem. Being ignorant is not an excuse when we get to Shamayim. But you don't feel Chilul Hashem dying? You have to think about the way, you know? Depends what kind of level of Chilul Hashem. Part of the repentance for Chilul Hashem is death, but it depends on the level of Chilul Hashem. Like the guy that actually went to a card club of a person that I know, and used the tzedakah money that he got because he represented Judaism in some way or another. He was part of some type of organization, and people gave him donations. So he took the donations and bought chips with them.

1:30:15that's he's that seven that's number seven yes nice penthouse penthouse and Gehenom he's done why because why why not because that person that saw it he's affected until this day it's been ten years he still doesn't want to chew but because of that guy ten years he's I'm waiting for this guy to do Teshuva ten years Corrected version: That's number seven. Yes, nice penthouse, penthouse and Gehenom. He's done. Why? Because that person that saw it, he's affected until this day. It's been ten years; he still doesn't want to chew. But because of that guy, ten years. I'm waiting for this guy to do Teshuva. Ten years. He still remembers this situation. Kaf HaKela is outside of... He's not in Gehenom? No. Kaf HaKela is not Gehenom. Kaf HaKela is pure punishment only. There's no repentance. Meaning, Gehenom is, in essence, a cleaning up. They call it a washing machine because there's a purpose for the punishment. It cleans up the dirty soul that's full of sins. There's a purpose for it. Kaf HaKela, on the other hand, is pure revenge. They take somebody with a slingshot and they fling him from one side of the galaxy to the other and beat him up the whole time. Beginners’ class here. What kind of beginners do you have? I wish I had beginners like this. I wish I had beginners like this. Okay. What else? Go. Hold on. Let me ask a question in order.

1:31:28I'm going back to the reincarnation topic. Basically, so you know how the soul goes on? I have two questions. First, can you be reincarnated as an animal or a different form? 100%. There's proof of it. And my second question is, why can't we remember our past lives? Some people can remember. But why isn't it said that we do? Wouldn't we be wiser? No, then it would take away your free choice. Yeah, but as Jews, wouldn't it be more beneficial if all of us knew for sure everything? I don't know how to explain it. It is a thing. Yeah, we already went through these mistakes. It's a good question. I have an answer for you. So, a lot of people ask your question in a different way. How do they ask? They say, listen, if God wants us to know that He's real, why doesn't He make some miracles? Just come to this shiur, say, "I am God. Yaron, I'm taking over from here." So I was talking to you guys, like He did to Moshe Rabbeinu out of the Sneh, out of the burning bush. "I am God. I am who I am. Show up here." Why not? We have a Sefer Torah, a holy Beit Knesset, Sifrei Kodesh. We're learning Torah at 12 o'clock at night. Why can't He come here? He can, right? Why doesn't He come here?

1:32:54Is the answer miracles do not make religious people? What's the proof? What's the source? Mount Sinai. Before Mount Sinai, we had 12 months of non-stop miracles. Non-stop. Hashem took the largest civilization that ever existed and destroyed them to nothing. They had over 900 million. One of the Midrashim says they had over 900 million Egyptians. 900 million Egyptians. Powerful. The entire world paid them taxes. Everyone. You know, America, people think that they're the strongest country in the world. Nobody pays America taxes. Barely the Americans. Barely the Americans pay taxes. Egypt, everyone paid them taxes. To survive, they paid them taxes. They had complete control of the entire world. And what happens? Over the next 12 months, from one miracle to another, Hashem destroys them to such an extent that they become the servant of their servants, begging them to leave. After that, just in case you didn't believe that Hashem controls nature, by showing you that He's going to throw these ice balls with lava in them which goes against nature. There's ice balls with lava inside them falling only on the Egyptians. The Jew stands here, Egyptians here, only hits the Egyptians. They switch spots, hits the Egyptians.

1:34:05balls with lava in them, which goes against nature. There's ice balls with lava inside them falling only on the Egyptians. The Jew stands here, Egyptians here, only hits the Egyptians. They switch spots, hits the Egyptians. Anywhere that they could go, the Jew could run around outside, and nothing happens to him. The Egyptian gets hit every time. Whether it's the plague on the animals, or on the food, everything, everything—the blood. They have a cup of water, the Egyptian picks it up, it's blood. The Jew takes it back, it's water. different, that's completely, completely different. Uh, reason, right? This is because technically we did deserve to die. So, this was, we were actually paying, in essence, doing something in order to show that we're different—we're following God, we're earning one more mitzvah. As a matter of fact, it gets even worse. After we left Egypt, we got to

1:35:11the Sea of Reeds, Yam Suf. Yam Suf. And Moshe Rabbeinu is with all of Am Yisrael at Yam Suf. And they're all hanging out over there. All of a sudden, they hear that the Egyptians are coming, and they're not coming to say hi. They're coming to kill them. Some of the Jews want to commit suicide. Some of the Jews want to go fight, knowing that they're probably going to lose, but at least they're going to lose fighting. And some of the Jews say, "You know what? Let's just go back to being slaves." Pretty much one disaster after another. Moshe starts crying to Hashem, and Hashem says, "Why are you screaming to Me?" So the Midrash says, "What do you mean, who else is he going to scream to? Why is he screaming in the first place?" screaming because he's trying to split the ocean like Hashem said. You get to the sea, split the ocean, but the ocean won't split. He's trying, and it's not working. Why? Because the angel of Egypt, whose name is Mitzrayim, the same as the name of the country or the people.

1:36:31The angel Mitzrayim comes to Hashem and he says, "Hashem Yitbarach, when You wrote the Torah 974 generations before You created the world, black fire on white fire, thank You. Black fire on white fire, You signed it. You signed it with a signature called Emet. Truth, meaning you can't change it. Whatever is in it has to be true." not changeable, it's not bendable. It's either true or it's false, and You said there is a reward and there's a punishment system. And now You want the ocean, the angel of the ocean, to split for these Jews, which You're gonna let them pass and drown my people. Why? Understand why you're going to drown my people there. You know they worship Avodah Zarah? Understand why you're going to kill the Egyptians, but the Jews are also doing Avodah Zarah. Both are doing Avodah Zarah. Just last week, they were doing Avodah Zarah. You're going to split the ocean for them and kill the Egyptians? That's not emet. So the ocean won't split. The ocean says, "I'm not splitting for them."

1:37:56And Moshe Rabbeinu is trying to split the ocean; it's not working. So he cries to Hashem, and Hashem says, why are you screaming to me? Move on, move forward. What does it mean, move forward? He says, they're right, the angels are right, I can't split the ocean for you. You have to move forward by making some type of mitzvah to show me you believe, not just tell me you believe. move forward with something to tilt the scales to your side. Because right now, you've spent all of your zechuyot in Egypt to get here. All of the zechuyot that Am Yisrael had until this point, I spent them. I made a miracle after miracle after miracle after miracle, destroyed the civilization, gave you seven clouds to carry you Special fire is protecting you from the Egyptians, from the enemies. The cloud is protecting you from snakes and scorpions and everything else. All the zechuyot you had, you spent them. It’s one more zechut to split the ocean. You don’t have. You have to do something about it—move forward. So what happened? While the three parts of the nation all wanted to do something, one thing or another that was wrong, and...

1:39:12was from the tribe of Judah realized that Hashem couldn't have brought us here just to kill us. That's not the God of Israel. The God of Israel is merciful. The God of Israel is loving. The God of Israel is correct, but He's also true, meaning He can't go against His own word. So, he says, if He brought us here, that means we're here to live. That means we're supposed to do something. Meaning that if He says, move forward, I'm going to take Him at His word. So he started moving forward and he started walking into the ocean until the water got to here and he started swallowing water. And at that very moment, Hashem split the ocean. Why? Because he showed Him he believes in Him, and not just told Him he believes in Him. What's the reward for Nachshon ben Aminadav? Aside from splitting the ocean and saving the entire nation and being mentioned in today's shiur and forever, Mashiach comes from him. Next. You asked the question. Go ahead. You know how the story goes: when the Egyptians came into the water, how did they not find any of the remains of the army?

1:40:29How do you know they didn't find it? Actually, they found a lot of things. They found over 5,000 soldiers and chariots from that time. It's not about hearing; it's scientific proof. It's archaeological proof. You can see the pictures. There are videos of it. There's a Discovery Channel special about it. I don't work for the Discovery Channel. I work for Hashem. But, you know, just type in "Exodus." Type in "Exodus" and you'll find it. He asks the person questions? Yeah, like... Yeah, the first thing he asks him is if they remember their name. Yeah, but besides that, it's not a question that... It depends. It depends on the person. It depends on what kind of sins the person has made. There are a few things. First, the most important thing that he asks the person is their name. The name of the person. As far as the main questions that they ask him as soon as he gets to Shamayim, the first three questions are if they conducted their business honorably, if they made time for Torah, like a time to learn Torah every day.

1:41:45They fulfill the Torah, things like that, right? It's kind of similar to what you asked at the beginning. I'm going to ask someone... Finally, it sure is getting interesting. You guys are asking questions. We're going to give the guy two hours to break from that. Yeah, you guys are a tough crowd. A person who doesn't keep the laws of Shabbat will be judged the same as a person... Hold on, let me rewind it. A person who sins a lot, okay, and doesn't keep Shabbat, would he be judged equally to a person who keeps a lot of mitzvot but doesn't keep Shabbat? This is what Chazal say. I'll answer you with a source from the Torah. Chazal say, if a Jew found a way, and they're giving a hypothetical example because this is not possible. We have 613 mitzvot that are de'oraita, that are from the Torah. And then there are seven mitzvot that are from the Rabbanan, from the rabbis. For example, the fact that you guys are doing a blessing before you eat, that's Rabbanan. The rabbis made that rule.

1:43:02When you say Hallel for Rosh Chodesh, that's Rabbanan. Chanukah and Purim, Rabbanan. You understand? But then the 613 mitzvot, they're de'oraita, which means from the Torah. Shabbat, Brit Milah, and so on. Violating things from the Torah is much worse. than violating Rabbanan. As far as the overall viewpoint, the punishment for Rabbanan is actually worse than some of the De'oraita. Nonetheless, the rabbis say this, the sages say this: if someone found a way to keep all of the mitzvot except Shabbat—619 mitzvot— Out of 620, you have 7 Rabbanan, and you have 613 De'oraita. So that's 620 in total. He found a way to keep 619. The only one he doesn't keep is Shabbat. Now in reality, it's not possible because some of those mitzvot are for the Beit HaMikdash, some of them are just for women, some are just for men, some are just for Kohanim, some are just for Korbanot, and so on. In reality, you could probably do 200 at best. But let's say you found a way to keep 619. And you don't keep Shabbat, according to Gemara, Shulchan Aruch in seven places, the Zohar, the Written Torah, the Oral Torah, everywhere you will look.

1:44:29It's not worth anything. No one says there's no point in learning. You have to learn in order to do teshuva. You have to keep other mitzvot. Just committing one sin does not mean that it's okay to commit other sins. It's like saying, listen, if I don't become a millionaire, then there's no point for me to go to work. I'll just be homeless. No, that's obvious. It doesn't make any sense. The key is to beat the Yetzer Hara and eventually get there. How do you beat the Yetzer Hara? The Gemara in Masechet Berachot tells us exactly how to do it. Tells you exactly how to do it. First, if a Yetzer Hara comes to somebody, the first thing they need to do is say Kriyat Shema. If it doesn't work, then they start learning some Torah. If it doesn't work, then you remind them of the day that they die. Now, we'll explain what all three of those things mean. If the Yetzer Hara comes to you and tells you, "Listen, why don't you look at that girl and waste seed? Or get with the girl. Or go to the beach on Shabbat. Or go eat non-kosher." Whatever the Yetzer Hara tells everybody every day. So you say Kriyat Shema, remind yourself that there's a God. Kriyat Shema, "Shema Yisrael," meaning you're calling God.

1:45:39you're reminding yourself that there's a God that's watching, that cares. Just like He cared about that UPS guy I told you the story about. He cares about you too. Just like He cares about my student Emmanuel in Bulgaria and literally created a kehillah for him in Bulgaria. Created a kehillah out of nothing. One day there wasn't, the next day there was a kehillah. You'll hear the story if you hear my lectures. give you guys some preview, but I can't give you all the secrets. I have to get you guys to listen to some of the other lectures. Miracles make miracles, just like He cares about Emmanuel, just like He cares about the Av Bet Din, or He cares about everybody. He gives people hashgachah. He cares about you keeping Shabbat, you keeping mitzvot. So He says, when you say you're reminding yourself that He cares, but sometimes it doesn't work... sometimes reminding yourself that there's a God doesn't work. So, He says, "Okay, I created the yetzer hara that's full of fire. It's very strong, very smart, and older than everybody else. It has a lot of experience; its size is from the ground to the sky. It's huge and full of eyes; it's all eyes. It has a very, very, uh, uh..."

1:47:02Scary sword-spear type of thing. He knows everything. He says, "Okay, that one, you really can't beat him, but I gave you a potion of how to beat him." What's this potion called? Torah. Learn Torah. The Torah is like kryptonite for the Satan. You learn Torah, you make your yetzer hara that's in you weaker, and... He runs away when there's Torah. You come here to the Brussels Center to learn with Rabbi Raphael, yetzer hara leaves. Why? Because you learned Torah. If you only come here to eat cholent, it's not going to help you. But if you come here to learn Torah and eat cholent, B'ezrat Hashem, yetzer hara is going to get weaker. You come here to smoke hookah and make fun of the lecture, it's not going to help you. You come, listen, ask questions about Gehinnom, it's going to help you. And it's going to make everybody else become more religious, B'ezrat Hashem.

1:48:04So, if you learn Torah, he says that's step number two. You learn Torah, it's going to make the yetzer hara run away. But sometimes it doesn't work. Why doesn't it work? Because you can't focus. Your yetzer hara is so strong, you're looking at the words, you have no idea what they mean. You can't focus. You don't have yishuv ha'da'at. You can't, you don't understand. What? Natati lachem, natati. Why is he giving? Who gives? Who cares if he gives? You don't care about the words. You have no connection. read it 500 times, you don't understand. Sometimes I read a paragraph in the Gemara or anything for two hours, the same paragraph, two hours, and I have no idea what's going on. And you keep going, you keep going, you keep going. Eventually, you get it. Sometimes you read a whole page in a short period of time, but sometimes it doesn't work. So he says, okay, if that doesn't work, it says to remind them of the day that he's going to die. Why? Why are we such a morbid Torah, talking about death all the time? Because if you remind him of the day he's going to die, then he's going to think about what you asked. He's going to think, what happens again? Ooh, the guy says they feed him sand, and they break all of his teeth. I don't want to go there. The guy that did this, they do this to him, they do this to him. Ooh, okay, that's enough. We already hit Gehenom cap. No more, Rabbi, thank you very much. I don't want to go to Gehenom. I reminded myself of the day I'm going to die. I'm not going to do the aveirah. Yetzer Hara, goodbye to you. Get out of my house.

1:49:30So that's this process. Even if someone is a mechallel Shabbat, it doesn't justify them making any other sin. The goal is for them to stop being a mechallel Shabbat. But they're not going to start there. For example, when I first started doing teshuvah, I didn’t start with Shabbat. I started learning Torah for 15 minutes a day. Then I started keeping kosher. Then I started wearing tzitzit. Well before I kept Shabbat. So I'm wearing tzitzit. Then I started even wearing a kippah. Still not realizing that I'm violating Shabbat. Even after I started keeping Shabbat, I didn't keep Shabbat like halacha. I didn't know everything you're supposed to do. So I thought I was keeping Shabbat. I thought I was a tzaddik. Guys, you have no idea who I am. I'm keeping Shabbat right now. I thought I was like the biggest tzaddik in the world. Six months into it, I'm realizing that what I was doing every Shabbat, I'm like, oneg Shabbat. What do you do on oneg Shabbat? You make fresh food. So I can't cook, that I know. Oh Hashem, I know I can't cook. But I like jachnun. So jachnun, what do you have with jachnun? You have the resek agvaniyot, you have the tomato paste. Gotta make it fresh on Shabbat. So you grind the tomato on Shabbat, not realizing I'm violating Shabbat, like I'm a tumtum. Like an idiot that I am, I'm violating Shabbat, thinking it's fresh for Shabbat, fresh for Shabbat.

1:50:51you don't learn the halacha, you don't know. But nonetheless, obviously, the chilul Shabbat at that level is less than me driving. But nonetheless, the point is, I would have never gotten there had I not started with learning Torah. Had I not started with anything. So you can't start everything, but you have to start somewhere. Yeah, yeah, many years, yeah. Personal question: You do the kiruv for many people. Over all these years teaching people, what do you think is the reason it's so difficult for people to keep Shabbat and come back? It's difficult for people to do teshuvah for a few reasons. Number one, there's only two reasons why somebody is not going to keep Shabbat. Only two reasons out of all my experience that also... ...uses the experience of rabbis that have been doing this for much longer than I have. There are only two reasons why somebody is not going to keep Shabbat for 99.9999% of the people. There’s always an exception to the rule, but it's very rare and that can't really count. One reason: they don't believe. They don't believe in the Torah. They think it's Harry Potter...

1:52:11They think it's Happy Days. They think it's, I don't know, Ninja Turtles. They think it's just a made-up book with some characters. They learned about Moshe Rabbeinu from watching a movie from 40 years ago called The Ten Commandments. They learned about Noach from some movie that came out five years ago. That's who they think the Torah is. They don't think much of it. They don't believe it. A lot of people do not believe in the Torah. A lot of people. Jews, non-Jews, they don't believe in the Torah. Second reason is, they don't know. Meaning, not that they don't know what Shabbat is. Not that they don't know what Torah is. They don't know the consequences. They don't know how severe it is to violate the laws of the Torah. Because when you don't learn Torah, you're not going to learn any of the answers to all the consequences. And even sometimes when you try to learn Torah, you don't have the ability or access to all the information everywhere. Most rabbis don't talk about what I talk about. For example, Gehenom, you have to go to a very, very special place to be allowed to talk about Gehenom. It's not taught. Go look for it on the internet. Good luck. It doesn't exist.

1:53:27Wasting seed, there's a total of maybe five hours, six hours of lectures on videos on the internet about wasting seed, which is one of the top sins, one of the top three sins in Judaism. Remember I told you, only three types of people go to Gehenom forever: wasting seed, Chilul Shabbat, and Chilul Hashem. Which means wasting seed is one of the top three sins in all of Judaism. There's a total of maybe five hours in lectures on the internet about wasting seed. Four and a half of them are mine. Which is very sad. In English, obviously, in English. In Hebrew, there's a lot more. Which is very sad. It's not something I'm proud of, because in reality, I've only been doing this for a couple of years, and there are rabbis who have been doing this for 20 years, 30 years. But it's not politically correct. People don't want to talk about it. So that's the thing. When you go to a place like this and they allow someone to talk about the real parts of the Torah, all of them, it's a very, very special place. You have to keep going. You have to keep getting stronger. But again, the whole Torah is not something that you can learn in one night. You have to dip a little bit every day, every day, 15 minutes, then 15 minutes to 20 minutes, then 20 minutes becomes 30 minutes a day. You know, a little bit more each time. Get stronger with Torah, learn the truth, and go to the right places. If you go to a place and they only talk to you about how much of a tzaddik you are even though you drive on Shabbat, it's no different than going to a church. You learn nothing over there, you learn nothing over here.

1:54:41Dip a little bit every day, every day—15 minutes, then 15 minutes to 20 minutes, then 20 minutes becomes 30 minutes a day. You know, a little bit more each time. Get stronger with Torah, learn the truth, and go to the right places. If you go to a place and they only talk to you about how much of a tzaddik you are, even though you drive on Shabbat, it's no different than going to a church. You learn nothing over there; you learn nothing over here. You got to go to places like this where they tell you, listen, this is what happens, this is this, this is this, A, B, C, and that's it. Da'at Hashem. Two things. First, you said there's two reasons why people don't take Shabbat seriously. They don't know it, they don't believe it. What if there's a third reason? The third reason is they're crazy. That's the thing. To be fearless, to know... Okay, so I'll give you an example. There is a short book, like an online book, I think I sent it to you. It has like 80 pages. Each page has 25 or 30 different sources.

1:55:51of what happens as punishment to somebody that violates Shabbat. I talk about Shabbat because it's the most common problem. But there are other problems also in Judaism. Nonetheless, it's one of the foundational issues. So, each page has between 25 and 30 sources of the types of punishment that happen to somebody who violates Shabbat. Each page. If somebody just read the first page, they'd never violate Shabbat again. It's so scary, so scary to even think about all these things that they write about it. You have to be crazy. Which means that one who's driving on Shabbat, there's no way he knows this information. And if he knows it and still violates, then he doesn't believe. Okay, it says this about Gehinnom, but I don't believe that Gehinnom exists. It says this about Gehinnom, but I don't believe that Gehinnom, I believe that I become a tree after I die. I believe that, you know, people believe everything, you know, they don't believe. So it's either they don't believe, or they don't know. The only guy that knows and still does is just because he went crazy. And it happened before. There's Elisha ben Avuya. It's written in the Gemara. He was one of the rabbis of Rabbi Meir Baal HaNes. And they called him Acher, "the other." And he lost his mind. If he was the rabbi of Rabbi Meir, obviously he was on a higher level, because the rabbi is greater than the student.

1:57:15And he was huge. Satan. One of the people that was able to revive the dead. And he saw something in the heavens that just didn't make sense to him. It's a long story. And he literally lost his mind and became a kofer, a heretic. Started violating Shabbat. Started doing crazy things. And he knew, but he lost his mind. So yes, there are cases like that, but how many of those are you going to find? How many of those are you going to find, people that actually know and still violate? It's very rare. So it's usually because they don't believe. And my second question is... Yeah, for them, you don't need to prove anything. He already knows, and he still doesn't want to do it. My second question is, let's say, like, beginning to learn Torah, like, what do you recommend, like, the... Basics of Torah? There's a lot of subjects. What's the best thing to learn, like for a beginner? Beginning is first you gotta learn the very basics, which is the Five Books of Moses. Chamishah Chumshei Torah. Parashat HaShavua, you learn the weekly parasha. If you could do more than one parasha a week, it can make you go through it by reading the parasha with commentary. Not just reading the story, but reading what the sages like Rashi and Rambam teach about each one of the verses and so on. A good one to look at is the collection of books.

1:58:35By Me'am Lo'ez. It's called Me'am Lo'ez. You can buy it on Moznaim.com or Amazon, but Moznaim.com is the publisher. Me'am Lo'ez is phenomenal because it tells you not only the explanation of each verse, what it means and the details behind it, but it also teaches you the mitzvot. along teaching you what the Torah is saying. And on top of all of that, they do all of it in a story format, making it very, very easy to read. It's very enjoyable to read, especially the first couple of books of the Torah, Bereshit and Shemot. So, I would say the first thing to do is to start learning Parashat HaShavua. Another thing on top of it to do is to listen to Shiurei Torah. Especially in the beginning, listen to Shiurim. If you're not able to come to the shiur, then listen to it online. If you're able to come to the shiur, it's even more of a zechut to go to the shiur. Listen to Shiurei Torah every day instead of listening to the stupid music that we have in today's age. You know, listen to Shiurei Torah instead; make your brain work. Techno and trance, you know, it's fun, but it's not going to help your life. It's not going to help your life, so listen to less music.

1:59:53more Torah in the car. It's very easy to listen to, or you can put YouTube on. You can put SoundCloud on, put TorahAnytime.com, which is the website where you can find all of our lectures. You can also find my lectures on TorahAnytime and on my website, which is BeEzratHashem.org. There are plenty of ways to listen to Torah; put it on your phone, and so on. so listen to lectures, read this, and then also, on top of it, look for guidance from your rabbi, your regular rabbi, and go to a shiur Torah because he's going to give you different lectures based on your level. For example, you can learn Gemara, but you can learn Gemara in a few different ways. Gemara is the Oral Torah; it's the stuff that sharpens your brain. It takes you from standard level to a rocket scientist, but it takes time. You know, it's... So he can teach you Gemara, very, very basic level, this is what it says, this is what it means, basic first-grade level. After you're with him for a year, two years, three years, you're already at a level that you can teach the first-grade level, but you're learning third grade, you're learning fifth grade. So it continues to improve. So, your rabbi is going to direct you on that extra teaching, but the very basic is the first and most important rule out of everything I just said,

2:01:19is to make a rule for yourself. You're not going to finish a day without learning a certain amount of Torah every day. You decide what that amount is. But it has to be the same; you know, it has to be at least a certain amount of time every day. If you can do more, do more. For example, I started with 15 minutes a day. I said, from now on, every day I'm going to learn at least 15 minutes. Meaning there's no way that I'm going to finish a day without learning for 15 minutes. Has to be. Everyone has 15 minutes, but sometimes you get busy and this and that. Is it 15 minutes? I'll make it. So I started with 15 minutes, but if I could do a half hour, I did a half hour. But I knew that no less than 15 minutes. After a while, I started learning. I started falling in love with the Torah. And I started making it. Okay, you know what? It's a half hour every day. then it's an hour every day. And then I just stopped counting. It just became hours and hours and hours because I became addicted to it. So the beginning of learning Torah, in the beginning, very, very, very beginning, it's a little difficult, but once you pass that first level, it's the greatest thing you'll ever have. It's the greatest thing in the world. Greatest thing in the world. I wish I could still have the beginning stages like you guys are going to have soon. It's so good.

2:02:36It's like, I'm just thinking about it right now. It was worth me doing a shiur just for me to think about the beginning. That's how good it is. It's like the greatest high in the world. It's unbelievable, the beginning. I was never a drug person, but whatever a high is, that's what it is. It's amazing. Go ahead, what's the next question? How many people have you made religious? I have no idea. I don't count them, but whatever I contributed to, it's all Hashem. I'm just the parrot. I'm the parrot that repeats Hashem's Torah. The outcome is in the hands of Hashem. Whatever people take from me, people that take me seriously have changed their lives. I had some people, Baruch Hashem, convert and become Jewish. They left Avodah Zarah and became Jewish. I had some people who were atheists and became very religious. I have another miracle for you guys. I had a guy, I had a guy who was an atheist. Didn't believe in anything. Jewish guy, Russian Jew. Believed in nothing, bubkes. Thought we're all going back to being on trees and sand. He was married. Never had a formal wedding because, again, he didn't believe. But he was lucky enough that he married a Jew. At least that he did right. But she doesn't believe. He doesn't believe. We have non-believers.

2:03:56A few years they're married, no kids. Nothing. They're trying, doesn't work. Comes to me, first shiur, just like this one. Okay, God's real. I understand this. Second shiur, okay, God's serious. Sometimes they realize God's serious, then they realize He's real. It's a different order. First, they get scared, then they start realizing what's going on. Depends. Depends. By the third shiur, I got him to do something about it. So he started keeping some things, little by little. Started learning Torah, I gave him a package, started listening to CDs, started reading some books. Baruch Hashem, he became Shomer Shabbat. Started learning Torah, started wearing tzitzit. Little by little, over the next eight months or so, he started changing his life. And then you say, okay, listen, I found out that they never got married appropriately. I said, listen, you have to have chuppah and kiddushin. He goes, yeah, for what? Every time you're with her, every time you're with your wife, she's niddah. To be with a woman that's niddah is worse than being with your mother. I got your attention now. Good morning.

2:05:22To be with your mother is disgusting to everyone. It's a sin, obviously. But to Hashem, it's a very, very big sin. But to be with your own wife, your wife, when she's niddah, when she's not pure, she didn't go to the mikveh, it's actually a worse sin. It's a worse crime than being incestuous with your mother. So make sure your wife goes to the mikveh. So now, Atom, committing a big sin. You're already keeping Shabbat, you're already doing this, Hashem is making miracles. It's great stuff. I'll finish the story and I'll answer your point. So, okay, fine. What do we need to do? Very simple. We get ten Jews, get a rabbi, a kosher rabbi, who knows what he's doing when it comes to the ketubah. You know, they're experts in the whole issue of chuppah and kiddushin. You have to get a guy who's an expert in chuppah and kiddushin. It's not just about knowing how to say, you know, "harei at mekudeshet li..." You have to go to somebody who's an expert because if someone's not an expert, they can make one mistake and your whole marriage is invalid.

2:06:34And a mistake for 50 years. You have to be really an expert. You have to be careful with these things. One guy wanted to volunteer. I'll give you guys a side story. One guy wanted to volunteer to be his, he called himself a rabbi. He wanted to volunteer to be the rabbi for the chuppah. I asked, I told the guy, I'm like, listen, does he have a semicha for chuppah and kiddushin? He's an expert? I don't know. I asked him. And he says, yeah, yeah, I've done it before. Okay, done it before doesn't mean anything. Is he an expert? Is he someone that has te'udah? He has a certificate that he's an expert in this issue. It's like, wow, what's the big difference? I'm like, well, the reason why I know he's not an expert is because he was supposed to ask you questions that even I know. Like, for example, were you ever divorced? Because why does that matter? Because if you were divorced, you had to have a get. And somebody like me who didn't believe in anything wouldn't have a get.

2:07:38That's a problem, so what we found out was that the guy was not only not an expert, but he also didn't know anything. The lesson learned is to get somebody, whatever the cost, whatever you need to do. It doesn’t really cost much anyway, just effort. Long story short... Even though the families wanted to have a big wedding, big wedding, fancy wedding, fancy wedding, I'm like, forget the fancy for that schmancy. Just be kosher. You want fancy? Go down the road and do fancy. Right now we just need, as soon as possible, to become kosher. Stop sinning. Okay, fine. We arrange it in one of the guy's houses. And he tells me, he goes, listen, what's the point anyway? Okay, fine, okay, the niddah thing I understand. Because my wife can't have kids anyway. I'm like, why can't she have kids? She can't have kids. She's an irregular body. Maybe she has a period once a year, if that much.

2:08:39can't have kids. Doctors say she can't have kids. I say, can't have kids? It's up to Hashem. You do what Hashem says. Your responsibility is to make the effort. We said it before, remember? The final problem is kosher. Rabbi, kosher people, kosher everything. Everything is good. Two weeks ago, I got a call. "Rabbi, I have to tell you something." I said, "What?" She says, "My wife is pregnant. But she's pregnant five months. She only realized now because her body didn't change for the first five months. Usually, during the first pregnancy, your body doesn't change as much as it does during your second and third. And she was also a little heavy, too. She got pregnant." A week and a half after. You are responsible for your effort. The outcome is in Hashem's hands.

2:09:57Whether it's pregnancy, success in money, success in zivug, success in anything, doing anything, you are responsible for your effort. How much Torah are you going to know? Hashem decides. You are responsible for learning. What you end up actually absorbing, Hashem is going to decide. Go ahead. A rabbi once told me that there are three things Hashem... free, like pre-sets or free, like what is put in your DNA or whatever your destiny programs. One is death, when you're going to die. One is how much money you're going to make. Is there? And the third, I'm not exactly sure. I think it's how many kids you're going to have or who you're going to marry. Now, that's Rosh Hashanah. He tells you that, not at the beginning of your life. When you're going to die, yes. How much time somebody has, yes. It's also based on how many, as far as, but you can change certain things. For example, the Torah also says that each person comes to this world, this is more of the Zohar part, more mystical part of the Torah, but it says that each person comes to the world with a certain amount of words.

2:11:11Something about shtuyot that come out of your mouth. More nonsense. If you say nonsense, you're in essence killing yourself. You're shortening your lifetime. But if you say divrei Torah, you could say an unlimited amount. Somebody likes to talk a lot like me. If I use that talking for nonsense, then Hashem Yerachem. But if I use it for Torah, you could talk as much as you want. But do you believe about the amount of money someone is making? Yeah, the amount of money is written in the Torah. It's written in Masechet Beitzah, Masechet Rosh Hashanah. Both Gemaras mention it, that every Rosh Hashanah, Hashem decides how much you're going to make over the next year. Now, it's also mentioned in the same two Gemarot, and also in the book of Rabbi Shalom Arush, that there's a very famous story about the... Baal Shem Tov. Baal Shem Tov, one day he sees one of the guys in the town, and he comes up to him and he says, "How are you?" Baal Shem Tov is a great rabbi, a tzaddik rabbi. He sees one of the guys carrying water. That's his job, carrying water. It wasn't like today where you have mineral water arriving all the way to your house. Back then, you had to carry it from the wells.

2:12:26He's carrying the water. He sees the guy sweating. It's hot. It's a thousand degrees outside, like Florida. He says, "How are you?" He goes, "Everything is good." The next day he sees the same guy, also carrying the water again. "How are you?" He says, "Ah, Kvod HaRav, I don't know why Hashem is making me suffer with this job, 20 years, carrying this heavy water. It's so hot outside. I don't know what's going on." He says, "Oh, Baruch Hashem, you helped me understand a Gemara and a Mishnah that I've been studying for years and I never understood it until now." He says, "Me? I helped you? I just complained. Complained about my miserable life, that I'm carrying this water in a thousand-degree weather." He says, "No, no, you helped me with my Torah." He goes, "How did I help you?" He says, "In the Mishnah, it says that Hashem decides how much parnasah you get every year on Rosh Hashanah. Rosh Hashanah, you arrive at the Beit Knesset, all..."

2:13:33you know, like we said before, everybody's show and tell, they want to show off their watches and their rings and their cars, but in reality, it's Judgment Day. Hashem tells you how much parnasah you're going to get. But then the Gemara says that He judges us every day. So I said, this is contradicting one another. If He's already deciding my parnasah on Rosh Hashanah, why is He judging me for my parnasah every day? He already decided. What is He deciding again? And you gave me the answer. And the guy says, "How did I give you the answer?" He says, "Yesterday you were happy. Today you are unhappy. You're still doing the same job. Why? Because it was already decided for you what parnasah you're going to get on Rosh Hashanah. But how you're going to get it, whether it's going to be easy for you to get the parnasah or difficult for you to get the parnasah, that's decided every day based on your actions." Meaning, when your neshama leaves your body and goes to shamayim every night when you go to sleep, your neshama signs off on all the things you did during that day. I made these and these sins. I made these and these mitzvot. That's why then you sign off. So on the day after 120, they show you all your signatures, what you did. It's no surprise.

2:14:53So now they're going to tell you, listen, based on everything you did today, tomorrow, it was just ruled for you right now, tomorrow is going to be an easy day, you're going to make $15,000. So sometimes you wake up in the morning already happy. No reason why you're happy, but you're happy. Why? Because your neshama knows, I just got good news; today's going to be a good day. You don't know. Your body doesn't know. But your neshama knows. So already you wake up, good mood, today I'm going to make $15,000, but you don't know. Sometimes you wake up, Tisha B'Av. Sometimes you wake up to disaster. You wake up, and instead of saying good morning to your wife, you curse her. What did she do? She just woke up. What are you cursing her for? You look at the kids, and you're cursing the day they were born. Why? They're five-year-old kids. What could they do to you? You're cursing them. You're in a bad mood. Somebody died. Why? You just woke up. What happened? you got bad news in shamayim. They said based on all your sins yesterday, today you're going to get a tikkun. Today, on the way to work, you'll get a flat tire. After you get a flat tire, you're going to find out one of your employees stole from you. After you find out what your employee did to you, you're going to find out that you lost a $15,000 lawsuit. They tell you all the bad things that are going to happen to you today. You don't know this as your body, but your neshama is already expecting bad news.

2:16:07And you already feel the suffering. So you wake up, Tisha B'Av. So now, now that you know this Mishnah and this Gemara, you have a choice. The next time you wake up in a good mood, just take advantage of it, make another mitzvah. Because last night's mitzvah ended up being a good day today. But the next time you wake up Tisha B'Av, the next time you wake up in a bad mood, you can either make more sins and make tomorrow even worse. We say, ah, if I'm waking up in a bad mood, that means that I'm not doing so good. I should do teshuva so tomorrow is better. And that's why Chazal say, someone that's smart does teshuva every day. Every day. Next question. I wanted to ask something earlier. I kind of said I won't ask. Ask. It's free. Same price. I think it’s shayach for everyone. I'd rather see marijuana. Straight up, guys. Thank God I stopped smoking. Somebody who smokes. Somebody who smokes for medicinal purposes. Someone is sick, cancer, HIV, some type of major disease, and they need it for medicinal reasons?

2:17:25It's a medicine. You don't get the same level of high when you're using marijuana for medicine as you do for enjoyment. But someone that's smoking it for enjoyment, it's 100% a sin. Not allowed to do it under any condition. It alters your state of mind. Meaning that if you smoke marijuana, you're not allowed to pray. You're not allowed to pray on marijuana. Why? Because... You can't drink. Right. You can't show up to a Beit Knesset drunk. So if you're not in a state... where you're allowed to pray, then that means that Hashem cannot be next to you. Which means that when you smoke marijuana and you're high, Hashem can't be next to you. Who wants a life without Hashem next to them? So, it's the same thing with alcohol, though, Rabbi. Same thing? You're allowed to drink. You're allowed to drink up to a point. You're allowed to drink up to a point. You're not allowed to get drunk to the point where you're falling on your face. If you drink for the taste, a little bit of wine on Shabbat, for the taste, you get a l'chaim, it's fine. But if you're at a point where you can't tell whether you're Haman or Mordechai, you have a problem.

2:18:28Some people drink just for le'ilos, for tipsiness. To the point where you're buzzed? Yes, again, to a certain extent. Most people that are really connected to Hashem don't drink at all. They drink other than maybe a little bit on Friday night for Kiddush. Generally, they don't drink at all. Listen, someone that feels a need, this should tell them about themselves, someone feels a need to alter their state of mind, either through alcohol or through some type of drug, they have a problem. So, it's a, someone that feels, they have a serious problem. The drug is the least of their problem. Mentally, though. Right. They're operating, functioning, getting done what needs to get done. And just like somebody who doesn't have a beer at night, they'll have a joint. Fine, God can't be next to them, so it's considered a sin, and I'll have to pray. It doesn't matter whether they can function or not. If someone is in a condition where God cannot be next to them, where they cannot be in a beit knesset, it's not allowed.

2:19:32Someone that's a drunk, an alcoholic, functions perfectly well. Someone that's like, if one of you guys gets drunk, you're gonna fall on your face. But someone that's an actual alcoholic, like a real alcoholic, which me skin, I have a few people like that, they function perfectly well. They don't fall on their face. They can drive, they can talk, they can function, they can work, everything. They drink, like to you, it looks like they're drinking a bottle of water, but in reality, they're drinking, I don't know, arak or vodka or something else, but they're drinking like water. However, despite their functioning, it doesn't matter in terms of halacha. If someone is in a condition where God cannot be next to them, where they cannot be in a beit knesset, it's not allowed. Right, same thing. They function fine, still not allowed. It's not about functioning, it's about your state of mind. Your state of mind is not at its ultimate level, it's not prepared to see God, it's not prepared to face God, it's not prepared to be your best. You may function, but so does a turtle. Does that mean the turtle can, you know, complete davening? What if it helps a person learn? It's nonsense. Right, same thing. They function fine, still not allowed. It's not about functioning; it's about your state of mind. Your state of mind is not at its ultimate level; it's not prepared to see God, it's not prepared to face God, it's not prepared to be your best. You may function, but so does a turtle. Does that mean the turtle can, you know, complete davening? What if it helps a person learn? It's nonsense.

2:20:32I agree, but I... Nonsense. Nonsense. I want to go, but I can't go. I can't do it. Listen. Having a God in your life obligates you. This is the reason why a lot of people don't want to become religious, because they don't want to be obligated. They don't want rules. They want to do whatever they want. People want to do whatever they want. They don't want to be told what to do. They don't want rules. The problem is that everyone has rules and we all have to follow them. So when you choose to follow everyone else's rules except God's, You have a problem because right now you're all going to drive home at some point, right? You're going to comply with the laws of traffic because you know that if you drive 100 miles an hour and a cop catches you, most likely you're going to go to jail. Or at the very least, you're going to have to pay a very, very hefty ticket. So you comply with the laws of traffic.

2:21:37Same thing with if somebody makes you really, really upset, and you want to murder them, you're not going to murder them. Why? Because you know that you don't want to spend the next 25 years to life in jail. So you're going to follow the laws of the government, whether you agree with them or not. Whether you like Obama or you don't like Obama, whether you like the government or you don't like the government, you're still going to follow their rules because you don't want to get in trouble. So then one day somebody goes up to Shamayim and Hashem is going to say, okay, so you followed Obama's rules, you followed Bush's rules, you followed whoever's rules, all these governments, all these different types of associations, all these groups, you followed everyone's rules except mine. There's no bigger chutzpan than you. you have a problem: you followed everyone else's rules except mine. If you didn't follow anyone, you still have a problem. It's not good, but it's still not as bad. It's the same thing for theft. For example, the punishment for theft When you're stealing in the morning versus when you steal at night, it's two different things in Shamayim. Why? When you're stealing in the morning, Hashem says, he has no busha, he has no nothing, no nerve, no nothing, no care in the world for Me or for people. He's stealing in the open. Everyone can see him stealing and he's stealing in the open. But if he steals at night, then that means that he's only scared of people.

2:23:01He's not scared of Me because he knows I'm watching. So he's more embarrassed of the people than Me. If he was not embarrassed in front of them and Me, it's one thing. But if he's only not embarrassed of Me and only of people, then it's something much worse. Same concept. What about drugs that enhance your capability of learning? Someone that is on a drug that enhances your capability of learning? No. There's no such thing as something that permanently enhances your capability of learning. And the reason why is... Adderall. I used to take some of it back when I was working in New York. Oh, a lot better. Or some people could. Adderall. With Adderall. It's not only a temporary state; it's eventually going to crash. Listen, I'm a student. I'm a lifelong student. Not just of Torah, but of a lot of different subjects. I like to study. If I could, I'd go to school forever. But I also don't like to waste my time. So I study things that are very, very specific and precise, and I don't like to waste my time. So...

2:24:10Part of studying is that you have to use your time, maximize your time, and sleep less. So I sleep less than most people. And if I did it through drugs, eventually my body would crash, and I would either die, or I would just completely not be able to do it ever again. It would just permanently change, and it would become a disaster, a plane crash. But when you train yourself naturally, or I would just completely not be able to do it ever again. It would just permanently change, and it would become a disaster, a plane crash. But when you train yourself naturally, to sleep less, then number one, it's healthier, and number two, it's longer-lasting. So as a studier, as a person that learns, I can tell you from experience, there's no such thing as making it better. Why? Because in essence, what someone is saying by claiming that there's a drug that's going to make me better is essentially saying to Hashem, "Oh, You made me imperfect; I'm helping You out." So for someone with a learning disability... Learning disability? What learning disability? Laziness? ADD. ADD is laziness. No. Yes, it is. ADD is... Okay, so show me anyone medically, theoretically, rationally, in the previous generation that had ADD or anyone even said that he had ADD. ADD... I'm not saying that there is...

2:25:32Yes, it's called laziness. Laziness, it's called lack of focus. It's called... Huh? What about dyslexia, which is ultimately a very real... No, dyslexia is different than ADD. ADD is just not having the ability to pay attention. Not having the ability to pay attention is because your mind is on girls, your mind is on money, your mind is on everything else except what it's supposed to be on. You have a very, very hard time sitting in place. You have a very, very hard time focusing. I understand what ADD is. I'm not a fool. But it's something that's workable, meaning you can fix it. You can't fix it over one sitting. But you can fix it. You just have to work. You have to work at it. The Gemara – one of the reasons why they teach Gemara at a very, very early age is because the Gemara is the best possible tool to sharpen your brain, to make that ADD into someone who is a Ph.D. But it takes time.

2:26:39It takes time. Because again, you're coming to me as a dull knife. I'm going to make you into a sword. It's going to take time, though. It takes effort. I've had people that were complete fools, and I trained them how to pass big tests. And they were able to do it. It just requires time and effort. And just like that same person that has ADD, somehow he finds the attention to play PlayStation for six hours. Exactly. The basketball game is not ADD when it's in the heat, right? Six hours you can play PlayStation. You can beat the game before anybody else even got it. The scientific proof of brains that... cannot focus on one thing, whether it's... But PlayStation, they can't. You can't focus on two things at the same time. And they actually need, they're missing something in their brain. They have a hormone, some type of imbalance, chemical imbalance. That's different than ADD. ADD is not a chemical imbalance, though. No, no, no. Most of these problems come from wasting seed. That's what Gedalia said. Put it this way, everything is workable. Maybe that guy is not going to become Rav Ovadia Yosef, but he can still become a normal Jew.

2:27:52That's what we need him to be. He can still keep mitzvot. The ADD shouldn't get in the way of him keeping Shabbat. It shouldn't get in the way of him not wasting seed. He shouldn't get in the way. Okay, maybe he's not going to become the next big talmid chacham, but he can still learn for 15 minutes. Take what? What does he need to take? Let's get him to 15 minutes first. And we'll go from there. Because really, most people who have ADD won't even want to learn for 15 minutes. Why? Because they're already scared about the fact that they can't learn for two hours, so they might as well not learn for 15 minutes. This is the reason why I say that the root of ADD is laziness, not ADD. I trained over 135 people just your age to become ultimate salesmen, to pass a very big test of 265 questions. I have experience with this. It's probably mentioned in some of my shiurim. But I can tell you, I've trained a lot of young guys. I've dealt with them for many years. For the most part, it's hogwash. It's nonsense. Sometimes you have special mental cases...

2:28:59But that's a different story. It's all treatable. Torah can fix anything. If I could cure an impossible disease by learning Torah, Hashem cured my disease by learning Torah. If you guys even knew 1% of what I went through for seven years, you wouldn't even ask about Gehinnom because you'd learn about Gehinnom here. 1% of what I went through. We went over some of it on Tuesday. We went over a couple of things. And we have a whole shiur about it. Trust me when I tell you, if Hashem can cure me just by me learning some Torah, doing some zikui harabim, and a few mitzvot, ADD is nothing. I've seen miracles beyond your belief. The UPS is one miracle. The woman that couldn't give birth is another miracle. Another guy, Hashem created a kehillah for him in Bulgaria. Another miracle. One guy was supposed to have surgery on his head because his baby was born with some type of deformity in his ear. He started contributing to kiruv. The next check-up they had 30 days later, the doctors were asking what happened.

2:30:11The kid's perfect. You have to understand, the reason why we teach Torah and science, which we didn't really cover very much of this today, Baruch Hashem, we covered more of Torah than we did the science, is not necessarily to show that science is great. It's to show that Hashem is great. show that Hashem is in charge of science. You know, in Hebrew, the word for nature is "hateva," but the numerical value of "hateva" in gematria is the same value as "Elokim." It's not a coincidence. The point being is that if you do Hashem's will If you do Hashem's will, there's no limitations. It says in Proverbs, Shlomo HaMelech, the smartest man of all time, in the book of Proverbs, that when someone makes Hashem happy, even his enemies, even his enemies will come and say, "I'm sorry." Enemies. Next. You mentioned about sleeping. So, it's not true that you have to sleep eight hours to be healthy?

2:31:21If you're an average person, you sleep an average amount of time. If you want to be more than average, you sleep less. It doesn't necessarily mean that you have to sleep an hour a day. You still have to be healthy. But the average person doesn't actually need eight hours. I sleep five hours every day. That's it. Sleep, sleep, sleep. Today I've slept less. Five, five, five is nine. I mean, listen, most people do not need eight hours of sleep. Most people don't need eight hours of sleep. You sleep less. I mean, listen, if you had a very big event tomorrow morning, I don't know, you have a job interview, it wouldn't matter what time you went to sleep. You'd be alert to the job. You'd get the job. When someone is trying to catch a flight, it doesn't matter what time they went to sleep. They always wake up on time. But you tell the guy to come to Selichot, to come to Beit Knesset at 6 o'clock in the morning, he's like, oh, come on, it's too early. But the Rav is too early, you know? Come on. But for a flight, who misses a flight? Except me, I miss flights all the time. I don't know why I always miss flights. I have like a tikkun with flights. I can't catch a flight. Yeah, I had a miracle with flights. I had actually a guy, I had an Arizona trip. I missed my flight. I missed my flight and...

2:32:39But it was a Friday, meaning I couldn't book it for a late flight. It had to be an early flight. And the woman told me, "Listen, in order for you to get there early, before Shabbat, with enough time before Shabbat, to Arizona, which is a five- to six-hour flight, it's going to cost you $830." So it's either miss the Shabbaton—they set up this whole Shabbaton where I was going to give lecture after lecture to all these people in this kehillah— I'll pay $800. Again, I don't work on Wall Street anymore. But Hashem provides parnasah, whatever He does. Okay, Hashem's going to pay for this too. I have no idea. So it cost me about $50 with the cab to get there. And then $830 for changing the flight. So I'm $880 negative. or in this trip started, I'm already at a negative. We had maybe nine or ten different lectures in Arizona. Very successful. One of them was a group of young guys like you, and the rest of them were regular—young, old, and everything else. Then on the way home, somebody took me to the airport, but on the way home, I had to take a cab. Instead of getting Uber, I said, you know what, there's already a taxi right in front of me. Let me use this guy.

2:34:04The guy ends up being a crook. And his meter, I notice it within like 20 minutes. I'm already on the road. I notice it within 20 minutes. The meter is wrong. I know how much. I've gone to the airport a million times. Cost, I don't know, 50 bucks from my house. $45 to go from my house. Already five minutes into the ride, I'm at 40 bucks. Like, is something wrong with this meter? I tell the guy, is something wrong with your meter? I'm not paying you $50 just until now. By the time we get to my house, it's going to be over $100. Double the average. He doesn't respond to me. He acts like he doesn't hear me. I say, okay, whatever. I just want to get home. By the time we got to my house, it's $120. Uber? No, not Uber. Taxi, yellow cab. $128. $128. He's considered a thief—100% a thief. I tell the guy, I'm not going to pay you. I'm not going to pay you $130 for a $50 ride. I tell him, listen, I'll give you $70. Wow. I'll give you $70, which is a lot. The guy starts yelling and calls the cops, like calls 911. I'm like, you know what? What do I need this Chilul Hashem for? They're going to think there's a Jew trying to take advantage of this cab driver. I'm like, you know what? Here's your money. Hashem is going to take care of this.

2:35:19That's it. So now I'm negative. How much am I negative? $1,000. The night after I finished all the lectures, you know a few people gave a few dollars, but then one guy came literally after I finished all the lectures, after I finished everything, it was like 2 o'clock in the morning. He came to the house that we were staying at, the Rabbi's house. He came to the house, he goes, "Oh, I want to give you this," and he gives me an envelope. I usually don't count in front of people; I just leave the envelopes. I get to my house, say hello to my wife, my kid, everything else, and then I open the envelope: $1,000. Hashem paid for it. The average person doesn't donate $1,000. Some people give more, some people give less, but the point is, in lectures, not necessarily everybody donates that kind of money. But Hashem pays. Exactly on the point, exactly on the dollar. What envelope is that, Rabbi? One envelope. Yeah. One envelope, I got a thousand dollars. I'm not the Baba Sali; I'm just Yaron, but yeah. Do you remember the story? The story with the... Listen, Hashem pays. Hashem makes miracles for anyone that cares about His kids. Baruch Hashem, we try. More questions? As many as you want. I have all night. It's up to you guys. You guys need to sleep. What do you think of the upcoming elections?

2:36:41What do I think of them? Who should we vote for? G-d. Yeah, but in reality, there's a... G-d is going to choose who's going to win. It's not up to you. It doesn't make a difference. It doesn't make a difference. If you believe your vote counts, then yeah, you should... if you vote, you're in... you're in... you're in the... uh, so if you believe your vote... I personally don't believe your vote counts. It doesn't... only feel like... according to... according to the Torah, your vote is irrelevant. Why? Because Hashem takes away the free choice. The free choice of the leaders. We have two perfect examples of it. We have more than two examples. One example is Pharaoh. Everyone knows Hashem took away Pharaoh's bechira. He took away his free choice. After the first few plagues, Hashem took away his free choice and for the rest of the Exodus, Hashem hardened his heart every time to keep him from letting Am Yisrael go because Hashem wanted to show Am Yisrael and all of the goyim how amazing He is. He made a lot of miracles, so He took away his free choice. Another example is Sichon. Sichon we learned about two weeks ago. When Am Yisrael went to war with them, Hashem made Sichon go to war with them. They attacked Am Yisrael. Why? Because He took away his free choice.

2:38:05We also see that Hashem took away the free choice of Nebuchadnezzar at some point. Not the whole time, but at some point, He took away his free choice. So Chazal teach us that when Hashem takes away the free choice of leaders, He's taking their free choice away. He says, yes, according to the Gemara, Hashem takes away the free choice of leaders. Meaning, whether it's Bush or Obama or Osama or whoever, it doesn't make a difference. Hashem is going to make the leaders run the world the way He wants them to run. We get mad at Obama and Osama and Churchill and Trump and whoever else is going to run or ran or whoever. All these people are because we think we have a say in the matter. In reality, all we have is the choice of whether to perform mitzvot or averot. I don't vote. But again, I also didn't care for politics regardless, even before religion. Because I was on Wall Street. And on Wall Street, it was non-stop politics. And I saw how much nonsense it is, to begin with, firsthand. Once I got into religion...

2:39:13I know that it doesn't make a difference. So, again, I'm not necessarily saying you shouldn't follow my advice. You believe in voting, vote. I'm not telling you not to vote, but I wouldn't necessarily spend my day following the elections and the debates and watching the news. There's a lot of, I mean, I think there's a division in the Orthodox world of people who voted for Obama. Most of the Jews, I mean, they'll be credited. People who think that it's important to vote and those who think it's not important to vote. Yeah, no, listen. If you think you actually have a say in the matter, then vote. I don't think you have a say. So, if you thought that you did have a say, would you vote? Or would you still say it's in God's hands? No, no, no. Meaning if I thought that God is not controlling it. That's what I mean by say. Not like the voting system. Don't the people that get elected stop voting? Some people say you should vote because you should show effort. You should exert effort to vote in order to influence certain things. But when it comes to leadership, we have no examples whatsoever that our vote counted in all of history. Even kings, like for example, were kings that Hashem picked. Hashem picked them.

2:40:28Hashem picked him to be king. You couldn't just become a king simply because somebody elected you. Hashem picked him. Why did He pick him? Biggest giant of the generation. He was able to give 127 lectures on any issue in the Torah. 127 different lectures on any subject. Netilat yadayim, 127 lectures. Gemara, 127 lectures. Whatever you want, 127 lectures on every issue. Something that no one can give 127 lectures on one subject in this generation, let alone every subject. E nachav, ein lo chelek l'olam haba. has no share in the World to Come. Why? Because why is it that the navi lived close to him and he says, "Listen, I want your land. I want your vineyard. I want, you know, what I want. It's right next to my house. It's nice. I'll give you something better." He goes, "No, no, it's not for sale. It's passed from generation to generation. It's not for sale." Because, yeah, but it's

2:41:33right next to my house. I'll give you something better, bigger, better. What do you care? He says, "No, no, it's not about the money. It's family business. I'm not giving it away." So he couldn't deal with it. He says, "I'm the king. I'm smart. I'm this, I'm that, I'm everything." But he became depressed, just like Haman. Haman was richer than Achashverosh, but he was depressed. Why was he depressed? Because one little Jew didn't say hello. That's it. Everyone else is bowing to him. One Jew doesn't say hello. That's it. That's the end of the world. Achav, same thing. He owns everything. Everyone bows to him. God picked him to be the king, but he can't get this little piece of land. Ruins his life. So he becomes depressed. So his wife, Izevel, comes to him and says, what happened? He goes, no, I want this land. I can't get it. Like a baby. She says, aren't you the king? So act like the king.

2:42:35So what did she do? She changed the rules. They accused the prophet of being a criminal. What happens when you're a criminal? They take you to the Beit Din. Give you Gezer Din Mavet. They kill you. And who inherits all the property? The king. That's it. So Achav inherited the property, but he lost a share of the World to Come. Meaning that, yes, he had free choice. He had all the wisdom in the world. all the Torah in the world. But when you don't work on your middot and your middah of Rechanut, which means greed, you can't control it, it's all worthless. So yes, Trump is nice and Hillary is nice and that one's nice and that one's nice. It doesn't make a difference. What we as Jews do is going to dictate what's the outcome. And right now we're at the end of times anyway, so it's not supposed to be a pretty time. Would that also go for in Israel? Would you still agree with that? Same thing. Everywhere. Everywhere. You wouldn't vote for the religious party in Israel?

2:43:35I wouldn't vote, period. It's my choice, though. It's not necessarily a recommendation. I don't believe voting counts. Number one, because of experience, and number two, because I'm connected to Hashem, and I believe that whoever is the, whoever is the, what's it called? Yeah, I mean, in Israel, if you could vote only for the religious party, then maybe that would count, because it has something to do with Torah. But what Torah do you have in America? I'm saying, in Israel. In Israel maybe, yeah. In Israel it would be something else maybe, but in America... But the position of the liberals here in the United States, especially in Israel, is not... Liberals everywhere. Liberals control the world. They control Israel, they control here, they control everywhere. Say, what, you have... How? I mean, you have. You have... They celebrate things that are anti-Torah. whether it's homosexuality, transsexuality, things that are 100% against the Torah. This was not something that was even an option in the world of the goyim even, just a generation ago.

2:44:48You know, so you have, you know, the homosexuality in San Francisco is to such a high degree that I heard scientists have, I don't know if they confirmed or they estimate that the animals, animals have become, the animal homosexuality in San Francisco is higher than anywhere else in the world. Animals. That city got destroyed once, a hundred years ago. Because the actions of man influence, influence, and influence animals, everything. The same thing happened during the flood. Listen, the point being is that homosexuality is a hundred percent a choice. I have a whole lecture about it. A hundred percent a choice. Listen, you are born with certain desires. Some people are born with a desire to be with the same sex. That's not their choice; they were born with that desire. Some people are born with a desire to steal. Some people are born with a desire to see blood. Now, you have a choice of what to do with that desire. Someone that's born with a desire, the Zohar says this, and also the Gemara, someone that's born with a desire to see blood could either be a murderer,

2:45:59A surgeon, a butcher, they can do a lot of things. You're not saying that homosexuality is a choice. The desire, the fulfillment of the desire. The fulfillment of the desire is up to you. You are going to have a desire to be intimate with another male, but whether to act on it or not is going to distinguish you between being an animal or not. So God can make you attracted to the same sex? As a tikkun for you, yeah. And that would prevent you from performing surgery? No. No, you can overcome that desire and actually marry a woman and have a family, and it's happened plenty of times. You can overcome every desire. If you want to be with a Goyah, you have to overcome it. Yeah, every desire you can overcome. You can have a sexual desire, you can have a money desire, you can have a lot of desires, and eventually, if you work on your middot... you can eliminate something. For example, anger. There's a secular way of fixing it, and then there's the Torah way of fixing it. In short, the secular way of fixing it, what do they tell you? What do the psychiatrists tell you? What do the self-help books tell you? They tell you to waste seed, so you can relax, and they tell you that don't express your anger, keep it inside you. So what happens after a few years? Okay, you're not expressing your anger, but you have a cancer inside instead.

2:47:13And one day you explode, and you lose your mind. The Torah way of fixing anger is telling you, do not get angry. Ever. Meaning you actually don't have a reason to get angry if you work on your Middot. If you actually realize that by being angry, in essence what you're saying to Hashem is that you run the show instead of Him. Because you're only angry because you didn't get your way. And why would you think that you have to get your way? Because you think you're like a mini little god. So once you realize that anger in general is wrong, and it's anti-Hashem, and according to the Gemara, it's the equivalent of Avodah Zarah, you're not going to get angry after a while. But you have to work on it. It takes a while. It's not like one day you realize it, and the next day you stop. According to Rabbi Yisrael Salanter, it takes six years. work on one midah, on one character trait. But if you work on it, it's happened plenty of times that whether it's homosexuality or it's any other desire or any other character trait, you can overcome it. No question, if you want to, you can overcome it.

2:48:17I heard about, I did research about Izevel. I heard he made a mistake because she was a fake convert, and she got a lot of prophets killed. Possible. I don't know that part. She was such a wicked woman, and he married her. Yeah, she was definitely a wicked woman. I just don't know that part. I don't know if she's a convert. She's a fake convert. It says. Possible. It's possible. She did a fake conversion just to marry the king, and she got a lot of the prophets killed. That's what I heard. It's possible. That part of the story, I don't know. What else? What determines the relative impact of the fulfillment of a bad desire? To draw on the homosexuality example, what makes homosexuality as worse as another sin in that section of the Torah? Is there like a rating system? Yes, there's a rating system. The rating system is based on punishment. So, for example, if someone steals, the Torah says he has to return double. You stole 100, you have to give back 200. If someone murders, the Torah says that he also gets killed. He gets a death penalty for murdering. Your life is not yours, and someone else's life is not yours. But if someone violates Shabbat, then they get three different punishments. First, it says they get a death penalty also, just like the murderer. It says so. So it says three different words that describe, three adjectives that describe the punishment for Mechalel Shabbat in the Torah, in the written Torah. You go to, I think it's verse 32. That's where it says it. So it says so. What does it mean? So it's three different words.

2:49:40Then they get three different punishments. First, it says they get a death penalty also, just like the murderer. It says. So, it says three different words that describe, three adjectives that describe the punishment for Mechalel Shabbat in the Torah, in the written Torah. This is not commentary; this is literal Torah. You go to, I think it's verse 32. That's where it says it. So, it says. What does it mean? So, it's three different words. Mot means death. Yumat means upon death. So, it's two deaths. then it says "cut off from the nation." So, what does it mean? "First death" means that you cut off the person's life short in this life. If the Sanhedrin was still around, they would get a death penalty. Because the Sanhedrin is not around anymore, they actually get a heavenly punishment where their life is cut short here. Hashem kills them earlier than they're supposed to. They were supposed to live 120 years; now they're going to live, I don't know, 105, 115 years, so 110 years.

2:50:42Because they violated Shabbat. This is for the sin of Shabbat. So that's the first death. But what does "upon death" mean? If he died, he can only die once. "Upon death" means he has no share in the World to Come. No Olam HaBa. He loses his Olam HaBa. So the third, so now after he died twice... This world, the next world. What's the cut-off from the nation? Cut-off from the nation means literally what it says, which means that they're no longer part of Am Yisrael, meaning that their Judaism is on suspension. So they're no longer recognized as a Jew. They're not recognized as a Jew until they do teshuva, until they start keeping Shabbat again. Okay, and so the implications of that are that in the next life or wherever, you know, your soul takes you in this case, so I assume the next life. that carries forth into that. Yes, well, it actually carries forth. It's already carried in this world also, meaning that if someone is a violator of Shabbat, they cannot be counted as part of a minyan. Minyan, meaning ten people needed to pray to say Kaddish. They have to have ten people who keep Shabbat in order to say Kaddish. If there are nine people who keep Shabbat and the tenth person doesn't keep Shabbat, he doesn't count as part of a minyan. If they want to do an eruv,

2:51:58And Gemara Masechet Avodah Zarah, page 65, says that if you want to do an eruv between, let's say, three houses, and one of the three houses is mechalei Shabbat, you can't count him as part of the eruv. Why? Because he's not reliable. He's not considered Jewish. So many, many sources talk about it. It's not like my commentary or anything. It's a very, very heavy punishment. So that's how we know the significance, the rating system of sins, what's bad, what's worse. And to tie it kind of into that, does, I guess because the rabbis sort of say, does the Torah ever change? Does it ever adapt? No, Hashem says, He constantly uses the Torah, and He constantly says that these rules are forever, for eternity. These are the rules. This is how it is. This is how it was at Har Sinai. He mentions it in many, many parts in the Torah, that whatever rules we have, it's also in this week's parashah, it's in last week's parashah, it's in a few different places. Whatever rules you have, these are le'olam. Le'olam means eternity. Even after this world, they stay the same rules. It never changes. I had a question a long time ago, but I'm learning not to be politically correct. What does it really mean in our times?

2:53:12Modern Orthodox means there are certain leniencies in Judaism that the Orthodox do not allow. For example, more leniencies in the modesty of women. more leniencies in the modesty of men and things like that. There's more to it than just that, but there's more modernizing Judaism to adapt to the goyish world that we live in because it's become socially acceptable for women to wear shorter skirts. They figure that it's not as immodest to wear a short skirt in this generation as it was in previous generations, which is 100% wrong. But, so, modernizing the Torah, there's no place in the Torah that says you're allowed to modernize it, but, listen, we have a very weak generation, and unfortunately, some rabbis have no choice. It's either Modern Orthodox or nothing. Women not covering their hair is unfortunately a very, very big sin because it's considered nakedness. Yes, you're right. That's what the Gemara Masechet Sotah says.

2:54:14I have this question, but I'd like to say I learned not to be politically correct because nobody told these things. You know, everybody doesn't want to hurt anybody's feelings. Everybody's inspiring, but nobody... Well, it says... It says... It says you must rebuke your people, but you can't bring yourself to a point of making a sin by doing it. Meaning that there's a way to rebuke someone. You can't... You can't embarrass them in public, but there are certain circumstances where you have to embarrass them in public. So it's two different things. So... You're not allowed to embarrass them, but there are certain circumstances where you have to embarrass them. How so? Meaning if you don't have a choice. If, let's say for example, there's somebody in Beit Knesset, Beit Knesset, talking in the middle of tefillah. You have to warn them: Stop talking in Beit Knesset. We're praying here. It's the house of God. And they continue doing it. You're not only allowed, but you have to, according to Shulchan Aruch, you have to embarrass them, kick them out of the Beit Knesset. Even though it's embarrassing in front of everyone.

2:55:15So again, the first part says you have to rebuke, but don't get to a point of making a sin. This means that there are laws for how to do everything. You could rebuke your friend, but you can't really rebuke his wife. You could have your wife perhaps talk to her because there are also laws of modesty involved here. Unless you're their rabbi. And even then, you have to be careful. Even rebuking your own wife, there are certain rules. So, there are certain rules to do things. Also, if there's a rabbi present, if it's your rabbi that's present, you can't really say a halacha in front of him. It's a death penalty. You have to ask him first, "Am I allowed, can I say this one point?" Oh, yeah, okay, fine. So we learn this also from the Gemara. What I'm saying, we observe in Judaism about 12 years that I'm practicing. And I listen, I used to be at a lot of shiurim. And I'll be honest, at one point, I got like, you know, and since I listened to Rabbi Mizrachi like two years ago, I said, wow, this is really different. Not because I'm a chareidi, it's just because it's a different approach. It's not politically correct. Right, it's not politically correct. I heard one Rabbi give a speech, a few weeks ago, and they all said the same thing. So I like that because it's more effective. It's real.

2:56:27But this generation, I think, is different. It's the only thing that works. Listen, the reality of it is that the politically correct world is not really helping as much as people think it should help. It's only recent, right? Back then, it wasn't like that. It wasn't like that. People 100 years ago... Yeah, even less than that. But in general, people would tell people the truth. That's it. You mean another, another. All along another. Yeah. Restored. He’s dead after he gets offended by everything. Everything gets offended. But if I told you guys, listen, everything is great, you would never do teshuva. Nobody would do teshuva. It's the only way that works. If I would have just not said anything, you guys would continue hanging out the whole time, make a whole joke out of it, and nothing would have been achieved. We would just waste each other’s time and everybody would just laugh the whole time and nothing happens. But after we said that, look, we got a good shiur. The next two hours were great. Understand something else: if you're going to be real, you have to be real 100% of the time. If you're going to be fake, you have to be fake all the time. You have to understand that Hashem is not politically correct. Hashem put some very, very difficult parts in this Torah for a reason. There are certain parts of the Torah that talk about punishment, such as horrible punishments like eating our own children, getting to such starvation that we have to eat our own kids. That's a horrible punishment to think about and...

2:57:47And it happened. It happened multiple times. It happened in the Beit HaMikdash, the first one, the second one. It happened during the Holocaust. It happened. It actually happened. These things actually happened. It wasn't like some things that Hashem just said. It actually happened. And so these are warning shots. These are warnings. These are not just things that Hashem is saying just for joking. So if we take Hashem seriously, then there's no way that we could possibly be politically correct because we know that Hashem is not politically correct. But if we don't take Him seriously, then we just pick and choose whatever rules. Next thing you know, we're all Reform. You understand? Little by little, everything becomes Reform. Everything becomes everything else, unfortunately. Okay. Okay, so we've got to get to that. That's why we have a shiur. You got stronger a little bit today. Got a little wake-up call today? So that's it. So to close, I guess, when do you think the Mashiach is going to come? Tomorrow, B'ezrat Hashem. But like... I think very soon. You think in our lifetime? I think very soon. No, it's definitely in our lifetime. I have a few years about it. I have a couple of years about it. In the next six years, seven years? I'll be happy if I'm eight years old. No, no, I think it's much, much less than that. I don't want to die and not have it.

2:59:09No, no, no. It's definitely in our generation. We're already out of time. I'll give you a basic understanding. In Gemara, it says—the Gemara is the Oral Torah, and we'll finish with this point—it says that the Mashiach will come before Shabbat. Before Shabbat. So, what does it mean "before Shabbat"? Does it mean he has to come six days out of the seven days? No, no, it doesn't mean before Shabbat the day. It means before Shabbat the year. So, in the Tehillim, in Sefer Tehillim, in Psalms... David HaMelech tells us that even though Hashem doesn't actually have time—He's not bound by time—every day for Him is like a thousand years for us. And He created this world for 6,000 years. So every 1,000 years is a day of the week. And the 7,000th year is Shabbat. So now we are in year 5,777. So 5,000, that's already Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday completed. 5,000 already completes five days.

3:00:13Now you have 777. So that's 750 out of 1,000, which is three-quarters, right? Three-quarters out of 24 hours is 18 hours. What's 18 hours? 18 hours is 6 p.m., right? But then we still have that 27. I did the math. It's approximately every 41 years is an hour. Every 41 years is an hour, which means that we're somewhere around 6:40 p.m. right now. Average Shabbat in Israel doesn't come in at 10 o'clock at night. The average Shabbat during the year comes in around 7. Sometimes earlier, sometimes later. Either way, even if, let's say, you say it's 8 o'clock. Let's just say, give it kavod, it's 8 o'clock. He didn't say he's going to come on Shabbat. He said he's going to come before Shabbat. Which means it could happen any day, and it's not only going to be in a lifetime. We're talking about a matter of a few years.

3:01:14at best you have maybe at all fifteen years, twenty years. You know, you're not really allowed to put timing on it, but we're out of time. In previous generations, we were able to bring the Mashiach in a good way by mitzvot. Now, we're out of time, and all of the prophecies of what's going to happen at the end of time—you can't get any worse than this. But you must say, there is no—I don't think I'll go to the book starting in the middle of the already started getting worse. It started last year. When September 11th of 2015, which is last year, Russia brought a ship with 200 atomic bombs to Syria. Okay. That's the beginning of Gog u'Magog. Why? Why did they bring it? Why is it the beginning if there are a lot of other things? Because they said that they're coming to fight ISIS. You don't need 200 atomic bombs to fight ISIS. Obviously, they're coming for a world war. The next world war is going to be the last war. ...and since then, everything around the world has heated up. You know, Russia and America are not exactly best friends anymore. There are also some problems with Turkey. There are serious problems all over the world. You see, if you look, if you follow the politics and all the stuff, you see that pretty much right now everyone wants to fight.

3:02:32Everyone, even now, we have a new guy who starts giving fingers to everyone. North Korea wants to fight everyone. Everyone wants to fight. Panamanian people are having issues. The Filipino guy, he's cursing America every day now. Who even heard of this guy? Everyone wants to fight now, which is pretty much what they said. The Gemara says it's going to happen at the end of times. I don't know about the exact day. I don't know about the exact month. All I know is that all of the prophecies that we're supposed to get, we have them. The only thing that's left is... A few things. A few things. We have a whole shiur about it. There's a shiur, maybe two or three shiurim about it online. In the end of Gemara Masechet Sotah, page 49, it says different signs of what's going to happen at the end of times. For example, it's going to be the face of the dog, the face of the generation will be the face of a dog. Meaning, this is in two ways. One,

3:03:42The generation is going to be full of chutzpanim, rude people. This was not common in previous generations. When they wrote this Gemara 2,000 years ago, being rude in public was not... They'd throw the guy out of the city for something like that, or even kill him. Now, people are cursing their own parents and feeling okay about it. Another point of proof, I'll show you after we finish the shiur on my phone, it's actually scientifically shown that people tend to look like their dogs. Facial features similar to their dogs. So we have, that's one. Two, the daughters-in-law and the mothers-in-law will become bitter enemies. And this sounds normal to you guys because it's common now. In previous generations, there was no such thing as a daughter-in-law fighting with a mother-in-law. It was like a second mother. The mother-in-law was like a second mother. To say that the daughter-in-law is going to fight the mother-in-law was like crazy. What about, like... Father and father-in-law, or father and mother-in-law? In-laws in general will become problematic, specifically the issues between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law, but in general, in-laws will be difficult. Another thing it says is that the leaders of the nations will start working against the people.

3:05:04We've seen that for years. We've seen that for many years. We've seen that very actively in Israel, very actively in America, and everywhere else. In Israel, yeah. I mean, the government of Israel is anti-Torah. They're anti-Torah. They hate the Torah in every sense. They torture the people that learn Torah by giving them fines, by lowering their benefits. When Israel was founded, who was the man? What was his name? Well, you have Ben-Gurion who was like the first president. Yeah, but Zionism is anti-Judaism. Yeah, exactly. Zionism is anti-Judaism. What makes it so? Because I'm not familiar. Zionism is based on a communistic mentality. It's based on communism, which is anti-God. When you're communist, you're anti-God. So Judaism is all about God. So it's literally the... epitome of the opposite of Judaism. But in today's generation, there are religious people who are Zionistic also because they don't look at the communistic viewpoint; they just look at the love of the country. They love Eretz Yisrael, but they're religious, and there are plenty of them, and they're very good people.

3:06:21But it becomes problematic because there are a lot of difficult issues because, again, the government of Israel is anti-Torah. It's a secular government, and it's not just secular, like they don't care about it. There have been actual politicians whose literal mission was to hurt the Torah. So this is some of the stuff that we have to be alert to, and this is one of the prophecies that's going to happen at the end of days, because it's not normal for a government that's being voted by the people to be against the people. I guess this is a different take on things, but a kibbutz is generally considered a positive, religious, enforcing thing, and I guess, socially, we viewed it as such. No, but kibbutz in general is communist. Okay, so... Socialist. Socialist, socialist, same foundation. Are we conflating socialist and communist with being anti-God when we're assuming that the state becomes the God, or are we saying that it's anti-God because it preaches personal...

3:07:23No, it preaches that we came from monkeys. That's what they teach in secular schools in Israel. They teach we came from monkeys. They teach that there's a big bang theory. They teach things, they say that the Torah is like a journal or a novel. They teach people to masturbate because they think it makes you healthier. pretty much every single thing that's against the Torah, that's what they teach.