Shiur Torah #103 Torah, Science and Ancient Wisdom (LightHouse Project)

0:01To be here at the Lighthouse Project again. Thanks for coming, Baruch Hashem, a lot of new faces. Also, thanks to TorahAnytime, who's been supporting us and helping us publicize our Torah all over the world. It's truly amazing how much Siyata Dishmaya we've been getting over these last couple of years. When just, you know, it wasn't too long ago, just several years ago, if anyone that came to my personal story two weeks ago, what we did here, To be here at the Lighthouse Project again. Thanks for coming, Baruch Hashem, a lot of new faces. Also, thanks to TorahAnytime, who's been supporting us and helping us publicize our Torah all over the world. It's truly amazing how much Siyata Dishmaya we've been getting over these last couple of years. When just, you know, it wasn't too long ago, just several years ago, if anyone that came to my personal story two weeks ago, what we did here,

1:16It wasn't too long ago, we didn't know anything. We didn't even know whether Hashem was real or not. And today, Baruch Hashem, our main focus in life is to get Am Yisrael back to the Torah, get Am Yisrael back to Hashem. And last night we had a shiur in Boca Raton. And during the shiur, you know, once in a while we talk about Mussar, we talk about Parashat HaShavua. But also, we throw some science into the shiur because it's always good to feel Hashem in a way that you can actually see. Spiritually, sometimes it's very difficult without tefillah, without a lot of Torah, without learning. So, in our generation, many people want to have scientific proofs of Hashem. The unfortunate part is that most of the science that we've learned until this point from public schools and universities has been a complete lie. And today, b'ezrat Hashem, we're going to try to prove not only that everything we've learned thus far is a complete lie, but also that all of the wisdom that ever existed is in a book we call the Torah.

2:31Now, most people have been celebrating this holiday in America called Columbus Day. And Columbus was famous for discovering America, even though there were already people here. He was famous for discovering America. But the bigger celebration is the fact that before Columbus, according to the historians, everyone thought that the world was flat. ...And Columbus said, no, no, no, I'm going to continue going all the way to that point, and I'm going to get to another piece of land, and I'm not going to fall off the edge. And then when he continued and he got to another land, everyone said, wow, look, Columbus, the world is not flat. This is just a few hundred years ago. Unfortunately, that entire story is completely false. And the reason why... is because Am Yisrael has known that the world is not flat. As a matter of fact, Am Yisrael has known that the globe is a sphere exactly as we know it today, already from Har Sinai, and all of this is in the Torah.

3:44I'll try to provide sources for everything that I say, so anyone that wants to check it, you don't want to take my word for it, you shouldn't take my word for it, you should check it yourself. But I'll give you page numbers, and I'll give you the books, and you can see it yourself. This first example is in the Gemara, which is a critical part of our Oral Torah. We have two Torahs. We have the Written Torah, which is the Five Books of Moses, and then the Prophets. And then we have the Oral Torah. The Oral Torah explains what the Written Torah actually says. And most people that don't want to believe in Judaism, whether it's because they're Jews and they don't want to keep mitzvot, or they're Christians and they're saying that some other guy came and saved everyone and now you don't have to do anything. All types of nonsense that people create in their mind. But everyone has a problem with this Oral Torah. Even though Hashem said that He gave us the Oral Torah at Mount Sinai also. But people say, no, but rabbis mentioned their names in the Oral Torah. These rabbis weren't alive during Mount Sinai. Yes, but the information in the Oral Torah must be divine. And B'ezrat Hashem, today, we're going to prove that because the information they had couldn't have been information possessed by a man.

4:54The first one being proof that the globe, that the earth is a sphere. In the Mishnah in Masechet Avodah Zarah, page 41b, it says that there are all types of Avodah Zarah, all types of idol worship, and you're not allowed to benefit from anything that was ever worshipped. Even if it was worshipped for a day, you're not allowed to benefit from it. So the Gemara asks, what about if it was a picture? I said, "Okay, what kind of picture? What if it was a picture of a man?" I said, "Well, if it's a picture of a man holding a bird or holding a ball, you're not allowed to take it." I was like, "Okay, why the ball? What does it matter what he's holding?" Gemara says that if this man in the picture is holding a ball, then he's representing as if he's a king controlling the entire world. And they're saying, why does it represent him controlling the entire world? They say, because the ball is a representation of Earth, the planet we live on, and Earth is round. Just like the ball is a sphere, so is the world that we live in. This Gemara was written nearly 2,000 years ago. The Mishnah itself, about 2,500 years ago.

6:10Columbus, many, many years later, about 2,000 years later, did not discover that the world was round. Am Yisrael already knew this. So now that we know that Columbus Day is not really a real holiday, it's just that people want to take off work, let's learn some other things that the Gemara says. Now, in the Torah, we have a lot of things that, in our current generation, people get shaken up by. For example, when I tell people that if a Jew does not keep Shabbat, according to halacha, according to the Rambam, he says that a Jew that doesn't keep Shabbat is considered a goy, is considered a Gentile, considered not Jewish. But what kind of a Gentile? Because there's something called chasidei umot haolam, which are the righteous Gentiles, the righteous non-Jews around the world. Rambam says, no, no, not the righteous ones. These are tzaddikim; they have olam haba. The Jew that's not keeping Shabbat, he's considered an idol worshiper. An idol worshiper. He doesn't keep Shabbat. He drives on Shabbat. He smokes cigarettes on Shabbat. Watches TV on Shabbat. He's considered a complete idol worshiper. Now, when I tell people this during a shiur, it shakes them up. "What do you mean? I'm a Jew. My mom was a Jew. My dad was a Jew. I went to Beit Knesset three times last year. I gave some tzedakah once in a while. What do you mean? I'm not a Jew?" Well, according to the Rambam, you're not a Jew. Your Judaism is on suspension.

7:33You start keeping Shabbat, suspension's off. Now, things like this shake people up. One time I told somebody this, and when he wanted to prove to me that he's a Jew, he took out his Israeli identification, which had on it "Jewish." I told him, "Yes, you know what, you're right, but it doesn't work in halacha, because you can't take it." So the reality of it is that some of the sayings of Chazal, some of the sayings of the sages, shake people up. So, who is this Chazal? Who are these Chachamim? What proof is there that they're any smarter than us? What proof is there that the Torah is really from God? What proof is there? B'ezrat Hashem, Hashem will give me the words to prove it today. Usually, this shiur is about three to four hours, so we're going to try to do it in an hour. B'ezrat Hashem, we'll see where we can fit. So now Hashem tells us in the Torah, there are certain types of food that you are not allowed to eat. If it's a fish, if you want to eat seafood, it has to have two signs. It has to have fins, and it has to have scales. This we mentioned in our last shiur here, but we'll quickly go into that because this is directly in the Torah. This is in the Five Books of Moses. Hashem says, if a fish has fins and scales, it's kosher.

8:52If it doesn't have scales, then it's not kosher. So Chazal say, what do you mean it doesn't have scales? They say, because you'll find fish that just have fins, with no scales, but you will never find a fish that just has scales, but no fins. Which means that this information cannot come from mankind. Why? Because if you're going to write this in a book, and you want everyone to follow this book, then that means that you're not going to put something that could easily be proven wrong. If somebody goes to the beach and catches a fish and they find a fish with just scales, you have yourself a mistake in the Torah. If there's one mistake in the Torah, the entire book is canceled. There's no more Judaism. You no longer have to fast on Yom Kippur. You no longer have to keep Shabbat. There cannot be a mistake in the Torah. Why? Because it's divine. Divine means it's from God. God does not make mistakes. So now you have a situation where whoever said this, that every fish that has scales must have fins, must have known every single fish that will ever exist. There are over 2 million species that we know of on Earth. There are over 40,000 different types of fish that we know of. That means that whoever said this 3,300 years ago had to have known everything that not only existed back then, but would ever exist, including mutations.

10:20And until this day, no one has ever found a fish with just scales but no fins. You have many fish, like sharks, dolphins, and so on, that just have fins. But you'll never find a fish that just has scales. Which means that even if you find a fish that's cut off, you cut off half the fish, and you don't have the side that has the fins. And you only have scales. The Gemara says you know for sure that it's kosher. Why? Because you're never going to find a fish that just has scales. So this is just one simple proof that's in the Five Books of Moses that, b'ezrat Hashem, all of us read every single year, parashat haShavua. You should find this in the Five Books of Moses. Another thing... The Torah says, in regards to the animals that we eat, Hashem is a big makpid. He's very, very stringent in regards to what we eat. The reason why is He says that everything that you ever eat, whether it's ice cream, or a steak, or an apple, or anything that you're ever going to eat, is going to turn into blood. Whatever doesn't turn into blood will come out of your system.

11:25Now, who told this food, whether it's a steak, to turn into blood? And then the apple comes in, it also turns into blood. And then on top of that, the burger also turns into blood, and the bun also turns into blood. How come it all turns into blood? Because, obviously, there's an intelligent designer behind all of this. Now, this blood, according to Hashem, is part of your neshamah, it's part of your soul. Which means that you are what you eat. If you eat something impure, you become impure. But what does it mean to be impure? Does it mean you're a bad person? No, not necessarily. It means that if you try to learn Torah, it becomes nearly impossible because the Torah is the only thing that's truly spiritual in the world and it's complete purity. This means that if you go to a shiur Torah and you eat non-kosher food, you're going to be like me when I was first starting to do teshuvah. I go to a shiur, and I'm completely 100% awake. Five and a half minutes into the shiur, I fall asleep. Why? Because the purity was too much for my neshama to take. So it takes some training and obviously takes some kosher food. Now, Hashem said that how are you going to know if this animal is pure? He says it has to have two signs. It has to have split hooves. It has to chew its cud, re-digest its food. You can have approximately ten different animals

12:46that he lists a little bit more than 10 animals that actually have 10 species that have these two signs. The rest of the animals in the world will not have any sign. It's either two or nothing, except four. There are four animals that have one sign. The pig, the hare, the rabbit, and the camel. Four animals. Four animals only have one of the two signs. Every other animal either has two signs, which means it's kosher, and the rest of the animals in the world have nothing. What does this mean? This means that if we find animal number five, there's a mistake in the Torah. If we find another animal that has one sign, there's a mistake in the Torah. Baruch Hashem, 3,300 years have passed since we got the Torah, and they're still looking. Another interesting thing that Hashem said about the animals, about kosher animals, that we didn't talk about in the last shiur, is that He wanted us to identify the kosher animal from the outside because that's easy for us to know, easier for us to identify. But there are also internal signs inside the animals. Now,

14:04According to Judaism, in order for an animal to be allowed for us, to be permitted for us to eat, it has to be slaughtered in a kosher way. Slaughtered in a kosher way means that the animal cannot suffer, even for one second. Now, if you look at a slaughter from the outside and you're not familiar with shechita, slaughtering looks really horrendous. It doesn't look like it's not painful, but there's actually scientific proof that it's not painful. All non-kosher animals, including mankind, have all of the blood at some point travel from the heart to the brain. Now, someone is considered alive as long as there's blood going to the brain. As soon as the blood stops going to the brain, you're considered dead. It's not if the blood stops going to the heart. That's just a heart attack and somebody can be revived. But as soon as there's no longer any blood going to the brain, you're considered clinically dead. So now, as soon as we disconnect

15:09the blood from the brain of the animal, the animal is officially dead, meaning that it's no longer functioning; it dies within a matter of, you know, less than a second. Now, all of the animals have two veins that connect to the brain: one on the bottom of their neck and one on the top of their neck. This means that regardless of, let's say for example, if this is the head of a horse, there will be a vein on the bottom and a vein on the top. So even if we cut the vein, if we slaughter it on the bottom, there's still going to be blood coming from the top. Which means that until all the blood comes out of the bottom, it's still going to be alive and it's still going to suffer. It's going to feel the pain because it's still alive. There's still blood going to the brain from the top. So this means that there's no clean way to slaughter a horse or a camel, and so on. But if you look at the kosher animals, if you look at the cow, you look at the lamb, you look at the ones that we are allowed to eat, the deer, there's only a few animals. There's a very unique thing about their creation. They also have two veins.

16:28But, right before they get to the brain, both of the veins connect and become a single vein. This means that when the shochet slaughters the animal, he is only cutting one vein. By the time the remaining blood travels from the point of the cut to the brain, the animal is already dead. Which means that scientifically, it has never felt pain. If the animal feels pain, it's no longer kosher. So again, this is something that we wouldn't have known 3,300 years ago unless Hashem told us. And Hashem is telling us that if we have this kosher food, then we can learn His Torah, then we can connect to Him. But now you have countless proofs that the Torah obviously has information that mankind couldn't have, whether it's scientific or it's prophecy. But the main thing that people have a problem with is not the five books of Moses, because even the Muslims that hate Jews still believe in the five books of Moses. They also believe in the Nevi'im. They also believe in David HaMelech.

17:33believe in all of them. They just call it the first book, and the Quran is the second book. The Christians, whether they like Jews or not, still believe, according to them, that they believe in the five books of Moses. They believe in the entire Tanakh. So, no one really has a problem with the Tanakh. What is the problem? The problem is with the Oral Torah. So, now we're going to go into the Oral Torah and show that this is not just a bunch of rabbis arguing with no foundation behind it. According to scientific knowledge, in 1962, they came up with a system that they called revolutionary to save lives. They called it CPR. If someone can't breathe anymore, you give him CPR, you bring him back to life. This was in 1962, and it's approximately 60 years ago, or 50-something years ago, and people call this revolutionary. This was a life changer, and technically it was if you didn't know it existed. But according to Chazal, in Yalkut Shimoni, in last week's parasha, last week's parasha of the Meraglim,

18:49We had the spies go to Canaan, which is later to be called Israel. And what do they say they saw? They saw giants. They saw giants. This Midrash was written nearly 2,000 years ago. This Chazal is telling us that when they saw the giants, the giants also saw them. And they screamed such a loud scream that everyone passed out. Everyone passed out. And then it says... And the giants that lived there saw them and screamed. They all passed out. What they ended up doing is they came up to the meraglim and gave them something they called mouth-to-mouth in order to breathe air back into their mouths to revive them. I think that's also called CPR. About 200 years ago, they discovered a way to revive someone who had also lost their breath and needed to get stimulated in order to breathe by putting a tube through their throat. This was, again, 200 years ago, revolutionary. The Baal HaTurim, one of the major sages, wrote about 700 years ago that there were two women written in the Torah, in Sefer Shemot (Exodus),

20:18that their job was to deliver the Jewish babies. They had two names, Shifra and Puah. Later on, we find out that that's actually Yocheved and Miriam. So Chazal asks, why do they call it Shifra and Puah? Their names are something different. Shifra comes from the word "meshaperet," meaning to improve. And they used this in order to... Why was she called Shifra? Because she would breathe into still-life babies. If a baby was born not breathing, she would give mouth-to-mouth. This is even a previous source from the Yalkut Shimoni. This is a Midrash from 3,000 years ago. One of the main things that we find impressive about doctors is that they're able to make... surgery became less painful. Until just a few hundred years ago, if you were using secular medicine and you had to have surgery, whether it's for a broken leg or any other issue, most people would actually die from the pain. Most people would die from the pain because the best mechanism they had was making the person drunk, which usually is not very good for recovery. But about 200 years ago,

21:48They came up with a way that they would give someone a drug, which is, in essence, poison, and it would put them to sleep, and they would all hope that he would wake up. A large percentage of the people would not wake up. So now that we discovered anesthesia, where they give something in a scientific way, in a precise way, you go to sleep for an hour, two hours, ten hours, twenty hours, they do whatever they have to do for your body, you wake up, one, two, three, and everything is great. So we're very happy about this. And we give doctors a lot of money because of this genius wisdom they have. The problem is they didn't discover it. And the Gemara, again, the Oral Torah, the tractate of Bava Metzia, page 83b. Rabbi Eliezer, the son of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, the one we celebrate on Lag Ba'Omer. That guy, everyone knows Lag Ba'Omer, not everyone knows Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai. So, Rabbi Eliezer, his son. One day someone called him wicked. Wicked.

22:56He says, "You are vinegar coming from wine. Your father, Rabbi Shimon, he's wine. He's a tzaddik. But you're vinegar." And the reason why is because Rabbi Eliezer would actually help the goyim by sending all the Jewish criminals to them. If there were Jewish criminals, he would send them to the goyim. Who wants a Jewish criminal? Someone that's hurting other Jews. You have to arrest them. So he would inform on them. And this guy said, "What are you telling the goyim about our nation? Even though they're wicked, you shouldn't say anything." So Rabbi Eliezer was questioning himself. He said, "You know what, maybe there's something to what he's saying, but I have to check this." Now, I know that according to the Torah, someone who is truly righteous, truly righteous, at a very, very high level, after they get buried, the body doesn't disintegrate. The body doesn't get eaten up by the worms, maggots, and snakes. And there's proof of this. Even today, when they uncover certain people—major sages—you're technically not supposed to touch it, but it's actually been done many times already, where they open the graves of Tzadikim, and they see people as if they died five minutes ago. This is, according to science, a scientific impossibility. But it's happened. The Gemara says this, and it was written nearly 2,000 years ago.

24:23He says, "I have to check this out. So how do I know if the maggots and the worms are going to eat me? So I'm going to have surgery." He was very, very heavy. He was very fat, according to the Gemara. And he says, "I want you to take out the fat from my body." And then I'm going to put it out in the sun to see what happens to the fat. If the bugs are going to eat it and it becomes smelly and rotten, just like everybody else's fat or everybody else's meat. Or even if you put just a piece of steak outside for five minutes, there are already maggots coming out of it. He says, "I want to see it." So he went through surgery. We call it today liposuction. the beauty of it is in the Gemara, page 83, it gives you all of the details of what happened in this surgery. And what do they say? They say, "We gave him a certain drug to put him to sleep." We call this anesthesia. And what do we give him? A surgery on a table of granite. Why? Because granite doesn't absorb all the germs. We only discovered this again in the last hundred years or so. And he goes through this whole procedure.

25:35And they take out, I think it's two or three buckets' worth of fat from his body, which according to today's medicine, you cannot do. Meaning they had more advanced medicine back then than we have today. And then, as the story goes, he did put those buckets outside. No one touched them. No bug touched them. They stayed fresh. But nonetheless, again, all the credit we give doctors—God bless them for helping save lives. But listen, you have to give credit where credit's due. Rabbi Eliezer deserves the credit. He's the first one that had anesthesia, not Dr. Williams. Until 1881, approximately 140 years ago, no one really thought that flies, the little annoying bug, really did anything. They just thought, listen, it's just an annoying little bug. But in 1881, scientists realized that flies actually transfer disease. And so do mosquitoes. They transfer disease. Until then, when the Jews told them, "Listen, we have a Gemara in Masechet Ketubot, page 77b, Rabbi Yochanan says...

26:58Be careful of flies of Ba'al Raatan that will transfer disease. Ba'al Raatan was a certain type of disease. He says that disease is transferred to flies. Gemara, almost 2,000 years ago. So why didn't they read the Gemara? Oh, it's not popular anymore. So we had to wait for them 2,000 years to realize what we already knew. One of the main things that's used in a lot of medicine today is silver. Silver is used in medicine in order to heal wounds. Now, this again, was only discovered in recent generations, but the Mishnah, which is actually 2,500 years old, writes in Masechet Shabbat, Tractate Shabbat, page 65a, that one is allowed to put a silver coin on an open wound on Shabbat because it's healing. So even though technically you're not supposed to touch a coin, not allowed to touch money on Shabbat, he says on Shabbat you're allowed to touch the silver coin if you're going to put it on a wound because it's for medicine. And in those days, if you continued bleeding, if you didn't stop it right away, you would die. So it's considered pikuach nefesh. In today's world, obviously, it's not. But nonetheless, it says it's specifically telling us that this silver has healing power. Also, there's something called opakino.

28:28Opakino in the Gemara, as I said, this book, I can give you a lecture for about three weeks. I'm just trying to find the interesting ones that... Opakino, according to the Gemara, is very good for the ladies. Why? Chazal figured out that instead of going to the spa, spending two, three hundred dollars to get different hair removed and your skin better and all the things that women do, all you have to do is use apakton. What's apakton? It's an olive. Olive that's crushed and turned into oil, and they would rub it onto the skin. But it's not just any olive; they have to wait specifically until the olive is a third of its normal growth. As soon as the olive is a third of its normal growth, they have to crush it, and that's the oil they use. So they knew exactly and precisely when it was a third, and they would use that to remove hair from the bodies of women and

29:30and make them pretty, make them shiny, and all the things that, unfortunately, ladies, you spend at least a few thousand dollars a month on. You can get it for free if you learn the Gemara. See, the guys are excited about this, like, oh, I can save some money out of this shiur. One of the major things that people discovered just in a recent generation is that wine is good for the heart. Wine is good for the heart. But this you actually can find in both Masechet Berachot and as well as Masechet Avodah Zarah and several other places in the Gemara that it specifically talks about the difference between wine and beer. It says beer is terrible for the heart, but wine is very good for the heart. So, they also know exactly what's good for the heart. They know a lot of things that we again just discovered recently. Now, one of the things that people are usually inspired by

30:44is astronomers and people that talk about the stars and the galaxies and millions and millions of years. And they tell you that dinosaurs were around here, you know, 65 million years ago. And some people say that they were around 2 billion years ago. Usually, the guy with the most amount of years gets the biggest grant from the government. So it pays for them to put more years. If they start telling you, listen, the world's only been around for 6,000 years, they don't get any more grants. But one of the things they don't teach you is that these very same scientists who look into the universe and look into the galaxy also have one statistic they don't usually share with most people. It is that every galaxy, according to their knowledge—this is secular knowledge—has an exploding star. happen at least once every 26 years. Once every 26 years. And this is usually one of the ways that they can figure out how old the galaxy is. So if you see the remnants, you see these things, the remnants of the star for many, many years.

31:56So if you see the remnants of 10 explosions, that means that this galaxy is approximately 260 years old. One of the things that they don't tell you is that in our own galaxy, scientists estimate that there have been fewer than 250 explosions. Which, if you do the math, makes the world somewhere in the neighborhood of 6,000 years old, which is very, very close to what our mesorah (tradition) has been saying for 6,000 years. Another thing that they don't tell you is that NASA has spent close to 900 billion dollars on different programs to discover various things about the stars, the galaxy, and the sun. One of the things that they've tried to identify is exactly how many stars we have in the universe. In 1994, NASA came out, connected a supercomputer to a very high-end telescope, and they did a calculation, an estimate, of how many stars there are in the universe. According to their estimate, there are 10 to the 20th power. So, 10 with 20 zeros after it, approximately, in stars.

33:12In the year 2004, ten years later, a university in Australia came out with a slightly smaller number, and they said, no, it's not 10 to the 20th power, it's actually 10 to the 18th power. Now, they could have saved all this money, because in the Gemara, Masechet Berachot, page 32, we have the exact number. Now, most people, when they read this Gemara, don't usually think about stars. So I'll read this Gemara to you, and you tell me what you think. The story goes where after Am Yisrael suffered from the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash, they screamed to Hashem, and they said to Hashem, "Hashem, even a woman, even a husband, that divorces his wife, still if you ask him years later, "Do you remember the wife that you divorced?" he says, "Yeah, I remember her." But you have destroyed our house, you destroyed Your house, and we feel like You've left us. That's what Am Yisrael says. The fact that it was their fault for the destruction, they're not mentioning.

34:22Similar to us today. We always complain to Hashem, but we don't look at ourselves in the mirror. Oh, listen, why would Hashem give me anything good if I'm not keeping Shabbat, I'm not keeping Taharat HaMishpacha, I'm not keeping kosher, I'm not keeping any laws. The last law that I kept was I gave a dollar to a homeless guy. The one before that is I went to Beit Knesset once last year. So, we have to give Hashem a reason. So, here in the Gemara, Hashem answered them. They had more merits than we do. The Holy One, blessed is He, responded to her. Meaning he's calling Am Yisrael his daughter. Biti, my daughter. Twelve constellations that I created in the firmament. And above each and every constellation, I created 30 army commanders. And above each and every army commander, I created 30 legions. And above each and every legion, I created 30 raton. And above each and every raton, I created 30 karaton. And above each and every karaton, I created 30 gastera. And above each and every gastera, I suspended in the firmament, meaning in the sky. I'll explain all of this in a second. I suspended in the firmament 3.65 million stars, corresponding to the days of the solar year. And all of them I created only for your sake. And you say that you've forsaken me and you've forgotten me. He says, "I created all of this for you."

35:50all of these stars. But before it gives you 3.65 million stars, the actual number in the Gemara is 365,000 times 10,000. So before it gives you this number, it gives you all these weird words, and it's 12 times 30, times 30, times 30, times 30, times 30, and you get to the 3.65 million. So what is this? Chazal says this is actually the exact number of stars, the calculation of how to get to it. The 12 is the 12 parts of the universe. This is what we call the mazel. Everyone has a sign. Zodiac constellations. So 12 constellations. And then he says, each one of these constellations has 30 parts. And each one of those 30 parts has another 30 parts. And he gives them a name. And each one of those 30 parts has 30 parts. And in essence, each one of these is a number of stars. The calculation goes, 12 times 30 times 30 times 30 times 30 times 3.65 million. And then you get a number. And the number is 1,064,340 followed by 12 zeros.

36:55The number is approximately 10 to the 18th power. So finally, they caught up to us. Finally, they caught up to the Gemara in Masechet Berachot, page 32. They could have saved all this money, maybe give some tzedakah. We don't know, we don't know. We live and learn. They wouldn't get the grant. That's what it is. Another thing that's very interesting is that Hashem says that at the end of days, He's going to punish the wicked and reward the righteous with the same tool on this earth. It's called the sun. In Tehillim, Psalm 19, verse 5, David HaMelech tells us that Hashem is going to burn the wicked with the sun, while the righteous... are going to be revived, meaning they're going to feel a healing power with this very same sun. And David HaMelech tells us exactly how it's going to happen. Hashem is going to take the sun out of its shell. Now, the last time you looked at the sun, which most people can't look at for very long, did you see a shell? I didn't see a shell. So, what is David HaMelech talking about? According to our knowledge,

38:15That's not scientific. This is what the sun looks like, just a big ball of fire, right? But David says, no, this big ball of fire, that's the shell. The real sun is inside. Scientists, in just the past generation, Dr. Vidal, a senior astronomer at Greenwich Observatory in England and a professor of astronomy at Australia's National University, started taking X-ray pictures of the sun and discovered something very, very interesting. The sun really does have a shell. The real sun actually looks more like this. Where the real sun is a small ball inside, which, obviously in comparison to us, is huge. But the outside is a shell. Now, why did Hashem create the sun this way? Because the sun that's inside generates, or has a temperature that's generated at 15 million degrees Celsius.

39:29But the temperature that we get to our earth and the temperature that we get from the outer part is only 6,000 degrees. A little bit of a difference, meaning that if this shell did not exist, neither would we. The sun generates every day with the 6,000 degrees that we get, more power than all the power that mankind has ever produced. And it does it every minute. Every minute that the sun exists, it creates more power than we ever had, that we've ever generated as mankind. But that's with 6,000 degrees. If we really had the real sun, ...obviously, it would be drastically bigger. But scientists also confirmed that the sun is precisely positioned in the only place that would allow us to live. Because if the sun was one degree closer to us, the Earth would burn immediately. If it was one degree further, we'd all freeze.

40:32Same goes with oxygen. Oxygen on Earth is 21 percent. The 21 percent of oxygen you have to have. If we have 22 percent, Earth becomes explosive. The next guy that smokes a cigarette destroys the world, becomes an atomic bomb. Everything is destroyed. Just for one percent more oxygen. If we have 20% oxygen, we won't be able to live, won't be able to breathe, and the world is destroyed instantly. This shows that obviously all of this is very, very precise. This cannot happen as a mikreh, meaning as a happenstance or coincidence. Another thing that the Torah says in Parashat Bereishit, Genesis, we talk about creation. Hashem says that He split the water from above the heavens from the water from below the heavens. Now the water below the heavens, you know, if the heavens is the sky, water below the heavens, we see it, we know it, it's the ocean. 72% of the world is water. So okay, so we see that there's water. But Chazal say, no, no, no. The water here is not the real water. The water here is very, very little.

41:49The real water that allows Earth, allows mankind to exist is the water from above the heavens. So, until recently, we didn't discover any water anywhere. Mars doesn't have water. Pluto doesn't have any water. The moon doesn't have anything. It doesn't even have the flag they say they have. So where is this water? Especially if it's so much more water than us. And then these smart scientists, Dr. Sigward and Dr. Louis Frank, started looking into the stars, and they started examining something that we call, you know, different meteors. These different things that fly around and sometimes hit Earth. And then they see something that everyone has seen at some point in their life if they live in a city outside of New York because there's too much pollution in the sky. You see a shooting star once in a while. Usually, most fishermen enjoy this. You see a shooting star is a star that just makes a little streak. And everyone likes this, like, "Oh, a star is falling." It's not really a star that's falling.

43:04What it actually is, according to scientists, according to evidence that we have today, is a comet. A comet is a giant ball of ice. The streak is being made because it's going in a direct line across the sun, so it's melting much faster than it would normally. So that streak is actually water—a huge amount of water. And that water arrives here. Every single day, millions and millions of comets go through the atmosphere and they melt by the time they come to Earth. And that's the actual water that revives us and that allows us to survive. So they said, "Okay, fine, you proved that there's water above the heavens, but where did you prove that there's more there than here?" So these telescopes finally came through, finally caught up to us, and say, "Oh, actually, the outer shell... of the entire universe. So if you have a universe, this is everything. The entire shell is ice, and these comets, these comets that we get, are small little chips that break off of it. It's a little bit more than Earth. Chazal knew this, again, many, many years ago.

44:32One of the most interesting things that I find in this book is something that applies to our life. Most people talk freely, curse freely, speak freely, and think it doesn't really make any... there's no consequence for this. A famous Japanese doctor and scientist, Dr. Emoto, wanted to see if there’s any impact by our words. So he took petri dishes, you know, these little plastic dishes you find in the science lab, and he put some water into it. He took a few of them, and then on one of them, he cursed. The other one, he said nice things. I don’t think he knew any brachot in Hebrew or anything, but he said nice things. And then he froze them. wanted to see if there's any impact by our words. So he took Petri dishes, you know, these little plastic dishes you find in the science lab, and he put some water into them. He took a few of them, and then on one of them, he cursed. On the other one, he said nice things. I don't think he knew any berachot in Hebrew or anything, but he said nice things. And then he froze them. After freezing them, he looked at the icicles under the microscope. Now, the one that he froze, to which he said nice things, came out looking very beautiful, similar to a snowflake. Have you ever seen a picture of a snowflake under a microscope? It's beautiful. That by itself is the best proof that there's an Intelligent Designer behind everything, because every single icicle, every single snowflake looks different from another. You're never going to find two identical snowflakes. And they're all very precise, literally like an artist drew them.

45:59And he says when you freeze the water, the icicles look something similar when you say something nice. But when you actually say something nasty, it comes out a little different. It looks very black, and it looks more like death. He has pictures in his book. I doubt anyone can see it from where you're sitting, but you'll see. One end, beautiful. The curse looks like mud. Both of them are water. So a Jewish scientist, a student at Bar-Ilan University, by the name of Tomer Rabiav, wanted to take this to the next level. He wasn't exactly religious, but he said, "Listen, I always heard this Torah stuff. Let's see if it has any impact." So he took this science experiment to the next level. And he planted three beans. Three beans. One of them he said nice things to. Another one he said nasty things to. And the third one, he said, "I want to see if they grow differently." So the one that he said nice things to grew normally, grew a little bit, became a little bit of a plant. The one that he cursed at died.

47:27They didn't grow anything. The seed died. The one that he said Tehillim to grew somewhere in the neighborhood of five times the size of the one that he said nice things to. The main reason for all of this is because your body is made up mostly of water. Technically, if you look at your body in actuality, what makes up your body as far as the chemicals, you can buy the chemicals in a lab somewhere in the neighborhood of three to five dollars. Most of your body is water. Now, if the words that you're saying are impacting the outside world in such a negative or positive way, what are they doing to your body? You're mostly water. You're a little bit of a bigger petri dish. If we say berachot, the water is nice and beautiful like a snowflake. If we say kelalot, we say nonsense. We talk about Oprah Winfrey in the last show that she had. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know how much this is going to help. I don't know how much this is going to help the petri dish you have inside you. Another very interesting thing is that if you actually go to the Book of Shemot, when we were at Har Sinai, the very famous event,

48:50That unless someone's an atheist, everyone agrees that the Jewish people got the Torah at Mount Sinai. But we have something very interesting. It says in the book of Shemot, chapter 20, verse 15: "The entire people saw the thunder and the flames, the sound of the shofar, and the smoking mountain. The people saw and trembled and stood from afar." Later on, in the book of Devarim, Moshe Rabbeinu also says, you saw Hashem's words at Mount Sinai. Now, Chazal says, what do you mean you saw? We heard His words. We heard the sounds. But like we said in the beginning of the shiur, there's no such thing as a mistake in the Torah. It's divine. So Chazal actually say, the sages say, no, no, they actually saw the sounds. When Hashem spoke, there were writings in the sky. When the shofar was blown, the sound made an image in the sky. So there were some scientists who wanted to see if it's possible to see sound.

50:12One was a scientist by the name of Yaakov Guggenheim, an engineer, who connected different machines to his voice, and he started trying to make his voice actually make this machine draw what he's saying. So, if he says "apple," he wants the machine to draw an apple, or draw a word that says "apple." A similar research was done by another scientist named Chaim Ben-Arav Elbaz. He's a physicist. So both of them had these machines, different strategies, but the same purpose. So what do you do when you try to make sounds? If you say "A," what is the machine going to draw? So you have to go to the simplest possible thing. Where do you go? To the alphabet. A, B, C, D. When they said "A," nothing came out. They said "B," nothing. "C," "D," "E," nothing. They said, "Oh, you know what? Let's try a different language." They tried different languages, nothing. Baruch Hashem, one of them was a religious Jew, and he said, "Oh, I also know Hebrew." So he tried Hebrew. And both of them discovered the same thing: the only language that the machine draws...

51:40is Hebrew. When he said the letter Tet, the machine drew an image of Tet, exactly as we know it from the Torah. This you can't see from there; it's too far, maybe the camera can see it. When he said Ayin, it drew an Ayin. Pei, pei. You see exactly, this is not like a coincidence. These pictures are a little bit bigger. When they said Aleph, nothing came out. It looks more like an Ayin than an Aleph. Bet looked like just random. Gimel, Dalet, nothing. Nothing looks like anything. But if you look at the Ayin, it looks like an Ayin. Lamed, you see a Lamed. Bet, you see a Bet. Zayin, you see a Zayin. Every letter in the Hebrew alphabet, you see the machine drawing it. From what? From sound. So apparently, Chazal weren't kidding when they said that according to the Torah we saw Hashem's words; there is a way to see sound. Another doctor wanted to see if we're the only ones that actually have life.

52:58So about 60 years ago, Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose, an Indian researcher internationally renowned and one of the pioneers of research in the field of plant life, started looking into this, started looking into if there's a way to prove that plants have life. He did more and more research, and then his research... Someone took a piggyback off of his research and built on top of it, a person by the name of Cleve Baxter. Now, Cleve Baxter was actually an American polygraph expert. He had nothing to do with this experiment, but he wanted to see one day if you could detect anything from a plant. So he connected the polygraph to the plant. Obviously, the plant's not lying; it's not saying anything. So he tested it. He brought a fish and took the fish out of the bowl, and automatically he started seeing the plant's polygraph start making movements as if it was panicking. He put the fish back into the bowl, and the plant calmed down.

54:23Then he lit a match, saying to himself, "I'm going to burn this plant." The plant started making the same type of movement as if someone that’s actually in a panic, someone that’s being burned. And then he said, "Look, you know what? Maybe, OK, it reads, it sees apparently this plant. But can it read a mind?" So his friend came into the room. And all of a sudden, he saw his plant making a similar gesture to someone that's very upset. He says, "What did you think? Honestly?" He says, "Yeah, yeah, what did you think? What did you think? I'm researching something. I just thought that my plant is nicer than your plant." Apparently, the plant also has feelings. Chazal said this already in the Torah. It says that when a tree falls, you can hear, when a tree is cut, you can hear the screams of the tree from one end of the earth to the other end of the earth. They weren't talking figuratively. They were talking seriously.

55:52The microscope was invented 330 years ago and discovered blood cells in the bone marrow. And it actually learned that finally, the real healing power is in the bone marrow. The significance of the bone marrow was only discovered later. As for the blood, it was discovered 330 years ago, to correct myself. In the Gemara Masechet Chullin, the Gemara Tractate Chullin, page 125a, Abaye, one of the greatest sages that ever lived, he's in practically every page of the Gemara, says, an animal with an exterior wound, the brain of bone, which is in essence bone marrow, heals from within, the outside, meaning that the healing comes from from within the bone to heal this wound. There's a disease called hemophilia. Women carry this, but it affects only men.

57:11Now, if a child has it, you're not allowed to, if a child is born with it, you're not allowed to circumcise him. In the Gemara, Masechet Yevamot, page 64b, the sages explain that they stopped four sisters from circumcising their babies after three sisters had their babies die. Why? Because they believe that they had this hemophilia. Rabbi Yochanan explains that I told them not to circumcise the next child because he has this specific disease, and this is something that the women carry but only men receive. The Gemara in Masechet Ketubot, page 77b, discusses how to heal a Ba'al HaRatan, that same disease that we're talking about that you can get from flies. Now, they explain what is this Ba'al HaRatan. It's a growth in the brain. We call it today a tumor. And the actual discussion of the procedure is in the Gemara. The Gemara actually talks about what exactly they did to remove this brain tumor.

58:33And they talk about how the knife that they had to use had to be very, very sharp, very precise. But unlike today, where they use a saw or sometimes a laser to cut the head, which creates a lot of blood damage and a very, very difficult recovery, The sages had a much, much better way. In order to create a hole in the head to take out this ba'al ra'atan, what did they do? They put a cream. They put a very, very special type of cream on the skull, which would make it soft, and they could open it with a very simple incision. So, doctors today are not the most advanced. Just a few decades ago, there was a new disease that came to the world, according to scientists, called AIDS. And they say that the originator of AIDS, the HIV virus that later becomes AIDS, is the monkey. There are two interesting things about this. It's not new. The Midrash Rabbah and the Gemara Masechet Sotah

59:53says that any place—oh no, it's Midrash Rabbah and the Gemara Masechet Sotah—so it's in two places. Both of these things were written 2,000 years ago. Any place that has a high level of promiscuity will have a plague of germs that destroy the body, specifically the white blood cells. Rabbi Simlai says anywhere that you see anywhere that you see znut, which is promiscuity, anywhere that you see immodest women walking around half-naked, which has become common today, or people that are promiscuous, which is celebrated today in our world. So he says anywhere that you see znut, androm and almoti come to the world and kill good and bad. And almoti is another name for AIDS. It's just the Gemara's language of AIDS. Now, one other thing that's very, very interesting about AIDS is that when you look using Torah codes, there's something called Torah codes. Torah codes involve finding secrets within the Torah using math, using computers and math.

1:01:11Where, for example, if you want to find certain information, let's say, for example, you want to find something that's already happened. So, for example, you want to find information about the Holocaust. The Holocaust has happened; we know that it's happened. So there’s different information, relevant words. You want to find where, if the Torah is divine, that means that it has to have all knowledge. Not just knowledge that existed 3,000 years ago. It has to have all knowledge, including today's lecture. So now, you have to have a way to find it. One of the ways of finding it is using something called Torah codes, where you look for a specific word, and the computer program will find this word in the Torah using equal mathematical skips. Meaning, that let's say, for example, you look for the word Hitler (Yimach Shemo V'Zichro). Okay, now you're looking for it obviously in Hebrew. So first you look for the letter He. Then you look for Yud, because obviously Hitler didn't exist 3,000 years ago. So you have to look for it. How is he going to find it? So if the computer finds this word, it's going to find this word where each one of the separations between each one of the letters has to be equal. Meaning the Hey, let's say there's a 50-letter space. And then there's the Yud.

1:02:31And there are another 50 letters, and then there's another letter, and so on. But it has to be an equal mathematical skip. Meaning, in order for you to see that this is actually not just a random word, the separation between each one of the letters to make up this word has to be equal. And the lower the number, the more you see that this is intelligent design and not just something random. A lot of people tried to challenge Torah codes by saying, yeah, we found interesting words even in the book Fiddler on the Roof and Harry Potter and all these other books. This is complete nonsense. Number one, they didn't find anything relevant. And number two, when I tell you what they actually find in the Torah, you'll understand why there's nothing compared to Torah codes when you actually know what you're talking about. Now... When they looked for Hitler and the Holocaust and all the evil things that they did to us, they found all of these words, all of them, on the same page in the Torah. And not only did they find all of these relevant words, whether it's Hitler or it's the Shoah, which is the Hebrew word for Holocaust, or it's different sergeants that he had, the generals that he had, or the concentration camps, the gas chambers—all of these relevant words.

1:03:48are hard to say and hard to hear, but all of these words are exactly on the same page in the Torah. And what is that page talking about? It talks about what happens when Am Yisrael doesn't listen to Hashem, the punishment we get. So you see that the page where you find all of these words is the very same page that is relevant to these words. So now, in the Torah you're going to find interesting codes. You're going to find a lot of interesting things. One of the things that the Torah forbids is homosexuality. It forbids homosexuality. Hashem says you're not allowed to be a homosexual. Now, when you're looking for the word AIDS in the Torah and anything relevant to AIDS, whether it's the doctors behind it, the discoverers, the scientists, and the originator, which is the monkey. All of those words you find on the same page. What's the page talking about? Two things. Homosexuality and bestiality. Both of which are... ...and the originator, which is the monkey. All of those words you find on the same page. What's the page talking about? Two things: homosexuality and bestiality, both of which are...

1:04:53in essence, in Hashem's eyes, the same thing. How do we know that bestiality and homosexuality are the same thing in Hashem's eyes? Because every time that the sex crime of homosexuality is mentioned in the Torah, right next to it, it talks about bestiality. To Hashem, it's the same thing. So again, someone has this problem. I understand they have a desire; they're born that way. We're not saying we have to kill them. But just because someone has a desire does not mean they have to act on it. You know, if you have a person that you know who's a kleptomaniac and needs to steal things, you're not going to invite him into your house. Yeah, but he was born that way. He's a kleptomaniac. Yeah, but let him be a kleptomaniac somewhere else. I don't want him to steal my stuff. Or if one of your children has a friend that's a pyromaniac, who likes to light things on fire. Yeah, but Ima, it's my friend. Yeah, but he's going to burn our house, Bobby. Go play in his house. Burn his house, don't burn my house. Yeah, but he was born that way, Ima. Okay, let him be born that way over there. Meaning that just because someone has a desire doesn't mean we have to accept it to be politically correct. This is all complete nonsense.

1:06:11We have to do what the Torah says because now that we see all of these proofs, we know for sure that Hashem is the one that told us. Now, one of the things, since we already started talking about the Holocaust, and a lot of people ask, where was Hashem during the Holocaust? There's a very simple answer, and it's not politically correct. The answer is, He did it. That's the answer. He was there. He's the one that did it. And not only did He do it, He told us He would do it. He told us that He would do it 3,300 years ago in Parashat Ki Tavo. He also told us that He would do it in Parashat Bechukotai. When you look at the Torah codes for the Holocaust, you'll find many of them in Parashat Ki Tavo. But last but not least, if we forgot what was written in the Torah...

1:07:12He also told us about it in the Gemara, Masechet Megillah, page 6b. Yaakov Avinu is praying for Am Yisrael. And he says, Master of the Universe, do not grant Esav, meaning my brother, The wicked, the desire of his heart. But here, he's not talking about his brother. He's talking about Esav the nation, Edom. Do not grant Esav the wicked the desire of his heart. Do not remove his nose ring. So Chazal asked, what does it mean, "do not remove his nose ring"? He said, treat him like one of these bulls. A bull, as big as he is, if you pull on the nose ring that people put on him, he loses all of his power. You can maneuver the bull as much as you want from this little ring. So Yaakov is pleading to Hashem, "Okay, I understand you have to give him power. He's one of your tools to punish us if we don't do what you say. But at least put a nose ring on him."

1:08:24control him. Don't give him what he wants, meaning don't give him free will to do whatever he wants to us. We still haven't talked about Germany. So now he talks about Germany. So, the Gemara says, what is this referring to? זו גרמניה של אדום שאלמלא הם יוצאין מחריבין כל העולם כולו Translation, this is Germania, a royal province of Edom, who if they would but go forth, they would destroy the entire world. In Hebrew, the word for Germany is Germania. And it's saying this Germany is one of the descendants of Esav, of Edom. So now, this could just be a coincidence. Germany, Germania, how do we know this was written 2,000 years ago? How do we know this is definitely it? Number one, Germany did not exist 2,000 years ago. There was no such country 2,000 years ago. If you look at the U.S. government archives, which I did, and you look at the history of Germany, you see that Germany was founded 800 years ago.

1:09:52by a combination of 300 barbarian nations. Three hundred barbarian nations came together and created the country called Germany. So let's see what the Gemara says. Rabbi Chama bar Chanina, one of the sages, says there are 300 crowned princes in Germania of Edom. and there are 365 chieftains in Rome. And every day, one group goes forth to encounter the other group, and one of them is killed. They would then have the trouble of appointing a new ruler in its stead. So now we see that Chazal is explaining to us, yes, this Germania, it's come together from 300 chiefs, 300 leaders, 300 nations, but eventually it's gonna have 365 generals within it where every day they're manipulating each other in order to kill one another, in order to become the official leader. This is what actually happened to Germany.

1:11:11Where if it wasn't for their terrible leadership at the end, they could have actually won the war. So now we see that even this Hashem told us about. Hashem told us about everything. The Gemara and the sages are nothing to scoff at. It's not something that we say, "Ah, who is this Rambam that made this halacha about Mechalel Shabbat is not considered Jewish? Who does he think he is?" Who is this Rabbi Akiva that's saying that I have to keep kosher and I have to keep Shabbat and I have to lay tefillin? Who do they think they are? We just talked about them for the last hour. These are not regular people. There was actually a scientist who was a Nobel Prize winner who heard about the Rambam and he scoffed at it. He said, listen, I heard that there's a statue in Washington. The Rambam, and they call him one of the 18 most important people that ever lived. He was a physicist, he was a philosopher, something extraordinary, a doctor, a major sage in the Torah. They don't know him for the major sage; they don't know him for the rabbi part. They know him for everything else. He says, what's the big deal about this guy? Why are they making such a big deal?

1:12:29And the rabbis that he came to said, "Ah, Rambam lived almost 800 years ago, and his wisdom was something beyond our comprehension." He says, "Ah, I'm a Nobel Prize winner, I know, there's nothing big deal about him." Listen, Rambam not only wrote the halachot and broke down the Gemara, the Oral Torah, for us to understand what to do, what not to do, what's tahor, what's tamei, black, white, he told us exactly what to do. But he did it in a similar style, lehavdil obviously, a big difference, but nonetheless he did it in a similar style in his writing, similar to how Hashem wrote the Torah. Meaning that Hashem did not put one extra letter in the entire Torah. Everything was precisely there. And there's not one extra letter, there's not one extra sentence, there's not one extra dot in the Torah. Meaning that Hashem used the least amount of letters, the least amount of words, to provide the most amount of information. Einstein used to say, if you can't explain something in a simple way, then you don't understand it well enough. If you truly understand something, that means that you have to be able to explain it to anyone, including a four-year-old child.

1:13:49To show true wisdom, you have to show it in the least amount of words. Sometimes you see books, and they're 800 pages, but in reality, the guy could have written all of that information in 30 pages. Why did he write it in 800 pages? Either, number one, he doesn't know the information well enough, or number two, he knows no one's going to buy a 30-page book for $50. But they'll buy an 800-page book because it looks more significant. So the Rambam wrote the halachot in the least amount of words. So this scientist scoffed at it, and he said, ah, what's the big deal? Give me a halacha, I'll learn this halacha, and I'll write it in fewer words than him. He said, okay, learn the simplest halacha there is. Whatever you pick, you do. Go work on it as much as you want, and come back to us. And explained that halacha, the entire halacha, in the least amount of words. He worked, worked, worked, worked. Several months later, he came back. He says, okay, this is the halacha. He wrote the halacha. He wrote it in 31 words. They peeked at the Rambam, a little less. A few more months, 27 words. A little less.

1:14:59A few more months, he got it down to 21 words, explaining an entire halacha. I mean, an entire halacha—you could read several books about one halacha. So this is actually, he's not a fool. But nonetheless, he got the 21 words. It's like, ah, he was completely confident. He was like Datan and Aviram. In our week's parasha, Parashat Korach, we're after... They went against Moshe Rabbeinu. They're walking with their heads high. And the Torah says they're walking straight up with a lot of ga'avah. So he thought he got the job done. 21 words. He opens the Rambam. Seven words. And not only seven words, but those seven words explain the halacha much better than the 21. When you actually start studying the Rambam, just a little bit, you start realizing that the smartest person we have in today's generation is closer to a monkey in intellect than he is to the Rambam. That's the difference. And the Rambam was 800 years ago.

1:16:07He wasn't even enough to be one of Rabbi Akiva's students 2,000 years ago. Why? Because the least of Rabbi Akiva's students had enough kedushah and wisdom to revive the dead. So Rambam was not enough to be one of Rabbi Akiva's students. But people say, no, what does Rabbi Akiva know? What does Rambam know? Who do they think they are? Okay, go figure it out. So you understand? So when we talk about the sages, it's not talking about regular, normal people. To us, it's as foreign as it could be. It's closer to being an alien than it is to being a man. The wisdom that the sages had is divine wisdom. But in our generation, in order for us to do what Hashem wants, we have to have proof. We need proof because our generation is very weak. And this is the reason why it's very important for everyone to know things like this, to learn how you can feel Hashem. I'll finish it off with one major thing that a lot of people like. Because one of the things that we find ourselves in is the end of days. How do we know? This is also in the Gemara. Same Gemara. Gemara, Masechet Sotah, page 49b. In a period which will precede the coming Mashiach...

1:17:36Insolence, meaning chutzpah, will increase. Last time I checked, people were not very, you know, they had the machmirim on chutzpah, you could say. Insolence will increase. The cost, meaning inflation, will soar. The vine will yield its fruit, yet wine will be dearer. The government will turn to heresy, and there shall be no rebuke. No one will tell people the truth, what Hashem actually really said. People will be scared to tell others what it actually says in the Torah. When Hashem says that someone who doesn't keep Shabbat will face all the punishments, everyone here went to synagogue and learned Parashat Bechukotai. But most people don't know that when Hashem talks about the punishments... minutes. When Hashem—oh, okay—when Hashem talks about the punishment, one of the parts that most people don't know is the details of what the punishments mean. The reason why is because most people don't speak Lashon HaKodesh. You may speak Hebrew like I do; I was born in Israel and came here when I was 10 years old, but Hebrew...

1:18:51The modern Hebrew is different than Lashon HaKodesh. The holy language you have to study. You have to learn Torah to know what it says. Most people that read Parashat Bechukotai think, "Okay, there were some punishments. Doesn't sound so great. That's it." So, the problem is that Hashem said a little bit more than just punishments. There are levels of punishments. And He gave us a prophecy of what's going to happen in the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash. It says, if you don't do, if you continuously treat Me with casualness, meaning you treat My Torah casually, you pick this mitzvah, that mitzvah, but the rest you don't want to keep. Yeah, you know what? It's not for me. But I'll wear a long dress. Or I'll wear, sometimes you see a woman with hair covering, she's wearing a mini skirt. They pick and choose what they want to do. The guy is davening Mincha, but it's six o'clock in the afternoon on Shabbat, Friday night. He'll do Kiddush, but on Saturday he's going to the beach. This is what Hashem said: You treat Me with casualness, I'll treat you with double casualness, sevenfold, and each time it's even worse.

1:20:08And he says the details of the punishments. And I bet you that most people do not know what the fifth level of punishment is. I tested this a few times, and no one knew. The fifth level of punishment says that we'll get to such starvation that we'll eat our babies. Now, if you actually knew that, this should help you do teshuva. This is scary. Who wants to get that type of a disaster? The problem is most people don't know this. They hear the parashah, but they don't actually understand what it actually says. This isn't a joke. Every wife, every mother, if she actually knew this, and she knew that our kids were going to public school, she'd sell the house before she continued sending them to public school. She'd sell the house. She'd divorce the husband before she allowed the kids to go to public school. This is what it says about my kids? I don't need you, husband. I need the kids. I want to save my kids. Who cares about you, husband? Save my kids. No mother in her right mind would ever do something against her kids. A mother that knows what it says in Parashat Bechukotai and continues going against Hashem? Why? Why are so many going against Hashem unintentionally?

1:21:31Because most people don't know. Why don't they know? It says it right here: there shall be no rebuke. This is considered a rare lecture. It continues: the erstwhile meeting place of the sages will be used for harlotry. Instead of the Chachamim, the people that know Torah, getting together to come up with new halachot and getting us to a point of connecting unity, Torah, what do we have? We have nonsense. How many people have a story that they saw a black-and-white so-called Chassidic guy in a strip club? A black-and-white so-called religious guy in a casino? How many of these stories have you heard? Many. This is what it says here. There's a lot of fake people, unfortunately. Some people are true. Some people are tzaddikim, regardless of whether they wear black and white or not. It's irrelevant. I'm just giving an example because that's what modern Judaism, Orthodox Judaism, is known as today. But you could have the most righteous person in the world not wear black and white. You're not obligated to wear black and white. The point is that you have so many fake people out there that you don't even know what to do anymore.

1:22:56You don't know what to do anymore. You don't know who's righteous and who's not. Everyone has a beard. Osama bin Laden also had a beard. So what happens when someone is secular, like I used to be? I'd see a guy playing poker with me. The only difference is I have a ponytail, but he has peyot in the front. He also has a big hat. And he says he's religious, but he's playing at the same poker table with me. Even to me as a secular person, it stunk. I said, listen, I belong here. This is what I do. What are you doing here? It's called Chilul Hashem. But I used that as an excuse not to become religious. Because if he's doing it, that means the whole religion is fake. But it doesn't. That was just an excuse. Because once you know the information we went over, just even a little bit of the information we went over, and a lot more information that we have online, Baruch Hashem, we have over 300 hours' worth of lectures. Once you learn what it actually says in the Torah, you realize it doesn't matter what everybody else is doing. Who cares what they're doing? You could be surrounded by heretics, or you could be surrounded by tzaddikim. You're still obligated to be a Jew.

1:24:16If you live on an island by yourself and there's no one around, you're still obligated to be a Jew. A woman that lives on an island surrounded by animals still has to be modest. The man still has to lay tefillin if he has them. You're still obligated with mitzvot. The Rambam says, if you can't find a place that's not full of heretics, move to the desert. Meaning that the excuse of using people that pretend to be religious or the stories that we hear on the news every other day of some so-called religious guy that cheated or stole or did some type of avon—we can't use it as an excuse in Shamayim. Because Hashem is going to tell us, "Listen, I gave you the Torah 3,300 years ago. I gave it to you and I gave it to him. He chose not to keep it. What's your excuse?"

1:25:17I said, yeah, but he didn't keep it. Okay, it doesn't help you. It doesn't help you that he didn't keep it. What, do you want to join him in Gehenom? It doesn't help you. He'll suffer. If you want to join him, do what he does. You want to go to Gan Eden, do something different. Do what it says in the Torah. The concept of Gehenom is very real. We actually learn it from this week's parasha. That's where Korach went. It's called Sheol. And according to the Gemara, In Masechet Sanhedrin, page 109, Korach and his congregants will never leave Sheol, will never leave Gehenom. According to Rabbi Akiva, there is a machloket; some say he may actually get out one day. Nonetheless, it talks about Gehenom. Gehenom is very much a real place. So the people that say, no, no, Gehenom is like a washing or it's a dry cleaning or some type of nonsense analogy that they use. Okay, go wash in lava and all types of wonderful things. Good luck with that. I don't want to go there. I don't want to get washed. I don't want to get cleaned. I want to go to a good place. But it's real. Why don't people talk about it? Because it's not politically correct. It scares people. But if I told you, listen, there's a guy I know and he has two options.

1:26:33Tell him, "Listen, you're gonna do a surgery. It's gonna hurt a lot. A lot, it's gonna hurt, but you're gonna live. It's gonna hurt for six months, but you're gonna live. There's no share many more years. Or I could just say, you know what? Don't do it, don't do the surgery, but you're gonna die. What do you mean? I don't wanna die. I wanna live. No, no, no, but the surgery's gonna hurt. Who needs that pain? Who wants to suffer for six months? I know a little bit about suffering." i want to suffer for six months. Yeah, but I'm going to die. This sounds ridiculous, right? This is our generation today. They think that if we don't tell people that they're better off. How are they better off? If we don't tell them, they're never going to do teshuva. Korach is going to have more friends. But if we tell them, yes, it's going to hurt to do teshuva. Yes, it's a life change. But ultimately, you're going to live. You're going to live in a good place, here and there. This is one of the things that the Gemara says. It's not going to happen. Why? Because the truth is going to be despised.

1:27:54Also, it talks about the people who dwell on the borders who will wander about from town to town. The wisdom of the scribes will decay. And those who dread sin will be despised. Anyone that hates sin and wants to help people do teshuva, people are going to hate them. Look at my comments online. Sometimes you have some haters. Last week, someone called me an idiot. Because I said that, you know, according to halacha, there's a machloket. There's not really a machloket. There's only a machloket in our current generation about the permission of wigs or not. Only Ashkenazi poskim, a few of them, mentioned that wigs in that generation were permitted, but they didn't mean today's wigs. Today's wigs are too long. They look much better than natural-born hair. And Sephardim have nothing to rely on. There's no Sephardic Posek who has ever said wigs are allowed. It also didn't talk about wigs. The power that they're mentioning in the Gemara is actually talking about the corner of the land, not a wig. Nonetheless, there's still a machloket, there are still some issues. So she decided, no, she wears a wig that's probably a little too long. She decided to call me an idiot, so I provided her sources.

1:29:19I told her, do you have sources for what your argument is? She goes, no, I went to some rabbi and I heard he said good things. I said, okay. So my response was somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 or 65 sources. I don't make this stuff up. Who am I? The truth will be absent. Youth will blanch the faces of elders. And elders will stand in the presence of minors. In the past, an old man was sitting on a bus, all the kids would get up for him immediately; he wouldn't have to say anything. Today, it's the opposite. The old man is sitting, and the kids tell him, "Come on, get up, old man, we need to sit." Daughters will rise against their mothers-in-law. A lot of the shalom bayit issues we have today are problems with in-laws. This wasn't around a few generations ago. A mother-in-law used to be like a second mother. In our generation, she's an enemy. The face of the generation is like the face of a dog. There are two proofs for this. One, a dog is an animal that lacks shame, licks itself everywhere, and unfortunately, our generation is very similar to that.

1:30:48People make out in public. Even more, they even have shows about it, movies, and books written about it. Best-selling list. What is it? Fifty Shades of Grey? Some book about sex. This is a best seller. This is a best seller. This is the generation we live in. The face of a generation is the face of a dog. But there's also another one. Scientifically, there's a picture on my phone, I can show anyone who wants to see it. They actually saw that scientifically, people tend to look like their dogs. And they show the faces of people next to their dogs. They tend to look alike. The hair is the same. It's very, very strange, but it's very real. This wasn't the newspaper I just read. This was the Gemara. This was written nearly 2,000 years ago. And every one of the things that I mentioned to you is actually happening right now. The first time I read it, I honestly thought I was reading the newspaper. Because this is exactly what's happening in our world today. And it says, this is what's going to happen right before Mashiach is going to come. So we're going to finish it off with one thing that you could take home. Most people ask themselves, where is God?

1:32:11Where is God? How come He doesn't answer my prayers? Give me a proof. Give me a proof. We provided many proofs, but there's one last proof that I like. Personally, it's my favorite. In 1983, Dr. Rubenstein moved from Argentina to Israel in order to do molecular biology, to do research on DNA. DNA is something you find in every living creature. He looked at the DNA of bats. He looked at the DNA of fish. He looked at the DNA of rats and monkeys. I think it was 25 or 26 different species. And one of them happened to be a human being. After a few years' worth of research, he discovered something very interesting. First and foremost, all DNA has the same foundation. You have the two squiggly lines you probably have all seen a picture of at some point. Two squiggly lines going against each other making somewhat of a knot, an untied knot. But in those squiggly lines, there are also these lines that look like teeth that connect the two squiggly lines.

1:33:22So he asked his computer program to investigate what happens if you take the two squiggly lines apart. And the computer program, after thorough analysis, responded that the subject will explode, meaning the two squiggly lines must stay together. Okay, the next natural rational question is, what's keeping them together? The computer program's analysis comes back with, every so often—meaning every several acids, ACTG is what it's called—every several ACTG, there is a bridge made of sulfur connecting the two squiggly lines. Okay, so these teeth that we see in the picture are very important; they're keeping the two lines together. The next question is, what is every so often?

1:34:24Is it random? Between different species? Or is it something that has some type of precision, some type of intelligent design? And the computer responds with this: Yes, it does have an actual number. It's every tenth acid, and after that it's every fifth acid. And after that it's every sixth. And after that it's every fifth. And then it goes back again. Ten, five, six, five. Ten, five, six, five. Ten, five, six, five. Forever. If you take a strand of the DNA and uncoil it, it can reach from here to the moon over 500 times. So this is a lot of ten, five, six, five. What's ten, five, six, five? Yud, Hey, Vav, Hey. The name of God. In Hebrew, Not in English, not in Chinese, not in Arabic, not in Christianity, or in Islam, or in any other false religion or false belief. In Hebrew, each one of the Hebrew letters has a number, a numerical value. It's called Gematria. Yud has the number 10, Hey has the number 5, Vav has the number 6, and Hey again has the number 5. If you're looking for God...

1:35:49Just look in the mirror. He's inside you. Any questions? Baruch Adonai le'olam. Amen ve'Amen.