Shiur Torah #113 The Three Things That Cured My Incurable Illness (MUST WATCH)

0:01Thank you for coming. New face, always good to see. Baruch Hashem, we had an amazing trip, a Shabbaton in New York with Torah Anytime and Chazaq, and also Bet Gavriel hosted us. Baruch Hashem, they continue to support us in every way possible to publicize our Torah, trying to get Am Yisrael... Thank you for coming. New face, always good to see. Baruch Hashem, we had an amazing trip, a Shabbaton in New York with Torah Anytime and Chazaq, and also Bet Gavriel hosted us. Baruch Hashem, they continue to support us in every way possible to publicize our Torah, trying to get Am Yisrael

1:17and any righteous gentile that is looking for the truth to see the truth. And what we'll learn actually in this parasha, Parashat Va'etchanan, we'll see in chapter 4 that that's exactly what Hashem says. In the end of times, Everyone is going to have an opportunity to find the truth. Every single person is going to have an opportunity, which means that when we get up there, we get up to the Beit Din of Shamayim, or we get in front of the Mashiach, we're not going to have anything to say. We're not going to have any excuses. If somebody is still a Chiloni, somebody is still secular, somebody is still an atheist, somebody is still confused, you're not going to have any excuses. You're not going to have any excuses at all. And we're going to see why, B'ezrat Hashem, in this parasha. Aside from that, it was, Baruch Hashem, a lot of lectures. I think we did, between the ones we did at the house and also at the shul, maybe like 11 lectures between Friday and Sunday. Honestly, I committed to a lot more than what I thought I could do, but I trusted in Hashem, and three or four lectures while I was fasting was a new record for me, Baruch Hashem, so another proof.

2:27from Hashem that when you're there working for Him, He takes control of nature because, for me, generally, one lecture during a fast is more than enough. Doing four, Baruch Hashem, was a new record, so it's unbelievable. The lecture we had on Saturday night was streaming live. Anybody who saw it, Baruch Hashem, I said that maybe Like five, six hundred people came to the lecture and another four thousand or so were watching live online, and I don't know how many watched it afterward. But then we did the three lectures the next day, and the one we did, we did two, like in essence all of them were talking about the same thing but there were different parts. And one I highly, highly, highly recommend for everyone to watch is "Where Was God During the Holocaust?" This is the one we did on Sunday afternoon, and then we have another one that says, "Elections are coming. How do we avoid another Holocaust?" So it's almost like a part one, part two. And of course, the Satan always has to get his. So lecture number three that I had on Sunday night, the last couple of hours before the fast, didn't have any sound.

3:42But Baruch Hashem, if the Satan ever had to take a lecture away, that's the one I would pick. So you see that even the Satan has to work in accordance with Hashem's laws. So, Baruch Hashem, really, really good lectures. The thing is with the Holocaust, and that's what we're trying to do, is to show people that everything that happened During the Beit HaMikdash, which most people can't really connect to. I can tell you myself, before doing Teshuva, and even in the beginning of doing Teshuva, when I heard from my Rav, listen, you know, during Tisha B'Av, you're supposed to cry. Cry for what? He goes, Churban Beit HaMikdash! Like, family was like, what do you mean? Churban Beit HaMikdash. Beit HaMikdash was destroyed. The first one was destroyed. The second one was destroyed. We had the pogroms. We had the Holocaust that started on Tisha B'Av. But so many different things happened. But just the Beit HaMikdash by itself, you're supposed to cry about every day. let alone, of course, you're going to have to cry about it on Tisha B'Av. Crying on Tisha B'Av? I don't know anybody that was alive during the Beit HaMikdash. What am I going to cry about?

4:49So for most people, it's very, very hard, especially guys. Women have a little bit of an easier time to cry. But in general, most guys, you tell them to cry for Beit HaMikdash, it's hard, it's hard. But once you actually start learning Torah and getting closer and closer to Hashem, Baruch Hashem, you start viewing the world in a little bit different way, and you also start learning about what actually happened. what actually happened in Churban Beit HaMikdash and I don't even, honestly, I don't even, I don't think it matters whether he's even, somebody's Jewish or not. Anyone that has a heart that reads what happened during the Churban Beit HaMikdash has to cry. It's horrible, horrible, horrible things. But even then, sometimes you tell people stories of what happened, and it's like, okay, shocking, it's awful. You tell somebody, listen, there was so much murder, the goyim killed so many Jews that the amount of blood that there was...

5:52was so high that it reached the stomach of the horses, became like a lake, and it went from city to city. A huge, huge, huge amount of blood. A river of blood. Shocking. It still doesn't get most people to cry. So the goal of the lecture, Baruch Hashem, was to get people not only shocked, but to show them that it's much closer to us by showing that every single thing that happened during the Beit HaMikdash happened during the Holocaust. And that is something that most people can connect to. Either they know somebody that was in the Holocaust, or they know somebody that knows somebody that was; it's close to us. And the key was to actually show that Hashem already told us that it's going to happen. So it's not like it was a surprise. This is already Hashem, in essence, giving us a prophecy, giving us a promise.

6:59that this is going to happen if we violate His law. Now it's going to happen for no reason. It's going to happen if we violate His law. And there are two specific parashot that talk about it, which are parashat Bechukotai and parashat Ki Tavo. Even though sometimes you have many people who have actually learned those parashot 50 times, they don't really understand or look into the details. When you actually look into the details of the curses, you start comparing, you're seeing that everything actually ended up happening, and on top of it, You see that it actually happened during the Holocaust. So once you start seeing that this stuff is very much real, and Hashem is in essence one of the reasons, one of many reasons, but one of the reasons why Hashem brought the Holocaust, or any disaster we've had in the past, but mainly the Holocaust, is that it's a wake-up call. On one hand, it's a wake-up call to get us back to Hashem. On the other hand, it's also a punishment for sins that we're committing. But last but not least, because Hashem is good, and kol de’avid Rachmana tav avid, like Rabbi Akiva says at the end of Gemara Masechet Berachot, everything that the Holy One, Blessed be He, does is always for the best. There is something good in it.

8:22And the good part is that He actually saved Am Yisrael. If we were going to continue the way we were going before the Holocaust, as far as religion is concerned, Judaism wouldn't be around anymore. There was an extraordinary amount of assimilation. In some parts of Germany, it was over 80%. There was a huge number of people that were just becoming secular, which was new to our nation. You know, being secular was not something common, you know, two, three, four hundred years ago. Even people that weren't exactly the biggest tzadikim, everybody kept mitzvot. They weren't like, you know, debating, should I keep Shabbat or should I go to the mall? You know, there wasn't a debate back then. So the whole concept of being secular only started in the last couple of hundred years with a foolish idea by a guy named Moshe Mendelssohn, who was a rabbi. And he coined the phrase, "Be a Jew at home and a person, a human being outside." Meaning, keep your Judaism at home. And he's a rabbi, so obviously people are going to listen to him.

9:32keep your Judaism at home and outside be like everybody else. What does he mean by "be like everybody else"? He says, listen, we should take our boys out of yeshiva and send them to secular schools so they could learn the world, go to university, and instead of being talmidei chachamim and doing the work of Hashem, we should have them as doctors and lawyers. And as you would have it, as Hashem obviously shows us who's boss, four out of six of his kids married goyim. Rabbi, Rabbi. Four of his six kids married goyim and the Reform movement started with him. Which today, 200 years later, has graduated. Now it's not just marrying goyim. Now they're actually also giving bar mitzvahs to dogs. I'm not joking. They give bar mitzvahs to dogs. There are rabbis that are women. There are women rabbis. There is no mechitzah whatsoever. There's no separation between the men and the women. That's also by the Conservative. Pretty much they've become a completely different religion. But at the same time, it's like a mockery of Judaism to the highest extent. Even if a Christian person walks in there, it's like, come on, this is a joke.

10:47This is a complete joke. They made a complete mockery of Hashem and His Torah in machshimam. And it's mamash sad because on one end, there are some people in there that are truly wicked and deserve the punishment that they're going to get. On the other end, there's a lot of naive people. There's a lot of people that just don't know. And they're not, it's either too lazy or whatever the reason is, they don't have the... I guess, I don't know, just the intuition to go look elsewhere, to go look for the truth, and they stay in there, not knowing. I actually have a few students like that, that, Baruch Hashem, we started teaching them about a year and a half ago. And they all go to a Conservative shul. They're all going to the Conservative shul. It's not as bad as Reform. And when I first started talking about Shabbat, started talking about everything else, this was completely new to them. They're going to shul for 15 years, 20 years they're going to shul. They're not like new Jews. And they start seeing that everything that they're doing is wrong.

11:58You know, it's according to the Torah. It's against the Torah. Baruch Hashem, over the last year and a half, every single one of them did teshuva. Every single one is Shomer Shabbat, modesty, kisui rosh, everything. So that's the thing. Sometimes you have people that are just, you know, they just listen. The guy calls himself a rabbi. You know, in the Reform shul and the Conservative shul, they also use the name rabbi. They also wear a kippah. They also wear a tallit, just a little more colorful, but they wear a tallit. And so people say, "Oh, he's a rabbi, so I'm going to listen to him." There are actually even Christian churches that call themselves, what is it called, Messianics. They call themselves Messianic Jews, but it's 100% Christianity. But the guy that's on stage calls himself a rabbi. So people think it's Judaism. People think it's Judaism. So you have thousands and thousands and thousands of people fooled by these resha'im arurim. And obviously, it's a big fault of these leaders. But it's also the fault of the people too. No one is innocent. Why? Because as we're going to learn from this parashah, Hashem specifically tells you, if you look for me with all of your heart and all of your soul, you'll find me.

13:19He doesn't say if you just look for me, like you look for keys. Or if you look for your cat, you know, you didn't find it, you're going to buy a new one. He says, if you look for me with all of your heart and all of your soul, you'll find me. Which means that it has to be mesirut nefesh. It has to be self-sacrifice to look for Hashem. Just like if you're looking for a job because your kids are hungry, you're going to look day and night if you have to. If you're looking for a spouse, you're going to spend every energy, every dollar, everything that you can to go find one if you really want one. If you're sick, you want a cure, you'll spend every single penny you have to find a cure. I can tell you from my own personal experience. So how come you can do all of that for those things, but you can't do it to find Hashem? That's the thing. That's what the mekatreg, the prosecutor against everyone, is saying every day upstairs. Every day we go to sleep, our neshama, a big part of it, leaves our body. And goes up there and reports all the mitzvot and the sins we made. Every day. And we sign off. We sign off. Yeah, I made all these things. Yeah, 1,500 sins today, just between 9 and 10 in the morning. Signed. Signed. So when you show up over there, he's like, wait, I didn't do it. Wait, you signed over here. You signed Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. You signed. This is your signature, right? Signed. So now...

14:45After a while, when your cup gets to a point where in the beginning it's over here, and it gets to a point where it's up to the top, Hashem has to punish. Hashem has to deliver a decree. He has to give somebody a sickness, losing money, all types of hardships, Holocaust. And people say, where was God? What do you mean where was God? He did it. Why did He do it? Because your cup was very full. He filled up the whole building with the worth of sins. So people need to know that every single thing that happens in the world always has a reason. There's no such thing as suffering without sin. No such thing. But at the same time, everything that Hashem does is for the good. So how could the two seem like they're going to contradict each other? How could it be good? How could punishment be good? The same way that if you tell someone, listen, you have to have a surgery and the surgery is going to hurt a lot. You're going to suffer from the surgery for six months. It's going to be horrible, horrible pain—horrendous. But you're going to live. You live 20 more years, 30 years, 50 years, whatever. Okay, what's option B? Die next week. What do you pick?

16:07to surgery suffering for six months. Why? Because there's—there's—that's the price. That's the price. So, in essence, when Hashem gives us punishment, He's also going to do it with something that is going to benefit us in some way. So, for example, with the Holocaust, even though some people went off the derech, many, many more became religious. many more came back to Hashem. And we also ended up getting a vote to start the modern State of Israel, which, even though the government running it was always wicked, is still good for the Jewish people to have their own land. It gave a lot of people hope that the Mashiach is closer. It gave a lot of people, you know, The freedom that they needed because we're never really going to have as much freedom outside of Israel as we do inside Israel. And for anyone who thinks that there's more freedom in America than in Israel, you're delusional. And the reason why is because I'm not talking about freedom of speech or right-to-vote type of nonsense. I'm talking about freedom where you feel secure.

17:27Now, most of us have lived in America most of our lives, and Baruch Hashem, the country has been good to us; there's nothing wrong with it. But that's not the point we're talking about. Because Germany was the same thing. Germany was also safe. Germany was also a place where Jews prospered before the Holocaust. Spain, the same thing. And Egypt, the same thing. All of those countries were good until they were bad. So what's the turning point? The turning point is that when things happen, when Hashem brings a decree, and it's time for certain things to change, we can easily get kicked out. Whereas in Eretz Yisrael, we're not going to get kicked out. It's our home. So another example is just the way your neighbors are going to treat you. If you are in America, and there's actually proof of this, people have actually done videos and research on this, and they see what happens to a guy if he just falls down in the street in the middle of New York or in the middle of L.A., And, you know, or he's, you know, acting like he's dying. What happens? And they showed a video, this guy, you know, he didn't, obviously he wasn't dressed in a suit and, you know, a three-piece suit that's $3,000 or anything. But whatever, he was a guy, he looked like, I don't know, maybe homeless or maybe whatever he was. The point is, he was struggling, begging for help.

18:52And 15 hours before anybody even looked at him. 15 hours. I think it was maybe even 17, but 15 hours. People walk over him, walk next to him, look and run away. Guy's saying, "I'm dying, I'm dying. Please, my heart." Nothing, nothing. Nothing. In Israel... Yeah, yeah, no, there's a video on this. I'm not making this up. I can't make stuff like this up. You go on the internet. People did this. It's much better. 15 hours, 15 hours, maybe 17 hours even. The guy is struggling. He's saying, "I'm dying, I'm dying." Nothing. People walking over him. Nothing. They're too busy in their own world. Nobody's interested in anything. In Israel, also obviously has a lot to do with the Jewish people because the Jewish people, each one of them... In order for them to know for sure, according to the Mishnah, according to Pirkei Avot, in order for us to know for sure that we are descendants of Avraham Avinu, we have to have three traits: Rachmanim, Baishanim, and Gomlei Chasadim. Rachmanim, meaning merciful. We have to be merciful.

20:03You see somebody dying on the street. You see somebody even falling on the street. You have to do something about it, which is the same thing. You go to Israel. Anyone falls on the street. Even if you see somebody struggling with his groceries, at least three or four people help him. Even if they don't like the guy. It's the nature of a Jew. It's the nature of a Jew. Baishanim, meaning shy. This is not something all of us qualify for. But that also has to do with how much Torah we know. Someone who knows Torah is usually going to be a lot more of a baishan, a lot more shy, than someone who doesn't have Torah. And the third one is Gomlei Chasadim. So that's being kind. And Jews in general are very, very kind people. And one of the ways that you can prove it is you look at the biggest donors in the world, and they are Jews. Not necessarily a lot of that money goes to kiruv, but it goes to other things. So you know that if you're in America...

21:06You're one of 370 million people. Everybody cares about their own thing. Obviously, there are some people that are very nice. There are some people that are just into their own world. In Israel, same concept. There are some people in their own world and some people that are very nice. But in general, if someone is ever in danger or someone is ever in hardship, you have a lot of people that are going to help you. And for me, that was a little strange when I went to visit Yerushalayim. In Israel, in general, a few months ago, we were there for a while. And in Har Nof, in Yerushalayim, no one says hello. It's the strangest thing in the world. Like, I would say hello to people because I'm used to saying hello. I see somebody, I say hello. And, you know, well, I don't know the guy. Just, you know, hello, hello, nod or something, and, you know, keep walking. And a lot of people just don't respond. Or the ones that respond, they look at you and go, oh, yeah, hello. They're not used to it. I'm like, what's wrong with these people? Why doesn't anybody say hello? No, it's nothing against you. It's just that they're not used to it in this neighborhood because everyone thinks that everyone is either learning or busy with something, so they don't want to bother you.

22:16It sounded very, very weird to me, the whole hello thing. But in other parts of Israel, if you don't say hello, they take it offensively. So it's just different communities have different mentalities. The point is, though, is that before Pesach, they have this thing called Kimcha De'Pischa. They gather money, and then they buy a whole bunch of stuff for Pesach, and they give it to all these families that they don't know. For Pesach, they give them the whole shopping for Pesach, and it's complete strangers. Anyone that has any money is contributing, and also time. They go, they pick up the stuff, and they give it to people. It's amazing. It's not hard to go raise the money. Listen, everybody knows; this is what we need to do. Everyone gets money together. They go, they give money. Nobody is going to be left with no food. Everybody knows, the secular, the religious, everyone knows this is what you got to do. And so when it comes down to, like, someone being in trouble, I remember in the kollel, one guy was shy, but eventually, we found out, he told my cousin that they shut off his electricity.

23:37Salaf is electric, and, you know, he owed maybe like 4,000 shekels, which is a lot of money. You know, they make 2,000 shekels a month as avreichim. So it's two months' worth of salary. 4,000 shekels is about $1,000. And right away, people started giving. Right away, people started giving. They don't know him. Nothing. People just started giving. So it's a different world. It's a different world. But listen, either way, wherever you live, obviously you have to be grateful that the country allows you to have your freedom, to have your Judaism, to have your Torah. We can never be ungrateful. But we always need to remember where home is. That's just the reality. So you were asking before about what, you know, people are saying, rabbis are saying. And the book that's actually behind you, that's a book by Rabbi Alon Anava.

24:49Anyone who wants to buy it, it's... twenty dollars. All the money goes to him. He just gave me a box to give it to anyone... to sell it to anyone that wants to... buy it. It is full of prophecies of the end of times and how... pretty much, according to all these prophecies, he's here. Pretty much, the Mashiach is right around the corner, and he is one of many. Rabbi Alon Anava is one of many rabbis that is... recommending for everyone to go to Israel. to make Aliyah to Israel. And he had a lecture, I think it was a week ago, two weeks ago, here in Florida. A week ago, two weeks ago. So it was a very good lecture, I heard. I met him at a second lecture. But a lot of people are trying to make Aliyah. A lot of people, the ones that are not able to make Aliyah, are very, very nervous. And one thing I can tell you for sure that, you know, I've spoken to him about it, and you know, he doesn't disagree. Yes, if someone can do Aliyah, they should. There's no question about it. But it has nothing to do with the Mashiach. Anytime you can go back home, go home. Obviously, it's ideal even before the Mashiach.

26:10...comes anyone that can do Aliyah, meaning that, number one, they're ready financially—they're going to be able to have parnassah over there. The family, you know, the wife or the husband and the kids, especially the wife and husband, because the kids don't really, you know, they don't rule the house—they shouldn't at least... So the wife and the husband have shalom bayit and they're going to be okay when they go there. Meaning they both agree. It's not just the husband pushing the wife or the wife just pushing the husband. Because if it's going to create shalom bayit issues, then you can't go. No rabbi in the world will tell you to go if it creates shalom bayit issues. And three, you're going to end up being closer to Hashem as a result of it. Meaning, you're already religious. You're already keeping mitzvot, but you feel that your learning and your Judaism in general will improve as a result of the move. If you have all three of those items, all three of those bullets, and you have a checkmark next to each, you should make aliyah tomorrow. You have parnassah, you have shalom bayit, and you have Torah. You should make aliyah, no questions asked. But, if...

27:20It creates shalom bayit issues, or it creates parnassah issues, which ends up creating shalom bayit issues, or if you're still iffy as far as religion is concerned, you're still not really sure if you're going to keep this Shabbat or not, you're still not sure if you're going to start eating kosher outside of the house or not, if you're going to have that type of issue, then you're going to go back to the old neighborhood full of secular people, No reason for you to go to Israel. Why? Because even if the Mashiach comes, it's not going to help you. It's not going to help you. As a matter of fact, it's even worse because the sins in Israel are worse than the sins in the exile. It's double punishment. Making a sin in Israel is much worse. The Torah is more significant over there. Your learning of Torah is more significant in Israel. Your mind, and I know from experience, your mind works even differently. If you're already into Torah, your mind works differently when you're in Israel. But, if you're still in the sinning world, if you're still pretty much in a... If you're still in a situation where you're not really sure if you're going to keep this next Shabbat or not, you're not sure if you're going to...

28:31If you're still not really sure whether you believe the Torah is 100% divine or not, then there's no point whatsoever for you to do Aliyah. Because you're only going to get yourself into trouble because it's much easier to be secular over there, actually. A lot of people, unfortunately, they do Teshuvah in America, but every time they go on a trip to Israel, they're Chilonim, they're secular. religious in America. Wherever they live, they go to Israel, they become secular. They go to the beach, you know, with men and women. They hang out at the cafe all day and just waste their life away. And you ask them, "Why? Back home you're a tzaddik. What happened?" "Oh, I'm home," they say. They feel more comfortable, like once you're home it's okay, which is complete nonsense. As far as Torah is concerned, it's actually the opposite. Once you're actually in Israel, it's even more stringent as far as religion. But obviously, people need to realize that. So that's why I say, as far as Aliyah is concerned, it's great if you can do it. But only if you have those three points. Only if you have Parnassah, you have Shalom Bayit, and you have Torah, then you do it. If you don't have those three things,

29:50...and it's going to create problems in your life, then there's no point. And the reason why is because once the Mashiach comes, it's not really going to matter where you're going to be. If you're a tzaddik, you're going to be saved. If you're a rasha, you're not going to be saved. You could live on top of the Kotel, on top of the Kotel, somehow find a lease on top of the Kotel. If you're a rasha, you're going to be the first one destroyed. Doesn't matter where you live. Like some people think, no, no, if you live in Israel, you're okay. Like there are actually some Zionists that are like half-religious, half, you know, Zionists or something. I don't know. It's like some people that are strange. I actually spoke to one of them. I even argued with one of them in Israel. And he actually believed, until we showed him proof that he's completely wrong, and I don't know, I still don't know if I convinced him, but he actually has this mindset that living in Israel is the number one mitzvah in the entire Torah. Like it's more important than Shabbat, it's more important than Torah, it's more important. He honestly, and he's not one guy. Many of them, there's a group of people, a huge amount of people, that believe that living in Israel is the number one mitzvah in the Torah. It's complete nonsense.

30:59It's complete nonsense. How do we know that? Look at Chazal. You don't have to go far. Where's the Talmud codified? Talmud Bavli. What's the main part of the Gemara that we read? Bavli. Even though Yerushalmi is also great, the Bavli is the main one. What's Bavli? Iraq. All of them were living there. Yes, of course, there were some people living in Israel back and forth, but the main Chazal were living in the exile. This doesn't necessarily mean that the exile is better than Israel or anything like that, but to say that living in Israel is the number one mitzvah in the Torah is against the Torah. We clearly have, obviously, bigger mitzvot. You know, so people need to understand what’s going to happen. Each and every single one of us, when the Mashiach comes, is going to only depend on our actions, not where we live. If you're a rasha, it doesn't matter where you live. If you're a tzaddik, it also doesn't matter where you live. But you think that everywhere there are many tzaddikim around the world. Not everybody lives in the exile. There are many tzaddikim. Do you think that just because they don't live in Israel, they're going to be destroyed? Who thinks like this?

32:11But I heard that in the first Beit HaMikdash, they killed the righteous people first. In the Holocaust, also the righteous people died. But before Mashiach comes, it's only going to be the wicked people. Well, I mean, it depends. The thing is, though, that the Gemara, it's Masechet Shabbat. We mentioned it in Shiurim. It's Masechet Shabbat, page 54b. It says, the Gemara says, "Hashem, why did You kill the righteous people first? Why? Why? Because they didn't rebuke. They didn't rebuke." Someone who does not rebuke his nation, does not rebuke his brothers and sisters, is not considered a completely righteous person. As a matter of fact, according to the Gemara, they actually take on the sins of those they didn't rebuke. So, which makes them even worse off than what they were before. So yes, their Torah counts for something, and yes, their mitzvot count for something, but in the eyes of Hashem, it actually puts an even bigger responsibility on a talmid chacham, somebody that goes to kollel all day, somebody that goes to yeshiva all day. Even somebody who knows who Noach is, even somebody who knows who Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov are, is obligated to teach this Torah to somebody.

33:22Friend, neighbor, family member of some kind, colleague, family, your kids, you have to teach someone. Even if you live on an island by yourself, obviously teach yourself. But you're obligated to teach Torah. It's not just to learn; it's to learn and to teach. How do we know? Page 17 says someone who learns Torah without an intention to teach it is like someone who does not have a God. What do you mean, not someone who doesn't have a God? It's so extreme. All these people, they don't teach, that's why they don't have a God? It says yes. Why? The point of learning Torah is not to be robots. If Hashem wanted robots, He would have just created the malachim. The point of learning Torah is for us to learn the middot, the character traits of Hashem Yitbarach, and to emulate them, to do the same thing like Him, to be like Him. Meaning, He's kind, we learn how to be kind through His Torah. He's merciful, we learn to be merciful through His Torah.

34:33And so on, all of the amazing traits that Hashem has, we use the Torah in order to emulate Him. So He says, the biggest, you know, the most popular trait that we know about Hashem is that He has chesed, He only gives, non-stop giving. He never gets anything, because Hashem is perfect, He doesn't need anything. So He is the ultimate giver that never receives anything in return. So if you're gonna learn His Torah, you're going to keep it to yourself. Obviously, you're not learning this Torah. You're learning a history book or something. You're not learning this Torah, or you're learning, I don't know, you're learning something else. You're not really connecting to Hashem. You're like one of these robots with black and white that, uh, you tell them, "Listen, what's the halacha on this one?" They know by heart, but you tell the guy, you know, anything you ask him for, even the smallest favor in the world, he looks at you like he came from a different planet. Like, middot don't exist. A lot of people learn halachot, they learn Torah, and they know a lot of things by heart, but as far as human beings, pitiful human beings. Mamash, pitiful human beings. They just, like, you wouldn't even want to be friends with the guy.

35:46...just like so, Hashem does not want robots; Hashem wants quality people. So, if you are going to learn Torah, you have to know the number one reason to learn Torah is not just to fulfill Hashem's will. Hashem's will is for you to emulate His behavior, to emulate His traits. So, Torah says, the Gemara says, if you're not emulating the chesed that Hashem gives by teaching the secret... You're not learning. You're not learning this Torah. You're learning something else. So that's the most important thing. Do kiruv, Baruch Hashem. Yeah, do kiruv. Baruch Hashem, CDs, we'll almost finish with the first 25,000. And we're almost done. We need another couple of thousand more. And we're going to finish with the 25,000 drive first. And Baruch Hashem, probably in the next few weeks, Baruch Hashem, in the next couple of weeks, we're going to come out with CD number two. There we go.

36:5330-hour CD, CD number two. And for that, B'ezrat Hashem, we're going to do 50,000. We're going to try to come up with 50,000. So B'ezrat Hashem, anyone that wants to be part of this zechut, become a partner in this giant mitzvah, please. You know, it's mamash, it's a big zechut. Am Yisrael needs Torah. And people are doing teshuva because of these things. I'm telling you, people are emailing, texting, phone calls, non-stop. asking for uh more and more Torah. They love it; they see, they listen to the CD, they start doing teshuva. I get messages, uh, just today a guy asked me a question about, um, and, uh, I never—I saw him making a few comments on my videos in the past but nothing— I don't know anything, just one of thousands and thousands of people. And, uh, today he tells me, he goes, "Oh, by the way, Rabbi, just want to let you know you're the reason why I became religious." Yeah, what I do, I just made a few shiurim. You don't know how the truth of Torah, in the purest form, affects people. It has nothing to do with me, really. You read it, you do the same thing. It's that, unfortunately, we have a limited amount of purity in the world. Very, very limited. Very limited amount of speakers are able to tell you what the Torah says 100%. People are worried too much about what other people think. And it's called political correctness, which we've talked about many times.

38:15so to finalize, the first question is in regards to Aliyah. Yes, if you can do it and you have all those qualities, 100% do it tomorrow if you can. But if it's going to create problems in your life, And you're not going to be as religious. It's going to put your marriage at risk. And, you know, as far as parnassah is concerned, you have no idea how you're going to survive the first month. You don't have any savings. You have no way of how to do it. It could create other problems. Even though you could have emunah that the parnassah is going to come, you also have to know where your emunah stands, meaning you may have the emunah, but your spouse may not. So you understand? You may have emunah, 100% I believe, Hashem's going to give me, a man's going to come from Shamayim. Great. Your spouse, on the other hand, may not even believe that Hashem is even giving the first dollar that you have. Like Iyov. Yeah, exactly. Like Iyov. Iyov, Job. Job had the ultimate level of emunah. This is why he has one of the 24 books of the Tanach. It's written about Iyov.

39:19Passed a test of tests. But his wife didn't have emunah enough to even pass the first day. The first day she didn't pass. The first hour she didn't pass. She's like, "Why are you still praying to this God?" He told her, "Be quiet, you fool. May His name be blessed." It's not mine. Everything was His anyway. He gave it to me. He lent it to me. And He took it back. May His name be blessed. Thank you for giving it to me up to now. What are you complaining about? Right, so that's the thing. When we realize that it's an emunah test on a family, you can't fault anybody for not having emunah. It's something you build over time. You may develop faster than she will. She may develop faster than you will. The point is that this has to be a family decision. But family means the parents, not the kids. Kids do not decide. If you let kids decide, your whole life is going to be Gehinnom. Kids do not decide anything. You tell them where to go to school, you tell them what to do, until they are old enough to decide, then they're old enough to live on their own. You know, I don't believe in giving participation to children that are still living in your house, any decision whatsoever. And the reason why is because until you're an adult, you don't really know what you want. And even when you're an adult, you usually don't know what you want.

40:43And a kid's desires are different than a parent's desires because they're looking at something different. They're looking, wait, I have a basketball court right next to my house. That's why I want to live in America. I have a, you know, I like the schoolyard. No, Pokémon Go has Pikachu next to my house. So I don't know what they're going to have in Israel. They're going to make decisions based on Pokémon. They're going to make decisions based on a girlfriend or something. They're not making a decision based on, like, real life. So you can't involve them in decisions. And if you do, you're ruining your own life. So, the couple is going to be good? Good. Now, to the next question people are probably going to ask, so I'll already answer it now. They're going to either ask later today or they're going to ask in the comments. Why don't I move to Israel? Right? If I believe so much, Baruch Hashem, I have emunah. Baruch Hashem, Hashem gives parnassah somehow. I don't, you know, this is my job. I don't have a regular job, but somehow He gives me parnassah every month. And for the record, I also tell people over and over again, somehow people still don't listen to the full story. Like they listen to the whole lecture, they tell me it changed their life because of my personal story, but the part where I told them I lost everything, they don't listen. People still think I have millions. I don't have anything. I lost everything. I live off of a miracle every single month, Baruch Hashem.

42:00So I live off of emunah, Baruch Hashem it works. Hashem signs off on a check somehow every month. But, so why don't I move to Israel? The reason? Because Hashem needs me here. We have 6 million Jews in America and the overwhelming majority of them don't even know what Shabbat is. Baruch Hashem in Israel they have a lot of really good rabbis, and for what I do, there's not as much of a need. When we go there, we do lectures, it definitely affects people. We just actually sent 4,000 CDs over there that are being given out. And there's definitely a crowd over there that we're building. But there's more than enough solid rabbis over there that tell the truth with zero political correctness. Here, on the other hand, in America, in my opinion, there's no more than a handful. It's no more than a handful that I know that are public. Maybe there are ones that are not public that I don't know exist. But as far as public, those who make videos and post them online, the ones that I know about, maybe a handful, and I'm being generous. You know, so when you have six million Jews at risk,

43:15I can't allow myself to go and enjoy Eretz Yisrael when I know my brothers and sisters have no idea who Hashem is. And we're finding ourselves in the end of times. So when Hashem wants us to go to Eretz Yisrael, we'll go to Eretz Yisrael. But the work that I do anyway requires me to travel. We had this big trip in New York now. In two weeks, we're going to a Shabbaton in Arizona. And there's a lot more trips coming soon. So we're really not living anywhere; we're living in a suitcase. Uh, but uh nonetheless, for zikui harabim, the number one requirement is self-sacrifice. Yeah, so in your personal story, maybe I missed it, I don't know, but is that what was the, uh, recovery? Oh, how did I recover? I guess I didn't say that part. Because a lot of people ask me the same question. I don't know. I thought I covered it. So yeah, I guess it's good.

44:18So, suffering was for seven years. I only started doing teshuva after maybe the fifth year or something like that. So, even after I started doing teshuva, I mean, suffering actually got worse in the beginning. Pain got worse. Financially, it got much, much worse. But ultimately... the mindset that I had changed drastically. Because once I started doing teshuva, I started finding answers. Answers for questions I had my whole life. And when you find answers, you have a diagnosis. It gives you hope. And eventually, I got to a point where I realized that all of this suffering is actually to my benefit. It's 100% to my benefit. The pain is to my benefit. Losing money is to my benefit. Everything is to my benefit. And Baruch Hashem, at one point, I even got to a point where I would actually say a blessing every time there was more pain. You know, and it's not an easy thing to do, but the way that I overcame it is mentally wise. Before I did teshuva, I wanted to commit suicide. That was the worst possible place you can be. But...

45:40Once I realized that there's a benefit to this, everything changed. And the reason why I benefited really quickly is because when Hashem gives you some level of punishment, there's a reason for it, obviously. As we said before, there's no suffering without sin. When Hashem, when there's a, you made a lot of sins. And in essence, you deserve a death penalty. And Hashem doesn't want to kill you. So what does He do? He takes your money. It's the first thing He does. How do we know? Money has a few names in the Gemara. It's called a zuz and damim. Zuz means move, because money moves from place to place. And damim means blood, but plural. Why is it called blood? Because people spend their entire life and use their entire body, their whole life, in order to chase money. But the Gemara also says that Hashem, when the prosecutor goes up to Shamayim and the cup of sins of the person is filled up, the Satan comes to Him and says, "Listen, Hashem, Your Torah is truth, Your signature is on it, You wrote Emet, which means You can't change it. According to the Torah, You have to give this guy a death penalty."

46:53Bar Minan, that's what it is. He filled it up. Okay, one sin, two sins, three sins, you put it on the account. You put it on, you know, like you go to the stores in Israel, you can put everything on credit. Put everything on credit. You know, Rafi, I'll pay you at the end of the month. I'll pay you in two months. You know, you buy $200 worth of groceries. You only give the guy $100, and he keeps it in the book. In Israel, they have it. They don't really have this, I don't think, in America. I remember as a kid, that's what they had in Israel. But eventually, you have to pay the bill. So now with Hashem, you also have to pay the bill. But sometimes it gets to a point where He has to close the account early because you've already reached your credit limit. The prosecutor comes to Hashem and says, "Hashem, he reached his credit limit. We have a margin call. We have a margin call. He doesn't have enough merits to justify the amount of sins, and we have to punish him. You have to do something. And according to what You wrote in the Torah, it's the death penalty." Now Hashem knows our potential, Hashem knows that He loves us, and obviously, He wants to give us more time, so if we have the merit, whether it's because of some action that we did in our life, or perhaps even something that our forefathers did,

48:04righteous grandfather or grandmother or parents or whatever, something. There has to be something of merit to justify more time. Even if it's just simple prayer, something has to justify more time and Hashem, instead of taking your life, will take your money. Which really means that when someone loses money, especially when it's a lot of money, really what they should do is bless Hashem to the highest level. That's really what they should do. That's really what they should do. And the reason why is because when you lose a lot of money, that is Hashem telling you, "Son, I love you. It was instead of your life. It was instead of your life." Now when you lose $5, $5 could be just for some sin you made or even just to give you a test. But if you lose a lot of money, something that changes your life, you should thank Hashem more than when you made the money. More than when you made the money. Because, mamash, 100% instead of your life. So I'll tell you a story. I don't know if I told anybody this, at least not in lectures. But, you know, we started losing, losing, losing, losing, losing more money. And we got to a point where, you know, we really didn't have, you know, we had, I don't know, a few hundred thousand dollars left. And which, relative to the millions we had, was nothing. But whatever, we still had enough to live.

49:31And what kept me going is that my health started getting better. So that's all. So actually, you know, before I even tell this last story, I'll tell you this story. I'll tell you about the health part. People ask me about the health part. So anyway, I did a few things. Three things that changed everything for me and anyone who wants a cure for anything—a cure for disease, a cure for hardship, a cure for depression. And a lot of miracles. You do these three things. Guaranteed miracles. You just have to be, obviously, persistent. These are the three things that I did that worked for me. One, I dedicated an extraordinary amount of time to learning Torah. Every waking hour that I had, non-stop, whenever I wasn't working or doing something, there was no hanging out, there was no nothing. There was no social life, there was no nothing. I never really had much of a social life anyway. I was always a busy guy as far as work. But now, I dedicated non-stop to learning Torah. Like, no joking around. If I didn't have the energy to read a book, I'd listen to shiurei Torah. If I was able to read the books, I'd read the books. But mamash, like non-stop. Like, no eight hours of sleep at night. I mean, I was never really into eight hours of sleep at night anyway. But, you know, when you're struggling at two o'clock, three o'clock in the morning, you know, that's the kind of Torah I'm talking about. So, learning Torah excessively.

50:54Like, as much as I can, Baruch Hashem, especially since I had to suffer through a lot of pain. So, learning Torah with pain has a little bit bigger merit, Baruch Hashem. So, learning Torah. The second thing is, I started doing kiruv. And, obviously, this is before I was able to speak; I didn't really know much. So, what did I do? I started supporting rabbis. You know, either giving, helping my Rav from Israel, Rav Efraim, put his videos online. I set up his YouTube channel and Facebook and sent him a camera and, you know, set him up so he has, Baruch Hashem, already a channel for a few years with a couple of hundred videos. But, Baruch Hashem, we ran the channel, publicized it, and I didn't even know how to use YouTube before that. But I knew his shiurim were unbelievable, and I said, it's not fair for me to be the only one that benefits from this. Amazing shiurim. We have to put this out to the world. So I started doing kiruv. Then, after that, I started getting CDs from Rav Mizrachi—his CDs, Rav Mizrachi's CDs. I started giving them out. Then I got the book by Rabbi Zamir Cohen, The Coming Revolution, which also has another name. It's the same book.

52:14...uh... science comes of age... so I started giving those out. So then we created a kiruv package, which I think some of you got. If you didn't, I'll give it to you. But, uh, we started with a few packages and sent them all over the country and sometimes even around the world—to India, Australia, all over the United States. The people, you know, with the book... And, you know, a handful of CDs from Rabbi Mizrachi, and other little things that I would have. And a nice package. And to this day, Baruch Hashem, we still do it. And, you know, we wrap it up in a nice present format. You know, it's not like, "Here's a book, go, read." You know, it looks like something precious, like if you give somebody a present. And that was my wife's genius idea. She always has the great finishing touches. So we started sending it to people. I publicized it on Facebook. I started a group on Facebook called Torah Lessons to Help Our Lives. Every day, I would look for new people to add to the group, one here, two there, three there, four there. I wasn't really a social media guy.

53:26I only used, I think, Twitter for business a little bit. I tried it and LinkedIn, but it never really took off. But then once I started doing kiruv, I started joining these other sites like Facebook. I started creating groups. And these Torah lessons to help our lives became, little by little, bigger and bigger. Baruch Hashem, now we have thousands of people. It's one of the biggest Torah groups in English, and on Facebook. People are joining every single day. I don't have to go chase people anymore, Baruch Hashem. That's the good news. And every single day, I spend time doing kiruv. I was learning while doing kiruv. So those are the first two things. and the last thing, and eventually, obviously, I started teaching, and here we are today. Still do the Kiruv packages, Baruch Hashem. Still give out the CDs, as you obviously all got, and there are some behind you, and the books. Still give out Rabbi Zamir Cohen's book. Still handle Rabbi Ephraim's YouTube, and I also continue to help Rabbi Mizrahi as well. So, Baruch Hashem, everything we were doing continued to grow, Baruch Hashem, and now we obviously also do our own thing. But the last thing, the last ingredient, is the one that's probably the most difficult.

54:47That's the one most difficult. It sounds easy, but it's probably the most difficult. Learning Torah, difficult, but if you want something, you have to do it. Kiruv requires money and time. Money or time, or money and time. Whichever one. If you don't have time, then give money. If you don't have money, then you have to give time. You can't go up to Shamayim and say, "I don't have either one." No such thing. You have 24 hours in a day. You have money or you have time. Everyone's obligated to do kiruv. No questions asked. We talked about it in lectures in New York. You know, when Chazal says, two things are going to save you from the days of Mashiach. Torah and Gemilut Chassadim. Torah, obviously, we know, is learning and observing the Torah. Gemilut Chassadim is overwhelming kindness. Now, overwhelming kindness, people mistranslate it a little bit. They think that if they give somebody a challah every day or every week, that's going to save them in the days of Mashiach. It's nice, it's kindness. Chazak u'Baruch, you're going to get a mitzvah, but it's definitely not going to save you in the days of Mashiach. I'm not the judge, but I can definitely tell you that it's...

55:51He learned Torah. No one that's giving challah, you know, once a week to somebody is going to be saved in the days of Mashiach. I mean, you have to realize it's a big deal. Having the merit to be saved in the days of Mashiach is not going to be just because you gave somebody a ride to the mall. It has to be something significant. What's something significant? What's the biggest chesed that there is to give? According to Chazal in the Gemara, bringing them back to Hashem. Why? Why is it bigger than giving challah or giving a guy a ride? Because you can give the guy a ride every single day for his whole life for free. You can give him challah, and you give him food every day. You can finance the homeless. You have a homeless shelter, you're financing the whole thing. It's still not as big as saving one Jew. Why? Because if you're financing the homeless but it becomes a prostitution house, then they only have this life. You're giving him challah, but he's putting pork on it. He only has this life. You're giving him a ride to the mall, but he's going to his business and he's stealing. He only has this life. You bring him back to Hashem, he has eternity.

56:58You understand? So, Gemilut Chasadim, when Chazal talks about it, is doing Kiruv. Every single Jew is obligated to be involved in Kiruv daily. Not once a year, daily. Something. Five minutes a day. If you have time. If you don't have time, then it has to be a money amount that justifies daily. So if it's $10 a day, $5 a day, $100 a day, I don't know how much money everybody has, but everybody knows where they stand. It can't be, listen, I'm going to give $1. You know, Reb Roland Rubin said, it's $1 CD, I'm going to give one CD a month. The guy makes a million dollars a month. You think you're going to give one CD a month, that's going to save you from Moshiach? Good luck. You understand? So it has to be serious. Arrange shiurim. It doesn't always require money. It could be for free. Go, if you're already on Facebook, copy a lecture that's moving. Paste it on Facebook. Click post. That's it. You're finished. Free. Somebody did teshuvah because they watched the lecture. Who's better than you? So it doesn't always require money. But the point is that it requires something.

58:06So, kiruv, everyone's obligated to do. Torah, everybody's obligated to do. Last piece of the puzzle, saying thank you. Thank you to Hashem. All the time. All the time. Not just tefillah. All the time. For good and for bad. Bad things happen, you say thank you, Hashem. Baruch Hashem. It's Torah. Yes, it's Torah. It's actually why it says in the Torah, Masechet Berachot. Masechet Berachot says you're supposed to thank Hashem as much for the bad as you do for the good. As much for the bad as you do for the good. Meaning that the bad and the good are the same to you. So you have to, what I started, you know, I still do now, but what was the main thing that I started to do is actually start thanking Hashem for everything. Now, it's very hard to thank Hashem for something you think is bad. So if you have pain, for example, my level of pain was, you know, eight or nine, and I wanted to jump off a roof because of the pain. Or I got to one of these points where I had to give myself a surgery, which is a disaster of its own. There's blood everywhere, and there's pain nonstop, and I can't move, and I'm suffering and suffering in pain. It's kind of hard to say thank you, right? Because if you're viewing it as a negative thing...

59:29it's hard to say thank you. But once you realize that He's doing you a favor with this, because in reality, you deserve much worse. In reality, you're getting off easy. In reality, you deserve five times worse than the Shoah for what you did. And I'm not saying, according to human beings, I wasn't a nice guy. I wasn't like a wicked guy that stole money and killed people on the side, or anything like that. I was the definition of a nice guy. Maybe I was a little serious when it came to work. I wanted people to work. I pushed people to the limits, you know, and I tell people if they came to my office and wanted to work for me, at the very least, they had to bring in $400,000 worth of revenues. If not, I told them they were wasting their life. That's why I say to them, if you're coming to my office, you're coming to my house, you're gonna work for me, you have to be on the way to making $400,000 a year. If not, you should go become a teacher. It's worth it. It's not worth it to work in that business to make $100,000 a year or $150,000 a year. It's a complete waste of time. It's too much pressure, too much stress, too much liability. Who needs that garbage? Go be a teacher. You have vacation two months a year or something like that. $60,000 a year, live a regular life. There's nothing wrong with being a teacher.

1:00:46But if you're going to already go to work and there's an opportunity to make millions of dollars, okay, of course, you can't get to a million dollars right away, but you have to already think in your mind that the minimum requirement for me to even be in this business is for me to make that kind of money, make $400,000, $500,000 a year. So I was very, very serious with my guys, and I didn't like when people wasted time, but I was also very generous. But again, in business, if you want to succeed, you have to shoot for the moon. If you're going to say, listen, everybody's okay, everybody's tzaddik. What, you only made $6 today? Okay, don't worry, maybe tomorrow. That's not my personality. I go for everything or nothing. Which is the reason why also when I left the business world, I left it completely. I couldn't do both. I'm either everything or nothing. I know that if I go back into the business world, you may not see me next week. That's just my nature. So, when it came to business, I was a very, very serious guy. I did not have any small talk. People talk about the Mets and the Giants and some girl they went out with last month or last week, or how much Derek Jeter makes, or who's running for president. I would find these conversations, I would detest them. Especially when people talk about other people's money, I find that to be the lowest form of conversation there is.

1:02:09When somebody talks about somebody else's money, I think that person is maybe, maybe one degree higher or lower as far as IQ than a mouse. There's absolutely no benefit whatsoever to talk about other people's money. It's the lowest form of conversation. I would hate it. And because what, what's the, what are you doing with this? Okay, he has money, he doesn't have money, what's the point? Where is he going? Okay, Derek Jeter made $80 million last week, great. Is he paying my bills? No, so why would I care? And people love, especially on Wall Street, they love talking about people's money. So I was a very, very serious guy, which really has not changed much. But when it came down to people needing me, or better yet, needing my money, or needing my time, I think everyone can say that I was a fair guy. People would come. It didn't matter what their problem was. I would just ask them how much. I'd write them a check. And it wasn't because I had a lot of money, because I know a lot of rich people. that you're asking for $5 that I want to give you. That was just my nature. I never really cared for money. I liked making it more than I liked having it. So I gave a lot of money away. I bought Sifrei Torah, donated to synagogues, gave plenty of money to family and friends. If I got all the loans back that I gave to people, I'd be a millionaire already again. I still have a ton of money out there.

1:03:30I'm never getting it back. Unless Hashem wants me to get it back. But the point is that I was very, very generous when it came to that. I was a nice guy when it came to things like that. I was the guy that was always the crutch. People didn't have something, they'd come to me. Whether they were tzaddikim or they were resha'im, it didn't make a difference to me. And I also made friends with usually the most Normal people. Most of my friends were UPS drivers and janitors and regular people. I didn't really befriend rich people. And obviously clients, they were rich. But as far as friends, usually regular people. So, nice guy, 100%. At least that's what I think and what people say. I mean, I don't know. One of my employees called her son a name after me. So I think that says something. But according to Hashem, I was a Rasha Merusha. It's a reality. According to Hashem, according to Hashem's definition of what nice is, I was not nice at all. I was ungrateful. Hashem gave me life, Hashem gave me eyes, ears, mouth, brain, blood cells, success, anything and everything you could possibly imagine, and I wouldn't even keep a Shabbat.

1:04:49I'd eat pizza in a non-kosher place. Okay, it wasn't pepperoni pizza, but still, if it has cheese from a goy, it's not allowed to eat it. Why? Because it has meat in it also. I'd go to places I'm not supposed to go to. I'd gamble. I'd do all these things. And I'm only telling you this, not to say lashon hara about myself, because you're not allowed to say lashon hara about yourself, but because it's for the purpose of helping. Because everyone thinks they're nice. And I'm telling you, Anyone that knows me from the past, not many people are going to tell you that I wasn't a nice guy. Maybe there's a few people that don't like me, but that has more to do with jealousy than it has to do with me being a bad guy. Point being is, nice is not defined by your actions as far as what your friends think. Nice is defined by Hashem's definition. You do the will of Hashem, you're the nicest guy in the world. You don't do the will of Hashem, There's no way you can be nice. There's no way you can be good. Because you don't know what's good. Your good is subjective. You know that Hitler thought he was good? Hitler woke up every day and said, I can't wait to be a bad guy. He was doing the world a favor. He wrote in his book, Mein Kampf, that the reason why he feels obligated, not that he just wants to, he’s obligated to kill the Jews.

1:06:14Kill the Jews. It's a bad thing, no? He says, no, no, no. It's a mitzvah. Why? Because they went against God. He wrote this in his book seven times, eight times. So he hated the non-religious people. Right. He hated non-religious people. He didn't care for the religious either, but the non-religious even more so. He said, as a nation, he believes that we went against God. He wasn't exactly wrong about it. He's still a psychopath. But the point I'm trying to tell you here is that everyone thinks they're nice. Nice is not defined by you. So... When I started doing teshuvah, I started realizing what nice means. And I realized that I'm not being very nice to my Creator. I'm not being very nice to my Father upstairs. I'm not being very nice or grateful for everything He's giving me. And I realized that this is not nice. This is not good. So, obviously, I started learning. Okay, what are the consequences? Aside from, obviously, this disaster that I'm dealing with already. And I started realizing that based on what the consequences are supposed to be,

1:07:20And according to the Torah, and what I'm getting, I'm in Gan Eden. With the suffering 24 hours a day. Gan Eden. Suffering, pain, 24 hours a day, surgeries, losing money, friends becoming enemies, becoming an embarrassment, disaster, regulators, lawsuits. My whole world went atomic bomb after atomic bomb. Gan Eden. Gan Eden. Gan Eden, next to what I really deserved. Mercy of mercies. So when you start looking at life in that perspective, which is just, that's really what it is. You realize how good Hashem really is. You realize what Rabbi Akiva says: everything that Hashem does, everything that the Merciful One does, is always for the best. You realize that Hashem is doing you a 100% favor with this pain. So what are you going to say? No thank you? No, no, give me the Gehenom instead? Give me Kaf HaKela instead? What are you going to say? You've got to say thank you. So Baruch Hashem, we start saying thank you. Gam zu l'tovah, yeah, that was actually Nachum Ish Gamzu. No, but if you say it, is that like thanking Hashem? But if you really mean it. It's different. Saying something and meaning it are two different things.

1:08:43So, yes, yeah, have a seat. Right? No, so of course, yes, so yes, of course. It didn't start where day one I was already a... The key is that you have to develop, you know, emunah. And it takes time. So initially you say Baruch Hashem with like 10% meaning, 90% hope. Over time, if you start working on it, you learn this Torah, you learn everything, you start, okay, it becomes 80% hope and 20% meaning. Little by little, you go up, you go up the ladder, and eventually you can get up to 50%, 60%, 70% meaning and 30% hope. The point is, you have to work on it. It's like any muscle. You know, you have a muscle in your body, you want to grow it, you have to go to the gym, you have to rip that muscle. Your emunah, you have to build it up also. And the key is that, you know, every day you start looking at things from Hashem's perspective. Don't look at it just from your perspective. No, I'm a nice guy, why is Hashem doing this to me? That's being selfish. You got to look at it from His perspective. Okay, let me see. His Torah says, I have to keep Shabbat.

1:10:00i don't keep Shabbat. Problem one. Torah says eat kosher. Ah, eat kosher sometimes. Problem number two. You start looking at all the laws. You have 613 commandments. You have another seven from the rabbis. You're not really responsible for 620 anyway. You're responsible for maybe a third of them. So let's say you got 200, just for numbers' sake. You look at 200. You got 16 that you're doing. And 184 that you're not doing. Why do you expect anything good from him? But that's only what you realize, right? But the point is that, let's say you know 200. Let's say you know 200. What's the point when you realize that everything comes from Hashem? 100%. Right. This is the stage we're talking about right now. The point is that if you actually do a check, you check yourself. You're at the stage where you say, okay, let me see where my cheshbon is with Hashem. Let me see why I am getting the suffering I'm getting right now. Let me check myself. You have to test yourself. You have to check yourself. You have to give yourself a report card. So you look at where you're at. You look at where Hashem expects you to be. Or at least that's what He is telling you here. It's not a big mystery. It's okay. 200 mitzvot. I'm doing 12. Thank you, Hashem, for keeping me alive, you should say.

1:11:27I'm living on borrowed time, right? But if you're doing, obviously, get up the ladder. Okay, okay, Hashem, okay. I'm only doing 50, but it's the only 50 that I really know how to do. Then you have yourself a situation that's good. Or it's 50, and I'm working to 60. I'm working to 70. You're actually showing genuine initiative that you're getting better. Hashem, I know my Shabbat is not 100%. I still have a few problems. I know, Hashem, that my kashrut is still not this. I know that I'm still not perfect, but I'm trying. Hashem pays you for it as if you're already doing. It's all about effort. Not necessarily just execution, but genuine effort. You can't say, listen, I'm trying to keep Shabbat by driving to shul. That's not effort. That's being fake. That's being a hypocrite. You understand? So... If you have 100% effort, according to Pirkei Avot Mishnah, it says that's what you get paid for. Hashem pays you for effort. If someone has the ability to study 20 hours a day, and he only studies a half hour, even though a half hour is good for somebody else, somebody that's a Baal Teshuva, just started keeping Shabbat two weeks ago, he studies a half hour a day, it's a huge deal in Shamayim. They have parties in Shamayim. Wow, look, my son is studying a half hour a day.

1:12:49My son finally remembers who I am. Half an hour a day committed. You know what amazing things are happening in Shamayim for this little guy that's studying half an hour a day. Just two weeks ago he didn't even know what Shamayim was. Now he's studying half an hour a day. But another guy has already been religious for five years, ten years. And he's studying a half hour a day. He says, "Asher me'usha." Wasting his time. Look, a waste of life. I gave this guy the brain of Shmuel, and he's acting like Esav. Half hour a day. You understand? It's all about where you stand. You have to check yourself. Once you check yourself and you really are honest with yourself, you'll find that Hashem is being much, much more kind and generous and fair with you than you deserve. All the time. Once you get to that point, it's much easier to say thank you. So if a person is righteous, then he shouldn't get any suffering?

1:13:53You should have a smooth life. No, no. There's still an issue of tzaddik v'ra lo, rasha v'tov lo. It's also in Masechet Berachot. Moshe Rabbeinu, actually in this week's parasha, he asks Hashem, you know, why is there such a thing of tzaddik v'ra lo, a tzaddik that has a bad life, or a bad situation, and a righteous person that has a, you know, I'm sorry, a righteous person has a tough life, and a wicked person that has, what seems like, a great life. So there's a couple of things about it. First and foremost, in this week's parasha, we have part of the answer, which is Hashem is saying here that, there we go, in chapter 5, chapter 5, verse 9, and also, again, in chapter 7, also verse 9 and 10. Same answer, but just the last one is a little more elaborate. It says, and actually, verse 10. And it says,

1:15:18So, Hashem is telling you that I show kindness for thousands of generations to those who love me and observe my commandments. But before that, He says that He visits the sin of fathers upon children to the third and fourth generation for His enemies. So the point is that Hashem is giving us the definition of who are His lovers and who are His enemies. Lovers, He says here specifically, it's in the verse. Lovers observe My commandments. So anyone that wants to define themselves as a nice guy, they also have to meet this definition. To be a nice guy, you have to be a lover of your Creator. You can't not be a lover of your Creator. Why? Because that would make you a kafuy tovah, an ungrateful person. You cannot be an ungrateful person and a nice guy at the same time. Right? Agreed? Okay. So now, it says that those who love Me observe My commandments. Those that are My enemies don't observe My commandments. Simple. It says it twice in this week's parashah.

1:16:20says that the ones that observe My commandments, I show them kindness for thousands of generations, meaning eternal reward never ends. Generations, obviously, you only live for generations. You live, you know, for one generation, two generations, you don't live for thousands of generations. So obviously, this is talking about eternity. Which means that when someone, when a tzaddik, has a difficult time here, this is not really the sachar, this is not really the reward place. This life is not necessarily the place you're supposed to get your reward. Hashem is specifically telling you, your reward is going to be for thousands of generations. So if you have to pay for the few sins that you're making, because everyone makes a sin, there's no such thing as a righteous person without a sin, except four people in history. Everyone makes a sin. You have to pay for that sin. So Hashem is actually showing you kindness by making you pay for this sin here. Why? Because it's better to suffer an entire life, 70 years, of the suffering that Iyov got, for 70 years, not for one year, not for seven years, for 70 years, than one hour in Gehinnom. That's what the Gemara says. Seven years of the suffering that Iyov got.

1:17:42Seven years of that, instead of one hour in Gehinnom. Hashem says, okay, you made a few sins in your life, you borrowed money, and you did all different types of sins, you didn't pay on time, on purpose, you cheated this guy on something else, you cursed out someone else, you were angry a few times, whatever, you did a few things here and there. So, either I give you suffering in this life, I'll give you suffering in the next life. But since you're doing full teshuva, I see you're serious. Olam HaBa is definitely ahead. So I'd rather you go straight to Olam HaBa with no suffering in between. So I have to give you a few years of suffering here to pay the bill. You pay a bill, okay, you suffer for a year, two years, three years, five years, whatever you suffer here. But when you get to Me, get to Hashem, You've got eternal good, and more good, and more good, and more good, and more good, and more good. So that's, and the rasha, the one that doesn't, the one that's Hashem's enemy, he says the opposite. He says the opposite. Hashem, what He says, the worst possible thing you can get. It says,

1:18:58Hashem is talking. He repays His enemies, which we now know who the enemies are. He pays His enemies in their lifetime, cash to their face in their lifetime, to make them perish. He shall not delay for His enemy. In his lifetime, He shall repay him, which means to his face. Like cash to his face, throwing money in his face. L'avido. L'avido means to destroy him. Lo ya'acher lesono. El panav yeshalem lo. Pay him cash to his face. What does it mean? It says the guy that's not keeping my mitzvot, I'm going to pay him whatever few mitzvot. Sure, he did some type of mitzvot in his life. Gave a donation to somebody. He, I don't know, he did a bracha one time. He, whatever, he did tefillin maybe a few times in his life. But he's a rasha. I still have to pay him for that, for those few mitzvot. So I'm going to pay him all of the reward for those mitzvot in this life. Why? Because once he gets to me, he doesn't have any good. He only has the Gehenom. He only has eternal suffering. So I want to make sure that I pay him to destroy him. Because once he gets to me, I don't want to see him at all. He goes to a different place, he doesn't leave. Gemara, Masechet Rosh Hashanah, page 17.

1:20:25It says there are certain sinners, there are certain types of sinners like heretics and minim, people who do things to anger, a few different types of sinners, that their suffering will never end, meaning the Gehenom will never end. Even after the Mashiach comes, he’ll close the first six chambers of Gehenom, the seventh chamber he won’t touch, stays on fire forever. Until the Zohar HaKadosh says, eventually there's nothing left except the part that Hashem has. And Hashem takes that back. And that's it. Because Hashem has a piece of Him in each one of us. That's what He gave in Adam HaRishon. So that's the part that He takes back. So, but the point being is there is such a thing as eternal suffering. It's not a joke. It says in the Gemara. It also says in Reishit Chochmah and a few other places, which, by the way, you and I have to start getting serious about. Gotta get serious about it. It's really, it's really... So, so he's saying clearly here, the guy that's driving a Ferrari on Shabbat, the guy that just won the lotto,

1:21:37guy that's, I don't know, just took his company public and made half a billion dollars, the guy driving a new car every other day, and he's violating Shabbat and everything else. He's considered a hater of Hashem, an enemy of Hashem. You shouldn't be jealous of him; you should actually feel sorry for him because Hashem gave up on him. Hashem says, "Listen, I have to start paying you." for everything good you did, the few things you did well, I have to start paying you now. Because I don't want to see you when you get up to Me. You should feel bad for them. Mamash, you should feel bad for them. Somebody like that, usually about 20 years before they die, you see them make a lot of money. You know, there's no rule of thumb. Sometimes the wicked person also... Sometimes, yeah, sometimes, no. The point being is that... Some, the Gemara specifically says, okay, so it's actually in the Torah itself. There's a literal verse in the Torah that gives you the answer. But then there's another answer. Then there's another part. You know how they say the 70 faces to the Torah? It doesn't mean that there are 70 things that contradict each other. It means that there are 70 things that could complete the whole puzzle where you get more and more answers that support each other.

1:22:49And the Chazal says, this is where we learn, this question is where we learn about Gilgulim, about reincarnation. If there was no... From this verse and also from the Gemara, from that particular question. From that particular question. So, if this was the only life that we were living, then things would seem a little odd. But since we know, and there's not only scientific evidence, but of course there's Torah evidence, that reincarnation is very much a key part of Judaism, then we know that there's a lot more to each one of our stories than we have. There's no such thing as a baby. You know, my baby girl is a baby to me. She's 14 months old, but in reality, she was here before. I was here before, you were here before, we're all here before. So, why did we come back? Because we didn't finish our tikkun (rectification). We didn't complete our mission. This is like our last chance.

1:23:58Yeah, but the point is that we've been here before many times, not once, not twice, which is the reason why if you go to a certain type of hypnotist, a professional one, and I don't necessarily recommend it for everyone or anyone really because it's kind of dangerous, but there is a certain type of hypnosis called regression. And regression can take you back in time. And they use this, this is serious, serious stuff. The scientific evidence that it's real, it's not a joke. They take people, and they hypnotize them, and they ask them to go back in time. They tell the guy, "Okay, you're going back in time to, I don't know, 1900. Go back 100 years." And the guy can start speaking to you in a different language, start speaking in French. And he's American, he doesn't speak French. Or he could talk to you as a different gender; he's a woman all of a sudden. Or he starts telling you where he's at. He's like, oh, I'm surrounded by tanks. Tanks? The guy lives in Manhattan. What tanks? And you go, okay, go back another 300 years. Like, oh, I see Napoleon or something. So you see that people have knowledge that's in them where, when they come back from the hypnosis, they don't know the language, they don't know any information about it. So there's scientific evidence that we've all been here before. There's actually a great movie by Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi called "Life After Death."

1:25:22Anybody that wants it, I give you a CD. It's on DVD. You can watch it. It's three hours of pure genius. It talks about proofs of life after death or life before life. But the point being is that, what does that have to do with our question? Since we came here, that means that we still have an account, an unpaid balance with Hashem from before. We made some sins before. Maybe in the previous life, we stole some money. In the previous life, we beat somebody up. In the previous life, we killed somebody. In the previous life, who knows what we did. Hashem is going to make sure you obviously have to pay the bill. so if somebody stole money, they're going to find themselves in this life working for this guy like a slave, and it doesn't even make sense why. "Why work for him? I'm much better than him, smarter than him, I'm this and that," but your whole life you're working for this guy like a slave. Why? Because in reality, Shamayim is saying you're paying him back the money you stole from the last life. This is why it's very, very dangerous to gamble, and it's very, very dangerous to borrow money and intentionally not give it back, because once you gamble

1:26:33and you win, or once you borrow money and don't return it on purpose, it's considered 100% stealing, gezel. And for gezel, you cannot go into heaven, even if you're completely righteous in everything else. No person, no soul has ever entered Gan Eden, according to Chazal, with gezel on its hands, meaning that they stole money. with gezel on its hands, meaning that they have to come back to this life to pay the money back. And that's why, hold on, if somebody stole money from you, or if somebody, you know, borrowed money from you and didn't return it on purpose, or stole money from you, or you lost a bet of some kind. In essence, if someone falls under this definition of stealing from you, according to the Torah, the best thing you can do is say, I forgive him. Why? Because if he comes back, you also have to come back so he can pay you back. Who wants to come back to this world? Forgive everyone. So that was actually one of the other things I also did at some point. One of the things I did also at one point, I started praying for anyone that I believed wronged me. And I prayed for each one of them individually. So, you know, you do a combination of things. All of it is part of teshuva.

1:27:55So we know that any type of suffering you have in this life, there has to be a reason. Sometimes the reason is from this life. You get something in this life. It's wrong. It's not good to go against Hashem. But sometimes you'll see somebody that's very righteous from birth but is still struggling. It could be because of their previous life. Most likely it is because of their previous life, not this life. So there's always a reason. So that's what the Gemara is saying, that when there is a righteous person that's suffering... It's because of some sins that he made before, but it's also the same thing for a wicked person that's prospering. It could be that in his previous life he was a ba'al tzedakah. He gave a lot of money away. So he did some big mitzvah, or his grandfather did some big mitzvah, or something like that, that Hashem is still paying the generations for. For example, the Rothschild family until now. They're rich. Not all of them succeeded with their ventures, but the Rothschild family is very, very successful for many, many generations. One of the reasons, the easiest reasons to explain it is because the original Rothschild was a big tzaddik. Big tzaddik. Such a tzaddik that there's actually a story. He was a talmid yeshiva, connected to the Torah.

1:29:25and loved his rabbi. And then after he got a little older, he got married, and he went into the business world. He succeeded and started making a little money. One day he runs into his old rabbi and... His rabbi says, "Listen, we're looking to raise some money for our organization." And he tried helping him. Anyway, long story short, since they got together, he invited him to the house. The rabbi invited him to the house. And after, I think his name was Mayer Rothschild. I think the original was Mayer. Was it a long time ago? Yeah. Yeah, a few hundred years ago. And after he left the house, Rothschild left, went back home, went back to his life. And then the daughters of the rabbi, a day or two later...

1:30:37say to the rabbi, "Abba, we have a serious problem. All the money is gone." "What money?" In the old days, the Jewish people, I don't know if it was by the goyim the same way, but the Jewish people would trust the rabbi with the community's money. People would use the rabbi as the bank. They would go to the rabbi because the rabbi is a trustworthy person, tzadik. So, you know, not everybody can afford to have a safe in their house. And not everyone, you know, they didn't have HSBC and TD Bank open seven days a week back then. So people would need a place to put it. So they would give it to the rabbi. So the daughters of the rabbi say, "Abba." The money is gone. All the money is gone. The entire town's money is gone. And it's definitely that guy that came here the other day because he's the only one that was here in the last few days. The rabbi says, "Oh my. Meir is my student. I know he's a righteous guy. There's no way. Nobody else was here. Who else could it be? We're here. We stole it. You have to go get it." So the rabbi goes to Meir.

1:31:51Goes to his house and sees his fancy house; it's the first time he's ever been in his house. He's like, "Listen, I'm very upset to be here, but I don't know how to even say this." He tells him the story and says that they say you did it, because nobody else has been in my house other than you in the last week. And Meir Rothschild says, "Yes, Kvod HaRav, it was me. Just give me a few days. I'll get you the money." The Rabbi is shocked. This guy was a tzaddik, a student. I can't believe that he stole from me, but at least he says he's going to give it back. Okay. So he waits a few days. Within a few days, he gives him all the money back, a ton of money. Ask him exactly how much money, it's a ton of money. A few months pass, a few months pass, and they find out that the real thief was not Meir Rothschild, but actually his cleaning lady.

1:33:14how did they find it? Because they started noticing her husband was a drunk, and he went and started drinking, spending money. But then he started telling the story of how his wife was so smart; she took this money from this guy, and people overheard. That's it. Most of the money was still left, so they caught the guy and took the money. So now the rabbi is like, wait a minute, I don't understand why he said that he stole the money. So, he goes to his house again, and he sees now his house is completely empty. Nothing. Nothing except him and his wife and a couple of kids. Nothing there. All the furniture is gone. It looks horrible. He's like, "Here's your money. Why did you do this?" And he says, i saw you when you came to me. I saw you were so sad because the money was gone that I said to myself, I'd rather take on this tikkun of people thinking that I'm a thief than you being sad for one minute. And I told my wife, we're going to sell everything we have. We have to make sure my Rebbe has everything, so nobody thinks that he did anything wrong. That's why I gave it to you.

1:34:35He goes, "But you didn't have to do that. You could have just told me you didn't do it. I would have believed you." He goes, "No, no, I couldn't handle you being sad for the Rav." He gave him a blessing, and the Rav gave him a blessing. I forget the Rav's, the Rebbe's name, but he gave him a blessing: "May you succeed in all you do," and so on and so forth. And they say that this blessing works a thousandfold, and he became the richest man in the world. If he were around right now, he could pretty much buy probably half the Forbes 500 list combined. that rich. It will be trillions of dollars in today's money, probably even more than all of them combined. But the point is that sometimes we have the merits of our forefathers; sometimes it's because of our previous life. So when you see someone that's wicked, that is in a very, very good financial position. Sometimes it's because of a few things he did in his own life, but sometimes it could actually be because of something he did in his past life, and Hashem still has to pay him for it. You know, there's no such thing as something without a purpose. Everything always has to have some type of purpose, some type of cause. There's no such thing as anything otherwise. Um...

1:35:57So now that we're done with the introduction, let's go over a few things in the parashah that I think would... would add to the points, unless you guys have other questions. Yeah, one more. Go ahead. It says that on sins of karet that you made, even if we did teshuvah, let's say ten years down the line, you could still suffer for those sins. Okay. Because the only way you could heal it is by suffering in this world. Some sins, yeah, some sins you can do teshuvah for, some sins you can't do teshuvah for. Like, for example, Chilul Hashem, you have to suffer for. Chilul Hashem, you have to suffer for. Desecrating Hashem's name, you have to suffer for. And the biggest part of suffering is death, which is part of the tikkun for Chilul Hashem. But that's assuming you did complete teshuvah. If you die with Chilul Hashem on your hands without doing teshuvah, Hashem, it's the worst part of Gehenom. Seventh level of Gehenom. So people have to be very, very careful. People have to be very, very careful with Chilul Hashem. Same thing with Shabbat. Somebody, if you did Teshuvah on your Shabbat, then it could ultimately, if you end up getting to a point where you are celebrating the Shabbat, Oneg Shabbat, and it becomes the greatest day in the world every week,

1:37:17Your Shabbat sins could easily become a Kiddush Hashem. But even more than that, if you do kiruv, then you can actually show up with a credit on your account. Why? Because if, let's say for example, somebody did Teshuvah, you guys are young, 25 years old, something like that? Okay, so whatever, you guys are young guys, so Baruch Hashem, you didn't have enough time to make big sins yet. So now, let's say you missed out on five years' worth of Shabbatot. You didn't keep Shabbat for five years, let's say. So, but now you start keeping Shabbat, Baruch Hashem. So now you live to 120, you kept Shabbat, but it's still five years missing. It's still five years missing. So I guess, let's say it's five years, it's 52 Shabbats a year. It's a lot of Shabbat. 260 Shabbats.

1:38:25Shabbats, you go up to Shamayim and say, "What do you mean? I'm not going to forget about these 260 Shabbats. Give yourself a problem." So if now you make somebody else do teshuva, you give him a CD for a dollar, he does teshuva and starts keeping Shabbat. Every time he keeps Shabbat, it goes into your account. So now, instead of you keeping one Shabbat, you're keeping two Shabbats. If you got three people, five people, or even ten people you made do teshuva, then every Shabbat for you is 11 Shabbats. So now you end up going to Shamayim with a credit. Instead of having a deficit of 250 Shabbats, you go up with a credit of 50,000 Shabbats. And Chazal say, only when someone gets to the Beit Din of Shamayim does he actually see who he created. So what do you mean who he created? Created? It's a human being. Hashem only creates. He goes, no. Somebody that makes somebody else do teshuva is considered as if he created him. So somebody comes to Shamayim Comes to Shamayim and says, "Oh, these are the 150,000 tzaddikim you created." He goes, "I don't even know 100 people. What 150,000 tzaddikim?" He goes, "No, you gave $500 a month for CDs. Those CDs worked. You arranged a shiur every month. The shiurim worked. People showed up to the shiurim. You had 50 people come to every shiur."

1:39:48Did teshuvas for 10 years, every month, every month, every month, one teshuva, two teshuvas, every month. The teshuvas work. People did teshuva. Okay, but okay, one guy did teshuva here, one guy did teshuva there. He goes, yeah, but that one guy. The guy goes home. He has a wife. His wife also does teshuva. Now they're gonna have kids. They have four kids. The kids are now tzaddikim. Now you have six people. But the kids are gonna have kids. The kids, it's good dividends. But the kids now are going to have kids of their own. They're going to start doing, it ends up becoming the greatest investment in history. This is why I tell people, anyone that doesn't do teshuva is mamash like crazy, crazy. The Zohar HaKadosh says, Zohar HaKadosh, Zohar, this is not like Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai. They celebrate a holiday for him every year. Everybody knows Lag BaOmer. They don't know who Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai is. Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai says, someone who knows the value of helping somebody do teshuva, he'd leave everything in the world and start running in the street like a crazy person looking for somebody to help him do teshuva.

1:40:49they know the reward for one guy doing teshuva. So now you go up to Shamayim and say, "Yeah, I don't know, I gave ten dollars for CDs here and there, I arranged a lecture here and there. They did a little bit, five minutes a day. Like Rabbi Aaron said, five minutes a day. I did five minutes a day. Yeah, okay, five minutes a day times 80 years, it's a lot of time. Look at the result: this family, that family, that family, that family. That's me, showing up with 150,000 people tzadikim." Who's better than you at that point? You understand? So that's why I say to people, it's so cheap, so cheap to do kiruv today. That not doing it is not only crazy, but can actually go against you in a very, very big way. A very dangerous way. And this is how I finished off two of the lectures this weekend. We had 11 lectures, and it was powerful, powerful stuff. It was really some strong, strong information that anyone who doesn't wake up after those lectures, I don't know where they're going to be. I can't help them. They probably have no pulse. Strong lectures.

1:41:56Hard, hard information. You know, tough. Even for me to say it, I almost started crying. Talk about the Shoah, talk about the Holocaust, people dying, eating all types of... I don't even want to remember it. It's hard stuff. But anyway... I told this to people. I said, listen, I have a few, Baruch Hashem, I have a few tzaddikim that are helping me with kiruv. Everybody knows Vimesh, a tzaddik, who posts all these things. There's Emmanuel in Bulgaria, a tzaddik. There are a few people, Baruch Hashem. Simcha, Baruch Hashem, is helping us. We also have this other guy, Daniel, who is helping us. Baruch Hashem, the team keeps growing. We have Benjamin, a tzaddik in France, who is helping us build the website. The team continues to grow. There are also people helping with the book, helping with the videos, and all types of things. The amazing tzaddeket that made the new clip that we have for the CDs, the minute-and-a-half clip for the CDs, the blue one. The tzaddeket did that. She's actually in the process of converting now. The other tzaddeket that's also helping me with the book. Another one, you know, just amazing. A lot of people helping for free. And just amazing people. That is the thing.

1:43:19Some of these people are converts. Some of them are Jews. Some of them are in the process of conversion. But one particular one, or two particular ones that are actually in the process of converting, Vimesh and Emmanuel. These are the two that I talked about. They're amazing. If the Mashiach could be a convert, it would be one of them at least. So now, Vimesh is surrounded by idol worship. Literally, there's a wall. There's a wall. 500 feet away from that wall, there's idol worship—people, cows, and all types of idol worship that there is. He's surrounded by it. He's now working on taking all these financial tests just so he can get out of there and get a job in the U.S. Not because he really wants the job. He's obviously going to work to make a living. But why? So he can convert.

1:44:19Because you can't convert over there. All of this he's doing, he's studying for all these, I don't know, like seven tests or something like that. Things that take people years. He's trying to do it all in one year. Al-Kashem, he's a genius. Works really, really hard. I don't know if he ever sleeps, to be honest with you. But he's doing this while working non-stop and helping with Kiruv 24 hours a day. All the videos you guys see in the groups. Every few hours there's another post on Facebook, on WhatsApp, on so many different other sites, the website. Constantly you see Vimesh everywhere. You don't see him. Everything has something to do with him. He touches everything. Baruch Hashem. Unbelievable. I started to come here. Yeah, oh, see, there you go, Baruch Hashem, from his text, he started coming here. So now, a lot of people have found out that I even exist because of Vimesh's work. Then you have Emmanuel. And he's doing all of this for what? For nothing, for free. He's doing this for Hashem, 100% for Hashem. And it's not just for me he's doing it for, he's also doing it for Rav Mizrachi. We have tens of thousands of people being reached every single day because of Vimesh's work.

1:45:34Then you have Emmanuel. Hold on. Then you have Emmanuel. Emmanuel, tzaddik, surrounded by idol worship also. There's zero Judaism around him. He has to travel far away to get to Judaism. And he quit his job because he wanted to get a job so he could actually keep Shabbat. On top of that, Since he was born not Jewish, he has to have a Brit Milah, he has to have a circumcision. So, Baruch Hashem, last week he had a circumcision. Now, as I said in the lectures this weekend, listen, if you're 8 days old and you have a circumcision, it's not exactly a big deal, you don't remember it. But when you're in your 20s and you have a circumcision, it's a pretty big deal. You also remember that one. When you're 100 years old, you're going to remember the one you had. So something that I've said in this story at least five times in the last few days because I'm still shocked and amazed by it. The day he has his circumcision, the day he has the Brit Milah, I see him on the internet posting my videos, doing kiruv. And I ask him, what are you doing? You didn’t do the surgery? He goes, no, no, I did the surgery, just finished a few hours ago.

1:46:52I'm like, so why don't you rest? Aren't you in pain? He goes, no, it's painful, but I have to, you know, I have to post these videos. And I ask him, why don't you rest? He goes, how are the Jewish people going to get Torah if I'm sleeping? That's mesirut nefesh. That's self-sacrifice. So when we arrive at Shamayim, Hashem will ask you, what have you done for Me? Did you do any kiruv? Did you save any of My children? You say, I didn't have time. I was busy, God. I wasn't sure. It was this. Oh, so how come they're going to bring you Vimesh and Emmanuel? One is studying for seven or eight tests at the same time. The other guy is running a business, and they're doing more kiruv than I think anybody in the world. These two tzaddikim. And they're not even obligated. You are obligated. Do you understand what I'm saying here? So not doing kiruv, it's a problem. It's a problem. So this is one of the main things we have to understand, that on one hand, doing it, this is one of the main ways that, you know, I know for a fact. One day, I started waking up with less pain.

1:48:12and less pain, and less pain, and less pain, and eventually it got to a point where the infections would come, you know, instead of every month, or in some cases even every few weeks, it started coming every three to four months. And then, you know, as I continued to study Torah, continued to do kiruv, continued to thank Hashem, eventually it got to a point where it was less often, it was every three to four months. And then it was every six months. And then it was just random. And even when it was random, it was like a superficial infection that wasn't really that big of a deal. It would pop or it would heal after a few days. It was never what it was. And instead of 24 hours a day in pain, it was maybe a few hours here and there. And little by little, Baruch Hashem, it got to a point where it was 95% better. I mean, I still have some things here and there, but in comparison to where I was, and it was all through the simple formula: Torah, which is kiruv, and saying thank you to Hashem. You do those few things, any miracle and every miracle you want will be gifted to you because you're fulfilling your purpose in the world.

1:49:30On the other hand, you don't do it. Don't ask for anything. Everything you have is, you know, you don't even deserve to begin with. You don't do Torah. You're on borrowed time to begin with. You don't care about Hashem's children. Why should He give you any special attention? Why should He give you any special miracles? You're seeing His children die left and right. I don't mean physically die; I mean spiritually die. Getting off the derech, marrying goyim, Chilul Shabbat—you're seeing them spiritually dead everywhere, and you're not doing anything about it. No, no, no, but I'm a tzaddik, I go to the Beit Knesset on Shabbat. Okay, but my kids, my kids, my kids are dying. Can't you say something? Can't you tell them something? Something, something, say something. So, you don't do anything for them. He says, okay, so I'll treat you like everybody else. Okay, you're still my son. you don't have a special account with Me. Yeah, you're okay, you're good. You're casual, yeah. And then, last but not least, if you keep every suffering that you have, meaning that you don't say thank you to Hashem, you don't get to a mindset...

1:50:42where you realize that everything that Hashem does is for the good, and you really do a real cheshbon nefesh, you really check yourself, then in reality, when you don't have that connection to Hashem, where you're thanking Him for everything, your life is 100% suffering already. Your life is already gehinnom. When you don't have emunah, it's already gehinnom. Why? Because everything is terrible. Flat tire? Oh, it's terrible. You don't realize the flat tire actually saved your life because there's going to be an accident three miles ahead. And if you were driving, Hashem forbid, you got a flat tire. Hashem did you a favor. I had a miracle happen to me from a flat tire. Oh, so there you go. It's constant miracles. It's constant chesed from Hashem. But if you don't look at it that way, you don't thank Hashem, you don't give Hashem kaf zechut, you don't give Hashem the benefit of the doubt that everything He does is for your benefit, then your life turns into gehinnom all the time. You're always suffering.

1:51:50Business doesn't go your way, it's suffering. You don't realize that Hashem is doing you a favor where He says, "Listen, if I give you any more money, you will turn into a crazy person and start gambling. You will turn into a crazy person and divorce your wife or something." People do crazy things when they have money. Not everybody should have money. Most people that have a lot of money shouldn't have a lot of money. It's a very, very difficult test to have money. Very big responsibility. Or somebody says, no, I didn't get this client. You don't realize that if you would have gotten this client, the relationship—Hashem already knows—the relationship would have turned bad. The client eventually, six months later, a year later, would have sued you and bankrupted you. You're thinking, "Oh, Hashem, how come I gave tzedakah? How come you didn't give me this client?" The client is a litigious person. There are certain types of people that like lawsuits. There is. It's not even scammers. That's just their personality. They believe that the world works for them, and anything that doesn't work for them, they sue. They're just people... they're just people that...

1:52:53like to sue people. Every other day you hear, "Oh yeah, I'm suing this guy, I'm suing that guy." Like what? Everybody did you wrong? You're the only tzaddik in the world. And not only a tzaddik, you're like Iyov. If you're suing everybody, that means everybody did you wrong. You're like suffering all the time. How could it be? How could it be that everybody's doing only you wrong? How come you're not doing everybody else wrong? You understand? So there are certain people that All like that. And you're thinking, "Oh, I could have gotten this $10 million account. I could have gotten this big deal with this guy." You didn't get it. Hashem, how come you're doing this to me? It's not fair. He's doing you a favor, habibi. He's doing you a favor. That's it. You start looking at life that way. That's when you get to a point where you become like Nachum Ish Gamzu, where it says, Gam zu l'tovah. That's what it means, Gam zu l'tovah. This too is for the good. Why? Because you're seeing the candle that Nachum Ish Gamzu had went out. The donkey that he had, a lion ate him. Do you guys know the story of Nachum Ish Gamzu? Okay, so I'll tell you the story in case you don't know.

1:54:03So Nachum Ish Gamzu was a big tzaddik. He was actually one of the rabbis of Rabbi Akiva. And one day he goes into town and they reject him in the town. They don't want to let him in. And so he's forced to, with him and his students, to go sleep and camp outside of the town. And the students were like, "Rabbi, you know, you're a righteous person. How come such a thing is happening to us?" He goes, "No, everything is for the good. If Hashem wants me to sleep on the grass over here, not under a roof, this is for the good. It has to be for the good. Why? Because Hashem did it." Okay. So he is trying to learn a little bit. All of a sudden he hears roaring. A lion attacks his donkey. Eats his donkey. So now he has to walk. Tomorrow morning, when he wakes up, his donkey is like, you know, a Toyota. So now he has to walk back to town. It's not easy. So his Toyota is gone, his donkey is gone. And what does he say? This too is for the good. Moments later...

1:55:21Here's... Jumping on his chicken. Eats his chicken. His rooster. The rooster was the clock back then. They didn't have the Movado and, you know, Rolex watches back then. The rooster was the clock. Wake up in the morning to go to tefillat netz. Not like us lazy, barely waking up at 9. You know? They wake up early. So, Baruch Hashem, that's what we did actually in New York. They had a great tefillah. We started at 4 o'clock in the morning. We had to wake up to go to tefillat netz because we had to do shiurim in the morning. So we went to sleep at like 1:30, 2 o'clock to wake up at 4 and start the day for Shabbat. We did 6 shiurim. Honestly, it was 100% miracle. 100% miracle. I didn't know how I survived the day. But they had a great tefillah at 5 o'clock in the morning or something like that. Great, great tefillah. Anyway, So, the rooster is dead. Students are asking the Rav, "How are we going to wake up early in the morning for tefillat netz?" No, come to the Torah. If Hashem wanted my rooster alive, it would stay alive. If He didn’t want it alive, it's for my benefit. Okay, so now they're trying to learn Torah. It's night, and they don't have a light. They have a candle.

1:56:41All of a sudden, a strong wind comes and blows out his candle. He can't learn Torah anymore. He doesn't have any more matches. That's it. He can't learn Torah. Hashem doesn't want him to learn Torah. This too is for the good. Okay, so what does he do? He goes to sleep. Nothing else to do. Everyone goes to sleep. They wake up the next day and look on the horizon. They see the town they were supposed to be in, but there's smoke coming out of the town. It looks like there's a fire of some kind. Okay, let's go check out what's over there. They go into the town and see the whole town is destroyed. Fires, people dead, disaster. Get a guy, stop him. He goes, what happened? He goes, ah, these vandals came into town last night and robbed the whole town, killed almost everyone. It was a very, very big disaster. Fires everywhere. Everything was destroyed overnight. So Rav says to his students, he goes, you see how gracious Hashem is to us? If I would have had my donkey, donkeys are known to make noise. They're known to make noise.

1:57:59night. The people, when they passed the town, passed right by us. But since it was dark, they didn't see us; they just passed. But if my donkey was still alive, it would have made noise, and they would have checked out, "What's this donkey?" They would have caught us, and we wouldn't have survived. Same thing with the rooster—roosters also make noise. If I still had my rooster, it would have made noise. Next thing you know, the guys are coming to our camp. He goes, "Okay, but what about the Torah you didn't learn?" He goes, "No. If I was learning Torah, that means I still would have had to have my candle. And my candlelight you can see from 10 miles away." ...it's flat land; you can see from 10 miles away. In those days, even more so. Now, in our generation, our eyes are weaker; maybe you could see a mile ahead of you. But in the old days, it says each person, the average person, was able to see 18 miles in either direction with regular eyes—18 miles. And we learn from the Gemara, it says, when it talks about Maaser... When somebody is giving Maaser, and he says, what about if he has ten sheep, but five are on one side of his field, and five are on the other side of his field. So does he still have to separate one from the ten? Does it count as if it's one group?

1:59:20Because it's five, you know, he has ten, really. Or does it count as two different groups, where technically there's no Maaser because he has five on this one and five on that one? And it says, yes, it counts as one group if he could still see it. As long as he can see it with the naked eye, then it's considered one group. So the Gemara asks, well, how far can someone see? And they give the details of how many parsa, they give the word parsa, which is a few miles. Anyway, he can see. Long story short, here we learn that Chazal in the old days were much, much stronger than us physically, and the vision of the average person was able to see 18 miles. 18 miles. Today, you barely see the wall. You know, we have glasses. And their bodies were much stronger. You know, so 18 miles in either direction, you can see. So he said, if he could see it, it's part of the same group. So yes, okay, so this ends up being a question and answer show, because I don't think we're going to have much to talk about in the parasha. But do you have any other questions? That's when the chametz becomes a good state, right? Because of all the stuff that happened. Right?

2:00:31Once you get to a point where you say thank you to Hashem and you realize that everything is for the good, what Hashem does is He actually ends up turning everything into good. Why? A few reasons. Number one, you start seeing that you're passing the test, obviously. If you're seeing everything as good, then you really deserve good. That's number one. Two, the Satan can't stand hearing you. Satan can't stand hearing you say thank you. Because really, some of the tests that you're getting, some of the annoying things that happen every single day—UPS doesn't go pick up the package that you wanted to get picked up, your computer fails and goes to nothing, you have 900 gigabytes worth of videos and material on it, and all of a sudden it crashes on you and doesn't work. All types of things happen. Part of it is the Satan trying to distract you to see if you get angry. It's a test. Because someone who gets angry, according to the Gemara, it's considered idol worship. It's a big deal to get angry. So he wants to see. So, Satan sees that every time something bad happens to you, you say you're blessing Hashem. You're learning even more Torah. You're saying thank you to Hashem every time something bad happens to you. Satan says, okay, you know what?

2:01:58Stay away from me. I'll stay away from you. Don't say thank you anymore. Do me a favor to Hashem because you're getting more credit. He's trying to give you less credit. It's going against you. So, Baruch Hashem, he stays away from you. He stays away from you except for big things. So, that's another reason. And three, you're getting a reward for each one of them. Every time you say thank you, you get a reward for it. Also, that's another thing for people that, that's another thing for people that if you get a miracle... The purpose for why, one of the reasons why Hashem gives us miracles is so we can sanctify His name, so we can do Kiddush Hashem. Meaning, if you have a miracle in your life, you should publicize it. Don't keep it to yourself. Some people are worried, no, no, I have a miracle, I don't want to have ayin hara. I don't want to tell people. It's the biggest mistake in the world. Why? The only reason why Hashem, like the biggest reason why Hashem did it for you, is so you could tell people and publicize His name. Because we're not at Har Sinai right now where there's a miracle every second. We're not in Beit HaMikdash HaRishon or HaSheni. We're not in Egypt. We're not in any of these places where there's a miracle every two seconds. And people are constantly questioning, where is God? Where is God? We need to see things. So Hashem makes certain miracles happen for people.

2:03:13...so you could tell people, listen, Hashem still runs the world. Now, if you don't tell people when a miracle happens to you, then Hashem says, "Oh, it's not worth doing business with you. I gave you a miracle not only to benefit you but to pay Me back. Publicize, tell people I'm still around." You don't say, "No, no, no, I'm scared of what’s getting under your skin." Instead, say "Baruch Hashem," you have nothing to worry about. Study Torah 100% and don't spend time thinking about Ayin Hara. Just 100% believe that everything is in Hashem's hands. You have nothing to worry about Ayin Hara. Also, there are certain verses I could tell you that you could say, as it says in the Gemara, that you are one of the descendants of Yosef HaTzadik, and he is above and beyond the power of Ayin Hara. You could say that verse and you don't have to worry about Ayin Hara. You don't have to worry about the evil eye. Point being is, Hashem gave you a miracle, most to publicize it. Because if you don't publicize it, it's not worth it for Him to do business with you. On the other hand, if you do publicize it, and it becomes a Kiddush Hashem, you do a Seudat Hoda'ah. You do a... Hashem saved your life, Baruch Hashem. A car accident or, I don't know, a surgery or something, anything. You do a dinner.

2:04:35With shiur Torah, publicizing Hashem's name, saying, "Look at the miracle that happened to me, let's learn Torah, let's do that," Hashem says, "Oh, it's worth it for Me to do something for you." He gives you another miracle. So, you want to see more miracles? Publicize the miracles you're getting already. I heard that if you watch your eyes and you don't look at immodesty, the Ayin Hara cannot affect you. If you watch your eyes 100%, 100%. If you watch your eyes 100%, you can become very, very righteous. Very, very righteous. You know, also, if you watch your mouth, you watch your mouth 100%, everything that comes out of your mouth can come true. To that extent. Meaning, if your mouth is holy, where everything that comes out of your mouth is Divrei Torah, holy things, never ever spend any time on Lashon Hara, never look at anything bad, and never say anything bad, you'll be like Hashem's mouth. That's why people go to Tzaddikim for blessings. People think it's because he knows a lot of Torah. No, it's not. There are many people who know a lot of Torah, but you don't go to them for blessings. You go to the big Tzaddikim because these people, they don't sin. They don't sin like regular people. They don't look at immodest women. They don't speak Lashon Hara. Oh yeah, he has 80 million dollars. He has 15 million. They don't talk about stuff like that. All they talk about is Torah. Hashem says if his mouth is so pure,

2:06:01How could I not make everything he says come true? But if his mouth is full of curses and all types of stupidity, Hashem wants to close his mouth. He's lucky he even has a mouth. One of the sages asked Hashem, Hashem, how come you didn't give us two mouths? I think it's Rabbi Meir. Rabbi Meir Baal HaNes. How come you didn't give us one mouth? One for regular talk. And one for Torah. Hashem responds, look at what happened. I give you one mouth and most people talk so much lashon hara. Imagine they had two mouths. They'd talk double lashon hara. destroys everything. In general, talking should be limited unless it is Torah. The reason why is because idle talk, talking about nonsense, will inevitably lead to sin. It's only a matter of time before you are

2:07:11you make a sin. Actually, I'll give you an example. I did a chiddush today, one of these short recordings, about this subject, but I'll do it again here because it's really, really important. People have no idea, no idea how much their mouth can get them into trouble. It's really like, if you knew and you realized what you're getting yourself into, it's pure stupidity. Pure stupidity. So, people like to watch videos on the internet. They like to watch, you know, certain rabbis. They watch me, watch Rabbi Mizrachi, Ilan Nava, countless different rabbis out there. Now, once in a while, you don't like what the rabbi says. Don't like it. He says, which is what's written in the Torah. Someone who is a violator of Shabbat has death upon death and is cut off from the people. One death means that they cut their life short.

2:08:21Another death means that they have no share in the World to Come. And the cutoff from the nation means they're no longer considered Jewish by Halacha. They're considered 100% idol worshipers. For what? For violating Shabbat. Now, somebody doesn't like to hear that. Like I have this guy that used to come to the shiurim. Nice guy, but one of the biggest miskenim I've ever seen in my life. Really, really, I feel bad for him. Why? He has all the money in the world and not an idea what life is about. And the money is 100% poison for him. And so he didn't like it when I said this. So he stopped coming to the shiurim. Stopped coming. But actually, he ended up texting me today. I haven't seen him in months. Texting me today or yesterday. Something like that. He goes, is there a shiur? Yeah, there's a shiur. We're still here. Just because you don't come, we're not going to close shop. Yeah, sure, you can come. It's this time. We'd love to see you. Unfortunately, he didn't come. He's on the shiur next week. The point is that, obviously, it's still a scar on his head. And it's still bothering him, which means we did our job. This is what he needs to hear. The fact that he didn't come is not up to me. It's up to him.

2:09:30We tell people what they say because if I would tell them, "Listen, you're a tzaddik, everything's okay, everything is great," he'd stay in Mechalel Shabbat for the rest of his life. The fact that it's still bothering him, that he wants to come back, but it's still shaking him up. We already did our job. So the point is that people hear some things; they don't like it. They don't like to hear what the rabbi said. And what do they do? They want to express their opinion. They want to express their opinion, you know, because of freedom of speech. So what do they do? The worst thing in the world. First, they tell one of their friends, "Oh, Rabbi Mizrachi said ABC." "Oh, Rabbi Yaron said ABC." "Oh, this one said ABC." They say, don't agree. I don't think so. I don't think he's too much. He's too aggressive. Is he against the Torah? Is he saying something against the Torah? If he's not saying something against the Torah, then you have nothing to say. The fact that you don't like it is your problem; it's not the Rabbi's problem. If it's against the Torah, then you have a case. But even then, you have to be very careful. Even then, you have to be very, very careful.

2:10:40Because he's still a rabbi and he's still considered a Talmid Chacham. He's still doing Zikui HaRabim. He's not intentionally making errors on the Torah. That's if he actually made an error in the Torah. But I can tell you for sure, anyone that has the names that I mentioned, is not making a mistake in the Torah. Why? Because we're reading it directly from the book. If it's my opinion, you already know it's my opinion because it's clear it's my opinion. Otherwise, you're seeing verses, page numbers, parshiot, and so on. If you just don't like it, and you say to somebody, "Listen, he's too much for me." What's the big deal? Okay, he's too much for you. How bad could it possibly be to say to somebody else, "Listen, he's too much for me, I don't like to hear him." Doesn't sound like a big deal, right? What's the big deal? You saying it's too much for me. It's not even cursing the guy or saying bad things like, "Hey, he's stupid" or "He's a rasha" or anything like that. I'm talking about just simply saying he's too much, he's too aggressive to somebody else, one person. That could lead that other person to stop watching his Torah shiurim.

2:11:53That means that person was, let's say, 1% away, 1% away; he was going to keep Shabbat. 1% away, he was going to start violating Shabbat. And he needed to watch the next shiur, the one that you didn't like—the one that you didn't like, you didn't—mot yumat. That's the shiur he needed to do teshuva. Because of you, he didn't do it. Hashem, what gehinnom you're going to have. You just caused another Jew to lose his olam haba. That's for one guy. That's because you said, "Oh, it's not for me. It's not for me." Now, here's where it gets even worse. People don't do it for one person. They don't go to their friend, "Hey, listen, he's too much for me, he's too this, he's too that." They don't do that. What do they do? They make a comment on the internet because they want to make sure their opinion is considered by all. They want to feel important. Everybody's a hero behind their keyboard. Ooh, what heroes. Superman, Hulk. Hulk, Superman, and I don't know, Power Rangers all together with this guy's head. They want to make sure everyone knows. Everyone knows their opinion. And they start making these comments on the internet. Hashem, what comments they're making. But let's just say, it's not even a harsh comment. It's not even one of these crazy comments where people are saying really bad things and curses and threats and all types of kefirah. I'm talking about just a simple comment. He's not for me.

2:13:17he's not for me. That "he's not for me" comment can dissuade one person, as we've just shown, from watching the shiur that could change their life. But if it's on the internet, in a matter of a second, it could hit 5 million people, 10 million people, 100 million people. Even if it hits 5,000 people, which is nothing for the internet. Nothing. In a matter of one minute, 5,000 people get my shiurim. Everybody's going to see this comment. He's not for me. If even one of those 5,000 decides not to watch the shiur, you have yourself a serious problem. Imagine if all 5,000 don't watch the shiur. And you know all of them need it. Why? Because Hashem is going to give you the words to say that everyone needs to hear. He's not just giving you words randomly to just blab. He's giving you words that everyone needs to hear. Every single person that's going to watch the shiur, there's something in that shiur specifically for them. Two hours could be completely irrelevant to them except the last 30 seconds. And Hashem put those 30 seconds in your mouth for him. Custom made. And this heretic

2:14:31This politically correct here, I didn't like mot yumat v'nikhretah hanefesh hahi. Like I made it up. Like I created this verse. Like Hashem asked me for permission. I said, no, no, no. Hashem, you're being too lenient. Let's write mot yumat. And also let's throw him out of the nation. You're being too lenient, Hashem. Let's give it to him on the head. Extra. This guy wrote a comment. So this is not just my opinion. How do I know? We go to parashat Ki Tavo. Remember I told you in the beginning of the shiur, there are two parashiyot that are full of curses. We have a couple of verses of blessings if you do the good thing, and we have 40 or 50 verses. Pretty much the rest of the parasha is curses for different sins. Punishments. Now, the worst possible punishment in the Torah is expressed with a single word: Arur. Arur means cursed. But not cursed by me, cursed by Hashem. Cursed by Hashem. You don't want Hashem to curse you. Parashat Ki Tavo, chapter 27, verse 26. It says,

2:15:53Here, now, the story is: you have two of the tribes or half of the tribes on one mountain, half of the tribes on another mountain. One half says, "Blessed is a person that does XYZ," and the whole nation says, "Amen." The other half is saying, "Cursed is the man that does ABC," and the whole nation says, "Amen." Big event. that does ABC," and the whole nation says, "Amen." Big event. Now here it's talking about all different types of sins. It talks about cursed is the man who will make a molten image, you know, Avodah Zarah. Everyone says amen. Cursed is the person that degrades his father or mother. Everyone says amen. Cursed is the person that causes a blind person to go astray on the road. You know, an evil person. Cursed is the person that perverts judgment.

2:16:54You know, somebody goes against the Torah that way or goes against the converts, the orphans, or the widows. Cursed. It's dangerous to go against converts. People are crazy. They put signs on their Beit Knesset. We don't accept converts. Yes. Wait a minute, let me see that. No, no, in Florida. Florida, Florida, yeah. Florida, unfortunately. Yeah. They trickled down. Unfortunately, yes, there's a sign. Yes, unfortunately, there's a sign in some Beit Knesset. They put on the front. Converts not welcome. Certain communities, Hashem yerachem. You know, I have a prayer in that shul, right? Me? I wouldn't go. I wouldn't even visit. But the point is, it's very, very bad. The point I'm trying to tell you is that people are crazy when they make stuff like this. I'm telling you right now, cursed is the person that goes against converts. Listen, you don't want to go marry a convert yourself? Okay, whatever, do what you want. But to tell other people, listen... righteous tzaddeket, righteous tzaddik, converted to Judaism, is probably more religious than 90% of Am Yisrael. You're not going to let him go into your synagogue? What, are you crazy? Just say, listen, Hashem, I don't want to go to Gan Eden. Just give me Gehinnom right now and that's it. Who wants to? Who's crazy like this? But people, people, people take...

2:18:12That's what people do when they bring judgment into their own hands and their own logic. They make themselves problems. So anyway, it's saying all these different sins, these certain types of people, cursed is a person that's gay, cursed is a person that lies with his mother or father, cursed. All types of sick, sick sins. Here, all types of sins. But then it says here in verse 26, "Cursed is the one who will not uphold the words of this Torah to perform them," and the entire people shall say "Amen." Now, Chazal ask here, what do you mean "cursed is a person who's not going to uphold the Torah?" The whole thing, all of these curses are against the Torah. So why is there a special verse just for this one talking about someone who is not going to comply with the Torah? He's not going to uphold the words of Torah. He says, no, it's not referring to someone who individually goes against the Torah only himself. That already we know. Look at how many curses we have. We have pages of curses already about that guy. Everyone that's homosexual is going against the Torah. Someone who goes against the Torah's consorts. Someone who makes their own laws against the Torah. We already know. We don't need extra verses for that.

2:19:27What's this about? Chazal tell us, no. Someone that goes against publicizing Torah. Someone who stops the publicity of Torah either by saying lashon hara about the rabbi. People don't come because of that. People don't watch the video because of that. All types of things. You get in the way of publicizing Torah, Hashem says that person is cursed. So, this stupid little comment that someone made innocently, "I didn't mean bad by it. I just said my opinion. It was just my opinion. What's the big deal? It's freedom of speech. We're in America, not Iran." Okay, fine. You're going to go to Iran soon with this stupid comment. People have to understand: no one needs to know your opinion. You have your opinion, keep it to yourself. Keep it to yourself unless it's something positive. Your negative opinion is too dangerous. My gosh, an atomic bomb is in your mouth.

2:20:27Atomic bomb is in your mouth. And with the internet, it's like an atomic bomb with chemical weapons inside it somehow. People don't understand. That's the thing. And it happened where somebody did it. Somebody did it recently. And honestly, I hope he can do teshuvah. I hope he can do teshuvah. Yeah. That's why I'm saying this story. Somebody did it to me. Somebody I'm actually helping. That's the worst part about it. It's somebody I'm actually helping a lot with their teshuvah. But he tells somebody else something about me. He didn't like something or whatever. He said some type of lashon hara. But the other one, I'm also helping him a lot. Baruch Hashem, another one of my students. And he tells me this. But not tells me in his words because I can't take people's words for that. He shows me the text. He shows me the text. And I said, okay, I don't care. Whatever. It doesn't make a difference to me. Whatever. He likes me. He doesn't like me. He's a kafui tovah. He goes, I do a lot for him to help him with all these different problems that he has. He says, okay, whatever. What can I do? Not everyone's going to love me. Fine. It doesn't make a difference to me. But then, this is the part, the reason why I'm telling you this. Then this idiot decides

2:21:55that he's going to get in the way of our kiruv. And he presses a button to, what's it called, to complain about one of the posts that the other guy made, because the other guy is my helper. And he gets him blocked off of Facebook for, like, a couple of days, which means that he can't make the posts of our shiurim on his profile for, like, two days. That's a lot to take on his hands. So you have less Torah in the world for the next two days. I don't know. Crazy? Psychopath? Something wrong with you? This is my point. People don't know. They don't know. You didn't do it on purpose to get to that extent. You just wanted to be annoying or something, I guess. But the point I'm trying to make is that people make these comments and these actions using their emotions, and it can only get you into trouble. Only get you into trouble. And the worst part about it is that when someone presses the button for an atomic bomb, he thinks he's pressing the PEZ machine to get a candy instead. He thinks it's not a big deal.

2:23:05You have to be very, very careful with your mouth. Very careful, more than anything else. And also, we also talked about it in the Torah. It says, each person comes to this world with a certain amount of words. A certain amount of words. Each person has a certain lifetime of words. Let's say you come to this world with a billion words. If you talk a lot of nonsense, in essence, you're killing yourself. But if you talk Torah, you have an unlimited amount of words. So, somebody likes to talk a lot of nonsense. In essence, what they're doing is they're cutting their life short. Right, right. Because they used all their mouth purely for Torah. Any other questions? Oh, yeah. When you say... Yes. It's very good never to forget that paragraph. If someone stole from you, you forgive him... Whoever says it, Hashem forgives you for the sins you made. That's one of the things that we learn from Hashem, as far as mercy and forgiveness. If you learn Torah, as we mentioned before, you learn Torah to teach. Why? To learn Torah to teach, because that shows us that we are emulating the actions of Hashem. We are emulating the Middot of Hashem. One of the Middot of Hashem, one of the character traits of Hashem, is forgiveness.

2:24:22So if we, the more forgiving we are, the more forgiving He's going to be on us. But if we're stringent with everybody, then He says, okay, you are stringent, I'll be stringent with you. If you gave people kaf zechut, if you gave people the benefit of the doubt, where someone didn't show up on time to let you in an appointment, if you're one of these people where you're thinking to yourself, ah, they're doing it on purpose, what rude people, they don't value my time. You know, you're like one of these crazy people, a guy who's late five minutes, and you're making it like he went and robbed your house. Because you're taking it so personally, thinking of yourself like you're Donald Trump or something. Okay, then Hashem is going to say, okay, yeah, you were late to the tefillah. Your Kriyat Shema was 37 seconds after the required time. I'm not accepting it. It's going to be the same thing to you. On the other hand, if instead of that, you give people the benefit of the doubt, where uh say oh he's late five minutes i hope everything's okay because i know you would not be late on purpose you start praying for the guy say Tehillim for the guy or something like that or at the very least you don't think bad about the guy then Hashem's gonna do the same thing. He goes oh by the way every time you prayed was right on time but you're thinking to yourself wait a minute like my Kriyat Shema was at 11:30 in the afternoon

2:25:38No, no, no. It gives you kaf zechut. No, no, you were anuss. You were anuss. You couldn't do it earlier. You understand what I'm saying? So you got to give people kaf zechut. Got to give people kaf zechut because that's how you get yourself kaf zechut. There's a really, really interesting part of this parasha I wanted to say that because I have a few people that are really, really nice people but unfortunately they're still stuck with idol worship. still stuck with Christianity. And actually one of them is with Islam. Still not sure. And actually, this parasha has a couple of proofs. A couple of proofs that both Christianity and Islam are fake. You know, since both Christians and Muslims

2:26:39say they believe in our Torah, meaning that it's the first book, and they just believe that, you know, the Muslims have the Quran, that's the second book, and the Christians believe the New Testament is the second book. They believe it's a continuation. So now, that means there's a postulate, meaning that the Torah can be right, and the Quran and the New Testament can be wrong. But it can never be that the Torah is wrong and the Quran and the New Testament are right. It could be possible in one of a few scenarios. Either both could be right — let's say the Torah and the New Testament are right — or only the Torah is right. It can never be just the New Testament being right because the New Testament depends on the Torah. So it can never be right and the Torah wrong. Because that would contradict each other. But it can be that the Torah is right and correct, and the New Testament is wrong. The same concept applies with Muslims. The Torah can be right and the Quran be wrong, or both can be right, but it can never be just the Quran being right. Okay? So...

2:27:57so a lot of people that read the Torah, it's a, you know, they're always looking for proofs. They're looking for scientific proofs, prophecies, and things like that. And Hashem actually made sure that whoever searches for Him will find Him, no matter where they start off. Doesn't make a difference. And it starts off in chapter 4. ah okay, chapter 4, and it says this is actually one of the End of Days prophecies, End of Days prophecies, um

2:29:03When you beget children and grandchildren and will have been long in the land, you will grow corrupt and make a carved image, a likeness of anything, and you will do evil in the eyes of Hashem, your God, to anger Him. I appoint heaven and earth this day to bear witness against you. This is Moses telling the people what's going to happen over time. In the beginning, the generation that's going into Eretz Yisrael at that time, he's not worried about it because everyone saw enough proofs that Hashem is real. They're not going to go worship idols or anything. They saw the punishment. They saw the reward. He's not worried about it. He's saying, he's talking about your children and grandchildren and so on. They're going to sin eventually. They're going to get too comfortable with the goyim, and they're going to start worshipping idols. And he's saying here, I appoint heaven and earth this day, meaning heaven and earth are going to be witnesses to see what I'm telling you right now. If you ever end up sinning, don't forget, they will bear witness against you that you will surely perish quickly from the land to which you are crossing the Jordan to possess. You shall not have lengthy days upon it, for you will be destroyed. Hashem will scatter you amongst the peoples.

2:30:19And you will be left few in number among the nations where Hashem will lead you. So one of the reasons why Hashem spread us to the four corners of the world is as a form of punishment because of idol worship and our transgressions. But also, the benefit of it, by the way, the Zohar HaKadosh says, One of the reasons that, with the good, the chesed that Hashem did with us in spreading us to the four corners of the world is so that, at the end of times, we can help the righteous people of all the nations convert. There's always going to be a Jew in different places that will help people convert. So it's always good, what Hashem does. So then it continues, verse 28: There you will serve gods... handiwork of man, of wood and stone, which do not see, and do not hear, and do not eat, and do not smell. So now He's telling you, not only are you going to go to these foreign lands with the goyim, but over there, you're going to get even worse. You will start worshiping idols, and there are two specific false religions. There are two specific idols that you're going to worship: the handiwork of man. Handiwork of man means it's man-made, of wood and of stone.

2:31:31So wood, it's a cross. Stone, it's Mecca, the stone in Mecca. So if anyone heard this part so far, there's something at the end that you haven't heard, that I haven't told you yet. So don't worry, there's even a chiddush for you, b'ezrat Hashem. So now, We see here, literally, literally, Hashem is specifically talking about the two leading religions in the world other than Judaism. He's talking about this cross. He's talking about this stone. Now, someone can say, listen, okay, this is nice. It's a nice coincidence. It's a coincidence. Wood can be something else. Stone can be something else. So then we look at Torah codes. We look at Torah codes; this is something that even Chazal, Chazal actually talked to us about in both Masechet Megillah and a few other places in the Torah. The Torah codes do exist. When they say, if the Torah is divine, where is Mordechai in the Torah? It says in the verse that talks about the incense offering,

2:32:39And it starts with the word " מִדֹּר". And if you use Torah codes starting with this " מִדֹּר", you'll find the name Mordechai in the Torah. Long story short, Torah codes are where you use math to find hidden words, in order to find hidden secrets in the Torah. So, for example, if you want to find the word "Hitler," יִמַּח שְׁמוֹ So you look for, I'm going to do it in English, obviously, just for argument's sake, but it's obviously in Hebrew. So you're looking for H-I-T-L-E-R. So you're going to look, where is Hitler in the Torah? Obviously, there's no one named Hitler in the Torah. But the computer program, because we're weak-minded in our generation, we can't do things in our head, so the computer program will say, if you could find the word Hitler, where the H has an equal mathematical skip between each letter to make the whole word Hitler. So, for example, H, 50 letters, skips. I, 50 more letters. T, 50 more letters. L, 50 letters. So there's an equal mathematical skip between each one of the letters.

2:33:55to make, then you see the word "Hitler." So it shows that if it's H, 50 letters, and then I, 12 letters, then it's just random. But if it's an equal mathematical skip, then you see that there's design there. What shows that there's even more intelligent design is that the words that you will find, Like, for example, Hitler and Holocaust and all the relevant words to, let's say, the Holocaust, Hitler, or the names of the other resha'im Nazis, or the concentration camp names, or the cities and so on, all of those words, you'll find the codes for them on the same page, in the same parasha. And not only that, the parasha that they're talking about talks about punishment, of what's going to happen if we do it. So you see that these words are positioned specifically, all of them that are relevant to this one subject, are positioned exactly in the same place. So they're not only connected to each other, but they're also connected to the Torah that's talking about it at that point, that page that they're talking about. Same thing with Tu B'Shvat. You want to...

2:35:04find all the fruits. For example, you see all of those fruits, the names of all the fruits, you'll find them in Genesis, Bereishit, where it talks about the trees. And so on. So you'll see, usually, all of these Torah codes are very, very precise. It's not like people think, where it's random, like you could find random words in the book "Harry Potter" and "Fiddler on the Roof." Like idiots think that you could do this stuff in any book, and they compare it to our Torah, but it's pure ignorance. Anyway, everything that's ever happened and will happen is actually in the Torah. You just need to know how to find it. That shows that it's divine. There was actually even a guy who publicized this, who was actually a journalist. He wasn't the one who discovered it; he was just the guy who publicized it. He actually found a code himself that predicted the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. And he went to the Prime Minister of Israel. He went to his office and tried to get a meeting with him, but they didn't let him in. Eventually, he gave a letter that told him, "Listen, it shows in the Torah that you're going to be assassinated." They ignored it, and he got assassinated. It's very, very rare to be able to predict something in the future because you need to know what to look for. We could do it for the past because we know what we're looking for. We know Hitler existed.

2:36:32So, we know to look for the word Hitler. We know that, I don't know, whatever, all types of words existed. Twin Towers. Obama. Osama. All these things, we know they exist, so we know what to look for. What about the random ones, like the 1200s and all that stuff? Is it also in there? Everything is in there. Even this conversation right now, if someone knew how to look for it, it's in here. Everything is in the Torah. Everything that ever existed or will exist is in the Torah already. We obviously don't have the ultimate knowledge to know how to find everything, but there's actually a Rabbi, I forget his name, starts with a G. Glazerson, I think. He's a genius in Torah codes. Maybe, maybe. I don't remember. Yeah. White beard doesn't really give much of a detail, but yeah, he's a white beard. Yeah, so there's, oh yeah, so also for HIV and sexually transmitted diseases, all of them, in a parasha specifically talking about homosexuality. HIV, AIDS, the doctors that discovered it, the monkey, all that stuff. All those words that are connected to that particular issue are in a parasha, in a paragraph that talks about homosexuality being a sin, an abomination, and so on. So anyway...

2:37:48So, this parasha, this verse that I just read to you, this couple of verses that I just read to you, where it says, the god of wood and the god of stone, the two false gods, using Torah codes, you can find, in the entire Torah you can't find it except in these two verses. You can find both the name Yeshu, yimach shemo vezichro, this is JC in Hebrew, and Mecca. both of them using equal mathematical scripts of 49 letters. It starts with the verse 27. It says, so, so I just said everything I just said in English. I said it in Hebrew. And the first word has, for example, the Yud in the first letter of Yosef's name in Hebrew. You skip 49 letters. You get to the Shin.

2:38:55which is the word Shema, you skip 49 letters, and you get to Yishme'un, you get to the Vav. And the same thing with Mecca for Islam. So this is very, very interesting, which I've actually already said in previous shiurim, but I always find this verse very, very fascinating. But something that's a chiddush that I don't think I've said in previous shiurim that Baruch Hashem I will say today, is you actually have a prophecy inside your prayer, inside your siddur, three times a day. Yeah, you have a prophecy about both false gods, both false religions, inside your prayer every day. And what? Aleinu leshabeach. but this is the one I'm talking about, but these two specific ones, I don't know about. But these specific ones, so what is it we have a

2:39:58And it's the last prayer, the last two paragraphs of all three prayers that we do each day. And it's saying it's our duty to praise the Master of all and so on. And it says in it that we have the merit of being connected to Hashem and having the real God. And the other nations bow to false gods. And it says specifically this, that they bow down to vanity and emptiness and pray to a god who cannot save them. So the word "hevel" means vanity and "rik" means emptiness, nothing. So the interesting part is is that "L'Hevel V'rik" actually both are connected to those two false gods. How? V'rik, V'rik has the numerical value 316. Right? Vav is 6. Resh is 200. That's 206. Yud is 10. That's 216. And Kuf is 100. So 316.

2:41:19Yeshu, also 316. Emptiness, nothing. Hevel, hevel also means vanity. So the heh symbolizes the number five. That is the five prayers that the Muslims do a day. Bet symbolizes two. That's the two holidays that they have in Islam. They only have two holidays. And Lamed symbolizes the 30 days of fasting that they do. 30 days of fasting. You know, we do a one-day fast. They do 30 days. It's the Mahmir. It's from morning to night. The point is that you see this prophecy is actually in the words of your prayers. And as a matter of fact, the last verse of Aleinu L'Shabeach, the first paragraph, comes from this week's parasha. where it says that it’s actually in this week’s parasha, let me see, oh, there we go, it's in chapter 4, verse 39.

2:42:39It says, "And you shall know this day and take to your heart that Hashem, He is the God in heaven above and on earth below. There is none other." So the last verse of the first paragraph of Aleinu L'Shabeach, the very same prayer that I just mentioned to you, actually comes from this same parasha also. Last but not least, This same parasha, this same verse, also shows up and answers the question that anyone who knows the book of Yehoshua has probably asked: Why did Hashem let Rachav not only convert, but marry the Gadol HaDor? Rachav, anyone that knows, was one of the most beautiful women that ever lived, one of the four most beautiful women that ever lived. The Gemara says that she was so beautiful that anyone who ever saw her, even once, and then said her name, would have a seminal emission. Just by saying her name three times, Rachav, Rachav, Rachav, they would have a seminal emission. So one of the Rabbis, Rabbi Yochanan, says, "Okay, so I said the name, nothing happened." They responded, "Yeah, but you never saw her."

2:44:01If you would have seen her once, that's how beautiful she was. Imagine that. But she was a prostitute. So how do you let a prostitute, beauty or no beauty, it doesn't make a difference, Hashem made her beautiful. But she was a prostitute, the worst possible sin you can do. A prostitute, running a prostitution house, you not only let her convert, but you let her, actually Hashem tells Yehoshua to marry her. The Gadol HaDor, the one that took over command after Moshe Rabbeinu, the chosen one. Hashem says, go, go marry this former prostitute that converted and... Why? You couldn't find him anybody else? Millions of people, you couldn't find him a nice Jewish girl? Even if you want to convert, okay, convert, tzaddeket, great. Find a righteous one. You couldn't find one that wasn't used by the whole community? Imagine that. why is it this verse, this verse? Why does she say, in chapter two of the book of Joshua, "I know that Hashem has given you the land, and the fear of you has fallen upon us"?

2:45:28and all the inhabitants of the land have dissolved because of you. For we have heard how Hashem dried up the waters of the Sea of Reeds for you when you went forth from Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were across the Jordan—to Sichon and to Og—whom you utterly destroyed. We heard, and our hearts melted. No spirit remained in any man because of you. For Hashem, your God, He is the God in the heavens above and on the earth below. It's the same exact verse we just read for Aleinu L'Shabeach. So the same thing, same last verse of Aleinu L'Shabeach, Rachav says. And we actually use it because of her merit. Not because it's in the parashat Va'etchanan. Why? Simply one word. Out of everything I just read to you, one word. Why? And we heard. Meaning, as soon as she heard about the God of Israel, she did teshuva instantly. She heard, she didn’t see anything.

2:46:49She didn't see anything. She heard what the God of Israel did for Am Yisrael. She said, that's enough for me. I'm leaving the prostitution house. I'm leaving the Goyim. I'm leaving. I'll sacrifice my life. I will die for this God. That's Emunah. Hashem says, somebody that believes in Me without seeing, Am Yisrael saw. They saw the miracles in Egypt. They saw the Sea of Reeds. They saw the miracles in the desert. They saw the miracles at Mount Sinai. What miracles didn't they see? They saw everything. Rahab didn't see anything. She said, I heard. I heard about the God of Israel. I did teshuva on the spot. Hashem said, somebody like that, not only is righteous, I want her in my nation as one of my daughters, marrying the Gadol HaDor, because her teshuva is complete. That's what it means when it says, be complete with Hashem. Why was Noach, Noach, why was he given such a merit to save the entire world? Simply, he was complete. Whatever Hashem said, he did. He didn't ask any questions. He didn't ask any questions. He didn't say, oh, can you show me some proofs in the Torah that Hashem talked about the 39 melachot on Shabbat? Can you show me a proof in the Torah that says, covering the hair for women?

2:48:05Yes, it says both of them, yes. But the point I'm trying to make here is that they didn't ask any of these questions. Why? They heard about the glory, the extraordinary, amazing graciousness of Hashem being present upon us, the teshuvah. It's enough. It's enough. Vayishma, vayishma is enough. That's why Rachav not only converted, did teshuvah, and married Yehoshua bin Nun, but last but not least, eight prophets came out of her. Eight prophets. Any questions? May Hashem give us Emunah Shleimah to get connected to Him. And Be'ezrat Hashem, all of us take all of these words to heart, start taking initiative with Torah, start taking initiative with Kiruv, and Be'ezrat Hashem, also start taking initiative with the Emunah Shleimah and the thankfulness that we need to give Hashem for every single second that we live. Baruch Adonai Le'olam. Amen ve'Amen.