Shiur Torah #30 From Business To Torah, Nepal, Unity, Ungratefulness and More

0:00In the name of G-d, we're at a new location, we'll try to learn some things today. Chazal says that if you're going to start a shiur and you have a new crowd, you should start with a joke. So one time there was a rabbi that went to a new kehillah. And he comes to the kehillah and he says, "Okay, I'm going to give a shiur." They say, "Oh, Baruch Haba, come, give a shiur. It's nice." So he starts talking about Shabbat. He says, "Shabbat is very important. It's the fourth commandment. If you drive on Shabbat, it's a big problem." And he starts, the kehillah stops. They say, "No, no, no, what are you doing? What are you doing? You can't do this. It's too much." He asks, "What do you want to talk about?" They respond, "No, we want to talk about something else." He goes, "Okay." He starts again, "Let's put Shabbat aside for a second." We're talking about kashrut. Kashrut, Hashem told us that we can only eat the pure animals. The impure animals are making us foolish. No, no, no, stop. What are you doing? Have a party after Shabbat. No, you can't. People are not going to come to my party. Okay. So third, you're going to start something else. So he starts talking about...

1:09which is wasting seed. Immediately when he even says the word, he says, "No, no, please, come on, you're trying, what are you doing? Please, you have to stop." He goes, "What do you want me to talk about? Let's talk about Judaism." So, this is our generation. Baruch Hashem, our generation, on one end, we have the good news, which is that we're closer to the Mashiach than any other generation. That's obvious. But we're the generation of the Mashiach. We have all the signs. Fifty years ago, we didn't have any of the signs. Today, whether it's the Red Heifer, or any other type of astrological signs, many other different things that Chazal have told us that are going to happen at the end of times, we have all of the signs. Everything except the Mashiach. So we know we're the dor of the Mashiach. We're the generation of the Mashiach. That's the good news. The bad news is that we still have a large majority of Am Yisrael that are not following Torah and mitzvot. And the reason is one of two things. For 99% of them, there's always an exception to every rule, but the majority of people are either not following Torah and mitzvot either because they don't know or they don't believe. Either they don't know what the Torah says and they think that

2:35driving on Shabbat, it's okay because I'm going to beit knesset. But they don't believe that the Torah is real, that Moshe got it on Har Sinai. No, come on. Tell me some guy, you know, went on a mountain 3,300 years ago and people saw it. They saw the words in shamayim, and they heard the sounds and saw the sounds and all of these miracles. There was a pillar of fire, a pillar of cloud, food coming from shamayim. Come on, this is too mystical for me. It's like Harry Potter. so they don't believe. So our goal should be to learn it so we know it. And the second thing is to teach it. If you can teach it to people, like we're trying to do today, then you do it. If Hashem didn't give you the skill set to teach people, teach your family. If your family already knows, teach them again. If they still don't want to hear you, you teach yourself. The key is to make sure that you have the Torah living inside you at all times. Since there are many new people here who don't know who I am, I'll give a brief introduction of who I am and why you should listen to me or why you shouldn't listen to me. You make the decision based on yourself. Most of the stuff that I say...

3:52In regards to Torah, it's all Torah. It has nothing to do with my opinion. I didn't write it. Hashem didn't ask my permission to write it. He didn't ask my opinion either. I'll say whatever the Torah says, and everyone makes a decision based on that. As far as the other, you know, things that I say on the side, like the joke, that's not in the Torah. That's just my own, so you can discount my own information. So, prior to being here today, I spent about 15 years in the investment business. I started as a broker working for a company, made them a lot of money, and then eventually realized that I'm never going to... The first company was JW Genesis, then it was First Union, then it was Raymond James, and then eventually I opened up my own firm. Raymond James, I think, is based out of Florida. So... No, just everything. You know, mid-size, mid-caps, small caps, large caps, everything and anything that made sense. So I started as a broker, made some other people some money, and then eventually realized that I have to leave the firm and went to another firm, went to Raymond James. And at Raymond James, I initially worked for somebody.

5:04And then, after two months of realizing that the guy was refusing to pay me, I decided that it was time for me to part ways with him, but I still wanted to stay in the branch. So the branch manager told me, "Well, how are you going to pay me rent? Regardless of whether you show up to work or not, you have to pay me $4,000 or $5,000 a month." So I said, "I don't know, I don't have any money, but I'll figure it out. I've been in sales since I was 10 years old, so I figured one way or another I'll find a way to make money." He said, "Okay, fine." I said, "What's your goal?" He said, "To buy you out." He was a very confident young man. And imagine, right now I'm only in the business for a couple of years. These couple of years I've spent working for other people. I haven't made any amount of my own money. But I'm telling this guy that's been in the business for 25 years that I'm going to buy him out. Foolish, confident, not really sure. Eleven months later, I broke a company record. I made $117,000 in a day. About seven or eight months later, I made $600,000 in a day. Then I opened up my own company. And then the average month was between $200,000 to $400,000. And the biggest day of my career was $1.6 million. A lot of money.

6:27open up my own branch, open up another office, open an insurance company, broker-dealer, a hedge fund. Millions of dollars. Throughout all of that time, there was one thing missing: happiness. Money, you can throw it out, but still have enough. Happiness, you can't buy. But I thought that, you know what? The key is to make sure that if I continue making money, eventually the happiness will come. All this time, I thought that Hashem's plan for me in this world was to make a lot of money so I can give a lot of money away. I like giving; I like donating. We donated a few things when we had a chance. And we thought that, hey, maybe this is my purpose in the world, to give. Keep Shabbat? I didn't even know what that was. Do mitzvot? Whatever made sense to me, I did. Pray every day? Yeah, whenever I had time. Tefillin, twice a week. Whatever made sense to me, I did. I just figured if I don't work on Shabbat, that means I'm keeping it. Time passed.

7:49More money came in, more friends came in too. When you get money, you get a lot of friends too. I don't know if you guys have ever had that problem, but you get a lot of friends. A lot of friends. And then one day, Hashem says, okay, you did a few mitzvot that I owe you. And that's why I gave you all this money. But, you did one specific mitzvah that made me want to keep you around for a little longer than just this world. that made me want to keep you around for a little longer than just this world. How do I know? In a few weeks, we're going to read in the parasha that Hashem answers a lot of questions that a lot of people have about why it is that some people follow Torah and mitzvot and have a difficult life, tzaddik v'ra lo, But then there are some people that are wicked, who don't follow anything. I was born in Israel, in Netanya. I came to the United States when I was 10 years old. So, sometimes you see people who do good, and they have a tough life. People who don't do good, based on Torah, I'm talking about—not just murderers and things like that, that's obviously against Torah.

9:12like that, that's obviously against Torah. I'm talking about people that keep mitzvot. They do good, they keep, they wear kippah, they do tefillin, they study Torah, they do everything they're supposed to do that Hashem said. Assuming everyone believes that Hashem exists, and Hashem created the world, and Hashem gave us this Torah, they do everything He says. And they have a difficult life. And then you have some people that are against Torah. And it looks like, it just looks like, they have everything. Brand new car the other day, house, wife, kids, everything you can possibly imagine they have. I was one of those people. I just didn't know it. How do I know? Because Hashem says in the pasuk over here, so this is saying, you must know that Hashem your God is the God and is the faithful one. We'll see if God keeps the covenant. Meaning that Hashem gave us a deal, He gave us the Torah, a few things that are the key parts of being Jewish.

10:16And He's upholding it. He's never going to change it, He's telling you. I gave you a deal. A covenant is a deal. A brit is a deal. We made a deal. It's a contract. It's not like a contract you have between two businessmen where one guy is trying to find a loophole. It's not like an insurance company that's going to try to find a way not to pay you. This is Hashem. So He says, this is, I am Hashem. I don't change my mind. So He says to the people that I love, and who love Me, I keep it for a thousand generations. A thousand generations is figuratively speaking; obviously, it’s eternal, but the point He’s trying to tell us is that I keep My brit with them, and the reward that they’re going to get is for a thousand generations. But to My haters, I will pay them cash to their face now. I will not delay their payment. I will pay them now.

11:28So this answers the question of someone who has everything but nothing at the same time. Meaning, imagine you have a person who has everything in the world, but one thing they don't know is that tomorrow they're going to die. If they don't know, they're still going to live life just like any other day. If they knew, how much value would all that money and all they have really have? The problem is that I was one of those people, and I didn't know it. So, Hashem gave me different signs, and sign after sign, you always try to make an excuse for why it's not the sign. And what ends up happening is that you continue making excuses for yourself, because if it's true, if the sign is true, if Hashem is true, if the Torah is true, then it obligates you. Then you have to do something about it. I didn't want to do anything about it. The problem with those signs is that each sign becomes a little more difficult. So first Hashem says, "Hey buddy, wake up." Then it's a little bit of a shake-up, then it's a slap, maybe a punch, eventually a kick, and eventually Makat Bechorot. Baruch Hashem, I didn't get to the too late part, but I got to the near too late. November 18, 2006...

12:57I had an elective surgery for something completely irrelevant, not dangerous. I didn't even have to take care of it, put it that way. Not gonna get into the surgery part, but I had a surgery. I woke up from the surgery and started screaming in pain. They started giving me morphine, and the morphine didn't work. So they gave me more, and it still didn't work. Eventually, I started asking everyone around me to kill me, and no one wanted to listen. After a few hours, it eventually stopped. The amount of morphine they gave me was the most amount of morphine legally allowed. They said that usually, people would die with half of what I got. But the pain stopped. I was as happy as can be. I felt like I saw Gehinnom. I said, okay, it's time to go home. I actually had a shawarma.

13:57I remember that shawarma. You know why I remember the shawarma? Not because the shawarma was so good. It was actually very good. But because approximately 40 minutes after I ate that shawarma, I woke up from bed and I started screaming again. Only this time, I didn't stop screaming for 62 days. In 62 days, everything that could go wrong, went wrong. Something went wrong with the surgery, some type of nerve was cut. To this day, we don't know. But I got the punch, if you will, from Hashem. For 62 days, if you can imagine it, we went through it. Whether it's liver failure, urinating blood, blood from the eyes, or infections, everything you could possibly imagine. My body changed forever. After the 62 days, which, by the way, when you can't get sleep for more than 15 minutes in a row on a regular basis, which is like the sleep of a horse according to Chazal, you start losing your mind. You start hallucinating. You start seeing things. You don't really want to live. It's not fun. After 62 days, you started coming back to life. You started getting better. You're still walking around when it's very difficult.

15:25Nine months later, there was a complication from the original surgery that we didn't know about. A new infection. It became worse. Ten days in the intensive care unit. Three months later, another surgery. How old were you? Twenty-six. So, imagine seeing a 26-year-old kid with a cane walk slower than an 85-year-old man with a cane. To walk from the beginning of the store to the end of the store would have taken me somewhere close to about 40 minutes. That's before you had money? After I had money. So, you had money before 26? I made my first million when I was 23. So, it wasn't a solo gig? It wasn't? It's a gig. What do you mean it wasn't legit? Oh, money I made? 100% legit. No, I didn't steal money. No, no, no high pressure, no stealing, no nothing. Look at my license. I had eight licenses. I was on CNBC, I was on Bloomberg, I was on CNN, Wall Street Journal, Chinese Network; I was on TV. Pretty well-known person in the business and legit.

16:45So anyway, surgery after surgery, I think five or six surgeries, health became a nightmare, painkillers 24 hours a day. It got to a point where I didn't want to live. One year after another passed, and eventually, I decided that, you know what, it's time to go. It's time to leave this world. didn't really want to stay around, but the only reason I stuck around until this point was because of my mom and my wife. Both of them spent their entire lives trying to make me happy. I figured I owed them that much. Obviously, my father as well, my brothers, but the ones that you saw the tears from all the time are the women, usually. Guys don’t cry. So... one day I decide that...

17:47I have to start planning. And I start making this whole plan of how I'm going to leave this world. And I decide, you know what? Maybe it's my last time I saw my mom on Friday. She wasn't happy. So let me call her and say nice things to her before I leave. So I call my mom, and my mom is crying hysterically, and she says, "Talk to him, talk to him." And I ask her, "Who? Talk to who?" She says, "Talk to Ephraim." Who's Ephraim? "Talk to Ephraim." I don't know who Ephraim is. Never heard of Ephraim. She says, "Talk to Ephraim, he's your cousin." I'm like, "Who's my cousin? Never heard of him." She said, "I'll call you, please." I said, "Okay, stop crying and I'll talk to him. Just tell him to call me." So how do we get to Ephraim? That day, at the same time I'm about to call my mom, my mom is going through a phonebook looking for rabbis that are going to give her son, our poor son, some blessings and hopefully heal him after so many years of struggling health-wise. And she starts calling people all over the United States, all over Israel, anyone and everyone she could find. Only today, no one wants to answer. Hashem dictated that no one will answer. Eventually, she calls a number in Israel.

19:18And a woman answers, and she asks for a certain rabbi. The woman says in Hebrew, "No, there's no such person. It's the wrong number." My mom loses it and starts crying hysterically. Imagine crying for an hour. You're trying to find one rabbi. No one is answering. You're crying for your son. You know he's losing it. You're seeing him. He looks like an old man. He's always in pain. And no one wants to answer. My mom starts crying hysterically and all of a sudden the woman on the other side of the phone in Israel, the wrong phone number, says, "Dolly?" which is my mom's name. My mom says, "Well, how do you know my name? Who is this?" She goes, "It's me, Pnina, your niece. How did I get to you? I don't even have your phone number. We've never spoken on the phone ever. How did I get to you?" "I don't know how you got to me, but if you got to me..." That has to be a reason. Why are you crying? My son, he's in bad condition. I think he's dying. He says, well, I'm looking for a rabbi. If you're looking for a rabbi, why don't you talk to my brother Ephraim? He's a big Talmid Chacham and he lives next door to Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. You'll talk to me? Of course I'll talk to you. You're the famous aunt from America.

20:39So she calls Ephraim. Ephraim is in the kollel, but his wife has him call my mom back. Ephraim and I have never met. When I left Israel, he was still a baby. He starts talking to my mom, hears her out. He asks a question, he says, does he speak Hebrew? Yeah, he speaks Hebrew. Will he talk to me? Because I don't think he'll talk to you. He doesn't talk to me. He doesn't talk to anybody. I became very antisocial. When you're in pain, you tend not to want to have friends. or family, or anyone. At that very moment, when she said, I don't think he's going to talk to you, that's when I called her. At that very moment, remember when I told you a few minutes ago, I told you I called her, and she's hysterical and telling me, talk to Ephraim? That's exactly when I called her. I was calling her to say goodbye, and she's telling me, talk to Ephraim. So you see the Hashgacha Pratit from Hashem,

21:40He watches every single step, and He's only going to give you a test if He knows for sure that you're going to pass it. As soon as you get to a point where you cannot pass it, He intervenes. We got to that point. Ephraim calls me. I agreed to have him call me. Ephraim calls me, and we talk. He tells me my favorite story to this day, which is the story about Yehuda and Tamar. and the complicated parts, the Midrashim, and all these different things, and then I ask him questions and he gives me answers. We talk for an hour and 40 minutes. I tell him a problem I have; he gives me a source in the Torah of someone that had exactly the same problem. I ask him a question, he gives me an answer. Computer. Next week, he calls me at the same time, Thursday at 4 o'clock, and we have a conversation for 3 hours. Same thing, questions and answers. Week after that, we'd talk for five minutes. Week after that, we'd talk for seven hours. And from that day forward, every Thursday at four o'clock, we had an average conversation of about six to seven hours. And obviously, it became even more than just Thursday. And little by little, we did teshuvah. Little by little, we started realizing that the signs weren't just a, hey, you know, and I exist. The signs were, it's time to wake up, son. It's time to wake up.

23:08You don't want to be the one that gets the payment in this world. You want to be the one that gets the payment in the next world. Even though that may mean that the payment in this world may or may not come. The key is to make sure you get the payment for the next world. Why? Because this world, according to Chazal, is like a hallway, a corridor. Where are you going to live? 70 years, 80 years, 100 years? In comparison to the real life, it's nothing. Just imagine a drop of water in the entire ocean. It's nothing. So, seeing both sides of the world, seeing the business world and the ultimate success—success that I think anyone and everyone would ever want if they're after monetary success—we reached it. Of course, I wasn't the richest guy in the world, but very rich. Enough to buy whatever I wanted. What anyone out there that's after material wants, we had it. But still, having that nothing at the same time is mind-boggling. Because what's the difference between someone who's depressed and rich versus someone who's depressed and poor? The guy who's rich is hopeless. The guy who's poor still has hope. Why? Because he says, "I'm depressed now, but once I get money, I'll be rich. I'll show you guys how to be happy." He still has hope that money is going to buy him happiness.

24:35So once we got to that point, we realized it's not so true. So since then, we started learning Torah, Baruch Hashem, and la'at la'at, we started getting more involved in that life versus the business life. I've closed down my business at this point. I'm more focused on Torah. I try to do kiruv, and my goal today and every day is to try to do two things: to help the people that either don't know or don't believe. If you don't believe, we can try to find a way, scientifically, to prove G-d, to prove the Torah. Scientifically. Most people like science. They like philosophy, they like science. They like Darwin, they like Plato, they like Aristotle. They like all those people. So we try to prove it through that teaching. People that don't know, we teach them. Very simple. We try to teach it in a way that's very, very simple. I don't talk about anything that's overly mystical, that's overly high level. I'm not high level. Talk about it in a way that we understand. If anyone doesn't understand what I say, then please tell me. I've done a lot of... One thing that I do know, that I've spent my career doing, is speak. I know how to speak. So, b'ezrat Hashem, if you guys can direct me, we'll speak about the right things. Any questions so far?

25:54I'd just like to make a comment that what I would say is that if you'd be on a runaway train, if you know that in two hours it's going to fall off a mountain, you're stuck on this train, in these two hours, what do you do? You don't care if your stock goes down, you don't care if your mortgage fell off, you make a phone call to take what you have, you do what you do. But what we are is basically on a runaway train, but it's 80 years. Not two hours. So all we have to do is take the same scenario that we have on the train and put it into life. Because life is limited, this life. So we have to look at it and just minimize it into two hours and say the same thing you do in two hours on the train, you do in your life. Kachlon. Rabbi Efraim Kachlon. Yes. And now he has, we have, he started putting shiurim on YouTube. We have a little over 100 lectures on YouTube. He's written several books. He's a big, big chacham, Baruch Hashem. And some of his books are very difficult for the average person to read. No, Jerusalem. One thing in your story that I think I need a better understanding of is when you talked to him, you started to heal right away? No. I got worse.

27:18It got worse, but then you changed your mind from putting an end to everything. Yes. And you said, I'm going to give it a shot. Yes. So when I first started talking to him, things were really bad health-wise, and they got worse. Things weren't as good money-wise, and they got worse. And it continued getting worse. I started losing money, where at the beginning of my career, everything I touched turned to gold. Now everything that was gold turned to dirt. So, health-wise, it got worse, and I was going through my tikkun. I went through seven years of non-stop pain, 24 hours a day. In comparison to where I was, this is 100% healthy. That's the question. Yeah. Was a big part of you wanting to live in this world, was you losing the money? No, no, no, I still had millions of dollars. So it was only the health. I cared less about money. It's one thing, I mean, it's hard to believe, but anyone that knows me for a long time, like the guy behind you, for example, knows even when I had money, I cared less about money. I only liked making it. I gave away a lot of my money, most of the money. I wasn't one of these guys that had toys like Ferraris and planes and stuff like that. I cared less for it. I gave a lot of my money away.

28:41to friends, family, whoever, because money never really meant much to me. But I liked making it because it was a challenge. As far as leaving the world was concerned, no, when you're living 24 hours a day in pain, you tend to lose the purpose of life. So that was the purpose, that was the reason. Now, as the situation got worse, at the same time it got better because I started finding answers. answers the questions that I always had, and answers the questions that I never knew I had. The first nine months of conversations with Rabbi Ephraim Kachlon were literally just questions, non-stop questions, and like a machine, he would answer every question that you could possibly imagine. I've never met anybody like him. And it was on the fly. After some years passed, he used to tell me that before our conversations, he used to pray so he would know the answers. But Baruch Hashem, Hashem gave him the answers, and that's one of the things we also learned from Chazal, is that when someone is trying to help someone else do teshuva, Hashem gives him Torah. Hashem gives him the words to say. So Be'ezrat Hashem, Hashem gives me the words to say that somebody here needs to hear. That's the key. I used to...

30:04Once we got to a point that we started seeing some answers and we started seeing a purpose to life, you start wanting to connect, you start wanting more of it. And everything else loses its purpose. So the things that used to affect you in a negative way don't really affect you in a negative way. The things that used to affect you in a positive way don't really matter to you anymore. Life changes. You change. Still the same person, but you change. And the one main thing that I can tell you is that you achieve the purpose of life. How do I know that you achieve the purpose of life 100% of the time? It's because the purpose of life that everyone here and everyone in the world has is common. It's the same thing. What is it? It's the desire to be happy. Everyone in the world wants to be happy. There's not one person in the world that wakes up and says, "I want to be miserable today. I want to be awful today. I want to cry all day, looking forward to it." No one says that. Everyone wants to be happy. Why do we want to make money? So we can have things. Why do we want to have things? So they make us happy. Because we think things are going to make us happy. Why do I want to get married? Because I want my wife to make me happy. Why do I want to have kids? Because kids generally make people happy. Why do I want to have all of these things that we want? We attach them to happiness. The beauty of the Torah...

31:24...is that by itself, it makes you happy. By itself, you wake up, and you feel completely different. It solves all problems, it teaches all lessons, and it does everything you could possibly imagine. And that's exactly why Hashem said that if there had to be a choice, I'd rather them leave Me than leave My Torah. Because at least the Torah is their way back. When you think about it initially, it's hard to believe. Hashem says if they had a choice to leave Him instead of His Torah, how could that be? Wouldn't you want us to believe in Hashem? Wouldn't you want us to believe in You? Hashem is telling us, believing in Me is subjective. It's something that you're either going to do or you're not going to do, but it depends on your own circumstances. If times are good, maybe you'll forget about Me. If times are bad, oh, you're going to remember Me. Torah, regardless of whether you want to or not, eventually you're going to come back to Me. And that's why every Jew is obligated to study Torah every day. Whether you're busy or not busy, you're obligated to study Torah every day. I started with 15 minutes a day. And that's what I recommend to everyone in the world. Start with 15 minutes a day, 5 minutes a day, something. 15 minutes. 1-5. Everyone has 15 minutes. You start with 15 minutes. See if you like it. Get used to it. After a little while, maybe one more.

32:53I will put my money that you do. Fifteen minutes becomes twenty-five minutes. Twenty-five minutes becomes thirty minutes. Thirty minutes becomes an hour. An hour can become as much as possible. And the reason why is because the Torah is what connects you to Hashem. The Torah is what connects you to happiness. The Torah is what connects you to truth. Without it, life becomes meaningless. So with this Torah... Hashem wanted to give us a book, a love letter in so many words, that's going to teach us how to live, how to achieve life's purpose, how to succeed in business, how to have a successful marriage, how to raise kids, how to achieve everything that you want. That's good. It's in this book. The beauty of the Torah is that every week we have a parasha that we have to read. We have a chapter that we have to read. One of the proofs that the Torah is divine, that it has to come from Hashem, and it's not from some writer who wrote a fiction book, is that each week that we read a parasha, if you study the parasha—study it, not talking about studying it for five years, study it for a couple of hours, an hour—you will find...

34:21something that's relevant to you, personally, at that time in your life, that week. Every week that you will read this parasha, you will find something that's relevant to you, in that parasha, that will help your life. I can't explain that. Oh, Hashem. Me too. And that's one of the amazing things because if you read Harry Potter books or you read any of the other books that are out there that are making millions and millions of dollars for people, not so much. Not so many miracles like that. Not so much help. They're entertaining. But I wouldn't say that you could solve life's problems with them. But Torah helps us do that. Now, we have a lot of different things in these parashot, but there's a few things that we'll go over. And b'ezrat Hashem, if you guys have any questions in the meantime, obviously let me know. Last week's parasha was parashat Naso. Parashat Naso has a very interesting story about a woman that's called Sotah. Sotah is a woman, a wayward woman, a woman that is suspected of potentially cheating on her husband. We don't know for sure if she cheated, but she's suspected of cheating on her husband.

35:37This is a story we can learn a lot about, learn a lot from. In Parashat Naso, it tells us that this woman is suspected of cheating on her husband because she was in a closed room with another strange man. That's not her husband. In Judaism, that's not allowed. If a woman is a businesswoman or has a reason to be with a man in a closed room, The room has to be open, meaning that anyone and everyone can walk in and walk out whenever they want. It cannot be locked. This woman was going against the rules. She got a warning from her husband: "Don't do this again." She did it again. Her husband brought a witness: "Don't do it again." She did it again. Eventually, it got to a point where they had to bring this woman to the Kohen Gadol. The Kohen Gadol... At this point, he was not only the most holy man of the nation, the one that talks to G-d on a regular basis, but he also was the one that was going to show Am Yisrael a miracle right in front of them. He was the private investigator. How? They had a process where they would take a cup of the holy water that came from the kiyor, from the laver,

36:54The kiyor was the place where the kohanim, before they did the holy work, would wash their hands and feet. By the way, other religions that have something called holy water, that's where they got it from. So you know the source: where do they get holy water from? It's from our Torah. Everything that's any good in this world is from the Torah, just so you know. Anyone that doesn't know, anything and everything that's any good has to come from the Torah. It has to have a source in the Torah. Everything. I've tried it and tested it, and tested it, and tested it. Everything that's any good, whether it's a good saying... Like, don't look at the book, don't judge a book by its cover, that also comes from the Torah. Not that specific verse, but it's a verse that says, don't look at the outside of the jar, look at the inside. Everything and anything that's any good, whether it's a saying or something to do, has to come from the Torah. Also, another way that we know it's divine. So they gave her this water, and in this water,

37:55They took a scroll, they put Hashem's name on it with a specific verse, and they dipped it in the water with some dirt—dirt that was in the area of the holy tools. And now, when you put this ink into the water, what happens? The ink comes out; it erases Hashem's name. Now, erasing Hashem's name is a very, very big sin. but Hashem said that for shalom bayit, for peace in the home, I'm allowing you and actually encouraging you to erase My name. Which means that if someone has shalom bayit issues, someone has problems at home, and refuses to fix them, they are doing something worse than erasing Hashem's name. So if you had an argument with the wife, or the wife had an argument with the husband, and you say, I don't feel like talking to her for the next week. I'm going to punish her. I don't want to talk to him. I'm not going to talk to him for the next two years. Not such a good idea. Always make sure to work on the issues. Make sure that there's always shalom bayit. Why? Because that's a way that you achieve your purpose together. When a man and a woman come together, it's not just physical; it's spiritual. Souls become one.

39:10So Hashem says, I'm willing to let you erase My name for shalom bayit issues. Now she would drink this water. If she cheated, they would know it right away. How would they know? She would blow up and die. Her uterus would blow up, she would die. If she didn't cheat, then she wouldn't die. And she would actually get a blessing from the Kohen Gadol. There are two other things we need to know about it. One is that sometimes they did cheat and they didn't die. Why? Because the husband cheated also. So Hashem is only truth. He says, if he's a cheater and she's a cheater, they deserve each other. I'm not going to punish her for something he's doing. The other thing is also, before they made her drink the water, They tried intimidating her and embarrassing her. The first thing they did, as read in the verse over here, is that they took off her kisui rosh. The Kohen shall have the woman stand before Hashem and uncover the woman's head. This is where we learn that kisui rosh for women is from the Torah.

40:37It's not from Rabbanan. It's not some theoretical concept. It's not a style. It's not a trend. It's not whether we like it or we don't like it. A married woman is obligated to cover her hair. How do we know? They were saying that the first thing that would embarrass a woman would be taking off her kisui rosh. So even if this woman actually cheated, even if this woman is a promiscuous woman, cheated on her husband, she would still wear a kisui rosh. Which teaches us that in those days, even the women who were prostitutes also covered their hair. Imagine today, we have women who barely want to wear clothes, let alone kisui rosh. This is also one of the things that we learn from this parasha. The issue of modesty. Modesty is one of the things that no one wants to talk about, but everyone knows is a problem. Kisui Rosh is not just about covering the woman's hair, because Chazal, the sages, tell us that a woman's hair, a married woman's hair, is the equivalent of our private parts, erva. It's as if you're seeing the woman naked. When you see a married woman's hair, it's as if you're seeing her naked. Don't ask me how, why, or when. Hashem said it, that's all He said.

42:00Covering a woman's hair is a very, very big obligation. Obviously, covering the hair is an obligation. Of course, being modest with clothing is an obligation. But sometimes you want to see, you want to understand things based on extremes. What do I mean? Sometimes the best way to understand something is by comparing it to something extreme. Because that's how you can see how ridiculous the thing is, the situation is. So you've all heard of the earthquake that happened in Nepal, right? A lot of people died. I'm sure you've all heard by now, there's also a lot of avodah zarah in Nepal. A lot of idol worship in Nepal. In that part of the world, there's also something very, very interesting. Strange but interesting. They have a temple where they worship rats. Rats, you know, the stuff that you try to kill, you put traps for, rats. People come in, and they make a big bowl of milk, coconut milk, and they have rats drink this milk.

43:11Now, to say that this is insane, obviously I would say you agree. Some of you guys are trying to make me laugh by the smiles that I'm seeing on your faces, but the point is this is ridiculous, right? To say this is foolish is an understatement, right? But we can learn something from these people. Ask yourself, what can I possibly learn from such a fool that's worshipping a rat? How do they go to their temple? How do they dress? Kisuy Rosh. And everyone's modest. Everyone covers. All the women are covering themselves. No such thing as miniskirts. No such thing as tube tops. No such thing as tank tops. No such thing as the clothes that we call common clothes today. So if those who worship a rat are modest, they're modest. Imagine what we should do to Melech Malchei HaMelachim HaKadosh Baruch Hu. one true God. So sometimes, you see people walk around like this on the street, but that's the way it is, unfortunately. Can't fix the world overnight. One thing we can fix is how we attend our synagogues. Don't show up like a prostitute. Don't show up half-naked. God doesn't want to see you half-naked. Simple as it gets. This is one simple thing, you know,

44:38Whatever way you dress at home or everywhere else, we can't build a bed in McDonald's overnight. But, show up to the Beit Knesset and ask for a little bit of tzniut. Simple problem to solve. It's not rocket science. This week's parasha is Parashat Beha'alotecha. Beha'alotecha talks about a lot of different things, and we could spend quite a bit of time on each one of them, but we'll try to find a few things that are interesting. In the beginning of the parasha, it talks about the menorah. And the menorah was all gold. It says something interesting. It says, "This is the workmanship of the menorah, hammered out gold."

45:49From its base to its flowers, it is hammered out. What does it mean, hammered out? Hammered out means that it was all one piece, it was all one nugget, one gold nugget, that they carved out and made into a menorah. Chazal explain to us that it was actually a miracle when they threw the gold into the fire; the menorah just appeared. Moshe Rabbeinu threw it into the fire, this big giant nugget of gold, and it became a menorah. Now it specifically tells us that it's one piece. What's the significance of it being one piece? One of the things that we learn about this menorah is that having it being that it's one piece, it's also like Am Yisrael. Am Yisrael is compared to the menorah. We, in essence, have to be one piece. We have to find a way not only to get along, but to help each other. It's a Jew's obligation not only to be religious, not only to learn Torah, but to make his brothers and sisters do the same. To say that, oh, I know a few things. I'm taking care of myself. Listen, he doesn't want to live. Let him live alone. Eventually, his time is going to come. He's going to be religious on his own. Unfortunately, that's not only a sin; it's a big sin.

47:11Because what ends up happening is that Hashem puts everyone in this world for a certain purpose. And sometimes your purpose is to tell someone that Hashem exists. To tell someone that Hashem is here and He's the purpose. And He puts you in this world to tell that to a specific person. So if that person does not fulfill his mission, he goes up to Shamayim. Hashem asks him, do you keep Shabbat? No, I don't know what Shabbat is. What do you mean? But you were friends with Moshe. Yeah, Moshe never told me. Hashem says, "Okay, bring Moshe up here." Moshe comes up. He asks Moshe, "Did you tell him about Shabbat?" "No, I didn't tell him about Shabbat." "But you knew about Shabbat. You've been keeping Shabbat for 20 years. You knew about Shabbat." Yeah, but I didn't want to bother him. I didn't want to, you know, I didn't want to offend him. I didn't want to turn him off. I wanted him to keep coming over. You know, he could drive to my house on Shabbat and go to the beach after. What's the big deal? Eventually, I thought he would keep it. He would get the point. If he's been driving to your house for 20 years, obviously he didn't get the point. And what happens? Moshe gets a big part of the punishment.

48:23That's the problem for Moshe. Because it's technically Moshe's fault that his friend didn't listen. His friend didn't know. That's one of the things that we need to understand — that it's our obligation to make sure that we have friends whom we tell. The way to do it If you guys see these, there are different rabbis who have CDs. I have a bunch of CDs in my car. I can give you some from Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi. Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi has many amazing lectures. I can give you CDs, cards; you can put them in your car, you can watch them on TV. A lot of really good things that you can listen to, you can give to your friends. There's nothing that helps them do that. That's one of the best ways to do it. Other ways include helping them come to shiurim. Little by little, people learn the truth, little by little. They will want more of it. Question? Yes, I do a shiur in my house every Tuesday. Yes, every Tuesday night. Every Tuesday night. Why don't you change the day? Why don't I change the day to what day? Any day. Oh, to any other day?

49:39Tuesday is a good day. Everybody else? Oh, you have another lesson. Alright, so if we can get... if we can get enough people, we'll do another shiur another day. We have more than one day a week to learn Torah. No, no. My goal is to teach as much Torah as possible. If I can teach every day, I'll teach every day. Uh... The next thing also we learn is that sometimes you have people that pray to God for something. They pray to Hashem, "Give me parnassah," "Hashem, give me a zivug," "Hashem, give me something good." They ask for something. Eventually, the prayers reach God. And God says, "You know what? Fine, I'll give it to you. I'll give you a zivug. I'll give you money. I'll give you whatever you want, whatever they ask for. Whatever people ask for, You give it to them." Instead of continuing to pray to Hashem, instead of continuing to get even closer to Hashem, what do these people do? They go away. No, thank you, Hashem, and they leave. They got what they wanted. They got what they wanted and they leave. In this parashah, we learn a little bit about this.

51:04We learn one of the things that we learn in this parashah is Hashem seeing Am Yisrael. Hashem gave Am Yisrael the man. Gave them food from Shamayim. Imagine every day, you don't have to work, you don't have to go to work, all you get. You get the best food. You want it to taste like steak? It tastes like steak. You want it to taste like peanut butter? It tastes like peanut butter. You want ice cream? It tastes like ice cream. Imagine that. Amazing, right? Am Yisrael is getting it. Am Yisrael is getting it every day. Instead of saying thank you, they start complaining to Hashem because they want something else. They want meat. They want meat. In this parashah, We learn about how much Hashem hates ungrateful people. Someone who gets what he asked for, prays for what he wants, Hashem gives it to him, and instead of getting connected to Hashem, he uses it against Hashem. He complains about it. Or, instead of keeping more mitzvot, he keeps fewer mitzvot.

52:26getting a zivug, but instead of, he finally got his zivug, instead of keeping more mitzvot, he stops keeping Shabbat all of a sudden. Why? He wants to go with his girlfriend to the beach. This is, and some people will tell you, wrong, that Hashem loves everyone. No, that's not true. There are certain people that Hashem, according to the Torah, which Hashem gave us, there are certain people that Hashem hates. Yirmiyahu says He hates them. One of them is ungrateful people. We need to know that everything we have in this world is only because of Hashem. The least we can do is say thank you; the least we can do is show appreciation by connecting to Him. If we connect to Him, that by itself is a show of appreciation. B'ezrat Hashem, we'll have a little more time next time. But if you guys, unless you guys have any specific questions, there's quite a bit more we can learn, but I know we're short on time. We started a little late. But unless you guys have any questions. Questions? Do you have a question?

53:49No, it's not a sefer Torah. It's a siddur. No, it's mutar. Yes, it's mutar. Okay, what's the question? What's the question? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Do you still get a bracha? You wouldn't really know. Yeah, it's a good question. It's a good question. Actually, there's one thing I forgot to say. It's actually a chiddush, Baruch Hashem, we got this week about the cup she was using, which was from cheres, from clay. Everything in the Torah has a reason, meaning that there's no such thing as Hashem mentioning that it's from clay, which they call earthenware, or cheres.

54:59for no reason, has to be a reason. So why did Hashem use, tell, tell Moshe Rabbeinu, listen, the cup that you're going to use for this Sotah, make it from clay? Why not from steel? Why not from glass? Why not from something else? A few weeks ago we learned, Parashat Shemini, about the purity and impurity. And it said there are different things that attain purity, and there are different things that become impure. So, for example, if there's a dead animal that touches something, it becomes impure. Now, in this parashah, it tells us about the different stages of impurity. But there's one thing that cannot be purified, and that's clay. Meaning that if you have, let's say, a clay cup, And if something impure touches it on the outside, it's fine. But if something impure, let's say it's a bug or a rat, a dead rat, goes even inside, doesn't touch it, but goes inside a little bit, it immediately becomes impure. And you cannot purify it. Whereas everything else, like steel or glass or everything else, you put it in the mikveh, it becomes pure. Okay. What does this mean?

56:27The cup that they gave the sotah was also made of clay, to symbolize that so long as everything is from the outside, someone is looking, what can you do? Someone is saying, it's on the outside. The minute someone has even a little bit of the inside of the woman, it's no longer pure. What does it mean? With the clay, what you have to do with it once it becomes impure is you have to break it. Just like with the marriage, you would have to break it if there's ever cheating. It's not necessarily just cheating. Also, in shalom bayit issues, you also know that if a woman develops a relationship with someone, it's not always physical. It's also emotional. It becomes much, much more extreme. And this is one of the things that we have to learn is that Even though in our past life we always want our wives to be friends with our guy friends, it's not always the best idea. It usually isn't a good idea. Even though it seems harmless, a lot of bad things have happened from it.

57:38And there are plenty of stories that you can learn from those things. People that, you know, one day they are married, the next day they are divorcing. Why? Because she's going with his best friend. Or he's going with her best friend, or something like that. It's not just women, it's men too. Obviously, it takes two to tango. So, I mean, as far as the sotah, it's, again, a good question you're asking about if she doesn't die because he cheated. But I know that there's a Beit Din here and there's a Beit Din up there. Sometimes there would be people that everyone knew was guilty, but they can't prove it. They can't prove it without, you know, 100%. And the Beit Din, the Jewish Beit Din, There cannot be any type of uncertainty. It has to be 100% sure that the person's guilty for them to give them a death penalty. To the point where Chazal say, if there was one death penalty in a Beit Din every 70 years, the Beit Din is considered too extreme, it's too strong, not good. They're doing something wrong. Because unlike the regular court,

58:58The secular court, where you're constantly trying to prove people guilty. In the Jewish court, in the Jewish Beit Din, you're constantly trying to prove people innocent. You're constantly trying to find a way of how they didn't violate it, or there isn't enough proof that they did violate it. And that's also one of the big differences between our court and the secular court. Generally, if we have an option... We're not allowed to, like if we have to choose to go to a Beit Din or to a secular court, you're not allowed to go to the secular court. You're only allowed to go to the secular court if you have no option, if someone's suing you or you have to sue someone and there's no way that he's willing to go to a Beit Din. Anything else? The last thing, if you guys want, if you have two minutes, the last thing in the parasha, it's going to be interesting, you'll probably hear about it this weekend. This is actually the parasha where we learn about Lashon Hara, the significance of Lashon Hara. Miriam and Aaron are talking, and they start talking about Moshe Rabbeinu. They say, "Listen, Moshe Rabbeinu left his wife. Hashem told him to leave his wife. He’s saying Hashem told him to leave his wife Tzipora. What is it? We're also prophets. Hashem didn't tell us to leave our wives." So Miriam is telling this to Aaron.

1:00:24She's saying Lashon Hara about Moshe Rabbeinu, not intending to harm him, but thinking that he's making a mistake. Hashem comes to them and tells them that Moshe Rabbeinu and you are also prophets, but the type of prophecy that Moshe has and the type of prophecy that Miriam and Aaron have... Nothing similar. Not even close. The type of prophecy that Moshe Rabbeinu had was a very, very high-level prophecy. No one has ever had the prophecy that Moshe Rabbeinu had. Everyone that gets prophecy, other than Moshe Rabbeinu, was always either sleeping, having a seizure, or they were always lying down or sitting down. They could not stand up. And that's why they say Moshe Rabbeinu is the only one who had prophecy while standing or walking. He could talk to Hashem like you and I are talking to each other now. And because... Moshe Rabbeinu, at any given moment, was able to talk to Hashem. Hashem said that he had to be pure all the time, and that's why he could never have relations again with his wife. Miriam and Aharon, each time they wanted to have a prophecy, had to go to the mikveh and become purified. Their prophecy had to be almost like an appointment with Hashem; it wasn't whenever they wanted it.

1:01:50So because Miriam said something that wasn't good about Moshe Rabbeinu, Hashem punished her. And He gave her something called tzara'at. Tzara'at is a spiritual and a physical disease. The pain that I was describing before by myself is not even close to that, much, much more. And there's no cure. All of Am Yisrael started praying for Miriam. It didn't work. Aaron comes to Moshe Rabbeinu and he says, please, she's our sister, she's our blood. Pray for her. Moshe Rabbeinu says one sentence, one sentence, and she's cured. Which shows you the significance of Moshe Rabbeinu neged the entire nation. That's why it says that Moshe Rabbeinu's prayer is like the entire nation. The equivalent of the entire nation. But this teaches us about lashon hara. Sometimes we are very, very quick to say bad things about people when we don't really know the whole story. I read the story. It said that this woman, one day she...

1:03:04She meets this other woman in a work environment, and she works for some vendor. Anyway, they start working on some project together. She says, "Listen, this is not my kind of business, but I'll help you out anyway as a friend because we live in the same community. I'll help you out." Sure enough, they exchange some emails, they work on this project, and that's it. A few months pass. Woman A sees Woman B. says hi to her, and you know, she doesn't even acknowledge her. She goes, "Hey," nothing. It doesn't really welcome her. It doesn't, like, you know, she helped her out a lot. Woman A gets so upset, she starts telling her friends, "Ah, this woman, I helped her out so much, I did so much for her, I could have charged her so much money, I didn't do anything, da-da-da-da-da-da, became the devil." So one of the friends listening to this says, Maybe you should meet her sister. She's a twin sister and she's much nicer. Meaning that the woman she helped was the first woman. The woman she saw was a completely different woman. But she already assumed it's the same woman. Sometimes we don't know the entire story. And that's why we're obligated to give kaf zechut to every Jew. Sometimes you don't know why a Jew is, or any person, is speeding on a highway. Maybe he's going to the hospital, chas v'shalom.

1:04:33Sometimes you don't know why someone's angry. Maybe he just lost his job. Maybe something just happened. You know, you don't know. Try to give people kaf zechut. Try to make sure that, you know, you don't just be in a hurry to say bad things about people. Even if it looks bad, the reason why Hashem gave us an imagination is so we can use it to give people kaf zechut. And b'ezrat Hashem, we learn as much as possible from the Torah how to give people kaf zechut. And b'ezrat Hashem, we learn as much as possible from the Torah how to give people kaf zechut. And we'll see each other next week.