Shiur Torah #4 part 1 Proofs, Maaser, Shabbat and your DNA

0:00So we're talking about donations and the whole issue of ma'aser. Ma'aser v'titasher, HaKadosh Baruch Hu is telling us that it's the only thing out of all the things that He says in the Torah, it's the only thing that you're allowed to test Hashem. So, somebody that says, for example, listen, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to go work hard, I'm going to make money, once I make money, I'm going to become religious. Or if I make money, then I'm going to donate. Once I become rich, I have some money, but I don't have enough, I want to make a bigger donation, then I'm going to donate. Or once I get married, I'm going to do teshuva. Not allowed to do any of that. Why? Because you're making God into a human being that you make negotiations with. So, by humanizing God, by saying that, God, you give me this, and then I'll do it in return, pretty much, instead of making God the Creator of the universe, which, you know, on one end you're saying that He can give you everything, but on another end you're demanding it from Him, and you're blackmailing Him. You're saying, if you give me this, then I'll do it in return. Torah, you know, that doesn't work that way. So, not only are you not going to get it,

1:22whoever is doing it, but it's something you can get a punishment for. But with Maaser, it's very different. Maaser is something that Hashem specifically tells you, test me. Give 10% of your income, of the net income. So after you paid your main expenses. So expenses, for example, like rent, like your car, like the basic needs that you have in your life, that's expenses. But expenses can't be like, "Oh yeah, I had to have an extra vacation this year to the Bahamas." That's not expenses. That's money that's part of the net income. So you take 10% of the income and you donate it. The number one place to donate, if you want to get the biggest reward, is to people who learn Torah. The problem with people today, and I made this mistake in my life also—it's not necessarily 100% a mistake because it's still a mitzvah—but if you're going to do something, you want to get the full potential out of it. So, for example, if I'm going to work,

2:27I want to work at a job that's going to make me the most money. If I'm going to do a deal and I have a choice of two different deals, I want to go with the deal that's going to make me the most money. If I'm going to decide between two women to marry, I want to marry the woman who's going to yield me the best life. So, same thing with mitzvot. So you have to look at things as what's going to yield me the most. Now, a lot of people, anytime something bad happens, or anytime something really, really good happens, what do they want to do? They want to donate a Sefer Torah. Oh, Hashem, we have the zechut to donate a Sefer Torah, but donating a Sefer Torah is giving you the ability to make a mitzvah, at best, a few times a year. for the whole year. In reality, it's maybe a few times a year. Why? Because most Batei Knesset have several Sifrei Torah. They can't read all of them. They only read one at a time. So if you have a normal Beit Knesset that has three Sifrei Torah, they're going to read, you know, most of the time they're going to read one of them that the rabbi likes, and the other two are going to come out during the holidays. So you're really getting a mitzvah for that Sefer Torah when you donated it, you're getting the mitzvah when they actually are reading from it, and that's about it.

3:29But you've spent $50,000, $60,000, $70,000, $80,000, $100,000, $30,000, whatever you've spent. You've spent tens of thousands of dollars on this thing. And with that money, you're getting... It's a good mitzvah. It's actually one of the mitzvot that you need to do during your life—to donate a Sefer Torah. But then you look at that $50,000 that you donated and you say, what can I do with this money? Another option is to give it to people that study Torah. Why study Torah? Because every minute that somebody studies Torah, one of the sages calculated it, and Rabbi Mizrachi in his lecture told us that somebody that studies Torah has the ability to make a mitzvah for every letter that they read. And based on the math of how many words you can read in every minute, they make 60,000 mitzvot for every hour that they study. 60,000. someone that gives money to somebody who studies Torah is like fire. Fire is such that if you take fire and light another candle, now you have two candles, both with an equal amount of fire. It’s not like one candle took the fire from the other and now has less. So, what happens here is that by supporting someone who is a לומד תורה (lomed Torah), you are sharing in the merit without diminishing the merit of the one who studies.

4:51actually learning Torah, you are a partner to all of these, you're a partner to all of these mitzvot. And somebody that's studying Torah seriously, studying 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 hours a day worth of Torah, you're talking about millions of mitzvot that are happening every single week. In reality, giving even enough money for that person to survive for a month... ...is going to yield somebody more mitzvot than the Sefer Torah will probably do in its lifetime. Because if you look at a lot of these Batei Knesset, that's how it's calculated. Yeah, every letter that you read from Torah is a mitzvah. No, no, no, that's calculated. If I give a Sefer Torah, that mitzvah has to be used for me to get a mitzvah. Okay, so let's say... I have a Torah that counts. Yeah, you got the mitzvah already once. Well, you don't get a mitzvah every time you get it. You thought about it once. Every time somebody uses a sefer, I get the mitzvah. You get the mitzvah. Yeah, but just, okay, so let's say, right, okay, so this is a phenomenal book. You have wisdom here enough for a lifetime to know. Now, somebody printed this in a printing machine, and they put it in a store.

6:06Now, as long as it's in that store and nobody ever read it, is it yielding anyone a mitzvah? Somebody got a mitzvah for donating for somebody to do the work to do it, so somebody got a mitzvah for that. But if it's sitting in the store for 50 years, and nobody ever opened it one time, is it yielding him any more mitzvot? Nothing. Nothing. Same thing with a Sefer Torah. Donate $50,000, $60,000, or whatever thousand dollars to commission a Sefer Torah. It's great. It's wonderful. They read from it four times, five times a year. They dance around the shul with it during Simchat Torah along with the other eight Sifrei Torah that they have. Great. So you have one, two, three, four. You can count the amount of mitzvot that you're going to get throughout the year. So let's say you got a hundred mitzvot for the year, let's say. Say that. Yeah, but let me ask you this question. If you donate a Beit Knesset, a window, or a picture frame, or something that's hanging on the wall, or you donate the floor, any part of the Beit Knesset. Yeah, you're getting a mitzvah for somebody using it, but you cannot compare it, even 1%, to somebody that's learning Torah. Why? Because this entire world...

7:24was put into existence only for Torah. It's not for us to have fun. It's not for us to eat nice meals. It's not for us to drink good water. It's not for us to have nice wives. Initially, it wasn't even necessary for us to get married and have kids. The original creation was with one person. Even though Hashem already planned from the beginning to have a mate for him, the initial creation was with one person. Why? Because Hashem is telling us that technically, you can serve My purpose just by yourself. Why? Because the purpose is to learn Torah. So we ask ourselves, wait, if learning Torah is so important, how can I even compare it to the window, or to the door, or to the nice plaque that I gave with the picture. There's no comparison. Why? Because somebody is learning Torah. It's reading the holy letters that Hashem created the world with. You know, Hashem, when He created the world, He created the world with words. He didn't create it with hands, or with construction companies, or anything. He created the world with words. And in Mount Sinai... to the window, or to the door, or to the nice plaque that I gave with the picture. There's no comparison. Why? Because somebody is learning Torah. It's reading the holy letters that Hashem created the world with. You know, Hashem, when He created the world, He created the world with words. He didn't create it with hands, or with construction companies, or anything. He created the world with words. And at Har Sinai,

8:35One of the things that we learned is that Am Yisrael, there were millions of people surrounding the mountain, and they saw Hashem's words. And in the book over here, The Coming Revolution, now they changed the name to Science Comes of Age, by Rabbi Zamir Cohen, it actually has something very, very unique and very amazing. It talks about that whole verse of what do you mean Am Yisrael saw Hashem's words? How could that be? How could they see words? How could you make sound into something that you can see? So a few scientists looked into it and started researching it. A couple of people came up with different programs where they connected the microphone to different machines. These two machines went about it in different ways. But in so many words, the machines, like for example, when you have a lie detector test and you say something, there's a little thing that makes a chart. It goes up and down, drawing something.

9:40"And that's how you know if somebody's lying or not lying. Same thing with somebody who has any type of test in a hospital. When they put the machine on them, you see whether he's alive or not. They have that little chart, that little pattern that goes up and down. So they connected a certain type of machine, a sound machine, to a person. And the person was saying letters. And it was something very different about the Hebrew language than any other language in the world. Anytime someone said a Hebrew letter, the machine would start going and it would actually draw the shape of the letter. With no other language did that happen. It's right here, I'll show it to you. And it shows you the pictures of it. It's something extraordinary." a Hebrew letter, the machine would start going and it would actually draw the shape of the letter. With no other language did that happen. It's right here; I'll show it to you. And it shows you the pictures of it. It's something extraordinary. It has the pictures. You haven't opened the book. I gave you the book already a month ago. No, but there are a lot of pages in this book. Your copy is over there, by the way. This thing right here, you'll see it. I hope you guys see it.

10:52This book is something out of this world. Another guy actually had a similar type of machine, but originally, when he tried it, it wasn't working. Then he realized that sound, unlike most other things, can also be three-dimensional. So he connected it, and he changed the machine to make the sound appears something three-dimensional, so his shapes, which is the page before, came out the same thing, drew the letters in three-dimension. Only the Hebrew language. Only the Hebrew language. No other language came even close. So this is actually what they saw on the screen or they filtered it around? No, no, no. This is what they see on the screen. So they saw a white screen with... The white screen has nothing. It's a white screen and then it starts drawing it. And look at this. This one made right here with three-dimensional. Looks like fire. It's the color that they're using. The other one is clear. The other one is clear, sure. But the beauty here is that it's only with the Hebrew language. So what does that teach us about this verse? They saw it on the screen. So when Hashem was talking, His sounds, and even the sounds of the

12:15...of Him coming, all the sounds that were being made were being shown in the sky as three-dimensional sounds. The sound, the letters, the words that He was saying were being spelled out in the sky. And millions of people saw this. How do we know that Judaism is even real? How do we know that Har Sinai actually happened? How do we know? Okay, so it's written in the book. Okay, so if I go upstairs, I don't know, I sit there for a few hours, I can write you maybe a few pages, and I tell you, okay, Hashem gave this to me. How do I know this is real and mine is fake? How do I know? The difference here is that in the Torah, Hashem gave us the Written Torah and the Oral Torah. The Oral Torah is the Gemara, Mishnah, the Zohar, and several other parts that are never-ending. but it's the sages who gave us the core of it, and we continue expanding upon it. The Torah Shebichtav (Written Torah) is the source of all the mitzvot that we have,

13:25is from there. Meaning that the Written Torah, the story of Moshe, Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, Adam, Chava, Noach, all of the sages in it, David HaMelech, the Tanach, all of these things are something that's very, very unique because it's telling us the history of the world, the history of Am Yisrael, but it's also telling us the 613 mitzvot that we have to do. 248 that we have to do, 365 that we're not allowed to do, things that we're not allowed to do. But one of the most important mitzvot is Shabbat. Why do we know it's one of the most important mitzvot? Because Shabbat, it tells us in the Torah specifically, that its punishment is different than a different punishment. What do you mean? If somebody murders someone, the punishment is death. Okay. So, I go and I murder this guy, My punishment is death. So that's the punishment of the Torah. But the punishment for breaking Shabbat is worse. The punishment for breaking Shabbat is not only death, but it's also death in the next life. And more critical that a lot of people don't realize is that someone who breaks Shabbat is also cut off from the nation.

14:55What does it mean? Someone that does not keep Shabbat is cut off from Am Yisrael. He's not considered Jewish. He's considered the equivalent of a non-Jew. As a matter of fact, if the non-Jew is righteous, he's considered higher than someone who is breaking Shabbat. How do we know this? Because a lot of people have a problem with the Torah where they say, "Listen, this is somebody's translation. We're not so sure." With this, we're sure. How do we know this? We know this from Sefer Shemot. Anyone who knows a little bit of Hebrew could understand this. Even someone who knows English could understand the translation of it very, very simply. And it's the most important thing that someone needs to understand. So you have here, Vayomer Adonai el Moshe le'emor. This is Sefer Shemot, verse 12. until 14. Now you start the serious part. So you have first, he's telling us, keep the Shabbat.

16:12Then he's saying, someone that breaks the Shabbat, so he's saying mot yumat. Why mot yumat? Because there's two deaths: there's death here and in the next world. So he already told us we're getting killed here and then killed in the next world. So already that one we've established. Ki kol ha'oseh ba'melacha, v'nichreta ha'nefesh ha'hi mikerev ha'am. What does v'nichreta ha'nefesh ha'hi mikerev ha'am mean? Nichreta means cut off. Ma ze ha'am? Ha'am is the nation. And here you go, the English translation. Hashem says to Moshe, saying, "Now you speak to the children of Israel, saying, 'However, you must observe My Sabbaths, for it is a sign between Me and you for your generations.'" to know that I am Hashem, who makes you holy. You shall observe the Sabbath, for it is holy to you. Its desecrator shall be put to death. Whoever does work on it, that soul shall be cut off from among its people. So here's the problem, here's the dilemma. Most rabbis don't tell this to people. Why? Because they say that, listen, if I tell people that if you don't keep Shabbat, you're not really considered Jewish,

17:32They could either get really upset at me, they could fire me from the Beit Knesset, they could show me their passport, which somebody did to me one time. I told them, listen, if you break Shabbat, you have a verse over here, and it's shown several times, not just one verse. There are multiple verses that say the exact same thing. Shabbat is one of the most critical and repetitive things in the Torah. Why? Because it's the core of Judaism. It's one of the three core mitzvot: Shabbat, tefillin, and brit. Brit is not just brit milah for the child. Brit is also to keep the brit, meaning not having relations with women on a regular basis without getting married, and also with non-Jews and so on. So now, someone who is... I told them, listen, I understand that you feel like going to shul is very nice. But after that, you decide that you want to watch TV, go to the mall, go to the beach, and drive wherever you want. And that's great for you. But I'm telling you that you're wasting your time going to shul because it's not going to help you. If anything, it's going to make it worse for you. She said, "What do you mean? I'm going to shul." I'm like, "No, no, I'm telling you. I don't have anything to lose by telling you the truth. I only have something to gain. You not liking me doesn't really matter to me."

18:47I'm trying to save you. So I'm going to tell you what happens. If you break Shabbat, you turn on the car, you smoke a cigarette, you do anything like that on Shabbat, the problem here is that when you do that, you're not even considered Jewish. His immediate response to me is, "What do you mean? I have a Jewish passport." That was legitimately his response. He actually was taking it out of his pocket, showing me, "Look, it shows on my passport I'm Jewish." "You said this to somebody?" "Yes, of course, I said it to several people. I say it to anybody who breaks Shabbat that actually is willing to listen." Because it's the truth. I spent most of my life not knowing. And I know for myself that not knowing hurt me. And the reality of it is that anyone who does not keep Shabbat, anyone who does not keep the mitzvot of the Torah, 99% of the time it's because they don't know. Either they don't know that the mitzvah or the sin is not allowed or allowed, or they don't believe that the Torah is real. And that's most of the time. Most people don't believe that the Torah is real. Most people think it's a very, very good history book. And some people even called it one time, I heard one of my dear friends called it the best story ever told. I think people know that it's wrong. Either they don't know that the mitzvah or the sin is not allowed or allowed, or they don't believe that the Torah is real. And that's most of the time. Most people don't believe that the Torah is real. Most people think it's a very, very good history book. And some people even called it, one time, I heard one of my dear friends call it the best story ever told. I think people know that it's wrong.

20:11People know it, right? Everybody knows. They don't know. But how long is it? That's the thing. So here's the thing. So, if the Torah tells me that if I... What's the consequence? What happens? What's the punishment? What's the punishment? I don't know. You don't know. You don't know. They don't know. As long as you know the things He tells you, you... Things are a little bit different. So why do we start going... But you said before we started talking about it, you said it's worse than to kill someone? Yes. The Torah specifically tells us if you kill somebody, your punishment is death. Return death. You get one death. Here you get two deaths, and plus you're not considered Jewish. But the beauty of being Jewish, the advantage of being Jewish, which the next question should be, what do you mean? So if I'm not considered Jewish, how could I be doing teshuva? That's the benefit of being part of Am Yisrael originally. The benefit that you have of being originally Jewish is that you always have a way to return. If you do teshuva and you start keeping Shabbat, it's as if, with full intention...

21:21It's as if you've kept all the Shabbats that you previously didn't keep. You're back to everything being clean. You're as if you're brand new. And a Baal Teshuva is considered even higher than someone who's naturally been keeping it his whole life. Why? Because a Baal Teshuva is someone that saw the other side. That saw and stared the Yetzer Hara in the face. and decided to go against him and to go towards Hashem. Where someone has been religious his whole life, Baruch Hashem, it's phenomenal, and God willing all of our children will be that way. But they've never had that test, not to the same extent. So they don't really know what the other side looks like. So that's why they say that some of the biggest sages in history, Rabbi Akiva came from a family that were gerim. Rabbi Akiva himself was a Baal Teshuva. He was completely against the Torah. He was so against the Torah, and he was considered one of the biggest Jews in the history of, one of the biggest human beings in the history of mankind. Even Moshe Rabbeinu himself said to Hashem, why are you giving me the Torah when you have Rabbi Akiva? He saw, Hashem showed him the future. He showed him Rabbi Akiva teaching Torah, and he says, "I don't understand what he's teaching."

22:34And then towards the end, Rabbi Akiva said, "This, everything that we are presenting to you, we got from Moshe Rabbeinu at Har Sinai." Meaning that he elaborated on everything that we originally received from Moshe Rabbeinu at Har Sinai. Now, Mount Sinai. So now here's the key. Rabbi Akiva was a Ba'al Teshuva and he ended up becoming not only one of the most important Jews in history, he ended up becoming a rabbi with the biggest congregation in history of 24,000 students. Show me one rabbi in the world that has 24,000 students that are so smart that each one of them knows more Torah than all of the people in the world today combined. Each one, the least knowledgeable, knows more Torah than anybody else in the world. These are not normal people; these are people who gave their whole life for it. You have people that, some of the biggest sages in history were not only people that did Teshuvah, you have some of the biggest, like Avimelech, or you have Onkelos. These people were converts. It's even a farther extent than a Ba'al Teshuvah. A Ba'al Teshuvah is somebody that went and saw the bad side,

23:40was Jewish, saw the bad side and said, no, I don't want to do it anymore. I'm going to go and I'll be with Hashem. A convert is somebody that's completely in a different world. A convert has been in front of different, you know, different worlds altogether and chose to go on Hashem's side. It's a huge, huge, huge, huge advantage to have that. And when you decide to go with Hashem, In such a beautiful way, Hashem gives you special protection. So that's why, number one, it says that a Baal Teshuva stands at a place that regular people who have been religious their whole life can't reach. And the converts, the protection that Hashem gives the converts is mentioned in 46 verses in the Torah, more than anything else. The protection that Hashem and the love that Hashem gives to converts is mentioned more than anything else in the Torah. Now, if I'm already born Jewish, my mom is Jewish, my father is Jewish, I speak a few words of Hebrew, and now I have a Hebrew passport from Eretz Yisrael, and I have a few friends that like to play soccer on Shabbat, and I don't keep anything. When you know the truth, you say, I'm insane. Which means that there's only one of two ways. Either...

25:03you don't know or you don't believe. In my opinion, it's a combination of both. Why is it a combination of both? Because if you really knew that the Torah is real, there is no way that you would spend one minute not looking into it. How do we know that? If we're sitting over here and we got the amazing experience, nothing less than what Moshe and Bnei Yisrael saw at Har Sinai, where we had Hashem come to us in some way or another and tell us, "I am Hashem that took your nation out of Mitzrayim, and I am the one that's the father of Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, and I'm telling you everything that the Torah says." Now we're sitting over here, we're learning a little bit of Torah, Hashem comes to us, we know it's real. amazing experience, nothing less than what Moshe and Bnei Yisrael saw at Har Sinai, where we had Hashem come to us in some way or another and tell us, "I am Hashem that took your nation out of Mitzrayim, and I am the one that's the father of Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, and I'm telling you everything that the Torah says." Now we're sitting over here, we're learning a little bit of Torah, Hashem comes to us, we know it's real. We know for sure it's real. So we're going to do what he says. Now, we're not Moshe, though. That's the problem. But the beauty is that we can prove that the Torah is real through this book. All you have to do is read Hashem's letter. If I got a letter from a very famous athlete or famous personality, let's say some billionaire or some superstar of some kind in the world,

26:26And he sent me a long letter telling me he needs me to do something, but the mission of what needs to be done is in a different language. But this is from somebody that's huge, somebody that's very important to me. I want to know what this is. So the first thing I'm going to do is run everywhere that I possibly can to find someone to translate this letter for me. I don't speak Spanish, I don't speak Italian, I don't speak all of these other languages. It's in one of these languages. Please, please, please translate this letter for me. Why? Because it came to me from a very important person. Hashem wrote us a letter. It's right here. This is part of the letter. If you don't understand Hebrew, you have an English translation. If you don't understand English, you have a Chinese translation. Any language that you want, the Torah has been translated to. If you want to know the inner meaning of it, you have the Mefarshim. If you want to know even more, you have this phenomenal series. If you want to know the inner stories, there's one thing that I'm reading right now, Me'am Lo'ez. This is something that, if you want to know deep parts of the Torah, the stories, the amazing parts of it, I highly recommend buying the series. It's extraordinary. The stories will blow your mind with how amazing the Torah is. If you want to know how to do the mitzvot and what to do, you can't learn that from the Chumash. Why? Because Hashem tells us that you have to keep the Shabbat. Okay, how do I keep the Shabbat? There are no details of how to keep the Shabbat. Where do I get that? I get that from the Oral Torah, the Talmud Bavli.

27:53all of these. The Gemara that we have out there, given to us by the Sages, provides the details of how to keep Shabbat. You have 39 melachot, 39 categories of work that you're not allowed to do on Shabbat. What are they? You will find out from here. All of the story is in here, the details are in here. And the beauty of it is that if you put in the time to learn one thing at a time, not only will you find out what to do, but more importantly, you'll find out why you're even doing it. And that's the key, and I think that that's one of the missing parts for Jews today. That was one of the things that was missing in my life, is that I saw, and I always liked the Torah, I always found it interesting, but I never really found the connection to say, why do I need to do this? Why do I need to add these restrictions to my life? Why do I need to stop doing this, and stop doing that, and stop doing all of these things? But once you find out who you're dealing with, you start looking at other people and say, how are you not doing it? How can you still look at yourself with a straight face and finish the Tefilat Shemoneh Esrei with the last verse of Tefilat Shemoneh Esrei, one of the last parts of Tefilat Shemoneh Esrei, you're telling Hashem, Hashem, I've poured my heart out to you,

29:23Please accept my prayer, in so many words. But the whole time you were praying, you were playing with your phone. How could that be? So, the key here is that when you have the truth, when you're learning about this, and you know you know that Hashem really gave you this Torah. He gave you the truth, and you're finding out why you're doing what you're doing, then you're put in a position where everything is very different. You start looking at things very differently. You start seeing, okay, wait, this Hebrew language that I learned and took for granted my whole life... And I thought, oh, it's a nice language like any other language. And I really only wanted to grow up learning how to speak English because English is such a pretty language. It's in more movies, and more superstars talk it, and the government people speak English. I spent years and years developing my English language only to find out in my 30s that I completely missed out on the most important language in creation. The only language that you can see...

30:39The only language that you can feel. The only language that was used to create this world. So you have to catch up. It's never too late. Or be an Akiva star at forty years old. We're still young. But the key is to start. The key is to take it seriously. The key is to add these things to our life and find out who am I dealing with here. I'm dealing with Hashem. I'm dealing with the Creator of the world. I'm not dealing with some superstar that may be superstar today and a homeless guy next week. I'm dealing with the Creator of the world. I have to have a connection. And if you pay attention to the details, you start seeing the creation. So here's an example. One of the things that we see now that we're in year 5,775 since creation is that everything in creation is being given an opportunity to repent and get closer to Hashem. What does that mean? The reason why Hashem created the earth and the world and the universe in six days is because each day represented one thousand years that the universe would exist. The seventh day is a day that He stopped creating, so that means that each of the days represents a thousand years.

32:00of the days represent a thousand years. That means that the world was, in essence, planned to exist for 6,000 years. We are now in the year 5775. That means that there are 225 years left at the most before the Mashiach comes. However, it does not mean that he is going to wait until the year 6000. He can also come tomorrow. That’s why we are all supposed to be praying for him to come. Now, That means that we're running out of time. How do we know that we're truly running out of time and it's not going to be the year 6000? It's going to be much, much sooner than that. How do we know? Because we're seeing the world and nature itself change. Now here's an example. A couple of hundred years ago, some of the things that we eat today weren't part of our food chain. So, for example, potatoes. And lettuce were not necessarily considered part of the human food chain for most, you know, for the elite people. Maybe for the lower-class people, they would eat anything they could find. But some of the people that had a little bit of money did not consider that human food. They considered it food for their cattle. So, potatoes would be given to different animals, and so would lettuce.

33:15Now each thing in creation, the Torah tells us that each thing in creation has a nefesh. In order for it to exist, it has to have a certain part of a soul. Nothing exists from nothing. Everything has to have a certain part of a soul. Now, in order for it to serve its purpose, it has to go up a level. How does it go up a level? By somebody eating it after doing a beracha, it goes up a level. But if all of the potatoes are stuck underground, and they're left on the ground, and the only thing that eats them is a horse, or a cow, or some other animal, then the potato, or the lettuce, can't really elevate itself. It's serving a purpose, but not a full purpose. So Hashem made us have a desire to start eating these foods. And as you saw in the last couple of hundred years, they've become such a huge part of our food chain, that right now potatoes... is the number two most eaten food in the world, behind corn. So it went from being something that wasn't even considered human food to something that's considered food, that's part of our day-to-day life. So it's one example of how Hashem is showing us that things are changing. Now, what can we learn from all of this food? How do we see the Creator? Okay, that sounds nice, that it used to be not food, and today it's food, but that could also happen to what people call nature.

34:41They discover new fruits, and it doesn't really make much difference; it doesn't affect my life. So what can we learn from all this food? If someone has Yirat Shamayim, meaning that he has fear of Hashem and is paying attention to the details, then he could see Hashem's creation everywhere. So how do you see it in food? If you take any fruit and you look at it, the most beautiful part of any fruit is, is when you cut it in half and you see the inside and the outside of it. That's when you see the full creation. Why? Because you see that there's a peel that protects it. For example, let's use an apple. You have a peel that protects it. It's white and pretty as the, let's say, the core part of it, or the most part of it, the body of it. And then you see that it's always in the same place. It's never on the right side or the left side or the bottom, but for the most part, you see it. The seeds are right in place, right in the middle. You have two here, two there. There's a little shield. There's a little shield that protects them. And you see...

35:49how beautiful and how perfect this creation is. So we've moved up a level. Great. Your own. We like apples now. We like bananas because also when you cut them open, you see the creation. We like cucumbers and everything else. When you open it up, great. What did we achieve here? What can we possibly learn from this apple, from this cucumber, from this banana, or from any fruit? Now, since we already realized that... ...a fruit, for it to serve its purpose, we have to eat it after blessing it. That means that after we eat it, it goes closer to Hashem. Now, if Hashem graced us with His presence, we wouldn't act like we're acting. We would obviously be, you have a king, you have the King of all kings. in front of you, you act a little different. Even if you have your teacher from high school appear to you, you start acting differently. Imagine the King of all kings, right? The fruit's no different. When you peel an apple, what happens? What's the first thing that happens after you peel an apple? 25 seconds into it. It darkens. When you take the peel off, take the peel off the apple, it becomes dark.

37:10So, what is it doing? It's hiding; in essence, it's replacing the peel, and it's hiding the beauty that's still inside. What is that equivalent to? You just took off the apple's clothes, but the apple now realizes that it's one step closer to seeing Hashem. It's shy, it's going in front of the King of Kings, it doesn't want to show you its inside. So the apple covers itself by becoming darker. Even though it knows that its purpose is to be eaten, it's still very shy, and it's still going to be tzanua. So if the apple is worried about being modest, being tzanua, how are women everywhere wearing tube tops and tank tops and skirts and this and that, and showing their body to the world as if they're some billboard? The apple is worried about it. But we're not. And that's just from paying attention to a creation. It's a very small example. There are millions of examples. This is just something that is extraordinary that I just learned recently that I find it amazing that if any fruit you take, you take a banana, it becomes dark. You take the peel, once you have the peel on, everything is great. You have the clothes on. You take the peel off, everything changes. And that

38:37And it's showing that these creations know where they stand. And that's another thing that's also in this book. One of these scientists took a lie-detecting machine and connected it to a plant to see if the plant reacts in any way. He realized that when he said that he was going to burn the plant, the machine went crazy. the plant showed signs of fear. And then he realized that he didn't even have to say it out loud; even if he was just thinking he was going to burn the plant, the machine went crazy. Eventually, what they saw is that if he brought another plant and he, in his mind, thought that the other plant was prettier than that plant, the plant started dying. Everything in creation is working as a life form. The fact that we don't know it doesn't mean it's not there. What we have to do is realize that our job here is to find out what this letter that Hashem wrote to us says, what these instructions are, and find out different things about it that show us that it's real, that it's really from Him. We need to validate it.

40:04There's plenty of material on the internet, in books, and countless other sources these days that you can find to prove the Torah. One of my favorites is the Torah and Science DVD. I think it's one of the most amazing, if not the most amazing, movies ever made about Judaism and proof of the Torah above anything else in this world. Really? Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi, I think it's something extraordinary and a must, must-see if you can't watch four hours straight. If you need to, it's not ready in my car. The DVD is available; you can watch it on a DVD, you can watch it on the internet, and you can have it in lectures. I gave you the CDs, but I'll give you the links if you want also. The movie is divided into three parts, so you don't necessarily have to watch all four hours straight. You can watch an hour here, an hour there, and another hour later. Within one or two days, you can watch this movie, and it changes your entire life because it shows you proof after proof that the Torah is not only real, but it's something beyond anything you could have imagined.

41:10The same concept with this book, The Science Comes of Age, or The Coming Revolution by Rabbi Zamir Cohen. It shows you different parts of creation, no less than some of the stories I said today. Some of them I even got from his book. Some of them I had on my own. But about the perfection of creation, because these people have spent their lives. Rabbi Zamir Cohen is a big, big, big chacham. If we can become 1% of him, it will be a big accomplishment. Rabbi Mizrachi is a huge, huge tzaddik, huge chacham. If we could become 1% of him, it would be a huge accomplishment. These people have spent their lives looking into these things, finding out the answers, and making it easy for us. And what do we do? We spend our lives playing video games. We spend our lives chasing money. We spend our lives chasing women. We spend our lives chasing everything that we're not supposed to do. Everything that we're supposed to do, we say, "I don't have time for this, I don't have time for that. I'm busy with this, I'm busy with that." But what we need to do, and that's the thing, is realize that the information is right in front of us. The proof that it's real is the most important part we have to address at step number one. Why? Why do I need to know that it's real?

42:24Before I find out how to do Tefillin, before I find out how to keep Shabbat, before I find out who was up there on Mount Sinai, was it just Moshe? Did he have some people? How long was he there? Did he go there for 40 days, or was it 120 days because he had to go up three times? Why did Am Yisrael, after seeing all the miracles, all of a sudden start worshipping an idol? How could this be? Does it make any sense? Is that more important than finding out if this is real? No. Why? Why? Because first I need to know that this is legitimate. Once I know this 100%, once I know this is given to me from Hashem, then I know I'm going to spend my life looking into this thing. I want to know what He says. But until I know for 100%, 1000% this is legit, I'm never going to take it seriously. I'm always going to have my doubts, even if they're subconscious. Because as long as I'm not doing anything I can to find out what this letter says, that means that there's a part of me that doesn't believe it. And that's why I say that it's a mix between not knowing what to do and not believing. And that's what we talked about in the first shiur. I'm not sure if you were here or not, but how most people that say they believe, believe in something different

43:52than what the Torah says. Meaning that they believe in a different type of Hashem, unfortunately, than what Hashem really is. If I knew that Hashem is real, then I know that I have to spend my life finding out what He's telling me to do and being excited about it. But if I have doubts, I'm not going to do it. Moreover, if I'm in a situation where I do some things, I don't do some things, I don't really keep Shabbat, but you know what, I'm going to go to holidays, I'm going to shul on the holidays, and I do whatever I want, chofshi. Whatever I want, I do it. But if I have a problem, Sefer Tehillim, open it up, I'm reading for three hours straight. Everything is good, I'm on the beach, having a good time. What does that mean? That means that I think I'm treating Hashem like a human being. I'm treating Him like one of my friends. I'm not treating Him like the Creator of the universe. I'm not treating Him as someone that is the only reason why I'm still alive and breathing in this world. And that's one of the things that people just have to learn a little bit to find out how we are even here. Even the people that believe in the nonsense stories of science that tell you that everything started from a Big Bang

45:12Even the people that really delved into it, like Einstein, like Stephen Hawking, even though he changes his mind on a regular basis, and people that really, really got to the highest level of science, concluded that there has to be a Creator. Why does there have to be a Creator? Because they cannot explain certain things about creation. First of all, even if everything came from a Big Bang... Nothing comes from nothing. There has to be something. What created this bang? What created the first molecule, the first cell? There has to be something. So that's number one. Where did the first thing start? The second thing is also, when you look at everything in creation, everything has cells, and these cells have atoms, and the atoms have something very unique. You know, you have the nucleus, And you have something, you know, you have the electron going around it. Very, very, very fast. Over and over and over and over and over again. Now, when they started really delving into this thing and using high-end microscopes, they saw that the size difference between the nucleus and the part that's going around it is significant. It's such a huge difference in size.

46:39that it's the equivalent of the distance between us and the sun. The actual material part of each atom, from which everything is created, is so little that if the spinning ever stopped for just a millisecond, the object would disappear. So, what does that mean? Here you have everything in the world depending on this thing that's spinning. And the way you could, I guess, visualize it is, for example, you see a fan. The fan's going really fast. It looks like there's one blade. But in reality, there are two or four blades, maybe even more. But it looks like there's one blade. Same thing with this thing. To us, this book is real. To us, this iPad here is real. This table is real. This house is real. Everything is something solid. In reality, it's all energy and it's things that are moving fast. But to us, it just looks like it's something solid. In reality, it's not. It's an illusion. Right. So if it ever stopped for a millisecond, if the whole universe stopped spinning for just a millisecond...

47:57everything would disappear, and you could take everything in creation and fit it all into a box of matches. All of the matter and all of the universe can fit into a box of matches. This is concluded by scientists, not just the Torah. So now I have a question. If I don't believe that this is a letter from G-d, what's keeping all these atoms spinning? Where are they getting the energy to spin? Nobody can answer about it. So that's the thing. So this is another way that it's necessary to know that this is really, really divine. You need to find out that this is real. Because if you find out if it's real, and that's why I highly recommend you and anyone else that's watching this, the first thing they need to do is take the movie "Torah and Science." There's a Hebrew version, and there's an English version. And actually, there are translations of it into other languages too.

48:57It's the number one most popular religious Jewish movie in history. It's extraordinary and it's full of proofs. Take that, watch it. Watch it as many times as you can. By the time you finish watching it one time, you will know this is not only real, this is something beyond your expectations. By the second time, you'll think it's the greatest thing ever. By the third and fourth time, you'll become addicted to it that you're going to want to pretty much publicize it to the world. Look, I'm trying to. It's something extraordinary because we literally have a letter from Hashem and we don't even realize it. So the first thing we need to know is we need to know this is legit. You don't want to tell yourself, "No, no, no, I really know that it's legit." No, no, "I feel that it's legit." No, I'm not telling you. You need to know 100%. That's why the number one thing you need to do is find out without any doubt that this is real. The second thing is to find out What do we need to do? Why do I need to do it? Learn the reasons behind why we're doing what we're doing. So, for example, one of the things I learned this week, a few things I learned this week, is, you know, there's a lot of different minhagim and different things that don't actually have a source in the Torah. It's different segulot that people create. Some of them are real, some of them are not real. Some of them have a source in the Torah, some of them don't. So I always ask myself, you know, when you do Havdalah,

50:24You know, part of Havdalah is that you light the candle and everybody says, you know, "Borei Me'orei HaEsh." But, you know, you show your fingers and you look at your nails. Now, for a long time, I thought that the point of doing this is to see the reflection of the fire on your nails and to show that, okay, you are separate from Shabbat to Yom Chol. Very basic, very, you know, where it started, I don't know. Why can't we just look at the fire? Same thing. Why do I need to look at my nails for it? Me'am Loez tells the story behind it. It's something extraordinary. It's so special. It's so delicious that it's something that you have to know and you're never going to look at that process the same again. The snake, the serpent... that made Adam and Chava sin, or enticed them to sin, received ten different curses. One of the curses was that he was going to lose his arms and legs because originally he walked like a human being. Another curse was that instead of being the king of all the animals, he became cursed by all the animals. One of the words in the verse explains that.

51:53So instead of being the king of all the animals, he became cursed by all the animals. Another curse was that everything he eats tastes like dust. It doesn't matter whether he's eating a rat or he's eating any piece of meat or he's eating a fruit. Anything that he eats tastes the same. But another unique part of the curse is that he has to shed his skin once every seven years. And the way the snake sheds his skin is that he goes between two rocks and the skin gets peeled. According to the Torah, it says it's very painful. Even though you don't see a snake screaming in pain, calling for help, or asking for a doctor, apparently it's a very painful process. And you ask yourself, okay, so why is it such a punishment? He's just getting new skin. Because, first of all, he's losing the skin, but he's not immediately replacing it with new skin. He has to wait until his new skin grows, so he’s going to be skinless to some extent, or not have fully grown skin for some time. How is this relevant to what happened with Adam and Chava (Eve)?

53:21Because the Torah tells us that everything Hashem does is measure for measure. Everything that in some way does a sin, the punishment is measure for measure. What you did is what you get in return. Someone who steals from somebody is going to end up losing money. Someone who kills is going to end up either dying or losing someone. So anything that you do, you get that in return. So how is this measure for measure for what the snake did? because the snake is losing its skin. What we learned is that Adam HaRishon was the most beautiful creature that was ever created. To such an extent that Chava looked like a monkey in comparison to him. But to Chava, the third most beautiful creature was Sarah Imeinu, the wife of Avraham.

54:23And she was so beautiful that she was shining. But next to Chava, she was like a monkey. And next to Sarah, all of us are monkeys. That's how beautiful these creatures were, these human beings, these amazing, amazing beauties, it's hard to even imagine. Now Adam HaRishon, when he was created, his skin was shining, similar to our nails. And when you see it on the fire, when you see the fire on Shabbat, during Havdalah, your nails, unless you're a construction worker, your nails generally look, you know, they're shiny, they're pretty, and so on. So... When he did this, after he committed the sin, he lost that shine. And that's why... the snake got his punishment of losing his shine. And that's why on Havdalah, we look at our nails. Because on Shabbat, if we honor the Shabbat, we're like kings. We're like kings. We eat like kings. We connect to the King of Kings. Everything is phenomenal. But then on Havdalah, we have to go back to the regular week. And Hashem is reminding us, just remember, you were a king on My Shabbat.

55:48But don't let this make you prideful and have so much ga'avah because the last person that had too much ga'avah and didn't pay attention to what I was telling him, he lost his shine. And that's what the nails are all about. And that's the thing. It's like sometimes you do things and you have no idea why you're doing them. No idea. No idea. It's fantastic because, you know what, from now on, I'm never going to look at it the same. You know, every time you do it, oh, yeah, sure, okay, yeah, it's nice. But when you find out the meaning of these things, it's delicious. It's amazing. You want more. And all of it is available. All of it is available. It's at the tip of our fingers. Another thing that I think is a very, very, very important proof of Hashem not only being real, but also that the Jewish Hashem is the only type, is the only one. There is no other, like He says. There is no possible other choice. of Hashem not only being real, but also that the Jewish Hashem is the only type, is the only One. There is no other, like He says. There is no possible other choice.

57:12There are no doubts. It's a story I saw some months ago that I think is truly one of the most fantastic things I've ever heard in my life. You may have seen this, but there was a guy, a rabbi, who was also a molecular biologist named Rabbi Rubinstein. Rabbi Rubinstein, in 1986, originally came from Argentina in 1983, and in 1986 he was doing intensive research on DNA. He was looking at rats and other animals, and human flesh. He was, you know, your typical... microscope is going to look at things at 10x or 100x. His machine, which was the huge size of a room-type computer showing it on the screen, was a million x. So it was going into the deep, deep, deep part of each cell to look at the makeup of the DNA. Now he saw...

58:28that the makeup of the DNA of each creature, whether you're a bat, or you're a rat, or you're a cow, or a human, or any creation, is basically the same. You have the same two squiggly lines we all saw in our science class at some point in our lives. You have those two squiggly lines. Whether you're male or female depends on how many chromosomes are in it, but the basic makeup of it is exactly the same. You have the same two squiggly lines and some other things that are different within it, but overall, It's the same core. So he tells the story to his students in this video, and it's really fantastic. It's in Hebrew. I'll send it to you if you've never seen it. And he says, so okay, so I look at this, I look at this makeup, I see one creature that I have is the same, second one, third one, fourth one, everything is the same. Great. So I have these two squiggly lines. Now I ask the computer, Computer, it seems like the connection between these two lines is very important. What happens if I separate them? The computer, which he had programmed to talk to him, says, "The subject will explode. You will explode. If you take apart those two lines, whatever it is that you're taking apart will explode."

59:53So the next important, logical question is, what's keeping it together? So, Mr. Computer, what's keeping these two lines together? And the computer answers... No, the computer answers, it has to be science. God is... So the computer doesn't know God. They haven't programmed it in. So the... The computer responds that you have a bridge made from sulfur, gafleet, that's connecting every so often. If you have a bridge of sulfur every so often connecting this DNA, So now the separation between each bridge is these acids called A-C-T-G, or A-T-C-G, A-C-T-G. They are little acids that are in between each bridge. So you have the little squiggly lines, and you have one line, and then you have these little dots, and you have another line, and you have a few more dots, and then you have another line, and so on, connecting the bunch of bridges.

1:01:13So what's the million-dollar question? How often is "every so often"? Because you say that every so often you have this bridge, but how often is "every so often"? So the computer answers: every tenth acid, and then every fifth acid, and then every sixth, and then every fifth. 10, 5, 6, 5. 10, 5, 6, 5. Repeat it forever. What's 10, 5, 6, 5? 10 is Yud. 5 is Hei. 6 is Vav. And 5 again is Hei. Yud, Hei, Vav, and Hei. Hashem's name autographed in the DNA of every one of the creations in this world. So it's not only Hashem, but it's Yud-Kei-Vav-Kei, it's the name of Hashem in our Torah. It's not any other Torah, it's not any other religion, it's not any other thought, it's not any other language, it's not in English, it's not in Spanish, it's not in Greek, it's not in any other language. There's only one Hashem, the Hashem, the only one that ever came, the only one, the only nation that ever got His book, right here, got this.

1:02:37And it's in those letters. So when you know things like this, it makes everything different. Because you know that, number one, Hashem put His autograph inside me. Every one of my cells has Hashem's autograph in it. I have to treat myself with respect. I can't. I can't just tattoo my body, pierce it with different strange things, you know, do all these strange things that people do to their bodies. I can't. I can't do all that. I can't defile my body because in reality, when you defile your body, you're hurting the name of, you know, you're defiling the name of Hashem. That's why Hashem told us this. You have to protect your body. The second thing is, when you're talking to somebody else, when you know that Hashem's name, which is something very, very critical, because that's why we call Hashem, Hashem. What does Hashem mean? Hashem means "the Name." So how come we're not calling Hashem by His real name? Because His name is so special and so holy that even calling Him "Hashem" is a holy thing. Even calling Him "the Name" is holy by itself. But when you actually have

1:03:50the letters Yud, Kei, Vav, Kei. Every one of yourselves, and you know that the person that you're talking to has those same letters, and everything in creation has those same letters, you start looking at things very differently. Before I yell at this guy or curse this guy, I have to start realizing, wait a minute, this guy's got the name of Hashem. Even though he may not be the nicest guy in the world, Hashem is here. Hashem is everywhere. And it makes you start thinking about things a little bit differently. Because you're seeing Hashem's creation at work at all times. All we have to do is pay attention. And one of the lectures that Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi gave, he explained that one of the purposes of the Torah is to teach us the Hebrew language. Because everything has an opposite. And you learn it from the Torah. Tall, short. Fat, skinny. Everything has an opposite. So what is the opposite of someone who has Yirat Shamayim? Naturally, you would think someone who doesn't have Yirat Shamayim. That's what we would think. But the Torah tells us differently. The Torah tells us that someone who does not have Yirat Shamayim is someone who is not paying attention to the details. Why? Because if you just spent a few minutes of your life every day paying attention to the details, there's no way you wouldn't see Hashem.

1:05:21There's no way. You have to be blind—intentionally blind to not see it. And that's the job of the Yetzer Hara. The Yetzer Hara's number one job in creation is to blind us. The Yetzer Hara's job is to make sure that we don't see the truth. So how does he do it? My mom, she gave me a story of a mashal nimshal yesterday that I have to say it's so good and it delivers the point. So one day there was a guy who wasn't very rich, but he kept his money to himself. He was so cheap. that he didn't want to spend it on anything, even to buy himself a house. So he's trying to find himself a woman, but the rabbi tells him, no, no, there's no way any woman would want you. You have to have a house. You can't just be this way, roaming around from street to street. So he decides, okay, you know what? This is what I'm going to do. I'm going to take all my money, and I'm going to go to the rich man in town.

1:06:43So he goes to one of the rich people in town. He knocks on his door. The guy opens the door. He says, "Yes, how can I help you?" And he says, "Yes, I was wondering if I could buy a small amount of space in your house just so I could hang a nail. That's it. I don't need a room. I don't need a bathroom. I just need enough space so I can put my nail on your wall. Masmer." I'll pay you $1,000 for it. The rich guy's like, money, I've loved money my whole life. This is so phenomenal. Some guy comes here, some crazy guy comes here, wants to give me $1,000 so he can put a nail on my wall. Sure, why not? This guy's... Great opportunity. Sure, go ahead. Pick a place. Put your nail. So they make the deal. They do a shtar iska. They have an agreement.

1:07:44Shake on it. Here's my nail. Here's the thousand dollars. Goodbye. A week goes by. It's the middle of the night. In the rich man's house, all of a sudden, he gets out of bed. What's going on? Who's knocking on my house at 12 o'clock at night? And he sees it's the poor man again. He says, what do you want? What are you doing here in the middle of the night? And he says, "Oh, no, I came here so I could use my nail." He goes, "What do you mean?" He goes, "No, I just want to put my hat on the nail." At this point, when my mom told me this, I was laughing for at least five minutes. So he tells, "Okay, okay, put your hat on the nail." No. He puts the hat. He goes away. Another week goes by. middle of the night, the rich man is frustrated and runs downstairs. "What do you want? What do you want?" He goes, "Oh, I have my coat. I just want to put it on my nail." "Okay, put it on the nail. Can't you come at a different time?" He goes, "No, that's the only time I can come." Another week goes by. Two o'clock in the morning. The rich man is going crazy already. He goes, "What do you want? What do you want?" He goes, "No, I have this

1:09:13bag full of garbage. "I want to put it on my nail. I don't want to carry it anymore." He goes, "No, no, absolutely not. Don't put your garbage in my house." He goes, "No, what do you mean? We made a deal. It's my nail. You have the whole house. I just have a nail." So he tells him, "No, no, no, no. You can't put your garbage in my house." So what happened? They start arguing. He says, "Okay, we'll go to the Beit Din." So they go to the Beit Din. The Beit Din says, "Yeah, you guys made a deal. There's an agreement here." You’ve got to let him use the nail. It's his nail.