Shiur Torah #4 part 2 kosher, ungratefulness, and connection to HaShem

0:00About Shabbat. Shabbat. No, he's talking about... About the culture. So somebody, somebody, somebody... No, no, no, going back to the last part. Going back to Shabbat, going back to Shabbat, telling somebody that the punishment is terrible and you're embarrassing them, or you're offending them. So you're embarrassing them, essentially you're getting them to blush, and it's like you're murdering them. The question is, are you doing aveirah or are you doing mussar? No, no, no, no. First of all... No. And mitzvah, blah, blah, blah. You're right. But you don't do this in front of people. You don't do this in front of people. I can't embarrass you by myself? It's very different. If I embarrass you because we're talking right now and I tell you, listen, by the way, your fly is open. Your fly is open. And it's just you and me. The embarrassment is much, much smaller and much more insignificant because in reality, I'm the only one who saw it. I'm helping you out. Protecting you. From a greater embarrassment, where you go outside, you're going to meet your boss, you're going to meet your partner, you're going to meet a woman, you're going to meet a customer, and so on. Much greater embarrassment. You don't get punished for that. That's helping somebody. If I tell somebody, "Hey, by the way, listen, you came out of the bathroom, but there's toilet paper sticking out of your pants." Yes, that may embarrass him, but I'm helping him. Because if he continues walking the rest of the day with toilet paper coming out of his pants, it creates a much larger embarrassment.

1:26On the other hand, if, let's say, there's all of us over here, and I say, "By the way, Tomer, you're so-and-so, I saw you with this, this, and that," and I tell a whole story about you, and I embarrass you in front of other people, "I see you did this, and you did this," and I make this whole story up of what you did to embarrass you in front of people, that's not helpful advice. Then, of course, that's spilling blood. But helpful advice is not embarrassment. Even if it's embarrassing, it's not embarrassing someone. Do you understand what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, of course. So, when I tell somebody that, hey, listen, by the way, Hashem said that someone who does not keep Shabbat dies in this world, dies in the next world, and is cut off from among the people, like the verse says over here that we read from Shemot 31... verse 12 to 14. It's very literal. Hashem said to Moshe, saying, "Now you speak to the children of Israel, saying, 'However, you must observe My Shabbat, for it is a sign between you and Me, for your generations to know that I am Hashem, who makes you holy. You shall observe the Shabbat, for it is holy to you. Its desecrators shall be put to death, for whoever works on it...'"

2:44That soul shall be cut off from amongst its people. So if He already told us that He's putting us to death, why is He telling us that He's going to cut us off from the people? Some people say, oh, no, no, it's only a death penalty for Shabbat. If it was only a death penalty for Shabbat, just like murder. They say for work. No, for work. Violates the Shabbat. Right. Melachah, in Hebrew, melachah, that's what they use, the word melachah. is to create something. There are 39 different types of melachot that you can do. 39 different types of things that you do on Shabbat that are considered melachot, which are forms of work. So, for example, to you and me, sewing is not something that we do on a regular basis. We could do it right now. But on Shabbat, even if it's not our job, even if we don't make money from it, on Shabbat we're not allowed to do it. Because sewing is a form of work for someone else, it's considered work. So you and I are not builders, but if we decide that we want to build a house in the middle of Shabbat, even though it's not our work, it's still considered work. Even though we're not the people that start fires for no reason, if we want to do a barbecue on Shabbat, it's not considered work because we don't make money from it, but it's still considered a melachah.

4:04So in Hebrew, it's not necessarily just work, it's a melachah, which is in essence one of the 39 restrictions that you're not allowed to do. Now most people think that if you violate Shabbat, there's this punishment of death. And most people don't take it seriously because we don't have what's called the Beit Din. The Beit Din was the court of the Jews, where they were able to punish people according to their crimes. We don't have the Beit Din to the same extent as we used to have before, so people don't respect... the laws like they used to. The problem is here, so when you tell them, listen, you know, the death penalty, they know that nobody's going to be killing them. You can't kill people just because they violated the Shabbat in this modern world. They're not going to allow you to go to jail. But, this is not, in this verse, Hashem is telling us, mot yumat... So, it's saying, mot once, death once, yumat, it's saying death twice, so why is it, why is it you say mot? Why don't you just say, okay, whoever violates it dies. It's saying mot in this world, mot, you know, also death in the next world, and on top of that it's saying, whoever violates it, is cut off from the nation.

5:26What is cut off from Am Yisrael? What does that mean? If I'm cut off from Am Yisrael, what does that mean? That means I'm not considered part of Am Yisrael. If I'm not considered part of Am Yisrael, that means I'm not considered Jewish. I'm considered the equivalent of someone who is not Jewish. And that's why when you go to Israel and you have places where it's easy to get kosher food, but you have many restaurants that sell kosher meat, but they do not have a kosher certificate, and they're not considered kosher food. Why? Because those people are violating Shabbat, and therefore the rabbis took away their certificate. They're not considered... They're open on Shabbat. They're open on Shabbat, exactly. So why is that? Okay, but if I have kosher meat, how come the restaurant's not kosher? Because if the person is violating Shabbat, is open on Shabbat, that means he's considered a non-Jew. And if he's considered a non-Jew and he's cooking my food, it's not considered kosher. On top of that, if he is open on Shabbat and violating Shabbat, that means that he doesn't care about his own soul enough to care about Shabbat. And if he doesn't care about his own soul, why would I think that he cares about mine to really give me kosher food? Maybe he's telling me he bought kosher food, but in reality, he bought half-off non-kosher food down the street.

6:45I can't rely on him, because if he doesn't care about his own soul, why would he care about mine to give me kosher food? And that's why it's not just about having the meat itself being kosher; it's also about how you get the meat, who's serving you the meat, who's making the meat. The second thing is in regards to what Tomer is reading right now, that's what we were starting before, about the whole concept of kosher animals. There's a very, very big difference between kosher animals and non-kosher animals. In a sense, there are some animals that you're just strictly not allowed to have. You know, there's a sign of what a kosher animal is. They have to have split hooves and chew their cud. They have to have certain signs. They have two signs of what a kosher animal is. But aside from that, you know, there are certain animals that you're not allowed to have, like pig, camel, hare, and rabbit. Those are four specific, unique animals that you're not allowed to have, even though they have some of the signs. But there are plenty of other animals that you're not allowed to have, like horse or pig, or different types of carnivorous animals like lions, things like that. But now, let's just talk about the animals that are considered pure, meaning the animals that can be kosher but are not necessarily always kosher, like a cow.

8:07or a deer, or a sheep, or a lamb. These are inherently pure animals, but why can't I have McDonald's? They're selling beef. Not everything is pig. They have beef. Why can't I have McDonald's? Because the way the animal was slaughtered makes it non-kosher. So what's the difference between a kosher and non-kosher slaughter? In a non-kosher slaughter... In a non-kosher butcher, there are plenty of videos publicly on YouTube showing this. It's not something that we're making up just to scare people, but the way that the animals are treated is very different. Number one, the way they kill the animals is not through just a slit of the throat. The way they kill them is either by shooting them in the head, smashing them in the head with hammers, electrocuting them, or chopping off their entire head with a machine.

9:07very, very vicious process where you see that the animal continues to suffer. So, for example, if you shoot an animal in the head, it doesn't die instantly. It takes time until the blood stops flowing to the brain. If you smash an animal in the head, they have big heads, they have thick heads, they don't die on the first shot. It takes a few shots. So throughout all that time, the animal suffers. And if the animal suffers even for one second, it's not considered kosher. So then you go to the kosher slaughtering, the kosher way of slaughtering an animal, and people see that they slice the throat. Now, when someone doesn't know the intricate details of a kosher slaughter, they think that that's actually just as vicious as the ones we just talked about. But when you learn about the science of a kosher slaughter, you see that there's something unique about not only the slaughter but also about the animals that Hashem made kosher. Out of all the animals that are around the world—lions, tigers, horses, cows—each one of them has veins that transfer all the blood to the brain and through the heart, okay?

10:29So the way that you know if something is alive or not is if the blood connects to the brain. If the blood connects to the brain, then they're still alive and they still feel pain and pleasure. If the blood is cut off from the brain, then it instantly stops feeling. There are no more nerves, the brain stops feeling, and the person dies. So that's why when somebody says somebody's brain dead, in essence, they are considered dead. That's why, for example, if someone gets a heart attack, he is not considered clinically dead. Because even though the heart may stop working, as long as the brain is working and there are brain waves, they are still considered alive. Someone is considered officially dead when their brain waves are no longer working. So that's just medical terms. So now, each animal has these two veins that connect to the brain, transferring the blood to the brain. Now, in the non-kosher animals, like for example, a lion or a horse or a pig, those two veins, there's one on the bottom of the neck and there's one on the top of the neck. Both of them connect to the brain. So, it means that even if I cut the bottom, there's still going to be blood going to the brain from the top. So, until all that blood comes out from the bottom...

11:53The animal is still going to get blood to its brain. It's still going to be alive, which means that it's still going to suffer. It's still going to feel the pain. It doesn't lose consciousness right away. But with the kosher animals, like a cow, or a sheep, or a goat, it's something extraordinary. ...where the two veins, they still have the two veins, but right before they connect to the brain, those two veins merge. So when you cut it, you're cutting just the main vein. You're cutting the main vein and there's no more. This is in all the kosher animals. Only the kosher animals have this. Only the kosher animals have this. And it's something extraordinary where, instead of having one on the bottom and one on the top, they have just one. But they flush together. Right. They connect just like in the pictures. You cut that one, which means it cuts off the blood supply to the brain. So that way the blood doesn't... Which means they instantly die. It doesn't go to... Right. There's no more blood going to the brain instantly. They instantly die. They do not feel anything. Less effort for them.

12:55This is the least suffering. There is no suffering because they die instantly. When the brain stops getting blood instantly, that means that all of the nerves in the entire body die. So even if you see some parts of the body kicking and stuff like that, it's not the animal being alive. It's just the nerves of the body. If you shoot an animal in the head, you shoot it right in the brain. Right. It doesn't automatically die like that. No. There's still blood going to the brain. Even though you've made a hole in the brain, you didn't cut off its blood supply. You cut off part of the blood supply. So, number one, you could potentially miss. Number two, you could potentially just shoot a part of the brain where it's not necessarily going to kill the animal. It could just injure it really, really badly and make it dysfunctional. ...and it's something that, you know, it's not going to cut off the main source of its blood. It's still going to feel that pain until it dies. Even actually, when somebody gets shot, a person gets shot in the head, many times they still live. Even the ones that die from getting shot in the head, it's not like the movies where you shoot somebody in the head and they die right away. It's not like that. Unfortunately, I had the...

14:10displeasure of actually seeing a real person that shot himself. I don't know how I got this video. It was an accident. But anyway, somebody that actually really shot themselves. And you see that the person doesn't die right away. They go through horrendous suffering before it happens. And even though he shot himself, it's not like somebody missed. So, because the blood... doesn't get cut off right away. And many times, not every time obviously, but people that get shot in the head just don't die. Scrapes and misses, it even goes through, but not through the core part of the tissue. They can become disabled, but not dead. So with the kosher animals, Hashem gave us a very, very precise, perfect system where the animals are unique. And the system is unique, and it's the only animals that it's available in, and it's the only way that you can guarantee that the animal does not suffer. Now, that's why it's also important to make sure that the knife is extremely sharp, much sharper than what you guys and I have in our kitchens. There's a special type of knife, there's a special type of procedure. Sometimes they can cut the animal, but it's not a straight cut. If the knife doesn't go straight through... it's not kosher. It's not kosher.

15:36Why? Because the animal lived and experienced even one second of suffering, it's not considered kosher. And by the way, all the guys that you see in New York or in different places that sell halal meat, the Muslims that sell halal meat, they get the non-kosher animals from the Jewish people. When I say it's kosher, for them it's kosher, for us it's non-kosher. They also do shechitah. Yes, they do shechitah also. They also do butchering. But for them, they don't have to go through the same process as us regarding whether the animal suffers or not. For them, it doesn't matter. So what they do is they buy all the animals where Jewish people make mistakes, and it's not considered kosher by Jewish people. So what do you think about the shechitah they make? What's the point of what they do? They're just copying us to cut the neck. If we do a shechitah and it's not a kosher shechitah, they will eat it? They will buy it and eat it? That's where they get all their meat. But don't they make their prayers? But for them, it doesn't matter. They don't make a private foundation. That's where they get all their meat. 99.9% of their meat comes from Jewish people.

16:41Oh, yeah. But it's good. Because most places... Yeah, it's good. But we sell it. If we don't sell it, we sell it for non-kosher. Right. But no, no. That's why you get halal meat. Halal meat is a... That's why you see, for example, that's where you see a lot of places. You see, for example, kosher synagogues and Jewish communities. You're always going to see a mosque close by or even across the street. And the reason why is because they know that anytime that there is a kosher people, there's Jewish people, there's always going to be a local butcher. And if there's a local butcher, then they have a place to get a shechitah, they have a place to get their meat, their halal meat. So every time they make a mistake, they know who to call. Right, so there's a pro and con about it. But again, going back to what we were saying before, is that when you have these precise rules from Hashem, and He's telling you... is because they know that anytime that there is a kosher community, there's always going to be a local butcher. And if there's a local butcher, then they have a place to get a shechitah, they have a place to get their halal meat. So every time they make a mistake, they know who to call. Right, so there's a pro and con about it. But again, going back to what we were saying before, is that when you have these precise rules from Hashem, and He's telling you, this is the way to kill an animal, this is the way to keep Shabbat, this is the way to protect your Torah, this is the way to live your life, and He's giving you all of these things in a precise way, and if we do something different, then we end up going so far off the path that we end up forgetting Him. So now, we start having desires,

18:07requests from Hashem that in many cases are actually against our own benefit, but we think it's beneficial for us. What I mean by this is, the Gemara says, you know, people are asking what happened when Moshe Rabbeinu was on Mount Sinai and Hashem told him descend from the mountain, go down from the mountain because your people that I took out of Egypt have sinned and have built themselves an idol. So initially, the Gemara says, Moshe was in such shock that he didn't know what to say. He didn't respond.

19:08And then Hashem says to him, "Release Me from the covenant that I made with them, release Me from the deal that I made with Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, and I shall destroy them and start a new nation, a new greater nation from you." So Moshe Rabbeinu was so great that Hashem was saying, "Let Me destroy these people and I'll start a whole new nation with you." Now us, we're not tzaddikim like Moshe Rabbeinu. If Hashem tells us, "Listen, by the way, I'm going to kill everyone in the world and I'm going to start a whole world from you. You're going to be the king of this world," are we going to think about it more than two seconds before saying yes or no? Yeah, I want a whole new nation. I want to be the king of the world, right? That's what we think initially. But Moshe Rabbeinu said, "If you're going to kill them, kill me first." Wipe me from the book. I don't want to start. What happened, the Gemara tells us that when Hashem told Moshe Rabbeinu, "Release me from the covenant," Moshe Rabbeinu went from being quiet to starting to fight for Am Yisrael. Why? Because he realized that when he was quiet, he was quiet because he thought that Hashem had already made a decision.

20:31made a decision to destroy Am Yisrael because they violated a big, big rule. But once Hashem said, "Listen, I made a deal, I made a covenant with Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, please release me from it," meaning that I want you to agree that this is the right move. Even though He doesn't need Moshe's permission, He respected him because he was a righteous person. He was the most righteous person in history. And so Moshe realized, okay, so if He's, obviously Hashem is not like a human being. He doesn't change His mind. He doesn't have different opinions every other day. He doesn't have different moods every other day. He's not like us where he thinks one day one thing and another day he thinks something else and then by the third day he's back to the original. Hashem makes a deal, and that's what it is. So He's telling Moshe, "Release Me from this deal so we can start a whole new nation from you." Moshe realizes that He's only telling me this because I have a say in this. That means that I have a chance to save them. And he immediately starts praying to Hashem to save Am Yisrael.

21:37Now he starts, what does he start doing? The same thing that your lawyer would do to try to defend you. What does your lawyer try to do to defend you? He tries to blame other things. So the Gemara in Masechet Berachot tells us of different arguments that Moshe Rabbeinu uses to explain why Am Yisrael committed this huge sin. Because the sin doesn't really make that much sense. The fact that they just saw all these miracles in Egypt. They saw the miracles on the way out from Egypt. They saw the ten plagues, people dying except them. They saw the ocean being split. They saw a pillar of fire. They saw Hashem's words in the sky just the day before. I mean, you know, a few days before. I mean, it doesn't make sense. They're worshipping this idol. So, Hashem is saying, obviously, if they're doing this... they're not doing the right thing, I'm going to punish them. And Moshe says, no, no, no. It's partly Your fault that they did this. Now this doesn't even sound, no, what do you mean it's partly Hashem's? How could it possibly be Hashem's fault that Am Yisrael is sinning? And the Gemara explains what Moshe means. Moshe is saying,

23:03That if You didn't reward Am Yisrael with so much gold when they left Egypt—before they left Egypt, they got a lot of Egypt's gold—one of the ways that Am Yisrael got rich on the way out of Egypt is from the plague. So, for example, the first plague, which was blood—all of the water turned to blood, except the Jewish people's water. So the Egyptians would come to the Jewish people, they would steal their water. But then, as soon as they took the water from them, the water would turn to blood. And they would give it back to the Jew, and it turned back to water. This wasn't something natural. This was something that Hashem did to make Am Yisrael turn from slaves into rich people. And how did He do it? If the Egyptian paid the Jew for the water, it stayed water. And what ended up happening is through the week, that they had this plague of blood. The Egyptians ended up giving most of the gold, almost all of their gold, to the Jews, just to get their water to survive. So they got rich from that. So they got all this gold. I think these days we're rich because of it. So Moshe, what did he say?

24:21until these days we're rich because of that. Yeah, so Moshe Rabbeinu is saying to Hashem, "If you didn't reward Am Yisrael with all of their gold, then they wouldn't have the gold to build a statue." So Hashem says, "I partly agree with you. It is partly My fault that I gave them this." but this is only partly. Why? Because I still gave him the choice. I still told him the rules. I still gave him the choice of whether to sin or not. And there are a few different comparisons in the Gemara in Berachot 32a. It talks about different comparisons. How ungrateful we are when we ask for Hashem to give us something. He gives it to us, and we still kick him for it. So what is this compared to? One of the stories tells of a man who has a skinny cow, a very lean cow, and he wants to fatten it up. He wants to feed it. So he gets the best food available for cows, the most flavorful food for cows. And every time he gives this cow this specific food, which is the best food, the cow ends up kicking him.

25:48So he says, how is it that you're kicking me? It's my fault because if I didn't give you this food that's such a pleasant food, you wouldn't kick me. So it's the same thing with the cow. He's giving her the best thing for her, but in return she's kicking him. Same thing with Am Yisrael. He gave us the best thing for us. He tried to make us rich. And instead of doing the right thing, we end up failing and serving idols. Another example they give is they said it's like a man that has a son. And he takes care of the son. He loves the son. He gives him enough food, all the food that he wants. And he gives him all the drink that he wants. And he gives him all the money that he wants. He gives him a bag around his neck. that's full of money, as much as he wants, and he puts him right at the front door. He gives him a little area in front of a house of ill repute. "Harlot" is what they called him in a politer way. So they say he gave his son everything, but he also expected him not to sin. It's not possible. And here's the key.

27:04How does this relate to us? It relates to us because we ask Hashem for all these wonderful things. We ask Him for money. We ask Him for children. We ask Him for good wives. We ask Him for good friends. We ask Him for different things. And then what ends up happening is that we get some of these things. We're able to go to work. We have a good job. We have a good wife. We have a good husband. We have good children. We have a good head on our shoulders. Parts of our life are good. Some parts of our life are not that good. But overall, we're okay. We're healthy. we're able to pay our bills on time, you know, we're okay. And instead of thanking Hashem for what we have, what do we do? We complain. You didn't give me this, you didn't give me that, you didn't give me this, you didn't give me that, you didn't give me this. Instead of actually saying, thank you Hashem for all the things you gave me, we say, you didn't give me everything I wanted. Lo maspik. And that's the real problem here. That's what almost every Jew says. It's a, Chazal specifically say, give a person 100, he wants 200. Give a person 200, he wants 400. You give a person 400, he'll want 800. It's never, ever enough. And that's the sad part about this, about human nature, is that when you don't have a direct connection with Hashem, and you don't make Him an important part of your day-to-day life,

28:29where you're listening to something every day, you're learning something every day, and it doesn't necessarily need to be a three-hour shiur. It doesn't necessarily need to be a five-hour lecture or even a one-hour lecture. Fifteen minutes a day is the perfect way to start. Why? Because that will give you a direct connection to Hashem. And that's also part of the reason why we pray every day. You know, the brachot that we have, for example, for all the things that we eat, or the prayers that we have in the morning. I think we talked about this last week. These are all things to connect us to Hashem. When we connect to Hashem, everything changes for us. Our whole entire day changes for us. The problem is that a lot of people go through it and it becomes a process. Instead of something that they are supposed to be using to connect to Hashem, it becomes something that they do just because they feel like they have to, or they're used to it, and they just go through the brachot or the tefillah, like it's nothing, like it's not really a big deal. And in reality, when you're praying to Hashem, you're also saying that Hashem is right next to you, listening to you. You're not praying to something that's far, far away. You're praying, especially when you're in shul, you're praying over there, you're doing tefillah, you're pretty much saying that Hashem is with you there. He's everywhere. So if you really, really believed that He's right there with you, and you're talking to Him,

29:57through the prayers, how dare you talk to somebody during a prayer? How dare you not really get into the prayer and really, really mean 100% what you're saying? Does that make any sense? So that's the thing. So we have to start paying attention to all these small details. Especially during Amidah. One second, you're finished. That's the thing. When you're in a hurry, there's no way that you can mean it. And the thing is, with Amidah, Amidah is actually one of the three core prayers in Judaism, the most important prayers: Shema Yisrael, Amidah, and Birkat Hamazon. Birkat Hamazon is actually even higher than the other two because Birkat Hamazon is specifically from the Torah. Most people worry about something, you know, they wash their hands before they eat. The verse that specifically instructs us to pray after we eat is in the Torah itself.

31:14So it's something that necessitates prayer after you finish eating. It's from the Torah. Whereas the Amidah and the Shema Yisrael are... No, it's something that we understand. It's a translation that we understand. All of the prayers in essence... But all of the prayers in essence are from Rabbanan, except the Birkat HaMazon. Birkat HaMazon is specified in the Torah. And that's something that's not common because most of the mitzvot that we have, that we have to do, like Shabbat, like kosher, like a Brit Milah, all of these things, even though the basics of what we need to do and what we can't do are here, how to do it is not here. It's in the Gemara. Which means that, you know, anyone that says, yes, yes, I believe in the written Torah, but the oral Torah, I'm not so sure about—in reality, if there's no oral Torah, there's no Torah. Why? Because you wouldn't know how to even do one mitzvah. So, one example,

32:30is, for example, Brit Milah. When Hashem told Avraham Avinu to do a Brit Milah, he's the first person to do a Brit Milah, He said, "Cut the Orlah. Cut the Orlah." Now, one of the purposes of the Torah is to teach us Hebrew. What is Orlah? There's no definition of Orlah in the entire Torah. Nowhere does it tell us what is the Orlah. Maybe the Orlah is a part of my nose. Maybe the orlah is part of the ear. Maybe it's a finger. Maybe it's a toe. How can we know what an orlah is? The Gemara specifies what exactly an orlah is. It's the part of the person's penis. That's what you have to cut. Now, this mitzvah and this word, if you think about it, that by itself proves that Torah is divine. And that proves by itself that Torah is real. How does it do it? Because if somebody was creating a religion

33:30from nothing, then the last thing he would do is say, hey listen, not only should you do this, cut this orlah, but the orlah has to be in the most sensitive place on a man's body. Who, what man in the world would create a law like this? He would say, no, no, no, cut two ears, don't cut that. Cut three, cut here, take four fingers, I have ten, I don't need all ten, I just need six. So if Moshe Rabbeinu really created this, He wouldn't do this. The last thing he would do is say, listen, by the way, orlah is this. The second thing that makes Judaism different from any other religion is when we had Har Sinai, and you had millions of people standing around the mountain, hearing Hashem's words and seeing the words in the sky. And the amazing part is that, unlike any other religion,

34:31We had millions of people witness this. Every other religion, whether it's Islam, Christianity, Catholicism, they all, in essence, started the same way. They have the same core. Buddhism and the other 80,000 religions and cults in the world today, all of them started with one person. No religion in history ever started with more than one person other than Judaism. And that's one of the promises that Hashem made. That no one will ever start, no one will ever say that more than one person spoke to Me. Even when they didn't speak to Me, no one will ever speak to Me other than this one time where it's more than one person at once. So, which means that if somebody wanted to say, "Listen, I want to prove that the Torah is wrong, so I'm going to say that me and all three of us, four of us, five of us guys, are going to tell people that we all spoke to Hashem." Hashem said that's never going to happen. No two people in the world will ever say that they spoke to Me. Everything else, all other religions will always start with one. So, Christianity, for example, was Mary in her dream. She said she got pregnant through the dream. No witnesses to this dream. You can't witness a dream. There's only one person. No one knows if it happened or didn't happen. The point is that one person said she had a dream, and that's it. That's how the religion started. Same thing with Islam. Muhammad was in the middle of the desert. He was illiterate. He went to a cave.

35:59He was in the middle of the desert. He came back from the desert, and his people told him, "Listen, I saw one of the angels of God, Gabriel. He spoke to me. He gave me a continuation of the Torah." He said, "I don't know how to read and write. I need you guys to write it. I'll tell you what he told me." So, one person started Islam. Buddha, who started 2,500 years ago, claimed that he saw the light. There are no witnesses to whether he saw it or not. The point is, it was one person. The only religion... in history that ever started with more than one person as a witness is Judaism. And it was not only more than one person, it was millions of people. Now, how do we know, and you guys are going to see this from the movie, and please, please, please do me and yourself a favor. Watch this movie, Torah and Science. It gives you a lot more details than I ever can. I'll tell you. Did you send it to my phone? The Torah and Science, I can send you a link, but I can give you the DVD also. Either way, I'll send you the link. Okay, I have the DVD. I'll give you the link. If you prefer phone stuff, I'll send you the link. It's an extraordinary movie. It's four hours, but you can divide it up into pieces. So, the thing is, how do we know that this happened? How can we prove that there were really millions of people there? Because when we got the Torah in...

37:20And at Mount Sinai, it wasn't complete. Meaning, the written Torah, we received up to Parashat Yitro (Jethro). We didn't get the entire Torah, because we know that after Mount Sinai, they were in the desert for 40 years. And it still recounts the chronicles of what happened in the desert throughout those 40 years, and after they got to Eretz Yisrael. So it continues. He didn't tell him the end of the Torah before it happened. He came to write it. I asked the rabbi that. He said, "No." He said he gave the Torah. The full Torah was given. I'm not saying that. It was given in full. But it was... It's not like how we're reading it now. I understand. It was hidden from Moshe. The letters were together. It was hidden from Moshe. Basically, when he would die and things like that. Okay. Well, that's the story. So, okay. So, there's two parts of the Torah. There's the Oral Torah. The Oral Torah is all the laws and how to do them. That's complete. That was the most important part of what we got. And there's the Written Torah, which is the Five Books of Moses. That's the stories, from which we derive the laws, but in essence, it's the chronicles of what happened. He didn't give him the complete story because it didn't happen yet. So he's not going to tell him, "Listen, by the way, I'm giving it to you right now, but the people are going to be sinning in five minutes from now, building a calf."

38:42And a week from now, Yitro is going to come. And a week from now, you're going to have to do this. You're not going to tell him the future. I'm telling you, I was wondering about that. Because obviously, he wouldn't know what's going on. No, yeah. You're removing his choice. But the question is... So you gave him the complete... So who wrote the rest of it? He wrote... So Moshe Rabbeinu continued writing every few weeks or few months throughout the 40 years they were in the desert together. Every so often Hashem would tell him, okay, write this section, write this parasha. Every so often he would write a different part. Actually, Hashem, at the end, before his death, he finally finished and he handed the books to Yehoshua. Right, so now there's a debate, there's a machloket, of whether Moshe Rabbeinu wrote the last verse or not. Because the last verse is that Moshe died. Whether he wrote his own last verse saying that he died or not, or Yehoshua bin Nun wrote the last verse. It's a machloket on that, but as far as the whole book, it's Moshe Rabbeinu who wrote it, and every so often, he got, in Mount Sinai, he got the Torah up to Parashat Yitro, and then he continued writing the rest of the Torah, the rest of the Parashot, over the next 40 years in the desert. And so now, how do we know that this actually happened like this?

40:03The beautiful part about the Torah is unlike any other religion out there where the stories that are being written are about somebody that's not alive. Meaning, in Christianity, like let's say for example, the New Testament. I don't know if you guys know anything about the religion, but the religion itself is based on this Jesus figure. And... about his life, his laws, and so on. But everything that they wrote about him was written between 70 to 300 years after he died. Which means that all of the people that wrote what happened in his life didn't ever know him. So it was after he died. It was just like stories they heard from mouth to mouth of what happened. Same thing with the Quran and Muhammad. the Quran and Muhammad. He wrote about things that happened before. It's not things that are happening right now. So the point I'm trying to make is that in Judaism, in the Torah that we have, which by the way, all the two other religions, Christianity and Islam, both depend on the Torah. They claim the Torah is the first book, they're the second book, meaning it's the first chapter, they're the second chapter. That's what they claim. So they're not saying, no one ever said that the Torah is not real.

41:28They're just saying it's their continuation. Who's the one that said that the Torah was true? Both Christianity and Islam say that the Torah is real. No one is ever saying that the Torah is not real. What they are saying is that they have the part two of the book. This is the Old Testament. We have the continuation. They believe that they have the continuation of the book. The problem is that Their books are not divine; they weren't given to them by Hashem, but that's a different story. The point I'm trying to make is that in the Torah, one of the biggest differences is that our Torah, when Moshe got it, the people that he was writing about, the people that were written about in the Torah, and that were being given the Torah, were still alive. So all the things up to Parashat Yitro, all the things that we got, he told them about what happened in Egypt, he told them about how we got out of Egypt, he told them about what happened in front of the mountain, they saw Hashem's words. The people that saw all of this were the same ones that got the Torah.

42:40So if this didn't really happen, if let's say, for example, okay, you wrote here, hey, listen, Moshe, one out of all the millions of people, you said that we all heard Hashem's words and saw His words in the sky. I didn't see it. The whole Torah is canceled then. If it wasn't valid, if it didn't really happen, one of the millions of people that were there would say, no, no, by the way, you told me that I saw Hashem's words. I didn't see it. You told me that we crossed an ocean and it opened up. I don't remember doing that. If it really didn't happen, one of them would have said it. you go into any shul in the world that has ten people, that has one minyan, try to find one big issue that they all agree on. It's almost impossible. So if it's so impossible to get people to agree these days, imagine getting millions of people agreeing on seeing these miracles. If it didn't happen, somebody would say it didn't happen. Why? Because the first thing that they learned about the Torah when they got it, is that the Torah has to change their entire life. The Torah obligates them to do things that they never did before. So, for example, one of the things that obligates them is that they, during the time that Moshe was on Har Sinai, they knew that he was supposed to come down, so what they did is they prepared this whole meal. So they butchered a bunch of animals,

44:06And they prepared all this meal, all this meat. Barbecued all this meat. And as soon as Moshe came down, he said, "Okay, all those animals are not kosher. Throw them out. You can't eat them." So right away, we just got this Torah. The first thing we did, we lost millions and millions of dollars. Because imagine, you have to feed millions of people. And he's telling you, rule number one, all this stuff that you guys made is not kosher. Because it doesn't follow the kosher laws. Now, I have to eat it. Give it to the dogs. And the dogs got it, by the way, just so you guys know. The dogs got the meat as part of Hashem's blessing to give them a reward because they were quiet during the Exodus. During the time when Am Yisrael was leaving at night, leaving Egypt, the dogs didn't bark. And because of that, Hashem said, "Okay, so you didn't bark, this is your reward. You get all this meat."

45:06But at the same time, all of Am Yisrael is losing out on all this meat. And that's why to this day, on the Chag Shavuot, we eat dairy food. On Shavuot, that's the holiday when we received the Torah. Is it because of that? Yes. Because after that, they didn't have enough time to do the whole slaughtering. I mean, there are millions of people, there's hundreds of thousands of animals they have to shecht. There's no time. They want to celebrate right now. We just got the Torah. Moshe Rabbeinu just came back. But there's more reason for this. The biggest reason is because we weren't able to eat meat on that day. We weren't able to eat meat on that day. And that's the reason why we eat dairy as part of our culture. It's not a chiyuv. You don't have to eat just dairy, but that's the biggest reason. That's the biggest source because there can't be a source that's earlier than that or higher than that because that's the day we got the Torah. And the event happened the day we got the Torah. So anything that happened after that could also make it nice why we do it. It's great, but overall, that's the main reason.

46:17So, you have yourself a situation where all of these people, millions of people, got the Torah, they heard all of these things that Hashem said, and now He has all of these laws. The other way that you know that this is real is that, you know, these new laws where He told them, listen, from now on, you're not allowed to marry your aunt. A lot of people were married to their aunts in those times. So, for example, if a father, one guy had a sister, And, you know, his sister was much younger than him, and his sister and his son were the same age. A lot of them got married. It was a new law, you're not allowed to do it. Torah says you're not allowed to do it. He says, okay, great, I'm not allowed to do it, but I'm already married to her for 10 years, and I have 20 kids with her already. You have to get divorced. No, not grandfathered, you have to get divorced. And who were the first to divorce? Moshe's parents. So if Moshe Rabbeinu made up this Torah and wrote it himself, the last thing he would do is say to his parents, "Listen guys, you're my parents, but you have to get divorced." Now that would be one more time. So these things, these laws were going directly against everything that they knew. So if they didn't see everything that it says that they saw—Hashem's words, the miracles, the Exodus, everything that happened there,

47:45If they didn't really see all of that, why would they do any of this stuff? What benefit do they have? And that's just one of the ways that you know that this is 100% real. Did you see the discovery? They found... I don't know if the article is true or not. The scientists found remains... The Sea of Reeds, the remains of the soldiers? Yeah. Yeah, it came out a little while ago. Soldiers? I don't know if it's really... Thousands, thousands of remains, thousands of bones. They're going to be researching it for the next few years. But it's the first time they were looking for a different treasure. But they ended up seeing it as thousands of bones. They're saying at least 5,000 soldiers, if not more. in one particular area, in the Sea of Reeds, which is the sea where the split sea happened for Am Yisrael, Yam Suf. On the bottom of the ocean, they found thousands of bones with weapons and chariots for soldiers. It wasn't like...

49:05So they say it's going to be years before they finish the parsha. Right. That's what it is. They're saying that they... I heard about it like a month ago, maybe less. This is what you're looking at? Yeah, I just... To strike the point, if you say it didn't happen, then you have scientific proof. All the scientific proof is coming out. Well, you also have, you know, a lot of people have a hard time believing the story of Noach. Especially scientists. Scientists say that the world is millions of years old, and billions of years old, and, you know, the whole story of the Torah is just a made-up story. It's a nice story. It's not real. The story of the world being destroyed, and all of the animals that we have today all fitting in this ship. It doesn't make sense. Take two of each other. I learned about the concept of time being different. It's not necessarily that the scientists, whether their science is wrong, say that the world is millions of years old. The concept of time is different. No. Time was created in creation. It's 24 hours in a day.

50:24Torah's version of time is exactly the time that we have right now. It's 24 hours in a day. The Hebrew calendar is different than the calendar that we use now, where we're in year 5775, whereas most people in the world are using the year 2014. No, what I'm saying... But as far as time and the amount of years... What I'm saying is like the world was created in seven days. Seven days is the concept of seven days that we have today, but it could be different than that creation. Yeah, because just in the ten days... It could have been much more than that. The concept of time is... I don't know how we can understand that. We can, because it says here, it says here specifically... In Parashat Bereishit, if the concept of time was different, then it would contradict every single sentence, every single day. Meaning, if the concept of time was different, then Hashem wouldn't mention the concept of time. He would say, "I created this, I created this, I created this, I created this." He mentions the concept of time. No, but the time was created because He said "today."

51:42וקרא לה יום יום וקרא לה לילה לילה. Exactly. That's the first day. בשבילנו זה 24 שעות. Right. So what's one day? If each day wasn't the same day as we have today, then He wouldn't call it Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. He wouldn't call it that. He would just say this is just a day. Each one is one day. There's two days. There's three days. He wouldn't call it. The days of the week, he's saying this is a full day. That means that there were 24 hours, there was a concept of time created in the beginning. The second thing you have to know about science is that the way they measure time is through a couple of methods. One of the oldest ways is through something called carbon dating. Carbon dating is something where they, and also there's coal, they use coal for it. Anyway, they look at the core parts of the earth, and they look at certain chemicals. In essence, they measure the time of when those chemicals are, and then they compare them to, you know, they look at their shape, and they compare them to the estimate they have of how many years they've been around.

53:07The problem with all of the processes, and it's already been proven that they are all flawed completely by scientists, not by Jewish people. Scientists have proved that all of the systems being used for dating are completely flawed and completely false for a few reasons. Number one, from a logical perspective, which all of us can figure out, you will never find two scientists who agree on a date. Ever. One says 50 million, the other one says 57 million. Another one says 3 billion. Another one says 3.5 billion. Whoever comes up with the bigger date gets a bigger headline in Science Magazine. But no one ever agrees on the same date. So that already shows that none of them are using the same system; none of the systems are valid. Number two, all of these systems depend on something critical. They all depend on on the atmospheric level of the world to remain the same, the actual temperature of the world to remain the same. So, in order for me to know how old this paper is, when it was actually created, the overall atmosphere and its environment need to remain the same. There can't be a critical change in the world it's lived in for my system to be

54:28valid because if, let's say, for example, it's one level of temperature today but tomorrow something drastic happens, such as a huge earthquake or a volcano erupting right under where this paper is, and somehow it survives, obviously its environment changed drastically. It's no longer the same type of environment as I'm comparing it to. So... All carbon dating, all types of dating systems depend on one particular base. The problem is that science has already proven that the Earth has changed drastically. There's no way that the temperature is the same today as it's been a thousand years ago, two thousand years ago, three thousand years ago. There's no way that it's been the same. There had to be a one or two degree difference, which means that we're comparing something to something that's not the same. There is a movie called "Footsteps of Creation" or something like that, by a scientist who came up with scientific evidence to show all the dating systems being completely wrong and proving it scientifically.

55:52And since he came up with his claims, which was back in the, uh, maybe 25 years ago, no one has been able to refute him. They still continue to say that these things happened 30 billion years ago, but that's because they're just ignoring him and not addressing his issues. Uh, the second thing, and another thing is also in regards to the dating, is everyone says that the story of Noah's Ark can't happen, uh, How could he fit all those animals? First of all, what we need to know about Noah's Ark is that even though it was a miracle to fit all of the animals that you see today, all of them fit into Noah's Ark. So, first of all, even with Noah's Ark being huge, It was the size of three football fields. Just so you know, three and a half football fields. It's more like the Titanic. Most people that visualize Noah's Ark think it's like a small little boat. It's not. It's the size of three and a half football fields. You know, football fields like a soccer field. Three and a half of them. It's huge. It was like the Titanic. It's a huge, huge thing. But even that couldn't fit all the species that we have today in the world. So it was a miracle anyway. But people...

57:13still had a hard time believing it. But at the end of... And it took him 100 years to build it. Now, in Noah's Ark, 100 years it took him to build it. Towards the end of the parashah, towards the end of the story of Noah's Ark, something very, very special... that you guys can check out for yourselves today. This is a proof today. If you don't know this already, you should check it out today. Don't take my word for it because who knows, maybe I'm not trustworthy. So, you take it and go check it out today. If it's something that, in my opinion, you should check out because it's special, I'll take your word for it. I know, but you can actually see it's pretty cool, actually. Yeah, those candies are terrific, aren't they? Yeah, I'm already at two; this is my third. That's it, no more.

58:41Okay, so I'll tell you what it says, and I'll find it over here. In the Noah's Ark story, it says that the water, the rain, Hashem opened the heavens, which was pretty much one of the meteors, and He made the water not only come from the clouds but also from outer space to fill up the world with water. And there was also water that came from, like lava, that came from the ground, that destroyed everything. And the water that filled up the world was up to almost the top of the world. There was a space of 15 amot, was it? like 15 amot or something like that, or maybe 30 amot from the top of the world. It went above the mountains. Above the highest mountains. It was above the highest mountains, but it got to a point where it was only something like, I think, 15 amot from the top of the world. Okay? So everything, the world became pretty much... underwater. Water. That's what we know here from the parasha. It gives you the specifics. And it was only the living things...

1:00:00It was him, his wife, his three children, their three wives, and there were also a couple of other people that survived. There was Og Melech HaBashan, Og the king of Bashan, who also survived. Oh, here it is. Og the king of Bashan also survived, and there was one other person, I forget his name, who also survived, and there were also a couple of large animals that survived. But anyway, at the end of the flood, the water started receding. They were in the ark for about one year. So now we are there at the top of the earth. The water stops coming down. The water starts being absorbed by the ground. going down little by little. And you have this giant, Titanic-sized ship. And it says over here that the ship eventually, that the ark eventually, rests on the top of the highest mountain at the time. And it gives you the name of the mountain. It's called Ararat. Ararat. A-R-A-R-A-T. That was the highest mountain at the time.

1:01:29So the ship, why? That was the highest mountain at the time. To show how high this water came, at least. The water was as high as that. If the ship is already over there, that means that the water was higher than the mountain. That was the highest mountain in the world. That was the landing area. So it landed on this mountain. And then the water continued going down over the next few months, and eventually they left the ark and went about their lives. And the ark was too big. They couldn't take it down with them down the mountain. It's on the top of the mountain, right? And it tells you not only that the ship, the ark, was on top of the mountain, but it tells you the name of the mountain. The beautiful part about Hashem is that in this generation, He knows that we're so low, we're so far from the truth, that He knows that if He doesn't help us... It says in the Torah this name, Ararat? Ararat, right here. I had it for you. I had it for you, right here, where it's highlighted. Now we're going to say they found it in Turkey. Turkey, and the name of the mountain is Ararat.

1:02:46The question is, how come, if it's resting on a mountain, how did it ever come down? It never came down. It's a mountain. It's a mountain. They found it. Yes, they discovered it. There's a mountain in Turkey called Ararat. Same exact name as in the Torah. And they found a... Art with the exact precise measurements is what's in the Torah, and it's on the mountain. How do you miss such a big thing? I want to see it because it's not... The snow comes down, and rock forms. It's inside the mountain. It's not a... But they went inside it. They went inside it. They did... There are a few videos on YouTube. You guys can find out for yourselves. see if the exact same measurements, the exact same chemicals, everything precise. Everything precise. I have it. I have it on YouTube. I'll send it to you guys. So it's not only that it's precise measurements, it's on the top of the mountain. And if anyone thinks about it logically, there's no way that they built it up there. Exactly. Because you couldn't bring all that equipment and all of that wood...

1:04:00Even though I'm saying, even if somebody says, no, no, they just built it now, there's no way that you could have done it now because it's on the top of the mountain. There's no way that you can bring all of that wood, all of those tools, all of those things to the top of the mountain. It's not like a mountain like you see from, you know, what's called in Vegas at the coast, that you could climb it just with your feet. It's a huge, giant mountain. You can't bring all that stuff to the top of the mountain. But Hashem could have made it disappear, but I guess He didn't want to make it disappear. No, that's one of the proofs. That's the proof. It's showing that this really happened. He could have rested it a lot easier for them to get out and the animals to get out. But that was the point. If they put it on top of the mountain, it proves that the flood happened. Because if you would have put the ship on the ground right here in the middle of Florida, for example, then we could say, "Oh, it's any ship. Maybe somebody built it. There's no way that we can prove that that's the ship that Noach was in." But the fact that it's on a mountain, it shows that it's... How are you going to bring it up there? There's no other way to bring it up there unless it literally happened like the Torah says. And the best part about it is that it's the same mountain. I mean, a lot of the names from the Torah have changed. Like, for example...

1:05:16Babylon is one of the constant countries that's mentioned in the Torah. But Babylon doesn't exist anymore. What is Babylon? It's Iraq. Okay, so a lot of the names have been changed. But there are certain names that Hashem felt were important enough to keep the same. One of them was this mountain. Wow. So that's what we were saying at the beginning, and I say throughout the whole process, the first thing that someone needs to do is to confirm that this Torah is real. And confirming it is very, very simple. You watch the movie I gave you guys with the Torah and Science. You learn some of the things that are lectures out there, lectures that we're going to talk about. See what's in this book. There's a lot of evidence that confirms this is real. Once you confirm this is real, then you find out what's in it. Once you find out what's in it, then you figure out what it is that I need to do and why I need to do it.

1:06:26Because just keeping Shabbat and not knowing why, it's not going to make Shabbat very fun. Just keeping kosher and not really knowing why, it's not really going to help us. Just saying prayers without really knowing the meaning of them, it's not going to help our lives. It's going to help, it's good to do a mitzvah, but if you have a connection to the mitzvah, it makes you want to do it. So also I got you guys this thing, you guys know the... Asher Yatzar, the blessing that you say after going to the bathroom. Every time you go to the bathroom, you have a blessing that you need to recite. Thanking Hashem for making your body work the way it works. It's called Asher Yatzar. So, I don't know if you guys have this or not, but if you don't, please feel free to get one. Feel free to take one. It's a blessing you put on the wall. You know what? I'm surprised that in the synagogue, when you come out from the bathroom, they don't have another one on the wall. They used to have one. This is very, very cool. It tells you how the body works on the back, gives you details of the body. It's very, very cool stuff. You put it outside of the bathroom.

1:07:45The guy that printed these out, that created this, his granddaughter, zichronah livrachah, she's the little baby that got killed a few, like a month ago or so, in the terrorist attack. Oh, with the car? With the car, yes. Yes, so the guy that created these and put these together, he's actually the grandfather. Wow. Of who? The grandfather of who? Of the baby. The baby that was run over by those animal terrorists. So, this is really, really cool stuff. So, do you have one of these? I don't have one of those, but I was talking to my daughter about this the other day. Yeah, take the small one too, when you are. I thought I would get her one of these. Yeah, but it's good. The Arizal. Thank you. The Arizal was one of the great sages, very, very important. Take one, put it in your wallet. These little ones, the small version, put it in your wallet. He said that it's so important to have Kavanah during your prayer that even he would read what, in those days, a five-year-old knew by heart.

1:09:06But he said he would read everything that he would ever pray because the only way to have true kavannah is when you're reading it from a book or reading it from something. Yeah, it's fine. It's better to stand in place Because when you're standing in place for 20 seconds, it's not like it takes three hours to do it. Then you step out of the bathroom, you close the door, and you say the prayer. Right, it takes 20 seconds. It takes 20 seconds. You put that on your wall outside of the bathroom. There's an hour, hour and a half after that you can say it. Right? Something like that? I don't know exactly the time, but it's better to just say it. Yeah, because you have to stay. Why do you have to stay? That's the thing. If one of those parts stopped working, you wouldn't be going to the bathroom another time because you wouldn't survive the next one.

1:10:19Yeah, I can tell you from my own life. It's not easy. What you say, let's say I say it, I try to say it, and it's hard. Because as you say, every time you move, you have to say it. And then what you say, I have an idea. So I say it, but many times I, you know, I say it automatically. Okay, so it is... Because it's something you do many times during the day. All right, so here it is. I'm going to tell you guys something you need to know to show you what the significance of this is, because this is something that I actually have personal experiences with. and how amazing it is that you guys have a normal, relatively normal digestive system. About ten, if you might actually open his.