Shiur Torah #42 NEW Scientific Proofs of God, Failed Logic and the Ponzi Scheme Of Life

0:04Monday nights all go to Warren. May he have a lot of success in spirituality, in business, and in every single thing that's good in this world. May Hashem give him and his family blessings for putting together this shiur. It's not easy to put together a shiur. I remember when we first started with the other shiur we have on Tuesday. We started with just one person—me and one other person. And pretty much each week, you have to almost practically beg people to come. And the reason why is because there's something called an evil inclination in Judaism. And the Yetzer Hara, the Satan, is a lot more powerful than we can even imagine. So when you say that, listen, you should go to a shiur Torah, Satan doesn't want you to. He's going to do everything he possibly can to convince you not to. Whether it's a flat tire, or it's busy at work. Satan will even give you money to make sure you don't go to a shiur Torah. At the last minute, right before you leave the office, the one customer you've always been waiting for, the one who never called in his life, he's going to call you.

1:14And that's what happens. So, putting together a shiur is not easy. So, Chazak U'Baruch to Warren, Be'ezrat Hashem, we'll continue to grow this shiur. And then we want to do a refuah shleima for Sam. Be'ezrat Hashem, we'll do a full refuah shleima. Daniel, Pharaoh... And also the little baby still hasn't healed a hundred percent yet. But Ravit, Be'ezrat Hashem, will have a refuah shleima soon. And Be'ezrat Hashem, all of Am Yisrael will have a refuah shleima and success in spirituality and connection to Hashem. So I was thinking about this lecture, trying to figure out how to start a lecture, and it reminded me of my business days prior to learning and teaching Torah. I was in the business world, I owned a business. As Warren Buffett often spent too much time explaining his business life, it's not as important.

2:21I'm telling you guys, I spent some time in the investment world, the insurance world, and part of what I did was consulting. Different people would come to me with different ideas, and I would tell them my opinion, even if I wasn't the one who was actually going to take the investment, per se. So, it reminded me of the story of a guy by the name of Henry. I'm not going to say his last name because I don't have permission to share his story. But he was a really, really nice guy, not Jewish, but a very nice guy named Henry who came to me and told me that there's a group of people offering him this investment deal in his park. He wanted me to look at it. I looked at the deal and... Oh Hashem, I had a little bit of a talent as far as finding red flags, so I spotted that it was a Ponzi scheme within about five or ten minutes. I spent the next few hours trying to prove it. So now, after you look at this thing and you see that all of the money that they're pitching that they're going to get for investors, they're really taking for themselves, now you have to go back to the investor and you have to tell them the truth. The problem is, how do you start a conversation with someone telling him that everything he ever believed was a lie? And it's the same thing that goes with Am Yisrael today. Unfortunately, in today's world of political correctness, people are too worried about other people's feelings and not enough about the truth. So we grow up and we live a life thinking that it's okay to have our own opinion.

3:35with someone telling him that everything he ever believed was a lie. And it's the same thing that goes with Am Yisrael today. Unfortunately, in today's world of political correctness, people are too worried about other people's feelings and not enough about the truth. So we grow up and live a life thinking that it's okay to have our own opinion. that supersedes the Creator of the world. Our opinions are valid. Our logic is important. Some people are smarter than others. Some people are better in other things than others. But the key is that we have to understand that there is a Creator. The Creator created instructions because no creation was ever made without a set of instructions. So, for example, if I ask you, you know, this pizza, does it have a creator? Did somebody make it? You'd obviously say yes because it didn't come from nothing. There wasn't an explosion that just created this pizza.

4:39or this restaurant that we're in, you know it didn't just come from nothing. A few people came together, put some steel together, some wood, and some other parts, and the next thing you know, you have a building. The same thing goes for the roads, the same thing goes for the cars, the same thing goes for everything else in life. Every creation has a creator. The unique part about all creation is that they all also have a set of instructions from that creator, from that manufacturer. The reason why is because if I gave you a phone for the first time, you'd never seen a phone in your life, and I gave it to you, and there were no instructions, and you didn't know what this was. Without the instructions, this would be useless to you. It would just be a block; you could just put your cup on it. But if I gave you a set of instructions and explained to you what it is, then obviously you'd use it. Not only would you use it, you'd know how to use it to its best potential. For some reason or another, over the last few generations, the Jewish people have been led to believe that the set of instructions we received from Hashem, the Creator of the world, are no longer valid. They're outdated. They don't really matter as much. They're not relevant.

6:06And the problem is that there is a systemic issue within the entire Jewish community. What do I mean? You have two sets of people. You have either people that know and they're already religious, or people that don't know and they're not religious. Now the ones that know, once they've spent some time learning, or they were born into it, they assume that everyone else knows just like they know. Someone who was born religious assumes that everyone else also knows what he knows, but they choose not to do what Hashem asks. And that's generally the mentality of most religious people who have been born religious, that in general, people choose not to do what Hashem said, instead of not knowing what Hashem said. The other side, Oh, and the reason for that, by the way, the foundation for that claim—it's not everyone, obviously, this is a general claim—is because if you look at the overall perspective of rabbis that focus on kiruv, that focus on helping people do teshuva, it's a very, very small minority in comparison to the overall number of rabbis in general that just teach Torah.

7:27Now, the Torah has—it never ends. You can learn Torah every day, 24 hours a day, for a thousand years, and you still would not scratch the surface of how much it has. So, learning Torah is obviously something that we're obligated to do as Jews, and it's something that we need to do. Religious people know this, so many of them teach themselves and each other, but that doesn't necessarily help many people give back to Hashem. That's helping people that are already in the "club." Out of the 14, 15, 16 million Jews that are in the world, maybe there's less, maybe more. No one really knows how many there are. If you ask the non-Jews how many Jews there are in the world, they'll tell you 2 or 3 billion, just based on how many times we show up in the news. But if you look at the overall perspective of Jews, there's only a small minority who are religious. Maybe 20% of us are keeping Shabbat. Maybe 20% of us... even know what Shabbat is. Everyone knows that Shabbat is the seventh day of the week. Everyone knows, even the non-Jews know what Shabbat is as far as it being the seventh day of the week. As a matter of fact, there is no scientific reason

8:56of why there are seven days in a week other than the Torah. Other than the Torah, there's no basis for why it was decided to be seven days a week. None. No scientist will ever tell you, "Listen, there are certain proofs that such-and-such scientist came up with a theory and he said it should be seven days a week." No. There's no other religion that said it. Since before Judaism, there weren't any other religions other than paganism, worshipping idols. After Judaism, all the other religions were born. There are about 80,000 of them today. The three majors are Christianity and Catholicism (which is one), Islam, and Judaism. But there are 80,000 other cults. All of them started after Judaism. So none of them could say that they knew something before Judaism. None of them could say that they are the source because technically they're all using our book, our Torah, as their first book and they claim to have a second book. Christianity and Catholicism claim to have the New Testament, and they call our Torah the Old Testament. Kind of gives you the perspective of what I was saying before about how they're calling the Torah that Hashem gave us outdated, the Old Testament. New always sounds more exciting.

10:25The Quran says that our Torah is real, but yet the entire Quran contradicts it. So, I'm not really sure how it's real, but at the same time it works. But either way, no one can say that there is a basis for why there are seven days in one week other than the source being the Torah. This by itself, if you think about it enough time, you'd understand that, obviously, the Torah was not written by a man. The Torah was not written by some person who decided to publish a book. Because if a person decided to publish a book and say, listen, this should be seven days a week, that would mean that it's open for the public to do. Then a second publisher would say, no, I think it should be twelve days a week. Another guy would come out and say, no, no, I want to be competitive. I'm going to make the week much easier. Only two days a week. And then the guy that likes sales will say, you know what, it should only be one day a week. Every day is a new week. But since no one did it, obviously we know that this is not a creation of mankind. The other proofs will be much stronger, but the point is that this is a very logical proof. Now, the other side of the equation are the people that are not religious.

11:48By "not religious," I don't necessarily mean people who are completely far away from what Hashem said and don't know anything. They're obviously included. But I also mean people who are 50-50. They do things based on their own understanding. And by "own understanding," I mean based on their own convenience. For some reason or another, we were led to believe by the political correctness of the world and by the concerned leaders. Let's say we don't want to turn anyone off. We're very worried about turning people off by telling them the truth. If we tell people the truth, maybe they'll be so scared they're never going to come back. So what you see is most lectures—I don't know how many of you guys watch lectures, but if you watch lectures, there are many brilliant rabbis in the world. There's no shortage of brilliant rabbis. But the overall majority of them stay away from some of the difficult parts of the Torah. For example, the whole aspect of punishment. Some groups within Judaism don't believe in punishment. They believe in what it says in our Siddur when we pray on Shabbat, that every Jew has an Olam HaBa. Every Jew is going to go to the next world.

13:12The problem with that verse is that it's only the first part of that Mishnah. The second part of that Mishnah is that after it says every Jew has a part in the next world, it says, "And these are the following who do not have a share in the world to come," and it lists a long list of violations of who loses their share in the world to come. But in our Siddur, we don't have that. Why? Because if we read it every week, we'd probably be very depressed, especially in our generation. So many rabbis try not to talk about punishment. There is an old sage saying, "Teach Torah, teach the beauty of the Torah, and that's going to attract people." Yes, it does attract people. But unfortunately, not enough know that it's attractive in the first place to even hear it and be attracted to it. Even more so, since each generation, since the creation of the world, continues to deteriorate. Every generation, as all Jews know,

14:37we are at a generation that we don't have that kind of time. If the sages are right and we are in the end of days, then we don't have that kind of time to wait for everyone to pleasantly walk into Judaism and just decide to keep all of the mitzvot. If the Mashiach is really going to come any day, then we'll run out of time. Because once the Mashiach comes, there's no more time to do teshuvah. You can't say, oh, you know what, from now on, Mashiach, now that I know you're here, I'm going to keep Shabbat, I'm going to keep kosher, I'm going to do tefillin, I'm going to make sure there's family purity, I'm going to be modest, I'm going to do all the things that Hashem said. No, once the Mashiach comes, there's no more time. Because then, it's no more test. So the whole aspect of the Kiruv, the concept of teaching people the pleasantness of the Torah without punishment, without any consequences. And eventually, if you teach them things in a nice way, they will listen and eventually they will do it on their own. In the past, again, this is my opinion and I'm not the only one, but this is one of the few things that's 100% my opinion.

15:48In my opinion, we don't have that kind of time. When you have 80% of the Jewish people who have no concept of the significance of Shabbat and are not observing it, while at the same time, all of the sages throughout all of time and all of the prophets have said that this, right now, the days we're living in, are the end of days, meaning that Mashiach can come tomorrow, B'ezrat Hashem. I hope he doesn't come tomorrow because I want to save more Jews. But at the same token, it's one of our obligations to hope that he comes. So it's a little bit of a mixed opinion. So when you have 80% of the Jews, people don't even know what Shabbat is, and they're still driving on Shabbat, and they're still smoking cigarettes, and they're still violating, and some people even drive to shul. So far they're off the basis of what Hashem said, that they figure that if I do a mitzvah by going to the synagogue, then that cancels out the violation of driving on Shabbat. Makes sense. Logically, it makes sense. The problem is that the Torah is not necessarily logical. The Torah is not necessarily meant for it to be logical for us because our logic is obviously lesser than our Creator's.

17:16You know the significance of the Creator based on His creation. So now, when you have so many Jewish people that don't have a concept of the basic foundation of what makes someone Jewish, then I don't think we have enough time to wait for me to teach pretty things, nice things, and never tell you guys about anything that's truly important. a little bit hard, a little hard to hear. And we're not going to learn about Gehenom in our first session, but we will learn certain things, and Shimon is laughing because he's heard some of those shiurim. But we will hear a few things that may not necessarily be pleasing to some people because, again, it's not going to be hard stuff where you're not going to be able to sleep or anything like that. The point of what I mean by saying hard is that everything I'm going to say, b'ezrat Hashem, the goal is for it to obligate you. Obligate you to change. Obligate me to change. The goal of Rosh Hashanah, that's coming up, is not for us to go and pray. It's not just for us to go and look in nice clothes, and go to Beit Knesset, and think about, oh, at least this holiday I don't have to fast like the one that's coming up ten days later, Yom Kippur. Maybe have a nice meal at home.

18:37And then Yom Kippur, he says, oh, you know what? This is not like Rosh Hashanah. I can't eat on this holiday. And he asked the rabbi, what time does the fast end? Instead of, do you think I'm going to survive? Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah are not for us to just go and socialize with our friends and family in the synagogue. Rosh Hashanah, for all Jews that learn a little bit of Torah, they know Rosh Hashanah is the Yom HaDin. It's Judgment Day. That means that the books in Shamayim are opened and Hashem decides whether you're going to live another year or not. Now, if someone went to a trial in this world and the judge says, "Tomorrow, I'm going to decide whether you're going to live or die. You're either going to live and be free and you're going to not have jail time, you're going to be in the world and do whatever you want, or the exact opposite. You're going to die." Are you going to have any worries about whether she has a nicer dress than you, or he has a nicer car than you, or whether you made the right recipe, and whether the guests are going to like what you made for food, you're not going to think about that, right? Because, why? Because tomorrow is a big day. Yom Kippur is the appeal.

19:56Hashem already knew that we're going to get to a point where some of us are not going to know, and not going to do enough on Rosh Hashanah. Because most people think that Rosh Hashanah is a celebration. Oh, it's a happy new year. Like the Christians and the Catholics. Happy new year. With all the bells and whistles and all the fireworks. No, it's not a happy new year. Yeah, of course, we say Shana Tova. We say that you have Berachah. And B'ezrat Hashem, all of us will have Berachah. But again, it's not the same type of happy new year. Hashem already knew that we're going to get to a point where some of us are not going to know the significance of Rosh Hashanah. And we're not going to pray hard enough on Judgment Day. So what did He give us? He gave us an appeal. He gave us Yom Kippur. It's a day that it's unquestionable why you're supposed to be there. No one fasts just because they like it. No one stops their will just because it's pleasant. That's why in Hebrew, the word for fasting is not just Tzom, it's also Ta'anit. Ta'anit comes from the root meaning to suffer. In essence, you're supposed to suffer a little bit. So now, we have a dilemma.

21:23with 80% of people that don't know. Most of the people that do know are not interested, or maybe aware, or perhaps even versed in getting those people back. But the religious people know that they need to. So Baruch Hashem, Hashem obviously is smarter than all of us. He sends people like me that don't care. I don't care about people's feelings. I want to save them. If they cry, but then they keep Shabbat, then I'm happy. Because they'll cry now, but they'll be very happy. So I don't have a congregation. I don't need any tzedakah. I don't have any other benefit other than to make people religious. And that's the goal today. So now, how do you make someone religious when they're 50-50 or nothing? First, we have to decide. If we should. Why should I become religious? Maybe the book is fake. Maybe it's fake. Maybe Moshe wrote it. Maybe Tzvika wrote it. Maybe Avraham wrote it. Maybe Nissan in the back wrote it. Nissan comes to all my shiurim. He's the one I said we started the shiur with in my house. He was the first one. It was me and Nissan. I have the two. I ordered them. Two more.

22:47You want four? No, two more. Yeah, they're in the oven. So now, the dilemma is that most people don't know for sure if the Torah is real. To be honest with you, I actually think some religious people don't know if the Torah is real. They do it because it's become a culture. If you're born into it, it's just like if I was born in the middle of Africa and everyone's walking around just with underwear. To me, that would be normal. Because I'm walking around with underwear, they're walking around with underwear. But if I came to New York, well, maybe not New York, but if I came to Florida and I walked around with underwear, then I would probably get arrested, right? Because it's not normal here. So people think that the Torah has some things in it... that are interesting. Some people even call it the best story ever told, but they have a hard time believing that it's real. This is why I call myself the failed experiment. One of the biggest drives that I have in doing this is because I was the failed experiment in this generation. Because what?

24:14I was the failed experiment of teaching in a nice way, thinking that eventually, he'll become religious. When I had the business in New York, I had different religious people come to my office at least twice a week. Different organizations—we're not going to mention names—they all tried their best. They all did what they were told. You weren't religious at the time? I was not religious at the time. As a matter of fact, I was as far from religion as you could possibly be. I knew the concept of Judaism, but like many people in the world today, I defined it myself. What is the concept? Do you have any background? Do you have any base? Background of what? Like everybody else? I mean... What level of religion? I was? In the past or now? Oh, in the past. In the past, I mean, my parents would do Kiddush on Fridays. And then television. And then we would go to the movies sometimes, or the clubs. Or...

25:21do whatever we wanted. Eventually, my mom was the first one that started keeping Shabbat, many years before the rest of us did. My father later on, but the kids never did. When we were kids, we were living in Israel, and we went to a religious school for the first few years of our life. But once we came to America, that was no longer possible, so we went to public school. And when you go to public school, you become friends with the public. The public in America is not Jewish. The public in America is not religiously Jewish. So you become just like them. And you have theories that you create over time, and you have your own mind that you create, and you make everything into a nice cholent of opinions. And you create your own religion in your mind. So I figured that once I grew up, okay, there's something called Torah. I heard a few stories at some point. They say don't work on Shabbat. Okay, so I'm not going to work on Shabbat. I'm going to go to casinos. I'll go play high-stakes poker with the best players in the world. I knew a little bit of math. I was pretty good at the game. So I'll go play the World Series. I'll go play big tournaments. I'll play big cash games. I'm not working.

26:41It made perfect sense to me. Because all those rabbis that came to my office twice a week for over 10 years, which if you do the math, if it's, let's say, once a week, it's more than twice, but let's say if it's once a week, they would come and they would tell me nice stories. Or they would tell me that, you know, something that's relevant to the parasha. But never anything with substance. Like, for example, by the way, if you don't keep Shabbat, you're not considered Jewish. That would hurt. That hurts. If I had listened to it at that time, it would have hurt. I'm not saying I would have listened and actually done it. But I know that it would have changed something in me. Now, I'm not blaming any of those religious people who came to my office. Because even if they had told me, I'm not saying that I would actually have done it. But the one thing I do blame them for is making the decision for me, for deciding that I wasn't ready to hear it yet. deciding that it's too much for me to bear. That if I heard it, it would just be too much for me. So they decided not to tell me, so I never knew. So for 10 years or more, I had people come to my office, and I would give them tzedakah, and I would listen to whatever they had to say, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, a half hour sometimes. They were really nice people. But never once did I hear from one person

28:10that Shabbat is the only thing that separates me from being Jewish. Meaning that if I don't keep Shabbat, based on the definition that's in the Shulchan Aruch, which is the Book of Laws, and the Torah in seven places; based on the Oral Torah, which is in the Gemara; based on the other parts of the Oral Torah, which is in the Zohar; and the best part is based on the Torah, the actual Chumash, the Tanakh, the one that everyone believes in, including the non-Jews, including the Christians and the Catholics. They also believe in the Old Testament or the Torah, what we call the Torah, even including there. Based on all of those definitions, so you can't say it's here but it's not there. Based on all of them, someone that's Jewish, who doesn't keep Shabbat, the least of their problems is that they're no longer considered Jewish. Now, of course, they can do teshuva, and everything that I'm going to say today, and any other shiur, is always subject to teshuva. But, if anyone needs a source, you go to parashat Ki Tisa,

29:13When it talks about someone that's a Mechalel Shabbat, Hashem is talking about someone that violates Shabbat. And He says what's going to happen to them in one verse, one sentence. It says, Mot means death. Yumat means upon death. So death upon death. So I died twice. We'll explain it in a second. And if venichretah hanefesh hahi means and cut off from the nation. Now if cut off from the nation meant death, then obviously I shouldn't have died twice before. So the first death is death in this world, spiritual disconnection from Hashem. because we're not getting death penalties like they did back at Mount Sinai. So you see plenty of people violate Shabbat and they're still alive, so obviously the explanation is pretty logical. "Upon death" means that there's no next world, there's no Olam HaBa. When you say, "cut off from the nation," it means that they're no longer connected to the Jewish people. So if anyone would have ever told me this, I'm not saying I would have kept Shabbat.

30:18What I am saying is that at least I would have known. And I would have made an educated guess, would have made an educated decision about what I want to do with the rest of my life. Maybe I shouldn't go to the casino. Maybe I shouldn't drive around. Maybe I shouldn't do all of the things that I was doing. Maybe not working is not enough. And that's one of the examples, the small examples of what I tell you as far as things that are a little hard to hear for anyone that's not keeping it. Because again, I asked one time, there was a guy that came to one of the minhagim we have during one of the holidays, which is to learn Torah all night. It was a guy that was secular, came to learn, but he never comes to shul, he doesn't keep anything, but he likes it. This is one of his things that he does. He comes every year to learn. And we were talking about Shabbat, and I told him this verse. He said, "No, no, what are you talking about? I'm Jewish." I said, "No, what makes you Jewish?" He goes, "My passport says I'm Jewish." What do you think the next question was? Can you take your passport to heaven? You can't take your passport to heaven. You can't take your money to heaven. You can't take your car to heaven. You can't take your friends to heaven. You can't take anything to heaven. The only thing you can take to heaven is whether you have sins or mitzvot. It's the only thing you can take.

31:38And that's one of the things we need to know. So now, we have to decide that before we become obligated to what the rest of the Torah is telling us, it says a lot. It's a lot of pages. It takes a whole year to read the Torah. If you read one parasha per week, it takes a whole year to finish it. In the old days, it took three years. They studied it more in depth than we do today. But nonetheless, it takes a year to read it. If you read it with the congregation, if you read it by yourself, it shouldn't take more than a few weeks. But either way, before we become obligated and read all of these other rules, we have to find a few things to hold on to. A few things to hold on to that are stamps of approval, logically, spiritually, and something that's very popular today, scientifically. How can we prove something that was written 3,300 years ago, scientifically? Because it's too common of a saying that people say that the Torah is no longer relevant. It's not relevant to our generation. Back then, they didn't have cars, so that's why they didn't violate Shabbat. Back then, they didn't have casinos like we have today, and that's why they didn't gamble. Despite the fact that all of that is convenient nonsense, we can still prove the Torah. And we're going to start with the first book, Bereshit. We're not going to cover the entire parashat Bereshit because I want to cover it in depth. Every shiur we're going to cover another part. Today, B'ezrat Hashem, we'll cover the first seven days. That's it.

33:05convenient nonsense. We can still prove the Torah. And we're going to start with the first book, Bereishit. We're not going to cover the entire parashat Bereishit because I want to cover it in depth. Every shiur we're going to cover another part. Today, b'ezrat Hashem, we'll cover the first seven days. That's it. cover the first seven days. Some things are going to be scientific, so they might be a little heavy as far as science. If you have questions, please stop me at any given time. This is not a pure lecture where I just talk. If you have questions in the middle, just like Moshe did, you can ask me, and I'll explain as best as I can. The goal is for you to understand. I already learned it, so the goal is for you to learn it and then, through you learning it, I end up learning because I'm repeating it, and we both benefit. So, The first verse in the Torah is: In the beginning of God's creating the heavens and the earth, when the earth was astonishingly empty with darkness upon the surface of the deep and the Divine Presence hovered over the surface of the waters, God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and God separated between the light and the darkness. God called the light "day" and the darkness He called "night." There was evening, and there was morning, one day.

34:23In the beginning of God's creating the heavens and the earth, when the earth was astonishingly empty with darkness upon the surface of the deep, and the Divine Presence hovered over the surface of the waters, God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and God separated between the light and the darkness. God called the light "day" and the darkness He called "night." There was evening, and there was morning, one day. All right. So now, one thing that we learn is that before this world, there was nothing. There was nothing. A mess. One thing that those who learn a little bit of Torah know is a very famous verse, which I'll read in Hebrew first, and then, you know, to give it the proper respect, and then we'll talk about it in English, which is, If not for my covenant, which he's referring to the study of Torah, or not for my covenant day and night, I would not have appointed the ordinance of heaven and earth. This is in Yirmiyahu 33:25. So he's saying, Hashem created the world from nothing. That's one of the core foundations of Judaism.

35:51But at the same token, he's telling us that if there wasn't the learning of Torah every single second of the day, someone in the world has to learn Torah. Baruch Hashem, there are many people who learn Torah in the world. But if we were the only ones learning Torah in the world right now, we would be holding up the world. So, he's saying if no one learns Torah for even one second, it would destroy the world. Now, when people think about destroying the world, they think about Noach. They think, oh, there was a flood, and it took 40 days, then after that, there was some rain, and after that, there was a lot more, and then it pretty much destroyed the whole world. The whole process took about a year, a year's worth of disasters. So people think, oh, it's going to take Hashem a year to destroy the world. This is... a convenient belief that people have because they figure that if it's going to take that long, maybe it's going to give me enough time to plead with Him and convince Him that, hey, don't do it. I'm a nice guy. It reminds me of a joke. There were two guys, neighbors, who lived next to each other all their lives. One guy was religious, Jewish, going to learn Torah each day.

37:15while he works as well. The other guy, no Torah, no mitzvot, no nothing. He worked in a taxi cab. So once in a while, the religious guy would say to the non-religious guy, he's like, listen, you know what, maybe you should come to the Beit Knesset, learn a few things, learn some Torah, it's really important. No, no, don't worry about it, I'm fine. He goes, how are you fine? He goes, no, when I get up there, I'll figure it out, I'll work something out over there. I'll work something out. He works out. It's God. He goes, yeah, I work out things with my customers all the time. It's only $10. I convince him to give me $15. God gave me this talent. So obviously, He gave me this talent to convince him too. This made sense to him. That's how he lived his life. One day, both of them went up to Shamayim, and they're both in the court. And the religious guy goes in to see the judges first. The non-religious guy is looking from the back. He's like, oh, this is real. I didn't really think it was going to happen this way, but okay. So he's watching his friend, his so-called friend. They ask the friend, so what did you do each day? He goes, oh, I learned Torah. They go, no, no, what did you do in the beginning? He goes, the first thing I did was I said a few blessings when I got up in the morning. Oh, put that on the scale.

38:39After that, he goes, after that I drank a quick cup of coffee before I went to the Beit Knesset. Hold on, before you got to the Beit Knesset. Coffee? What kind of coffee? Black coffee, no milk. Okay. Put all that coffee that he ever had. Did you have any sugar in it? Yeah, I had sugar. Okay, that goes on the scale also. So the guy on the outside is like, I knew it was going to be me. I drank, he drank only one cup. I drank three cups of coffee before I even left the house. So then the guy says, okay, I went to the Beit Knesset after that. Did you walk? Did you drive? You go, no, I walked. Okay, each step, let's measure it. It was a one-mile walk. Put all that measuring tape, times 70 years, on the scale. Once I prayed, after that I ate breakfast. Oh, what did you eat? Usually, I would eat a little muffin. He didn't start studying. He goes, no, no, hold on a second. Muffin you ate? Muffin is there on the outside. Okay, put that on the scale. The guy on the outside is celebrating like you wouldn't believe. It's like, muffin? I told this guy he didn't know what he was doing. Muffin? I didn't even leave the house before I had two or three of them. And just when I got into the car, the first thing I went to was Dunkin' Donuts, just to make sure that I had the freshest donut of the day.

39:54So then after that, he said, after I learned Torah, which obviously all goes on the scale also, so the non-religious guy on the outside, he's like, alright, Torah I don't really have that much. But the muffins I'm very good at. So after they said they had lunch, what did you have for lunch? I usually have a piece of chicken, a small piece of chicken. Oh, that all goes on the scale. The guy on the outside, the cab driver, is celebrating. Chicken, poor guy. I would have at least one chicken, at least one steak, and sometimes some cheese on it too. He's celebrating and as happy as can be. He sees his friend's scale keeps going higher and higher with mitzvot, and he's like, oh, he only had one piece of chicken, one coffee, and one donut. Eventually, they say, okay, you have Gan Eden, they let him in, and the cab driver comes in. I say, "Hello?" He's like, "Hello?" He goes, "Listen, I'm not going to waste your time. Just take a pen, write this down. In the morning, I'd have three cups of coffee. I'd put four sugars. My friend only one sugar. I don't know why. I don't know why he's worried. We both died at the same time. So four sugars, that worked for me. I didn't have, like my poor friend, his skin. He only had one muffin. I had three before I left the house. After that, I went to Dunkin' Donuts. After that, I had three." He goes, "Wait, hold on a second." The judge was like, "Wait, what do you think? This is a restaurant?"

41:18He goes, "What do you mean? My friend, he just came here, he just told you his order, he told you what he ate." He goes, "No, you don't understand. Him, everything he did, he did a blessing before he ate. And everything he did was so he has the energy to do even more blessings, to do more learning Torah, to do more praying to Hashem. What about you? Did you pray to Hashem?" He goes, "No, not so much." "Did you learn Torah?" "No, no, not so much." What did you do? I worked in my cab. Okay, it's not bad to work. What did you do with the money? He goes, I went to the Bahamas. Did you give any tzedakah? No, not so much. He goes, oh, so the chicken and all the donuts and all the coffees are worthless. They don't go on your scale. And that's what we have to understand. is that our logic, as much as it makes sense to us, doesn't necessarily make sense in Shamayim. So now, when we have a world that Hashem is telling us, on one end I build it from nothing, on the other end if there's no Torah, it goes back to nothing. Our logic will tell us that that will take Him time. I'm here to tell you it will take Him no time. It will be instant. It doesn't require war, it doesn't require earthquakes,

42:40Doesn't require winds, doesn't require anything. It requires them to stop thinking about us for a millisecond, and everything stops. How do we know this scientifically? Scientifically, we know there's something called an atom. All of life, whether it's the trees, it's you, it's your hat, it's your kippah, it's my jacket, it's the iPad, it's the book, the cars, everything... It gets down to being made up of atoms and energy. An atom has a nucleus inside, which contains protons. The nucleus stays the same; it doesn't move. Then there's an electron, which is energy, that spins around it really, really fast. So fast that it makes everything else look like it's solid. As an example, you should consider thinking about a fan. Have you ever seen a fan? When a fan is spinning really fast, it looks like there's only one blade. But as soon as the fan slows down or it stops, you see that there are four blades or three blades. So it's an illusion. It's an illusion that there's only one blade. The world we live in is also an illusion. It's an illusion that we actually have something. But in reality, 99.9% of the atom is empty space. It's nothing. The nucleus is drastically bigger than the electron that's spinning around it. But the distance between them, to put it in an easy way, is the equivalent of us to the sun. Between each atom.

44:0499.9% of the atom is empty space. It's nothing. The nucleus is drastically bigger than the electron that's spinning around it. But the distance between them, to put it in an easy way, is the equivalent of the distance between us and the sun. And there are trillions upon trillions upon trillions of atoms in each and every single cell in your body or everything that's made up of the air. But all of that, in reality, is an illusion. It's all empty space. Scientists have even gone one step further, where they went inside the atom that's mostly made of nothing and they went inside the part that's not nothing. And they saw that most of that is also nothing. It's also 99.99% nothing. Zero. And if you take all of the matter, all of the something that we have, in all of the universe, everywhere, and let's say you stop spinning, the illusion stops. It stops spinning. We no longer see one blade; we see everything. We see everything for what it is.

45:32Everything in the whole universe would be clear to us. The nothing will be exposed. And the something will also be exposed. The something of all the universe together will fit into a box of matches. Which means that if Hashem wanted to destroy the world, chas v'shalom, He would just stop thinking about us. wanted to destroy the world, chas v'shalom, He would just stop thinking about us. For a million seconds. And the atom would stop spinning. This is also one of the best arguments for people that don't believe in Hashem. People that claim that things came from some explosion. The easiest way to defeat that argument, which we'll learn some other ones today, is that, let's say it came from nothing. Let's say there was an explosion. Let's say there's no, let's say nobody, you know, Moshe wrote this book. Let's say all the rest of what nonsense they say is real. Fine. You still have to believe in a source. You still have to believe in God. Even the biggest scientists in history eventually get to a point where they believe in God. Including Darwin, who is the one that made everyone else believe in the survival of the fittest.

46:42Everyone forgot to read the rest of his life, which is that he said, "I've concluded that there has to be a source, there has to be a God." They forgot that chapter. They just believed the first part that they read. So now, if they listen to this, and they say, wait a minute, everything came from an explosion, fine. Started 13.7 billion years ago, Big Bang Theory, fine. everything started from a cell, fine. I agree with you. You're the best. Genius. Where did the cell come from? It can't come from nothing. Nothing. Even the argument of the Big Bang says that something existed. Where did that something come from? And the second question is that something was also made out of atoms, which are mostly made out of nothing. So, what kept it spinning at the most critical time of its existence, before it exploded? What's keeping it spinning now? This, again, doesn't take a scientist's brain to understand, but simply said, it destroys all arguments for anyone that's objective. The next thing we learn is, how do we know from the first...

48:09paragraph of the Torah, the first five verses of the Torah, how do we know that Hashem meant for us to have the Torah as the purpose of life? How do we know? How do we know it's not to make money? How do we know it's not to go party? How do we know it's not to go to the Bahamas like the cab driver? How do we know it's not to... I don't know, go on TV and make shows. This Torah has the literal meaning, but it also has secrets within it. I'm not going to go deep into it; we're just going to give you a little taste of what it means. There's something called codes, Torah codes. Torah codes are a mathematical way of finding hidden messages within the Torah. by finding a word after counting letters, and having the word made up of none of the actual words that are in the Torah, but actually by separating each one of the letters by an equal distance of letters. So, for example, if you wanted to find my name, Yaron,

49:29So you would look for Yud, and then you would look for a certain number, let's say 7 or 50 or any number, and then you would get to Resh. And then in order for that formula to work and be valid, it can't be just any other number after it. It has to be, again, if you picked 7 the first time, it has to be 7 the second time. It can't just be random numbers. So if you see that, you see Y, A, or Yud, Reish, Vav, and Nun, which is my name in Hebrew, if you see that you found that name with an equal distance of letters, then it has some type of pattern. There's something behind it. It's not just something random. But if the first time it's seven, the second time it's 63, the third time it's 104, then there's obviously no rhythm, then it's just pure nonsense. Okay? Now if that word that you're looking for has a foundation itself, meaning that the word that you're looking for is related to the verse that you're finding it in, the paragraph that you're finding it in. So, for example, if you happen to find the word in Bereishit, the first paragraph, if I were to tell you that the purpose of life is Torah,

50:47And it was told to us in the first few verses. Now, if you remember, I just read you what I read you. I didn't say the word "Torah" once. So how could I prove it? I say that in here, there is the word "Torah." And not only is the word "Torah" with an equal distance of letters, but even beyond that, the skip, the number of skips, is relevant to when we got the Torah. When do we get the Torah? During the holiday of Shavuot. During the holiday of Shavuot is when we get the Torah, right? When is Shavuot according to the Torah? It's seven weeks after Pesach. So it's on the 50th day. Seven weeks is 49 days. So it's on the 50th day. So if you look at Bereshit, the beginning. Bereshit has the letter Tav, the letter Tav. The first Tav, which is the equivalent of T in English. The first Tav in all of the Torah is in the first word.

51:59First off, you skip 50 letters, you get a Vav in the word Tehillim. You skip 50 letters, you get a Resh in the word Vayal. You skip 50 letters, and you get a Hey in the word Elohim, God. This shows that not only is the Torah, right from the beginning, encoded with hidden messages, but it's at a time where it's appropriate for that word to be in there. There are plenty, indeed hundreds of thousands of codes within the Torah. Again, this is just one way to prove that the Torah is not something that a man could have ever written. Another thing that I actually learned recently from a video put out by Oren Evron, which included work also done by Professor Haim Shore, is about the first verse of the Torah. is that the Ramban says that Bereshit also means "with wisdom." Bereshit means "in the beginning." But if you look at each word in the Hebrew language, it has a source.

53:19Foundation doesn't just words don't just appear from nothing, like for example in other languages where we just make up words. Each word has a root word within it. So "Bereshit" has the word "Rosh," which means "head" in Hebrew. "Rosh" indicates wisdom. So, the Ramban says that Bereshit also means "with wisdom," meaning that with wisdom, God created the heaven and the earth. Okay, nice. If you look at the numerical value of the letters, each letter in the Hebrew alphabet has a numerical value. If you look at the numerical value of the word Chochmah, including... the letters that spell each one of the letters. Meaning chet, in Chochmah, is chet, chaf, mem, hey. But each, the letter chet, if you spell the word chet out, is chet, yud, tet. Kaf is kaf, peh. And mem is mem, mem. And hey is hey, aleph. So how do we know who is considered wise, who is considered chacham in the Torah?

54:38We say if he follows what G-d says. How does he follow what G-d says? He follows 613 mitzvot. Chochmah, the numerical value of all of those letters I just mentioned to you, Chochmah is 613. So again, another small example of Professor Haim Shore's work and others showing how the Torah is far, far beyond human imagination. The next thing is, we read, "God said, 'Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate between water and water.'" Reichen. We're in the second day. We finished day one. I wish, but we finished a speck of a speck of some things we can learn about day one. Day two. God said, "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate between water and water." So God made the firmament and separated between the waters which were beneath the firmament and the waters which were above the firmament. We're talking about the sky.

56:08And it was so. God called the firmament Heaven, and there was evening, and there was morning, a second day. Great. Chazal, which are our sages, say that there are two waters being mentioned in this verse. They said that there are waters above the sky, and there are waters below the sky. And if I asked you, where is the water below the sky? Everyone knows the answer, right? It's in the ocean, it's in the lakes, it's in my toilet, it's in your toilet, sometimes it's in this Coca-Cola, hopefully. It's everywhere, right? But where is the other water? Where's the water above the sky? And not only that, as if that argument wasn't hard enough to prove 3,000 years ago, they said not only is there water above the sky, but the water above the sky is much more significant to our needs, and not only much more significant, but...

57:19There's much more of it. The last time I checked, when I looked at the sky, there's no water. Yes, of course, sometimes there are clouds, and they pour rain, but that comes from here, so I can't really count that. He says he's separating the water from below the sky. The clouds are below the sky. So he's not referring to the clouds. He's saying it's above. It's above the sky. It's somewhere else. It's in outer space. It's a problem of other planets. We looked at the moon. There's no water there. Look at other planets, we're not really sure what they have or what they don't have. There have been a few more indications in the last few years. But what did they know 3,000 years ago? What did they know in the Gemara 2,000 years ago? Well, I can tell you, back then, they didn't have telescopes. So everyone made fun of us. Everyone said, "Ah, you don't know what you're talking about. See, I told you, you're making this up. It's nonsense that you're saying there's more water above than the ocean. Look how big the ocean is. The ocean is 73% of the globe."

58:2073%. You're telling me there's more water somewhere else and we can't see it? If there was so much water, we could definitely see it. Once in a while, we all see something called a shooting star, right? You ever see a shooting star? In New York, you don't see too many shooting stars because of the pollution. But in Florida, I think there's less pollution. Huh? Well, I lived on the 35th floor in Manhattan. In downtown Manhattan, no shooting stars. Upstate. That's not really considered New York. So now, you have shooting stars. This is nice. Some people thought, oh, it's a star that's broken. It fell. It's a nice story. Sometimes they tell kids, maybe. In reality, what is that star? Scientists discovered that the star is creating this stream because that stream is water vapor. Where is that water vapor coming from? From the star. What's the star really? It's a comet. What's the comet? It's a ball of ice. Tall ice. We had a few of them hit Earth. There's one that hit Earth in 1908.

59:44The field that it hit, it said it was the equivalent of several atomic bombs that hit Hiroshima in World War II. It was the equivalent of a few of them. And the trees, thank God there weren't people there, but the trees to this day can't grow on that field. That's how powerful it was. This was just one comet, tiny, tiny little comet, 30,000 pounds. The average comet that you see in the sky with a little streak is a billion tons. A billion. Some of them get even to a million billions. Okay, so that's a lot. One other thing that Chazal told us is that not only is the water above the water here much more significant in size, ...and importance, but also it's still. It's in one place, it doesn't move. Baruch Hashem, we got to a point in science that we finally got to a point where we can see some of the deeper parts of outer space, and we saw that the outer layer of outer space is all one big ball...

1:01:09full of ice. And those comets are tiny little pieces that keep breaking off of it. Meaning that if that giant layer, that giant outer layer, which is called the Oort Cloud, were ever to melt, it would fill the oceans of the Earth more than a thousand planets the size of the Earth. This is page 32. Do you have this book? Whoever doesn't have this book, but whoever waits until the end, I will give out this book for free, along with some CDs that talk about Torah. So whoever wants to wait until the end, I have a free copy for them. It's a fantastic book by Rabbi Zamir Cohen. And many of the proofs that I'm going to talk about come from this book. So, this is something that talks about comets. It's extraordinary. And it's something that really, truly shows how, at a time when we didn't have telescopes, at a time when we didn't have anything even remotely close to the technology we have today, we knew much more than the people even today know. Why? Because we got the information from the Creator of the world. The second thing is we learned...

1:02:20is that there is something more to water. If Hashem said that He had to create something that's related and connected to water, then obviously water is important. Water is important for our existence. Now, scientists say that most of the human body is made up of water. Right. There was a professor, a Japanese professor, I believe his name was Professor Imoto. He's also in this book. But I'll just go off of... I think his name was Professor Imoto. No, Emoto. Sorry, Mr. Emoto. Professor Emoto, not Jewish, last I checked, wanted to understand water on a deeper level. He wanted to understand if we can impact water with purely our words. So he took water, put it into a little petri dish, you know those little dishes that you have in a science lab. He put water in it. He took two dishes. One dish of water, before he froze it, he gave it compliments, said nice things about it. And the other one, he cursed at. He said not-so-nice things. Like you go to New York and you hear that language. Like everyday language. Subway. Subway, ooh. Subway, that water won't survive. So now, I have to pick another place. I don't want to pick on New York too much. I'm going there in a few weeks. So now,

1:03:46He took these two dishes, he said some nice things and some bad things, and then he froze them. After he froze them, he took them out, looked at them under a microscope to see how the ice cells were formed. If any one of you has ever seen a snowflake, When it's under a microscope, it's beautiful. It has a beautiful symmetrical design. And no two snowflakes are the same. It's also one of the amazing proofs that a Creator had to create the world, because no two snowflakes are the same. Just like no two raindrops ever touch. One of the miracles of rain is that when rain falls, no two raindrops ever touch each other. Why is that important for us? Because if the raindrops would touch each other, then the drops would get bigger and bigger. And instead of it being rain that doesn't hurt us, it could be a flood on our head and kill people. So no two raindrops ever touch each other. Despite what the winds are, as much wind as you can have, whether it's Hurricane Katrina or Hurricane Sabrina, none of it ever affects the Creator of the world that put a science behind everything. then the drops would get bigger and bigger. And instead of it being rain that doesn't hurt us, it could be a flood on our head and kill people. So no two raindrops ever touch each other. Despite what the winds are, as much wind as you can have, whether it's Hurricane Katrina or Hurricane Sabrina, none of it ever affects the Creator of the world who put a science behind everything.

1:04:56So now, you have this water. He's looking under the microscope and he sees that the one that he said nice things to has a beautiful symmetrical design similar to snowflakes. Nice, beautiful stars—they have pictures in this book. Amazing. The one that he said not-so-nice things to is dark, ugly, and deformed. So there was a student at Bar-Ilan University in Israel who wanted to take it a step further. He wanted to see if our words could affect plants. So he took three beans and he planted all three of them. To one of them, he said nice things. To one of them, he said bad things. And to one of them, he took a shot at this Torah stuff. He said, let me read some Tehillim, let me read some Psalms. See, maybe it's a little more than nice things. So, of course, the nice things... After a month, the bean with the nice words grew a little bit. The bean with the bad words died and didn't grow at all. The bean with the Psalms grew something beyond normal—something like five times the size of the one with the good words. This shows that it's not just good words; it's something divine.

1:06:16Why am I telling you about water? Are you going to become a scientist at some point or another and start carrying around petri dishes next to your friend, showing, "Look, I got nice things"? No. Because if you remember at the beginning of what I said, I mentioned that most of our body is made out of water. And if the words in our mouth affect the water outside of us, like Professor Emoto says, what is bad language doing to our inside? If you notice, language amongst all of civilization has changed drastically over the last 150 years. Cursing is a lot more normal today. Speaking freely about sex and intercourse, and things that are not necessarily supposed to be public information, is very normal. What's also very normal is for us, unfortunately, to hear of new diseases. Diseases without cures and diseases that, unfortunately, are killing thousands and thousands of people on a daily basis. If we could only listen to the Creator on the second day when He created water, He also wanted to teach us that our words are going to have an impact. This Torah that we find out in the first few verses...

1:07:43That has a good impact on our body, not just on the outside but also on the inside. But as far as bad words, it's not only affecting the outside in a bad way where people are not going to like you so much. Maybe you'll get fired, maybe you'll be frowned upon. I don't know, maybe your friends like it. I'm not really sure. But your inside will definitely suffer. Not that I wish anyone suffering, but again, this is in the book. This is scientifically proven. So again, it's one of the amazing things that we learn from water. After this, we go to the third day, and it says, "God said, 'Let the waters beneath the heavens be gathered into one area and let the dry land appear.' And it was so. God called the dry land earth, and to the gathering of waters He called seas. And God saw that it was good. God said, 'Let the earth sprout vegetation, herbage yielding seed.'" God said, "Let the waters beneath the heavens be gathered into one area, and let the dry land appear." And it was so. God called the dry land "earth," and to the gathering of waters He called "seas." And God saw that it was good. God said, "Let the earth sprout vegetation, herbage yielding seed."

1:09:01Fruit trees yielding fruit, each after its kind, containing its own seed on the earth. And it was so. Okay. What I'm going to focus on is etz peri oseh peri. Fruit tree yielding fruit. If you don't mind, Warren, pass this around. The first fruit tree It says here in Hebrew, it's a little more understandable than in English, it says, it's in essence indicating that the first tree was also a peri. The actual tree itself was a fruit. Meaning that it's not just a fruit that you pick off the tree to eat, but at first, you were able to eat the tree. The etz was a peri. And made fruit. The fruit, the tree that was a fruit, made fruit. Right? And Chazal tells us we can learn something from everything. We can learn something to change our lives from everything. The other day I learned from my carpet.

1:10:27I learned something very, very important from my carpet. It's actually relevant to this shiur and it's relevant to every shiur. I have a dog. It's a cute dog. He's been with me for 15 years. We've gone through war together. Best dog in the world. His name is Bully. I named him Bully because he's exactly the opposite. Just looks like it, but he doesn't even bark. But Bully, like most dogs, sheds. Sheds. He was 15 years old and he still sheds to this day—a little less than he used to, but still sheds. This means that almost every day, my carpet in my living room looks like another dog. So sometimes, anytime I give him one of the treats, he takes the treat, and where does he want to eat it? On the carpet. He doesn't want to eat on the floor. He wants to eat on the carpet. Why? Because he feels at home with all of the other "dog" that's there from his shedding, and the treat. It's a nice big party.

1:11:27Be'ezrat Hashem, this shiur will also be for Refuah Shlema for Avi ben Shalom, Shevach, Gilad ben Yosef, Sabari, and Be'ezrat Hashem they will have a Refuah Shlema, and Yosef ben Naomi. It's always good to stop even in the middle of a shiur for Refuah Shlema, because Refuah, you want it to come as soon as possible. And Be'ezrat Hashem, Hashem will give me back my thought so I don't forget it. So say two more people there. So let's say another two people. Be'ezrat Hashem also, if they’re Jewish and they’re good people, why not? And? And? And they also have... Quickly. We said Eden already before. And Ado Zai bat Oza. She will also have refuah sheleimah. And refuah sheleimah to all of Am Yisrael. So now, my carpet. Oh, yes. And Aliza bat Miriam. And she will have refuah sheleimah. I said refuah sheleimah. You can listen to the fruit part.

1:12:44So now, what can we learn from my carpet? You guys don't want the carpet, do you? So now, every day I see this carpet, and we have to vacuum this carpet. And it goes back, you know, before we vacuum the carpet, it looks so bad that I want to throw it out. It's like, oh, it's so bad, it looks, I can't fix this. I can't fix this. But then my wife says, "Fix it." So I fix it, I get the vacuum cleaner, and I fix it. It looks brand new. This is the same thing as a Jew—a Jew that has never done a mitzvah in his life. A Jew that has made a big mistake today, a Jew that has violated Shabbat, a Jew that made every mistake he could possibly imagine, that's giving the Yetzer Hara a lot of ammunition to convince him he should just give up. There's no way to turn back. You're like the carpet. Eh, it looks terrible. The cookie is on you, the shedding is on you. God only knows what else is on you. You can't go back to Hashem. No.

1:14:06That's what we have to learn. Teshuva is always available. As long as the light is still on, as long as a Jew is still here, the opportunity to do teshuva is still available. But as soon as the clock stops ticking, no more teshuva. whether the clock stops ticking because the Mashiach is here, or because our clock stops ticking because at some point or another, b'ezrat Hashem, after 120, our clock stops ticking. So now, we go back to the fruit. What can we possibly learn from the fruit? We learn from the carpet, so the fruit is an even more genius creation than the carpet. If you notice, what is the most beautiful part of the fruit? See, notice from the picture I gave you, I gave you a little bit of a hint. It's the middle. It's the middle of the fruit. If you cut the fruit in half, you cut the apple. We'll use an apple as an example. You see, if you cut an apple in half, you see the beauty of the creation. Why? Because when you cut it in half, you see all of it. You see the peel on the outside that's protecting it. You see the body of the fruit.

1:15:21Then you see the shell that's protecting its precious jewels, which is its seed, so it continues reproducing. This shows that this is not just from an explosion. There's obviously a system here. There's logic here. This could not have come from some explosion. Because if you look at every single fruit, it's different from the other. But many of them, all of those that are in that picture, and I believe all of them, including vegetables, have one common denominator. They don't all look the same. As you can see from the pictures, they're all different. They don't all taste the same, obviously, as you all know from experience. But they all act the same. As soon as you peel them, as soon as you peel an apple, and you just let it, leave it there. You peel an apple a little bit. What happens after you peel the apple? It becomes dark. Ah, it becomes dark. Here's what we learn from the apple. Hashem gave His precious jewels, like our neshama, inside. He also gave them a body, like our body. But to protect the neshama and the body,

1:16:50He gave him the peel. He gave him the peel because the peel has to hide what's precious. This is no different than a Jewish woman or a Jewish man. What ends up happening to the apple is that as soon as you take off its clothes, it becomes dark. Why is it becoming dark? Because it's shy. It's embarrassed. You're seeing its inside. This is one of the lessons we need to learn for Jewish men and for Jewish women, where unfortunately today it's common for women to walk around half-naked and for men to think nothing of it. It's normal. There was one time a party that a guy had, and he invited his rabbi and he was telling a group of people that, "Hey, listen, Rabbi, we want to say goodbye. We're going on vacation." The Rabbi said, "Where are you going?" He goes, "I'm going to the Bahamas. We're going to the beach, hang out." He says, "You're going to the beach with your wife?" He goes, "Yeah." He goes, "And your wife dresses like everyone else?" He goes, "Yeah, she wears a bikini, no big deal." He says...

1:18:06Can I see the bikini? Can you ask your wife to come down and show me the bikini she's going to wear for the Bahamas? She's going to model it. So... That was a good one. Sure was worth it just for that. But now... The guy obviously doesn’t say what he said. The guy gets offended. He goes, what do you mean? There are 300 people here at this party. How dare you? What kind of rabbi are you? Evil. What kind of rabbi are you? Asking to see my wife in a bikini? What kind of rabbi are you? So the rabbi says, why is it a problem to show it to me and 300 people but not a problem to show it to 50,000 people on the beach? Your ears should listen to your foolish mouth. The apple is teaching us a lesson. We are not supposed to show our body to the world. We are not supposed to show the parts that Hashem told us to protect. This is why the apple and the orange and the strawberry and the pear and the banana and everything else, as soon as you take off the peel, are trying to teach us a lesson. They're trying to remind us.

1:19:33This is not normal. Normal is for me to be covered. Why? Because there's something precious that's being covered. If I had a bag of diamonds, do you think I would throw it up in the air and show the world I have them? No. I'd put them in a safe, inside another safe, with another safe on top of it. Cover it, it's precious. Same thing with the body, same thing with the soul. We're not supposed to necessarily show our body to the world. And again, this is something you can literally learn from a fruit. There's beauty there, but it's only specific to certain people. We go into the fourth day. I'll fast forward a little bit because we don't have that much time left. And if you've noticed, the first three days... Hashem says that there was light, but He still hasn't created the sun, He still hasn't created the moon, and He still hasn't created the stars. Yet there's light. So an easy explanation of that, what Chazal tell us, the sages tell us,

1:20:49is that in the beginning there was something called Ohr HaGanuz, hidden light. A light that, in essence, gave the ability to see from one end of the world to the other end of the world. But Hashem also knew that eventually He's going to create man, and man has an evil inclination, an inclination that will make him do bad things. So if a man was able to see from one end of the world to the other end of the world, he would use it for bad things, like peeping in on women he is not allowed to see, looking into bank accounts, and doing other things that, obviously, you can just use your imagination to understand what they could do. So that light was taken away, and He then gave us the sun and the moon. Now, along with the moon, on the fourth day is when they were created. It says, "It says, God made the two great luminaries, the great luminary to dominate the day," which is referring to the sun, "and the lesser luminary to dominate the night and the stars." Okay. The part we're going to focus on is the stars.

1:22:06This is something I've mentioned in other shiurim, but it still fascinates me every time I say it, so I'll repeat it for my own sake. And maybe some of you guys haven't heard it. Until the 1600s, when Galileo Galilei came out with the telescope, all of mankind believed that the number of stars in the sky was the number of stars that you can see with the naked eye. and some small tools they had. So they estimated that you can see somewhere in the neighborhood of 6,000, maybe 8,000 stars. And that's it. The Torah in Masechet Berachot, in the Gemara, in the Oral Torah, said, no, that's wrong. We already have a tradition directly from God. And He not only told us that there's more than 6,000 or 8,000 stars, but He gave us an exact number. exact number is 1,064,340 followed by twelve zeros. How did He tell us? He told us in Masechet Berachot. We were complaining to God about how He destroyed our Beit HaMikdash, and after He destroyed our Beit HaMikdash, we felt like He left us. So He said, listen, God even

1:23:25a man that divorces a wife, still if you ask him 20, 30 years later, do you remember the first wife you had? He's still going to say, yeah, of course I remember the first wife I had. Good or bad, he's going to remember it. But You, God, You forgot us. You abandoned us. So God says, my daughter, He calls Am Yisrael, my daughter. Twelve constellations did I create in the firmament, meaning in the heavens. He made twelve constellations. These are the zodiac signs. Notice the zodiac signs were not an invention of the Greeks or the other non-Jews. They were a creation of the Torah. 12 constellations that I created in the firmament, and about each and every constellation, I created 30 army commanders, and about each and every army commander, I created 30 legions, and about each and every legion, I created 30 ra'aton, and about each and every ra'aton, I created 30 karaton, and about each and every karaton, I created 30 gistera,

1:24:30and about each and every gistera I suspended in the firmament 365,000 times 10,000 myriads of stars corresponding to the days of the year. All of them I created only for your sake. And you say, you have forsaken me and you have forgotten me. Okay, it's a little bit of coded language. This is in the Gemara, Masechet Berachot 32. It's a bit... So, this is not only Hashem telling us that we're special. This is not only Hashem telling us that we're considered like His daughter. The parent obviously loves his daughter. But He's giving us a formula. He's giving us a math equation here. It's 12 times 30 times 30 times 30 times 30 times 30 times 365,000 times 10,000.

1:25:35saying that's the number of stars in the universe. And that's the number that I mentioned to you before, which is 1,064,340 and then 12 zeros. Or 10 to the 18th power plus 64,340 and then 12 zeros. That's the exact number of stars. I don't know how to say the number. Big. Genius. So when we said this to the goyim, when we said this to the Greeks, when we said this to the Romans, when we said this to the Egyptians, when we said this to the Turks, when we said this to the Syrians, to the Arabs, to everyone—what do you think they said? "You're nuts. You're nuts. Shtuyot." In the 1600s, Galileo Galilei came out with something called a telescope. It wasn't as advanced as today, so if you fast forward about 400 years, it became much more advanced, and it started being connected to a supercomputer. A supercomputer could analyze things much faster than the human mind. A supercomputer was able to calculate how many stars it can see, based on certain estimates. Long story short, there was research by NASA,

1:26:48In 1997, and then further research by the Australian National University in 2003, both estimates came up with numbers not too far from our own. 10 to the 21st power and 10 to the 19th power. One of them is coming closer than the other. Needless to say, regardless of which number it is, it's a whole lot more than 6,000, and the secular world that's using their logic is finally coming closer to a number we didn't even have a calculator to calculate. We didn't have such numbers, not back then, not today. So, to say that such a number would have been a man-made creation is obviously foolish. And the only one that could have known it is the One that put it there. We couldn't see it. We didn't have the telescope. We didn't have anything. This was written 3,300 years ago. Or 2,000 years ago in the Gemara. Well before Galileo Galilei ever existed. Well before we came to the modern world and had telescopes that were able to count. Well before anything. It shows you that the Torah is not only divine, but it's something that...

1:28:05is beyond our understanding, and we're only finally starting to catch up today. The next part is when, this is specifically for people, Baruch Hashem, not here, but anyone that has trouble believing in creation. People have a tough time, religious and non-religious, have a tough time believing that evolution is wrong. they had a picture of a monkey and someone who looks less like a monkey and less like a monkey and less like a monkey and eventually becomes a human being. You guys remember that picture? You all remember that picture. And that's what they say is what happened. They said that everything came from the self. They had a picture of a monkey and someone who looks less like a monkey and less like a monkey and less like a monkey and eventually becomes a human being. You guys remember that picture? You all remember that picture. And that's what they say is what happened. They said that everything came from the cell.

1:29:23And the cell became something else, like a fish or something. And it became a lizard. The lizard somehow became a monkey. And the monkey eventually became me, the one giving you the shiur today. Okay. I say I didn't come from a monkey. We may look alike, but I didn't come from a monkey. How do we know that this is the biggest and most foolish thing to even think, forget about, say? This is purely logical, and it's very, very simple to understand. Now let's just say, you have the five stages: you have the monkey, it's number one, then there's stage two, three, four, and we're stage five. I'm five, monkey's one. Okay, question number one. Why is the monkey still here? Simple question. If the monkey evolved into me, why is he still here? That's question number one. Fact number one. In order for anything to evolve—this is a little deep, so just try to pay attention—in order for anything to evolve from stage one to stage two, it has to be strong enough and self-sustaining enough to survive without evolving.

1:30:51Meaning that in order for stage number one to become stage number two, it has to be strong enough to stay stage number one without evolving. Meaning that the evolution is not out of necessity, but out of desire to improve, not to survive. Because if it was about to survive, then it would never survive long enough, especially according to evolution where they say it's millions and millions of years; it wouldn't survive long enough to be number two. So, stage number one has to be self-sustainable in order to become stage number two. Got that so far? So, since stage number one has to be self-sustainable and strong enough to survive, to be number two, that also means... but stage number two has to be strong enough to stay by itself without evolving to become stage number three. Right? This means that, at all times, assuming there are five stages, at least three have to exist at all times.

1:32:16It could never be only two. Stage number one has to be strong enough to be stage number two. Now, let's say we started with 100 stage one, 100 monkeys. Ninety of them evolved to become stage number two. That still leaves ten. Out of the ninety, let's say eighty of them become stage number three. That still leaves ten. So, by the time stage number three is evolving into stage number four, maybe number one became number two, or maybe they just died. But it can never be that number three is around and number one isn't. So, what is the point of this? If we came from monkeys, and the monkey is number one, and then there are three stages before us, where are the other ones? How come there's no other human that looks like me and the monkey? The guy in the middle. There was a drawing of five. We have number one. We have number five. Where are two, three, and four? At the minimum, where's number four? Let's say we skipped over two and three. Let's say the diagram is wrong. Let's say there weren't five. Let's say there were three. There was a monkey. There was half a monkey, half a human. And then there was me. I promise you I don't have a tail.

1:33:43Where's number two? That's the easiest way to show that the monkey theory can never be. Is the caveman number two or whatever? Caveman, yeah. Caveman is probably somewhere around number four. Number four? Okay. Somewhere around number four. He's right before us. Number two is still a monkey. Still a monkey, maybe without a tail. Some other nonsense they created just based on their imagination, but nonetheless, again, many people believe this. So the big question is, there are a lot of scientists that believe this. These scientists, some of them are Jewish, some of them are not Jewish, but they're all smart. They're not fools. How can you explain such a big mistake? made by such smart people. First of all, we all need to know that the biggest mistakes in history were made by the smartest people in history. Why? Because people that are stupid don't ever get a chance to make a big mistake because no one gives them the job.

1:35:03People who are not smart get the basic jobs. People who are really, really smart get the big jobs. At least that's what we hope, with the exception of our presidents. But aside from that, we have big jobs and small jobs. That's number four. So now, how could such smart people, scientific people, not figure out what we just figured out in the last hour? Two things. One is money, two is obligation. First one is easy to explain and the other. Money. Scientists live based on contributions and grants and money that's being paid to them for their sustenance. They get hundreds of millions of dollars to do work that's generally theoretical. Theoretical by definition means it's an idea, it's a possibility, it's a guess. It does not mean fact. That's what some people who don't know science think, especially young people who believe in that stuff. They say, no, no, this scientist said that the Big Bang Theory happened. But you just said Big Bang Theory. Theory means it's just theoretical. And that's why a lot of people don't understand the word theory. So they get a lot of money from governments and different institutions.

1:36:29the purpose of doing their work, so that means that if they admit the truth, if they admit, if the guy that's researching evolution, the guy that's researching stage two, three, and four, five, so if the guy that's drawing, he's not alive anymore, but let's say he's still alive, and he's figuring out where stage two, three, and four are, he saw this shiur online. He's trying. He's like, you know what? He's got a point. I know what a monkey is. I know where he is. I got stage one and five. Where's two and three and four? Now, if he admits that I'm right, and he tells all of the institutions and universities that this guy that's giving this shiur just proved me wrong, maybe the few hundred million dollars will come to this shiur and not to him. But the reality of it is that it's a big risk for him because he will lose his job. That means that his science, his work, his life's work becomes meaningless. If it's proven wrong, then it's meaningless. So what do they do? They say, listen, we're not so sure. It's a theory. We're going to spend the rest of our lives and the rest of your money trying to prove our theory right. So the first reason is money, which is unfortunately a very big driving factor that runs our world.

1:37:49The second reason is obligation. Why is obligation a problem? Because if believing that we didn't come from evolution, it becomes easy and we realize we didn't come from monkeys. Where did we come from? We realized earlier today we came from God. After seeing a few, just a small, tiny amount of proofs, which we'll go over in many more shiurim, we notice that this God wrote a Torah. How do we know He wrote a Torah? Because there's too much information here for it to come from a human being. There's too much insider information, as we call it in the securities business, stuff that no one else has. Too much goods. It's too divine. How could you know the number of stars? How could you know the secrets of water? How could you know that there's water when we can't even see the water? At that time we got the facts about the water. Some people still thought that the world was flat. They didn't even know that most of the world was 73% water. Forget about thinking that there's water above the earth. So, obviously, there's enough information just in the first few days of Creation.

1:39:14to show us that this book came from something above us. If it came from the Creator, and the Creator gave us this book, at the very least, we should learn what it says. Why? Because "Torah" in Hebrew also means "instructions." Torah. These are instructions. I like to call the Torah a love letter. It's a love letter from Hashem. Why is it a love letter? Because He's telling you how to have the best possible life here and there. If you follow what He says, you're not only going to have a lot of pleasure in learning all of this, but you'll also learn things that will help your marriage, things that will help your business, and things that will help you be happy. As a matter of fact, one of the things we learn from the sages is that since happiness is a spiritual feeling, and the Torah is spiritual, the only way for us to achieve the spiritual state of happiness is by feeding it something spiritual. Meaning you can feed yourself as many cars as you want, as much money as you want, as many millions as you want,

1:40:33And I'm not telling you this like I came from a poor place. I made many, many, many millions in my life. So when somebody tells you money is the root of all evil and they never had money, it's a little difficult to... I came from that. I had a lot of money and I made a lot of money. And I'm telling you, whoever came up with that statement is a genius. But the reality is that it doesn't make anyone any happier. At all. Not even 1% happier. Why? Because happiness... It's a spiritual feeling. The Torah is something spiritual. Even though you see this book as something physical, the lessons you learn from it are spiritual. The impact it has is spiritual. Meaning that the only way you can become happy is through the Torah. So, to sum it up and finalize the shiur today, when I thought about today and the shiur, I thought about that client, Henry. Henry brought an investment to me and he told me, "I want you to look into this investment." And I thought to myself, after I noticed that this is a Ponzi scheme, it's a scam, and they're going to take his money and run with it. But I knew that he believes their story. He even likes the two guys that are pitching it. Two guys that are really nice guys. Had a nice bio. Even nicer than the one that Warren read earlier today.

1:42:02One worked for the U.S. Open, the other guy worked for, I think, Disney. And he liked the guys, and they came over to his house, and they had dinner, and it was a big bag of lies. One lie above another lie, and above another lie, and it was such a small, small, small bit of truth. And that's the secret of all big lies. All big lies have a little bit of truth in them. The world we live in today and the beliefs we have today are one big Ponzi scheme. The Ponzi scheme that we live in is that we can do whatever we want. The Ponzi scheme we live in is that it's okay if we don't follow the Torah. I'll figure it out when I get up there. I'll talk to God. He's a nice one. They say He's a Rachaman. They say He's merciful. So forgive me. What's the big deal that I don't keep Shabbat? What's the big deal if I do whatever I want? What's the big deal if I never learn more than the shiur today? What's the big deal?

1:43:07That's our logic. That's the Satan. That's the evil inclination. The Ponzi scheme we live in today is leading us to believe that we can do whatever we want. We have no obligations. And I was thinking about Henry, and I said, how do you start a conversation to tell someone the truth when all he's ever heard are lies? And I hope that today we've identified a small part of the truth. Because most of what we have in this world is lies. The goal is to find a diamond in the rough. It's called the Torah. Just take that truth, hold on to it, and b'ezrat Hashem, get closer to Hashem and get to our purpose. Unless you guys have any questions... I thought Hashem will bring even more people next week.