Shiur Torah #44 Scientific Proof Of God 2, and Hidden Medical Wisdom of The Sages

0:00Which, for anyone who doesn't understand Hebrew, means "in the name of God, we will do and we will succeed." Anytime you start anything, you always want to involve God in it. Why? Because He's a good partner. The goal of this shiur is to establish not faith, but knowledge of God. And one of the most difficult things that... the people of everywhere, every country, not just Israel, have knowledge of God. Many people believe in God, but most don't actually know that He exists. And in Judaism, if you see in the Torah, most of the times when God says that He's God, He says you need to know that He's God, not believe that He's God. In other religions like Christianity and Catholicism, which in essence are one and the same, or even in Islam in general, you're supposed to believe. In Islam, they don't really have an explanation for a lot of the things that happen in the world. So they say it's in the hands of Allah. You know, everything is in essence predetermined by Him. The difficulty with that is that if it's really in His hands and He pretty much determines the outcome of everything, then we're all robots. Then why would anybody get upset for somebody murdering somebody else? It's in the hands of Allah.

1:24Why would anybody get upset if one country conquers another? It's in the hands of Allah. Why would anybody get upset about anything? Why would there be any laws? If it's really only in His hands and we have no choice. Believing in God purely based on faith is very vulnerable. Because believing in God puts you in a situation where you make God into something like a Santa Claus. where if you're nice, you get gifts, and everything is great, and life is wonderful, and if you say a few extra prayers, and you wear a few different, I don't know, bands or whatever is in style these days that people sell, most of which has nothing to do with Judaism, has mostly to do with capitalism. If you do nice things, and... then you're supposed to get whatever it is that you're seeking, whether it's a partner, a lot of money, a longer life, or whatever it is that you're looking for. Most people are looking for money, women, power—it's generally life. So, faith is very vulnerable because if you don't get what you want, and you say all the extra prayers,

2:42and you wore all the extra strings, and you did all the weird things that people tell you to do, and you don't get what you want, then the Santa Claus version of God doesn't actually work. Maybe He doesn't exist. Knowledge, on the other hand, is a confirmation that He has to exist, and whether you receive what you want or not is irrelevant. Whether you agree with what he says or not is irrelevant. Whether you do what he says or not is still irrelevant. He's perfect with or without you. The question is, how do we establish knowledge of something that we can't confirm with our five senses? You can't see Him. You can't hear Him. We're not Moshe Rabbeinu. He's not talking to any one of us individually, at least not to my knowledge. If He talks to any one of you guys, you should probably give this your... You can't hear us, you know, we can't hear Him, can't speak to Him, can't touch Him, can't taste Him, can't smell Him. So how do you know something exists without using your five senses? Now, every creation in the world, whether it's the table, or it's the iPad, or it's anything else that exists in the world, has always been created for a purpose.

4:03has always been created for a purpose. Nothing was ever created or built with no purpose. No one has ever built a table, and when you ask them, "What is this for?" they say, "I don't know." It obviously has a purpose: to put cups on it, to put food on it, to put books on it, whatever it is. There's a purpose for every creation. The car is obviously used for driving. A plane is for flying, and everything else that's ever created has to have some type of purpose. Now you know the Design itself is; the more sophisticated it is, the more sophisticated the designer. So, for example, the guy that built this table is not as sophisticated as the guy that, let's say, built this building. And the guy that built this building is not as sophisticated as the people that put the city together. So, the more sophisticated the design, the more sophisticated the designer. So the one who put the world together obviously has to be more sophisticated than everybody else. This means that there's nothing the least sophisticated designer could do or know that's superior to the one more sophisticated than them. It always gradually increases. So if someone created, let's say, something as simple as this phone in my hand, they came up with instructions.

5:27Why? Because they wanted us to not only know what this is, and not to use it as a cup holder, but they also wanted us to use it as best as possible. Because without instructions, we may be able to figure out what it is, but we won't really know the details of how to use it most effectively. So since the guy that created this iPhone, which some people say is Steve Jobs, some people say it's his employees, whichever one it is, the key is that he's not as sophisticated as the One who created this world, this universe. So of course, if He has instructions, the One who created the world has to have instructions. So last week, we talked about the beginning of the Torah, because Judaism claims that the Torah was given to us by God. The One who created the world gave us this Torah. Now, the New Testament, written by the Christians, came after the Torah. They call the Torah the Old Testament. And they claim that the Old Testament is correct. It's valid. Why? Because without it, they wouldn't have a New Testament. Their book, in essence, is a continuation of ours, at least that's what they think. We don't agree with that.

6:39but they don't disagree with the Torah. Neither does Islam. Islam also says that our book is the first one and their book, the Quran, is the second one, a continuation. Meaning that the two other major religions of the world, which encompass the vast majority of the world, don't disagree with Judaism. And with the book that's pretty much the foundation of the world and the foundation of Judaism. So we don't really have much to defend ourselves against those religions. Because technically, if our religion is fake, then that means that theirs is also. So we can't be fake and they be real. But we can be real and they be fake. The only thing that we battle is two possibilities. As I said earlier before I turned the camera on, it's either people that don't believe, so it's atheists, people that think that everything came out of a Big Bang... to some type of explosion or whatever other way they conjure up to justify life. Or the people just don't know. They don't know whether He exists or He doesn't exist. They don't know whether He's real or not. They just don't know. Now, the common denominator among all of those people is that none of them have ever read the Torah from beginning to end and actually understood what it says.

8:04Meaning that no one has actually completed reading this book. And I don't mean just read it with just the literal translation. There's a bit of interpretation by, you know, the people that will tell us how to understand. This is not a literal reading like a Harry Potter book. So to actually understand the Torah takes a little bit of work. But if you spend a few months on it, you could read the whole thing. And just by reading it, you see that the Creator and His creation So extraordinary and so perfect that it's impossible for it to be a man-made creation. So, last week we talked about some of the things that are written just in the first few pages of the Torah. We'll go over some of it today because most of you are a new crowd, but we'll go over some of it and then cover some new things as a continuation. We're not going to go over the entire first chapter or section of the Torah because it's too deep and there's too much to cover. But again, the point of what I'm trying to do here is to establish a little bit more knowledge that, at the very least, this cannot be a man-made creation.

9:23So the Torah starts with, it says, "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 a divine presence hovered upon the surface of the waters, God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light." In so many words, the Torah, the Bible, is telling us that before God created it, there was nothing but Him. The Zohar actually talks about how before God created the world, He actually created several other worlds, six other worlds. This is the seventh world. They all reached their maturity. This is the seventh world and the last one. But before that, it was just Him. And He had to minimize Himself in order to make space. for the rest of creation. The rest of His creation. So now, when God tells us that without His Torah, without somebody in the world learning Torah, there's no possibility that the world would continue to exist. Meaning that He's trying to tell us right in the beginning of the Torah that the purpose of the world is to learn Torah. The purpose of the world is for us to do what the Torah says.

10:52So the first thing we talked about last week, which we'll go over briefly today as far as something scientific that will get you thinking a little bit, is if, let's say, for example, God forbid, everyone in the world decided to stop learning Torah for a moment. Now, when everyone thinks of destruction, you know, biblical destruction, immediately they tie it to Noach. You know, Noach, which is the next parasha. Say, Noach, the people of Noach's generation were very bad, they were very evil, they did everything and anything they could possibly do against what God demanded, and God decided to destroy the world. And this whole process was one year long. The flood, you know, the first rain was 40 days, then it took over the next few months, but in essence, the whole flood itself was about one year. So when we think of a biblical destruction, we're thinking that at the very least, we have one year. So if God decides to destroy the world, it'll take Him one year, as if He needs that much time. When God said that if there's no Torah for even a moment, He didn't say that it's going to take Him one year.

12:05He said that if for one moment there's no Torah, the heaven and the earth, the laws of the heaven and the earth will cease to exist immediately. What are these laws? One of them, and the most important one in essence for us to exist and for anything to exist, is for the atom to continue spinning. Everything in life, as Einstein said, is energy. Everything is energy. When you break down everything, whether it's this table, or it's me, or it's you, or it's the world around us, everything can be broken down into atoms. And if you look into the atom, you see there are two parts. There's the nucleus, which is the bigger one, stays stagnant, doesn't move. And then there's the electron that spins around it over and over and over again. Now, the space between them is so big that it's the equivalent of the distance between us and the sun. Really, really big. Meaning that most of the atom is completely empty space. 99% of it is empty space. Scientists have succeeded in going even inside the nucleus, the part that doesn't move, and discovered that even inside the nucleus, there's another part that's spinning.

13:22And that part is mostly empty space. 99% empty space. So even the part that we thought is a little bit, the 1% of space, is really mostly empty space. Meaning that most of everything is empty space. So how can we see each other? How can we see the buildings and the trees, and everything looks as if it's solid? Imagine a fan. The fan keeps spinning really fast, and it looks like it's one blade. But once you slow it down from number one to number two or number three, you see that it's slowing down and it appears like it's two blades. And when you stop it, eventually it becomes four blades. It was always four blades. You just saw an illusion, an optical illusion that made it seem like it was one blade because it was spinning so fast. The difference between the fan and us, and everything else, is that the fan, in essence, is something solid in our eyes. But everything else around us, including the fan, is really not solid. It's really empty space. And if that electron, that ball, stops spinning, the first thing it's going to do is the only thing it's going to do. It will expose the darkness. It will expose the empty space. You will see the single blade. But since the single blade, if you will, is only 1%, or less than 1% of the entire thing,

14:46That means that everything would just disappear. There wouldn't be a destruction. There wouldn't be a war. There wouldn't be an earthquake. There wouldn't be winds. There wouldn't be anything that you see in the movies. There would be nothing. It would just cease to exist. Because technically, the only thing that keeps it spinning is willpower. That willpower is the best answer for any atheist in the world because that willpower is not connected to an electric outlet; that willpower is not connected to our hearts; that willpower is connected to nothing. Something keeps that electron spinning, and so long as it spins, we continue existing. If it stops spinning for a second, we cease to exist. No sickness, no headaches, no wars, no guns, no nothing. One scientist came to the conclusion that there's so little matter in creation that if all of the atoms stopped spinning in the entire universe, what’s left would fit into a matchbox. So there's that little left of what actually exists. So that's the first way we understand that there has to be something

16:09That's above us. That's beyond us. That's beyond our comprehension. That's beyond our intellect. That's beyond our ability to even begin to understand. The only thing we can try to understand is this creation's instructions. So the first thing we have to figure out is how do we know that this really is instructions? The second thing we talked about last week, and we'll go over again, is that on the second day... God said, when He was, in essence, after He created light—not the sun or the moon, but just the first light, it's called the hidden light, Or HaGanuz. God said, let there be a firmament, which in essence is the sky, in the midst of the waters, and let it separate between water and water. So, in essence, there's two skies: the sky that we see and a sky above the sky. There's the rest of the universe that we can understand because science classes told us early on that we have it. But then one thing that He said in the same verse is that there should be a separation between water and water, meaning that there are two waters.

17:25There's one water here, which we all know where it is. It's in the ocean, it's in the lakes, it's in the cups, it's everywhere. Where is the other water? Last time I checked, they haven’t discovered water on Mars, they haven’t discovered water on Pluto, they haven’t discovered water on the moon, they haven’t discovered water anywhere. Now, our sages tell us, not only is there water above this water, but the water above this water is much more significant. in quantity and significance to our existence than the water here. Now, 73% of the world we live in is water. So we know that the most important thing we need for existence is water. So, God made it so that the thing we need most, we have the most of. We don't have to pay for it, unless we want to pay for a bottle, but we don't really have to. Now, we see where the water is here. There's a lot of it. But God is telling us that there's a lot more. Through His sages, He told us that not only is there a lot more water above us. Now, the time that the written Torah was given was about 3,300 years ago. At the same time, we were also given something called the oral Torah. The oral Torah is...

18:50something that everyone has a problem with, unless they're religious. Why? Because most people that are not religious don't actually know what it is, and they think that just a bunch of rabbis wrote it, and they argued amongst each other, and it's their own opinions. That's not necessarily true because the entire Oral Torah is something that was given to us at the same time the Written Torah was given to us. but we were not allowed to write it. We were only allowed to write it about 1500 or 1600 years ago. In this Oral Torah, one of the main ways we understand and know that it's real is because part of the Oral Torah is something called the Codex. The Codex is a way for us to learn and know how to read the Written Torah. Meaning that without the Oral Torah, we wouldn't even know how to read the Written Torah. So, for example, in English, we have a vowel system. We have A, E, I, O, U. Every word has a base. It has to have one of these five letters. You cannot have any word in the English alphabet...

19:56without one of these letters. Whether it's, you know, dad, or mom, or it's electrocution, or it's anything else, it's food, or it's pizza. Anything else. Everything has to have one of those letters. At least one. Most words have more than one. In the Hebrew language, the holy language, we don't have letters that are vowels. We have something called "Nikud." Nikud is these little dots that you see on the letters sometimes. If you've been to the shul, and you see they read from the scroll three times a week on Mondays, Thursdays, and Shabbat, you see that the scroll they read from doesn't have dots. Because we're not allowed to have dots on that scroll. But we are allowed to have dots in the books. But the only way we could know what the one... the scroll is saying is by already knowing what's written in the book. So that's why every time someone tries to learn how to read the scroll, they have to train from a book, not necessarily from a scroll first, because they have to know what these words are. So how valuable is this vowel system? So imagine I gave you a word, I told you to say "Moses." But write Moses without vowels. You can't. If you take out the "O" and the "E," what do you have? You have "MS." "MS" is "miss." It's a completely different word.

21:14It's not a name. It's not anything. It's just a description. Moshe is actually a person. So if I told you to just say Moshe, but without the vowels, it would be impossible. Same concept with Hebrew. Without the Oral Torah, without this codex, which is one part of the Oral Torah, that means that there would not be a Written Torah. It would be completely illegible. We would not know what it says. Not even one sentence. So when people tell you, whether they're Jewish people that don't believe, or don't want to believe, or it's Christians, or anyone else, they tell you, "No, listen, we believe in this Written Torah, but we don't believe in the Oral Torah," that's complete nonsense. Because they cannot understand the Written Torah without the Oral Torah. They just think that they can. So that's one thing. The second thing is, about the Oral Torah, is the fact that every single commandment that God gave us in the Written Torah was not given with full details, with a full description of how to do it. So, for example, when He gave us the Ten Commandments, He told us the Fourth Commandment, after the first three, He told us to have one God, not to have any other gods, not to worship idols, not to use His name in vain. But the Fourth Commandment was to observe the Sabbath. Okay. How do you observe the Sabbath? Is it a pet?

22:35Is it some type of game? What's the Sabbath? How do you know what the Sabbath is? How do you observe something? We don't have the details in the written Torah. The details of how to observe the Sabbath, that's the Fourth Commandment, which obviously shows you how important it is because it's right next to the one of don't have any other gods. So it's not like it's the 37th commandment and you could say, you know what, it's not really that important. there's don't worship any idols, and keep the Sabbath. And then after that, it's respect your parents, and then after that, it's don't murder. Which, in essence, this is in the order of importance. So obviously, if you believe in more than one God, then the Torah is not relevant to your life, right? If you're using God's name in vain, then obviously you don't respect God, so the Torah is not relevant to your life. You can't have a connection to Him. If you have an idol, then obviously you don't believe in God. So again, the Torah is not relevant to your life. So the first three are obviously the most important, right? So he's saying the fourth one is the Sabbath and the sixth one is murder. Do not murder. Which, based on God—not me, I didn't write the Torah, He didn't ask my permission, I promise you—He wrote it. He says that violating the Sabbath is actually worse than murdering somebody.

24:01That's beyond our logic. And if we could understand His logic, we would be Him. Because anytime you're going to judge someone, for example, if you ever have a competition, let's say there's a debate. And, you know, in school, the little kids have a spelling bee, right? They have a spelling bee, and every kid spells all of these words that no one ever uses, but nonetheless, they have this spelling bee. Now, the judges, at the very least, need to be at the same level as the people they're judging. Because if the judges don't know how to read, how are they going to judge people who are spelling things? Right? So for us to judge him and determine whether he's right or wrong, whether he's fair or not, whether we agree with him or not, that means that we have to at the very least be at his same level. Now, if you believe in a Creator, then obviously, automatically, you believe that there's no such thing as being at the same level as the Creator because if you believe in a Creator, then that means he's superior to you. So in this very same Torah,

25:15He told us that some information in the Oral Torah about this water above the water that's here. So, the literal translation is what I just read to you: "Let it separate between water and water." But then the Oral Torah, which this part is called the Gemara, talks about what does it mean, "water above water"? Where is this other water? And how could this water that's so important, how come we can't see it? During this time that this is written, this is 3,300 years ago, and then the Oral Torah is written almost 1,500 or 1,600 years ago. We can't see any of this stuff. So when we told the rest of the world that there's not only a lot more water over there than here, but it's extremely important for our existence, they laughed at us. Now, in the 1600s, there was a person by the name of Galileo Galilei who came up with the telescope. He realized that everything we knew until that point was incorrect. Meaning that we thought until that point we had somewhere in the neighborhood of 600 to 800 stars, because that's all we could see with our naked eye. Without the pollution, we could see 800 stars, and that's what we thought existed. Just like people only thought that the only land that was...

26:35was available was what they could see. That as soon as the water reached the horizon, we would fall over. Eventually, when somebody sailed over, they realized that it was false. Same thing with the stars. So then he came up with a telescope and saw that there are at least thousands of stars. We developed it a little bit more and then saw there are millions of stars. We fast forward about 400 years, and NASA came up in 1994 with an estimate, which is 10 to the 21st power. which is one with 21 zeros after it. Then, 10 years later, a slightly better telescope in Australia came up with a more accurate number, which is 10 to the 19th power. Okay, one with 19 zeros. The interesting thing is that this very same Oral Torah that everyone has a problem with, that everyone says is fake, that everyone claims a bunch of rabbis wrote, and that it's just their opinion, not only has the answer to this question been known well before all of these telescopes came, but they actually have an exact number. It's 1064340 followed by 12 zeros, which pretty much is 10 to the 18th power. So when we came up with this number, when we showed it to the world that we have the exact number of stars in the entire universe, which is one with 18 zeros after it approximately, everyone laughed at us because they saw 800 stars.

28:01Even when they came up with the telescope, they only saw a few million stars. So all this time, they're mocking us for being wrong, according to them, only to eventually come closer and closer to the number that we already had. And the only way we were able to get it is from the One who put it there. Because we obviously can't count or use that type of number. So this very same thing, this very same God, this very same Creator, told us that the water that's above this water is not only more significant, but it's still. It doesn't move, like the ocean here. And as we develop these telescopes, we realize that there's something called a shooting star. You guys ever see a shooting star? It's pretty, right? Now, for many years, we thought, people thought, that the shooting star is a broken star. It just broke. It fell. It's falling off the sky. Poor star. Fell. What can you do? But after a little bit of time, we realized the shooting star is not broken at all. All it is, is just one really big ball of ice called a comet. And at the very moment it looks like a shooting star, it's actually melting. Because it's passing in direct...

29:21in a direct, I guess, ray with the sun. So it's melting at a very, very high pace. So the shooting part, the part that you see as the track, is actually water. So now we see that there is obviously a possibility of this water somewhere else. And then the telescope developed a little bit more, and we saw that the entire outer horizon of the universe is one giant piece of ice that these comets break off of. Little by little. Each one of these comets is a billion kilograms, a billion tons actually, which is giant. So when we had something like 30,000 pounds hit the Earth in the early 1900s, in 1908, it hit somewhere in Russia, and until this day, over 100 years later, nothing can grow on that land. That's just a small, tiny little piece. So this shows us that not only do we have more water above this water,

30:21But this has been here all along, and the only one that could have known this is the One that put it there. Moving forward into the fourth day, is when God says that He created the sun and the moon. So first, before He actually tells us the details of what He's going to create, He's giving us the reason of why He's creating. So God said, "Let there be luminaries in the firmament of the heaven to separate between the day and the night." And they shall serve as signs for the festivals and for the days and years. So the first question is, why do I need all these signs? I don't have any people yet. I don't have any people. He's telling us that He's putting these lights, which we'll find out shortly are the moon, the sun, and the stars. But He's putting them there specifically

31:44they serve as a sign for us to be able to know when there are festivals, which in so many words means holidays. Who are the holidays for? He hasn't created man yet. That's only on the sixth day. This is one clear proof that the only purpose of man is to follow what the Torah says. Why? Because If God, even before He created man, already told you that you're going to have holidays, and later in the Torah, He's telling you which holidays He's talking about, He's talking about Yom Kippur, which is coming up. He's talking about Rosh Hashanah, which is coming up even sooner. He's talking about Pesach, He's talking about Shavuot, which is when we received the Torah. Pesach is when we left Egypt. Sukkot is when we're supposed to celebrate the fact that we dwelled in booths. So He's telling... This is just the first few days. He hasn't talked about the holidays. He hasn't even created man. But He's already telling you that He's creating everything with one single purpose: a connection to Him. You have to observe these holidays. So when someone tells you, okay, you know what, like the Greeks, for example, a couple thousand years ago,

33:01The Greeks said, you know what, yes, we believe in God, but He left. He created everything and then He decided to leave. He doesn't need us. Why would God care if I do a blessing on this pizza? Why would God care if, I don't know, if I wrap this strange leather thing around my arm every day? Why would God care if I drive on Shabbat or not? Why would God care how often I'm with my wife? Whether it's the entire month, only a few days out of the month, or approximately half the month. Why would God care? He's telling me that before I created you, I'm already telling you I cared. Because the only way that you can connect to me He's telling you, I already put these instructions, this Torah, I already put it before you. Technically, the Oral Torah tells us that the Torah itself was created 974 generations before the world. This is just a small indication of that. So after this, he's saying, Vaya'as Elohim et shnei hame'orot hagdolim: et hama'or hagadol l'memshelet hayom v'et hama'or hakatan l'memshelet halayla v'et hakochavim.

34:17So we talked about the sun. Now he's telling us that he's creating a big light and a small light. In addition to the small light, there are stars. So Chazal tells us, the sages tell us, why did God create the stars? We understand why He created the moon. We understand why He created the sun. Initially, He says that He created two big lights. But then he changes it. He says, I created two big lights, but then one of them is a big light, and one of them is a small light, which means that initially, both of them were the same size. So what happened? Well, it didn't work out. The construction company didn't finish the job. What happened? So the sages explained to us that initially these two lights, everything in life is controlled by some type of angel that God created. So the sun has an angel that controls it. The moon has an angel that controls it. The grass has an angel that controls it. Everything, everything and anything has something that controls it. All of these soldiers that Hashem created, that God created. Hashem, by the way, means "the Name" because His name is so holy that you're not allowed to say it.

35:26So Hashem said that everything I created has somebody that I put in charge. Now initially, these two big angels, the sun and the moon, were the same. They had the same power, the same size, the same light. But the moon said to God, "Listen, there can't be two kings in the sky. Just give one of us the crown." So God said, "Since you're the one that mentioned it, I'm going to make you smaller." Because you showed pride, you're going to make the sun bigger. This is one of the first lessons we learn from God, which is how much He hates pride. But then we also learn mercy from Him, and it's the very same story. Because after He saw that the moon doesn't feel too happy about the fact that He just minimized it, He gave it stars. Just a gift to make it feel better because eventually, when the Mashiach comes, it's written that it will get its original light. gift to make it feel better because eventually, when the Mashiach comes, it's written that it will get its original light. What else can we learn from the sun and the moon? None of us are going to become employees of NASA anytime soon. So what else can we learn from the sun and the moon? We have to try to relate everything that we're learning today not only to a knowledge of Hashem but also related to our life. If you notice, the sun

36:46is how the moon gets its light, right? The sun, the ray of the sun, goes on the moon, and that's how it gets its light. Which, in essence, means that the sun always faces the beautiful part of the moon. And this is one thing we can learn from that: how to have a successful marriage. If the husband is always going to look at the dark side of the wife, it's not going to be such a happy marriage. But if the husband finds a way to always see the pretty side of his wife, just like the sun sees the moon, then we've got ourselves a chance. After this, We also learn one thing about Judaism: that every single day, the first day, second day, third day, fourth day, fifth day, sixth day, every time at the end of each day it says, "And it was evening, and it was morning," and then it says the number of the day. Why doesn't it say, "And it was morning, and then it was evening?" Because for us, our day starts in the evening, and our night is night.

37:56But based on Judaism, the day actually starts at night. That's why every time that you go to shul and they say, oh, it's Rosh Chodesh, which is the beginning of a month, or the holiday just started, it never starts in the morning. It starts at night. Technically, based on Judaism, the day starts at night. And we know this from the first parashah, because it says, "And it was evening, and it was morning." Morning came second. Why? Because based on God, technically, we're supposed to start at night. After that, it answers a very, very big question. A big question that I used to have before I became religious, before I started learning Torah. I had one question that very few people knew the answers to, even though it's within the first few pages. Just because someone has a beard doesn't mean that they know Torah. Osama bin Laden also had a beard. He didn't know Torah. A lot of terrorists that blow themselves up don't know Torah, but they have a beard also. Some people even have hats. They don't know Torah.

38:58You know if somebody knows Torah based on how they communicate the information, if they're sure, if they show you sources. So one of the big questions that every little kid has is: What about the dinosaurs? What about the dinosaurs? I don't remember reading anywhere in the Torah, when I was a little kid, that any teacher told me, and King David fought with the dinosaur, and Moses almost got stepped on by a Tyrannosaurus Rex. And Pharaoh was really scared of the dinosaurs. No one mentions the dinosaurs. They're kind of too big to miss, right? Especially now we have archaeological evidence. We have bones everywhere. We have whole structures. We have nice museums everywhere. Probably almost every major city has a dinosaur museum. And God created the great dinosaurs and all the living beings that creep, the ones who swim in the water, and the animals. God created the great sea giants and every living being that creeps. Now, the English translation of taninim hagdolim is sea giants. The correct translation, a tanin, is a lizard. What are dinosaurs? Lizards.

40:14And not only lizards, they're big. What's the word for big? Gadol. Not just regular lizards, they're big ones. So this answers that question. Then you will read a few other places in it. The Oral Torah tells you the details. There are a lot of details about it; it's much more than just these two words. But God didn't put even one extra letter in the written Torah. Every single letter that's in the written Torah is there specifically. If a Torah scroll that you have in the Beit Knesset is missing one letter, it's no longer considered holy. It's no longer considered a Sefer Torah. One letter. Why? Because it was given to us by a divine being, which means that it's divine. Which means that it cannot have any errors. Once it has even a single error, it's no longer divine. It's human. Human and divine have nothing to do with each other. We don't think like Him, we don't look like Him, we don't act like Him. The next thing after this that He talks to us about is that He created the fish. The fish is, by far, one of the best proofs of God in the Torah that there is because you can check it out yourself; it's very easy to check.

41:34Later on in the Torah, God tells us that there are certain types of fish that we're allowed to eat and there are certain types of fish that we're not allowed to eat. How can we tell the difference? He gives us a sign. He says there are going to be fish that have fins and scales. If they have both fins and scales, you're allowed to eat them. If they only have fins, you're not allowed to eat them. And then comes the Oral Torah, the part that no one wants to agree with, the part that no one wants to believe, the part that no one thinks is divine, and says to us a big secret. God also told us that there will never be, ever, even including any mutations, even including any scientific experiments, even including everything from the beginning of the world until the end of the world, there will never be a single fish with just scales and no fins. You will find fish that have fins but no scales, but you will never find a fish with just scales and no fins.

42:40So anyone that wants to say, you know what, I don't want to believe in the Torah. I don't want to do what God says. I don't want to keep the Sabbath. I don't want to keep kosher. I don't want to do anything. I want to live my life like the monkeys. I want to live my life like the hippies. I want to do whatever I want. I don't want these rules. All they need to do is prove the Torah wrong once. If they can prove the Torah is not divine, they can do whatever they want, and all the Jews will join them too. Once we know the Torah is not divine, we don't have to listen to it anymore. We get to Shamayim, God says, "Listen, the Torah was real." Yeah, but say, "God, there was a mistake." Oh, you're right. It's not divine anymore. If that's the first mistake, we don't know if there's another mistake. But as long as there's no mistake, then it stays divine. So that means that if anyone ever found one fish, discovered one fish with just scales and no fins, that would be officially the first mistake in the Torah. Why? Because it means that the one who wrote it made a mistake. So the fact that no one out of over two million species that we have, that we know of right now, no one has ever been able to discover anything like that,

43:54Even more so, even when scientists tried with all the mutations and experiments they do, they tried doing it, they have not succeeded and will never succeed. Which means that whoever said this, for now we're still calling Him God or Hashem, not only had to know at least all of the two million species that we know of today, but also had to be in control of them. In control of what comes to the world and what doesn't. It's not just having knowledge of them. It's not just superior knowledge, but it's also superior ability. He would decide if it could come to the world or not. And once He decreed that there will never be such a fish, that became a law. And that's again, one of the best proofs that you see every single day. The second thing is, we'll see in this book, which anyone that waits till the end, I'll give you a copy of this book for free. It's a phenomenal book. It's written by Rabbi Zamir Cohen. It was called originally "The Coming Revolution," then they changed the name, excuse me, to "Science Comes of Age." In so many words, what this is, is a book that accumulates scientific knowledge that we've accumulated over the years from scientists, not Jews. Some of them are Jews, obviously, but many aren't. And showing that whatever scientific knowledge they have, we already have in our Torah.

45:22When G-d gave us the Torah, He told us that there's nothing new under the sun, meaning that everything and anything you want, including today's shiur—it's very deep to get to that point, but the point is—today's conversation, the future, the past, every creation that ever existed and still exists, or existed in the past and doesn't exist. Every single thing that ever existed is actually in this book somehow or some way. You have to know how to find it, obviously. So how do we know that this Torah is so divine? We can just look at what it says, and we can easily find one example after another. You start seeing things that are just not human. For example, the knowledge of the stars. Another example was the fish. Now we're going to find an example about the animals. God told us when He created the animals that there are only certain types of animals that we're allowed to eat. Only certain types of animals are considered pure animals that we're allowed to eat if we kill them the right way, if we slaughter them the right way. Now, in Judaism, any cow or sheep or deer has to be slaughtered. We cannot shoot them in the head, we can't electrocute them, we can't torture the animal. Why do we slaughter them? Because the slaughter, if you do it the kosher way, is the only way that the animal would not suffer for even one second. So if you tell this to someone who doesn't know anything about shechitah, he's going to tell you that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. You cut the animal's neck, there's blood, it's moving, it's shaking, it seems like it's a lot more painful than shooting it.

46:53Seems like it's a lot more painful than injecting it, right? So, with this rule, God told us that there are only certain types of animals that we can use. For example, there's the cow, or there's the sheep. And then He told us four animals that can never be kosher: the pig, the camel, the hare, and the rabbit. And the sign for these animals to be kosher—there are about ten animals that are kosher—is that they have to chew their cud, which is essentially eating, swallowing, regurgitating it, chewing it again, and then swallowing it again. In so many ways. The second requirement is that they have to have split hooves. They have to have a split in their hooves. He said all of these kosher animals, all of these pure animals that you're allowed to slaughter the kosher way, have to have both of these signs. The animals that you're not allowed to eat either have none of the signs, usually will have none of the signs, but there are four specific animals that have only one sign, and you're not allowed to eat them.

48:14This again means that of all the animals, out of over two million species, the one who said this had to have knowledge of all of them, including all mutations and everything else. So, he told us that of all these animals, there could only be four that have one sign. Everyone else would either have both signs or none. Again, anyone that wants to prove the Torah wrong, find another one. Find one other animal that either chews its cud or has a split hoof. The pig has a split hoof. The rabbit, the hare, and the camel chew their cud but don't have split hooves. So this, again, could not come from a rabbi, could not come from me, could not come from any human being. A horse doesn't have any signs. It has zero. So, not kosher. Pretty animal though. A giraffe is kosher if you know how to slaughter it, if you know how to find the vein.

49:33So now this, something even more amazing that we found out through science recently, is that not only are these, let's say this is called 10 animals that we're allowed to eat, that are the only ones that have these two signs. Not only are they the only ones that we're allowed to butcher the right way, they're also the only ten that we can butcher the right way. Meaning that, The most important part of slaughtering the animal, the kosher way, is that the animal cannot suffer for even one second. One thing we know about the human body or the animal body is that, in essence, without our, you know, in order to, for example, to determine if someone died, it's not if their heart stopped. It's only if their brain waves stopped. If someone's heart stopped, you could still bring them back to life. But if someone's brain stopped, they're considered clinically dead.

50:34Whereas if someone's heart stopped, it's not considered clinically dead. This means that the moment blood stops reaching the brain, whatever species it is, whether it's human or animal, it's considered dead. If it's no longer receiving any blood, it can no longer function. So, in order for us to have pain, we have to be alive, first of all, right? And secondly, we have to keep getting this blood. So now, the beauty of these ten animals is that they have something very, very different about them than all the other animals, including the horse you mentioned before. Every animal, including the human body, has two veins, at the very minimum, two veins that connect from the heart to the brain. Two veins. Meaning, that if, let's say, for example, a horse, if you cut the vein on the bottom, there's still going to be blood reaching the brain from the vein on the top, the top of the head. So that means that until the blood empties out, he's still technically alive. And if he's still technically alive, he's suffering. Even if it's for five seconds, even if it's for one minute, however long it takes, as long as he's alive, he's suffering. So the pig, the horse, the camel, everything else.

51:36there's still going to be blood reaching the brain from the vein on the top, the top of the head. So that means that until the blood empties out, he's still technically alive. And if he's still technically alive, he's suffering. Even if it's for five seconds, even if it's for one minute, however long it takes, as long as he's alive, he's suffering. So the pig, the horse, the camel, everything else, except the kosher animals that God told us which ones they are, the ones that have the two signs, have these two veins. The kosher animals, which you see a picture in his book, it's on page 154, have something very, very unique. They also have the two veins. But right before they reach the brain, right as they reach the neck, they connect into a single tube. Which means that when the shochet cuts that tube, It's all circulation. All blood ceases to reach the brain instantly. By the time the remaining blood that's there reaches the brain, the animal has already lost consciousness and obviously does not feel any pain. So the next question is, how is it possible...

52:55that the animal still moves. If you've ever seen, I saw it, unfortunately, when I was a little kid. For some strange reason, we went on Passover. My dad decided that it was a good idea to take us to watch the rabbi shecht a sheep. So I still have nightmares to this day. I still feel bad for the animal. But anyway, it was an experience nonetheless, which actually helped me later on in life, but... You see the animal move after the rabbi cuts it. You see the animal's legs move, but that we know is nerves. That's nerves. That has nothing to do with whether the animal's alive or not. Even hours later, it would still do that and eventually stop. That's just nerves that are in the body. The other thing we saw, now that we know that the fish obviously has something special, The animals are something special. And somehow, we connect all of this to kashrut. So, the first thing that somebody tells me, I tell them, listen, keeping kosher is very, very critical if you want to get closer to Hashem. According to the Torah, according to Chazal, in order for someone to even understand Torah, they have to eat kosher. Meaning that if someone is not eating kosher, it makes it very difficult for them to accept the Torah. Even if I give you the best proofs in the world, it still will be difficult for you to absorb it.

54:21It doesn't mean that someone's stupid. It means that their neshama, their soul, is being blocked by something, something that's impure. The Torah is something spiritual, it's something pure. Something pure must go to something else that's pure. If there is a wall, obviously it's going to have a difficult time. So then he also gives us a rule about birds. And this actually also applies to animals as well. In order for a bird to be a kosher bird, one major sign is that it cannot be a bird that eats other living flesh. It can't be an eagle that eats rabbits and rats and cats and whatever else it can fit in its mouth. It can't be a carnivore. What does Hashem care if I eat a chicken, or an eagle. They kind of look the same, just bigger wings. What does He care? He says, because "ha-dam hu ha-nefesh"—the blood is the soul. Meaning, everything that you eat turns into blood. Whatever doesn't turn into blood leaves your body.

55:38Which means that you are what you eat. That famous statement, "You are what you eat." But in Torah language, it's literally "you are what you eat." Meaning that if you eat an animal or a bird or any type of species that's vicious, that kills, it will give you that nature. That's why you see some of the worst people on earth who are very, very avid eaters of pig. Aside from being a filthy animal, it's also a vicious animal. But again, one of the things that Hashem told us is that if you eat the birds and the animals, that are technically not eating other animals, then you're bringing something that's compassionate into your heart. You're bringing something that's merciful into you. And that's actually some of the signs of being Jewish. Someone that's not compassionate or merciful, you have to question whether they're really Jewish or not. Seriously. This is actually what the Sages tell us; I'm not telling you myself. Anytime I bring my opinion, I'll tell you it's my opinion. So far I haven't told you my opinion.

56:51So when we eat a bird that eats other birds, or we eat a lion that eats other zebras or whatever else it eats, we, in essence, take on its nature. So now, there was one time a rabbi called Rabbi Meir. Very famous, Rabbi Meir Baal HaNess. Rabbi Meir, the miracle worker they called him. He performed different miracles. He was known as the miracle worker. Now, his wife, her name was Bruria. V-R-U-R-I-A, something like that. And she was not only a righteous person, but she knew more Torah than most of the sages. And she would battle them. She would debate them. So she comes to Rabbi Meir one time, and she says, "Listen, God said that everything that He told us that we're not allowed to do, for example, everything that He created in the world, whatever we're not allowed to eat..." He gave us a replacement with the same exact taste, meaning that just by doing God's will, you never lose. There's no such thing as ever doing what God said and losing out, because that's what people think initially. Listen, if I tell them, "Listen, eating kosher is very important," they might say, "Oh, I really like eating pork. I really like eating bacon. I really like eating shrimp. I really like eating all of these other things." No one is saying they're not tasty. We're saying it's not allowed.

58:18But there's a replacement. God said that you'll never ever lose out by doing His will. So the first thing she says, "Okay, I want to eat something that has a similar taste to bacon." And there is actually a fish that still exists. It's called Shibuta. Shibuta is a fish found somewhere in African waters. It has the exact identical taste to bacon. This is just one small example of how if someone really liked bacon, there is another way to get it, in a kosher way. There was one time this rabbi had this parrot. And this is a real story. This happened literally within maybe the last 15, 20 years or less. He had this parrot. And, you know, the parrot hears religious stuff in the house. One day, the parrot flies out and gets lost. Somebody finds him and keeps the parrot. He doesn't return it to the rabbi because he doesn't know where it's from. He keeps the parrot and notices that on Friday night, the parrot starts saying "Shabbat Shalom, Shabbat Shalom, Shabbat Shalom." This is a strange parrot saying "Shabbat Shalom."

59:45Okay. After a couple of months, he goes and he finds the rabbi and he brings back the parrot. The rabbi sees this guy, he goes, "Oh, you found my parrot." He goes, "No, I've actually had him for a couple of months." "So what made you decide to bring this parrot back?" He goes, "Well, after he made me keep Shabbat, I decided it's time for me to do teshuva and give you back the bird." The same exact bird was actually stolen one time. And the guy that stole it also brought back the bird because it also made him keep Shabbat. Because they both figured that if this bird knows what Shabbat is, it doesn't really know, but it knows, then obviously we should know too. There's another funny joke about a parrot. One time this parrot, this guy has this parrot, and every day he sees this old man passing. And the same old man, he says, "Oh, you're ugly, you're ugly, you're ugly." The old man gets really angry, knocks on the door, and says, "Come on, tell your bird to stop." The owner responds, "Okay, I'll tell it to stop, I'll tell it to stop." The next day, the guy passes again, "Oh, you're ugly, you're ugly, you're ugly." The guy takes offense, "Come on, again, I told you," and he knocks on the door. "Please stop, stop, it's not nice, it makes me self-conscious." So the owner comes to the bird and says, "Listen, if you tell the guy again that he's ugly tomorrow, I'm going to kill you." So the next day, the guy passes, and the bird whistles to him, "Hey, you, you." And the guy says, "What, what do you want?" The bird responds, "You know. Why are you asking?" So what do we know from this? What do we learn from this story? You can learn something.

1:01:06if you tell the guy again that he's ugly tomorrow, I'm going to kill you. So the next day, the guy passes, and the bird whistles to him, "Hey, you, you." And the guy says, "What, what do you want?" The bird responds, "You know. Why are you asking?" So what do we know from this? What do we learn from this story? You can learn something. In parables, even from a joke, the truth will always be the truth. He was ugly. No matter what he does, even if he stops the parrot. Also, there was another time, there was another story about a parrot, another funny story about a parrot. One time, there was a guy who came to a store, and he sees the first parrot, $1,000. Wow, it's a beautiful parrot. He sees the one right next to it, it's $10,000. $10,000. They look exactly the same. So he asks the owner, what's the difference between these two parrots? They're the same exact size, same shape, same everything. He goes, well, this one is $1,000, the standard parrot. The one that's $10,000, he knows the entire Chumash, the entire five books of Moses by heart. Wow, that's a parrot. So he keeps looking, keeps looking, he sees another one, same exact one, $25,000.

1:02:33Come on, Noah, why are you trying to hustle us here? What does this one know that the other one doesn't know? He goes, oh, this one not only knows the five books of Moses, he knows the entire Gemara, the entire Oral Torah. Wow, what a parrot. And then he sees in the back there's a quiet parrot, looks like everyone else, $150,000. What could this one possibly know? This one knows the Written Torah. The other one knows the Oral Torah. What else is there to know? He goes, I don't know what he knows, but I know that the other two call him Kvod HaRav. Rabbi. They call him Rabbi. What is it? The neighbors, right here. But they don't talk. Yeah, yeah, I actually saw them. Every time I pass by, it jumps up. The white one. Yeah, I remember. You're right, you're right. But the Jewish one. They don't know the Torah. That parrot doesn't know the Torah.

1:03:43The next thing is, and G-d said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." This particular verse, this first half of the verse, is one of the most troubling verses in the entire Torah. When G-d told Moshe to write the Torah on Mount Sinai, He told him exactly which letters to put. So when Moshe got to this verse, he asked God, "God, there's only one of You. So why are You saying, 'Let us make man in our image? Let us make man in our likeness?' 'Our' is plural. Is there more than one God?" Of course, there's not more than one God. So why are You saying, 'let us make it in our'?" So God says, "Write it." he says, "But God, people are going to think, they're going to use this as an excuse to say that they have a reason to believe in more than one God." So God says, "Write it. The ones that want to sin, they're always going to find an excuse. The ones that are not looking for an excuse will understand why I wrote it. One of the biggest lessons that I'm trying to teach man is that even for his creation, for creating him,"

1:05:06Despite me being perfect, despite me being supreme and divine and superior to everything, I wanted to give the angels, which I created before man, a little bit of significance to make them feel good, to make them feel like they're partners. And I asked their opinion: What do they think? Should I create man? Should I not create man? So when I created man, I said, let us create man in our image to explain to you that I used their guidance. Not that He needed it, but just as a lesson to us that anyone that's ever going to make a big decision, it's very, very important for them to get guidance of some kind. It's not good to be alone. This is an important verse because a lot of people that are atheists use this verse as... ...that I used their guidance. Not that He needed it, but just as a lesson to us that anyone who's ever going to make a big decision, it's very, very important for them to get guidance of some kind. It's not good to be alone. This is an important verse because a lot of people who are atheists use this verse as... ...as if it's a mistake. People who believe in Christianity or Catholicism use it as a justification for the Trinity, believing that God is three parts. Obviously, if they read the interpretation, it's very simple to understand why.

1:06:15But God insisted on putting this verse. He obviously could have changed this verse as the only place in the Torah where it says God in plural. But He insisted on putting it because He also wanted to teach us that anyone who wants to do what He says will find a very easy way to do what God says. Anyone who's looking for an excuse will always find an excuse why not to do it. There was one time a big sage called the Maggid of Dubno. The Maggid of Dubno a very holy man, and some of his students came to him, and they said, "Rabbi, during the month of Elul, we're really supposed to repent as Jewish people because Rosh Hashanah is coming up. It’s not like the Christians or the Catholics who have a New Year's celebration with fireworks. It's not a Happy New Year in that sense. Hopefully, we will have a happy new year, but in essence, what Rosh Hashanah is... It's Judgment Day. It's the day Hashem opens the books and sees what you have done. Is it worth it for Him to keep you here for another year? Is it worth it for Him to make you richer? Is it worth it for Him to make you poorer? Is it worth it for Him to decide on anything in your life? It's a big day.

1:07:32Which means the preceding days, the preceding month approximately, or 40 days, are very, very important. They're the times we're supposed to repent. All of us make sins. There's no such thing as a person that doesn't make a sin. So all of us are supposed to prepare for this one day. So that's what we do during the month of Elul. Someone that ate non-kosher, someone that violated Shabbat, someone that cheated on their wife, someone that cheated on their husband, someone that cheated on their boss, someone that cheated on customers, someone that did anything. On purpose, unintentionally, everyone sins. The key is to start our repentance before the judgment day. Why? Because it's just like if you have a big trial. If you have a big trial, you're either going to lose everything or gain everything. You're not going to get ready the day of the trial; you're going to get ready beforehand. You're going to prepare your case. You're going to gather the facts. You're going to prove this guy's a liar. You're going to prove that guy is telling the truth. You're going to present the evidence. You're going to work at it. It's the same thing with God. So the Rabbi has these students, and he's saying, "What happens, God? There's more right here." So the Rabbi has these students, and they're saying, "God, what about these people that don't wake up during Elul? They don't repent. They don't think it's a big deal."

1:08:58So the Rabbi says, I'm going to tell you a parable. Every time you asked the Maggid of Dubno a question, he would always give you a parable. He would tell you a story to explain the point. So one time someone asks him, why do you say so many parables? He goes, let me tell you a parable. So anyway, he says one time there was a guy, there was an exporter whose trade was to transfer illegal goods from one country to another. He had a driver that would, you know, control the horses and the carriage. And he would give him the goods. The driver would take the goods to this other country or other city, bring the money, and so on. Now, the exporter himself was worried from the minute he gave him the goods, from the minute he gave him the merchandise, he was worried. Because he knew that if they caught him, it's illegal. Not only is he going to lose all this money, but he's probably going to tell on him. And he's going to go to jail for 20, 30 years, maybe even get the death penalty in those days. Problems.

1:09:59He was worried from the first day. The driver wasn't worried from the first day. When did he become worried? He became worried as soon as he got to the border. During the drive, he's hanging out. He's smoking a cigarette. He's drinking. He's hanging out. He's enjoying himself. As soon as he gets to the border, he starts thinking, "Oh, wait a minute. They're not going to believe my story. This is not mine. They're going to blame me also. They're going to think I knew it." He starts thinking, starts thinking. He starts becoming worried. So who's the only one that didn't worry in this story? The horses. So the Maggid of Dubna says, that's the nation of Israel. The righteous person is like this exporter. He's worried from day one. As soon as Elul starts, he's worried because he's already thinking about what sins did I commit? Do I remember all of my sins? Did I do this? Did I do that? If God is so perfect and He expects me to be better, He's not expecting me to be perfect, but He expects me to be better. I have to improve. So he's arguing with himself. He's worried. What's going to happen on this judgment day?

1:11:02The driver is the one that's not worried during Elul. The driver is only worried on Rosh Hashanah. As soon as he gets to Rosh Hashanah, they tell him, "Hey, listen, Rosh Hashanah is the day that God decides your fate, your fate, this coming year." As soon as he knows the significance, he becomes worried. The horses are, unfortunately, the rest of us. We're not worried at all. We're not worried during Elul, we're not worried on Rosh Hashanah. Some people don't even go to Meknes or Rosh Hashanah because they don't have a connection. They don't know that it's real. As I said in the beginning of this shiur, there are only two types of people that don't follow the religion: either because they don't believe or they don't know. Very, very rarely will you find someone that doesn't on purpose. Very, very rarely will you find someone that doesn't on purpose—meaning they'll do it on purpose with knowledge. There are many people, unfortunately, that are Jewish and are anti-religion, that hate the religion. There are even people that spend their money and their time going against the religion and...

1:12:18But they're not doing it based on knowledge; they're doing it based on lack of knowledge. If someone told you, "Listen, the Sabbath is very, very important." Okay, great. Important to you, not important to me. If someone told you the consequences of not keeping the Sabbath, that makes it a little bit more important. If someone told you more details of the consequences of not keeping the Sabbath, each time you learn more and more about it, deciding whether to keep it or not, whether to observe it or not, becomes a little easier. The more knowledge we have, the easier it is for us to move on with our life and get closer to Hashem. The problem is that we also have something that God gave us in creation, which is the evil inclination. Some people call it Satan, some people call it the evil inclination, some people call it the devil, whatever you want to call it. deciding whether to keep it or not, whether to observe it or not, becomes a little easier. The more knowledge we have, the easier it is for us to move on with our life and get closer to Hashem. The problem is that we also have something that God gave us in creation, which is the evil inclination. Some people call it Satan, some people call it the evil inclination, some people call it the devil, whatever you want to call it. It doesn't really matter. The easiest way is the evil inclination. Why? Because it's within us. It's not just some cartoon figure that's out there. It's something that's within us, something that's going to motivate us to do the opposite of what we're supposed to do. The best part about this evil inclination is that it's always going to give us a rational excuse.

1:13:36Oh, listen, if I observe the Sabbath, that means I can't work. If I can't work, I won't make money. If I won't make money, I won't be able to send my kids to yeshiva. So I should sacrifice myself to let my kids go to yeshiva. That's the evil inclination. There's no such thing as a mitzvah that's allowed to be done through an aveirah. There was one time a... A student told the rabbi, "Rabbi, listen, I'm having a hard time coming to the yeshiva on time. Maybe you can give me a break." The rabbi says, "No, no breaks. You have to come to the yeshiva on time. Everybody comes here at 8 o'clock in the morning. You have to come at 8 o'clock in the morning." The very next day, he shows up at 10. The rabbi says, "No, what happened?" "So, Rabbi, I have the evil inclination. It's convincing me. It's fighting me. It's hard for me." Rabbi says, "So fight him, beat him." The next day, the kid comes in even later; he comes in at one o'clock. The Rabbi says, "What happened?" "I listened to what you said, Rabbi. I actually woke up extra early. I woke up at 5:30 in the morning." "Okay, so what happened? Why did you show up at one o'clock?" "Well, the evil inclination, I was fighting it. I beat it. But after I beat it, I was so tired, I had to go back to sleep."

1:15:05Someone who wants to sin is always going to find an excuse because the evil inclination is already giving them one. The key is to find a way to beat it, to find a way to fulfill our purpose. The Torah tells us that we're not monkeys, we're not dogs, we're not people who have no obligations. We obviously have a responsibility. In the first... five days of creation, we learn enough about this Creator to, at the very least, know for sure that this book had to come from Him. There's enough information just within the first five days. It's beyond human knowledge. It's beyond human comprehension. I haven't even scratched the surface of all of this. Knowledge is just a small part of it. With a book being with the set of instructions being so superior to us, the least we can do is look a little bit more into it. See what else it says. Because one of the reasons why God gave it to us is not only just so we can serve Him. It's for our own benefit. This amazing book tells us how to serve Him, but also tells us how to be happy. It tells us how to have a successful marriage. Every time He tells me it's a birthday, I'll vote for Him. He's telling us that...

1:16:30tells us how to serve Him, but also tells us how to be happy. tells us how to have a successful marriage. Every time He tells me it's a birthday, I'll vote for Him. He's telling us that... This book has, obviously, a lot of interesting rules in it that are going to help our marriage, that are going to help our life, that are going to make us happy. There's a lot of it. The problem is that most of us don't read this book because we don't understand it. So God gave us another set of books. It's called the Oral Torah. And again, we're going to go back and try to finish this here with maybe a handful of facts that are good to prove the Oral Torah. Most people who have a problem with Judaism don't have a problem with the Written Torah. They like the story. They like Moses splitting the sea. They like the whole story of the slaves, of us overcoming the Egyptians. They like Adam and Eve. They like the story of Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, the twelve Shevatim, and King David. It's all wonderful. It's a nice story.

1:17:43but once it gets to a point where it tells us that we have to have a bunch of rules in our life, we have to dress modestly, we have to eat a certain type of food, we have to act a certain type of way, we have to do these strange things in the morning and at night, prayers, then that's interfering with my life. When God is telling me that I'm not allowed to walk around half-naked, I don't like it. When God is telling me that I can't just eat whatever I want, I don't like it. So I'm going to try to prove it wrong. So what do people do? They say, oh, show me a source. Then we show them the source in the written Torah, and they say, oh no, it's not really detailed. The Sabbath—it doesn't really say how to observe it. Kosher—it doesn't say exactly what makes it kosher and what not, other than there's two signs. Give me more details. So we have to go to the written Torah, the Oral Torah. So then they see a bunch of rabbis' names giving us details of how to do each mitzvah. So the immediate excuse is, no, it's just some rabbi. What if this rabbi is wrong?

1:18:48So God told us, one of the rules of Torah, God told us that we have to listen to these sages. We're not allowed to change the rules. The rules that are in the Gemara, they're all Torah, they were already written a couple of thousand years ago. We're not allowed to add to them or subtract from them. They are what they are. So the rabbis of today don't add more to what was already written. So when we're referring to rabbis, we're not referring to the rabbis from the local synagogue. We're referring to the sages of a few thousand years ago. So to give us an understanding... of who they are. It's easier to get an understanding of their knowledge than who they are. Because if you think that someone is just like you, then immediately you're going to judge them just like you judge yourself. If you think that you're smart, then you're going to judge someone that you think is either as smart or less smart than you. If you think someone is smarter then very rarely are you going to judge them based on their intellect. Maybe you'll judge them based on their athletic ability. Maybe you'll judge them based on their looks. Maybe you'll judge them based on anything else, but not based on their intellect. Maybe not based on their knowledge. So some of this knowledge, again, not only is from the Sages, but obviously from the Source, which is the Creator.

1:20:08Most of us think that this knowledge is from our technology of today, but we have sources in the Torah, and if anyone that wants the pages and the numbers and the books, I can give them. I'll actually mention some of them here. One of the things we know is that in 1962, somebody came up with mouth-to-mouth CPR. Right, milk and meat. Milk and meat is actually in the written Torah. Milk and meat is in the written Torah three times. It says you cannot cook the kid in its mother's milk. Now it's three times, hold on, it's three times. Why is it the exact same verse? I just told you earlier there's not one extra letter in the Torah. But that specific verse you are asking about is in the Torah three times. The exact same one. Why would you put the exact same sentence in the Torah three times? You just said there's not even one extra letter. One time is enough, right? This is to teach us the three rules of milk and meat. One, you're not allowed to cook it. Two, you're not allowed to eat it. Three,

1:21:29You're not allowed to benefit from it. Meaning, obviously you're not allowed to sell it. If you own, for example, a restaurant that sells cheeseburgers, you're not allowed to have that. Or, on the other hand, if, let's say, for example, you're cooking a burger. And instead of a piece of glass dropping on it, a piece of cheese drops on it, you're not allowed to eat the burger. That we already know from the first two rules. But also, the third rule, when it says you're not allowed to benefit from it, means that you can't even give that burger to your dog. Why can't you give it to your dog? Because technically, if you give it to your dog, you'll benefit from it because you won't have to give him as much dog food. That's why that same exact verse is in the Torah three times. So not only is there a source for your question in the Oral Torah, but there's a source for it in the Written Torah three times. CPR is another thing for which we had given scientists a lot of credit. It came out in 1962. But CPR actually is something that was already written about over 3,300 years ago when the nation of Israel was in the desert and they sent the spies to see the land of Israel. The sages tell us that as soon as they saw the giants, which literally says in the Torah "giants," some of the people passed out.

1:22:57And then they say, how do we bring them back to life? Because they lost control of their body. It says that the ones that stayed up actually gave them mouth-to-mouth, something that we call CPR. This, again, is written in a book that was already written 3,300 years ago. We didn't know what CPR was called then; we had a different name for it. Another thing is anesthesia. Anesthesia seems like a medical miracle. Technically, it is. Medicine has advanced drastically over the last 200 years, where a couple of hundred years ago, the non-Jews, non-religious, and those who were ignorant of Torah knowledge would cause the deaths of many patients, not just from the surgeries themselves, but also from the pain. They would perform surgeries, they would try to help people, but so much blood would be lost, so much pain would be endured that it was beyond human capacity and people would die. Then they came up with different ways to administer anesthesia to give a person the ability to fall asleep and not feel the pain. Obviously, medicine has advanced drastically now. Anytime someone has something as simple as a colonoscopy to as significant as a heart transplant, you have to have an anesthetic.

1:24:21anesthesia. You go there, they give you a little IV, and a few minutes later you fall asleep. You wake up, and you're all brand new—or at least that's supposed to be the case. So, scientists give themselves a big pat on the back for this anesthesia. The problem is that if they would have read the Gemara... It was written nearly 2,000 years ago. There was a person by the name of Rabbi Elazar ben Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai is the one who wrote the Zohar. His son was very, very fat. Huge. He said that he was so big that he and another person were so big that a bull could pass under them. Walk under them. Really, really big people. But he was also a very holy person. And one day, Somebody offended him and said that, in so many words, to shorten the story, he said that he thinks that he's making a big sin. So Rabbi Elazar took this very personally. He said, people that sin in this world, when they die, what happens to them? The worms eat their body. Worms and maggots eat their body until there's a skeleton. Within about a year, there's nothing left. Technically, the bigger a person is,

1:25:48the more the neshamah, the more the soul suffers, even after death, from this big body. The one thing we've discovered is that the really righteous people that have been uncovered, even from a few thousand years ago, some people have uncovered graves, the body does not disintegrate. It stays exactly the same. Without being mummified, without anything. This is... You can look at it on the internet. There are quite a few proofs of it, of big sages that were uncovered for one reason or another. And they literally look like they died yesterday. No holes, no nothing. So Rabbi Elazar says, I want to see if I'm really righteous or I'm wicked like this person. So I want to take out fat from my body. And I want to see if the worms and maggots and the things of this world are going to eat it. If they eat my flesh... then I know that I've made some sins, and when I die, I'm going to suffer like everybody else. If not, I'm in better shape. So the Gemara tells the exact details of the story. We'll try to save some time because there are a few other facts I want to mention. It gives the exact details of the surgery, of how they put him on a marble table. We know now why marble is very important. Marble doesn't keep all the bacteria out.

1:27:12put him on a marble table. They gave him a potion that put him to sleep. And they gave him talks about the entire process of the surgery 2,000 years ago, well, 1,800 years before anyone got any credit for anesthesia. Long story short, after they took out a couple of buckets full of fat from Rabbi Elazar, they put it outside in a hot weather of Israel, but not just for a few hours, but for several days. I believe it was actually even as much as a week, and not even one fly landed on his fat. If you put a steak outside, it doesn't matter whether the animal sinned or not; you put a steak outside, and after three hours, it's full of worms. So, it gives us an understanding of not only the level of intellect that these sages had, but also their righteousness. The next thing is, is that it's also in this book. Actually, even before that, it's in 1881, and then all the way throughout the 1800s, there were many plagues. If you guys remember, there was something called the Black Plague. The Black Plague, for anyone who doesn't know, happened because of human error, not anything else. The human error was that the church hated cats.

1:28:41they hated cats. There were a bunch of cats, so they decided to make a new law: kill all the cats. Anyone who sees a cat must kill the cat. Now, what happens when all the cats disappear? All the rats appear. Rats carry disease, hence the Black Plague. So now, in the plagues of 1881, scientists realized that There are many diseases that transfer to flies and mosquitoes. Obviously today, every other day, you find out in the news, breaking news, new fly, new mosquito, new disease, new disaster, new reason to be worried. Every day there's something else, whether it's the mad cow, or any other, or the chickens, or anything else. The Gemara already has this in Masechet Ketubot.

1:29:42Page 77, the side bet. Rabbi Yochanan says to be careful of flies, of the Ba'al Ra'atan, which the Ba'al Ra'atan was a form of disease of that day. And asking why should we be careful of flies, he says because the flies transfer disease. Literally, this is not an interpretation, this is not a translation, this is literally what it says. also has something called Apikninon in the Gemara, which is actually in, I believe it's in Masechet Megillah, maybe? I think it's in Masechet Megillah. It talks about wine and how they made wine in those days, and it compares wine to beer. And in so many words, one thing that we discovered about wine is that someone who drinks a cup of wine a day, or

1:30:46at least they say a day, it's supposed to be good for their heart. This is written 2,000 years ago in Masechet Megillah. It says that beer is bad for the heart, wine is good for the heart. There's a lot of them. In Masechet Ketubot, they talk about this same Ba'al Ha'atan, the same thing that we talked about from Rabbi Yochanan. He says, be careful of this Ba'al Ha'atan, this disease. Now, what happens when somebody gets it? You have to have brain surgery. So in Masechet Ketubot, it talks about how they remove these tumors from the brain. Again, it's a couple thousand years ago. It's the actual discussion of this procedure. It talks about how it requires a precise knife. And they also use something that we don't have today, which is a specific type of lotion that softens the skull in order to make it very easy to cut and not bleed.

1:31:46We don't have that today, but another thing that's very, very interesting and relevant to everyone's life because we live in the modern world today and people always think that nothing will ever affect them until it does. But in the last couple of decades, one of the big diseases that resulted from promiscuity is AIDS. There are different codes, something called Torah codes, which we'll talk about in the next shiur, that show in the actual written Torah from 3,300 years ago how there are codes of not only that their age would come, but it would come from a monkey. It's actually in the written Torah. But the Oral Torah, in Masechet Sotah, says that any place that has a high level of promiscuity will have a plague of germs that destroy the body, the white blood cells. This is by definition... What AIDS is. Again, a couple thousand years ago from the same people that no one wants to agree with. It talks about drug addiction. How Rabbi Chiya says to his son not to drink a specific type of drug because he will become addicted to it and once he becomes addicted to it, he'll always need it. And once he always needs it...

1:33:11he'll always sin. So, drug addiction was even around back then. Pregnancy risks. It has the secrets about pregnancy. It has the secrets of when the embryo actually gets its neshamah, which is on the 40th day. There is, unfortunately, a company called Planned Parenthood. I don't know if anyone's heard of them, but they've hit media in recent months. Okay, these sick individuals are in America, and they're selling human body parts from abortions. Now, this is as horrendous as it gets. The reason why they do this is because they don't believe in the Torah. They don't believe that these embryos have life. Now, all they need to do is go to the written Torah, the old Torah, and they get very, very detailed. But even if they want something they can see, they can just follow the instructions. The Torah says that the embryo is officially alive, meaning officially gets its neshama on the 40th day. Science has proven that the brainwaves of the embryo begin on the 40th day. go to the written Torah, the old Torah, and they get very, very detailed. But even if they want something they can see, they can just follow the instructions. The Torah says that the embryo is officially alive, meaning it officially gets its neshama on the 40th day. Science has proven that the brainwaves of the embryo begin on the 40th day.

1:34:35So, for anyone that's wondering, debating, should I have this baby or not have this baby, anyone that's having this unfortunate dilemma of not knowing that they're supposed to keep the baby and that they're not allowed to have abortions, They have to do a little bit of research, just like you'll do research about what job you want, just like you'll do research about what investments you're going to make, just like you'll do research about anything else that's important in your life. It's very important to do some research because listening to these people that do this is obviously, we now know, not in our best interest because they're looking for us to do these things because they're looking to make more money. This is unfortunately the Sodom and Gomorrah that we've reached today where people make money off of body parts. I know some of this stuff is hard to hear, but it's life. And if we don't address life, we're living in illusion. Last but not least, we have the whole issue of bacteria. Bacteria, obviously everyone knows what bacteria is. Everyone knows or has heard of Louis Pasteur, who lived in the 1800s.

1:35:46He believes that he discovered, and people believe to this day, that he discovered bacteria. And that's why they call it pasteurization. You know, milk is pasteurized. It says that to eliminate bacteria, you heat it up. In essence, he's gotten a lot of credit for something that technically was written by Rabbi Eliezer HaGadol. It's in the 7th chapter. It says, a man shall not drink from a cup and then give it to another because of life-threatening dangers. You're not obligated to give it from one person to another. You can put it in another cup. No obligation to drink from the same cup. It's a cultural thing. But Rabbi Eliezer says, in another place in the Gemara, that you are better off drinking the water of a witch, meaning water that has witchcraft in it, than drinking water of your friend. Because at least one of them you can get rid of. At least the witchcraft you can get rid of. But the bacteria, if it gives you the disease...

1:37:10Unfortunately, some of these diseases don't have a cure. So, so far we've gone over the first five days or so of creation. There's a lot of things that we can cover. I mean, again, the purpose of today's shiur is to establish at least a little bit of thought process, a little bit of thinking, a little bit of questioning of ourselves. Whether you're an extreme believer and you've been religious your whole life but sometimes have some doubts, or you don't believe in anything. My goal today was to get you to question yourself. Question yourself to the point of whether you believe as much as you thought you did, or if you don't believe, whether you're right. If you're questioning yourself by the end of today, then we succeeded. If we haven't, then please stay and we'll talk a little bit more privately. Each one of us will get closer to God through this. Each one of us will get closer to God through this Elul, right before Rosh Hashanah. Maybe try to take good advice of taking something upon ourselves. Whether you're religious or not is irrelevant. Take something upon yourself before the Judgment Day. Whether it's being a little more modest, eating a little bit more kosher, doing tefillin, keeping Shabbat, anything. Reading Psalms once a day, praying once a day, anything and everything. Anything that connects you to God for even two more minutes. If you can do that during this month, it shows God that at least you care. And if you care at least, you're giving Him a reason. A reason to give you good. If you don't care, why should He?

1:38:23being a little more modest, eating a little bit more kosher, doing tefillin, keeping Shabbat, anything. Reading Tehillim once a day, praying once a day, anything and everything. Anything that connects you to God for even two more minutes. If you can do that during this month, it shows God that at least you care. And if you care at least, you're giving Him a reason, a reason to give you good. If you don't care, why should He? So, b'ezrat Hashem, we all show enough care. And He shows us how much He cares. Any questions?