Shiur Torah #48 Yom Kippur MUSAR from Achi Ezer Synagogue (Brooklyn New York)

0:01Thank you for coming. Sorry I'm late. Again, it's very, very important to be on time, but sometimes, you know, there are a lot of things that get in the way. The Yetzer Hara has to get his. Anytime you try to do anything good, you're always going to have something to disturb you. You're always going to have something that's going to get in the way. Even your Tefillin, your Tefillin, you know you guys do Tefillin with the Lord Hashem. I see everybody here is righteous. I see everybody here, of course, if they're friends of Albert, I know. And Tefillin has three hairs. If you notice, the Tefillin has three hairs on it; that's for the Yetzer Hara. That's for the Yetzer Hara. They did it for the Yetzer Hara, so you give him that. I don't know how the Kabbalistic, I don't know how that world works, but what I do know is that the three hairs are for him. So he doesn't get in the way of you doing Tefillin. Every single thing that you're going to do in life, you're always going to have the Yetzer Hara involved. Why? Because that's his job. You can't really be upset at him, but at the same time, you have to hate him because he's the one that's going to try to get us to make all of these sins. This is also the reason why, if you notice through Torah, why the Mashiach, if you look through all the generations, the story of the Mashiach and how he came about, and eventually B'ezrat Hashem coming to our generation, has always been a very strange, un-Torah-like type of story.

1:24has always been a very strange, un-Torah-like type of story. Whether you're starting off with the story of Yehuda and Tamar. You know, Yehuda obviously was one of the 12 tribes, a big tzaddik. Tamar was his daughter-in-law. Tamar marries his first son. Yehuda doesn't know that his first son is not exactly a tzaddik. He thinks she's beautiful, but he doesn't want to have kids with her. Hashem, in those days, since there were so many miracles, and there was so much kedushah in the world at the time, it wasn't like today where Hashem was going to let you sin endlessly and eventually do teshuvah. In those days, sometimes specific types of people got, you know, punished right away. So when Onan made his sins, Hashem decided to take him out of the world. So in those days, they also followed the halachah, which we don't do in these days, which is that

2:25Once, if there's a marriage and the husband dies, the wife, if there are no children, goes to the brother, if he's willing. So that's what they did. And he did the same exact thing. He also didn't want to have children. He also wanted to have intimate relations. which is obviously one of the major sins in Judaism, and with no purpose. Hashem doesn't agree with a purposeless life, so Hashem took him out of the world also. So then you have the story of how Tamar wanted to marry the third son, but he was too young. So she waited, so Yehudah told her, "Go back to your father's home, and... When he's ready, I will let you know, in so many words. In reality, he didn't want her to marry his third son because he didn't realize his sons were really at fault for what happened to them. So he's figuring, maybe this woman has something wrong with her. Maybe I should try to take a few steps back and try to get away with it. Not give her to my third son. Chas v'shalom, maybe my third son is going to die.

3:49Now, Chazal tell us that Tamar knew that the seed of Yehudah was going to eventually lead to the Mashiach. And she wanted to be a part of it. And this is why... She had a prophecy. She had a prophecy. She had a prophecy that the Mashiach is going to come from Yehudah's seed. And she wanted to be a part of it. I don't blame her. But now she's starting to... she's not foolish. She's starting to realize that, hey, you know what? Maybe this plan of his is not really the plan that I thought it was. Maybe he's really just trying to kick me out of the house, get me back to my father's house. And... hope that I forget about it. So she realized that that was the plan, and she said, "Okay, well, I have to be part of this plan," and that's why you're going to read in about a month and a half or so, the parasha, and it's going to tell you the story of how she dressed up like a prostitute in order to entice Yehudah to be with her. Now, how could you tell the difference between a prostitute and not a prostitute? In those days, everyone was modest. There was no such thing as no modesty in those days.

5:08No such thing. Lack of modesty was if you covered your face. As far as the rest of your clothes, no such thing. No one was walking around naked, chas v'shalom, like we have today. Back in those days, everyone was modest. Rashi himself actually wrote that in his generation, even the goyim, even the goyim you could rely on that when the women come to the wedding, you could always rely on the fact that they're always a virgin. Even the goyim. So he said, of course, the Jews. But he says, we're such tzaddikim in our generation that even the goyim, the women of the goyim, they're all virgins when they get to their weddings. Unfortunately, things are not the same in our generation. So now, you have Tamar make a move, and she covers her face so he cannot recognize her. And Hashem, in essence, pushes Yehuda to go to her. And they...

6:09get together, and in essence, what happens is that she says, "Okay, well, how are you going to pay me?" He gives her a few things that are personal to him because he didn't have the money on hand. Later on, when he tries to pay her, he sends his friend to pay her, but he can't find her and doesn't know who she is. And what ends up happening is that he just forgets about it. And a few months pass by, and then the people of the community notice that she is several months pregnant. They go to Yehudah and say, "Well, she's embarrassing your family's name. She's having relations out of wedlock." Chas v'shalom. In those days, again, another example of how different we are from our forefathers. Having relations—premarital sex—chas v'shalom. This is not for the purpose of making us feel bad. This is for the purpose of realizing where we came from and what we're trying to do today. So now, he says, okay, well, someone does that—that's the death penalty. Bring her here. We'll judge her. And she tells, you know, right before they're about to throw her into the fire,

7:20She says, "Can I say one thing to Yehudah, who in essence was like a king in those days?" And she says, "Who do these things belong to?" She didn't say, "Hey, by the way, buddy, these are your babies. You're the one that got me into this situation." No. She said, "Who do these belong to?" Meaning she gave him the option of admitting. If he didn't want to admit, okay, fine. Which means... that she preferred to go into the fire and get burned and die rather than ever embarrass him. This is why Chazal tells us, this is what we learn from this Gemara, that it's better to burn in a fire than embarrass someone else in public. We learn this from Tamar. So why do I tell you this story? because technically, now obviously Yehuda, one of the reasons why his name is Yehuda is because he admitted to what he did. And he obviously didn't kill her and they had two sons. And one of them, Peretz, was the one that the seed of the Mashiach would come from. But if you think about it for a second,

8:34It's pretty strange. You think about Mashiach, you think about something kadosh, you're thinking about something really, really holy, something perfect, something beautiful, you're thinking it's going to be gadol ha-dor, you know, you're thinking it's going to be someone that floats, doesn't even walk like us. This is one of the things that we have to learn about the Yetzer Hara, is that the Yetzer Hara knows that when Mashiach comes, it's his end. Hashem promises to kill the Yetzer Hara, to slaughter him when Mashiach comes. So, obviously, the Yetzer Hara doesn't want Mashiach to come. He's going to try to do whatever he can to get in the way. So, since he knew this, since he knew that the seed is going to come from Judah also, he thought like us though. He thought that it's going to come from something holy. He thought it's not going to come from something, you know, out of wedlock, this whole balagan. So one of the reasons why Hashem made Tamar do what she did, made Yehudah do what he did, was because as soon as the Yetzer Hara saw it, what was happening is, ah, there's no way that the Mashiach is going to come from this. This is a sin. So by the time he obviously realized it, it was already too late because the seed was already there, and Baruch Hashem, we went to the next step. The same concept goes with the story of Ruth.

9:59The same concept goes with the story of King David himself. King David himself was thought by his own father that he was a mamzer. Again, another story of how you see how the, eventually when we see the Mashiach, we meet him, we say hi to him, he's going to introduce us to Moshe Rabbeinu be'ezrat Hashem, Avraham Avinu, you see Rabbi Akiva, but before that, it's nice to know a few things about him. You see that the story of how we get to the Mashiach, even Hashem Himself had to finagle a few things to make sure He doesn't get in the way. And this is one of the things we learn about this, is that anytime you're going to try to do something good, the Yetzer HaRa is always going to try to get involved. He's always going to try to get in the way. So if you want to do gifts to the Kever, for example, We're in Aseret Yemei Teshuvah right now. We have Rosh Hashanah, Judgment Day, that just passed. Now we have Yom Kippur as the appeal. We don't know how our judgment was. All we know is that we had Judgment Day, we're still here, but we have an appeal process coming up next week. We have Yom Kippur. So in case our judgment for the next year is not exactly roses,

11:14So, we have to obviously be prepared. We have to go up there and pray to Hashem and ask for forgiveness for whatever sins we did. We have to ask for blessings and so on and so forth. Since we don't know how we were judged, we all have to really prepare. One of the things that people do is they give tzedakah. One of the mistakes that I made personally, which I will go into in my personal story in a second, One of the mistakes that I made personally at times is that I'll delay things. I'll say, yeah, I'll give this guy money, or I'll give this Beit Knesset money, or I will do certain things, but when I get time, when I get time, when I get time, I'll give. It's like I'm busy right now making million-dollar deals, firing, hiring people, doing all these things, being on TV, doing all this show-and-tell type of life. When I get to it, I'll do it. And, you know, I gave some tzedakah, but later on, I found out what I was supposed to give versus what I gave is nowhere near what it was supposed to be, but I would delay it. And this is opening the door for the Satan. Not only did you open the door for the Yetzer Hara to come in, you invited him, you made him coffee. Like, you guys have all this food right now? It's like, this is what we do. When we delay, you're like, oh, he already did the job for me. He delayed.

12:33So, what's going to happen? Either you delay it even for one day or for one week, or you say, I'm going to do it at the end of the month. I'm going to do it when I get my next paycheck. You have the money in the bank. It's not that you don't have the money, but you're not that comfortable with the balance that you have. So, when I get my next check on the 15th, we used to get paid on the 15th. Once a month, we'd get paid on the 15th. That was the big day. When I get paid on the 15th, that's when I'm going to give tzedakah, that's when I'm going to give the rabbi some money, that's when I'm going to give the beit knesset some money, that's when I'm going to give some ma'aser. I'm going to do all these things, all these big promises, once the 15th comes. Of course, once the 15th came, the yetzer hara, he already gave you some other things to deal with. And by the time the 15th came... either you forgot about it, or there are a lot of distractions that make you forget about it, or you pretty much put it off for another month, and another month. And this is, when you're promising to do tzedakah, it's also a form of a neder. It's not something that's, not like saying, oh yeah, it's a nice gesture. Why don't you tell someone, for example, when someone buys an aliyah in Beit Knesset, even though technically you're

13:42supposed to give it during that year, and I don't know of any rabbi or any Beit Knesset that's really makpid and calls people in like a collection agency to tell them to pay the money right away, but it's generally a bad idea to delay it until the end of the year. It's usually a very, very good idea to give the money right away because... You don't want the yetzer hara to get involved. Listen, if you have to, you have to. This is not like a sin. So don't misunderstand me in any way. It's not a sin to delay it if you don't have the money yet, but you think you will, or you believe you will, or you hope you will. But if you have it, don't let the yetzer hara get in the way. Because why? If the yetzer hara was able to get in the way enough to such an extent that Hashem Himself had to finagle something for the Mashiach to come, why wouldn't He do it for us? And this is some of the mistakes that I'm going to talk about that I did in my life. And I think that even though technically, talking about your past, if it's a... Before we go over that, can you just touch base on Keter Kehunah, Keter Malchut, because Malchut comes from the Mashiach, right? There's three Keter in the Torah. Keter Kehunah, Keter Malchut, and there's another Keter. There's three Keter.

15:03crowns a person could get. Okay. Torah is higher. And there's another one, right? There's a third one. Torah is the highest. So... How does this tie up with Mashiach, with the Keter? He only has one Keter. How about the other two? No, the Mashiach will have, Chazal tells us, the Torah haNistar, the secret part of the Torah, says that not only does he come from the seed of David, which is Malchut and also Torah, but half of his soul will be David's and half of his soul will be from a Gilgul of Moshe Rabbeinu. So, in essence, he will be the best there is. He will be smarter than Shlomo HaMelech, but almost as big a prophet as Moshe Rabbeinu. No one will ever be as big as Moshe Rabbeinu. This is a verse in the Torah. But as far as the Mashiach, the Mashiach is going to be a pretty big deal.

16:10And I think that one of the main things that the goyim don't understand is that they think that the Mashiach already came, and then he died, and he's going to come back again, and all of that nonsense that they write in their books. One of the clearest and most logical ways to disprove that whole theory, that whole argument, that whole religion—there are many proofs, obviously—is that when the Mashiach comes... There will be no doubts that he's the Mashiach. There are plenty of people, and there is a book this big of false Mashiachs over the years that have appeared. Even Rabbi Akiva himself made a mistake and thought that someone was the Mashiach—Bar Kokhba, if I'm not mistaken. Even the Shabbetai Tzvi? Even the Lubavitch? The Lubavitcher Rebbe is not the Mashiach. They believe he's the Mashiach. They can believe whatever they want, but he's not the Mashiach. But we don't believe. Right. The way you know for sure that he's not the Mashiach is that he died. Mashiach doesn't die. If I tell somebody, listen, if stealing is not good, and they steal, does that make stealing right? No. If I tell someone, listen, if you violate Shabbat, then according to the Torah, not even in the Aleph, in the seven places in the Shulchan Aruch, all over the Gemara,

17:34all over the Gemara, and in the actual Torah, it says you're not even considered Jewish. The fact that he continues to violate Shabbat is not going to change the rule? No, it's not going to change the rule. So they can say that he's the Mashiach, they can say he's whoever they want, It's wrong. Why is it wrong? Because he died. It violates the major principle of being Mashiach. The second thing that he violates is this one thing that I'm going to tell you, which is that once Mashiach comes, everyone will know. Meaning not only the Jews, not just the Syrians, or the Turkish, or the guys from Tripoli, or the guys from Morocco, or the Yemenites, the Goyim, everyone will know he's the Mashiach. It will be obvious. It will be a worldwide event. You're going to see breaking news on CNN and Fox 5 for the last time. We have some crazy things happening in the world. There's a mountain opening in half. There is a person that, when he speaks to certain people, they disintegrate into nothing because they're resha'im. That's the reason. And there's someone that can tell you who you are and what you are without even hearing you speak.

18:46No doubt. It's not going to be some, you know, some guy that's an old man walking around, you know, saying, "Oh, do you want to follow me, please?" I'm not saying that that's a Lubavitch thing; I'm saying it's not going to be a doubt or a question of whether it's the Mashiach or not. Mashiach is here. It's here. Everyone's going to know. Why? How do we know this? Because when we got the Torah at Mount Sinai, it was the biggest event in the history of the world. Because it was the biggest event in the world, every nation and every person knew that it happened. This is why no one who believes in monotheism, who believes in God, ever says that Judaism is wrong. Meaning, Christianity believes that they are right, but we have to be right in order for them to be right. Meaning, it can never be that the Old Testament, or the Torah as we call it—they call it the Old Testament because "old" makes it seem like it's out of date—makes their "new" more popular. But they say that the Old Testament is right, but we have a second half that we got. But the second half cannot be right without the first half, meaning that the second half cannot contradict the first half. So they agree with what the Torah says. Same thing with Islam. They say that the Torah is good, it's kasher.

20:08You know, Avraham, peace be upon him. Musa, that's what they call Moshe Rabbeinu, peace be upon him also. They're all great people. We have a continuation. We call it the Quran. Fine. So no one disagrees with the Torah as far as the major religions of the world. They disagree with the fact that something changed and obviously they want to be the chosen people. So this event... happened, it was a worldwide event. All the nations knew. Everyone knew. Millions and millions of people witnessed it. Millions and millions of people, as you'll see from the verses in a few months, during the event of Mount Sinai, it didn't say only that we heard Hashem's words, but that we saw His words. We saw His words in the sky. How do you see words? The last time that you spoke to somebody, did you see his words? No, right? I never saw anyone's words unless it was subtitles on the television. So, in this book, which used to be called The Coming Revolution, now changed to Science Comes of Age by Rabbi Zamir Cohen, there was a scientist who came out and tried to figure out how we can see words. How can we see sound?

21:32So he did some research, and he found something very, very interesting. He used a specific type of machine, and he found out that if you speak the Hebrew letters aleph, bet, gimel, dalet, the machine, a sound machine, draws the words. You know how you ever see, for example, you go to the hospital, and you see the machine that tells you if somebody's alive or not? Right? So, a similar type of machine. Voice waves? Yeah, voice waves. So, instead of it showing, you know, doing the triangle or whatever other shape that it's doing, when he said these words, the shape would actually draw the actual Hebrew letter. Amazing, amazing. Other languages, not so much. Not English, not Chinese, not Arabic, not anything else. Only the Hebrew language. So, when Hashem told us that we saw His words. Finally, after a few thousand years, about 3,300 years later, we found out how it's possible. We saw the sounds. So it was a very spectacular event. Hashem did this to give us the Torah. That was part one. Part two is the Mashiach, is the end. Part two cannot be

22:58That much less than part one. At the very least, it has to be just as big, just as grand, if not even more, because it's the climax. Do you ever see a movie and, you know, the middle of the movie is as exciting as it gets, but then in the end, they say, "Oh, okay, I'll see you later, buddy," and they shake hands and go away? No. If it's an action movie, at the end, there's the biggest explosions. Same thing. So when the Mashiach comes, it's not going to be any doubt. It's not going to be, oh, is he the Mashiach? Is he not the Mashiach? Is he from Chabad? Is he Ashkenazi? Is he Sephardic? Do you think he's Lithuanian? Do you think he likes me? None of that stuff. I mean, no question. And that's one of the things that we have to understand is that the Mashiach is something that's going to see whatever truth we have in our life, he's going to see it. Without us, we're not going to have time to plead. He's going to see our truth and he's going to see our lies. And one of the things that every one of the sages, from Chazal all the way to our generation, all agree upon is that we're in a generation of the Mashiach. In the old generation of even 500 years ago, everyone always believed that the Mashiach is going to come. But everyone always knew that there's a certain amount of time.

24:24Hashem built six worlds before this one. This is the seventh world, the final world. Each world existed for seven days of the equivalent of Hashem's days, which is 7,000 years. This one, same thing. But the Gemara says that the Mashiach is going to come on Friday evening, right before Shabbat. But not Friday evening like we think, as in maybe this week, tomorrow, right before Shabbat comes in. Friday evening in Hashem's time. Hashem's time, according to David HaMelech in Tehillim, says that one day for Him is a thousand years for us. So now we have 5776. We just had Rosh Hashanah, so that's 1,000 years as one day. 5,000 is Thursday. The 776 means we're already into Friday. We're already at the point where Shabbat is about to come in.

25:24We don't have 7,000 years. We don't even have 6,000 years. 6,000 years are already deep into Shabbat. It's the end already. It's the end of the first day of Shabbat. It's the end of Friday. Meaning that 5776, Shabbat's about to come in. There's no more time. We can't rely on, you know what? I heard this one time, this rabbi say that if I screw up, Hashem's going to do a gilgul for me and I'm going to come back and fix it. We can't rely on Hashem anymore. According to the gedolim of this generation, we can't rely on Hashem anymore. We don't know. Maybe there's not enough time. So, the reason why we're saying all of this is not to scare anyone and to do anything that they don't want to do. It's to... get everyone to realize where we stand, to get everyone to realize that it's time to do teshuva. It's time to wake up. It's time to stop making our own rules. Right now, with Aseret Yemei Teshuva, this is our appeal process coming up. Our appeal process is coming up. But what we don't understand

26:27Especially some people that have been doing teshuva for a few years, that sometimes, like for example, when I first started doing teshuva, honestly, I'm telling you this, you know, it's, and Albert would tell you, I'm not exactly, I'm not a dumb guy, but I honestly felt like Hashem's going to talk to me. I honestly felt like if I continue praying, I read Tehillim, I'm praying, I'm doing tefillin, I started keeping Shabbat, I'm doing everything I possibly know, I'm doing it. I honestly felt like Hashem was going to talk to me like He talked to Moshe. I really did. I'm like, I'm praying so hard, I'm crying during my prayer. Talk to me, Hashem. Answer me. That's what I really felt. He didn't talk to me. At least not the way I thought. But sometimes you do teshuva, you get into the religion, you learn a little bit of Torah, you're already thinking, oh, you know what, I'm keeping a few mitzvot, I'm Moshe Rabbeinu already. I mean, him, we have the same suit. We don't realize that there's so much to do, not just for ourselves, but for our surroundings. In our tefillah, we say, Hashem Melech, Hashem Malach, Hashem Yimloch. Right? God is the King. He's ruling now. God ruled in the past, and God's going to rule in the future. It's a little bit out of order.

27:51It's out of order. Why does it say the past, present, future? It's supposed to be past, present, future. But no, it doesn't say. It says Hashem Melech. Now He's Melech. And He was the Melech, and He's going to be the Melech. Why is there a change? Because right now, right now we have to realize, if we said that Hashem was the Melech during the Aseret Yemei Teshuvah, during Yom Kippur, during Rosh Hashanah, And we say, okay, He was the Melech, fine, it's not related to me. If we say He is going to be the Melech a hundred years from now, okay, when I get there I'll worry about it. When you say Hashem is the Melech right now, oh. Hashem is Melech, Hashem is relevant to me today. Hashem is watching whether I do a berachah on mezonot or hamotzi, or whether I do netilat yadayim in the morning the right way, or whether I do tefillin. He really, really cares if before I eat bubble gum, I'm actually going to do a berachah, shehakol. He really cares. That's what Hashem Melech means. Hashem is here now.

29:03So now that we know that Hashem is Melech, now that we know that He cares about what's happening now, then it's good to know that He's always been and always will be. During the time that we stand right now with Yom Kippur coming up, since none of us know, and I'm sure you guys are much more righteous than I am, I'm still in my teshuvah process. I will be doing teshuvah for the rest of my life. I think that's what the sages say, you're supposed to do teshuvah every day. I think it's a good idea. But for me, I know that there's so much that I need to do as part of the teshuvah, not that I was this Hitler or anything like that, but there's just so much that I need to do because I'm a very ambitious guy. I can't just do standard. In the business world, I couldn't be the guy that makes $100,000 or $150,000 a year and lives comfortably. If I was going for it, I would tell my employees, if you come work for me and you make anything less than $400,000 after two years, you should leave the business. Leave the business altogether. Don't even work for anyone else. Don't work for me. Don't work for anyone else. You should leave the business. And they would tell me, why? What if I make $250,000? It's good money. I make $20,000 a month. It's not bad. Technically it is. I said it's not. So it's not worth the time. It's too much aggravation. It's too much headache.

30:23too much liability, who needs this tza'arah in your head? Go be a teacher, make $50,000 a year, you'll be much more comfortable than a guy in the investment business worrying about people's money every day for $200,000. No, if you're going to do it, you have to already make decent money, which to me, $400,000 was decent money. At my peak, I was making $5 million a year. So $400,000 was a month's paycheck. But for them, it was good. But just a few years before that, I was $35 away from being homeless. So again, I'm a very extreme guy. If I'm going to go, I go for everything. Same thing with Judaism. I know that there is, unfortunately, nearly 80% of the Jewish people today who don't know what Shabbat is. They don't know the significance of Shabbat. I don't believe that there's one Jewish soul in our generation that actually believes in the Torah and still violates Shabbat. No way. It cannot be. You can tell me, no, no, I have plenty of friends who know what Shabbat is and they violate Shabbat all the time. There's no way they know. They may know the concept of Shabbat; they may know that on Shabbat there are these strange religious people who wear black and white and wear these hats. They don't work, and they go to this place they call Beit Knesset. They don't really know what Shabbat is. How do I know? Because if you actually knew

31:48The risk someone is taking by violating Shabbat, if you knew, which I was fortunate enough to study a little bit of it, if we really knew, we'd be scared to leave the house. We'd be scared to move. The punishment for Shabbat is worse than anything else. It's worse than murder; it's worse than anything else. Meaning the guy that's a sniper for the mob, shoots people six days a week but keeps Shabbat, gets less punishment than the guy that's driving on Shabbat to B'kneset. Drives to B'kneset, which I know in New York, I don't think we have too much of that, Baruch Hashem. But in Florida, where I live now, unfortunately there's a lot of it. People somehow rationalize that it's okay to drive to Beit Knesset because it's 40 minutes away and they don't want to live next to the Beit Knesset because it's not next to the beach. So they drive to Beit Knesset. And unfortunately, we don't have enough rabbis to tell people the truth because they're scared. People are scared.

32:59So I'm not scared because I don't really care. I care about the truth. I care about saving people. So I'm going to spend the rest of my life, b'ezrat Hashem, trying to save as many people as possible. I'm going for the 80% that hasn't been saved yet. I'm going to try to get as many of them as possible. That's my life mission. I don't care about money. I don't care about work. I can go get work. I can do whatever I want to do in the world. I don't want to do any of it. Not that I'm special or anything else. I want to save people. Why? Because I know that if I didn't know and I was this close to riding my own first-class ticket to the worst place we could even imagine. As many other people also don't know. There's no way that they know. There's no way that they know and they're still going on that train. So when we go into Yom Kippur, we have to realize that we don't know where we stand. We don't know where we stand. It reminds me of a story. A seven-year-old girl goes into a jewelry store. And she goes into the jewelry store, you know, you see a jewelry store. A seven-year-old girl comes to the jewelry store. She says to the ba'al habayit, "I want this chain." The chain happens to be $1,000. The ba'al habayit is surprised—$1,000 for a seven-year-old girl? It's a little unusual. "Okay, honey, do you have money?" She says, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." She's very excited. She opens her Barbie wallet and takes out all these coins and dollar bills. She says, "Yeah, I've been saving for a year."

34:25So the owner counts the money. He says, okay, there's a quarter, there are pennies, there's five cents, and there are a few dollar bills, including one five-dollar bill in there. Okay, $14.27. We're a little short. So before he tells her, "Listen, honey, go away," he's a nice guy, a nice kosher Jew. He tells her, "Honey, tell me about this chain. Why do you want to buy this chain? Who are you buying it for?" She says, "I'm buying it for my sister." Why are you buying the chain? Because I have an 18-year-old sister, and because my mom and dad died, and they're not here anymore, she's taking care of me and my seven brothers and sisters. And she doesn't have any friends, and she doesn't have any time, and she can't go to school, and she can't do anything, she stopped everything just to take care of us every day. So I thought about this, and I see her every day trying so hard. I said, I have to buy her something nice. So I've been saving since last year, since the last Rosh Hashanah, I've been saving to buy her this chain. He says, well, the good news is you have just enough to get the chain. And he gives her the chain. So the little girl goes home, and she brings this chain. And what do you think her sister says when she sees the chain? She thinks she stole it.

35:44Come on, she knows she doesn't have $1,000. Wait, did you get this? She takes him by the hand, she takes the chain, and runs to the jewelry store. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he says. "No, no, I'm sorry about you. I'm sorry she took it from you." "No, no, no, she paid for it full price." "What do you mean, she had $1,000?" "Tax says $1,000." He goes, "Well, listen. Some people pay me by check. Some people pay me by credit card. Some people pay me by cash. But this was the first time in 35 years someone paid me with a full heart, so it's paid in full. That's the mashal." credit card. Some people pay me by cash. But this was the first time in 35 years someone paid me with a full heart, so it's paid in full. That's the mashal. We come to Hashem not asking for a thousand-dollar chain. We ask for a million-dollar chain, a billion-dollar chain. We want parnasah, but not just parnasah like the teacher. We want parnasah like five million dollars a year. We want the best wife. We want the best kids. We want the best car. We want the best house. We want refuah shleimah. We don't even want to have a cold. A cold is too much. We want everything. We come to Hashem, we want the whole jewelry store. But what are we bringing Him?

36:58A few mitzvot we did here and there. Okay, I gave this guy a dollar. I gave this guy twenty. I said thank you to some lady. We come with a few quarters. If we're honest with each other, our mitzvot, in comparison to what we can really do, not just what we have to do, but what we can really do at our full potential, if we're really looking in the mirror, we have some quarters and some pennies and some dollar bills. We don't have the full price of what we're asking for. So what do we do about it? We can't come up with all of these mitzvot over the next week. So all we have is our heart. All we have is what we're going to do with our heart over this next week. When you pray, pray with all your heart. Don't say, "Oh no, it's not Yom Kippur, so I'm going to pray hafif." I'm going to pray 15 minutes, Shacharit. I'm going to do Shema Yisrael, I'm going to do Amidah. "Hashem, that's good enough. Come on, I did it."

38:00Not so much. Okay, I'm going to give him what I have. Okay, two dollars. The other pocket has a thousand, but the two dollars sounds better. Right now, all we have is our heart. We don't have enough mitzvot for what we want. If we didn't want, if you don't want anything, okay, then you know what? You're right. There's no such thing. There's no such thing as a human being who doesn't desire. Gemara says, you give someone 100, he wants 200. You give him 200, he wants 400. 400, he wants 800. It continues forever. No man will ever desire less. It's part of our human instinct. It's part of the yetzer hara that's in us. But the yetzer hara can also be good. You can also use it for good. No one says that we have to be living in a corner and be this misken, this, you know, someone that's a chesed case you feel bad for. No, you make money, you make a good living, Baruch Hashem. Good for you. But what are you going to do with the money? Are you buying a Ferrari? Fine, you want to buy a Ferrari, buy a Ferrari. But what about the mitzvot? What about the kollel that's about to close down? What about the Talmid Chacham that barely has money to feed his eight children?

39:13What about the Beit Knesset that's trying to build up? Baruch Hashem, there's a lot of Torah here. You want to build it up? What about them? What about the mitzvot? What about, He gave it to you. Give Him a reason to continue. All we have right now is our heart. When we arrive at Yom Kippur, We want to use that heart. Don't be one of these people that's speeding through the tefillah just to get to the end and keep asking the rabbi every 10 minutes, "When's the fast over? Fast over? This is Judgment Day. This is the appeal. This means we could very likely have already screwed up in the first one. This is the appeal. Chas v'shalom if any of us go to a real court for a speeding ticket." A speeding ticket. You're going to tell the judge, "Judge, when is this going to be over? I got to go hang out with a few friends. We're having drinks. When is this trial going to be over?" We have to use our heart. By using our heart, we obviously have to use our brain too. This is what we have. This is what we have. It's all we have. It's what we don't have enough of. We don't have enough. I definitely don't have enough.

40:30And it's not that I know your cheshbon in shamayim, but I know that it's very, very difficult for anyone to have enough, because the more they have mitzvot, the more they desire. The more they know that their potential is more. Also, one of the things that I realized is that, through learning Torah, one of the amazing things that distinguishes the Torah from everything else that I've ever studied in my life. I've studied physics, I've studied chemistry, I've studied finance, I've studied psychology, I've studied a lot of different things. I always like to study. The amazing thing about Torah is that the more you learn, the more you realize you know nothing. The more you realize there's so much more to know. Of course, you learn 10 hours, you gain that time, you gain more information. It's not that you know less. It's that the more you learn, the more you realize how big the Torah world really is. It's endless. It's endless. Whereas everything else, okay, you study a few books of psychiatry or psychology or math. Okay, you study one book, five books, ten books. Eventually, you get the basics. That's it. You know it. I studied up to college level of math. I know that I know that much math. That's it. There's not that much more beyond it.

41:45But with Torah, it's endless. This is why you see tzaddikim like Rav Elyashiv, all the tzaddikim around the world that are studying non-stop, the same Shas they've studied already for the last 80 years, and they finish it constantly. They finish the Shulchan Aruch, and they finish the entire Torah with all of the chidushim, all of the perushim, everything, constantly, reading the same thing over and over again. Why? Because every single time they read over and over again, They find something new. And not just one new thing—many new things. This has been one of the best proofs for me personally about the Torah. The way you read the Torah, you know, obviously we have parashot. But if you study the parasha, study the parashat hashavua, you'll find something amazing. Every time you study the parashat hashavua, You study it, not just read it like in shul and, you know, just going through it. But study the parasha. You'll find there's not only something in that parasha that's relevant and it's teaching us about what's happening in the world today, but if you study it enough, you'll find something specific to you. You personally, at the time you're reading it. Meaning you read Parashat Ki Tavo, let's say.

43:11Parashat Ki Tavo was my personal story. You want to know my personal story? There are a lot more details than I'll be able to cover tonight. Watch shiur number 45. It was given a few weeks ago, during Parashat Ki Tavo. That was my personal story with a lot of details. One warning is that it's a very, very, very strong shiur. Meaning, it's not fluff. It'll shake you up. He watched it, Baruch Hashem. I guess that's what you see today. But it's a strong shiur. It was my personal story. But when you read the parasha, every parasha, you find something specific to your life at that time. So you read Ki Tavo this year. If you studied enough, you found something about your life. You read it again next year, you find something new about your life at that time. That's how you know also. It's one of the ways you know. And you can test it yourself. This week's parasha, next week's parasha, and so on.

44:11you'll see that this is the difference between a divine book and the man-made stuff that swamps this world. Now that we have covered a little bit of Torah, I'll tell you a bit of my story that got me to where I am today and try to cover some Torah through it. We came to the United States from Israel when I was 10 years old. And since the minute we landed in the United States, I started working. We had newspaper routes as kids, then worked at clothing stores and flea markets. I was already into the business world, but I was always very focused on studying and being good at school. Anyway, I was in the electronics business for a little while when the electronics business was good, like most Syrians and pretty much every Jew who was alive at that time. in America. And we did that for a little while, made some money, and, you know. Then I went and left the business, continued some school, and then decided to go back into the business world. I decided to go into the investment world. Now, the investment world is very different than the retail world because, in the investment world, unless you know someone,

45:39then you're pretty much going to be the cold button, you know? Unless you know someone, then you're going to be the guy that everyone's going to eat off of, but you're not going to eat yourself. So I got into the business not knowing any of this. Obviously, I was a young kid. I think I was 18 years old when I got into the business. And went to work for this one firm, and... left a short while later. Then I went to work for a second firm, and the guy told me there's no paycheck. You just work off of commission, and I'm thinking, "Oh great, so I'm used to making a few thousand dollars a month in commission selling electronics and other things, so of course, I'll be making that in no time." Little did I know that that's nowhere to be found, and I think... My best month for the first year and a half, I think it was like either $1,100 or $1,200 for the whole month. That was the salary. That's what I lived off of. But, you know, you were already in. So you always saw that...

46:44the results of your work were making everyone else rich. He was buying a Porsche and a car and jewelry and more jewelry and everything you could possibly imagine. So you're figuring that, okay, my turn is next. You don't know when it's going to come, but my turn is next. Only to realize that after you're already doing it for a couple of years, your turn is never going to come. You have to leave and start somewhere else. To fast forward a little bit, Finally, when I left for another firm, I went to a company called Raymond James, a decent-sized firm. After being played around with for the first few months that I was there, similar to the other firms that I had been with, they finally let me start my own, I guess, allow me to do my own thing and start building my own clientele. One of the encouraging factors for them to do that was that September 11th had just happened, and people were leaving the business. clients had no interest whatsoever in doing business, and this young kid wants to do it, sure, let him. Oh, and by the way, you have to pay me about $4,200 or $4,500 a month for rent and other things. So it's not like they were taking any risk on me or anything. They weren't that nice. But I believed in myself. The only thing is that my confidence was also good for business, but not necessarily very good for life as far as

48:09sharing things with people and then getting help when I need it. So, during this time that I'm not making any money, I'm not asking, I'm not telling anyone any of this. So, it literally got to a point where I was $35 away from being homeless. And every day, I would have to ask, borrow a dollar from this guy, Dimitri, to buy a donut and coffee from one of these trucks up the corner in Manhattan. And that was my food for the day. And I would have to sneak on the bus every day and hope that the guy doesn't throw me out when he finds out that the MetroCard that I told him that I have, I really don't have. And this was my life for a little while. So this was right after... this was September 11th, pretty much. For the next... Six or eight months, no, probably around eight months or so, this is pretty much the way I'm living. I'm pretty much just trying to survive. Losing everything, you know, friends don't want to talk to me anymore. My family I was pretty much trying to stay away from because I didn't want to tell them the truth. The relationship that I had was being destroyed, which is good because she wasn't Jewish.

49:23and but pretty much I believed in this dream so much that I said this has to work. This has to work. Eventually, Hashem had some mercy on me, and it started working. And in November of 2002, so about a year or so after I started, I got my first big break. One of my investments worked out in a big way with the company Nextel, and I made $117,000 for the month. So, $117,000 for a 20-something-year-old kid — 21, 22 years old at the time — it’s a lot of money, it was the most money I ever saw. So I, you know, this was the greatest thing ever, but little did I know that this was just the beginning. From that moment on, money started pouring in. Clients started pouring in. I became the next best thing. Every investment I picked started working out. Every client wanted to do business with me. Clients would call me, telling me that they had extra money. What could I do with it? Which never happens. To invest in business, you have to pretty much beg people to invest with you in a nice way. You don't call it begging, but in reality, that's what you're doing. You're pretty much convincing people. You're selling people to invest with you.

50:36So when someone calls you and says, "Hey, listen, Ron, my wife has an extra $400,000 that just matured from some bond. Do you have some place for her?" That's how it was. And how do you feel if you lost that $400,000? How would I feel? Terrible. Awful. I never wanted to lose anybody any money. That wasn't the purpose. I tried to make the money. Sure, it happens. I don't think anyone necessarily ever intends on losing money other than crooks. Crooks don't care. I wasn't doing a crooked business. I was trying to do kosher business and just do it in my own way and it worked. In the beginning, it worked really well. For a while, it worked. It worked so well that a year later, I became the third-largest producing broker in the country for that company, which had about 5,000 brokers. Guys that were in the business for 25, 35 years were behind me. I was number three and they were, you know, Far, far beyond. So the next thing was that I was going to start building up my own shop. So that was the next thing. August 2003, I started building my own company. Started hiring brokers, assistants, analysts, and so on. Continued making big money. I think it was in 2003 or 2004. My biggest month for that year was $600,000. For the month? For the month.

51:56From that moment on, from 2002 on, my average for the next 15 years, I guess, from 2002 to 2010, I think my worst year was $300,000, which was the first year. And the best year was when I took home a little over $4 million. But it was an average of a good month. A bad month would be like $200,000, $300,000 on average. If I didn't work, it would be a hundred. And good months could be, the best month I ever had was a million six. Printing money. Doing it legit. Not stealing. Not cheating. Not lying. I could have made a lot more money if I did it the crooked way. A lot more money. I could have probably made five to ten million dollars a month instead of a couple hundred thousand dollars. But, My nature was never to steal, lie, or do any of those things. I honestly tried to do the best I could, make people money, and for a while, I was making them a lot of money, and myself too. The one thing that I didn't realize is that even though I believed in God, it wasn't exactly the same God that was in the Torah. It was my own version of God. Meaning that it was a convenient God. When I needed Him, I'd pray. But as far as keeping...

53:20The mitzvot that He said, I didn't know most of them existed, and the ones that I did know, I didn't necessarily know how significant they were. Shabbat, that was my busy day. That was the day that I would have meetings with people, or I would go hang out and, you know, just have fun. Because the rest of the week, I was working 16, 18 hours a day. You know, you don't just walk into, as a 20-year-old guy, you don't just go and start making millions because you're a lazy guy. Working non-stop, I was the first guy in and the last one out. Sleep, you know, three, four hours a day and, you know, non-stop work. But I forgot that there's a source for this money. There's a source for this success. There's a source for all of it, and for a while, I honestly thought that I was untouchable and I was really the one making it. Yeah, I believed in Hashem to some extent, and I gave some tzedakah, and I donated a sefer Torah, and I helped build a beit knesset and stuff like that, but if you compare what I made versus what I gave, I He should have taken the money away a long, long time before that. And that's what Chazal tell us, that even though in the days of the Beit HaMikdash, giving Maaser, giving 10%, was an obligation. You had to. It wasn't like, oh, do I give it or not? You had to. In our generation, giving Maaser, since we don't have a Beit HaMikdash, even though technically it is supposed to be an obligation, it's not enforced.

54:45anywhere near as much by the big sages, the big rabbis that we have in our generation as it was in the past. But, there are two things we do need to know about Maaser. One, it's the only thing that you're allowed to test Hashem with. Meaning, no one can say, listen, Hashem, if you're real, then appear to me, or talk to me, or give me some type of sign. You are not allowed to do any of that stuff. But what you are allowed to do, according to Hashem's words Himself in the Torah, is that you're allowed to test Him with ma'aser. You're allowed, if you give 10%, He says, "aseir te'aseir." You give 10%, and you will be rich in your life. He doesn't say a specific time, He doesn't say, listen, if you give 10% this year, you'll be rich next year. He doesn't give you a time frame, but He does say that you will be rich. And this is one of the tests you're allowed to test Hashem with, and actually He encourages us to test Him. And this is 10% of profits, not 10% of gross. Meaning that if, let's say, for example, just for argument's sake, someone makes $5,000 a month, but they have $4,000 in bills. So obviously, the $4,000 in bills are real bills, not bills like the bookies and vacations.

56:02You know, $4,000 in rent, mortgage, insurance, food, stuff like that, real bills. Personal? No, not personal. Business, you said. Well, personal, even your mortgages, your personal. Or, you know, if, let's say, for example, if it was just business. And let's say, for example, when someone has just the business expenses but technically has a mortgage that's just as much as what he has. You can't give maaser. You won't be able to live. You can't make yourself poor in order to give tzedakah. So as far as, you know, it has to be your real bills, your net real bills, like the things you need for survival, right? So not the vacation to the Bahamas, not the, you know, the things that you don't need, but, you know, the things that you do need. After, let's say, you have $4,000 in bills, you have $1,000 left. From there, you give 10%. 10% for tzedakah. But, of course, you have to make sure you give it to the right place. You can't just give it to anything. You have to make sure you give it to the right place. You know, if it's a synagogue...

57:07you know, it's a good synagogue, you're not giving it to some Reform shul or something like that. If it's to a specific person, obviously it's always preferable to give it to someone who's learning Torah versus someone who's just lazy or doesn't feel like working. You know, you have to make sure, your investment, this is an investment. It's not, you have to understand that charity, you're not doing them a favor. They're doing you a favor by taking it. Because the beneficiary of the charity is the one who gives it. not the one that receives it. Why? Because parnasah is from Shamayim. It's not from you. Hashem doesn't need you to give the guy parnasah. He's going to get it one way or the other. Whether you give him your tzedakah or not, Hashem is going to give it to him. He's not going to make him starve because you decide not to give him tzedakah. The whole world is not relying on your tzedakah. We have to be real. So which means that Hashem is going to give him and you and everyone else, even the ant, that's trying to survive every day and doesn't stop working, that literally gets food 24 hours a day, and within the first day she gets enough food for her whole life. The first day, but she continues working every day for her six-month lifetime. So Hashem is going to give her parnasah, He's going to give you parnasah, He's going to give everybody parnasah. So which means that when I give someone tzedakah, I'm the only one really benefiting.

58:35Of course, you have to have hakarat hatov, you get tzedakah, you have to show kindness, you have to be grateful, and so on. But again, as far as cheshbon of Shamayim, as far as what's going on in Shamayim, the one that gives is the one that benefits. The one that gives is really technically supposed to be the one that says thank you, because he's getting all of the mitzvot. You have Eitz Chayim, saying the prayer every day. Eitz Chayim is the Torah. Tomecheha me'ushar, meaning its supporters are the beneficiaries. Shouldn't it say its receivers? The ones that receive the tzedakah are the beneficiaries? No. Like we said, haChesbon is from Shamayim, Hashem is going to give the money anyway. The investors in the Torah, they're the ones that benefit. They're the ones that get the real benefit because now they're adding some mitzvot. Now they show up to Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah. "Hashem, I did something with this money. You gave me $100,000. I did something with it. You gave me a million dollars. I did something with it. I'm giving you a reason to give me more." There's a story about an old man. You may have heard it before: the old man worked really, really hard but barely had enough money to survive. But he never complained; he always just worked hard.

59:58One day he's in the field, and he sees someone looking at him, and he notices it's Eliyahu Hanavi. Eliyahu Hanavi says to him, "Listen, Hashem has sent me here, and He told me that it's time for you to have a break. I'm going to give you a fortune. But you have a choice." It's either you can get enough money to live the rest of your life comfortably, just enough to live the rest of your life comfortably, or you can be the richest man in town, but for one year. He says, hold on a second, let me ask my wife. So he goes and asks his wife, and the wife says, tell Eliyahu to give it to us now, everything now. Okay, so he goes to the owner. He goes, yeah, I want all the big money now. No annuities. I want everything now. So how do I get it? He goes, go to the market. Buy one of these big jars. And you'll figure out the rest. So he goes into the market. He buys one of these big jars. Takes the jar home. Opens the jar. He sees it's full of gold. Poof, he became a rich man. Okay, a year passes.

1:01:20Eliyahu HaNavi knocks on the door, and he says, "Okay, Hashem has sent me, and He says that it's time for me to deliver the second part of the promise, which is that I have to take the money back." He says, "Hold on a second, let me ask my wife." So he goes and asks his wife. And his wife screams again. He goes, "Tell Eliyahu HaNavi to tell Hashem that if He has someone else who gives more than 50% of their money for tzedakah, then to give everything to them. But if not, leave it with us." He tells Eliyahu HaNavi. And Eliyahu HaNavi says, "One second, let me talk to Hashem." He goes and talks to Hashem. He comes back and says, "Your wife is right. You keep the money." The point of the story is that you have to give Hashem a reason. You have to give Hashem a reason. I didn't give Him a reason. I gave Him a reason in the beginning. I tried to do a few nice things. But it always has to be proportional to what you have. When you're giving, when you're making a hundred and you're giving ten, good. It's not difficult to give ten when you make a hundred. It's difficult to give a hundred when you make a million. It's difficult to give five hundred when you make five million. That's when the real test is.

1:02:36But we can never get to that test if we don't trust Him with the first hundred. So, as things got bigger, as things became very grand and very successful, I stopped giving Hashem a reason. And also, I wasn't doing the rest of what I'm supposed to do and what I agreed to at Mount Sinai, just like all of you did. We all agreed to do the Torah. It's not a matter of choice. It's not really free choice. No free choice where, listen, I'm either going to do the mitzvot or not going to do the mitzvot. I have a free choice. That's not really a free choice. Because unlike free choice that we think is free choice, which is like, I'm either going to go to work or not go to work, Torah is very different. If I go to work, I get paid. If I don't go to work, I don't get paid. Torah is different. Torah says, if you do the mitzvot, you have endless reward. Endless reward in this world, the next world, eternity. Just amazing things. It's so amazing that there's only very, very little description of it in the Torah. It's so amazing, there's very little description of Olam HaBa. Why? Because it's beyond our understanding. How do we know? He says, Olam HaBa, if you take all of the good...

1:04:00Of all the people that ever lived, since the beginning of time till the end of time, and you combine all of their good together, it's not even one hour of Olam HaBa for a righteous person. Not even one hour. How can you do it? Not even a sniff. Nothing. Nothing. So how can you imagine something like that? We think something good is, I don't know, winning the lotto or something. We think something good is getting a client, right? That's what we think is good. We think winning the lotto is good. We think getting a brand new client, building a new business, being the guy that, I don't know, founded Google or something. That's what we think is good. There's no concept of what good really is. Bad, we do know what it is because we have a lot of examples of it, unfortunately, in this world. So, Hashem is telling us that if you do good, there's an endless amount of good. If you don't do good, if you don't do anything that I tell you, it's not a free choice. It's not like if you don't do mitzvot, you'll break even. There's no such thing. It's either bracha or klala. Meaning, that if you do good, you have bracha. If you don't do good, you have klala. Unfortunately, you have endless bad. Hashem is different. So, free choice would say that if I don't go to work, I don't get paid.

1:05:19The real choice that we have is that if we don't go to work, if we don't show up, if we don't do mitzvot, forget about if we do sins. If we just don't do the mitzvot, there's no such thing as breaking even. Then they send a hitman who beats us up all day. That's not a free choice. So we have to understand that right now we have an opportunity of a lifetime to get closer to Hashem. We have an opportunity of a lifetime to identify with Hashem to such an extent that He gives us a reason to give us good. We give Him a reason to give us good. You want parnasah? Give Him a reason. Whether it's maaser, whether it's tzedakah, make Him a partner in your life. Aseh et retzono kirtzoncha, ve'ya'aseh et retzonecha kirtzono. Make His will as if it's your will. And He'll make your will as if it's His will. Give Him a reason. Give Him a reason. Whether it's tzedakah, whether it's mitzvot, whether it's anything that you're doing. You have to get stronger. And the reason why I try to cover a lot more of the Torah stuff than I try to cover my own life, number one, because I've covered it before, anyone that's interested can watch it. But even more so than that is that my life is not necessarily as relevant as what we all need to do. Myself included. Most of the time I'm reminding myself of what I need to do.

1:06:35The story continues with making a lot of money. Eventually, when I ran out of time, and Hashem said, okay, great, you gave some money, but you're not giving enough. You're not doing enough. He gave me a few tests. First, it started with slaps. Started losing a little bit of money. I didn't pay attention. I thought, okay, listen, I've been on a seven-year run, eight-year run where everything was turning from dust to gold. Okay, you're bound to lose at some point. What's the big deal? So I got a few losses. Didn't pay attention. A few more losses. Didn't pay attention. Health was deteriorating a little bit. Tests got bigger. Now it went from slaps to punches. didn't pay attention. And then I got Makat Bechorot. November 18th, 2006. The very same year that I made the most amount of money in my career was the beginning of the end, but the end happened like that. One day, everything changed. First, it was health. My health went from being a relatively healthy guy with more money than I knew what to do with

1:07:57And apparently, a lot of friends, they're not around anymore, but I had a lot of friends with all this money. It tends to happen. It tends to happen. On November 18th, I had an elective surgery that was supposed to be one of those surgeries where you go into the hospital and leave the hospital the same day. It was something I didn't really need, but it was something that annoyed me once a year. Spare you all the details. I woke up out of the surgery screaming non-stop. Apparently, the morphine and any other drug they tried to put in my system to calm me down didn't work. My body didn't accept any of it. I never did drugs in my life. I liked my brain too much. So when I first tried drugs, which were legal because it was in the hospital, trying to stop me from screaming and asking people to kill me, my body didn't want to take it. Eventually, it stopped, and I went home. I had a shawarma sandwich. I thought that it was over. It was a bad experience for a few hours. Baruch Hashem, no one listened to me to kill me, so it’s good. I said, okay, it’s over. Bad experience. I went to sleep. I woke up about 45 minutes later. Worse screaming, worse pain than what it was before.

1:09:24Only a little bit of a difference this time. I didn't stop for 62 days. The screaming and yelling didn't stop for 62 days. 62 days of Gehinnom in this world. 62 days where the longest amount of sleep was 15 minutes. The reason why is because every 15 minutes, whatever pain pills or pain medicine or whatever numbing or anything they could possibly do would wear out no longer than 15 minutes. And after 15 minutes, I felt like someone took a sword and started cutting me up into, you know, put me into the store and sell me as cold cuts. It wouldn't stop. Eventually, after 62 days, Hashem had mercy on me, and I thought that it was over. I was never the same, but I thought, relative to what I'd experienced the last two months, baruch Hashem, I felt like I had my life back. I couldn't really walk as well, I couldn't really move as well, but nonetheless, I wasn't screaming. So for me, pain was fine, just not screaming pain.

1:10:45Still didn't get it. This was the first big shot. I still didn't get the sign. I still didn't do teshuva. I still didn't pay attention to the details and find out why this is happening to me. Every person with a little bit of rationale and a little bit of logic would have already asked, why is this happening? Who is causing this? It's not a thing as bad luck. It's not a thing as luck. Mazal is a figment of our imagination. It's only relevant to the goyim, only to some extent. In general, everything and anything that happens in the world is because Hashem wills it. Whether it's something as disturbing as the story you're hearing right now, or much, much more disturbing, lehavdil, as the Shoah, you know, the Holocaust or Mitzrayim or the countless other disasters that have happened to our Jewish nation. Hashem wills it. Hashem makes it happen. So let's not fool ourselves and think that, oh no, it's just bad luck or bad people. No such thing. Even the Holocaust, which people that lived during that time or know that someone lived at that time, unless they're religious, they refuse to believe it.

1:12:09was already prophesying the Torah. Torah b'chtav and Torah b'al peh. The whole Torah and the written Torah prophesied about the Shoah. The Torah b'chtav, it's Parashat Ki Tavo. You use Torah codes, all the words that are relevant to the Holocaust are in that parashah. All of them. Hitler, his sergeants, the gas chambers, the... Everything, everything. Everything you want. Everything related to the Holocaust is in that parashah. What is that parashah about? The curses of what happens to someone who violates what Hashem asked us to do. Hashem is giving you everything in the world, and instead of doing what He asked you to do, you use what He gave you against Him. What is He going to do? Say, oh, okay, it's okay, you're a nice guy. It says, okay, if you do what I say, you have brachah. If you don't do what I say, you get kelalah. That's the parashah that gives you the details of the kelalah. In the Oral Torah, one of the places that's amazing, I think, is in a parashah, in Masechet Megillah. Masechet Megillah says that, you know, Yaakov is begging Hashem as a prophecy. Don't give the power to Esav of Edom. Edom is, in essence, the Goyim.

1:13:27Don't give him the power, at least take some control of it. Like you do with a big, strong bull that always has a ring around his nose. Why? Because if you put a rope around him, you're not going to overpower the bull. If you pull his tail, he's going to kick you. One way to deplete his power is by putting something around his nose. Because he has no control over it. It's one of those spots that's too painful for him not to be controlled. So he's saying, at least I understand that the nation of Israel is going to sin. And you have to give them a punishment. And Edom is going to be the tool. But at least have it controlled. Don't let them destroy it. Just like Germamia of Edom. Germamia. Germamia is the Hebrew word way of saying Germany. The interesting part is that at the time the Gemara was written, Germany didn't exist. Germany was only founded about 800 years ago. The Gemara was written nearly 2000 years ago, 1700 years ago, 1600 years ago. Correct me, Rabbi, if I'm wrong. A thousand years before Germany was even an idea, you have it in the Gemara, literally, not theoretically.

1:14:48We have it literally. And not only that, how was Germany founded? It was 300 barbarian nations that came together. What does it say in the Gemara? The nation of Germania has 300 princes, meaning it's a combination of 300 countries. So it's not only telling you the name, it's telling you exactly how it's going to come up a thousand years before it happens. It doesn't get more literal than that. But nobody wants to read the Gemara Masechet Megillah. Nobody wants to read Parashat Ki Tavo. Nobody wants to read this stuff. They want to blame luck or bad people or unfortunate events or... So again, my story is important for you to learn from, not chas v'shalom that anything will happen to you or anything like that. But we have to understand that when you say Amen, every time someone does a berachah, Say Amen. Someone does Kaddish, you say Amen. Someone does Motzi Lechem Min Ha'aretz, you say Amen. Every berachah someone does, you say Amen. But what does Amen mean? Have you asked yourself what does Amen mean? Other than the obvious, that you're agreeing with the person. Amen is, in essence, an acronym for El Melech Ne'eman, God, the King, who is reliable. That you could, you know, whatever He says,

1:16:09He's dependable. He's going to do it. He's not joking around. He's not like us. What we say one day, but maybe we can change our mind two minutes later. No, no, Rabbi, I promise you. Whenever I get my next check, you've got it. Oh, no, don't worry about that. The Sefer Torah that we need, I've got it. Oh, that talmid chacham in Jerusalem that needs money? The next paycheck, as soon as I get this next deal, I'm going to do it. And then when the next deal happens, no, no, I need the Ferrari better, or I need the car better, or I need, you know, we forget. Or when the guy says, listen, as soon as I get rich, I'm going to hire you, or as soon as I do, all the promises, empty promises that people make. That's why it says, make yourself a rabbi, but acquire for yourself a friend. Why make yourself a rabbi? If you're buying the rabbi, meaning if you have to give the rabbi money in order for him to be your rabbi, then the rabbi is going to have a very, very difficult time telling you the truth. If he's not a real rabbi, which the test of money is a very difficult test. I myself have failed miserably before doing Teshuvah.

1:17:24It's a very difficult test. Chazal themselves say that money is one of the most difficult tests there is. Not less, not no money, a lot of money. Having wealth is more difficult than being poor. It's a bigger test. So when you say, but it says that no money is involved, meaning, of course, you could support the rabbi, support the beit knesset, things like that, but meaning that it's not a relationship purely based on money. Because if it is, then the rabbi is going to have a very hard time telling you the truth, telling you, "Listen, by the way, you've got to keep Shabbat. By the way, that non-Jewish girlfriend you have, you can't be with her. By the way, I saw you talking during prayer. You can't talk." Why? Because if the rabbi is worried, like unfortunately in some places that I've seen (of course not here), but some places I've seen, the rabbi is scared to tell people the truth. "Oh, no, no. Listen, he's a good guy. I know he drives to the beit knesset, but he's a very big supporter of the beit knesset."

1:18:26As if, as if him giving money makes it okay for him to, you know, get out of jail free card. Like when we were little kids, we played Monopoly. Like him giving some tzedakah, oh, it's okay that he's a rasha merusha according to the Torah. It's okay. It's fine. No, don't worry about it. What, you want to murder? Fine. Just give a million dollars for that. Come on. That's what happens. You can't. So when the rabbi is purely depending on the money, it's very hard for him to do it. It's too big of a test for every ordinary rabbi. Of course, there are some rabbis who would stand those tests, and they're good and they're righteous. But based on my experience, and based on the experience of other people that I rely on, it's too difficult of a test for most rabbis to pass. Which means that the Torah, the Sages were right already when they said... The rabbi that's going to be the rabbi that you rely on cannot be based on money. So what does it mean to have your friendship? K'nei lecha chaver, buy yourself a friend. Just like the friends I was telling you about a few minutes ago. When you have money, you're going to have a lot of friends. Now, if you're foolish like I was, and you're thinking that they're really your friends, it's only a matter of time before they let you down. It's only a matter of time that when you go to surgery,

1:19:47And no one shows up. When you're in the ICU, the Intensive Care Unit, for two weeks, and no one shows up. When you show up to the office, no one even acknowledges you. I even had a point where, at some point in my career, I had a few employees who weren't happy with how much money they were making and they couldn’t blackmail me into giving them more. So what they decided to do is that... They wouldn't say, they would ignore me in my own office. They wouldn't say hello to me or anything. So imagine somebody coming to your house, they live in your house, but they don't say hello to you, even if you say hello. So this is people. So I came into the relationship thinking that they, you know, I had friends. I didn't think about the money. I thought, okay, I have money, so okay, let's buy stuff. I have money, you don't have money, I'll give you money. What's the big deal? Chazal is telling us something different. Chazal is telling us, if you're already getting into the relationship, already expect that with this chaver, with this friend, it's based on money. So don't be surprised if he leaves you when you don't have any money. This is obviously one of the many perushim. There's more depth, that you can study every one of the topics that I've mentioned. You can study every one of them deeper. But this is just one perspective of it.

1:21:10Come into that relationship thinking, okay, I'm going into this relationship only because it is based on money. Because you have a few dollars, and they don't have money, already expect that if the money wasn't there, he wouldn't be your friend. That way, you won't be disappointed if it ever happens. And that was the thing that was happening to me, that Hashem was giving me slaps, and then punches, and then a real true beating, and I still wasn't getting it. I still wasn't looking for the source. Why is this happening to me? I always thought that it's only a matter of time for it to be over. I was very optimistic. My nature is to be very optimistic. I always thought that things will improve. And I thought that this is going to end eventually. Without me doing anything, it's just going to end. If I was going to do anything, I would go to more doctors. So, nine months later, I get a worse situation. This time, they don't let me go home. This time, I'm in the intensive care unit for a few weeks. This time, they say that if I hadn't come to them the day that I did, I probably wouldn't have survived another day.

1:22:30So I thought that during the first surgery, during those first 62 days when I was bleeding out of my eyes and infected ears and couldn't move and was peeing blood, pretty much every bad thing you could imagine was happening to me. My whole body was being destroyed. I thought it was enough. Nine months later, I found out it could always get worse. And eventually, I leave. Still don't ask any questions. Still don't do teshuva. Still don't do anything. Still think, oh, it's going to be over soon. So about four or five months later, I'm back in the hospital. Pretty much for the next several years, seven years, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, pain. Some days worse than others. Seven years. Seven years of pain, 24 hours a day. Seven years of going to the doctor at least a few times a week. Over 50 different doctors. Different practices. Everything from traditional medicine to alternative medicine. Everything from surgeries to injecting steroids, vitamins, and ozone, which is purified air.

1:23:53everything you could imagine. I had money, so anyone that gave me a solution, I'd give it to him. Money's not worth too much when you can't live. And during those seven years, as I was not getting the gist, money started going too. And the friends started going too. One of the things that I always think about as far as money is concerned, is that people don't understand how little it's really worth. If you get anything from what we talked about today, this is one thing I really want you to understand. We spend our life chasing money. That's the material world. That's why the Gemara calls money damim, bloods, plural. Meaning, when someone is supposed to have

1:24:53death penalty because they sinned, they violated Shabbat, or they did something else. Hashem gives them the benefit of that way, it gives them more time, but they still have to get a punishment. There's no such thing as, "Oh, He's just going to forget about it." Someone that says that Hashem is not going to punish us for our sins that we're going to make, unless we do teshuvah, is a heretic. He's going against the Torah. Because sometimes the punishment is in this world. So when someone has technically a death decree in Shamayim, then the punishment that they get is the loss of money. A big loss of money. Because money is the equivalent of life, since we spend our lives chasing it. We spend our lives chasing it, so sometimes you're going to see someone who's a nice guy and everything looks good, but, you know, something bad happens to them. Somebody, you know, robs them, or they lose big money in what they thought was a good investment, or different things. They just see an unusual loss. It's not bad luck. It's not... It's punishment. Outright punishment.

1:26:16But it's also the best thing that could ever happen to them. Which is the reason why, if you ask me, do you miss the days when you had all of that? I would tell you, not only do I not miss it, losing all of it was the best thing that ever happened to me. Baruch Hashem, it's many years later, and a lot more Torah later, But why do I know that it's the best thing that ever happened to me? Because it was either the money or me. Not health. Me. In general. Life. The health part was the last thing. Health was first, then was money, and then was life. And that's usually what happens. The last thing that usually... happens to someone before they lose their life, if there's a decree in Shamayim for them to lose their life early, is a big loss of money. So technically, when someone has a big loss of money, it's actually the best thing that can happen to them. Because having no money or less money, but being alive is a whole lot better than having $25 million, but your estate has it because you're not here anymore.

1:27:39You understand? So, huh? Baruch Hashem. It's one of the... Acknowledging all of those things is the first step. Trust me, for a long time I wasn't like this. I wasn't happy about it. I was nowhere near happy about it. I was the most miserable person you could find. I was angry. I was upset. I was in a bad way. I had no health, no friends. Lots of enemies. Money was going faster than I could even imagine. Losing money that you would think should survive a few generations, let alone your own life. And you don't even know where it's all going. But eventually, since I was a very stubborn guy, I started looking for a reason. Eventually, I started asking for the source. Eventually, I started asking for... Thank you. Eventually, I started asking for a reasoned rationale of what was happening, and that's when I started getting a break. Meaning, I started learning a little bit of Torah. I started getting interested in it. And a big miracle happened. When I was really at my worst, you know, Hashem promises not to give us a test beyond our ability, beyond one that we can handle.

1:29:10So, I guess I got to my limit. And one day I called my mom. Actually, before that, my mom saw me in bad health and all of that stuff. And she decided to, like every other Jewish mom, she has a phone book full of rabbis' names. She calls all these different rabbis from Israel, here, everywhere, to try to get a bracha. "Please help my son, help my son." But during this special day, no one answers. All of a sudden, all of the rabbis' phone numbers don't pick up. Here, Israel, and everywhere. So, eventually, she gets to a number in Israel and a woman picks up and she asks for a specific rabbi's name. The woman says, "No, there's no rabbi by this name. It's the wrong phone number." My mom lives in New York. She doesn't live in Israel, so it was a long-distance phone call. She's been calling for hours and no one picks up the phone, and eventually, she finally gets a number in Israel to pick up the phone, but just to tell her that it's the wrong phone number. So she breaks down and starts crying, and the woman on the other end of the phone says, "Dolores," which is my mother's name. My mom goes into shock and says, "How do you know my name?" And she replies, "Well, I know your name because you're my aunt, but I have no idea how you called me."

1:30:40And my mom says, well, I didn't have your phone number. We've never spoken on the phone before. How did I get to you? She says, I don't know how you got to me, but if you got to me, obviously Hashem has a reason. She was our niece, whose father is my mom's brother, and he's a rabbi, a very religious man and an amazing person. And she asks my mom, why are you crying? And she tells her the story, my son, my son, my son. And she says, well, if you're looking for a rabbi, why don't you call my brother, Rabbi Efraim Kachlon? He's a big talmid chacham in Yerushalayim, and he happens to live next door to Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, zecher tzadik livrachah; he was still alive at the time. So, she says, oh, okay, will you talk to me? Yeah, of course, you're the famous aunt from America.

1:31:40Of course he's going to talk to her. So she calls Ephraim. He's, of course, at the kollel, but his wife reaches him and he calls her back. Ephraim and I have never met. When I left Israel, he was still a baby. So she talks to Ephraim, and Ephraim is amazing, and he's listening to her, and he says, well, he asks her, does he speak Hebrew? Because Ephraim doesn't speak... I refer to him as Ephraim, even though he's a rabbi, because it's a personal relationship, but he's Rabbi Ephraim Kachlon. So Ephraim asks her, "Does he speak Hebrew?" She goes, "Yeah, yeah, he speaks Hebrew." He goes, "Well, he can speak to me." She goes, "No, that I don't think so. He doesn't speak to anybody anymore." I became very antisocial at this stage of my life. At that very moment, when she says, "I don't think he's going to speak to you," I called her. First call, I probably called my mom in maybe a year and a half. I called my mom, and I hear her hysterical on the other line. She's hysterical, and she says, "Talk to him, talk to him." And I said, "Talk to who?" She says, "Talk to Ephraim." I'm like, "Who's Ephraim?" She said, "Cousin from Israel." I'm like, "Alright, whoever you want me to talk to, I'll talk to him. Just stop crying, tell him to call me, and I'll talk to him." Ephraim calls me, and we hit it off right away for...

1:33:05An hour and 40 minutes, I tell him a problem, and he shows me a source in the Torah. He told me the story of Tamar and Yehuda with a lot more details, and a lot of other stories and different questions I would have. It was a nice conversation. Next week, we talked for three hours. He called me the same day, Thursday at four o'clock; we talked for three hours. The next week, it was five hours, and the next week, it was seven hours. And from that moment on, it was every Thursday at least, it was a seven-hour conversation, pure Torah, and non-stop questions. And Baruch Hashem, he’s one of these special people that not only has the answer but has the answer with its source on the spot. page number, verse, and everything else that's along with it in several different places. And when you ask him a question, like, oh, you mean the question that so-and-so asked 827 years ago, oh, and it says da-da-da-da-da. It was something that was unbelievable to me. And in the beginning, I didn't even understand what Torah wisdom was. I thought I was smart.

1:34:20People thought I was smart. Especially when you have a few dollars, you think you're smarter than you really are. But when I met him, I realized that that's what smart is. But I still didn't realize what smart is, because I didn't know Torah. I didn't know the wisdom of Torah. And that's one of the things that is important for us to recognize Torah for what it is. Because unfortunately in our generation, I'm almost finished. in our generation, we don't really know what Torah is. We don't really know. We think someone learns, someone becomes a rabbi. Okay, so he took a test. Took an insurance test. It's like a driving test. Oh, someone learns a little bit of Gemara every day. Okay, yeah, so I read the newspaper every day. What's the difference? If someone has true Torah knowledge,

1:35:20That's why, when you asked about the crowns, his crown is the biggest. His crown is the most important. Why? Because Torah knowledge is something beyond anything that we're even used to. To give you an example of what I mean, there was one time a guy who had a son. He was a kosher guy, and he said, listen, I... I want to send my son to yeshiva. His wife says, no. In those days, they used to send the kids away to yeshiva. No, no way. I'm going to miss him too much. I love my son. He's my only son. I want to keep him home. You have some extra money. You're in the jewelry business. Bring a tutor to the house. He says, okay, let's go ask the rabbi. He asks the rabbi. The rabbi says, yes, you do have some money. Your wife is going to have too much hardship if you send the son away. Bring the rabbi to the house. That's it. Okay. So he agrees to do what the rabbi says. In those days, people respected the rabbis. And he brings a rabbi. For the next 20 years, the rabbi comes and teaches the son Torah every single day, non-stop. The kid never leaves the house. He's learning Torah all day. Twenty years pass. The rabbi comes to the father and he says, listen, I've taught your son Torah for 20 years. He knows at least everything that I know, probably even more.

1:36:46If I spend another day in your house, you're just wasting your money. Even though it's going to affect my parnassah, I'm not a thief. I have nothing to teach your son. He knows everything, everything that I know, at least. Baruch Hashem, the father's happy, the mother's happy. The son says, Abba, I want to go check out, I want to go outside for the first time, to go check out the shuk, the market. So he goes into the market, and he sees a lemonade stand. And he asks the guy for a lemonade. The guy asks him for a dollar or a lira. The boy says, I don't have a lira. I can give you a dvar Torah. I can teach you a little Torah in exchange for this lemonade. The guy grabs the lemonade from him and says, "Get out of here, you crazy Torah guy. You and your Torah. I need money. We don't pay with Torah in this world." The kid gets so upset. He runs to the house, takes his hat, takes his kippah, and throws it. "Oh, I wasted my whole life, 20 years I'm learning Torah. I can't even get a lemonade with my Torah." His father sees him and he says, "Okay, so what do you want to do?" He goes, "Abba, I want to be like you." He goes, "What do you want to do?" He goes, "I want to deal diamonds." He goes, "Okay." Abba was a smart man, he wasn't a fool. He goes into the safe, he opens the safe, and he takes his biggest diamond. He says, "Okay, son."

1:38:14I believe in you, but we need to take it one step at a time. Don't sell this diamond. Just go into the same shuk, go into the same market, and get me three prices for this diamond. Okay. The kid's so excited. "I got a big diamond. I'm going to go make some money." He goes into the market. The first guy offers him 200 liras. He writes it down. The second guy, 700 liras. Oh, big difference. He already feels good about himself. Oh, the second guy is really into it. Third guy, a thousand liras. He's so excited. He runs to the house. He's like, Abba, I think we got him. This guy really wants to pay a thousand. He goes, "Okay, hold on, son. Go to this other shuk tomorrow. This other shuk. Get me three prices from there. Before we sell it, before we give it away for a thousand. Let's see, maybe we can get a better price." He goes to the second shuk, second market, and the first guy says, 50,000 liras. The second guy says, 250,000 liras. And the third guy says, a half a million liras. The kid doesn't know what just happened, what just hit him. He doesn't understand how it could be. Yesterday I spent the whole day looking, looking, looking. I got a thousand. Today, the first one was 50,000. By the end of the day, I got 500,000. What's happening here?

1:39:43He goes to his father, he goes, "Abba, I don't know what's going on, but if you don't sell it to this guy for $500,000, I don't know who we're going to sell it to." He says, "Son, we're not going to sell it to any of them, but I wanted to teach you something. The first shuk, the first market you went to, it was a lemonade market. When you showed them the diamond, they thought it was a rock. They thought it was nothing. So they gave you $1,000 for it. It was a nice rock. They didn't think it was a diamond. They didn't know anything about diamonds. They only knew about lemonade." The second market, those are diamond dealers. They know the diamond. So that's why they were willing to give you full price. The same thing with the Torah. Your Torah of 20 years, you know a lot of Torah. You are a diamond. But when you went to the first market, what do they know? They know nothing. They don't know what Torah is. So they didn't want to give you even lemonade for it. But if you go to people who know Torah, they'll give you diamonds for your Torah. That's the thing we have to know with Torah knowledge. We don't truly know what it is.

1:40:45Unless we have it. A little bit of it. A little bit of it. Every one of us can get a little taste of it every day. Fifteen minutes a day. An hour a day. Two hours a day. Whatever we can get. You have to. You have an obligation to learn Torah every day. Anyone that wants to see Mashiach, anyone that wants to go to Gan Eden, anyone that wants to have Olam HaBa, needs to know for sure. Without learning Torah... Mashiach doesn't come without it. We have no right. That's our ticket. No learning Torah, that's your ticket. It's like you're saying, okay, I have a ticket for Olam HaBa. But you know what? I'm going to leave it at home. Torah is a ticket. Torah is a ticket. Doing kindness, being kind, being good. Don't make the same mistakes that I made and think that we're in charge of our parnassah. Don't wait for tests, like I got. Learn from this shiur, from the little bit of experience that I told you, the little bit of details that I told you, but more importantly, learn what the purpose is. Right now, we have Yom Kippur; that's our appeal. We have to use our heart because that's all we have. Mitzvot, we don't have enough. The second thing is, when we're giving tzedakah, give the right amount. Don't be one of these guys that has empty promises. "Oh, when I get rich, I'm going to give the 10%, but now I can't give the 10%, even though I have profits."

1:42:07Don't be a hero. Don't be one of these guys that has empty promises because you're opening, not only opening, you're making a whole table for the Satan. He's going to interrupt. He's going to do everything he can to make sure you don't give it. He'll give you the money. The Satan will even give you money just to make sure you make a sin. That's how much he wants you to work for him. And last but not least, if you see someone that has Torah, that has the... does... What this Rabbi, Baruch Hashem, is doing, bringing different people here. What people like Rabbi Mizrachi do, which is do kiruv non-stop, mesirut nefesh, people that are truly giving you honesty. Not lies, not nonsense, not fancy stories. Not the stuff that, oh, no, everybody's a tzaddik, everyone has a share of the world to come. None of that stuff. People that tell you the truth, people that only work for the truth, do and only do the truth. Most rabbis wouldn't invite people like me. Why? Because if you see any of my shiurim, they're no softer than this. And this is not exactly a soft shiur. A lot of rabbis don't want that. Why? Because they're like, oh no, it's too hard, you're going to scare them. A Rabbi that knows, he doesn't even ask who it is. Why? Because, listen, if he has the truth, I want to hear the truth. Whatever truth he has, I want to hear it. There are no boundaries. No, listen, by the way, don't talk about Shabbat.

1:43:33We don't talk about Shabbat here. Oh, don't talk about Niddah. You know, different rites. You have a Rabbi, Baruch Hashem, who gives you the truth. You have many others that I'm sure you know because I saw Rabbi Mizrahi in this place also with you guys. So I know he's a guest here. I was here. Yeah, I was here. I was one of the guests. So I know you have the truth here. Baruch Hashem, this is a place to be a part of. When you have Torah knowledge, you have everything. ...you have a ticket to Gan Eden, you have a ticket to Olam HaBa, B'ezrat Hashem, you have a ticket to not even worry about Yom Kippur. Because why? Because when you have Torah now, you already know that you're going to pray with a full heart. So B'ezrat Hashem, we all have a good holiday, a prosperous year, and do good things every day to bring the Mashiach.