Shiur Torah #49 Special Rabbi, Torah, Science & Musar at AUR Torah (Staten Island New York)

0:01We're in Staten Island where it all began. It's interesting, I always say, if you watch any of the shiurim we have on YouTube, I always say that one of the best proofs that the Torah is not a newspaper or a book like Harry Potter, but something divine, is that if you study each week's parasha, you'll actually find something that specifically, you know, pertains to you. That week. Meaning, you know, you read each parasha each week, every year, it's the same thing, over and over again. In the old days, they used to read the entire Chamishah Chumshei Torah over three years. Now we do it every year. But either way, the miracles still work now. you know, pertaining to you that week. Meaning, you know, you read each parasha each week, every year, it's the same thing, over and over again. In the old days, they used to read the entire Chamishah Chumshei Torah over three years. Now we do it every year. But either way, the miracles still work now. Which means that every week, if you actually study the parasha really carefully, you'll find something that's not only pertaining to what's going on in the world at that particular time in your life, but also something that's specifically relevant to you. So, one of the chiddushim that I got for myself from this week, that's very, very interesting, is that this week's parasha, we get the mitzvah, the 613th mitzvah.

1:23And if anyone knows what the 613th mitzvah is, the last mitzvah, it's to write a sefer Torah. Almost 10 years ago, I was here with all of you and many other people as well, giving my sefer Torah, Baruch Hashem. That was the beginning of the whole teshuva process. So it's very interesting that 10 years later, I'm giving my first shiur at the Beit Knesset where I did a mitzvah. So, first of all, birshut harav, Rav Zev is someone very special. If you look at all of my shiurim, it's very rare that I actually give a compliment to a rabbi. Because unfortunately, in our generation, many rabbis are very concerned about people's feelings. So much so that they are scared of telling people the truth. And in essence, what happens in this generation is that the rabbis end up making the decision for people. Where they say, listen, Maybe if I tell them what the other half of the Torah says, you know, there's that one half that says all the blessings, all the good things that are going to happen if you do the right thing. And there's one half that says all the bad things that happen if you don't do it. No one really wants to talk about the bad things. So everyone lives in the illusion that there's only going to be good things. And sometimes when you learn from some people, you see that they only talk about the good things.

2:47So people that don't learn often, you know, where they only learn, let's say, once a week, or even once a month, or perhaps even once a year, they hear a drasha on Yom Kippur or Rosh Hashanah, and they only hear good things, they honestly think that every Jew has guaranteed Gan Eden. And it's not true. Not according to the Torah. There's obviously a responsibility that all Jews have. You can't just be a king without responsibility. You can't just be a prince and act like, you know, however you want. You know, if there was a king and he had a prince and the prince decided that, hey, listen, I don't want to be a prince. I want to go hang out with my friends at the clubs. And I want to wear shorts. And I want to wear a tank top every day. And I want to go out with a different girl every night. The king is not exactly going to be too excited about this prince. Why? Because the prince has a certain obligation. He didn't choose to be a prince. No one asked him if he's going to be the prince or not. But he's the prince. The prince has certain privileges, but he also has certain responsibilities. Unfortunately, in this generation, sometimes we have so many people so concerned about getting people to come and show up and give tzedakah and donations and donations and donations that we forget about the ikar. We forget about why we're even here. What's the donation for? So you see a lot of batei knesset that are very, very big, but unfortunately, there's not enough Torah in there. And this beit knesset, Baruch Hashem, since the beginning...

4:13Since Rav Zev has come here also, everything has changed drastically. And the main reason is because he's honest with the Torah. But we still have a big difficulty. I remember for myself, so no one take anything that I say personally, I'm talking mostly to myself and reminding myself of how I was. I remember 10 years ago, before the Torah had a big part of my life, I would hear Rav Zev say something, And to be honest with you, I didn't understand most of what he said. And I thought it was his fault. I thought that, hey, maybe he should speak clearer, maybe he should do this, maybe he should... I thought about a bunch of suggestions of how he should do things. Not me. I didn't look at myself that I should learn. I thought he has to do something. Like he owes me something. Little did I know that the problem was with me. Because ten years later, Baruch Hashem, I've benefited in learning a little bit of Torah. And every single word that he says, I understand now. I'm still the same person, but somehow something changed. In last week's parasha, Parashat Nitzavim, it talks about teshuva.

5:30Anyone that's looking for a source of teshuva in the Torah, it comes from Parashat Nitzavim. It comes from other places as well, but Parashat Nitzavim talks about the concept of teshuva. Because teshuva technically is not logical. It's against all human logic. Doing teshuva does not make sense to a human being. Because technically it's like saying, you go to a bank, you rob a bank, they catch you, You go to the judge and the judge says, "Do you feel bad about it?" "Yeah, I feel bad. I feel really, really bad." "Will you do it again?" "No." "Okay, you know what? Go ahead. Keep the hundred million dollars. Just don't do it again." That's teshuva. Makes no sense whatsoever. But that shows you also the mercy of Hashem. In last week's parashah, Hashem says, "Listen, if you don't do what I say, a bunch of problems are going to happen." That was also in the previous parashah. we're not going to go over that. Anyone that wants to know the details, there's shiur number 45 on my YouTube. It goes over a lot of details. Danny saw it. A few other people here saw it. It's a pretty hard shiur, but it's going to touch your heart. My goal in every shiur is to touch your heart. If I didn't affect your heart in one way or another, I wasted your time and I'm sorry. So, after we found out about all the bad things...

6:55Hashem says, if you do, if you come back to me, teshuva is coming back. If you come back to me, then you have nothing to worry about. I'm going to bless you and everything will be fine. But one thing that He mentioned that's very, very interesting. It says, what do you mean circumcise your heart? Last time I checked, we don't circumcise the heart. Any of the guys had a different circumcision. I had a circumcision of somewhere else. It wasn't the heart. So what does it mean, circumcise the heart? When you have a circumcision, you're taking off a piece that's called the orlah. Orlah is the piece that you take off when you actually have a circumcision as a boy. But that's not what we're talking about. The reason why you take off the orlah is because the orlah has tumah. You're born imperfect.

8:09Hashem makes you imperfect so you can take off the orlah in order for you to become perfect. So then you're asking yourself, well, how could it be? Hashem is perfect. How could He create something that's not perfect? He's intentionally creating something that's not perfect to get the Jews to be involved with His creation. Get the prince to get a job. You know, the king, obviously, is doing everything. He doesn't really need the prince's help. But he's saying, you know, if I don't give the prince anything to do, He's, you know, going to feel bad about himself. No one wants to only get, get, get. Everyone wants to be involved in something. Imagine going to somebody's house and every day he's feeding you, he's giving you everything, and you never do anything. Eventually, after a while, after this vacation, you're going to feel bad and say, you know what, let me throw out the garbage. Let me wash the dishes. Let me do something. You want to contribute. So Hashem created us imperfect. He created us with an orlah. So, we have an eighth day, we have a circumcision, and we take out this tum'ah and...

9:09the Jew becomes perfect. But here we're not talking about that. Here we're talking about the orlah of the heart. The orlah of the heart is made up of the same thing. It's also made of tum'ah. But this tum'ah, this impurity, is made up of our sins. An eight-day-old baby didn't make any sins. Not yet, at least not in this life. But a 20, 25, 35, 55, 75-year-old person made some sins. So Hashem says that before you did teshuva, you couldn't even understand a big, giant chacham like Rabbi Ze'ev. You couldn't understand him. Because you had so much tumah covering your heart, you can't understand the purity of the Torah. He can speak to you in every language you want, in Spanish, in Hebrew, in English, in whatever language you want. You still won't understand it. It's your problem, not his. Because you have so much tumah on your heart. So Hashem says, but if you really, really want to come back, and you really show Me sincerity, not like just saying, "Oh yeah, I'm going to do teshuva," and the next day you're, you know, going to the beach on Shabbat. Really, you know, you're doing something that shows that you're sincere, you really want to do teshuva. Then Hashem says, okay, then I'm going to start peeling. Whatever mitzvah you're going to do, I'm going to peel off a piece of this klipah. I'm going to peel off a piece of this tumah off of your heart, and then you're going to start understanding.

10:37And one of the things we have to realize is that instead of looking at the world around us, we always have to look at ourselves first. It's one of the most important things in the world because every time someone has a problem, it's very easy to point somewhere else. I used to do it a lot. It's very easy to point somewhere else, which reminds me of a story. There was one time a Jew who had a little boy and he told his wife, "Listen, I want to send my boy to a yeshiva." But in those days, they used to send the boy, you know, far away. The boy would go away for 20 years, come back as a grown man, but a Torah scholar. The mom said, listen, it's my only boy. I can't, I can't do it. It's going to break my heart. I've been waiting for him my whole life. Let's go ask the rabbi. They go to the rabbi, and the rabbi says, listen, your wife is right. He's your only son. You have extra money. You're in the jewelry business. Hire a rabbi to come to your house every day and teach your son Torah. In those days, they respected the rabbi, so he did what the rabbi said. He hired a rabbi. The rabbi comes to the house and starts teaching the boy every day. 20 years later, that rabbi goes to the father and he says, "Kvodo, even though it's going to hurt my parnasa, I can't teach your son anything. 20 years I'm teaching him, he knows everything I know, and probably even more. If I come here one more day, you're just wasting your money."

12:04He says, thank you very much for being honest. Chazak u'baruch. The rabbi leaves. The son is very excited. This is the first time he gets to go out of the house. For 20 years, he's only been learning Torah. It wasn't like today where the kids are constantly outside. Back then, they would stay inside a little bit and learn some Torah. So for 20 years, he's been learning Torah and that's all he did. For the first time, he wants to go outside. He says, Abba, I want to go to the shuk. I want to go to the market. Go ahead, son. So the kid goes to the market. He has no concept of what the world is like. He goes to the market, he sees a lemonade stand. He says, can I have a lemonade? The guy says, sure. He gives him a lemonade. He goes, five liras. He goes, five liras? I don't have five liras, but I'll give you a Dvar Torah. I'll give you some chiddush about Torah. The guy snatches the lemonade from him. He goes, with your Dvar Torah, get out of here. Either five liras or nothing. The kid gets so upset. He runs to the house. He takes his hat. He takes his kippah. He throws it in the house. He goes, "What? Twenty years I spent and I wasted studying this Torah and I can't even get a cup of lemonade? Can't even get a cup of lemonade with this Torah? Abba, no more Torah for me." This Abba was pretty smart. So he said, "Okay, son, what do you want to do?" He goes, "I want to be like you. I want to sell diamonds."

13:25He goes, "Okay." Abba goes to the safe. He opens the safe. He says, "Son, this is my most expensive diamond. Don't sell it. Go to the same shuk. Go to the same market and get me three prices." He's so excited. He takes this big diamond, runs to the market. First guy says, "250 liras." Second guy says, "500." The third guy is up to "1,000." Comes to the house. He says, "Abba, I think we got him, Abba." The guy wants to give me a thousand. Four times what the first guy wanted to give. We should really sell it, Abba. We shouldn't wait. Abba says, hold on one second. Go to a different shop. Maybe, maybe, just maybe we can get a better price. He sends him to a different market. First guy says, 50,000. Second guy says, 250,000. And the last guy says, half a million. The kid doesn't know what to do with himself. How could it be? Yesterday it was a thousand. It was the best thing I could get. Today, 500,000. What could happen in one day? He goes back to Abba. He says, "Abba, what happened? If you're not going to sell for 500,000, I don't know who you're going to sell it to. But anyway, what happened? How could it be?" Because the first market you went to was a market for lemonade. They were selling fruits and vegetables. They don't know anything about diamonds. So they said it's a rock. It's a nice rock. It's pretty. They'll give you a thousand.

14:47The second market, those are diamond dealers. They know what the diamond is, so they're paying you full price. The first market you went to, they didn't know anything about Torah, so to them, it’s not even worth the lemonade. But if you go to the right crowd, people that actually know what Torah is, half a million would just be the starting price. And that's the thing we have to understand: Torah is not like math, it's not like science. It's not like any other subject. It's something extraordinary. When someone has Torah, they have everything. Rabbi Zev has a lot of Torah, and I didn't come here to just talk about him, but I'm trying to explain to you guys what you actually have because it's not common. I'm part of a very big shul in Florida, Baruch Hashem, there are some good rabbis there as well. I've seen some other rabbis, I've met some other ones, but what you have here is very unique. The problem is that we don't know that we have a diamond. I know I didn't know when I was here. What else is the problem with today's age? It's not just the rabbis. It's not just that we don't know what Torah is. It's that you have pretty much, if you're not religious, if you're not keeping Shabbat, you're not keeping tefillin, you're not keeping kosher, you're not doing what Hashem says, then you're one of two people. Either you don't believe, you don't believe in anything,

16:17Or, you don't know. Meaning that you believe in something, but you don't really know the significance of everything. There are a lot of people that I meet during these shiurim online and in places where we have the shiurim, and you'd be surprised at how little people actually know. People don't really know. They know the famous stories. They saw a movie about Moshe one day, so they know about Moshe. They saw a recent movie about Noach, they think that the movie is actually a real representation of Noach, even though it had nothing to do with the story. Other than having the same name Noach, it had nothing to do with the story. People saw a movie, so they think that's the Torah. Very few people actually know about Torah. And that's part of the reason why, if you don't know, you can't really be at fault for doing something wrong. The problem is that we all have sechel, we all have a brain. We can all read, we can all write. We're not in a third world country where there are no books available. If you want Torah in our generation, it's only a click of a button. Just as easy as it is to click on ESPN, you can get a Torah lecture. It's all a matter of will. You want to learn, you can learn. It's just a matter of will. It's a matter of overcoming the yetzer hara.

17:33So, what happens with the people that don't believe? To them, I talk about Torah proofs, which we'll go over a few of them today. The people that don't know, to them, I go over some of the details of what they should know. As far as Torah proofs, some of the things that people have a problem with, with the written Torah, is the fact that it was written 3,300 years ago. A little over 3,300 years ago. So, how could a book that was written over 3,000 years ago be relevant to my life today? How is it possible? How could it be anything more than just a Harry Potter book? How could it be anything related to this modern world with iPhones and iPads and airplanes and Google? How could it be? The amazing part of the Torah, as I said earlier, is that you could find something relevant to your life in every single parashah. The second thing about the Torah that's very different than any other book you will ever find is that it actually has information that no human in the world could have ever written. So I'll give you some examples to help you understand how this cannot be a man-made creation. A lot of people have a problem with keeping kosher. They figure that if they go to a pizzeria that's not kosher, but it's cheese. It's cheese. Not so bad. It's not meat. It's not meat. It's cheese. I'm not violating any rules.

18:56Anyone who doesn't know, they are violating all of the rules, not just from the cheese, but the actual sauce has meat in it. Every pizzeria. That's how you make a different sauce. If you have three pizzerias that are not kosher, they're all using the same ingredients. There's cheese, there's bread, there's sauce. How is the flavor different? Because the flavor is different based on the meat that the sauce is cooked in. And also the meat that's part of the cheese itself. That's why it's not only a violation of kashrut, but it's also basar b'chalav. But people have a problem with this. Well, maybe these kosher rules, maybe they're not really, maybe some rabbi made it up. So Hashem says in our Torah, He says, listen, you're only allowed to eat a specific type of animal. It has to have two signs, split hooves and has to chew its cud. Fine. There's about ten animals that can do that in all of creation. It's pretty interesting. He listed those animals. But the more interesting part is that he said that out of all of creation, which at this point we know there's approximately two million species. There are two million species that we know exist today. There are probably more, but there are two million that we have documented information about. And he said out of all of those two million species, only four will have one of the two signs.

20:21The kosher ones will have two signs. There are about ten of them. The non-kosher ones will have nothing, no signs. But there are four that will have one sign: the rabbit, the hare, which is similar to a rabbit, the pig, and the camel. Now if this was a man-made book that let's say Moshe wrote, or Avraham wrote, or Noach wrote, or just some rabbi a few thousand years ago wrote, You think that he's going to take a risk in writing something that's completely untrue because he wants people to follow his religion? If he's doing it for power or for money, then he's going to try to make it as easy as possible to believe. So he's not going to say, listen, I have a religion here and I have some proof that this book is divine. If he tells you, "Listen, September 11th happened in the middle of Japan. The towers dropped in the middle of Japan," you're going to say, "Oh, there's a mistake in this book. It goes in the garbage." Right? Because September 11th happened in New York City. So if he's telling you there are only four animals out of two million species, 3,000 years ago, well before humans knew about these two million species, there's something to it.

21:42And the interesting part is, until this day, even including mutations and manipulations from scientists that tried to disprove the Torah, there's never been another animal with one sign other than those four. Another thing that we know is that the sea is the vast majority of the world. 73% of the globe is water. Which means that everything we have on land, we have in the water and even more. Hashem says you're only allowed to eat a certain type of fish. It has to have fins and it has to have scales. Fine. Fins and scales. Everyone knows what fins and scales are. Fins are the little flippery things, and the scales are the stuff that you scratch off. Interesting. But the Torah says that you will find a fish with just fins, but you will never find a fish with just scales. with just scales. Never. So you look at the fish, you say, okay, just fins, I know there's a dolphin, there's a shark, and there's plenty of fish that have just fins, just like the Torah says. But then they're telling me that I will never find a fish with no fins, but just scales? How could it be? Again, 3,000 years later, no one can find a fish with just scales.

23:12Torah has many prophecies of things that happened that were already written 3,000 years ago. There's something called Torah codes, which is a mathematical way of finding secrets within the Torah. We go over some of these things in the other shiurim to give you just a small taste of it. Everything that happened in the Holocaust is already talked about in the Torah. It's parashat Ki Tavo and others. It has the names of Hitler, all of his buddies, yimach shemam. Concentration camps, the locations, all the details that didn't exist obviously when the Torah was written, are actually in the Torah. 9/11 is also there. This conversation is also there. We just need to know how to find it. Really, everything is there. Okay, everything in creation is in the Torah. There's actually a video that was done recently by Professor Shore. It's a 17-minute video. If anyone wants it, just remind me after the shiur and I'll send it to you. It's a 17-minute video that talks about the chochmah of the Torah, of just the first pasuk. Just that first pasuk, just that first verse. The first verse of the Torah has more information in it than all of the intelligence that the world has.

24:32All of it. 17 minutes, you'll understand. Mathematical information, prophecy, everything you want is in the first verse. Just one verse. Forget about the rest of the Torah, which has 304,000 letters. Talk about the first verse. So the next thing is, people say, okay, you know what? The Christians believe in the Old Testament. They call the Torah the Old Testament. The Arabs believe in the Torah. Okay, so I believe in it too. Fine. It's a nice story. Never read it, but I heard about it. Fine, I'll believe in it. But where do these mitzvot come from? Where do all these rules come from? So you tell them, well, the mitzvot technically all come from the written Torah. The source of them is from the written Torah. But the explanation of how to do them is from something called the Oral Torah. Torah SheBe'al Peh. So you say, okay, what is that? Is there another name for it? Yeah, it's called Talmud, Gemara, Mishnah, Zohar, and so on. It's part, lots of parts to the Oral Torah. Even books that are written today to explain certain things are also part of the Oral Torah. So if somebody opens the Talmud, they see there's a bunch of rabbis arguing. Now they're not arguing about whether you should do it or not do it.

25:51They're arguing about how to perfect doing the mitzvah. That's one of the mistakes that I made early on where I thought that the Gemara is full of arguments about whether you should keep Shabbat or not keep Shabbat. One rabbi says you should keep Shabbat, the other rabbi says you shouldn't keep Shabbat. That's completely not it. That's not the argument. The argument is how you should keep Shabbat. The argument is not whether you should do Kriyat Shema or not. It's whether you should do it At a specific time or not, in Masechet Berachot, there's 15 dapim, which is like 30 pages, because each daf in the Gemara is two, it's back and forth. There's 15 dapim just talking about 15 minutes. They're arguing about 15 minutes in the Gemara. So it's not about whether you should do the mitzvah or not. It's about perfecting the mitzvah. so people say, okay, you know what, this looks, it's nice, it's interesting, great, but who says this is divine? Okay, I can see how the Torah has many things that are divine, the written one, but how do I know that this oral one is divine? It looks like a bunch of people wrote it. The interesting part about the Oral Torah is that if Chas V'Shalom, Am Yisrael was ever in jeopardy of having to give up one of the Torahs,

27:14If an enemy nation would say, listen, you have to give us one of them, either the written or the oral, most people would say, give them the Gemara, we don't need it. But the reality of it is, we have to give them the Sefer Torah, Torah Bichtav, the written Torah. The reason why is because without the Torah She'be'al Peh, without the Oral Torah, there is no Judaism. Whereas without the written Torah... we still have Judaism because Judaism is not a story. Judaism is not a history lesson. Judaism is a way to connect to Hashem. You can't connect to Hashem through just stories. You have to connect to Hashem through actions. You can't tell your wife you love her just by sending a card once every five years. You have to show up once in a while. You have to pay the bills. You have to tell her you love her. You have to do a few things. Not too different with Hashem. You have to show up once in a while. I'm trying to be soft on you guys. So they say, how do I know? Okay, so now you have this Oral Torah. What else makes it so special? One thing that we know is that the Sefer Torah that's behind me, a few of them, Baruch Hashem, if you notice, none of them have nikud.

28:38You're not allowed to put nikud inside a Sefer Torah. If there's nikud, that violates the Sefer Torah; it's pasul. You're not allowed to use it. Even if there's one letter missing in a Sefer Torah, it's not considered a Sefer Torah. That's how, by the way, they ship it from Israel. You notice, if a Sefer Torah falls in a Beit Knesset, people have to fast. But when they ship it from Israel, they put it in a suitcase and throw it in there like it's nothing. How could it be? Because a few letters are missing. Even if there's one letter missing, it's not considered a Sefer Torah. Because if it's missing one letter, it's no longer divine. It's human. Divine means it's perfect. As long as there's something missing, it's not perfect. Every letter matters. There's never an extra letter. There's never an extra verse. But now, how do we know how to read the Sefer Torah? Because technically, Nekudot, to people that speak English like us, it's not just dots. Nekudot are vowelization. It's having vowels. Like, for example, in English, you have A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y. Those are the foundational letters that are in every word in the English language. Without one of these five letters, you cannot make up a word. A, E, I, O, U. So, for example, if you want to say Moses,

29:59Moses. Moses is a very important character in the Torah, right? Now, if I took out the vowels in English, so you take your M, it's good. O, no good, it's one of the vowels. Gets thrown out. S is fine. E, no good, gets thrown out. And then S again. So what do you have? M-S-S. Do you know how to read M-S-S? If anything, maybe it's Ms., the woman. Nothing to do with Moses. Without the vowels, you can't read the word. Same thing with Nikud. Without knowing where the Nikud is, you can't read the words. The reason why the holy Rabbi knows how to read the Torah is because he knows where it is. He read the one with the Nikud. And how do we know where the Nikud is, where the Nikud belongs? There's something called Codex in sefarim. Codex, or in Hebrew, it's called Keter. That was the source. that had a scroll, but with nikkud. And every copy, every Tanach that you see, that's the original source. Without that, we wouldn't know how to read the Torah. We wouldn't even be able to read one sentence. The Torah would be completely illegible. So that's one part of the Oral Torah. So when the Christians or the non-believers in the Jewish religion, or even the Arabs, say, no, this Oral Torah, it's not real,

31:25It's nonsense because technically, without the Oral Torah, without this Codex, which is just one small part of the Oral Torah, there is no written Torah, which means there is no Christianity, there is no Islam, and of course there isn't any Judaism because we wouldn't know how to read this book. It would just be a bunch of letters. The second thing that makes it very interesting as far as the Oral Torah is that there's a lot of secrets within the Oral Torah that cannot come from a human. So, for example, There's the number of stars. The number of stars in the universe. Back when the Torah was written, we obviously didn't have telescopes. Telescopes only started in the 1600s by Galileo Galilei. Before Galileo Galilei came to the world, we only thought that there were somewhere in the neighborhood of 6,000 stars, because that's what we were able to see. You look, go on the top of a mountain, no pollution. You see 6,000, maybe 8,000 stars. The Torah wrote an exact number. Masechet Berachot, page 32. daf bet, Hashem is telling us this formula of exactly how to calculate the number of stars. The nation of Israel complains about how the Beit HaMikdash was destroyed and they feel like Hashem forgot about them. But they say it in a mashal. They say, "Hashem, even when a husband leaves his wife and divorces her, many years down the road you ask him, 'Do you remember the wife you used to have?' And he still remembers her."

32:54Of course, he had a wife, even if it was 30 years ago. You, Hashem, did you forget us? Because they feel like He destroyed the Beit HaMikdash. And Hashem says something very interesting. He says that I built the galaxy, or the entire universe, based on 12 parts, 12 constellations, He calls it, which are the 12 mazalot, No, in English, horoscope. There you go, yeah, horoscope. So, 12 constellations, that comes from Judaism, by the way. So, there are 12 sections to the entire universe, and each one of those 12 sections has 30 ra'aton. And each one of those 30 ra'aton has 30 karaton, and each one of those 30 karaton has 30 gistera, and each one of those 30 gistera has 365,000 times 10,000, which is 3.65 million stars. If you do the math, has 30 ra'aton, and each one of those 30 ra'aton has 30 karaton, and each one of these 30 karaton has 30 gistera, and each one of these 30 gistera has 365,000 times 10,000, which is 3.65 million stars. If you do the math,

34:1730 times 30 times 30 times 30 times 30 times 12 times 365,000 or 3.65 million. You get an exact number: 1,064,340,000,000,000,000. That's 1 to the 18th power, almost. A little more than that. That's the number of stars. Not in today's age, not 3,000 years ago, and not even 2,000 years ago when this was written, did we have a calculator that could come up with that many numbers. 10 to the 18th power is beyond human capacity. So when we told this to the goyim, they laughed in our face. 8,000 stars, you're saying this crazy number. Come on. Be serious. What is this number? In 1994, NASA came up with a research. They connected a supercomputer to a telescope. This is almost 400 years after Galileo Galilei came up with the original telescope. The original telescope said that we're wrong, there's not 6,000 stars, there's probably a few million. So already we jumped. You fast forward to 1994, and NASA came up with an estimate of 10 to the 17th power. Fast forward another 10 years, a university in Australia said,

35:36Came up with an estimate of 10 to the 19th power. So little by little, they're getting to the truth. But the interesting part is that they need a supercomputer. We didn't have one back then, meaning that the only thing that could have given this information is the One that put it there. Another thing about kosher is that a lot of people think that, you know, I remember when I was a kid, I would have some friends make fun of kosher. So they say, listen, you know, come eat McDonald's, eat this, eat that. I'll bless it for you. I'll bless it for you. I'm sure all of you guys have heard it at some point. Somebody says, come on, I'll bless it for you. They thought that some rabbi blesses the food. They don't realize that the animals that Hashem picked are specifically unique. Unique in creation. One of the most important things that, of course, Rabbi Ze'ev could explain to you because he's a shochet, he knows all of this and many other things he knows. is that there's something unique about the kosher animals. One of the things that's important about kosher slaughter is that the animal can never suffer. Now, if you look at the traditional way of killing an animal, you take a gun, you shoot it in the head, you think, oh, it looks like it's suffering, but I don't know, it's dead after a few seconds, maybe a minute, two minutes. Or they electrocute them sometimes. A lot of vicious things that they do. But still, all of those people think...

37:05that the slaughter of cutting the neck of the cow or the sheep is much worse. Of course, it suffered. This is where science comes in. Baruch Hashem, science has shown us a lot of interesting things. A lot of people think that science goes against religion, goes against the Torah. But science is, little by little, proving the Torah. In order for anyone to die, It's not the heart; it's the brain. As soon as the brain stops getting blood, you're officially dead. If the heart stops working, you're still alive. You can still get the heart to come back to life because the brain is still functioning. But as soon as there's no more blood going to the brain, that's it. That's clinical death. And if it continues, obviously, then it's official death. So anytime that they announce anyone's death, they announce it based on when the brain waves stop working. That's how we know that the person or animal, or whatever species it is, is no longer with us. That's also how we know if the animal is suffering. So we know that in order for us to stop this suffering, we have some background music, baruch Hashem.

38:32It's good. That's some background music. Well, at least it's not me with my phone. So now, you have all of the animals. You have a pig, for example. If you slaughter a pig, a horse, a camel, or any non-kosher animal, if you slaughter it... the kosher way, it's still not kosher. Even without the signs, even if it had the two signs, it still cannot be killed in the kosher way. Why? Because you can't kill the pig without the pig suffering. If you cut the throat of the pig, it has two veins. So imagine this, for example, it's in the picture of the book, but you won’t see it from far away. So let's say this is the head of the pig. So the pig has two veins. This is the brain, And it has one vein here on top and one vein on the bottom. If you cut the bottom, there's still going to be blood coming from the top. So until that blood comes out from the bottom, the pig is still alive. If it's alive, it's still suffering. Meaning you cannot kill a pig, a horse, or any non-kosher animal that does not have those two signs in a kosher way. Impossible. Okay.

39:56What about the kosher animals? The kosher animals, the ones that have those two signs, are the only species in creation that also have another sign. But a sign that we needed scientists to find out. Those animals also have the two veins. But the interesting part about them is that right before they go to the brain, they connect and become one vein. So, when the shohet, the slaughterer, cuts that vein, he's only cutting one vein. This means it's an instant disconnect from the brain. By the time the little bit of blood that's left at the end of that vein reaches the brain, the animal is already passed out and dead. This means that in less than a millisecond, the animal is no longer with us. It cannot suffer. So you ask yourself, how is it that the legs still move for a little bit? Or the wing moves? Nerves. Exactly. There are nerves. So it's just like, for example, if you put your hand near an electric outlet, even though you sometimes take the equipment out of it, if you touch the equipment, you still get zapped. There's still a little bit of electricity left. The same thing happens with nerves. Same concept. Another interesting thing that the Oral Torah has is something about outer space.

41:17In Parashat Bereshit, it says that Hashem made a separation between the water that we have here in this world and the water above. The water below the heaven, the water above the heaven. But the water above the heaven is much more significant than the water below the heaven. So now, when scientists... And scholars and Greeks and Romans saw this and said, I don't see any water. And not only is this Torah saying that there's more water over there, they're saying that it's more important for our world to exist than the water that we have here. Now we know that 73% of the world is water, so it has to be a lot more than this. We'll fast forward because I want to talk about a few other proofs. I don't think I have two hours, but we'll see. Sometimes you see a shooting star, what's called a shooting star, right? You see a meteor. You see it leaves a trail. For a long time, we thought it was a broken star. A star that broke and it's falling. You know, like when you were a kid, you press on the brake, and you make a big skid on the floor. Like that. We thought the star is broken. It's making a skid in the sky. Fast forward with the whole telescope thing. Galileo Galilei helped us a little bit. NASA helped a little bit. Australia helped a little bit. And next thing you know, we see that it's not so much a broken star. It's not even a star. It's a comet. What's a comet? It's a big ball of ice. That's all it is.

42:38skid on the floor, like that. We thought the star was broken. It's making a skid in the sky. Fast forward with the whole telescope thing. Galileo Galilei helped us a little bit. NASA helped a little bit. Australia helped a little bit. And next thing you know, we see that it's not so much a broken star. It's not even a star. It's a comet. What's a comet? It's a big ball of ice. That's all it is. It's a giant ball of ice, 30,000 tons of ice. And the reason it's making this skid mark, this white mark that you see in the sky that makes it look like a shooting star, is because it's crossing in direct reflection to the sun. So it's melting much faster than it usually does. So you see there's a lot of water coming out of it. What's ice? It's water. So now we already know that there is water in outer space. Use a better telescope and you see that the entire surface of outer space is one big piece of ice. And these meteors are small pieces that break off of it. If you took all of that ice, you could fill up the earth thousands and thousands and thousands of times. Another thing that, again, a human being could never know.

44:07Another thing that we have is something that we only discovered recently, meaning in the last maybe 30 or 40 years. Obviously, we know that the sun is very, very important for existence. If we didn't have the sun, we couldn't exist. Plants couldn't exist, humans couldn't exist, nothing could exist. One thing also that's interesting is that If you look at the Milky Way, and you look at Earth where it is, technically all of the planets are shaped like a banana. Except one planet. Except, you look at a banana, and there's this one planet, it's a little bit off the mark. Kind of makes it not a banana. That's Earth. If Earth was one degree closer, which means closer to the sun, everything would burn. One degree. If it was one degree further, everything would freeze. So this little imperfect banana is kind of perfect. But the sun also has something Chazal say, the sages say. In Tehillim, David HaMelech writes that at the end of times...

45:26Hashem is going to unwrap the sun. He's going to take off the cover of the sun and expose the real sun. That's how the people who are Reshaim are going to be punished, one of the many ways. He's going to expose the sun. And then the Tzadikim will be able to enjoy the sun, though. The Tzadikim don't get burned by the sun; the Reshaim do. But he said something very interesting. He said that the sun has a shell. Last time you looked at the sun, do you remember seeing a shell? You don't remember seeing a shell, right? Can't even look at it, right? There was one rasha in the Gemara who used to bother the rabbis. He used to bother the rabbis all the time, always asking them stupid questions. So one day he says, "You know what, Rabbi? I want to see God. If you show me God," I'll do whatever you want. I'll convert to Judaism, I'll do mitzvot, I'll put on tefillin, I'll do whatever you want. He didn't have driving back then, but I'm sure he would have stopped driving on Shabbat too. The first rabbi didn't care for him and left. They sent him another rabbi. The rabbi says, "You want to see God?" He says, "Yeah." "Okay, I'll show you God." "Wow, show me God." "Yeah, I'll show you God. But it's like a ticket to get in."

46:54You know, you have to, you want to go to a club, you have a little ticket. Same thing, it's a VIP. You have to buy a few bottles. What's the ticket? You see the sun? He goes, yeah. You have to look at the sun for one day. One straight day, you look at the sun. If you look at the sun for one straight day, God will appear to you. I promise you. You promise? I promise you. The guy starts looking at the sun, about 40 seconds later, He's crying his eyes out. He can't look at the sun. He calls the rabbi, who walked away a little bit. He's like, "Rabbi, I can't do this." The rabbi responds, "What do you mean you can't do it? You have to look at the sun the whole day. You don't look for 40 seconds." The man replies, "I can't. I'm going to go blind." The rabbi says, "You can look at one of God's smallest angels, and you want to look at God? That's the sun. We can't look at the sun. But with special technology, we can." They took an x-ray of the sun and fused a few other interesting technologies, and they found out something very interesting. David HaMelech, 3,000 years ago, was right. The sun actually has a shell. Not only does it have a shell, but if this shell didn't exist, nothing would exist. The inner part is 15 million degrees Celsius.

48:23But because of the shell, it goes down to 6,000. 6,000 is all we can handle from that far away. So if we took out the shell, it would be an interesting shortfall. Shorter than a shoe for sure. It's a nice shell. David HaMelech was... was right, old man. Another thing that Torah Be'al Peh says is that there's a lot of things that we get fascinated by in today's age that are not so fascinating. If I was a PhD in medicine, and I gave a lecture at a university, regardless of what I said, regardless of whether I made sense or not, everyone would say, look at my degree, they would look at my business card, they would say, whatever he says is kadosh. No one debates with the lecturer. It's a PhD. If I talk to them about science, of course he's right. How could he not be? Even though it's a theory. To us, theories are facts.

49:45No one argues with theories. I had an argument with a few people over the years, but for some reason or another, people forgot the English language, even though that's their first language and only language, and they believe that theories are facts, even though by definition a theory is an idea. But if a scientist says a theory, people say, "No, come on, of course, he thought of everything. Can't debate him." If I was a doctor and I said, "Listen, the way you have to operate on this person, you have to go to" the right membrane. You have to go and use a special type of equipment and ta-ta-ta-ta-ta. And everybody says, wow. He says right membrane. That's a big word for me. Sure, he's right. No one debates the doctor. Everyone thinks the doctor is right. When was the last time you argued with a doctor? The doctor gave you antibiotics. Do you argue with him? No, doctor, I don't think it's the right antibiotics. Most patients don't argue. Maybe today they do a little bit because we have Google, but In general, they don't argue with the doctor. If someone has a degree, no one argues. Everything he says, kadosh. Rabbi says, halacha is, you can't drive on Shabbat. No, come on, Rabbi. Maybe they didn't have cars back then. That's why he didn't write it. Rabbi says, you have to fast on Yom Kippur. No, Rabbi, come on. Back then, they were probably only eating bread.

51:13Didn't have McDonald's, didn't have Subway, didn't have my mom's schnitzel. Come on. It's not relevant. Rabbi, it's 3,000 years ago. Rabbi says anything about Torah? No, everybody debates. Everybody's a chacham. Everybody all of a sudden became a big scholar. They read three verses in the Torah that they remembered from junior high school. They were in fourth grade, they were in yeshiva, they remember three verses, they're debating with the rabbi. Any rabbi, not just this rabbi, any rabbi. You go to any lecture. This is the quietest lecture in the world right now, by the way. I can't believe you guys are not debating yet. Oh, you're waiting. At least I'm getting some kavod. But you see, people... are constantly fighting against rabbis. They're constantly fighting and they're saying, no, the rabbi is wrong. The guy doesn't know anything about Torah. He never read the Chumash from beginning to end with basic translation. But somehow he's debating a guy that's been studying for 30 years. It's all over the world. But if the rabbi had a PhD and he talked about medicine, no one's debating anything. Number one, that's Yetzer Hara. Number two, that's ignorance.

52:30When we talk about things about the Torah, people get very, very impressed by doctors. They make a lot of money in America. They have all these procedures. But if you notice, every one of these procedures today requires something called anesthesia. Right? You need to go to sleep. And doctors are pretty quick to put you to sleep. They don't want to hear you at all. Even a dentist puts you to sleep. So we thought that, ah, you know what? Three hundred years ago Before this anesthesia really became something, people suffered and died during surgery. Baruch Hashem for these doctors, right? What great doctors. Yeah, what great doctors. Give them a lot of kavod for the anesthesia. Such great doctors, they invented this anesthesia. The problem is, they didn't invent anything. If you're reading the Gemara, which is again part of the Torah, not only do you see that anesthesia existed over 2,000 years ago, but they actually show you that one of the major sages, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai's son, actually had a surgery. He was very fat, and he wanted to have liposuction. He wanted to remove fat from his body.

53:53And they showed that they actually put him to sleep. And they put him on a table that was made of marble. Why marble? They were just as smart as you, at least 2,000 years ago. So they had a surgery. It talks about the entire surgery. It says that by the end of the surgery, they took out a couple of buckets full of fat. They had liposuction, not just anesthesia. They had liposuction. How come nobody gives them any credit? How come nobody says, wow, rabbis know something. These old men with beards and strange hats, they know something. Everybody gives credit to the doctor that makes $800,000 a year, used to be my client. Nobody gives credit to the great rabbis. You know why? Because nobody reads it. Nobody reads the Torah. Everybody just thinks it's an old book. Much better to read, I don't know, Harry Potter. The woman made a billion dollars off a fake story. I never read it, but I'm sure it's very interesting for someone who has nothing to do with their life. A billion dollars interesting.

55:20But the stories that actually changed life, changed history, no one wants to read them. Another thing that we know from the Oral Torah is that everything has nefesh, everything has life. One of the places in the Torah talks about how there is a screaming rock. Last time you checked, last time you picked up a rock, did it scream? Didn't scream, right? So maybe there's a mistake in the Torah. Maybe some guy wrote it and he just got lucky with a few things. Chazal tell us that everything has nefesh. Everything has some form of life. So there are several parts to this. It'll be very long, so I'll try to cut it short. First and foremost... There are actually rocks in the world, in America as a matter of fact, that they've recorded. They've recorded on camera that they move, even though technically a rock is not supposed to move. There are some rocks that move, yes, because of water and because of the surface that they're on. That only proves part of the theory; it doesn’t prove the other rocks that move.

56:45That's the ones in Nevada or Arizona. The rest of the rocks, the rest of the world, don't prove it. So it's an interesting theory, but not a complete one. So, there are rocks that move. The way that the secret part of the Torah, the Zohar and Kabbalah, talk about it is that sometimes someone sins so much—such a rasha—that they've already come back to life a few times. as a different person, reincarnation. Came back, didn't fix themselves. Came back, didn't fix themselves. Hashem says, okay. You're not going to come back as a human being. You're going to come back as an animal. So he comes back as a dog, as a cow, as something else. If it's a cow, he has a better chance of success because if a rabbi butchers him and slaughters him the right way, that's his tikkun. If someone says a blessing, that's his tikkun. If he comes back If he still doesn't do it, he goes down another level and becomes a plant or a vegetable. There's actually a famous story. It happened maybe about 30 or 40 years ago. I forget the rabbi's name. A woman comes to a rabbi, very hysterical, and she says, "Rabbi, I just came back earlier this week. I went to the grocery store. I bought some vegetables. And later that night, I ate...

58:13the cucumber. And I didn't remember what the bracha was, so I said, Borei Pri Ha'etz. The right bracha is Borei Pri Ha'adama. And I fell asleep later that night, and some strange man came to me in my dream, and he said to me, thank you very much for helping me by doing a bracha on the cucumber, because it's helping my neshama, but if you would have done the right bracha, It would have helped me a lot more. So that's also a tikkun. But eventually, the worst type of punishment is that it comes back as a rock. Sometimes it's somebody's tikkun. This is a little bit scary, but it's real. Someone that doesn't learn Torah. Someone that has all the time in the world, which we all do. We have 24 hours a day. We find time to chase money. We find time to watch sports. We find time to read Harry Potter. We find time to argue with people. We find time to debate with the rabbi about something we have no clue about. We don't find time to learn Torah. So somebody could come back for a tikkun as the wall of the synagogue. Yeah. So as far as rocks, they talk. The second way that we know that there's nefesh in the rock is

59:39It comes from something that Jonathan and I spoke about a couple of days ago for about two hours. Atoms. Does everyone know what an atom is? An atom is an atom. Everything in the world, as Einstein said, is energy. Only he wasn't the first one to say it, but E equals MC squared was already written by the Ramban 800 years before him. But nobody gives any credit to the Ramban. They say, oh man, Einstein is much more recent. He's cooler, has nicer hair. So now, E equals MC squared. We talk about energy, how everything in the world has to have energy. You are made of energy. The wall is energy. The world is energy. Everything is energy. Meaning that everything can be broken down into very, very, very small pieces. If you look through a microscope, a really special microscope, you'll see there are two parts to this atom.

1:00:40There's the electron, and then there's the proton. The proton is here; it's the middle. The electron is somewhere else, and it's spinning around it. The interesting part of the atom is that the proton and the electron have a very big difference in size, so much so that it's the equivalent of us and the sun in terms of distance between them. It's like if we were to travel to the sun, it would be a very, very long trip, taking us many years. That's how the distance is between the electron and the proton, which means that 99% of the atom is completely empty space. It's nothing. Nothing. So why does everything look solid? Why does this cup look solid? Why do you look solid? Why does the chair look solid?

1:01:40...is solid. But in reality, 99% of everything is empty space. So if anyone ever wanted to prove Hashem, they would just ask themselves, what keeps the electron spinning? Because if it stops spinning, what would happen? The empty space will be exposed. is solid. But in reality, 99% of everything is empty space. So if anyone ever wanted to prove Hashem, they would just ask themselves, what keeps the electron spinning? Because if it stops spinning, what would happen? The empty space will be exposed. meaning that 99% of everything would be nothing. Everything would just disappear. No earthquakes, no wars, no hurricanes, nothing. Everything would just disappear. And the actual amount of material that's left in all of the universe can fit into a matchbox. So who's keeping it spinning? This is also where we have...

1:03:06Hashem is telling us something very important. In Sefer Yirmiyahu it says, "Hashem says, 'If my covenant with the night and with the day would not be, the laws of heaven would cease to exist.'" What's the covenant? The covenant is Torah. If for one second the world stopped, if everyone stopped learning Torah for one second, Hashem says the rules of the world would end. He would destroy the world. So when we think about a bad thing like Hashem destroying the world, we're thinking about, okay, you know what? Destroying the world, it's going to take Him. He's probably going to have to send some planes, maybe some UFOs. Oh no, wait. He did it faster with Noach. He sent the Mabul. Every Friday night, we say, "Hashem, we had the flood." So it's going to take Him a year like it took with Noach. That's the misunderstanding. If Hashem, chas v'shalom, ever wanted to destroy, all He has to do is stop thinking about the Olam, and the Olam stops spinning, and everything just disappears.

1:04:31This also reminds us of how important Torah is. Whether it's learning it ourselves or supporting someone that is. Torah is the most important thing in the world. Anyone that wants to have a chance of seeing the Mashiach, anyone that wants to have a chance of going to Olam Haba, anyone that wants to have a chance of having a good life in this world, they have to have Torah as part of their life. I lived a big part of my life without Torah. I made money, I did this, I did that. I lived a fake life. And people always ask me, "Listen, you were at the top at one point. I'm sure some of you guys know my story. You were at the top at one point. A bad month would be $200,000. You had this, you had that. Don't you miss it?" I can tell you, and explain it in a very simple way. Once you discover Torah, It's something very different than anything else. It's something very different than money can't buy. It's something very different than something you can't get from anywhere else. And Baruch Hashem, if I took all the money that I ever made, and all the good that I ever had, and I multiplied it by a thousand, it's not worth one hour of today. One hour. One hour of learning Gemara. One hour of learning Chumash. One hour of learning anything relating to the Torah.

1:06:02Most of you, if you're not learning Torah, you probably don't understand what I'm saying, think I'm probably delusional, maybe I'm losing my mind. But the reality of it is that once you spend a little bit of time learning some of the stuff we talked about, you'll be amazed yourself. It's the only way you can truly have happiness. All of us are trying to get to a point of being happy. Hashem told us in last week's parashah how to do it. He said, He says, "See, I have placed before you today life and the good, and death and the evil, which I command you today to love Hashem, your God, to walk in His ways and observe His mitzvot, His commandments, His decrees, His ordinances, and so on. He's telling you, I give you life and the good." Death and evil. If you translate it literally, then you say, of course, life is good and death is bad. But that's not what Hashem means. Life means do what He says. There are rules in the Torah. Do it. If you do it, you have good. Here, next world, guaranteed good. Don't do it, guaranteed bad. Most rabbis don't want to tell you about the bad part. They want everyone to live in illusion.

1:07:32that everyone will have good. Unfortunately, it doesn't really work. It used to work in the old days because everyone knew the basics of Torah. So, everyone knew that it's better to be stronger, but there is just a certain amount of sacrifice they're willing to make. In our generation, most people don't even know what Torah is. So, one of the main things that I tell you today, and one of the main suggestions that I tell everyone today, is that it's really, really important to add some Torah in our life because if we do, we're guaranteed good. If we don't, you'll constantly be chasing your tail. No amount of money you will ever make will be enough. I'm sure a lot of people obviously in the world made a lot more money than I did, but I don't know anyone that made more money than me personally. It doesn't make you happy at all. It has nothing to do with happiness. It's really, really important to add some Torah in our life because if we do, we're guaranteed good. If we don't, you'll constantly be chasing your tail. No amount of money you will ever make will be enough. I'm sure a lot of people obviously in the world made a lot more money than I did, but I don't know anyone who made more money than me personally. It doesn't make you happy at all. It has nothing to do with happiness.

1:08:32Nothing. Happiness and money have nothing in common. Zero. You can go make a million, you can make five million, you can make 500 million. It makes no one happy. An Israeli reporter actually asked Bill Gates—Bill Gates should know about money; he has like 70 or 80 or 100 billion, I don't know how much he has after he gave a bunch of money away—they asked him, does money make you happy? And he got really angry at the question. He said, they have nothing to do with each other. All money does... is help you have convenience. But it has nothing to do with happiness. Nothing. That's why sometimes you'll find some of the happiest people in the world are usually poor. Second thing we have to ask ourselves is, what brought us to this world? Why are we here? For what? Someone has to ask themselves, why did Hashem bring me? If we already get to a point, okay, you know what, today we had a few interesting proofs,

1:09:33there may be something called a God. With a few other interesting proofs, just Torah stuff, these books, maybe they're not just fairy tales. Maybe not, maybe it, at the very least, deserves a second look. So if there's a God, and He wrote this Torah, what does it say? If really there's a God, and it's the same God that's written in this Torah, I should probably listen to Him. I don't think He brought me here to make money. And a simple proof of that is that if life's goal was to make money, why are there poor people? What, they have no purpose? If life's goal was to go on vacation, why do some people not have the means to go on vacation? Why do some people have just tikkunim their whole life? Just miserable life. What, they have no purpose? God made a mistake with them? He built the heaven and the earth and gave you the exact number of stars and made your perfect body so much so that your perfect body has something called a protein fold. A protein fold is part of your cells. You have trillions and trillions of proteins in your body. If one protein in your body folded the wrong way,

1:11:02One, out of the trillions and trillions that you have, that's disease. That's not being able to walk. That's not being able to see. That's not being able to function. That's not being able to breathe. One protein. You have trillions, an endless amount of proteins. One scientist tried to figure out what are the chances that every protein would fold the right way in order for me to give you the shiur right now. And he said, I have to connect it to a computer, a supercomputer. The one that NASA has that calculated how many stars. And he calculated and he said it would take me 10 to the 127th power years to calculate it. Can't calculate how perfect just your body is. Can't be an accident. So this G-d, in his Torah, he said something. What does he say? What does he have to say about your life? Right now we have Yom Kippur coming up. We have Aseret Yemei Teshuva. We just had Judgment Day. Most people thought it was a party. Most of Am Yisrael, unfortunately, thought that Rosh Hashanah is Happy New Year like the Christians. Fireworks, go to Tveria, have a barbecue.

1:12:29Give high fives? It's Judgment Day in reality. It's a trial. The Judge decides whether you live or die. The Judge decides whether you're going to have parnasah or you're going to have poverty. The Judge decides whether you're going to be sick or you're going to be healthy. The Judge decides whether you're going to suffer or you're going to have a pleasant life. The Judge decides if you're going to find a zivug or you're going to end up being single for another year. It's a big day. When we get a parking ticket, we go to the judge, we're scared. But against God, not so much. That was the trial. We don't know how well we did. We don't know if we passed. We don't know. That's what Hashem says. That's why you have Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur is the appeal. You have a second chance. If you messed up on the first one, I'm giving you a second chance. You have to appeal. You have to appeal. Just like when you lose a case in court, the judge says, "Oh, you sped. Fine, $800 ticket, 12 points. Take care." You're not going to take it. You're going to say, "I'm going to hire a lawyer. I don't want to lose my license." You're going to appeal it. You're going to fight it. God says you don't have to hire a lawyer. I already did it for you. You have an appeal. You have 10 days.

1:13:51You don't have just Yom Kippur. It's not just Yom Kippur. That's a misunderstanding. Everyone thinks it's just Yom Kippur, that we do nothing for 10 days and wait for Yom Kippur, and on Yom Kippur we show up. No. For 10 days, Hashem says, "Okay, why should I listen to you? Why should I give you parnasah?" Why should I give you a zivug? Why should I even give you life? If you ask most people who believe in God why He should give you life for even another year, most people can't answer you. Why should God give you life? Life. Forget parnasah, forget everything else. You guys notice what we pray every day now, during these ten days, in Mincha. It's an interesting prayer that we add after Tefillat Shemoneh Esrei. Avinu Malkeinu. You guys read this stuff? Avinu Malkeinu. We sinned. Fine. So we're admitting we sinned. It's a good start. You're asking Hashem for a good year. Okay, it's not bad, it's not unreasonable. You're asking Hashem to take away all harsh and evil decrees. Okay, that's not so bad. Okay, we know no one wants any bad things. But then you fast forward a little bit because it's two pages of requests from Hashem.

1:15:14And then we say, Hashem, not only give us a good life, inscribe us in the book of a good life, but judge us and inscribe us in the book of the righteous. Put us with the tzaddikim. The next one says, put us with the upright, the temimim, who never made a sin. Put us in the same book as them. Give us parnasa kallah, put us in the book that you talk about parnasa, people becoming rich, put us in that book too. Forgive everything we did. We're asking for a lot. What do we have to show for it? Reminds me of a good story we talked about this weekend. There was a little girl, a seven-year-old girl, who goes to a jewelry store. And she asks the ba'al habayit, and she says, "Sir, I want that chain." He says, "Which chain?" She says, "That thousand-dollar chain over there." The ba'al habayit sees a seven-year-old girl and says, "Wants a thousand-dollar chain, it's a little bit..."

1:16:15Azoy. Strange. "Okay, little girl. You have money?" She goes, "Yeah." She takes out her little Barbie wallet. She starts taking out quarters and pennies. A dollar bill. There's a five-dollar bill somewhere in there crunched up. You know, a little Barbie thing. You see seven. And the guy doesn't want to make fun of her. You know, he likes little kids. He starts counting the money. "$14.27. We're short a little bit." She says, "Honey, who are you buying this chain for?" And I’m buying it for my sister. My sister is 18 years old, and she's like my mother and father. "What do you mean she's your mother and father?" Because my father and mother, they died. They went to Gan Eden. So my sister takes care of me and my eight brothers and sisters. She doesn't have any friends. She doesn't have any time for herself. And all of our time is just for us. And last year on Rosh Hashanah, I saw a heart-shaped pendant and I said, you know what? I'm going to buy her a present. So all year I've been saving money to get her this present and I saw this chain and I want to buy it for her. So the Baal HaBayit says, well, you're right in time because you have exactly how much money you need. And he gives her the chain, $1,000 chain for $14.27.

1:17:38She goes home. Her sister sees the chain. She almost gets a heart attack. She thinks the girl stole this chain. She runs to the jewelry store. She says, "Well, I'm sorry. I'm sorry." He's talking, "No, no, why are you sorry? She bought it. She paid full price." And he says to her, "She paid full price." She goes, "What do you mean? She has $1,000?" He goes, "No, listen. I've been doing this for 35 years. Some people pay me cash. Some people pay by credit card." Some people pay by check. But in 35 years, this is the first time somebody paid with a full heart. That's the mashal. The nimshal is us. We come to Hashem asking, not for a $1,000 chain. We're asking for the entire jewelry store. We're asking for a chain of jewelry stores. Well, we have $14.27. And a Barbie bag. What mitzvot do we do? What do we do? If you honestly look at yourself, what do we really do? Okay, so we go to Beit Knesset sometimes. We do Tefillin sometimes. We give some tzedakah sometimes. But did we give tzedakah the right amount? Or an amount that didn't hurt us? Did we give the 10% that Hashem said, or did we give, you know, half of a tenth of a percent?

1:19:04because I needed the money for the vacation, for the expansion, and for the car, and for the Barbie bag for the seven-year-old kid too. Did we pray? When we prayed, did we have any kavanah? Or was it like, ah, can't wait till this is over. Can this rabbi read faster? When we did tefillin, did we think that this is the brit between me and Hashem, this is what makes me Jewish? I would say, eh, it's an interesting box. I can't believe I spent $1,500 on this thing. When we bought a mezuzah, did we ask the rabbi, "Rabbi, it's $100 for the mezuzah. Do you have something for $30?" Something that protects our life. But the navigation system, we didn't ask, "Do you have something for $30?" We said, "What, it's $3,000? Fine, add it. No big deal." Navigation system, you have it for free on your phone. But if it's for the car, add up to $3,000. Mezuzah? Chas v'shalom if it's more than 60 bucks. We only have $14.27, gentlemen. All we have is our heart. We're asking for the world. It's the only shot we have. We have Yom Kippur. We have a time to do teshuva. This is the time of teshuva.

1:20:26You want what you're asking for. You want a good life. You want parnasa. You don't want to have tikkunim. You don't want to have bad times. You want to have a connection with God. You want to have happiness. You want to have a zivug. You want to have good children. You want to have any good. It's very simple. The book is real. If you want more proofs, I'll sit with you until 5 o'clock in the morning if you want. I'll give you more and more proofs. We just don't have much time. The book is real. I've checked it. I was the most skeptical person in the world. I checked everything, many books, and more books, and lectures, and more books. I've studied many topics. I've studied physics. I've studied science. I've studied psychiatry. I've studied finance. Anything you want, I've looked into it at some point or another in my life. The book is real. You don't want to take my word? I'll sit with you every day until 5 o'clock in the morning. Until we confirm that it's real. Probably, if you're a smart person, it'll take about three hours. Not so smart, maybe a few days. But I'll still sit with you. The book is real. God is real. What about you? What are you going to do? Last lecture that we did, lecture number 45, that we talked about, at the end of the lecture, I asked everybody the same question.

1:21:47What are you doing to get these brachot that you ask for every day in tefillah? You can't. Somebody can't just change their life overnight, say from one day they're not keeping anything, the next day they're going to be Rabbi Akiva. Can't. It's too much. You got to do something. You got to show you're sincere. One guy said, you know what, from now on I'm going to do netilat yadayim. Never did netilat yadayim in his life. Another guy says, you know what? I've been doing it for a while. I've been doing tefillin for a while. I'm going up. I'm going to upgrade. I'm going for Shabbat. I'm going to keep Shabbat. Another guy said, I'm going to learn Torah every day, 15 minutes a day. Another guy said that he's going to leave his girlfriend. Another woman said that she's going to become more modest. Hashem hates zimah. He hates people who are promiscuous and think that their body is the property of the public. So people took something upon themselves. They all wrote a note. If anyone is interested in doing that, it doesn't cost any money, but it shows sincerity. If you want to write it on a note...

1:22:58Write on a note. I'm collecting those notes. Be'ezrat Hashem, we will get you a special blessing from Jerusalem. Be'ezrat Hashem, you will receive a big yeshuah from Shamayim. And Be'ezrat Hashem, we will prepare you for the appeal. Any questions? Concerns? Be'ezrat Hashem, thank you very much for having me. And may all of you have a Gemar Chatima Tova.