Shiur Torah #6 part 1 Books, Health, Miracles, Tefilin and Teshuva

0:00b'shem Hashem na'aseh v'natsliach, shiur Torah, and b'ezrat Hashem we'll learn a few new things. So first I actually want to tell you guys about the book. Give me one of the books, because I took that first one. So this book, this book, this book, actually, seriously, it's by Rabbi Baruch Haik, and it's actually one of the best books about Shabbat, you know, for me, to learn some of the things that we do, we were just talking before, you know, a lot of the things that, you know, there's 39 melachot that you're not allowed to do, 39 things that you're not allowed to do, and so this book shows you, even though it looks like it's for kids, it's really for adults, where it shows you not only what you're not allowed to do, but why. And that's really, I think that's one of the biggest problems with Judaism today, is that a lot of people do things because somebody told them, so okay, so I know I can't drive, but And we tell somebody, "Oh no, because you're not allowed to light fire." Well, I don't see a fire inside my car. But then once you learn a little bit about the electric current that goes on in the engine of a car, you realize, okay, this is nothing less than fire, if not more than fire. So, the key is to know why we're doing what we're doing. Not just do it like robots, because again, even though Hashem says, you know, listen, you have to do everything that I say, without even necessarily knowing the real root reason, if we have the ability to know the basics, which is in...

0:57And we tell somebody, "Oh no, because you're not allowed to light a fire." Well, I don't see a fire inside my car. But then once you learn a little bit about the electric current that goes on in the engine of a car, you realize, okay, this is nothing less than fire, if not more than fire. So, the key is to know why we're doing what we're doing, not just do it like robots, because again, even though Hashem says, you know, "Listen, you have to do everything that I say, without even necessarily knowing the real root reason," if we have the ability to know the basics, which is in... and the basic reasons of why we're doing it, and more importantly, the ta'am, which is like the, not necessarily the benefit, but I guess the object behind why we're doing each mitzvah, it gives us more of a reason of why to do it. Now, when it comes down to all the mitzvot, each one of them has a reason of why we're doing them. The real reason for all mitzvot, the real reason for all things that we're allowed to do, or that we have to do, and all things that we're not allowed to do, is one reason for all of them. Why? Hashem said so. That's the real reason. That's it. There's no other reason that's really necessary. But because our generation is so low, we constantly try to tie things together.

2:12to humanity, we constantly try to tie things to what we're used to. We're constantly trying to understand what we're doing, and I think what ends up happening with a lot of people is that sometimes they're so far from religion and so far from Hashem that it just doesn't make sense to them. So, they don't even bother trying to figure it out. Or worse, they go to the wrong sources. So when, for example, you tell somebody, "Listen, keep Shabbat, this is one of the core parts of Judaism." You know, Judaism has, and the Torah has, three covenants with Hashem. Three things that, in the Torah specifically, Hashem is calling a covenant, a brit. Okay, so you have Shabbat. The word "Shabbat" has three letters. You have Shin, Bet, and Taf. Shin stands for Shabbat. Bet stands for Brit, like Brit Milah. And Taf is Tefillin, which we'll talk about a little bit later. So these three things are the core of Judaism. That's the core of Judaism. If anyone asks you what makes you Jewish...

3:21is if you do these three things. If somebody doesn't do these three things, they really can't consider themselves Jewish. Just because your mother is Jewish doesn't necessarily make you Jewish. Yes, you're Jewish. Naturally, you have the privilege of being able to benefit from these mitzvot, and you also have the downside if you don't keep these mitzvot. But in reality, when it comes down to it, what makes someone Jewish is following what Hashem said. Hashem gave us the definition of what Jewish is, and most importantly, He gave us these three covenants. What is a covenant? A covenant is a deal, an agreement, between two people. Now, in this case, it's not an agreement between two people. It's an agreement between us and the Creator of the universe. So, my cousin always tells me, anytime that you have a business question, or anytime you have a business issue that you're thinking about, or anytime you're thinking about giving tzedakah, or anytime there's any money issue, anytime that you're thinking about anything, you have a difficulty in life, make a deal with Hashem. Not necessarily a deal like some people make, well, listen, Hashem, if you make me rich, I'll do teshuvah.

4:22but give what you're doing some type of significance spiritually. So you're saying, for example, I am, you know, for the benefit of my success, you know, so maybe to give myself a, give Hashem a reason to help me in this case, I'm going to start doing tefillin every day, and b'ezrat Hashem, life will become a little clearer. My road in life, my difficult road in life, will become a little clearer, and at least I'll understand why I'm doing what I'm doing. So it's not that Hashem, give me this and then I'll give you back. You have to start doing first. So that's why they also say that anytime you're going to travel somewhere, like either something that's out of state, no, not just but something that's good to do is to give tzedakah before you go, put a dollar in a tzedakah box or anything that you can afford. And also say that when I come back, I'm going to give another dollar, or another amount of money, then when I come back, I'm going to put it back. So, because they say that someone that's on the way of doing a mitzvah is unlikely, not definite, but unlikely to get hurt. So, for example, if you're going to travel, like recently when I went to travel, went to New York, you know, we put something in a tzedakah box, and we already put the money aside.

5:45That when we come back, we're going to put it in the tzedakah box. So again, these are little... The tzedakah box could be in the home or in the synagogue. Yeah, it doesn't necessarily have to be anywhere specific. It could be in a synagogue, it could be in your home, it could be at a local store. But you're committing, in essence, to do something and make Hashem partners with what you're doing. And I think that's really important. And that's the thing when we're working... And that's for traveling. For work also. Why is Hashem going to let you succeed? So already you have to put into your mind, okay, I'm going to, you know, with the work that I'm doing, part of what I'm doing is not only to provide for myself and my family, which of course we all need to do, but part of what I'm going to do is to help other people. And that's actually one of the things I saw earlier today. There was a scientific video where they were asking, can money make somebody happy? One of the things they scientifically proved is that people who buy things for themselves with their money are less likely to be happy than people who use their money to buy things for other people.

6:49And this is obviously coming from the Torah also, as the Torah talks about it a lot more. So in essence, when you're helping other people, it's not only going to fulfill your own needs as far as being happy in life, but more so it's going to give you a huge benefit for the next world. So when it comes down to your business or any types of dealings that you're doing, the more you involve HaShem in what you're doing... the more likely you are going to have a clearer direction, more help from HaShem, and something that I think would make your job and your business much more significant. To just go to work, do what you need to do, go home, pay the bills, stay with the family, go back again, it becomes mundane after a while. It becomes the same thing over and over again. And again, even though there are different times in our life when we enjoy our job more than others, that stuff doesn't necessarily always last if it's just purely the same basic thing over and over again. Okay, so let's say I enjoy my job today. I do it for 15 years. I can't guarantee myself that in another 15 years I'm going to feel the same way.

7:56So when you're involving other things, when you're involving things that are beyond our day-to-day job, when you're involving Hashem in your day-to-day work, it makes things much more significant. When you're involving helping other people and you see the point of doing all of this stuff, it gives what you're doing a purpose. So now, going back to this Shabbat book, it gives us all the things that we're not allowed to do, but it gives us the reasons. So, for example, here you have zoreh. Zoreh is winnowing, which is like separating things, separating the good things from the bad. So, if you're peeling something... Okay, so you have two parts. You have what you want, like a fruit, let's say, and then you have the peel that you don't need. Okay, now, if you're doing it just with a single fruit, it's different, but let's say, in this particular example, they're showing you somebody who is going through the straw, taking some of the straw, and throwing it in the air to put it in a separate pile.

9:05Now, this is normal day-to-day work that these people were doing. On Shabbat, you're not allowed to do it. Okay, so the last time I checked, none of you guys are farmers. None of you guys deal with straw. So how does this relate to you? So one of the things that I learned some time ago is that what a lot of people do is, what are these things called? Pistachios. Pistachios, pistachios. No. Okay, pistachios. You have to peel them. Okay, so pistachios, you can eat pistachios on Shabbat, but there's an issue here. Right, so here's the thing. So you have some, what a lot of people do because they want to have a neat house and something, you know, and they don't want to have these pistachios all over the floor or something. So what do they do? They give you a bowl of pistachios and they give you an empty bowl. So what you're doing is you're eating the pistachio, you're putting it into the empty bowl. You're eating the pistachio, you put the peel into the empty bowl. Same thing as sunflower seeds. Right, you're not allowed to do that. Sunflower seeds either? Not allowed to do with anything. Sunflower seeds, you're allowed to eat them. You're allowed to eat them, but it can't be in two separate bowls. And that's really what winnowing is. That's what zoreh is. You cannot take the peels off the feast. Right, exactly. Because you're separating the waste, the unwanted object, from what you want. In essence, you're doing exactly what he's doing.

10:25Okay. And that's the thing, so you can't do that. So if you eat it, but with no two different bowls, you just try the way it was made. Right, exactly. That's the way to do it. It goes for other things too. On Shabbat, you're not allowed to take only the good out of something. It's exactly what we're saying here. Because you're taking the waste, you're taking the waste and you're putting it somewhere else, you're separating it. If you're eating it and you're just putting it right there on the table, it's the same concept, anyway. Not necessarily, because that, you're putting it in the same area as something else. It's not pure waste. So that's why what people do is usually they put something good there. So they take one pistachio that's not peeled, that you haven't eaten, and they put it there. So in essence, there's good on both sides. So that's, it's a little trick to the trade. But again, if we don't know these little things, then you're breaking Shabbat without realizing it. And Shabbat, it's not like it's a... in the beginning, especially, when you first are into Shabbat, it's not easy. You know, it's fun, it's great, it's the best day of the week, but that doesn't necessarily come right away. So, you could be working...

11:34really hard to keep Shabbat, especially in the beginning, it's tough for you because your friends are not around, they don't want to keep Shabbat, or your girlfriend's not around, or your wife doesn't want to keep Shabbat, or the kids don't want to keep Shabbat, and the neighborhood doesn't want to keep Shabbat, and you're the only one that's really trying hard. So you say, "Okay, I'm going to do everything I can to keep Shabbat," and the next thing you know, you're doing something very simple, and you're breaking Shabbat, and you don't even realize it. Now, even though To commit a sin that you don't know is a sin does not get the same punishment. If you didn't know it, it still gets a punishment. So don't let anyone fool you into thinking that just because you didn't know, it's okay. That's completely wrong. There's still a punishment for it. It's still bad. Now, it's not the same punishment as we talked about in the verse in the book of Exodus, the chapter we discussed where the person gets cut off from the nation and so on. It's called shogeg. Shogeg means you made a sin unintentionally.

12:34So, when someone makes an unintentional sin, it's not the highest level of punishment, but it's still, in essence, something wrong. So it's just like, for example, if somebody, let's say, went through a light, you know, he drove through a red light. Like I did today with the shiur, I couldn't stop. So he drives through a light, and the cop's right there. And, okay, so that guy... looks at the cop, smiles at him, and keeps driving faster. When the cop finally catches him, he's gonna get a serious punishment, right? Okay. Now, the other guy just crossed the light, but, you know, he didn't mean to, so he stopped right away and then reversed. The cop still saw it, and he still stopped him. Because, listen, you still went through the light. Even though you reversed, you still went through the light. Now, he may still give him a ticket. Maybe he'll let him go. But the bottom line is that his punishment is still not gonna be anywhere near The punishment of the guy that smiled at the cop and waved as if he's one of his friends. And that's really what it comes down to. So, yes, it's okay not to know, but not permanently.

13:45And that's the thing. So these little things that we do every day, we don't realize that we're not allowed to do them. So this is a phenomenal book to learn some of these things because it's a very simple way. So number one, it's a great way if you have kids to teach them because kids see drawings, it attracts them. For me personally, I see drawings, I get attracted to it. So maybe I'm a little kid at heart still. I feel 700, but sometimes I like drawings. I like cartoons. But the other thing is that it's a good way to teach your kids, but even more so, it's a phenomenal way to teach yourself. because if you're going to do something you want to know why. So, for example, with something like this, you look at a picture and think, wait a minute, winnowing. Who does winnowing? I don't have a farm. I live in Florida. Winnowing. How is this even relevant to me? You look at a few pictures and you see, oh, look at this guy. This guy has a bunch of nutshells and he's blowing away the peel of the nutshells off of the plate, and obviously that's not allowed. So, again, the...

14:45the things that we do every day that we think is not a big deal, really is a big deal. So if you're already doing what Hashem wants, it only takes a matter of, you know, minutes to figure out what you can and can't do. So this is very, very highly recommended. The guy that is the artist of this book, and also a series of a few other books I have over there for you guys to look at, is a Baal Teshuva, that really changed his life in a great way, where he used to, he's an artist obviously, but he used to do things that were completely not what Hashem wants, and he's turning his entire livelihood into is the artist of this book, and also a series of a few other books I have over there for you guys to look at, is a Baal Teshuva, who really changed his life in a great way. He used to, he's an artist obviously, but he used to do things that were completely not what Hashem wants, and he's turning his entire livelihood into into something that's, you know, all of what Hashem wants. And Baruch Hashem, he has had huge success with it. So it also shows us that when Hashem says that the root of all of our blessings is from Shabbat. Someone who wants to have blessings in his life, in marriage, raising children, work, anything — anything that you want a blessing in — to even get to the point of having Hashem pay attention to you, you have to keep Shabbat.

15:54So, if someone is having problems with any one of those things we just talked about, or many other things, health, things like that, and they're not keeping Shabbat, then you've got to think about this. You've got to think about this logically. Shabbat is the covenant; it's the deal between us and Hashem. Tefillin is the covenant between us and Hashem. Brit Milah is the covenant between us and Hashem. These are three basic roots of Judaism. There's many other things, but again, this is the basics. So now Hashem says, listen, keep these three things, you're Jewish. Keep more, obviously, more. But the point is, if you don't, really we have nothing to talk about. So now, He gave us our bodies, our eyes, our legs, our hands, our families, our wives, our children, our work, our minds, and everything that He's giving us every single day, that we're alive, is a miracle. And then He's asking us to do something very, very basic, and we don't do it. Then something happens. He's trying to wake us up, so something bad happens. Because we don't wake up from something good. No one that I know of or have ever heard of in the history of mankind became more religious because they won the lottery. It's usually the opposite: they lost the lottery winnings and then they became religious.

17:15So, Hashem wakes us up with something bad. And He says, ah, Hashem, listen, I just got fired from my job. This is really bad. I don't know how I'm going to make parnassah. I don't know how I'm going to survive this month. I don't know what I'm going to do. So He shows up at the door. He's like, Hashem, please help me. But there's no answer. Why is there no answer? What did you do for Me? How about this? What did you do for yourself? I told you to keep a few things. Basics. A few basic things, and you didn't keep them. Now you want My help? Why? Why should He help you? And that's the thing that you have to think about logically. If you have a friend that the only times he ever calls you is when he needs something, but the one time you asked him, "Hey, listen, do you have some sugar to give me? Sugar. I don't want anything big. I just want sugar." It's a big story. It's a big story. Ah, sugar. You know how expensive sugar is today? I got my sugar from Whole Foods. They charge a dollar more than Super Value does. He gives you a whole story of why he can't give you a little bit of sugar. Is this a friend or an enemy? And that's the thing. So that's what we have to realize: even though Hashem is not our friend, we can't treat it much differently when it comes down to these things. If He's telling us to do something very basic...

18:38that's actually for our own benefit, and then we don't do it, and then something bad happens, and then we come back to Him, and we say, please help me. Yes, Hashem is all-merciful, and He could definitely help us, but I don't know, from a logical perspective, I really wouldn't depend on it, because I never really gave Him a reason to heal me. I never gave Him a reason to fix me. I never gave Him a reason to fix any of these things that I want Him to help me with. So why would He do it? Of course, He does it for everybody every day. The first question that naturally comes to people is, "Okay, yeah, but why is this guy that I know, who doesn't keep anything, a multimillionaire? He has a new Ferrari every year, and he has this and he has that, and it looks like he has the best life in the world." I can guarantee you that it’s not that. Yes, maybe he has money. but money doesn't really do much for you as far as giving you purpose in your life. From personal experience that I have, and from being involved with a lot of people with a lot of money, I can tell you that happiness and money have nothing to do with each other. And unfortunately, most of those people, one of the things that I learned from Rabbi Mizrachi, he says in his lectures several times, is that usually people like that, that have what seems like they have everything...

20:02and don't do anything that Hashem wants, usually those are the people you need to feel bad for. Because that means that Hashem is paying them for any mitzvah that they did in this life. Because after this life, there's not much good to look forward to. So anybody, most people have done some type of mitzvah in their life. Maybe they did tefillin one time when they were 13 years old, and they had their bar mitzvah, they did it once in their life. Maybe they gave some tzedakah here and there. Maybe they helped a few people here and there. So they did a few good things. And Hashem promises that He's going to pay us for everything that we do. The problem is that if we're starting to get paid in this world too much, that's not necessarily something we need to celebrate. That usually means that everything we're going to get, we're going to get in this world. And after that, not so much. Not a good picture. So, when we're doing these things, when we're thinking about Shabbat, when we're thinking about Tefillin, when we're thinking about any of these things that Hashem is asking us to do, first of all, we have to realize that we're doing all of this for ourselves. Second of all, we have to give Hashem a reason to help us. And that's really the bottom line. We're going to need help tomorrow. We're going to need help probably in 10 minutes from now.

21:20We're going to need help every day of our life. Of course, the things that we don't realize and take for granted, like breathing, eating, just being alive, being able to see, being able to hear, all of these things are miracles of their own. But let's just say the things that we do consider miracles, like the fact that we got a new promotion, the fact that we got more money, or a new wife, or a new this, all of these things that we really aspire to have, we're going to need Hashem to help us. And last week we talked about, or two weeks ago we talked about the blessing of Asher Yatzar, the blessing that you say after you go to the bathroom. And I can tell you guys that this is probably one of the things that people take for granted more than anything else in life. Thank you, I'll keep it in my wallet. Good. So that's the thing, say it every time you go to the bathroom. Because again, it's not just about the fact that you're saying it just to go through the motions, but if you really think about it,

22:21The fact that we are able to excrete all of the wastes in our body and keep all of the nutrients, and have our body work like the best machine ever created, is phenomenal. I mean, just think about that for a second. If you had a factory, or you go to any farm, or you go to any major company that manufactures things, every company has waste. Every company has waste. So, there's one of two options. Either you have people that manually take this waste, or you have machines that take out the waste. The problem is that in both cases, it's not going to be perfect. In both cases, there are going to be losses. So, the company is going to have the machine malfunction, or there's going to be a glitch, and a lot of good product will be lost, and that's just part of the equation. So they say, listen, we have a 5% or 6% ratio of lost product due to this machine. We can never be perfect. This machine is phenomenal, and we paid hundreds of millions of dollars to build it and design it, but it works 95% of the time. It's not too bad.

23:42Manual is even worse. Human mistakes, they're endless. It could be 50%. Nobody even knows it. So, our body is not like that. If there's something in your body that you don't need, it's out, whether you want it or not. And if it's not out, you know about it immediately. You have an immediate warning in your body where you immediately start getting warm, and the next thing you know, you have something called a fever. And a fever is actually our body protecting us. All of these things that the body does, it's all automatic. You don't need to press anything, you don't need to shake in a certain way, you don't have to call some guy from a hospital to tell you, listen, what to do, and then you do it. The body works automatically. So when you're saying, you're thanking Hashem for making everything work so perfectly that you don't even have to think about it. To us, it's just natural. I just, okay, I went to the bathroom, everything worked, I left, I went about my day, and I forgot about the fact that it even happened. But in reality, if something didn't work for even a millisecond,

24:55just a second, you wouldn't be able to function. And I know this from personal experience of health issues that started in 2006 for me and even before. But I'm telling you, when it comes down to your health, it's so underappreciated. People always say, "Yeah, when you have your health, you have everything." Only someone who has been unhealthy knows that. People that have not had health issues could say it's a nice thing to say. It sounds good. It has a good ring to it. It's all nice. But I'm telling you, you do not know what you have until you don't have it, especially with health. Because it's something extraordinary. And the fact that we're able to have this machine function in such a perfect way that we don't even think about it... It's not even a part of our thought process. Every day is a miracle. So another thing that I read a while ago—this is probably something like a friend of mine sent this to me about a year or two ago, something like that—that I thought is also good for us to know, but it's especially good

26:18for people that are very scientific and sometimes are atheists or having trouble believing that there's a creator. Or like the Greeks, who believed, okay, yes, there was a creator, but he left. Everything that we're doing every day is up to us. That's what the Greeks believed. They believed that, yes, there was Aristotle or Plato or... these philosophers that people, in essence, almost idolize, because they were very smart, but still made a huge error that made them very, very foolish. So there are a lot of people who do believe that there's something there, but only when they want to or need it. So that's what I personally call a convenient God. It's not the real God; it's a convenient God. It's a God that comes whenever they need it, like Santa Claus or something like that. It's not... Unfortunately, it's a very, very huge false belief and it's kefirah. It's something that's completely heresy. And there are other people that don't believe at all because they read some book in high school or someplace, and they think that everything came from a big bang and it came from nothing. And it sounds a little strange because

27:35I thought, okay, you know what, you could do a science experiment and maybe take the phone and smash it on the floor and see if something comes from the explosion. I don't think something new would come out of it. My phone fell by accident, and all I got out of it is a bunch of cracks on the screen. So nothing was created from it. But some people believe this because some scientists wrote in a book, and people think it's true. So anyway, this is something that shows people that not only is Hashem the Creator of everything, and the precision is something that's not even human, but on top of that, He is here, Every single second, every millisecond that you function is actually a miracle. So now, we talked about it actually about a week or two weeks ago. We talked about how the DNA has Hashem's name in it. Remember, we talked about every tenth, fifth, sixth, and fifth acid, there's the separation and the bridge of sulfur.

28:48in the DNA. So now, each DNA, each one of these microcells that we have in our body—there are countless ones in all of our body—each one of these things, just to give you an understanding of how significant it is: the amount of information that's on each cell, if you started writing it, just wrote the information that's on each cell, it would be over 3 million pages full of information. Just one tiny cell. I'm not talking about your body. I'm not talking about your arm or your finger or even a small piece of saliva. No, I'm talking about a cell. A cell is something that's too small for the eye to see. You need a very, very high-powered microscope to look at just one single cell. So that one single cell... has enough information that if you were going to write it in the neatest fashion possible, in small letters, it would still fill well over 3 million pages. Just one single cell. Okay, so now, we have a lot of information here. And this is part of your cell. You have the DNA molecules, you have the protein support molecules. Now, what scientists figured out...

30:08is that these proteins are, they say, linear strings of amino acids. Now, each one of these proteins has to fold a certain way in order for it to function. So I can't really give you a great example, obviously, but so, obviously, like this. Okay, so in order for this to be, let's say, this piece of paper over here, in order for it to, let's say, become an envelope, Now, if I fold it like this, it's not going to be a very good envelope because you have holes. If I fold it like this, and it's perfectly like this, there's a very, very good chance of it being a very good envelope. I have to fold a couple more things, but in reality, it has to be linear. It has to be straight. Similar concept with your cells. each one of the cells has countless proteins in it, and each one of these proteins has to fold in a certain way. Okay? Now, they did a calculation trying to figure out what is the chance of this thing folding this way each time, and more importantly, what happens when one protein, now each cell has

31:32Millions upon millions to the hundredth power of proteins. It's not like I told you; it's three million pages worth of information. So it's a lot. Now, if you took one little fold, you have millions of them, and one fold ripped. That person has a very, very, very bad disease that's not going away. Wow. lifelong disease, most likely even death. Just one fold. It ripped. That's it. So I did a calculation. What are the chances of every one of these cells, just a single cell, folding the right way? And they said that in order for us to figure out what is the mathematical equation of a single cell, we have to operate a supercomputer, which is huge computers that... non-stop work, 24 hours a day for 10 years to the 127th power, which is eternity in essence. There's no such year. 10 to the 127th power years, there's no such year and there's no number even that we could even relate to. Beyond our comprehension. Right. So this is, in essence, impossible.

33:00To just calculate the likelihood of one tiny little protein inside a cell folding the right way. Why isn't it folding the wrong way? And to have all of them do that? And on top of that, to have them all over your finger, all over your hand, all over your arm, all over your chest, all over your legs, all over your head? There is no such thing. as a calculation for something like that that's human. And that's just for a cell. So when you think about this, can this really come from an accident? Can this really come from a coincidence? I coincidentally dropped my phone and it became a world? And that's just one cell. So that gives us a little bit of an idea of how far we are from what's Hashem's significance. It's not something that we could really comprehend. Actually, the Gemara says, I think it's Masechet Shabbat, I actually think it's also from that paper that I read, that if you took all of the trees in the world and turned them all into pencils, and the entire ocean was your, in essence, your ink,

34:30you still wouldn't be able to write anywhere near 1% of the description of what Hashem really is. So, when you think about these little microcells that we don't even think of, it makes us realize that there's so much of our body that we don't appreciate, that we got used to, that we just take for granted. So for us to do a little bit of a beracha, after we go to the bathroom in the morning, in the afternoon, even if you go 10 times a day, to do something like that, that takes, what, 20 seconds, 30 seconds, let's say you read slow, it takes a minute and a half. He gave you everything that functions perfectly, and He gave you every one of these cells working, functioning perfectly, and you can't do a beracha for a minute and a half? I don't know, it's a little bit of a problem, in my opinion. Because when I ask Him for help, and I can't even do this mini beracha for a minute, I don't know, to me, I would feel embarrassed. I can't give you a minute and a half, but you're making every one of these proteins in my body fold the right way so I could function and not have sickle cell disease or some type of autism or some type of major disease that we don't even know exists. It doesn't make sense. So again, these things, we take for granted, and it's something that we really need to wake up and realize that this is something very small we could take on ourselves to make it a permanent thing.

35:54It takes a little time to get used to, but it's something to do. Now, the second part of the covenant that we have, the second brit that we have is tefillin. Now, tefillin is pretty much your daily covenant with Hashem. Six days a week you have to do tefillin, but seven days a week your covenant has to be active with Hashem. Seven days a week. You have three covenants. Two of them have to be active at all times. Meaning, your brit is seven days a week. And tefillin is six days a week, but on Shabbat you're not allowed to do tefillin. So on Shabbat, the only thing that's allowed to replace tefillin, or in essence take its place, is Shabbat. So tefillin is six days, and Shabbat takes its place on Shabbat. So the fact that you're keeping Shabbat gets you back to keeping two of the britot that you have to keep minimum every day. Now... When you're doing tefillin every day, and whether you're doing it first thing in the morning on time, or you're not at that place yet, but you're doing it every day, then pretty much you're saying, "Hello Hashem, I realize that we have a deal. This is my end of the deal. Please make me function and operate and do Your part of the deal." And that's it. But when we don't do our part of the deal, it's very strange that we come and complain to Him.

37:20that something didn't work out. So the best thing to do is to start in the morning and say, "Okay, this is our deal. I do my part, this is our covenant, this is telling me that today Hashem is going to be with me all day." Why? Because I started off my day with the agreement. First thing of the day, when you wake up in the morning, the first thing you see is your wife, you say hello. The first thing you see your kids, you say hello to them. You give them hugs, you give them kisses, you show them your love for them, your appreciation for them. Hashem is nothing less than that. The reality of it is that we have to show Hashem, "Hey, Hashem, I know you're there, even though I can't see you." And this is one of the ways that I can show you that that's what it is. But try to Even if you're doing the tefillin and you're at a point right now where the only thing you're doing is just Kriyat Shema and tefillin. Maybe you're doing Kriyat Shema and tefillat Shema nicely. Again, do it, but do it, even if it takes you two minutes to do it, do it with all of your heart.

38:20Even if it's five minutes of your time and you're not doing the whole Shacharit prayer that will take, you know, 45 minutes to an hour, and you're not ready for it yet, and you're not prepared for it yet and all that stuff, at least that five minutes that you're giving yourself to connect with Hashem, do it. Don't play with your phone. You know, don't think about work. Don't think about your wife. Don't think about your kids. Don't think about the problems you have or the customer that's annoying you or this or that. Five minutes. Connect with Hashem. Just connect with Hashem. That's it. Everything off. Take the phone. Shut it off. Don't leave it on at all. Not even on vibrate. Just shut it off. Why? Because with today's phones, they keep, like, right now, looking at my phone, every two minutes, some bright light is flashing at me. And it distracts you. And you're trying. It's five minutes. You know, you do this, you do this, you know, every two minutes you get somebody texting you, "Hey, what's up, man? Did you see the game yesterday?" "Hey, what's up, man?" It's nonsense. It's never really something important. And even if it is, if it's that important, it can wait five minutes. And you automatically look. It's a reflex. Yeah, it's a reflex. That's part of the amazingness of our eyes, actually, which I don't know if you guys got to it in the Zamir Cohen book yet, but towards the end of the book, it starts telling a story.

39:38of this magical city where the city functions in such a perfect way that everything that goes in, there's a certain amount of things that are allowed in, there's a certain amount of things that are allowed out, and any time that they need to clean it up, there's water coming out automatically. There are these amazing systems where it cleans the city and it always remains clean. It can never have one piece of dirt on it. And so on and so forth. It goes through this whole story. And then you realize towards the end of the story that what they're describing is actually how your eye functions. Wow. So it's definitely worth a read. It'll take you probably 5-10 minutes to read it. And it's definitely worth it to look at it. If you guys want to read it now, it's really something I probably have to refresh myself. It's really something... The thing is, when you think about your eye... Your eye was made in a way, was created by Hashem in a way where, in order to protect yourself, your eye has certain sensors that are always on. So, if something is coming towards your eye, whether it's a piece of dirt or a bug that's flying directly at you or anything else, you have the first line of protection, which is to look at it, to know that it's coming. Even if you're looking this way and you're...

41:04focus on something else, you find yourself looking at something right away for no reason whatsoever, and you realize that something's coming at you. The second line of protection is you have your eyelids that are closing. Even if you don't want them to, they're closing. And you have all of these different levels of protection that you don't even realize how perfectly your body is designed. I thought about it. Even this week, it's unbelievable what's happening over and over again. With the eye? With the eye. I could... If I take a hammer and I swing at something, let's say I swing at a piece of tile, it's glass. It shatters. Talking about the microscopic piece. I feel it hit my eye, and I'm amazed at the fact that my eye could even see that coming and closed my lid. Unbelievable. It's not a coincidence that it hit up here and that, okay, my lid is always halfway closed. And if my lid doesn't close, your eye is going to hurt. Definitely. It's unreal. You can't imagine something like that. It's not human. It's significant.

42:17Just to give you guys an understanding. The thing is also, the ishon, I don't know how to say this, if you just touch it, you know, in this spot here, in the black in the middle, it's like really, really fast to make damage. It's really, really sensitive. It's like a balloon. It's water. It's not like your fingers, it's not meat. It's a balloon. I actually combined two stories. One of them is "The City of the Future" and the other one is called "The Super Camera." But again, both of them you guys should read in this book. The point is that with your eye, if you actually took all of the supercomputers and all of the regular computers and all of the most amazing technological advancements the world has, they cannot compare to just one single eye and the technology of just one human eye. That's how sophisticated your eye is. So, the fact that we have these things and we got used to them is amazing. It's great. It shows how perfect Hashem's creation is. It shows how perfect the Creator is. So when we really think about it and say, okay, listen, to remind myself that I have this deal with this Creator and say thank you for five minutes without having my phone ring so I don't have to look at it,

43:44It's not really such a big deal. So again, whether you're doing Shacharit completely yet, or you're doing just a prayer for five minutes, and you're doing just Kriyat Shema with tefillin, again, we're not judges here. We're not here to tell everybody that we're doing everything wrong. We have to do as much as possible. So whatever you're doing, do it 100%. Even if it's five minutes, give Him the five minutes. And that's going to make the next level much easier to do and much more enjoyable. Also, when you connect with Hashem, if you can really connect with Hashem for five minutes, you'll wait 24 hours just to wait for the next five minutes. That's how great it is. Connecting with Hashem for five minutes is something that I can't teach or explain to you because it's not something that anyone can really explain. Connecting with Hashem for five minutes... it can make a lifetime of suffering worth it, just for five minutes, connecting with Hashem. So, again, you have the opportunity to do it every day. The second thing is about Tefillin, and how important it is. Tefillin gives us the ability to change our spiritual state,

45:09Meaning that, obviously, all prayers that we do, and some of them that we've gotten used to, we just go through the motions. It's something that even people who have been religious their whole lives, or actually maybe even especially people who are religious their whole lives, if you don't connect to the prayer and you don't pay attention, you're playing with your phone, and you're talking to people, and you're doing all of these things that are not relevant to what you're supposed to be doing, it's very easy to lose track and completely be disconnected from to what you're actually doing, and, you know, because you're thinking about something else. You're at prayer, and you're doing Tefillat Mincha, but in reality, you're thinking about, what's this guy, oh, what's he doing, maybe he's, you know, you're thinking about something completely different. So, now, prayer, and the Torah in general, is something that's supposed to elevate our spiritual being. Now, what does that mean? We have two parts: we have the physical and we have the spiritual. The physical is your body, and the spiritual is your soul and other things like your aura, things that are around your soul and around your body. So, there were scientists who tried to prove this scientifically because people have said throughout the years that they feel or they see

46:26other people's auras. Auras are something that, in essence, surrounds your body and appears in different colors. Now, your aura can convey a lot of information about you to someone who can see it. For example, it can indicate if you are in a good mood or a bad mood, if you are healthy or unhealthy, and sometimes even to the point of revealing if you are a good person or a bad person. So your aura is very much real, even though a lot of people that say they can see it are considered as speaking nonsense, it is very real. It's actually in the Torah, talking about the aura. Now, when you are praying and you're connecting to Hashem, you're elevating your standard, meaning that you have a certain standard of where you are at all times. Sometimes you're better than others, sometimes you're in a better mood than others, sometimes you feel spiritually higher than others, but overall you have a basic standard. which is represented by a certain color. And then sometimes you're higher or lower than it. So, for example, if somebody has a disease or somebody has depression or something like that, they're going to be lower than what they normally are. And if somebody is praying and connecting to Hashem, they're going to be higher and represented by a different color.

47:40So scientists tried to prove this. And for many years, they just couldn't do it. They were actually even mocked by people for even trying to prove something spiritual. Until one day, this couple called Semyon and Valentina Kirlian, who were photographers. In 1939, they took a picture and realized that there were certain weird colors around certain things. They discovered that if you put a high-frequency electric current into the technology of the camera, it actually shows that creature, or that human, or animal, whatever it is, with an aura around it. It shows the colors. and they developed it more. They came out with something called a Kirlian camera, which scientists started looking into and seeing pretty much people's auras. Now,

48:46Over time, other people got involved in it. There were more sophisticated cameras, and now they've connected it to computers, where you can have the camera connected to a computer, take the picture, and the picture shows on the monitor the person and the aura around them in different colors. White is the best color, which is, in essence, perfect. Purple is near perfect, and so on and so forth. There are other colors as well. So now... For a while, people were trying to see, okay, this one, you know, some people have better than others, but there's generally a standard amongst most people. Sometimes there are things that are outside of the standard. So during one of Rabbi Zamir Cohen's lectures, there was a scientist by the name of Dr. Alec Navet that was a skeptic, didn’t believe it. And he said, you know what, I'm a scientist, let me try this out, let me try this, you know, because he was talking about the human aura. He was talking about, you know, how these things, see, it's a natural thing, the phone buzzes and you have to pick it up. So, you know, Rabbi Cohen is talking about different things, about elevating your soul, elevating your spirit, and how he was talking specifically about tefillin.

50:14He's talking about how necessary tefillin is to get yourself to even be at a standard. Even to just remain at a standard, you need some type of spiritual help. Because we're constantly up and down. When things are good, sometimes we're doing good. When things are bad, we're definitely not doing good. We're constantly bouncing up and down. Sometimes we wake up in the morning, we're depressed for no reason. We don't even know why. Sometimes we're happy for no reason. So we're constantly up and down. So to even get yourself to have a base, you have to have a connection with Hashem. Our direct connection with Hashem is mitzvot. What are His basics of mitzvot? We talked about, again, Shabbat, tefillin, and brit. So Rabbi Zamir was talking about having this connection, having this tefillin. So this doctor said, you know what, I'm going to try this out and see what happens. So he invited 11 of his friends that were scientists, and all of them were secular. All of them were Chiloni. Some of them were complete atheists. So people that completely had no connection whatsoever, they weren't doing anything. So they had no biased opinion. If anything, they had a biased opinion against it to prove it wrong.

51:24So he took a picture of each person. Fine. Then he said, okay, you know what? Let's put this tefillin on each person. And every single person, no exception to the case, had a completely different aura when they had the tefillin on than when they didn't. To such an extent that when they had the tefillin on, kosher tefillin on, the level of the aura was was reaching near perfect. Something that is almost humanly not possible without having something, you know, that's extraordinary happen. And even more so, they tried to say, "Okay, wait a minute, how could this be? How could this piece of leather that's on his head and on his arm with animal hide that you write on, you put this ink on, how could it possibly change somebody's aura? It doesn't make any sense." So they tried messing with it. And one time what they did is they took out the, you know, there are four verses. There are four compartments in the one on the head. And they took it out. They took out the klaf. They took out the verses out of it. And it seemed, okay, maybe it's just the leather. Maybe the leather has some type of magnetic power that's causing it. It's leather. It takes about a year to create a nice kosher tefillin. It’s not easy work. And

52:53They took it out, and immediately the aura went back to as if they were wearing nothing. How did they gauge it? There are colors. Actually, this is also one of the things in this book. So, it’s colors, and they show how this works, where it’s the color that the person had. when they were wearing the kosher tefillin, it was something that, let's say if there are seven colors, level one is the worst, for someone who is in bad shape, level two is better, and level seven is the highest. The standard is, let's say, to be at level three or four. When someone was wearing tefillin, it was at six or seven. They were near perfect. When they took out the verse from there, they went back to being standard as if they weren't wearing tefillin. When they didn't wear tefillin, they were standard as if they were... Right. And that's one of the things that made a lot of people wake up, especially those guys that were involved in this project. Because again, like I told you, some of the people involved not only didn't do what Hashem wanted, but some of them didn't even believe He existed. So...

54:18This is something that science can't explain without adding God to the picture. So here you go. This is like a picture of somebody's aura. So you have different colors. And this is the people wearing tefillin. Before tefillin, after tefillin. And you see how much more blue it has now. Whereas here, it has yellow. This one got to near perfect and got purple. Here, yellow is a standard pretty much. So these guys are all pretty much mostly yellow. This guy is a little bit better. But all of them get to purple or even shades of white after they wear the tefillin. This actually is something very special where it's a woman covering her hair. which is something we're going to talk about in one of the lectures later on. The significance and the importance of a woman covering her hair. And this is just a woman covering her hair. So, I mean, you think about it. A woman is not covering her hair with an electromagnetic field on her head. She's not covering her hair with some type of metal. She's not covering her hair with anything that's inhumane. It's either a scarf of some kind or a hat.

55:41It's cotton. It's something very simple. Here, a woman is not covering her hair. Here, she's covering her hair. And you see that the aura of the person, again, for the woman, is, again, getting closer and closer to perfection. And it's amazing that science is helping prove what the Torah has been saying for many, many years. Um... So, yeah, look at this. This is a human Tefillin book. Look at it. Page 264. So that's something that I think is pretty amazing. Covering the hair. So Tefillin, again, this is a reminder for ourselves really. It's not really a reminder for Hashem because Hashem doesn't forget. Hashem doesn't change His opinion. Hashem doesn't do anything that's what humans do. And there are several verses...

56:42in the Torah, that we are reminded of these things. What if somebody ever thought, you know, maybe Hashem made a mistake? Maybe it's something that maybe Hashem forgot. So actually, in the book of Iyov, did I tell you guys about the book of Iyov? About the story when Iyov thought that Hashem made a mistake? Did I tell you guys about that? Job. No? Oh, yeah. All right, well, if you don't remember it, then I'll tell you again. Is it? No, Iyov. Iyov. Iyov. So Iyov, Iyov was not Jewish, but he was a prophet. And Iyov was very, very rich, had kids, had a wife, and was a righteous person. So the whole story of Iyov is long, but the point is that... One day, the Satan came to Hashem and said, "Ah, you know, the only reason..." Well, first, actually, Hashem said to the Satan, "Look at this righteous son that I have, Iyov, that he's doing everything I want, he's, you know..." Even though there wasn't Judaism at the time, this is how we know he wasn't Jewish; this is before the Torah. Um...

58:07But he was keeping the mitzvot, he was doing everything he needed to do and was honoring Hashem all day. So, Hashem is telling the Satan, "Hey, listen, look how righteous my son is." So the Satan says, "Yeah, of course he's righteous, you gave him everything that he wants. Why wouldn't he be? He's rich, he's got kids, he's got a wife. Why wouldn't he be righteous? But if you take away these things from him, he's going to change. He's going to change." So Hashem said, okay, let's test it. Let's see if what you're saying is right. You're allowed to do anything to him except kill him. You're not allowed to kill him. And this was multiple tests. The first test was that he lost his money. All of a sudden, he had people from the, you know, his workers come back to him. He had one worker come back to him and say, okay, listen, all the sheep that we had, all of a sudden there was a

59:09a gang of wolves came and killed all of our sheep. Shortly after, another one of his workers said the same thing about the chickens. Shortly after, another one came and said that pretty much all of his money, all of his inventory, was lost. Then they started talking about, okay, the building, the house over here got destroyed. And then shortly after, this is all happening right away, and shortly after, your sons were celebrating, and they all got together, and they were celebrating, and... And one of the houses that got destroyed, they were under it and they all died. So all of your children are dead. And I'm here as the only survivor to tell you the story. A big wind came and destroyed the house and they all died. So his sons died. His money's gone. And he's still praying to Hashem. So then, shortly later, Satan says, "Okay, so he hasn't failed, but if you take away more from him, surely he will go against Hashem." So Hashem said, "Okay, you can do everything but kill him." So then he starts taking away his health and gives him different diseases. He starts getting these different abscesses all over his body. He gets to a point where he completely cannot function.

1:00:34Shortly later, he loses his house. So pretty much his whole world goes upside down. There are a lot of details to the story, but I don't want to not give you the story properly. The point is that everything that he had is gone. So then... After everything is gone, his health is gone, his wife is complaining, his wife is telling him, you know, what are you doing? Why are you still honoring this God that's doing all of this to you? And actually, in that, the way he answers her, the verse that is written of how he answers her gives us a very interesting... repetition of something that was written in the parashah, I think last week or the week before, what Avraham's father said. And that's why people say that actually Iyov was Avraham's father's gilgul. Gilgul is reincarnation. They said the same thing. So anyway, then he has his friends come by from far away to...

1:01:49you know, to help him. Instead of helping him, they start judging him. They say, well, surely this happened to you because you weren't as righteous as we thought you were. And instead of helping him, they start judging him and criticizing him. Friends like that, who needs enemies? What ends up happening at some point, right before Hashem finally answers him, is that he says, Hashem, maybe Hashem thinks that instead of Iyov, which is his name, I am Oyev. Oyev means enemy. Now if you take the word Iyov, which is his name, Job, in Hebrew, and you switch around one of the letters, it becomes the word Oyev, which means enemy. So he says that it's the same letters, just moving one of the letters to another place. So he's saying maybe Hashem made a mistake,

1:02:51and instead of remembering that I'm his loyal son, Iyov, that's loyal to him, that praises him, that honors him, that has always been for him, maybe he thinks that I'm his enemy. And that's why he's doing all this to me. And that's when Hashem answered him. And Hashem says, He's created the whole world with all of the creations that are around the world, but even the minor details He pays attention to. He says, you have hair, you have a lot of hair on your head. Each one of your hairs needs nutrients in order to survive, and each one of your hairs is its own world. For example, your sweat is the food that your hair has. Like if you don't sweat, you're very likely to lose your hair. And actually, I think it's in the Gemara or somewhere else, they said that every hair has its own hole, and if two hairs ever come out of the same hole, the person becomes blind. So that's how precise the creation is. That's how precise your head and your body are. Two hairs out of the same hole make the person blind. So he says, I know the name...

1:04:14Of every one of your hairs. Hashem is telling them, "I know the name. There's a name for every one of your hairs. I have a name. I know the name for every one of your hairs. And you think that I made a mistake and think you're my enemy instead of a yob? I made a mistake with your name?" So it reminds me of another story that Rabbi Mizrachi said in one of his Hebrew lectures. He's fantastic, really. I mention him a lot because I really, really want you guys to start listening to him because he tells the truth and how it's supposed to be. He was the one that was just here recently. No, no, no. He's the one we're trying to bring here, but he hasn't been here recently. Oh, okay. He's the one I gave you the discs, all those discs that I gave you. Right, right. That's Mizrachi. That's Mizrachi. The movie that I keep telling you guys to watch, that's Mizrachi. That's Mizrachi. So, and again, there are plenty of really good rabbis. Obviously, I keep pushing Rabbi Mizrachi and my cousin Rabbi Fein Kachlon, even beyond other rabbis that I watch and follow because...

1:05:21...you watch a lot of different people speak in your life, whether it's business or Torah, different things, you start becoming a little bit of a better judge of who gets to the point faster, better, and in general, covers more. And I think they do the best job, in my opinion, uh... to meet the immediate needs of most people. Once somebody, you know, has other needs, they have some work, but other people can also cover some of the other work. But I think that especially for the Baal Teshuva, for someone that's really trying to get closer to Hashem, trying to serve their purpose in this world, I think that, you know, they can help somebody do that in a phenomenal way. My cousin's Rav Efraim Kachmon, he's... huge genius and really somebody that dedicated his entire life and continues to dedicate his entire life purely to studying Torah, nothing else, no work, nothing else, he's completely studying Torah and the amount of knowledge that he has is

1:06:23Really, it's just something that is hard to even explain, and it's not just knowledge about stories about the Torah. I'm talking about knowledge about life, business, the universe, anything you really want. Someone that knows Torah can pretty much have access to all knowledge, everything, whether it's science, or it's commerce, or anything else. And that's when you see rabbis, really special rabbis, like Rabbi Zamir Cohen, write these books that cover so much stuff about science, and you just see the guy, you know, normal rabbi, he's got the beard, he's got the hat, he's got the basic uniform, and this guy has this immense amount of knowledge that's or it's commerce, or anything else. And that's when you see rabbis, really special rabbis, like Rabbi Zamir Cohen, write these books that cover so much about science, and you just see the guy, you know, normal rabbi, he's got the beard, he's got the hat, he's got the basic uniform, and this guy has this immense amount of knowledge that's out of this world, and you're like, wait a minute, how do you learn this stuff from the story about Moshe? How do you learn this stuff about the story, you know, how do you know this stuff? And that's the beauty of the Torah. The Torah is endless. So, a lot of these rabbis are really special, and they, you know, a lot of them, you know, really get you some information. With my cousin, I mention it because he has a very unique way of seeing some of his stories, and he's also very funny, you know, when it's appropriate. And his way is...

1:07:43So his way is to do it in a gentle way, where he's teaching you, he's giving you information, while at the same time helping you get closer to Hashem by telling you why you're doing what you're doing. And he does it in a, you know, it's a, he tells you what's wrong and what's right, He's not only going to sugarcoat everything, like some people do, which I think is a mistake, where they only tell you the good part of the Torah, where all the good things that you're going to get if, what's it called, that Hashem said, but they don't tell you what happens if you don't do right. Because that's really more than half of the Torah, is what Hashem is telling us what happens if we don't do what He says. And to eliminate that part of the Torah is not only misleading people, but it's pretty much guaranteeing... That person is doing a very, very bad thing for the future. But also, those people guarantee that they're going to have a much, much more difficult path and journey to get to Hashem, to get in the right direction. Because that's what happened with these Reform movements and Conservative movements, where originally someone had this idea that they have a better way than what Hashem said for people to connect to Him.

1:09:07And what ended up happening is that they completely went off, and it has become its own religion. Reform and Conservative are not even real Judaism. They can call themselves Reform Judaism. They can call themselves Conservative Judaism. They can call themselves Superman. It doesn't mean that they are. I call myself Superman. It doesn't mean that I'm going to have a cape tomorrow and start flying everywhere. So just because something calls itself Judaism does not mean it's Judaism. Judaism, if you want to know true Judaism, true Judaism... is what the Torah says. And the only ones that are, you know, doing what the Torah says are Orthodox Jews. So, again, it's not the ones that are, you know, completely violating what's in the Torah, and it's not necessarily people that are doing things that, you know, are forcing people to do things that are above what the Torah says, which is, you know, strange uniforms and strange habits that is more of a machmir thing, where it's where they're doing above and beyond what's it's not necessary. It's not bad, it's just not necessary. So when it comes down to Judaism, we have to make sure that we do what the Torah says, know why it's saying it, know why we're doing it, and go that way. So my cousin's direction and the way he does things is that he teaches you what you need to know, tells you what's wrong and what's right, in a gentle way.

1:10:27Rabbi Mizrachi is a little bit more in your face, where he's going to tell you what 99% of rabbis are not willing to tell you, either because they're scared or because they don't want to scare people or make them uncomfortable. In my opinion, it's the only way to do it. In my opinion, the way he does it is the only way to do it. And the reason why I say that is because the nice way, where people say stories is and they tell you jokes, and everybody laughs, and everybody's friendly, and the men and women are sitting together, and it becomes this little party, and there's food everywhere, and all that stuff, that stuff doesn't really work. The fact that people tell you, hey, listen, your mom is Jewish, you're Jewish, don't worry, everything's going to be okay, and don't worry, things are going to work out for you. Even if you don't keep anything, just light some candles on Shabbat, you'll be fine. That's nonsense. And I know this not just from hearing him, but from personal experience. I'm not going to mention names right now, but if you figure out who the names are, please don't say them because I don't want anyone who's watching this to know. I don't want to badmouth anybody publicly, but this is good for everybody to know the difference between real and fake. So now, I had...

1:11:53There's obviously a lot of different Jewish organizations, and when I had my office in New York, we had... By the way, I just said, don't mention, you just came in, don't mention, if you figure out who the names are, don't say the name out loud, because I don't want anyone to know who the names are. I don't know about that stuff. So anyway, when I had my office there, we had a lot of people, and we had people, this was in New York, so you have a lot of religious people come to my office all the time. And we'd give them tzedakah, and if they had something to say, we'd listen to them. We had some Jewish guys at the office. Sometimes they would put on tefillin. They'd remind others to put on tefillin. Sometimes they would tell a little story about Shabbat. You know, different things. And whoever wanted to donate, would donate. Whoever wanted to listen, would listen. But with my office, the way it was, it always had an open-door policy. If you're in the neighborhood and you want to come and tell us about Torah, you know what? you can come do it, and we're more than happy to keep it, even though religion wasn't part of our business. I wasn't religious at the time, and neither was pretty much 99% of the office, with the exception of one guy. So people would come from time to time, and they knew that none of us kept Shabbat. They knew that none of us kept anything, for that matter. Some worse than others.

1:13:19And the attitude was the nice way, what people call the nice way, where they would tell us stories or a joke or just remind us to maybe put on tefillin here and there. And that's it. But it was like pretty much if you want to do something, you'll do it. I'm not going to tell you you need to do it, but you'll do it. And I can tell you for sure, based on just simple math, we had the office for more than 10 years, but let's just calculate it off of 10 years. We had people come to my office at the minimum twice a week, most likely three times a week. But even if we do it once a week, 52 weeks a year, that's 52 times, 10 years, so that's 520 times. 520 times, some type of rabbi came to my office and had an opportunity to help somebody in the office. We had 30, 40, 50 people in the office, whatever it was, many of whom were Jewish. Somebody to do teshuva, somebody to do anything. And I can tell you that out of 520 times, which is more likely like 1,500 times, not one person ever kept Shabbat.

1:14:47because of any of this. One time, 500 times you had an opportunity. 500 times you had an opportunity, and not one Shabbat was kept. Not one meal was kosher because of it. The only thing we did occasionally was being reminded to do Tefillin, which again, great, but 500 times, that's all you achieved? That's why I know for sure that the nice way doesn't work. Now, of course, you have to be nice when you communicate with people. And when I tell you guys, listen, this is the punishment for this, this is the punishment for that, I'm not judging you, chas v'shalom. Because again, keep in mind, I was in your shoes, if not worse, at some point in my life, whether it's you guys here or anyone that's watching it here. I was much, much worse than most people. And that's why I always say that if I can do teshuva, anybody can do teshuva. I was as far as you can be. But the key here is that, for me, my opinion is that If I knew the information, I might have made a different choice. Now, there's a difference between knowing something is wrong

1:15:57and knows the significance of how wrong it is. Now, everyone knows, everyone that's Jewish, unless they were born in some, you know, I don't know, jungle, everyone knows that you're supposed to keep Shabbat, and violating Shabbat is not good. Everyone generally knows that. Whether they believe or don't believe is a different story, but everyone knows you're not supposed to as a Jewish person. Everyone knows that you're supposed to do some basic things in Judaism, And that's why they show up to the synagogue once a year on Yom Kippur or something, right? Two hours before the holiday is over, they show up to the synagogue. Because there's a part of them that connects to it to some extent. It's a conscience. It's everywhere. It's everywhere. It's not just here. It's everywhere. In New York, we had people that, you know, you have the synagogue full, you know, half full during the day of Yom Kippur. half full during the day of Yom Kippur. Two hours before Yom Kippur ends, there are people around the building of the synagogue that just showed up. That's just the way it is. So there's a connection. When I talk about people, the point is there's a connection. Everyone knows there's something there. Knowing and knowing the details are completely two different worlds. Knowing that you're supposed to keep Shabbat is one thing.

1:17:12knowing that if you don't keep Shabbat, you are considered less than a Gentile, less than a non-Jew. Not the same. You're not considered the same. Because a non-Jew that is fulfilling his purpose, which is the seven laws that Hashem gave them, the seven laws of Noach, they have seven responsibilities: to have a court, to not eat living animals, not steal, not kill. Shabbat is only for Jews. Not kill, not steal, to have a court, to not eat an animal while it's still alive. There are a few other things, I forgot them right now, but there are two or three other ones. There are seven. Anyway, the seven laws of Noach. So the point is that if a non-Jew is doing that, and a Jewish person is not keeping Shabbat, that non-Jew is not only better, but he's going to Heaven. And the Jew, not so much. So it's not a small difference. It's a huge difference. And that's the point of what I'm trying to tell you,