Shiur Torah #62 Women of Chanukah, Parenting & College Education Advice, Driving on Shabbat

0:00Thank you for having me again. It's nice to be back. As we were just talking about the whole miracle of Hanukkah, what many people don't realize is that the miracle of Hanukkah is not necessarily just because a few Jewish warriors fought and obviously had Hashem's power that He gave them, and He made a miracle and they won the war. or purely because some oil, instead of burning for one day, burned for eight days. That's not really the true miracle. The true miracle is how the women were in those days, how courageous the women were in those days, to a much, much higher extent than most people give them credit for. And the reason why we talk about it is because in today's age, many people that don't know about the truth of Torah, especially women who don't know much about Torah,

1:00think that Judaism and the Torah are sexist. They think that we're prejudiced against women. And nothing could be further from the truth. As we talked about the last time I was here, we discussed the power of the modesty of a woman and how that is something more significant than any mitzvah that she can possibly do. A modest woman is already completing 60% of her mitzvot. That's 60%, which means that an immodest woman, even if she does 100% of all the other mitzvot, she only has 40%. She can't pass the test. So modesty is already a big thing. But now, the women of the time of 2,000 years ago, a little over 2,000 years ago, during the time of the Greeks, when they were persecuting the Jews, the whole story is that the Greeks wanted to do to us what pretty much is still happening today. They wanted us to leave Judaism. They had no interest in killing Jews. Unlike the Nazis that wanted to kill Jews, or the Romans that wanted to kill Jews, or many other nations that have been wanting to kill the Jews since the beginning of time, the Greeks actually had no interest in killing Jews. They just wanted to kill Judaism. They said, listen, if you leave the Shabbat, don't keep Shabbat, don't do brit milah, and don't learn Torah,

2:17Not only will we not kill you, but we'll actually give you very, very important and respectful jobs. We're going to give you very important jobs. You could be a big lawyer, a big accountant, a government member. You could have all the respect. You could judge matches that we have in all these fights. You could do a lot of different things that Jews, in general, were not entitled to at the time. And I said, listen, all we want you to do is stop keeping this Shabbat of yours, stop keeping this circumcision, be like us. We don't keep Shabbat. We don't think that there's a need to declare that God created the heaven and the earth in six days. We think that maybe, you know, God created the world, but then he left. That's what the Greeks believed. Yes, there had to be a creator, but he left. He doesn't care if I do Birkat HaMazon. He doesn't care if I do Tefillin every day. He doesn't really care if i turn on the light on Shabbat. Why does He care? The Greeks said, no, He created the world. Because they were very smart, the Greeks. But He left. He doesn't care about the small things. What about circumcision? Circumcision, why? You're telling me that God made a mistake? If God created you, He created you perfect. So why are you ruining it? Why are you cutting off a piece of the body? You're saying that God made a mistake. That was the argument, which is a very rational, very logical argument.

3:45You're telling me that God created you not perfect and He needs you, a little human, to make yourself perfect? He needs your help? If He already created everything? It's a very logical argument. It's wrong, but it's a very logical argument. And then Torah. They knew the secret to Judaism is the Torah. The secret to a connection with God is the Torah. A Jew without Torah cannot be a Jew. He could say he's Jewish. It could say on some type of certificate or business card or passport or anything in the world that he's Jewish. But a connection with Hashem, it's very, very difficult to have something that's real. Because Hashem gave you the instructions on how to connect with Him in the Torah. So, if I'm not going to read the Torah, and I don't know what it says, I just hear stories once a year during the holidays when I go to synagogue, I hear a story. Okay, so once a year I have a connection with Hashem. But if I go through rough times, or if I go through good times, where am I going to look? I can't really, I don't know how to connect with Him. It's like saying, yeah, He's my best friend, but I don't have His phone number. So it's like having an email. You have the most important person in the world's email. He says, listen, anything you need, email me. Obviously, Hashem is much more than any important person we have in the world.

5:09But the point is, that most important person in the world, you meet, he says, "Listen, anything you need, just email me. No phone number, no nothing else, just email me." Wow. I need a million dollars, he sends me a million dollars. I need help with some type of medicine, he helps me with the medicine. I need a job, he gets me a job. Anything I need, it's perfect. You just answer right away. So one day comes, and you need this help. I said, "Oh, great. Where's the business card?" "Oh, I don't have the business card, but I wrote it on a napkin. You see, the napkin got wet. So this one letter is missing. The other one, you're not so sure if it's a 'C' or it's an 'O'. So you guess. You guess. You type in the email, but you keep getting an error message. Invalid email. There's one letter in an entire email. It doesn't work. The email is worthless." Same thing with a Jew. He may think that going to beit knesset once a year, or even once a week, or maybe, you know, saying that he's Jewish, or writing on a passport, or any type of identification that he's Jewish, or saying that his mom is Jewish, or even doing some of the mitzvot here and there, makes him Jewish. Yeah, it's good. It's nice. It's a good start for, you know, if you're, you know, two years old. But to be really Jewish, you need the entire email.

6:35You need the entire instruction. And that's the connection with Torah. Torah is required by a Jew every day. Whether it's 15 minutes or 15 hours, it all depends on you. Different people have different lives, different levels. But every Jew is required to learn Torah every day. The Greeks, during this time, a couple of thousand years ago, knew that this is our connection, this is our direct dial with the most important thing in the world. And they said, listen, we can't beat them, even though there are only a few of them, and there are many, many of us, we have many, many weapons, they have nothing. But they have this God that somehow made them defeat every other nation that came in their way. The biggest nation in history, the Egyptians, He beat them. The Nebuchadnezzar and his people, even though the Jews didn't beat them, eventually Hashem destroyed him. The Persians destroyed him, the Turks destroyed him, everybody else destroyed him. Somehow, these Jews are the only ones that survive. Technically, they're not even supposed to be here. So it must be this Hashem. So if we stop there, what's the secret to this Hashem? The secret is their connection with Him, this Torah. So if we stop them from learning Torah...

7:49There's no connection anymore. We don't need to kill them. They're killing themselves eventually. How are they going to kill themselves? They're not going to actually kill themselves. How are they going to kill themselves? By saying, listen, if we don't learn Torah, we're just like you. So if we're just like you, our boys are going to marry your girls, and your girls are going to marry our boys. So all of us become, instead of all Jewish and Greeks, it becomes everybody is one nation. And the Jews are destroyed. And this is what's happening today. 2,000 years later, 80% of the Jewish people do not keep Shabbat. Over 70% of the ones that are in America not only do not keep Shabbat but are either in intermarriage relationships or on their way. And if you ask any Jewish couple, older couple, do you want your kids to marry a non-Jew? No, mah pitom, mah pitom. But then, 25 years later, when your son or daughter brings a non-Jewish boy or girl, she's so cute, such a nice person. What's wrong with her? What are you going to do? That's who he hung out with his whole life. She was his next-door neighbor. She is a nice girl. There's nothing wrong with the non-Jews. Some of them are the most amazing people you could ever meet. But Hashem said you're not allowed to be with them. That's as simple as it gets.

9:13So the Greeks knew all of this. They were very, very smart. They knew that the secret to a connection with God is the Torah. So they said, "Stop learning Torah." And some of the Jews, unfortunately, fell for this trap and stopped learning Torah. And not only stopped learning Torah, but started taking advantage of what they thought were all the money-making opportunities with the Greeks. They took these jobs. They became government members. And they felt important, and they started helping the Greeks to find any Jewish leader that was dangerous for this Greek movement. But the Jews as a whole were not fighting. What changed everything, the real miracle, the biggest miracle of Chanukah, is what the women decided to do next. There are two big stories that I know.

10:14I'm sure there are many, many others. But one of them is the story of what all the women did. The women decided that they're seeing their men sitting, doing nothing against the Greeks. They're seeing their people being destroyed. They're seeing their Torah being destroyed. They're seeing that the connection with Hashem is getting worse and worse with everyone. And little by little, they're seeing the kids on the street that used to wear the Jewish clothes and go to Beit Knesset and go to Yeshiva. All of a sudden, they're wearing the clothes that the Greeks are wearing, whether it's tight jeans like people wear today, or the tight shirts, or the guys that, for some reason, guys today think that they all need to look like homosexuals. I don't know why, but for some reason, looking like you just came out of some type of plastic machine that wrapped the clothes really tight to you, That became very popular today. I think there was a rapper by the name of Lil Wayne that made it popular where he said you have to wear girls' jeans. Right? That's it. So he's rich and famous. So people, you know, he has $500 million to wear these girls' jeans. Fine. But what are you getting for wearing the girls' jeans? You're making him the $500 million. You're looking like the Greeks.

11:36So, for some reason, this is a disease amongst Israeli men. A lot of Israeli men, Jews in general, are doing it, and it's overall not just Jews, but a lot of people are doing it, and it's become a modesty problem for men. We've never had a modesty problem for men in history until today. Generally, the modesty problem has always been with women. But the modesty problem with women really wasn't around until the last hundred years or so. Even non-Jewish women used to be modest. If you look at... pictures of women that used to go to the beach a hundred years ago. They would go with gowns. They would look more modest than the most modest rebbetzin in the world today. And I'm talking about non-Jews. Of course, the Jews would be modest. So the problem was with the women, but today we have a problem with the women, obviously, but with the men, too. So I'm not really sure whether we're trying to compete with Sodom and Gomorrah or not, but things are deteriorating fast, and that's why

12:36We pray every day that Hashem saves us from it getting any worse when the Mashiach comes, because we're not really sure what's going to be left if we're around another generation. So now, the women back then saw that their children were getting worse and worse. They were not interested in Torah. They were not interested in Judaism. And the husbands were not doing anything about it. So each woman that gave birth, as soon as she gave birth, she took the kid, She'd go to the wall in Jerusalem, she'd climb the wall, and she'd jump off and kill herself. And before she jumped off and killed herself, she said, "If you're not going to fight for our nation, we might as well die now. At least we'll die Jewish." And she would actually give the kid a brit milah on the eighth day. She would wait eight days, give the child a brit milah, and then kill herself. He says, "You're already killing us anyway by not doing anything. Might as well die, but at least we're going to die Jewish. At least my child will die Jewish." This is courage that's beyond our understanding. When I saw this story, I thought, no one in the world can do something like this today. Even telling the story scares me. Thinking about a woman who just gave birth, still in bed...

13:59We should not think of climbing any walls, killing ourselves for this. Listen, they have problems. They have problems. Leave them alone. You just gave birth. You carried a kid for nine months. Oops. Who needs these problems from these people? That's what people today think. Back then it was very, very different. People were very close to Hashem, very attached to Hashem. They knew what the Torah meant. They knew what the connection was. And the woman realized that if she's not going to take control, there's not going to be Judaism. And without Judaism, there's nothing. Nothing for the Jews, nothing for the world. One of the parts in the Torah says, when Hashem speaks to Am Yisrael, He says that if it wasn't for the Jews keeping the Torah, there's no purpose for the world. None. So, Hashem says it Himself, if it's not for My covenant, which He's referring to the Torah, day and night,

14:59The rules of the heaven and the earth will cease to exist. The world will cease to exist instantly. Now, when this was first written a few thousand years ago, we all wondered how could, what Hashem is going to bring, He already said He's not going to bring another flood. So how could it be? After science discovered what has always been there, but finally discovered it themselves, discovered the atom, They realize that the world is not what we think it is. If you look at the world as we see it, everything looks solid. The TV that's here looks solid, the wall looks solid, you look solid, the rock looks solid, everything looks solid. In reality, nothing is solid. In reality, everything is made out of atoms. So, to... cut it short and not get too scientific, but to explain to you what this means is that everything that we have in the world, everything that exists, is made out of atoms. It's energy. Now, an atom has these two parts: it has the nucleus and it has the electron running around it pretty much. But the two parts are significantly different in size. So, for example, if one of them is this book, the other one is this entire city.

16:22It's a huge difference in size. And the separation between them, because it's so big, is like between us and the sun. Very, very big difference. So, in reality, most of the atom is completely empty space. There's nothing there. 99.9% of the atom is empty space. which means that 99% of everything that we see is completely empty space. We just see it as solid because it's spinning really, really fast. The way to understand this is that if you ever see a fan—okay, so we have a fan here—but if the fan goes much faster, then it looks like instead of there being five blades, there's one blade. Why does it look like there's only one blade? Because it's going really, really fast. You think there's only one blade. Once it slows down, it looks like there are two blades. Slows down a little more, then we see three or four. Slows down more, and we see now there are five. So you see, the fact that it's going much slower, we see more. But if it goes faster, we see much less of what reality is. The same concept applies to atoms. Because everything goes really, really fast, everything seems like it's solid. Now the question is,

17:44What happens if it stops spinning? Unlike the fan, which will show us that there are five blades, the atom will show us that there is nothing. That 99% of everything we see does not exist. It literally is nothing. So if the empty space is exposed, then everything would just disappear. And the entire universe, according to scientists, and also not too different from the Torah, the entire cosmos, the entire universe, everything, everything, everything, as far as the amount of matter, of actual stuff, that actually exists, could all fit into a box of matches. Most of everything we see is nothing. Why do I say this? Because G-d said, "If it's not for My covenant between Me and the nation of Israel, for them to learn Torah every day, If for one minute, for one second, no one in the world is learning some level of Torah, everything will just cease to exist. So the way we could visualize it now, with science helping us, is that how would it cease to exist? God said He's not going to bring the flood. He's not going to make a war. He doesn't need tanks or airplanes or atomic bombs. He'll just stop the atoms from spinning.

19:12And everything would just disappear as if it never existed. This is how important the Torah is. And the women that lived 2,000 years ago, who saved the Jewish people, knew this. They knew this much more than we know even after what we just learned. They knew Hashem. They didn't just believe in Him. That's the goal that every Jew needs to have: to know Hashem, to truly know that Hashem exists and not just believe that Hashem exists. Another significant story is the story of Yehudit. Yehudit saw that the men were not doing anything, so she decided that she's going to pretend like she wants to marry one of the Greek leaders. The Greeks made a law that before any Jewish woman is allowed to marry her husband, then she has to be with him first to make sure that he tries everything and she's not a virgin when she goes to her new husband. This is the wickedness of the Greeks because, again, for them, the body was everything. So if the body is everything, I only want the best. Why should I give it to these lowly Jews? So she said, okay, I'm going to take advantage of this stupidity that he has, and I'm going to make it seem as if I'm happy to do it.

20:35So she brought to him a bunch of cheeses, a bunch of Jewish cheeses. Now, if you eat a lot of cheese or eat anything heavy, you get sleepy. So she gave him this, and he saw she was bringing him wine, she was bringing him cheese, a celebration, everybody's happy, and she's feeding him and feeding him. He's like, "Oh, don't touch me yet. Listen, I want you to be happy." Eventually, he gets happy enough that he gets very, very tired, and he goes to sleep. and at that very moment, she takes a knife out of her bag and cuts off his head. She puts the head back in her bag, and then she goes back to her Jewish people, her Jewish brothers and sisters, and she takes the leader of the Greeks' head, one of the Caesars, and she says, "This is what I was able to do. How could I do this? And the rest of you are doing nothing." And this gave the Jewish people a lot of strength, a lot of courage. And it instilled a lot of fear in the Greeks. The Greeks said, "Our leader just died." One of the main things in war, what you do, is you try to kill the leaders. You know, the war with Iraq was over as soon as Saddam Hussein was done. Most of the, any war that was a major war, usually it's because the leader is done. You know, World War II was over, not because the Americans joined, not because the British finally started beating them. As soon as Hitler was out of the picture, the war was over.

22:02As soon as Hashem decided that it's time for this leader to go, it was over. So, Jewish women today need to understand that in Judaism and the Torah, they have much, much more power than the men. Much, much more significance in their position in Judaism than men do. Because you are responsible for the Jewish household. If you raise your kid to be Jewish, he will be Jewish his whole life. Of course, there are exceptions to the case, chas v'shalom, maybe he'll go off the derech, but if you give him a good foundation, you make sure that it doesn't matter what you have to do, whether you have to sell the televisions and the appliances to make sure that he goes to yeshiva, or you have to beg the rabbis to give you money so your kid can go to yeshiva and never step a foot into a public school, that's what you have to do as a mother. to be Jewish, he will be Jewish his whole life. Of course, there are exceptions to the case, chas v'shalom, maybe he'll go off the derech, but if you give him a good foundation, you make sure that it doesn't matter what you have to do, whether you have to sell the televisions and the appliances to make sure that he goes to yeshiva, or you have to beg the rabbis to give you money so your kid can go to yeshiva and never step a foot into a public school, that's what you have to do as a mother. How nice your house is, is not important. What's really important is whether your kid goes to yeshiva or not, whether your kid is going to have a Jewish education or not. Going to public school, you're destroying the kid. And the reason why you're destroying the kid is because he's going to be with a bunch of goyim. I'm not saying they're bad people, but they're not Jewish. So what's going to happen? He's going to wake up one day; he's 20 years old, and he says, "Hey, look, I have my girlfriend."

23:28She's not Jewish, but she was my friend for 20 years. There was nothing wrong with her for 20 years. Why is there something wrong with her now, Abba? Why is there something wrong with her now? You didn't tell me there was anything wrong for 20 years. Why is there something wrong now? Somebody came to Rabbi Ovadia, Zekher Tzadik Livracha, one time, and he said, "Rabbi, I have a big problem. My kid wants to marry a non-Jew." And he says, "What yeshiva?" And the father's crying, crying, crying. Rabbi Ovadia was very emotional. He was truly connected to people. He sees one of the fellow Jews crying. He starts crying with him. He says, "What yeshiva did you send your boy to?" "Yeshiva? No, no, no, he didn't go to yeshiva." "What kollel did he go to?" "No, no, no, he didn't go to kollel." "So you taught him all the Torah that he knows?" "No, no, he doesn't know Torah." "So what does he know?"

24:34He says, "I sent him to public school, and we did Kiddush once in a while." Rabbi Ovadia, despite loving Am Yisrael, told the truth even when it hurt. He said, "Rasha, wicked one, it's your fault. It's not his fault. He doesn't know anything. It's your fault. You knew. You were responsible for everything." And that's the thing that people don't understand. I spoke to a woman just the other day about Jewish education. I have a group on Facebook with a couple of thousand members. I post different shiurim, not just my own. I posted something about Jewish education, and it's like an eight-minute video by Rabbi Mizrachi that really hits home. One of the women says, "Yes, but if you don't have money, then public school has to do." A lot of people say, "Yeah, if you don't have money, then public school is the only answer." The reality is that if we really want something especially as a woman, you always find a way to get it. If you want something from your husband, you find a way to get it. If you want a brand new car, you find a way to get it. If you want to survive in life, you find a way to get it. Now, obviously, if you don't have money, then you have to find a way by going to the rabbi and asking for assistance. Yes, I know it's going to hurt your pride. I know it's not fun to go asking for money or asking for help. But you have to look at it a different way. You can't look at it like you're asking for money.

26:02You're asking the rabbi and this yeshiva, and if it's not one yeshiva, it's another one. If it's not another one, then another one. You keep going to different ones until you find one that's going to help you. And there's enough good Jews in the world that someone's going to help you. You keep doing it until you find one. Why? Because it's not about the school. It's about saving a neshama. You're making a path for your child to succeed. I'm not talking about just succeeding in life as far as money and career, but succeeding with a purpose in life. If your kid is going to be surrounded by non-Jews his whole life, then one day he's going to wake up and tell you, "Listen, I don't feel Jewish. There's no connection between me and the Creator." This is why we celebrate Chanukah, because Chanukah is a holiday that not only do we have miracles from above, of winning a war, being a giant army, a giant nation that hated Judaism as a whole. But Chanukah is a holiday that we celebrate Judaism. We celebrate being Jewish. And there was never a time that it was at more risk in the last 2,000 years than at this time 2,000 years ago with the Greeks. Because again, like I said, they weren't interested in killing Jews.

27:23And that's the thing that we have today. Today, we have a problem where many of the Jewish people today have no concept of what Judaism really is. And it starts with the Torah. Now, the Parashat HaShavua, Parashat Miketz, is usually read during the time of Chanukah. Not always, but usually it is. And it's a continuation of the story we went over in last week's shiur. We talked about Yosef and how his brothers sold him purely out of jealousy. But not jealousy in the sense that they felt he was better than them and wanted to take advantage of the fact that they were many and he was few. But... jealousy in the sense that they felt that he has a deeper connection with their father that maybe he doesn't deserve. Because they felt that with his dreams and the interpretation that he had with his dreams, maybe he's really trying to ruin the plan that the family has. Because he says that one day all of you are going to bow down to me. Now, according to the prophecy that Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov have had and will be given from God,

28:41There's not going to be one, one of the tribes that's going to lead all of them. So they're saying, you know, there's supposed to be 12 tribes, 12 sons. This one son is saying that he's going to lead all of us. This doesn't seem like it fits the prophecy. Maybe he's trying to ruin the plan. Maybe he's trying to take over. So it's our obligation to kill him. But maybe we're wrong. So instead of killing him, we'll sell him. So that way there's no blood on our hands. But they told Yaakov, they told their father that they sold him. They told their father that he died from an animal. So now, at the end of last week's parashah, they talk about Yosef being in jail after the whole incident with Potiphar's wife. Yosef was not willing to violate Potiphar’s wife, even though she was begging him to do it. He knew that he was not allowed to be with a married woman, which is nonetheless also a problem today. People don't see that as a big deal. Not only do people not think that it’s a big deal, but there are actually some couples that ask each other to be with each other's wives today.

30:01Because they think that may stimulate the passion in their home. So, I'm saying all of these things because they're real. Because that's the world we live in today. As much as it's awful to hear, it's as real as it gets. This is the world we live in. This is everything that people need to understand of why we need the Torah. It's not about wanting the Torah. We need it because... As long as we don't have the Torah, things like being with other people's wives, walking around half-naked or completely naked, killing, stealing, and pretty much every rule that God gave us seem like an elective. Seem like it's, I could do it or not do it. Being nice becomes something subjective. It's a, I'm nice based on my own definition. Hitler thought he was being nice. He believed, truly, that he was doing the world a favor by killing all of the Jews. It wasn't that he thought he was evil. He didn't wake up every morning and say, "Oh, I want to be the most evil man in the world." He thought he was doing the world a favor. This is what happens when you don't have Torah in your life. When you don't have directions from the Creator, from the manufacturer, on how to use the product.

31:27There's no telling how wrong you'll use it. You can have a phone, but you've never seen a phone before. So, to you, it's just a box. So you think, oh, maybe this is a weapon. Maybe I'm supposed to throw it at people. Or maybe this is a cup holder. Or maybe this is something I'm supposed to put into my dishwasher just to hold it together. Who knows what it is? Without following the instructions, there's no telling how wrong you're going to be. There's no limit to how wrong we're going to be. As smart as we are, we're not smarter than the Creator, not even 1% of Him. So Hashem gave us the Torah because He knows that this is the only way we're going to survive. We need the Torah because we need to understand that it's the only way we're going to survive. Even during this time, even though we haven't received the Torah until almost several hundred years after this whole story, at Har Sinai, the sages and the forefathers, the forefathers of Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov and all of their children were following the Torah, most of the Torah. So Yosef goes to jail and then he has an incident where these two cellmates have a dream. He interprets their dream. One of them dies, the other one gets his job back, being the wine, the cupbearer for Pharaoh. And Yosef asks him to remember him

32:54once he gets his job back. Now, because Yosef asked him twice, he asked him the first time, "Remember me, once you get back to your job," and then at the end of the interpretation, he said it again, "Don't forget me. Remember me, mention me to Paro, I'm innocent, I've been here for 10 years already." That was already too much hishtadlut, too much effort on Yosef's level, and Hashem punished him by adding two more years to his sentence. Each one of us is required to have some level of effort in order for us to survive. The amount of effort versus the amount of emunah, the amount of faith you have to have in Hashem, all depends. If you have 100% faith that Hashem is going to help you, then all you need to do is learn Torah all day, you don't ever have to worry about money, and money will come. But if you worry about money, If you're worrying about how you're going to survive, that means that you don't have 100% faith. Maybe it's 90%, maybe it's 60%, maybe it's 30%. So the amount of effort you have to exert is based on how much emunah you have. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that all of us need to stop working tomorrow and just get into a room, close the doors, and learn Torah. Each person has his own job in the world. But it's very, very important to have a serious amount of emunah, which you have to work on on a daily basis, not just something you're born with.

34:19And use the amount of effort that is what's necessary. Not necessarily, you know, if you're working 18 hours a day, you pretty much have no emunah whatsoever in Hashem. You're thinking that you're the one who's going to make the money. If you're working a normal day, and then you make time for the family, you make time to learn Torah, okay, fine, then you're doing what you need to do. But if you have no time for Torah because you're working all the time, because you think that you need to make money, then you have to know that you have zero emunah. You and Hashem don't have much of a connection. This is as real as it gets. Because if you really believe that Hashem created the heaven and the earth, then that means that you would believe that if you do what He says, He would provide for you. Every day when we read Birkat HaMazon, anytime you eat bread, you have to do Birkat HaMazon. at the end of Birkat HaMazon, it says, I've been young, I've been old, and I've never seen a righteous person ever starve. It's no such thing. If you do what Hashem says, of course, Hashem is going to feed you. He's not going to make you starve because you're learning Torah. So, work, as far as how much time you spend at work, is, again, you have to make sure that work is in order to

35:41show your effort, but Torah has to be a priority. Now, when Yosef asked on his level, he made too much effort. He was supposed to ask once. Okay, you want to ask for help from this guy that you helped, that Hashem gave you everything, and you know, to translate the dream, you want to tell him, listen, mention it to Paro, fine. Once he asked the second time, Hashem said, no, you crossed the line for that, you're going to get punished for each request. you're in jail for another two years. Now, the beginning of this parashah says, it happened at the end of the two years to the day Paro was dreaming that, behold, he was standing over the river. When, behold, out of the river there emerged seven cows of beautiful appearance and robust flesh, and they were grazing in the marshland. So Paro has this dream. First of all, it's telling us at the end of two years, which shows that it's at the end of two years exactly. So this is to teach us that when Hashem gives us some type of punishment, it's exact. The same thing when He gives us any type of reward. It's exact. He's very precise. No one will ever suffer even an extra minute more than they need to. This we also learn when Yosef's brothers sold him; instead of him being sent to Egypt in a typical caravan that's usually full of oil and tar, which smells very bad,

37:07Hashem made those merchants carry perfume. So at least throughout that whole journey, he didn't suffer from a bad smell. Because, okay, he had to suffer, but not that much. Hashem limited the suffering to remind Yosef, "Hey, listen, I'm with you. There's only a limited amount of suffering that you're going to get, and I'm going to limit it." Same thing here. Exactly after the 12 years, the suffering was over. This gives us a lot of hope when we go through life and we have problems. There's not a person in the world that doesn't have problems. The Jewish nation has countless problems. We have people that are chasing us with knives. We have people that are trying to evict us from countries. They're trying to boycott us. Every single thing that you can imagine is happening. And it's not just in faraway lands. It's happening in America. It's happening in Israel. It's happening at home. You know, not too long ago, there was a murder in Florida, you know, just an innocent Jew going to shul, and some crazy kid decided to murder him. We have problems non-stop. We need to understand that anything that Hashem decrees is very precise. So when we're going through our problems, we need to pray, not because we need to pray

38:33because we think that, hey, listen, maybe Hashem made a mistake. Whatever Hashem decided, it's for our best interest. When Job got all the punishment that he had in the Book of Job, his wife was telling him, why do you even bother praying to this God still? And he says, foolish woman. Hashem natan, Hashem lakach, yehi shem Hashem mevorach. God gave, God took. It says anyway, may His name be blessed. But then, as he kept going through more and more problems, when God spoke to him through prophecy, he said, before that actually, he said, maybe God made a mistake. Maybe He thinks that Job in Hebrew is Iyov. And Iyov, if you change one of the letters, and you move it to another place, it spells Oyev. Oyev means enemy. He says, maybe God thinks that instead of me being Iyov, I'm really Oyev. I'm an enemy.

39:34So when God spoke to him in prophecy, He said, "I know every single one of the hairs on your head; I know its name. Apparently, each one of our hairs has a name. I know each one of its names. I created the heaven and the earth. Every single thing that moves in this world, everything that operates, He knows it. No, He doesn't give it to anybody else to do. He does everything." you think I made a mistake with your name, to think that you're an enemy? No, you were supposed to get this and that's it. So when we pray, it's not that we pray that Hashem made a mistake. We pray that Hashem have even extra mercy to maybe make it end a little sooner. Because we can't handle it. We can't handle it. But in reality, it's good to know that all bad things come to an end. Eventually, it comes to an end, whether it's an illness or it's financial difficulties or or any type of difficulty, it's going to end. The secret to making it end faster is to connect to the One who gave it to you. Give Him a reason. Now, if I was to go to a king of flesh and blood and I said, listen, I have some financial problems, and I showed up to this king of flesh and blood, do you think I would show up with shorts and a t-shirt? No, right? No.

41:00And especially the shorts and t-shirts that are dirty and maybe one of them has a hole. Probably not, right? So Yosef will be here. It says that before he got to Pharaoh, they dressed him up. They ran him out of the jail, which also shows that as soon as the punishment was over, Hashem made them actually make him run out of the jail to translate Pharaoh's dream. Vayeiritzu. Vayeiritzu means they rushed him. Pharaoh sent, you know, he was looking for somebody to translate these dreams. But none of his people were able to translate these dreams. Until this cupbearer finally remembered this Hebrew, this Jew that was in jail with him two years ago that helped him out. And he says, oh, listen, don't kill all of us. Because Pharaoh got really, really upset. He says, listen, I'm paying all of you guys a lot of money to be interpreters of dreams, to be the wise people. Apparently, you're all fools and liars. If somebody doesn't translate my dream today, you're all dying. So the cupbearer realizes, okay, we're all going to die, we're going to have to find something. Finally, desperate times call for desperate measures. He remembers this Hebrew that was in jail. So when they're bringing him, he tells Pharaoh, listen, when I was in jail two years ago, I met this Hebrew, this slave, this young guy. He gives him a really bad description to show that even when a wicked person does you a favor, it's still not 100% favorable.

42:30It's like he's giving you the money, but in reality, he's kind of pulling it back or he's trying to find a way to steal it from you. He's lending you money, but he also made you sign a contract that 95% of all profits go to him. So you're never going to be ahead. He's charging you 80% interest. That's a wicked person. So he's giving a description to Pharaoh. And Pharaoh makes some calls on him. They run him out of this dungeon. and not even moments later, the punishment is pretty much over. They dress him up, they shave him, they dress him very appropriately. Now, if I was at this, back to me talking to this king of flesh and blood, if I came to this king of flesh and blood and I said, listen, I have some financial problems...

43:33Would I say it in a way where I'm cursing and yelling at him and maybe even tell him, "Listen, you owe me. You owe me this money." Why do I owe you? "I don't know. I just feel like you're the king. You have a lot of money. Give it to me." Most likely, the king is going to kill me at the very least, right? He's not going to answer me with a positive response. Absolutely. So, we have to understand that when we're requesting stuff from the real King... From the King above us, when we show up to ask Hashem for things, whether it's for parnassah, whether it's for a zivug, whether to find a partner, a wife or a husband, whether it's for children, whether it's for any type of salvation whatsoever, we have to show up with something. We can't demand. Hashem doesn't owe us anything. He's the King. We're here to serve Him. It's not He to serve us. He's not Santa Claus. So we have to show up with something. Now, what do we show up with? What can we possibly offer Someone that has everything? Our mitzvot. It's the only thing He wants from us. Okay, Hashem, listen. Until now I wasn't modest. I wasn't modest. From now on, I'm going to be modest. But you can't say from now on

44:55If you give me this stuff, Hashem. Now, first you're modest. First, you take the step. You say, "Look, Hashem, I've been modest for the last week. Look, Hashem, I've been modest for the last six months. I'm learning more Torah. I'm being more observant. I'm keeping better kosher." You're doing so. You're showing up to Hashem with some type of report. "Look, Hashem, I'm being a good boy. Look, Hashem, I'm being a good girl. I'm doing what You want me to do." The best thing about Hashem is that once you start doing what He wants you to do, you don't have to ask. But even if you get to a point where you need to ask, at least you have something to show for it. Now, Yosef, what did he have to show for it to a king of flesh and blood? The king of flesh and blood asks him. Pharaoh asks him, "Listen, I heard about you translating dreams." "No, I don't translate dreams. It's beyond me. Only if God wants you to know the dream, He's going to give it to me. But me, I don't know. I'm just a human." Between you and me, if I was in jail for 12 years and somebody asked me, "Can you translate dreams?" I would tell them, "Yeah, sure, how many do you want? Just don't put me back in jail." Right? But Yosef was a tzaddik and told the truth. So now, he translates the dreams. He gives a message telling them, "Listen, you're going to have seven years of abundance where you're going to make a lot of money. The stock market is going to go up every day."

46:24Like it's been going since 2009, the market's been going up on a daily basis. Everything's going to be fine. You're going to have a surplus. But then there's going to be seven years of famine. The market's going to crash, and it's going to crash so badly, they're going to forget that it was ever good. Which, by the way, personally, I've been predicting the market's going to crash for the last couple of years. Obviously, I've been wrong. But I still think that it's going to crash very soon. Not because of a profit, but just because nothing makes sense. Nothing makes sense. The fact that you have technology companies that barely make any money being valued at 50, 60, 70 billion dollars. The fact that you have some companies that are in business for less than 10 years, make a few dollars, but they have better valuations than companies like Walmart and Coca-Cola. A lot of things don't make any sense. But people are stupid, and they're going to continue paying for these companies and for these stocks. And then when it crashes like it did in 2008, it's like, "Oh, I knew it was going to happen." So why didn't you sell? "No, I just didn't think it was going to happen then." Okay, but once it started, why didn't you sell? "No, I..." So that's the thing. No one knew anything. It's because people are too greedy to really change their ways. People always think that they're going to win. So now...

47:46Yosef is telling Paro, listen, you could be like those people, or you could be smart. You could find a very smart person that not only knows finance, knows money, but also somebody that knows how to preserve food. It's not just putting the food in a bunch of boxes and hoping for the best. So Paro saw that this kid is special. The reason why he saw he's special is because when he translated his dream... Paro tried to test Yosef. He wanted to see if he was really just coming up with whatever description he had. So as Paro is telling him the dream, he's changing the dream. He's not really telling him his dream. He's telling him, okay, so there were seven cows, but then there were three mice walking around. Now, Chazal say that Yosef also dreamt the same dream the night before.

48:46He saw his dream. But Paro was not a fool, right? Paro was a genius. He was also a chacham. He was very smart and very powerful. So that's why he's testing Yosef. He's saying, if this guy knows my dream, if he really is a dream interpreter, then he's going to catch me making a mistake in the dream. But if he's just a ba'al agada, if he's just one of those guys, he's going to tell me, okay, seven cows mean seven million dollars. Seven other cows mean seven billion dollars. He's going to tell me whatever he wants. How do I know it's true? So he tries to test him in an unusual way by making mistakes when he's telling him the dream. And each time he says something fake, Yosef stops him and says, no, no, no, you didn't dream that. There were no seven, there were no mice. It was only the seven cows. So every time he would do it, Yosef would correct him. It got so much to the point that by the end of the dream, Paro was telling him, were you watching my dream? How do you know this stuff? There's something unusual about this kid. So at the end, after he tells him everything that's going to happen, Paro looks at his other servants, all of his government members, all of the people that he has. Could we find another like him? A man in whom is the spirit of God? God is in this person. He knows things that no one else could possibly tell you that they know. Okay, maybe this guy can make a stick turn into a snake.

50:14or maybe this one can do a few magic tricks here and there, but it's not real. It's illusion. This kid actually knows my dream. This kid actually knows a lot. Can't find anybody like him. The reason why he asked the servants is because there was a lot of anti-Semitism at the time. The Egyptians hated the Jews already, so much so that they wouldn't even eat at the same table as them. And that's why later on in this parashah, when Joseph sits down with his brothers to eat. His servants, and he himself, are sitting at different tables. He can't show that he's Jewish to his brothers. And his servants, under no condition, would ever sit with a bunch of ten Jews. They felt like we're a disease. So, Pharaoh, even though he's Pharaoh, he's telling them, listen, forget about whether we like them or not. There's nobody like this kid.

51:15This is something, this is something better than all of us. Another thing is that Paro, in order to, there was a rule in Egypt, according to the Gemara, that the person who spoke the most languages would become Paro. Now Paro, he had a throne that wasn't just a seat like we see in the movies. His throne had steps. He was sitting on top of the throne; there were many, many steps. Over 70 steps. So with every step, he would speak to Yosef in a language. If Yosef knew the language, he would speak back to him in that language, and he would take one step. And then Yosef would speak in a language, and Paro would speak in that language, and he would take another step. Now Paro was so smart, he knew 70 languages. 70 languages. Yosef had a miracle happen the night before. An angel came down, Gavriel came down, the angel Gavriel came, Hashem sent Gavriel, and he tried to teach him 71 languages. It was too much for Yosef's human body, so Hashem just gave it to him. He just gave him all 71 languages. So when he arrived at the throne, after 70, both of them knew 70, and then finally Yosef speaks Lashon HaKodesh.

52:42the 71st language, which Pharaoh didn't know. So Pharaoh says, listen, there's no one like you, but I'm going to make a deal. You can't tell anyone that you know one more language than me, but I'll make you king. I'll give you, no one will be more powerful than you. Only I can oversee you. And that's what he says over here. Pharaoh says to Joseph, "I am Pharaoh, and without you, no man may lift his hand or foot in all of the land of Egypt." And he gives him a special name, Tzafnat Paneach. And then he gets him a wife, which has a story of its own. But nonetheless, it's not just because he translated the dream. But in reality, he showed him something that, if the Egyptians found out about the 71 languages that Joseph knew... It would make him king. It would make him king anyway. So, Joseph made a swear, he made a neder. And this neder, a neder is a swear in Judaism. He made a promise, a swear, that he will never tell anyone that he knows more languages than Pharaoh. Later on, this comes in very key, once Joseph's father, many years later, about 20 or so years later, 17 years later, dies, and Joseph wants to go bury his father.

54:07dies, and Yosef wants to go bury his father. Pharaoh doesn't want Yosef to leave. He's the king. They're making a lot of money because of him. Everything is great. They're almost worshipping this young man. Pharaoh doesn't want him to leave. So, Yosef says to Pharaoh, listen, I swore to my father that I would bury him in the cave of Machpelah. Now, if you tell me that I can't, you being the king... if you tell me that I can't keep this swear and I have to cancel the swear I made to my father, that means I also have to cancel the swear that I made to you 20 years ago. And I have to tell everybody that I speak 71 languages. And that was the only reason why Pharaoh let Yosef go bury his father in a different place. So now, moving on, you have Yosef, in a matter of moments, going from being in a dungeon for 12 years suffering, to now he's the most powerful man in the world. No one could do anything without him. The Midrash says that on that day, Pharaoh gave Yosef gifts of fields, estates, as well as 300 hundredweights of gold and 300 hundredweights of silver. Now,

55:37in today's numbers, that sum was in the neighborhood of about $400 or $450 million. He gave them on his first day at his job. It's a nice boss to have. It's a nice bonus. It's better than Goldman Sachs. So Yosef didn't just have a position. Now he became very, very rich too. Now during the next seven years, it happened as Yosef said, And the dream, he translated the dream. If anyone wants to know a little bit more about dreams, I talked about it last night at my house. I speak extensively about dreams. I don't want to go over the same thing, so you should watch the video. I sent it to you, and anyone that wants the videos, you can either subscribe or just give me your email or phone number, and I could text it to you. But everything that he said in his dream happened, and these next seven years... They're making a lot of money, and Yosef is preserving all of this extra food. A few other people who were smart also tried to preserve the food. But after seven years, when the famine starts, another miracle happens, and all of the other people who tried to preserve food, their food goes bad. And the only food that's preserved is the food that Yosef preserved. So...

57:02putting Yosef in a position of significant power, giving him a monopoly. Now the Egyptians had some reserves. That goes away. They want to get some more food. They come to Pharaoh. They come to Yosef. Yosef says, "No, okay, if you want the food, circumcise yourselves." "Why do we have to circumcise ourselves? We're not Jewish." Joseph knew that all this anti-Semitism was going to continue, especially because he knew that his brothers would eventually come. His family was going to come. The Jewish people were going to come. The 70 people that were in the family of Yaakov at the time. The 70 people that were there... There were 70 Jews in the world. 70 Hebrews or Israelites. They were going to come to Egypt.

58:03And you're going to make fun of them because they have circumcision. You're going to call them half a man, half of this. So, I don't want my family to be made fun of because of God's laws. So, if you want food, circumcise yourselves. So they all go to him; they don't want to circumcise themselves. They all run to Paro. Paro says, listen, He's the one with the power. Do whatever he says. Look at everything that's happened. When we were making money the first seven years, I said, okay, maybe he got lucky. We made some money because of him. But once the famine started, once exactly the timing, the whole world started losing money, except us. It wasn't just a famine in Egypt. It was a worldwide famine. No one had food. The only place in the world that had food was Egypt, was Yosef. So this may, if... Pharaoh was rich before Yosef got there. Right now, there's no limit to how much he has. If he was a billionaire, now he's a multi-trillionaire. Because imagine, one person in the entire world has food. You pay whatever he wants, whatever he wants. He wants to charge you a million dollars for an apple, you pay him a million dollars for an apple.

59:30So now you have a situation where they have to circumcise themselves, and a couple of years pass into this famine. It gets worse and worse. It reaches a point where Yaakov and his children are starting to feel the pain back at home. So this was really the plan of Yosef, where he says, eventually, my family is going to come. And he told all of the servants, "The day is going to come, give me a description of these few people. If they walk into this city, you let me know right away. But also make sure anyone that's buying food has to be the guy that wants to buy the food. You can't send a servant to buy food for him, because I want to see every person that's buying food. I can't tell them it's because I'm looking for my brothers." So he had a whole plan of how to make sure that when his brothers eventually come, he's going to see them. Now, the last time he saw his brothers was 22 years ago. Last time he was a little 17-year-old kid. No beard, clean-shaven. So when his brothers finally come, Yaakov sends them. He says, listen, go to Egypt. I hear they're the only ones that have food. Go there, but make sure that...

1:00:53All of you, don't go into the same gate. Go into ten different gates. He said, ten out of the eleven. Binyamin stayed home. He said, ten out of the eleven. He said, go to ten different gates. The reason why you have to go to ten different gates is because if everyone sees you coming out of the same gate, and they know you're all from the same family, and they see you have so much, they give you the evil eye. So this shows that the evil eye is very real. It's not some illusion or some superstition. The evil eye is 100% real. Which, by the way, the Gemara says... Anyone that is scared of the evil eye or something, you know, they should do what Yaakov teaches us. You take your right hand and your left hand, you take the two thumbs, you put them like this, you say, "I am from the seed of Yosef HaTzadik, and he is above the evil eye." And then there's another verse, "Ben Porat Yosef."

1:01:53And then you see this verse that Yaakov says as the blessing for Yosef HaTzadik before he dies. And it's something that protects you against the evil eye. The other thing that protects you against the evil eye is praying to Hashem. That's the best thing. Every time you say there's good news, always say Baruch Hashem. If there's bad news, always say Baruch Hashem. If you want something, say Be'ezrat Hashem. Everything you do Blessing of Hashem or with Hashem's help? Always involve and make Hashem a constant part of your speech. Make Him a constant part of your life. The more you mention Hashem during your day, the more connected you are going to be to Him. But if you're only connecting to Hashem through prayer, okay, so you pray in the morning, you pray in the afternoon, okay, so you connect with Him twice a day? Okay, so you do a blessing here and there. You connect with Him five times a day? Fine, that's good, it's not bad. But what if you, instead of fine, you connect with Him a thousand times? It doesn't require that much effort. Would you say it in the, I mean, in a straightforward manner, or would you just say it for yourself? You could say it for yourself, you could say it when people speak to you, it's up to you. You know, again, you have to say Hashem because you can't use the real name of Hashem. Right. That's the third commandment, you're not allowed to use His name in vain, which means just saying the real name of Hashem casually, you're not allowed. That's what I mean by that. Right.

1:03:22That's why we say Hashem. Hashem means "the Name." So we're not actually saying a name; we're saying "the Name." The real name is the one that we use during prayer. It's one of the real names. So now we're not allowed to use that. We say Hashem. Hashem means "the Name." You can say Hashem as many times as you want. To you, it means the same thing, but obviously, you're still giving His name so much respect that you're not actually saying it. But again, you should make it a part of your language, make it a part of your speech because that can help you stay connected and remind you, especially during difficult times. There's not a day that goes by that people don't have a difficult time. Whether it's an employee, a boss, a customer, some driver that just cut you off, or a police officer that pulled you over. or somebody that's robbing you, or somebody that's cheating you. It's constant problems. It's a constant balagan every day. When somebody says, "Where are you going?" or "What are you doing today?" Oh, b'ezrat Hashem, I'm supposed to do ABC. That already reminds us that, hey, He's here. It subconsciously reminds you

1:04:42that He's in control. Don't worry. Whatever's happening, He wants it to happen. It's for your interest. So make Hashem a constant part of your speech because that reminds you consciously and subconsciously that He is a permanent part of your life. So now, after Yosef makes all of these elaborate laws to make sure that when his brothers arrive, he sees them. The brothers arrive, all ten of them. They all go to ten different gates, and after a few days, he hears about them, but then they don't show up. So then Yosef sends his soldiers to go look for these ten people. He gives a description of what these people look like. Even though he hasn't seen them in 22 years, he remembers how the older ones look. So he gives a description; they get arrested, and they're all brought to his house. to Yosef. Now, Yosef, obviously they can't recognize him. It's been 22 years. He has a beard now. He's not a 17-year-old kid. But he recognizes them. And to make sure that they don't recognize him, he doesn't speak their language. He doesn't speak Hebrew. He speaks to them through an interpreter. And he speaks very harshly.

1:06:08very mean to them. "Oh, you're spies." "No, no, no, we're not spies." "No, you're spies. Why would you come through ten different gates unless you're spying for someone else?" "No, really, we're looking for our brother." "Which brother are you looking for?" And they tell him, "We have twelve brothers from the same father. One of them is gone and one of them is still with our father." And he said, "What if I," the Midrash says that he asks them, what if I found this brother of yours, or if someone found this brother of yours, but he didn't want to give him back to you? And then you respond to him, "We would fight until either they're dead or we're dead to save this brother of ours." And this really made Yosef see that maybe there's a possibility that they changed. So now, he goes back and forth with them. He's constantly calling them spies. They're trying to convince him they're not spies. He throws all of them in jail. They're in jail for three days.

1:07:35After three days, he says, "Okay, you know what? I'm not going to be like you. I have some mercy on this family of yours that's waiting back at home. So I'm going to give you guys a chance by sending nine of you back home. I'm going to keep Shimon, the brother, in jail. So if you want him back, you have to come back. Not only all nine of you, but you have to come back with this eleventh brother of yours that you say you have. Because if you really have another brother, then you'll bring him. If you don't have another brother, then obviously..." you know, then I was routing you as our spies and I'll track you down and kill all of you. Now, the big question here is: why were the ten brothers so scared of Yosef? Because what we learned in last week's parashah is that they were all big warriors with supernatural powers. Mm-hmm. Actually, in last week's shiur, we talked about how the source of all superheroes, like X-Men and all the superheroes you see in the movies today, the whole concept of superheroes comes from the Torah. It actually comes from the Twelve Tribes. Because if you see the Midrash, you see the Oral Torah that talks about the wars that they fought, and it gives you real details, how they jumped over giant walls.

1:08:58and they picked up boulders, killing 20, 30, 40,000 men in a day. You know, just the 10 of them. I'm not talking about them and an army of 50,000 people. So they had superpowers. So why were these 10 people so scared of this one guy? There are two answers to that. Number one is the obvious answer that we see in today's world, which is Am Yisrael always seeks peace first. under all conditions, even if it requires us to suffer. You see this in today's world with Israel. Even though the Israeli government is not exactly an observant Jewish government, they're still Jewish nonetheless. And you see that when we go to war with the terrorists, we do things that no other government in their right mind would ever do. There was a video recently posted by Prager University of a commander from the United Kingdom Army talking about how the Israeli army, the IDF, is the most civil and most merciful army in the history of war. Because he said, "I was at war with them on their side a couple of years ago when they were going against Hamas. And because they did not want to hurt

1:10:29they would actually call the terrorist house and put flyers in the street telling them that they're going to bomb the neighborhood. They're going to bomb specific houses. Now, when you're in war, civilians die. It's unfortunate, but it's collateral damage. It happens. Now, America did not call Saddam Hussein's friends and tell them, listen, by the way, we're going to bomb your castle before they did it. Japan did not call America before they bombed Pearl Harbor and say, by the way, the surfers that are hanging out there, tell them not to go to the beach today because we're going to bomb. No one does this. But the Israeli army, that comes from the root of Yaakov, says, listen, we don't want to kill civilians. We know that you have bombs in this house. So the few of you that, you know, don't want to die and hopefully are not terrorists, leave. And it would put hundreds of thousands, millions of flyers all over the streets telling people that they're going to bomb this place. So this shows you that in order to be a Jew, you have to have mercy. But Am Yisrael has even beyond the mercy of a normal human being. And Yosef says, I have mercy. I'm going to let you go. Bring food to your families. But you've got to go bring me back this kid.

1:11:52this other. Why do you want this one brother? Because that was his natural brother. The other brothers came from different mothers. Binyamin is the only one that came from the same mother, from Rachel. Now when they go back to tell Yaakov what happened, Shimon is back there. We have all this food, but we lost one of our brothers. It's not exactly the best news in the world. Yaakov is not very happy with them. And especially when Reuven tells him, listen, in order for us to get Shimon back, we have to bring Binyamin over there. Binyamin, we have to bring over there. It's a big problem. He's not willing to do it, and Reuven tells him, Reuven, the oldest brother, tells him, listen, I'll take the responsibility, and if I don't bring him back, you can kill both of my kids. So the Midrash says that... Jacob ignored him, saying, "What a fool my firstborn son is, thinking that his two sons are not my two sons also, that I would kill them. What kind of deal is this? You're telling me that if you don't bring one of my sons, I should kill two more sons? How does that make any sense?" But Reuven didn't really mean "kill my sons." He meant, you know, "I'm going to take responsibility. I'm really serious. I'm very passionate."

1:13:18Now, having passion when you're speaking is very, very important because when you speak from the heart, people will listen. Sometimes, having too much passion is not exactly the most effective thing. So there's a good story where this one guy was trying to teach his kid Torah. Trying to teach his kid Torah, and the kid just doesn't learn, you know. Doesn't speak a word. He's three years old, hasn't spoken a word. Nothing. So he's trying to teach the first words to this kid. He wants to teach him "Baruch Atah Hashem," something. The kid is not saying one word. One day, two days, one week, two weeks, three weeks, he's not speaking. He's thinking this kid is, I don't know, a fool, or maybe there's something wrong with him. So one day he takes him with him to the market, to the Israeli market. In Israel, it doesn't matter whether it's the year 2015 or 1915, there are certain parts of Israel that are still like the old days. So even today, you go to the middle of Tel Aviv, you're always going to find a guy with a donkey and watermelons, carrying watermelons. And the guy with the donkey with the watermelons screams, "Avatiach al hasakin," which means watermelon on the knife, like you get fresh watermelon. And the guy is screaming at the top of his lungs.

1:14:39So he passed by this watermelon salesman, and the kid, two minutes later, starts saying, "watermelon on the knife." So the father says, "I'm trying to teach this kid Torah for three weeks. This fool kid doesn't want to listen to anything. He listens to this watermelon salesman for two minutes, and he already says it." He goes to the rabbi and tells him, "Well, my kid has something wrong with him." The rabbi goes, "No." So when you were trying to teach him Torah, you were just trying to teach him to get it over with. The guy that's selling watermelons is thinking about, if I don't sell these watermelons, they're going to evict me out of my house. And when he says "watermelons," he's trying to sell them with all of his heart. If you're going to teach Torah, teach it with all your heart. Don't be a computer. If you want to teach your kids something, teach it with all your heart. Don't be one of these people who just go through the motions. put some passion into it. Show him that you care. Be involved. The most important thing in education is to be involved. You have to make it like you're learning also. Even if you're not learning. Even if your kid is six years old and obviously you know the math that he's learning. You know the English that he's learning. You know the Torah that he's learning. Even if you know all of it, act like you're learning also. Because if you're excited about it,

1:16:06They're going to be excited about it. But if you look at it like A, B, C, and if you're boring, they're going to think it's boring. Where are they going to go? Mommy, I hate school. Why do you hate school? What did school do to you? Did somebody beat you up? No. Did the teacher make fun of you? No. Then why? I don't know. There's no reason. They just hate school. Why do they hate school? They hate school because of you. Because you're showing them that it's boring. You tell them it would. And you're watching the TV on the side. I can't wait for this to be over. It's like you're praying to Hashem that this homework is going to be over. It's like, you know what, honey? Go play. I'll do the homework for you. And you do the homework for the kid. It's the worst thing you can do. Go watch TV. I'll finish the homework for you. You can't take it. You're killing your kid. You're destroying him. He's going to hate school. He's going to hate school. It's not good. School is very important. One of the most important things that people need to understand about school is that even though most of what you learn, especially in public school, you're not going to use in real life. So what's the point of school? School teaches you how to think. It's not that you need to know history and what Antiochus did 2,300 years ago.

1:17:29Antiochus is not coming back from the dead. He's not going to talk to you. He's not going to ask you, "Do you remember me?" It's not that you need to remember who the first president of the United States was. Before you die, they're not going to ask you, "Listen, before you die, we need to ask you, do you know who the first president was?" No one cares. No one's going to ask you if you know what the cosine or the tangent of a number is in math. No one's going to ask you if you know the square root of 81. None of that stuff is actually used in real life. The point of all of it, whether it's grade school, kindergarten, high school—all of them being Jewish organizations for Jews—and even college, is to teach you how to think. If you're going to go to college, the reality is that most of the time you're going to spend in college is a complete waste of money. The only valuable time you have is probably the last, you know, maybe your junior year. your third year, maybe part of your senior year. Most of college is just partying and wasting Abba and Ima's money because most kids don't know anything about what they want to do. And even if they finish school, they still don't know if they want to do it. And even if they want to do it, if it's a real job, they have to go to more school. So, if you're going to school...

1:18:51You know, regular school, obviously, you have to already go into it thinking that school is going to teach me how to think, how to make my brain work. The beauty about the Torah is that if you teach a kid from being a young kid Torah, by the time he's 12 or 13 years old, his brain is sharper than any doctor you have in the world. At 13 years old, if you learned Gemara at 13 years old, bring any doctor you want in the world, the kid's going to be smarter than him. Because the Gemara teaches you to work your brain in a completely different way, it takes you to a different level. Any yeshiva kid, someone that really learns, I'm not talking about somebody that learns an hour a day, but someone who truly learns Torah, a serious student, even a teenager, can be smarter than anybody you want in the world. It completely changes your brain. And it's never too late. It doesn't mean that the kid has to be born with the Gemara in his hand. Even if you start at 40 years old, never learned a page of Gemara, you start now. After 5, 6, 7, 10 years of serious studying, you're going to start looking at the world like it's two different places. You can't recognize the world you live in. You can't even recognize yourself from 10 years ago. It changes your brain completely. The Torah has something, not only spiritual in it, but it's also something that makes you think in a completely unusual way compared to secular knowledge. So,

1:20:20First thing is to teach us how to think. As far as if you're going to go for a career in the world and you're going to go to college for it, then it better be a meaningful career. If you're already going to work, I always tell people, listen, as far as business, I spent some time in the business world. We had some big successes at times. I've decided to spend my life to be in the Torah world now and It's not because I can't get a job. It's not because of any other reason other than the fact that I think that God needs more Jews than He does need business people. That doesn't necessarily mean that everybody has to do it. He gave me a gift. I could speak. I like to learn. So, the two go together and I can influence people to do teshuvah. And, Baruch Hashem, we've had a lot of success doing it. But, at the same token, this knowledge that He's given me about business over all these years and the experience that I have, I still have it. So, I try to help people with business. And I tell them, listen, if you're already going to do business, at least do it the right way. Don't go there and waste your time. If you're going to go to work and just make $5 an hour, while the guy sitting right next to you is making $150 just because he spends an extra hour at work, there's something wrong with you. So if you're going to do anything, at least do it the right way. If someone is going to go to college and they want to go for a career, have some type of direction. Don't go for a communications degree.

1:21:49Don't go for an English degree. Don't waste $100,000, $200,000 of your parents' money for absolutely no reason whatsoever. If you're going to go for a degree, go for a real degree. You want to be an engineer, you want to be a lawyer, you want to be a doctor, you want to be, I don't know, something. But don't be, oh no, I'm going there because I want to be a teacher. You don't need to go to the most prestigious college in the world to be a teacher. Go to a community school, pay $3,000 a year, and you'll be just as good of a teacher. If that's what you want, do that. So again, when we're educating our kids... It's, when it comes down to Jewish education, the most important thing we need to understand is that Jewish education is saving their soul. More important than any career in the world you're ever going to give them, you have to give them Jewish education in school, not just at home. It has to be 24/7. They have to understand they're Jewish 24 hours a day. Second thing is, if you want to make your kids succeed in life in general, make sure that they learn Gemara as early as possible, which, you know, the yeshiva will do. And third of all, if the kid eventually, once they're 17-18 years old, gets to a point where they want to go towards the career world, then if they've been learning Gemara their whole life, they're going to be a top student and they'll make good decisions. But in general, try to be a light to them by giving them direction. Don't just send your kid and hope for the best that he's going to make the decision by himself because at the end of the day, they're still 17-18 years old.

1:23:13They don't really know that much. Maybe they'll know some Torah, but they're not going to know life yet. So if you want your kid to be excited about learning, you have to be excited. If you have little kids, and you're doing the homework for them, don't do the homework for them. Even if it's better that the kid goes to school with no homework than you doing the homework for them. Why? But then he's going to fail. Right? What parent wants their kid to fail? No one, right? But what happens when you fail? You get embarrassed. You're not happy. No one wants to be a loser. So when you realize that you failed, okay, I have to do better. Now I'm going to do homework better. Now I'm not going to play anymore. It builds the kid's self-esteem. You can't make a kid expect you to do everything for them because the real world is not like that. You can't do everything for the kid, and then the kid's 25 years old, he's still expecting mommy to wake him up in the morning and make him lunch. He's 25, he's a real man, go away. You know, live your life. So when you're doing their homework and saying, "No, no, don't worry, I'll do it for you," that's what you're training them to be. You train them to be one of these 30-year-old kids that's still living at home. And you don't want that. So you want them to be excited about learning, and so my best suggestion is to fake it until you make it. Yeah.

1:24:39even pretend that you're excited about it even though it's boring, even though it's annoying, even though you'd rather be doing a million and a half other things. If you show excitement about it, after a few times you're not going to have to help them; they're going to do it by themselves because you're excited about it. Everybody wants to do something you're excited about. Just imagine, if you're excited about a TV show, your kids automatically love it. If you're excited about a certain sport, your kids are automatically fans. If you're excited about certain food, all of a sudden, this is my favorite food. You've never eaten it before. No, it's my favorite, Iman. It's my favorite. You've never eaten it before. No, no, it's my favorite. Anything you're excited about, they're excited about. Because a kid thinks you're the best. You're their idol. So if you're going to teach them all these things, be excited about it. And I think that makes it much more effective. Now, after this, going back to the parashah, you have the situation where Yaakov has to make a difficult decision. Now, I already have one son that supposedly got killed, another son is in jail, and in order for me to save the one son, I have to risk another. Because it's a possibility that this terrible, you know, viceroy may not, you know, may kill all of them. Maybe he's asking for all of them to come. So the Midrash says that Yaakov, it's not just a simple language. He says, here, listen, you should go bring him a gift.

1:26:06and hopefully he has mercy. The real thing about Yaakov, Yaakov wasn't someone to fool around with. Yaakov had a direct connection with God. If you collect all of the people in the world, all of the holy and everything in the world, maybe, maybe all of us could be the equivalent of his nail. Yaakov had a direct connection with God. So Yaakov, when he went to Esav, a lot of people think that Yaakov was just giving compliments to a wicked person. By saying, "Hey, listen, seeing you is like seeing the face of an angel," the real hidden message here is that it wasn't like that. He said, "Yes, seeing you is like seeing the face of an angel." The real secret is that he was telling them, "By the way, I'm not the same yeshiva boy I was 34 years ago. Seeing the face of an angel means that my friends are angels. I see angels all the time. So don't mess with me." You hang out with a bunch of clowns, a bunch of ISIS members, a bunch of drug dealers, and scavengers that murder people for fun. I hang out with angels. We could destroy you in a second. You understand? So just like the Gemara says in Masechet Sotah, what is this like? It's like somebody that gets invited to a house and finds out that the host wants to kill him.

1:27:34So how does he get out of this situation? He tells the host, "Oh wow, the food is so good, it reminds me of the food that I had at the king's house." So what does the host think? The host immediately thinks, "Wait, he went to eat at the king's house? That means they're friends. Nobody just goes to the king's house to eat lunch. That means they're friends. So if I kill him, the king's going to find out. If the king finds out, he's going to kill me." So automatically, the host doesn't want to kill him anymore. This is what Yaakov was doing to Esav. He's saying, by the way, I hang out with angels; your face reminds me of angels because I'm trying to tell you that I hang out with angels. Don't mess with me. Same thing as what he did to this mysterious king that he hasn't met. He tells his sons, listen, just like I brought to Esav, I sent him special gifts—that's to buy them, to soften their hearts a little bit. Prayer, I'll pray for El Shaddai, I'll pray for the God that created the heaven and the earth to say enough. Dai means In Hebrew, "dai" means enough. So, the God that created the heaven and the earth, eventually said enough. I created enough. That's it. No more creations. Nothing's going to be created. Just like He said enough of creations and ended creation after the six days, He's going to say the end of my problems. No more problems for Yaakov anymore. So I'll pray to God so you have mercy. But also give him this letter.

1:29:03So in this letter it says, it's a really interesting letter, and he tells him, and so I'm going to summarize it, and he tells this mysterious king, I heard you're smart, I heard you're nice, but I also heard that you accused my children of being spies. And at the moment that I heard that you're accusing my kids of being spies and took one of them to jail, I almost looked up that the heavens had two tears come out of my eyes. And if those two tears would have come out, the God of heaven and the earth would have turned your entire country and kingdom and friends and everything you have into dust. So make sure that when my kids get there, you treat them nice. He sends them a threat letter. So make sure that when I send my kids there, you bring all of them back and you treat them good. that the heavens had two tears come out of my eyes. And if those two tears would have come out, the God of heaven and earth would have turned your entire country, kingdom, friends, and everything you have into dust. So make sure that when my kids get there, you treat them nicely. He sends them a threat letter. So make sure that when I send my kids there, you bring all of them back and you treat them well.

1:30:05So, he sends him a threat letter. So, you know, when you read the Torah, sometimes, you know, it seems like, why were the 12 tribes scared? Why was Yaakov so passive? That's why you have to read the story behind the story. So now, going back to the question of why were the 12 tribes scared if they, you know, 10 of them, why were they so scared of this one guy? Because when they saw Yosef, and they saw that he had this... Not just this position of money and everything, but he also had this wisdom. And he started telling them things about their past that they forgot about, reminding them of Yosef, reminding them of their past, reminding them of their own sin. And at that moment, they started feeling guilty. And as soon as they started feeling guilty, all of the powers that Hashem gave them disappeared. They felt like just regular people. But then they started admiring this guy. They started saying, "Listen, you know," saying to their father, "Listen, he's not exactly the most wicked person because, look, he even sent us home. He had mercy on us. He sent us with a lot of food. You know, if he just wanted to kill us, he could have killed us on the spot. He sent us all back. So, also, his wisdom is amazing. He knows things about us that we didn't even know. He knew exactly what kind of beds we slept in when we were young." They don't realize that it's really their brother telling them.

1:31:33So, now Yaakov doesn't want to do it initially, doesn't want to send them initially, but then after, they start getting to the point of running out of food. As we said earlier, desperate times call for desperate measures. And Yaakov says, okay, go and get the food. And Yehuda comes to him and goes, yeah, but we have to bring Binyamin. And at that time, all the little kids, all the children of the brothers, came and told Yaakov, "We're all going to die if we don't get food." So they touched his heart a little bit, made Saba (grandfather) feel a little guilty. He said, "Okay, take Binyamin and also take this letter." So they all get to Egypt. And to their surprise... Yosef welcomes them into his house. Now they're thinking initially that maybe he's welcoming us into his house because he wants to arrest us and kill all of us. So immediately, they take the money that was left in their bags, which they thought somebody was trying to trap them with, and they try to give it to this servant of Yosef, who ends up being Menashe, his son.

1:32:55which they don't know yet. And he said, no, no, there was a mistake made. The last time we came here, we bought some food, but for some reason, the money was put back in our bags. And Menashe says, no, no, no. You've paid, you paid full price. All the money that you gave me, I have. This money is a blessing from your G-d. So they're surprised. He's like, you have nothing to worry about. You were invited here to have lunch with the viceroy. Now they are very, very surprised. Now, with the same token, they also know that they cannot eat food with the goyim. First of all, the Egyptians didn't eat meat. They didn't eat cows or sheep. They worshipped them. But for Jews, that was their main meal. So that was also part of the reason why the Egyptians would not sit with the Jews because they would be disgusted that they were eating their god.

1:34:13The second thing is, Jews have kosher laws, and even though we didn't get the Torah until a few hundred years after this happened, the patriarchs and the twelve tribes were all keeping kosher laws. So since Yosef was a Jew, a hundred percent kosher Jew, he made sure that he told Menashe, his son, take one of the animals and bring them to the slaughter and show them how you slaughter it. So they see that you're slaughtering it in a kosher way. And also show them all of the food that you're preparing in a kosher way. So they don't have a problem eating. So all these guys that are standing here, the travelers, they're seeing this, they're amazed. How does this Egyptian know about all of these rules? There's only 70 people in the world know about this stuff. It's not like today where there's internet, there's Facebook, there's millions of Jews. to the slaughter and show them how you slaughter it. So they see that you're slaughtering it in a kosher way. And also show them all of the food that you're preparing in a kosher way, so they don't have a problem eating. So all these guys that are standing here, the travelers, they're seeing this, they're amazed. How does this Egyptian know about all of these rules? Only 70 people in the world know about this stuff. It's not like today where there's internet, there's Facebook, there's millions of Jews I mean, there's really only 15 million Jews or so in the world, but if you ask the goyim, they think there's at least 2 or 3 billion. But still, the Jews have a big influence in the world today. Back then, there were 70 of us. 70, that's it. 70 is, you know, it's one family. So they're asking, how do these people from Egypt know these rules? How does this viceroy know this stuff? And he continues to amaze them. Now, as soon as he arrives...

1:35:40he sees the brother, he sees Binyamin, and he says, oh, so this is the brother you were talking about, and he takes Binyamin privately, and he starts talking to him. Again, he wants to find out about his younger brother, but he can't tell him that he's the brother. He says, so what happened to this other brother of yours that they say is gone? And he's like, oh, yeah, Binyamin starts talking about him, oh, yeah, man, I miss him, he starts saying all these compliments about him, so he says, oh, yeah, um, do you have any kids? Binyamin says, yeah, I have ten kids. He says, what are the names of your kids? And he gives him the ten names of the kids. He goes, these are unusual names. Where did you get these names? And he explains to Yosef every one of the names, how it's named after Yosef. Ten kids, all named after his brother. At that moment, Yosef became very, very emotional and he ran away. He couldn't do it. It says in the parashah, his emotions overtook him and he had to walk away because he couldn't handle it. So he went to wash his face and then he came back and said, "Okay, it's time to eat." Then he started calling out each one of the brothers' names and where to sit. He called them out in order of birth. Now, there again, these are

1:37:0610 adults. It's not like kids where you say, okay, one's 17, and I can tell the difference between a 12-year-old, a 17-year-old, and a 25-year-old. They're all adults. So, especially the older ones, how can you tell the difference? So, he calls each one of them in order of where to sit. And after all of them, he says, "Oh, and Binyamin, I also used to have a brother like him. And my mom also died. So, he's going to sit next to me." So, he gives him special treatment. And he gives him five times the amount of food than the rest of the brothers. And the reason why he did this is he wanted to see if the other brothers are going to be jealous of Binyamin, just like they were jealous of Yosef. So this whole show that he's putting on is to test out to see if they're going to do to Binyamin what they did to him. After this, he sends them all on their way, but with a trap. He puts his cup in the sack of Binyamin. And before they leave the city, before they go out, 2,000 amot, he sends his son Menashe to catch them. Now, why 2,000 amot?

1:38:27Because that day that they were supposed to leave was Shabbat. And on Shabbat, you're not allowed to leave a city. You're not allowed to go beyond 2,000 amot. Now, even though the brothers were all keeping Shabbat, to them it was pikuach nefesh to leave the king's house, you know, was saving their lives. But Yosef knew that they're not really saving their lives. He's not going to kill them. So he doesn't want them to violate Shabbat. So he's going to have them stop right before they reach the limit to make sure they don't violate Shabbat. This also teaches us again regarding driving on Shabbat. When I tell people, I emphasize that you are better off never walking into a Beit Knesset in your entire life than driving on Shabbat to a Beit Knesset even once. Never ever go to a Beit Knesset if it is not close enough to your house. Pray at home. You're not allowed to drive to Beit Knesset. You're not allowed to drive on Shabbat. Ever. There's never an excuse to drive on Shabbat to a Beit Knesset. The only time you're allowed to drive on Shabbat is if it's to save a life. If, chas v'shalom, something happens, you have to take somebody to the hospital, or you yourself have to go to the hospital, fine, you're allowed to drive. Shabbat is put on hold. It's not that Shabbat is canceled. Shabbat is put on hold. Meaning that as soon as you arrive

1:39:54to the hospital, the danger is over, because control is taken by the doctors and the nurses and everything. So at that moment that you arrive at the hospital, Shabbat is back on. That means you cannot go back, you can't stop watching TV and drive back home. You have to leave your car at the hospital and maybe ask a non-Jew to shut it off or, listen, I'm leaving my car there, give him the keys and hope that he gets the picture. You're not allowed to drive the car back home, maybe go to the mall, you know, I already violated Shabbat, I ruined it, no. Shabbat is put on hold until there's no more life risk. As soon as the life risk is over, Shabbat is back on. So this is another reason why I explain to people, as far as driving on Shabbat, it's not just that it's obvious that it's fire. With cars, every time you press the gas pedal, it's a new fire. It's a new violation of Shabbat. It's not just one violation of Shabbat. You could drive from point A to point B for 15 minutes. You could be committing 15 million violations of Shabbat because you're pressing the gas pedal, pressing the brake, turning on the radio, turning it off. You know, a million and a half things you're doing in the car. So it's not just one violation of Shabbat. That's why it makes me very upset sometimes to hear that rabbis tell their people, "Listen, come to the Beit Knesset," even though they know they drive.

1:41:23You can't drive on Shabbat. According to all halachot, according to Judaism, you're not ever allowed to drive. Now, what do you do in a situation where the Beit Knesset is too far from your house? You have one of two things that you can do. One, find a new Beit Knesset that's closer. If there's no other Beit Knesset that's closer, and obviously you can't just, you're not a multi-millionaire that can just buy a house the next day next to the Beit Knesset. You have a friend in the Beit Knesset. Stay there for Shabbat. Go to a friend. Tell him, listen, I live 25 minutes away from the nearest Beit Knesset. You live two minutes from the Beit Knesset, you live five minutes from the Beit Knesset, let me stay at your house for a day, we'll spend Shabbat together, until I find another situation, until I move, until I arrange something. One friend, two friends, if you go to the same Beit Knesset for a while, you develop relationships with a lot of people. So each week you do it with somebody else, it becomes fun also, having guests in the house. You can be like Avraham Avinu, having guests, it's a big privilege, it's a big mitzvah, to bring guests into your house, especially if you're helping them keep Shabbat. So it's very upsetting when rabbis take this notion that it's okay to tell people to drive on Shabbat as long as they come into the Beit Knesset, because maybe if they come to the Beit Knesset for a long amount of time, eventually they're going to keep Shabbat on their own. That's complete nonsense. And the reason why it's nonsense is because it's against all logic. If you're telling people that it's okay to violate Shabbat now,

1:42:48What's to tell them that it's not okay to violate Shabbat in five years from now? It was okay then. I don't want to go to level B. I'm still at level A. If the rabbis say it's okay for me to be at level A, which means God is okay with me being at level A, I'm going to stay at level A. I don't want to be at level B. I want to drive on Shabbat forever. All human logic will go against ever going to level B and stopping to drive, which means you have to treat people like adults. tell them the truth, they make their own decisions. I'm not judging anyone, I'm not telling anyone that they're a bad person or anything like that. This is what God said, you do what you want. Somebody wants to succeed in life, they do certain things. If it's money that they're chasing, they work certain jobs, they work certain hours, they make certain investments. Someone wants to succeed with a relationship with God, it requires nothing less than that. Simple. But you tell people the truth. Let them decide for themselves. It's not my responsibility or anyone else's responsibility to make decisions for you. You make your own decisions. So when a rabbi is telling, "No, no, I can't tell them the truth about Shabbat, because if I tell them the truth about Shabbat, that they're not allowed to drive, they're not going to be able to handle it, and maybe they're not going to come anymore." How do you know they're not going to come anymore?

1:44:13Why? You're them, you're in their brain, you're in their heart. Maybe they love Hashem more than you, they just don't know. I have a guy, when I first started doing these shiurim in Florida, about a year and a half ago, this one guy, wonderful guy, what an amazing guy, golden heart, this guy Nisan. The first guy that used to come to the shiurim to this day, amazing person. Just didn't know much. So, we started, I told him from the beginning, I said, listen, I'll tell you the truth, I'll never judge you; you do what you want. So, I mention Shabbat almost every lecture because I think it's very, very critical, not based just on my teachings, but based on what Hashem said. And it's a very critical problem in today's age because a lot of people don't keep it. So, I mentioned Shabbat to him, and he tells me, he's like, listen, I've been driving to shul for 20 years, no one told me. Since he never learned Torah in his life, his knowledge came from the Beit Knesset. Whatever they would say in the Beit Knesset, that's what he knew. He didn't take Torah books to his house and read on his own. He didn't do anything like that. So, whatever they said,

1:45:30in any shiur at the Beit Knesset on Shabbat when he would go there, because he's not going the rest of the week. So, he goes on Shabbat once a week, a rabbi gives a lecture, he talks about, I don't know, whatever he talks about. That's his knowledge. That's it. That's all he knows. And the people, they all know him. They know what he does. He's not the only one that drives. So now, he tells me, I've been driving to shul for 20 years. And then I couldn't drive. I knew it wasn't exactly what the black-and-white ultra-Orthodox do, but I didn't know it was that bad. As we continue learning, if you guys ever want to see a lecture about some more details about Shabbat, I made one, it's on YouTube. You'll see that every time Hashem talks about Shabbat and the punishment of Shabbat in the Torah, He puts it right next to the punishment of idol worship. Because someone that violates Shabbat is the same thing as someone that's idol worshipping. Same thing. In Hashem's eyes, not my eyes. I love everyone. Hashem loves everyone. But Hashem made the rules. He didn't ask me for permission. This is what He says. I put up a lecture that talks about how it could be; it doesn't make any logical sense to us.

1:46:55That violating Shabbat is the same thing as a guy that bought a statue from Chinatown for $10 and is bowing to it like a moron. It doesn't make any sense. But, that's what it says. So now, when we learn these things, Baruch Hashem, the key is that it helps us know the truth. Once we know the truth, maybe we can change. Oh, it's not my car. Let's take it, maybe it's my car. Um... we can make a decision at that point. No rabbi in the world is allowed to make a decision for you. I don't care if they're the biggest, smartest, most successful, or they're a beginner. You need to make decisions for yourself. Of course, it's very, very important for someone when they're doing teshuvah to get themselves a rabbi. Someone that's honest, someone that knows the rules, someone that's going to tell you things based on you. Now, you can't take every single mitzvah on overnight because you'll overwhelm yourself, but that's why it's important to develop a relationship with a rabbi because they know you. They know what you're ready for as far as

1:48:05the things that are beyond the basics. No one can ever say you're not ready for Shabbat because Shabbat is the minimum requirement. They can say, okay, maybe you're not ready to do Chalav Yisrael. You can drink regular milk and not milk directly from Israel. Maybe there are certain blessings you don't need to do; you're at certain levels. Fine. But there are certain things that are a minimum necessity of what a Jew needs in order to have a relationship with God in the first place. Shabbat is that one. The reason why we have ten commandments, they're all in order. The first three are directly between us and God. God says, I'm the only God. Don't use my name in vain. That's the third one. The second one is don't have an idol. And the fourth one is Shabbat. Observe the Shabbat. Fifth one is respect your parents. Sixth one is murder. Why is the sixth one murder and the fourth one Shabbat? Because Shabbat is considered higher than murder. Violating Shabbat is considered worse than murdering someone, according to God's eyes. Our logic would say no. Our logic would say, Chas V'Shalom, God is wrong. Murdering somebody is much worse. How do we know?

1:49:29Because if we found out that one of the people we know murdered somebody, then we're not going to invite him for Shabbat dinner. We're not going to invite him to our kid's birthday party. He's a murderer, right? But our friends who are violating Shabbat every week, they're our best men at the wedding. They're our best friends. They're the best people in the world. We don't think it's that bad. So it's time for us to start thinking about what does God think? Forget about what people think. What does God think? That's why it's important to learn some of these things because these are the basics of Judaism that are necessary for us to have a relationship with the Creator that we want so much from. He's already giving us a lot, we want even more. So it's good. It's fine. Give Him a reason. So now, when someone really wants a relationship with God, He wants to listen to the truth. It's not always easy to hear the truth because sometimes it means that we're wrong. But in Proverbs, Shlomo HaMelech, who was the smartest man of all time, Hashem gave him a gift, both of wealth and wisdom. Wisdom beyond any man in history. Shlomo HaMelech, when he was 12 years old, became the king.

1:50:51Anyone that becomes a king, what does he want? He wants power. He wants dominance. He wants material wealth. Instead, this 12-year-old kid, son of King David, one of the most righteous people in history—even the goyim read most of the Psalms that King David wrote—Shlomo asks Hashem for the knowledge to judge his nation justly. Doesn't ask for money, doesn't ask for women, doesn't ask to be popular, doesn't ask for anything. He asks to have wisdom. So Hashem says, you asked Me for something that's the perfect request, I'm going to give you everything that a person would want, and on top of that. So, King Shlomo had all the money in the world, he had all the power, he had complete peace throughout his entire kingdom, but his whole time that he lived, no war, no nothing, no problems. So he knew what he was talking about, is my point. Not only is he smart, he had experience, he had money, he had everything he could possibly want. So when he writes in his, he wrote three books that are part of the Tanakh: Shir HaShirim, Mishlei, and Kohelet.

1:52:15and Ecclesiastes. And in Proverbs 19:3, he says, "The foolishness of man" — meaning the foolishness of man is sins — "perverts his way," which means it brings him to punishment, but his heart frets against Hashem. Meaning that a person doesn't learn Torah, so he makes a bunch of sins. So it's just foolishness. Out of ignorance, he makes sins. Eventually, he has to pay the bill. He sees punishment. He sees things are not going well in his life. His job is not good. His marriage is not good. His kids don't like him. His wife doesn't like him. His friends don't like him. Everything is bad. And he doesn't even realize that if this continues, the next world is even worse. So eventually, he has to pay the bill. Eventually, he gets the punishment. Life's not exactly great. Once he gets this, instead of doing teshuva, he blames Hashem. He blames Hashem for his misfortune, which is really the result of his own actions. So what is King Solomon trying to tell us here? He's trying to tell us that we, as human beings, are...

1:53:45We're the only beings that can change. A lion cannot change. He cannot one day wake up and say, "Listen, you know what? I don't want to be a lion anymore. I want to be a lawyer." The zebra says, "You know what? I don't like these stripes. I want to be solid. I want to change my clothes." The alligator says, "You know what? I want to become vegetarian." Can't happen. The dog can't run the house, even though in some families the dog does run the house. Can't happen. Mankind is the only being that can improve. We are the only ones that can make ourselves better. We can improve our middot, our characteristics. We can turn from being the most angry person in the world to being calm. I remember before I had Torah as a permanent part of my life, the first word out of my mouth in the morning, instead of today, Baruch Hashem saying, "Thank you, God, for bringing back my soul," was a curse word. I always felt like I was late to something. You know, when you're in the material world, you're in the business world, you're always thinking that time is money. Even though I only slept two hours, three hours, I figured that three hours was too much. I would tell people, "I'll sleep when I die. I need to go make money. I need to do this. I need to buy this." I was constantly in that mindset. The first word out of my mouth was a curse. I don't know how my wife stayed with me, to be honest with you.

1:55:14Shoshana Tzadikashi is. But seriously, it's when you're in that world, when you're completely away from Hashem, there's no boundary to how bad you can be. Because everything is up to you to decide what's good and bad. And like we said earlier, Hitler, Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, ISIS—everyone that's evil in everyone else's eyes is not evil in their own eyes. There are some people that think they're good. because it's all based on their definition, even though they don't know anything about what's good or bad. The only one that knows what's good or bad is the One that manufactured everything, the One that created everything. So, King Solomon is telling us here that you have the power to improve. It doesn't matter whether you're 20, or 15, or 40, or 60. Obviously, as you get older, it becomes more difficult, but it's never impossible. As long as the light is on,

1:56:15You can change. Our goal in life is not only to be robots. Our goal in life is to connect to Hashem, which has extraordinary benefits in this world and in the next. By connecting to Hashem in multiple ways: One is to make Him involved in our daily life. Two is to do what He wants—that's how we're making Him involved in our daily life. Three is to act like Him. Emulate His behavior. Hashem is slow to anger, we should be slow to anger. Hashem is merciful, we should be merciful. Hashem is forgiving, we should be forgiving. Emulate His behavior, because the way you behave is the way He's going to behave towards you. If you don't forgive someone for making a mistake, He's not going to forgive you. Because He's going to show you, listen, oh, your wife said the wrong thing to you? Ah, what did you do? Oh, look, you didn't forgive her for three days. Oh, okay, so why should I forgive you? Oh, she said sorry and you didn't accept it, so why should I accept your sorry? Oh, the homeless guy asked you for some money and you didn't want to give him, even though you had $300 in your pocket, you couldn't give him two bucks, you couldn't give him $3? So why should I give you? The way we act is the way He's going to act with us.

1:57:39This is the most important lesson that we can learn from the Torah. The Torah is not a history book. The Torah is instructions on how to live. We're supposed to learn through the story. We're supposed to learn their behavior and what the purpose of life is. It's not just about learning a nice story. We like the Midrashim. We like the different things that happen. We like the fact that Yosef has this whole plan. of how to test his brothers, how Yaakov is sending a threatening letter. It's all very, very enjoyable. But the message behind the story is why Hashem wrote the Torah. Because if it was purely a history book, there would be a lot more details. A lot more. He would tell you exactly every day that they lived. He would tell you about every day. But here you can see, one parasha is in the year 1600 from creation. The next parasha is in 1948, 300 years later. The next parasha is 60 years later. The next parasha is a day later. There's no exact order as far as not day by day. Because Hashem included everything that we can learn from to impact our life. So when we're able to hear things like the wisdom of the Torah that King Shlomo is teaching here by telling us, don't be one of these fools.

1:59:04that makes sins, gets punished, and then blames Hashem. Okay, you made sins, fine. Hashem said, before I created the world, I created teshuva. Everything is subject to teshuva. Everyone can do teshuva. Even the worst kind can do teshuva. There is in Pirkei Avot, which is Ethics of Our Fathers, it's a... It says in the Pekudei Rebbe 521: Meaning, anyone that helps people do teshuva, Hashem... puts things in his way to make sure he doesn't sin. So even if he's naturally going to sin, and let's say looking at women, he's not going to put women in his way. If he's really, really connected to Hashem, he's going to literally eliminate the opportunities to sin from his way. Because if this person is worrying about Hashem's children, he's trying to help people do teshuva, get back to Hashem, Hashem's going to worry more about him. But then he talks about another person.

2:00:30But one who influences the masses to sin will not be given the means to repent. It says, one that makes other people sin. Instead of telling them, "Listen, keep Shabbat," he tells them, "Come on, let's go to the baseball game on Shabbat." Instead of, "Listen, let's go to a kosher restaurant," he says, "Do you want to go to a kosher restaurant? Kosher? I want to go to a regular restaurant. He says, nah, come on, pork is so much more delicious." Instead of, "Come on, let's go to Beit Knesset, let's pray," they say, "No, not Beit Knesset, let's go to the beach." Somebody that does those things, which all seem innocent, they all happen in all of our lives. We have plenty of those friends that do that. Those people are creating a very, very big bill for themselves. It says here that instead of what they do for the person that makes other people do teshuva, they make them not make sins pretty much. For this person, they close the doors of teshuva for that person. What does it mean when the heavens close the doors of teshuva? It means that it becomes more difficult for them to do teshuva. Everyone can do teshuva. Even this particular Pirkei Avot means that it's not that they can't do teshuva, but they have fewer opportunities. So instead of, let's say, for example, messages from Hashem being sent to you in ten different ways, you got to work,

2:01:58You're thinking, what is my purpose in life? Hashem gave you a thought. All of a sudden you see something on the computer and you see a shiur Torah by someone interesting. Next thing you know, your wife calls you and says, by the way, and she mentions something that she saw that's really inspiring, that's a connection to Hashem. So there are a bunch of different ways that Hashem is connecting to you, helping you do teshuva, giving you the message in ten different ways. Someone that makes other people sin, yeah, you can do teshuva. but He's not going to send them as many messages. Maybe He'll send them one. So that's what it means when He closes the door, at least one of the meanings. When they close the doors of teshuva, everyone can do teshuva, but if you make other people sin, it's going to be much, much more difficult for you to do teshuva. So the key is for us to listen to this great mussar that Shlomo HaMelech teaches us, which is that We want to make sure that we're not those fools who wake up one day after we sin and blame Hashem. Why didn't You tell me? Because He told us. I'm not here by coincidence. He didn't send me into your life, and He didn't send you into my life by pure coincidence. There's no such thing as coincidence. Whatever I'm saying, He's telling me what to say. I didn't prepare the lecture. So the key here is that someone here needs to hear whatever I'm saying. Somebody online who's going to watch this video needs to hear what I'm saying.

2:03:23The key is that we want to be one of those people that says, no, no, I'm not going to be the fool. I'm going to be the one that changes. I'm going to be the one that repents. I'm going to be the one that does what Hashem wants. How do I know what Hashem wants? It's in the Torah. And each week, b'ezrat Hashem, we will do shiurim once a week, twice a month, whatever it is. The key is anytime that you want to get closer to Hashem, the instructions are not far from you. The end of this parashah, which is what we'll finish with because the story continues in next week's parashah, is that Yosef sends the brothers with a trap of this goblet, this cup, to see if they're going to give up their brother, because he puts it in the sack of Binyamin. As soon as they get caught, they don't think that they did anything, and they realize that the brother, Binyamin, took, or at least it looks like he took this goblet, And they go back begging this king to forgive them. And that's actually where the parasha ends. But throughout this whole process, you're going to see how the 12 tribes, or the 10 brothers or 11 brothers, are all going to be tested, including Yosef, in what they truly feel about each other.

2:04:54If they don't really care about Binyamin, they say, you know what? Why are we fighting with this big giant king? Leave this kid. He stole the goblet. That's it. Leave him alone. Let me go home. I'll tell our father. I'm sorry. What can I do? He stole. It's his problem. If they feel a little more for him, they're going to try to convince the king. If the king says no, figure out something else. Maybe fight. Maybe pray, do something. On the other hand, Yosef has to test himself. How long can I keep this story going on? There comes a time in a person's life that they're going to get tested. They're going to get a very, very big test. It's going to test your character. Hashem is going to test your character. Do you really want a true connection with Me? Or do you want to just tell people you have one? Do you really want to be directly connected with Me? Or are you one of those people who just likes to say, "No, I'm Jewish, but I don't keep that much"? Are you going to defend My Torah and tell people the truth? Or are you spineless and feel like people can't handle it, or you can't handle their reactions?

2:06:20There's going to come a time that God is going to test your character. We know this because that's what He did to anyone He loved. Anyone He loved in the Torah, whether it was Avraham, whether it was Yitzchak, whether it was Yaakov, whether it was the 12 tribes individually or together, whether it was Moshe, the one, the only person in history that spoke to Him face to face, whether it was Aharon or Miriam, King David, Shlomo, Everyone. Everyone He loved. The closest people to Him, He tested each and every one of them with the most difficult tests. You look at the most righteous people in today's age, and you see them going through tests. Those tests are not for nothing. God is not torturing us for no reason. He's testing our character. And He says it specifically in Tehillim: "I test you because I want to see if you truly love Me." Do you really love Me, or do you just want to tell people that? Is Shabbat as important to you as it is to Me? Or do you think that you can make a new rule and override My rule because you believe My rules are no longer relevant? That's something people need to understand. Again, it's not easy or simple to be a simple Jew.

2:07:45It's not simple to be a simple Jew. But it's worth it. And that's what we learn from all of these stories: that these important characters are being tested. We're being tested. We're going to find out what they did with their test, and we're going to find out what we did with our test too. Hopefully, all of us will have the same positive results. Unless you have any questions. I have a question. What is Miketz? That's at the beginning of the parashah. What's the question? What's the meaning of it? Oh, it happened. Like it's a... Ketz means it ended. It's the end. Ketz is end. Ketz yamim is end of times. Okay. Okay, the other one is... Talk a little bit about Yosef's wife. Oh, Osnat. It's Osnat, yeah.

2:09:14Osnat. Once Yosef got the position of being the viceroy, being in essence the king of Egypt, Pharaoh said it's not good for a king to be a bachelor, to be a single guy, so let's get you married. Now Yosef can't just marry any woman, but every woman in Egypt wanted him. So, on one hand, he knows that he comes from the Hebrews. He comes from the chosen people of Hashem. On the other hand, he's in the middle of Egypt and he's being forced to get married. What is he going to do? So, Hashem already gave the cure to the ailment before we even knew there was an ailment. A couple of weeks ago, we learned that... Actually, when I came here, we learned about Dina and how she got raped by Shechem, right? Yeah. out of that rape came a girl, a daughter. Now, Dina was very embarrassed that this rape ended up resulting in a child. You know, in Judaism, we're not allowed to abort. Abortions are not allowed. It's considered complete murder. So even back then, they knew it. So she couldn't kill the baby, even though technically if it's a rape and it's situations like that,

2:10:40There is a certain posek that would allow it if it's really, really early on. Nonetheless, it's a very controversial issue, both in Judaism and otherwise. But the point to stay on topic here is that she gave birth to this daughter, but she was too embarrassed to see this kid every day. So Yaakov, her father, said, "Listen, why don't you send the girl away to a good family?" He found a family. Who's the family? The family of Potiphar. Potiphar and his wife, who was one of the most beautiful women in history, weren't able to have children. So, they were happy to adopt this baby. Now, this baby is Osnat. How did Hashem ensure that Yosef knew that Osnat was allowed to him? It's because Yaakov wanted to make sure that Osnat knew that she was Jewish. So, he gave her a medallion, and on the medallion, he inscribed that she comes, you know, My name is so-and-so and I come from the seed of Yaakov, Yitzchak, and Avraham. So when Pharaoh gave the position to Yosef, he gave him a special gold necklace and a ring and also a special caravan, a chariot. So when Yosef was traveling in the city,

2:12:10all the women would throw their undergarments at him, showing that they were available, and then one woman threw a medallion. He picked up the medallion and saw what was written. He saw that it was inscribed in Hebrew. No one else in Egypt knew Hebrew. So he saw it inscribed in Hebrew, "I am from the family of Yaakov." He found out who the girl was, and that is who he married. This also shows us, one of the things that it shows us is that the... The big lesson here is that Hashem will always give us the cure before we even realize we're sick. Any problem that we have, Hashem already has the cure. It's just that we have to be patient enough to see it through. Any type of issue that we've always had throughout history, Hashem already has a solution for it. It's just that we have to, number one, be patient. Number two, be deserving. By deserving, I don't mean that you have to be the most righteous person in history to deserve Hashem's help. Even your belief in Hashem is enough of a reason for Him to help you. The point is that Hashem is going to give you different tests based on your level, based on how you improve. If you're on level A, He's going to give you level A tests. If you're on level B, He's going to give you slightly more difficult tests. But He's going to give you all of these tests in order to help you grow and become better.

2:13:32Same thing if you want, you know, if somebody wants to become very strong, wants to become a bodybuilder, they have to go to the gym. Now, logically, it doesn't make sense. Why would you want to lift more weights? I don't even want to lift any weights. I want to stay at home. But if you want to get big and strong, you have to lift weights. So in the beginning, it's 5 pounds, then it's 10 pounds, then it's 20 pounds, then it's 50 pounds, and so on. You keep lifting more and more weights because you want to rip more muscles and eventually become bigger. Same concept with the test. Hashem is going to keep giving you more tests to build your character. But the solution to all of these things that sometimes we feel are never going to end, He already has. The problem that someone may have with finding a house, Hashem already has exactly the house that belongs to this person, that he's entitled to, that He wants to give him. He just wants this person to pass the test, and eventually, He's going to show him this house. Money—Hashem already has the money ready for him. Anything, anything in life that a person desires, Hashem already has everything ready for you. It's just that sometimes we're not ready to see it. Who else? Any more questions? No, no, there are two questions already. You can ask as many as you want, so I'm here. Anything?

2:14:56about Shabbat, that you cannot write on Shabbat. Right, you cannot write on Shabbat. You need to wait to solve the problem. My question is, can somebody else give you a ride? It's not allowed either. Somebody gives you a ride to Beit Knesset, you mean? Yeah. If someone needs to go somewhere and they're old and sick, then it could potentially be permitted for a non-Jew to give them a ride somewhere. But on an occasional basis, you could potentially find some poskim that would permit that if they're old or sick. If they're normal like you and I, then ride won't work. They have to find a better way to get closer to the Beit Knesset if they want to go to the Beit Knesset. I know this is a very big problem in Florida and around the U.S. It's not as much of a problem in New York, where I lived before I moved here, because New York is, everything's on top of each other and there's a Beit Knesset on every corner. But here in Florida, everyone drives.

2:16:16And everything is far away. Everything is 15 minutes away. So I know this is a problem and it's a very, very big test, a very big difficulty for people. But I promise you, I've seen it in my own life. I've seen it in my own tests. And if you want to see some of the tests that I've gone through, there's a lecture number 45, Shiur Torah number 45 on YouTube. That's one of the ones that I did. It's a big part of my personal story. And it tells most of it, not all of it. There are some details that were just too gruesome to tell people. But some of my own personal stories are there, along with a bunch of other things that I've gone through. And I promise you, if you do what Hashem wants, you can't lose. Maybe you won't see the reward right on the first day or the first week. But I promise you, if you do what He wants, you'll only win, and you'll win a lot more than you could ever even want. And it's a... Some of the stuff that I say, no, it's not what you hear from most rabbis. It's not what people... People get shocked sometimes when they hear that desecrating Shabbat is worse than murder. Or that driving on Shabbat to Beit Knesset is... Not only is it not okay, you're better off never going to Beit Knesset. And I've even had a couple of times where people who were supposed to know told me not to say it.

2:17:42And I don't care what people say. I care what God says. The people that I look up to are people that see the truth. One of them is Rabbi Mizrachi, to whom I've given you guys some CDs of his teachings. He has thousands of lectures. He's been doing it for over 20 years. He tells the truth exactly how it is, both in Hebrew and English. And some of his stuff has been... translated to other languages. Rabbi Ephraim Kachlon, he's been my chavruta and my rabbi since I started this whole journey several years ago. Again, there's only one version of the truth. There's no two versions of the truth. Even though sometimes the truth is painful. No one wants to know that they are not perfect. But the reality of it is that none of us are perfect. The beauty is that we can all improve. Whatever mistakes you've made until now, it's fine. But get better. You know, a woman asked me recently, how do I, you know, fix the sins that I made because she was very promiscuous. I don't know what kind or what level, but the point is that she was a very promiscuous woman. And she says, how do I fix what I did? The first thing I told her is to stop sinning.

2:19:05Okay, of course, there's a million other things you can do. There's prayers, there's teshuvah, there's this, there's that. But the first thing you need to do is stop doing it. You know, that's really the most important thing. Figure out a way. Again, I know, Beit Knesset is far away. It's 20 minutes, 25 minutes. It's not exactly... It is ideal for us to ask people for a favor. Listen, I want to go to the Beit Knesset. Can you let me stay at your house this weekend or pay for a hotel that's closer? It costs money. I know, it's not easy. But I promise you, it says it in the Torah: Make His will into your will, and He will make your will into His will. Do what He says like He wants you to do it, and He'll do whatever you want without you even asking. So you win. It's just that you have to have the patience to see the prize. You know, so it's a... There's no such thing as a Jew that does what Hashem wants and loses. No such thing. It's just that some of the tests are bigger than others, but again, it's a... The reward is so much bigger that it's just like when Yosef interpreted the dream for Pharaoh...

2:20:23You know, he told Pharaoh, "Listen, the first seven years are going to be good. The second seven years are going to be really bad—so bad that you're going to forget about the good." Hashem is the opposite. In the beginning, it's a little difficult because you're changing your life. You're changing, you know, some tests here and there. But the good that you're going to get after is so good, you're going to forget there was ever any bad. you're going to forget there was ever any test. When you get to a point, you could even get to a level where every time there's a test, you're like, oh, thank God, wow, great, I got another test. You're excited for the tests. Because that's Hashem, we all get to that level. But all the sages, all the people that you see that are really big mekubalim, bless Hashem for the tests as much as they bless Him for the rewards. And it's important for us to know the truth because it's the only way we can change. As far as driving and things like that with Shabbat, again, there are different levels of Shabbat, but driving under no condition is ever allowed. I just recommend that you find either a closer synagogue,

2:21:43Or find a place to stay that's closer. And if there's no choice whatsoever, stay home, you know? I mean, staying home is not the ideal, but under no condition is it the right decision for you to drive. But I'm sure you have enough friends in this community who would be more than happy to have you stay with them for Shabbat. It's much more fun also. Once you shut off yourself... From the real world? From the world that we see every day—from cars, from cell phones, from TV, from restaurants, from all that stuff. Why don't you shut off? You shut off one day. The seventh day, this is just between me and God. And you have your family, you have your friends. This is the greatest day in the world. It's the greatest day in the world. No one in the world had more excuses than me to not keep Shabbat. I was a big businessman. My meetings were on Shabbat.

2:22:44My fun was on Shabbat. So if it was for business reasons, well, I can't meet him during the week. I work during the week. And if it's like, oh, finally I'm not working, so I want to go have fun. I want to go to a casino. I want to go on a vacation. I want to do this. I want to do that. I'm telling you, no. And I had money and I had everything available to me. So there were no restrictions whatsoever. So when I found out about Shabbat, I started saying, no, but... How can I keep Shabbat? I have meetings. But, okay, maybe I can make the meetings on Sunday. Then I start saying, okay, but what about my vacations? What about this? And then I start listening to myself say these excuses. And I just said to myself, I was actually on the phone with Rabbi Kachlon, and I said, I'm so full of it. It's all nonsense. It's all excuses. If I really wanted to keep Shabbat, I'd just keep Shabbat. find a way. Just like I found a way to do everything else in the world, you have to find a way. And I listened to my own words saying, no, but I have meetings. No, but I have this. No, but I have that. But every one of the excuses that I had, even though it seemed like it was the size of a mountain, in reality, it was nothing. It was just the Yetzer Hara. It was the evil inclination. And I just said to him, honestly, I'm just full of it. I'm just going to keep Shabbat. I don't know how, but I'll just find a way.

2:24:02And that's how I kept my first Shabbat. My wife and I kept the Shabbat. We were in the house. We couldn't leave the house. We were living on the 35th floor, so you can't go up and down the stairs with 35 floors. So we just stayed home the whole Shabbat. And, you know, she made food. We got the hot plate. You know, we got the "Torah and Science" book, I think it was, or some other book that we just read together. and I prayed at home, and it was probably one of the greatest days of my life because it was so different from anything else I ever experienced. Even though, you know, maybe almost 20 years ago, when I was 17, I kept Shabbat for about a year and a half. But then I stopped. So, I kept Shabbat for a while, but it was nothing like this. My Shabbat when I was 17 years old was I'd sleep as much as possible until Shabbat was over. because I had no connection to any synagogue, I had no connection to Torah. I would listen here and there, but I wasn't truly connected. So, if you want to truly enjoy Shabbat, involve it with the family, involve it with people you love, and most importantly, involve it with Hashem. Study some Torah. Shabbat is the best time to learn Torah. If, just for argument's sake, you get a reward of $100 for every minute

2:25:31that you study Torah during the week, on Shabbat, you get a thousand times that. You get a million dollars for all Shabbat, every minute that you learn Torah. Shabbat's reward for learning Torah is a thousand times more than during the week. So, it's very, very worthwhile to learn Torah during Shabbat. But again, we can't learn Torah while we're driving in the car. It's like showing up to the king, asking him for a million dollars, while I'm throwing spears at him. Again, we have to find a way. But it's not Hashem who will find a way. I see you love Hashem. Regular people that don't love Hashem don't show up to a shiur at 10 o'clock at night, 11 o'clock at night. So, obviously, all of you love Hashem. All of you want to connect with Hashem on a much deeper level. And you will. You'll succeed. You'll succeed. You know, and again, you need anything, you have any questions, I only know one version of the truth, so I'd love to answer anything. Baruch Adonai le'olam. Amen ve'amen. Amen.