Shiur Torah #68 MUST WATCH, Real Emunah Without Discounts, Are You Moses Or Pharaoh?

0:00In the name of G-d, we will do and we will succeed. Shiur Torah, happy to be back. In the name of G-d, this year we will also go towards the Ilui Nishmat Eduardo Chaim Reyes and also Refuah Shlema to Lourdes Garcia, Miguel Ben Sara, Sara Bat Sara. In the name of G-d, all of them will have Refuah Shlema and all of Am Yisrael. we'll have a lot of difficulties happening right now in Israel. Unfortunately, there are murders and butchering, and the Israelis are suffering all over the world. It's not just in Israel, it's in France, it's all over Europe, it's even happening in America. But for some interesting reason, the media doesn't cover the Jewish part; it only covers the terrorist part. Yeah... You know, so when a terrorist in Israel, two Palestinian terrorists, kill, you know, several Jews, Hashem Yinkom Damam, what the media says, you know, two Palestinians dead in a Jerusalem murder. So, someone that's naive, you know, that's reading it in America, that doesn't know what's really going on, is thinking that the Jews killed two Palestinians. You know, they don't know, unless you click and you read the story, and even then,

1:27It's like, well, maybe there's a mistake. Maybe it's really the Jews that are the higher number. People are constantly put to the test of searching for the truth. And because the media is manipulating everything on a regular basis, and I've seen it in all walks of life, whether it was in the stock market business, where you see the media when they're trying to promote a certain company. If the company is announcing bad news, they'll spin it in a way where it becomes good news. If the company is announcing good news, they pump it in a way as if they rediscovered the wheel and found the cure for AIDS, cancer, and every single disease ever known to man, and they went to the moon at the same time. They say, okay, so they did okay for the last three months. What's the big deal? The media wants to promote this company for whatever reason or another, whatever agenda they have, whether the company's going to buy time, you know, on their channel to put their commercials, or the CEO has a bunch of stocks in the company. You know, there's always a reason for that in the stock market business. But I figured, okay, it's the stock market business. This is money. I understand. It's understandable. But then...

2:44You see situations like what's been happening over the last week. We won't go into too much detail because I spent some time on it yesterday. But you see this type of behavior from the media in the religious world. And that's what's happening right now and has been happening already for some time. But specifically this last week, what's been happening to Rabbi Mizrachi and how the media has joined forces with the reshaim, wicked people who hate the Torah, hate Hashem, hate everything to do with the truth, and the media is trying to capitalize on it. It's not CNN media, it's not Fox News, where you expect anti-Semitism from them. You expect anti-Semitism from a news network that's not Jewish. You don't expect anti-Semitism—and I don't mean anti-Semitism against Israel, but anti-Semitism against the Torah. Because the word anti-Semitism is anti-Shem in Hebrew. And anti-Shem means anti-Shem. Shem was one of the sons of Noach. And that's where all the Jewish people came from. So anytime that you're anti-Jews, you're anti-Shem. You're anti-Shem, the son of Noach. That's where anti-Semitism comes from. So when people hate the truth, in essence, even if they claim that they have the truth...

4:10Really, that's what they're doing. And what's been happening, I mean, that's what's been happening with Rabbi Mizrachi, where he is one of the few, one of the very, very few in our generation that is willing and able to tell the truth exactly how it's written in the Torah. It's not pleasant to hear all the time, but it is refreshing. You know, it's not pleasant for someone that's sinning and is not willing to change their life. They don't like to hear that, you know, what happens if you sin. but it's refreshing because you don't hear it anywhere else. Everywhere else they talk about, oh, listen, you should be kind to people. Okay, great. Oh, listen, make sure that you give your dog food before you feed yourself. Okay, great. Oh, listen, you should give tzedakah. Great. All of these things are phenomenal. But how many times can you hear about them? How interesting is it to talk about tzedakah 5,000 times? I mean, how many lectures can you hear about tzedakah? So, When you hear about the reward and punishment, it's refreshing because, again, it's not a common subject today. And he tries to do it in every single lecture, and that's why he's led so many people to do teshuva. So what's been happening over this last week is that this group of reshaim has decided to take it upon themselves for the last few years already and cut clips out of his videos and make him look bad.

5:38And the media, the Jewish media, the religious Jewish media, took advantage of this and publicized the story, initially making a whole big deal out of it. So now, obviously, they have views. If they have views, that means there’s money to be made. After it was clarified, he said, listen, I made a mistake as far as the numbers, number one. But two, even more importantly... I'm sorry anyway, because I didn't say it to offend anyone. This is only three minutes out of a 90-minute video. If you actually watched the whole 90-minute video, you would see that that's not really what I said. But either way, if even what I said in the 90 minutes offended anyone, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend anyone. The whole point of the video was to educate people about the halacha of intermarriage. That's it. That's the whole point. Why do we need to know so much about intermarriage in our generation? Because right now, our generation has the highest amount of intermarriage in history.

6:38You know, we're competing with what happened right before the Holocaust. Whether we have more intermarriage today than then, or the same, is irrelevant. The point is that everyone agrees that we have an extraordinary amount of intermarriage today, and it's a problem. Why? Because it's a silent Holocaust. Because Jews who don't know better are marrying outside of their religion, and little by little, the Jewish religion is being lost. So you have one day, you have a Jewish guy who doesn't know better. He marries a woman that's not Jewish. And he thinks, "Oh, I'm Jewish, so my kids are going to be Jewish." He doesn't realize that the kids are not going to be Jewish. Why? Because Judaism comes from the mother. And that's one of the things that people have a hard time understanding. Why? Is the father not good enough? Why is the mother not good enough? What's going on? It's not a man-made rule. This is exactly what Hashem says. Whether you like it or not is irrelevant. If you have a problem, go up to Him and ask Him. Ask Hashem. I don't know. And people get angry about this issue as if the rabbis made it up. These are verses in the Torah, verse after verse, explaining this is what the halacha is. So the fact that people don't want to talk about it is a problem because now it's happening more and more often. So even...

7:51The guy that's willing to listen to a rabbi once a month for 20 or 30 minutes, he's not going to hear the truth. He's going to hear about giving food to the dog before he eats. He's going to hear about don't be angry and, you know, try to control your mood. He's going to hear about neutral subjects that are more like self-help books, not Torah. Yes, the Torah is supposed to help you work on your middot. It's supposed to help you develop your character. Absolutely. But you also need to know what the Torah says. And that's the reality of it. Why? Because what ends up happening, and I had this conversation with somebody yesterday, is that how do you debate with somebody that doesn't believe in anything and says, listen, I think I came to the world to be a good person. So the first question needs to be, how do you know what's good? What do you mean? I know what's good. Well, what's good? You know, is killing people a good thing? No, killing people is not a good thing.

8:51What if you have a next-door neighbor that you know is a mass murderer, and you're the only person in the world that knows this, and he's about to go murder people, and you're the only one that can kill him? So is you not killing him a good thing or a bad thing? If you don't kill him, he's going to go kill people. If you do kill him, then based on your original definition, you're a bad person. He says, no, no, no, it's... What about not killing? What about just being, "I don't want to kill anyone"? What about just being a nice person? What makes you think you're nice? Who defines this "nice"? You know, Hitler thought he was nice also. He thought he was doing the world a favor. So the point is that we have no concept of what good is. Yet, we define it every single day by our behavior, and we think that we can do that by using our own logic. So what ends up happening is that people who are telling the truth, exactly as Hashem said it, find it refreshing to people; it's the first time they hear it. But some people who don't want to change and think they know what "nice" is, think they know what "good" is, and are shell-shocked by this news. They don't want to hear it, and they challenge it. But they don't challenge it quietly or even like civilized people, where they send a question to the rabbi, listen to the Rav.

10:17You said XYZ about this, you said somebody that does violate Shabbat, this happens, or somebody that doesn't eat kosher, this happens. Can you show me a source for what you're saying? You know, like a civilized person. If you came to a doctor and the doctor said, listen, if you do ABC, this will happen to you. are you going to tell him, no, you're wrong, you're a liar, you're a wicked person, curse him? No, you're not going to say that. Well, how do you know? That's what you're going to say to the doctor. How do you know that this is going to happen? The doctor is going to say, well, listen, he opens the book, he says, see, this is my source, that this is likely to happen. If you go to a lawyer, and the lawyer says, listen, if you don't sue this guy, then by the end of the month, he's going to own everything that you have. You don't say, oh, you liar, you cheater, you start cursing the guy. No, you don't say that. You say, why, how do you know? like a civilized person. And he says, well, listen, based on the law, he has this right and that right and this right. But with religion, with Judaism especially, no one questions anything. They just attack. It's immediately war. You're guilty until proven innocent, not innocent until proven guilty. And that's the problem. And the media milks this in every single way possible. So on one end, when he said what he said, and it was...

11:35completely misconstrued, completely misunderstood. They took advantage of it, ran it, publicized it to the world. Made it as if this guy who spent 21 years trying to save Jewish souls is pretty much worse than a Nazi. That's what they made this... I mean, he works for free. He doesn't charge for lectures. He gives CDs for free. So it's not that you would say, oh, he's a multi-millionaire and he could do that. He's not a millionaire or anything. He lives off of charity. People that see what he does, they try to help him out. But in reality, if he charged for lectures, he could get thousands of dollars for each lecture. He doesn't. Why? Because he doesn't want anyone to ever not get him to speak just because of money. This shows you how this is someone that truly cares about the results of Judaism, for Hashem, not for his own pocket. And that's what the media is not telling you. So then, after this, he says, you know what, fine, I'm sorry. So they get, they tell him, they call him, they tell him, listen, now we have an exclusive, you see the Yeshiva World, I think it was, or whatever media it was, they get an exclusive, Rabbi apologizes. So you think, okay, it's over.

12:56Mistake was made. Whether mistake or not is irrelevant. Bottom line is, people got offended. Okay, Rabbi says, I'm sorry. That's it. We're done, right? That's generally how it's supposed to be. Hashem accepts our teshuva. Mankind should accept our teshuva also. What happens? Not even hours later, they're already working on another story. of how, "No, he should also say sorry for this, this, this," and they start looking for things for him to say sorry about. And the media facilitates even more lashon hara, giving people more reasons to hate him after they pretty much begged him to give them an exclusive and, you know, to issue this, you know, worldwide apology. And now, it's just continuing, and continuing, and continuing, and it's just never-ending. And the problem is, when things like this happen, when all of this lashon hara comes to the world, it creates a big chilul Hashem. It makes Hashem very, very angry because it makes the Jews look like fools, especially when those Jews are religious. If it was a bunch of, you know,

14:12Non-religious Jews arguing about something, okay, this guy's this one, this guy's not, you know, he's foolish, this guy's a jerk, fine, whatever, it's just like anything else. But because religious Jews are held to a higher standard, when we make a mistake, when we slip on a banana, the whole world knows. The whole world knows, especially the Jews, especially the ones that are not religious, so they take advantage of it. See, the religious Jews, they act like this, so therefore the whole religion is fake. Somehow, because this guy made a mistake, the whole religion is fake. What one thing has to do with the other, I don't know. But again, it gives people an excuse. Baruch Hashem, Hashem in His amazing Torah, in His divine Torah, already prophesied this, already told us this. this is going to be one of the things that's going to happen. And as I mentioned last night, one of the things that you have in the tractate Sotah, in the Gemara, is things that are going to happen at the end of days. There's a list of things, there's a whole page list of things on what's going to happen at the end of days. One of them is saying that those who rebuke, the rabbis that tell the truth, are going to be hard to find.

15:29Truth is going to be hated. People are not going to like to hear the truth. One of the other interesting prophecies, not in Masechet Sotah, but somewhere else, is that during the days of Mashiach, during the days right before Mashiach comes, the truth will be uncovered, meaning that the wicked, the ones that have been wicked but have been pretending to be righteous, are going to be exposed. Why? Because the Mashiach, when he comes, it's not going to be a question of whether you are righteous or not. He's not going to ask you. He's going to know right away. One of the ways is that you're going to uncover yourself. And this is exactly what's happening now. So you see, the biggest problem with all this, the only reason why the story got any attention, is because some rabbis, some of whom have no reputation whatsoever, no one knows who they are, And some destroyed their reputation by doing stupid things. What are they doing? They're trying to rebuild their careers. So they figure that I don't have any fans, but everybody's talking bad about this guy, so if I talk bad about him also, and give legitimacy to the argument, I could inherit his fans, in essence, steal his fans. And the guy who destroyed his reputation, he says, oh, if I join the party also, and I say bad things about him, then I could also get fans.

16:5521 years' worth of fans, hundreds of thousands of people that have heard his CDs, have done teshuva. So now you have something very interesting here. You have these so-called rabbis pretending like they care about the truth and they're hurt and offended, and how could he do this and how could he do this. Anyone that has a little bit of sense and listens to the words that these people say knows that they're full of it. And in reality, their wickedness is being exposed. This is when you know that this whole thing is being controlled by Hashem. Everything is controlled by Hashem. But here, anyone that pays attention to the details sees that this is controlled by Hashem. Why? To uncover the wicked. He looks righteous. Why? Because he has a long beard, and he has a big hat, and he has the peyot, and he talks, you know, really like he's serious. The guy is a Rasha Merusha, and has a special seat in Gehinnom. Just no one knew about it because he's doing it undercover. Now he's exposing himself. So when Mashiach comes, there's no question of whether you're a Rasha or not. He knows, look what you did. You publicized Lashon HaRa, that somebody that's one of the most important people in our generation helps people do teshuva. Not even because he's so big. Not even because Rabbi Mizrachi is so big. Not even because he's so famous. Not even because he's been doing it for so many years. Because the reality of it is that even if the person

18:18was doing it for a few months. One month he's doing it. But his purpose in life became to make people do teshuva, to worry about Hashem's children so much that he's dedicating his life to help other Jews do teshuva. That by itself makes you stay away. Why? Because the Mishnah itself says in Avot, it says someone that's a mezakeh et harabim, someone that benefits the public, that makes the public do teshuva, ein ba'al aveirah. Sin doesn't come to him. Of course, everyone makes sins, but there are certain sins that Hashem sends you, meaning tests. He sends you tests on the road. You walk on the road, and Hashem could send you, let's say, a bunch of immodest women that He's going to bring to that road to see if you're going to look at them. But someone that's doing zikui harabim, someone that's spending their life, is dedicating their life to benefit the public and do teshuva, Hashem doesn't send them that test.

19:18He doesn't say, "This is what's written in the Mishnah." This is what we have. This isn't our Torah. This is not something that I wrote, he wrote, or some guy in our generation wrote. This is what we got on Mount Sinai. So, even if you don't like what he does, even if you don't like the guy, even if you don't like his way, even if you disagree with him, be quiet. Why? Because he has a special deal with Hashem. He cares about His kids. You care about His kids? You helping other people do teshuva? No? So be quiet. That's it. And that's the thing, so that's why I see it clearly that when these rabbis are coming out and showing their wickedness, now there's no more question. One of these rabbis that came out, without mentioning any names—it's easy to find out anyway, he's very famous. I guess his fame went to his head; he went to the media a lot, and then he became very, very bold and decided to write a book about how Jesus is kosher. which is completely against the Torah, it's complete idol worship, there's no way in the world it can ever be kosher. But he writes a book, maybe there is a way. Which is pretty much, wait, so on one end you're calling yourself an Orthodox rabbi, on another end you're telling us that idol worship is kosher? No. So he writes a book, and even his own congregation from Chabad went against him after that, and he completely destroyed his reputation after he wrote this book. So now he's trying to rebuild his career.

20:45He's still famous among the Americans and the secular people of the world. They still consider him a rabbi. But among the religious world, he's considered zero. So he's trying to build his career now. Why? Because it's an opportunity. I could step on Rabbi Mizrachi to build my career. And someone that has even a clear vision can see this. The problem is that most people don't see it because most people don't know the whole background story. They don't know who this guy is. They don't know who that guy is. All they know is a bunch of rabbis fighting. So it makes the religion look horrible, completely uninteresting, and you know what? Leave me alone with this religion stuff. Look at what these religious people are doing. I'm going to continue driving on Shabbat, going to the beach, doing whatever I want. Leave me alone with this. So that's what's called Chilul Hashem. The good news is, aside from it being a prophecy that's telling us that we are indeed in the end of days, we are indeed getting closer and closer to the Mashiach. The good news is that the Satan has one thing that is against the Torah and the Torah being fulfilled, which is that he knows that as soon as Hashem decides to bring the Mashiach, that's his last day. That's the day he gets fired. That's the day that Hashem will slaughter him. He doesn't want it to happen, so he tries to do everything possible

22:16to make it not happen, to delay the Mashiach, to make more Jews suffer, to make more Jews not be saved. And that's what we're going to learn from next week's parasha, is that as far as the amount of Jews that actually left Egypt, it was a very small percentage of the Jews that actually existed. They say chamushim, chamushim literally means one out of five Jews left Egypt. The other four died. Hashem punished them. Why? Because they didn't want to do Teshuva. They didn't want to get the Torah. They wanted to stay in Egypt, comfortable. But some sages actually interpret the Chamushim to mean not one out of five left Egypt, but actually one out of five hundred. Which means only two out of one thousand Jews actually left Egypt. That's not even two percent. That's a tenth of a percent. I'm sorry, a tenth of one percent. So it's if you think about it, this is a horrible situation, much worse than what happened in the Holocaust.

23:26Not that the Holocaust is not a disaster. It's a disaster of our generation, of our recent generations. And there are still people alive who are still having traumatizing dreams about it and memories of it. No, no, no. We're not understating the Holocaust in any way. But if you compare what's happening in this parasha, in last week's parasha, to what happened in the Holocaust, as far as the numbers are concerned, it was much, much worse in the Torah. So why does Hashem allow the Yetzer Hara to interfere? One of the reasons He lets the Yetzer Hara interfere is by giving the media their 15 minutes of fame, giving the Rasha rabbi his 15 minutes of fame, giving the righteous rabbi 15 minutes of, or even an hour of embarrassment. It looks like everything is the opposite. The sages say it's Alma deShikra, the world of lies. Everything is the opposite here. Why did Hashem do everything the opposite for a little while? It's to give us a sign. A sign that the Yetzer Hara is not happy with you. If the Yetzer Hara is not happy with you, he's going to interfere. If he's interfering, if he cares enough to interfere in your life, that means you're doing the right thing, it means you're going on the right track, that means you're doing something important.

24:54There's a tradition, there's a regular Yetzer Hara in all of us. But some have a big Yetzer Hara. Some have a Yetzer Hara where it's hard for them to put on tefillin in the morning. Some have a Yetzer Hara where they can't not look at an immodest woman. They have to look at women. So that's a standard Yetzer Hara. It's not good, but it is what it is. But then there's the Yetzer Hara where all of a sudden you were the number one rabbi in the world one week, and the next day everyone hates you, or it seems like it at least. It's a big problem. It's a big challenge, a big test. So David HaMelech wrote something for us to know that this is indeed what it is. It's in Perek Tehillim, it's in Psalms 27, Chaf Zayin. It says, If an army should encamp against me,

25:54My heart would not fear. If a war should rise against me, in this I trust. If an army goes against me, I'm not going to fear. If a war goes against me, that's what I trust. It says, what he's saying here, this is actually, I heard this verse from my Rav, Yosef Mugrabi. He's telling us here, if I have problems, then I know I'm already going in the right direction. And if there's an outright war against me, I'm certain I'm going in the right direction. If things are not going well, you know, I'm not doing as good as I should, or there's a little bit of distraction, one guy is being not nice to me, two people, okay, so that's giving me some certainty that the Yetzer Hara is not happy, but...

26:55I'm fine. I'm standard. I'm the guy that has a problem doing tefillin. I'm the guy that has a problem watching his eyes. I'm a standard person. But if there's an outright war against me, that's what I trust. Now I know for sure the Yetzer Hara is not happy with me. I know for sure Hashem is happy with me. So if you're going to do the right thing in a big way, expect a war. That's what David HaMelech tells us. It's scary. It's scary. But it's reality. And how can you possibly get, now that you know this, you have to ask yourself, how much do I really want to do the right thing? Because that means the more right I'm doing it with Hashem, the more righteous I am with Hashem, the bigger the challenge. the more people are going to go against me. If no one's going against me, if I'm doing lectures but no one's making any comments, everybody loves me, "Oh, you're so wonderful, what a great lecture, I really enjoyed it." If no one is saying bad things, I'm doing something wrong. If no one is shaken up at the end of the lecture, there's something wrong. I'm like everyone else. But if you have people like, "Hey,

28:17That's not right. Fighting. This, that. David HaMelech is telling us, no. You got it. You hit the nail on the head. So you have to ask yourself, how much emunah do I have to know that the reward at the end makes the suffering that you have right now worthwhile? Worthwhile. The good story about Hashem, that's, that's, that's, it's emunah. The basis, the foundation of getting closer to Hashem is emunah. But not emunah as in "I believe in G-d." Because in this week's parasha, the first page says, "And you knew, you shall know that I am Hashem your G-d." Not that you believed. So what does it mean, emunah? Emunah means that you know that He's reliable. You know that no matter what, Hashem takes care of everything. The reward, the punishment, and everything else. You have nothing to worry about. He controls everything. The only thing that's in your hands is whether you fear Him or not. Everything is from Heaven, except the fear of Heaven. Whether you're tall, short, black, white,

29:43Spanish, Israeli, rich, poor, single, married, all of that is in Hashem's hands. Whether you have children, don't have children, it's in Hashem's hands, it has nothing to do with you. He just allows you to work to make it look realistic. The money you're making is not because of you. He did it. He just wants you to work. So, it's like a little kid. You're making the kid feel like he's really walking, but in reality, you're carrying the kid. He's a baby. He's six months old; he can't walk yet. But you're carrying him on the floor to make him feel strong and confident that one day he will walk. But in reality, he's not walking. Same thing with Hashem and us going to work. We make pretend. Okay, yeah, yeah. You're making the money, son. You're making the money. Go ahead. So you just feel good that you made the money. You didn't make anything. Yes, you made the deal. The Korean company that called you to sign the contract. Yes, it's all because of your charm and good looks and you're so smart. Make pretend. Because if we really knew that we're just, you know, there's only one responsibility we have in the world. It's not exactly that good of a feeling when you're not close to Hashem. You feel, what? Nothing is in my hands. I might as well do nothing. You just give up.

31:01to get to the point where you realize the fact that everything is in Hashem's hands is to my benefit, takes a little bit of learning, a little bit of, you have to graduate to that level. But nonetheless, He gives us that feeling. But how do we get to a point where we have this emunah that knows that everything that Hashem promises, He will do? In this week's parasha, it starts with this. וידבר אלוקים אל משה ויאמר אליו אני ה׳ God spoke to Moses and said to him, I am Hashem. This is a little bit of a strange sentence, if you will. We'll have to say it; hopefully, it's not a sin. But it's interesting. God is speaking to Moses and says, I am Hashem. Now, I'm speaking to you now. You know I'm speaking to you. I'm sure that if God spoke to us, we know God is speaking to us. You're not going to think it's me talking to you. You're not going to think it's her talking to you, or him, or anyone. You're going to know God's speaking to us. You're going to know God's speaking to you. So why does God tell him, "I am Hashem"? So Chazal is telling us here, Rashi, in this case, is Hashem is telling him His name, this specific name, the Yud, Hey, Vav, and Hey.

32:29He's saying, I'm going to use, this is my name that signifies or symbolizes mercy. But it also symbolizes a few other things. When I'm telling you that I am Hashem, I'm also telling you that, being the fact that I am Hashem, I don't have thoughts like you. I don't have empty promises like you humans have. I don't change my mind. I don't need 15 minutes of fame. I don't need to be liked or disliked. I am Hashem. I'm perfect. I'm reliable. I'm trustworthy. I exist with or without you. The creation of man was only for man's benefit because Hashem is already perfect. We don't improve His existence. We're the only ones that could benefit or lose out of this relationship. He stays the same. He's telling you, whatever I say, you can take that to the bank. If I tell you there's reward and punishment, there's reward and punishment. There's no half-deal. There's no, "You know what, let's forget about this one, this one's a discount." There's no discounts. There's reward, there's punishment. Why? I am Hashem.

33:57And this is what you hear throughout this entire parashah: He constantly mentions to Moshe, "I am Hashem, I am Hashem, I am Hashem," constantly, over and over and over again. And throughout the Ten Commandments, He says, "I am Hashem." and then after the Ten Commandments, "I am Hashem." And throughout the entire Torah, He's constantly reminding us that He's Hashem. Now, think about this for a second. If He was really just telling us the name, by now we got the name. He told us once, a heavenly voice that's scary, and it was pretty much so scary for Am Yisrael to hear Hashem's voice when we heard the first two commandments, that all of Am Yisrael died. Everyone died. Twice. The first time, the first commandment, His voice was beyond what our physical capabilities are, our human capabilities are, that the entire nation of Yisrael died. He brought back their neshama into their body, and then He said the second commandment; everyone died again. He brought back their neshama, and then He said to Moshe, "Moshe, go up to the mountain, you hear it, you talk to Him, because if we hear Him again, we're going to die. I don't want that."

35:07You can't take it. I can't take it anymore. We died twice, so if we hear Him again, we're going to die. For real. He says, no, no, He loves you. He doesn't mean to scare you. He's testing you to see. The point is, we can't handle it. So if Am Yisrael that heard Hashem's voice, they died. So it's a memorable experience. Why does He have to remind them again, I am Hashem after that? And I'm not talking about years after it, we're talking about, you know, minutes. When we're talking about the fifth commandment, which is to honor your father and your mother, so that your days are lengthened, I am Hashem. Again, you're mentioning Hashem? We know it's Hashem. You already told us in the first commandment, and the second commandment, and the third commandment, you reminded us it was Hashem. You are Hashem. Why are you mentioning it again, and again, and again? So in that particular commandment, he's telling you, honor your father and your mother. Your benefit is that if you do honor your father and your mother, your days will be lengthened. But remember, I am Hashem. What does it mean? You can honor them as long as they're not going against Me. If your father and your mother tell you to drive them on Shabbat somewhere, that's not pikuach nefesh, it's not saving a life, drive them to the beach, drive them to the mall.

36:30I am Hashem. I come first. You don't honor your father and your mother if it means violating My commandments. I come first. If your father and your mother invite you to a dinner and you know they're going to a non-kosher place, I am Hashem. You're not allowed to go there. Why? Because I don't change. There are no discounts. Reward and punishment. This is the most important, critical lesson a Jew needs to understand. This is one of the foundations of Judaism. If you don't believe in reward and punishment, you do not believe in Judaism. You do not believe in the Torah. These are our principles of faith. There has to be reward and punishment. If there's no reward and punishment, there's no purpose in life. If people think they can do whatever they want, then in essence that means that all of us, chas v'shalom, are living a purposeless life. There's no point to our life. Do whatever you want. Sodom and Gomorrah. Why be righteous? Why wear a kippah? Why do anything? Why not just be a nomad and go from place to place? If there's no reward and punishment, there's no purpose to life. This is a difficulty that people have today. They refuse to believe that there is reward and punishment. Why? Because if there is reward and punishment, it obligates me. It means that I have to change. It means that I have to comply with the rules.

37:58And those rules are not what I like. I like to be with a different woman every other day. A woman says, I like to be with a different man every day. That's what I like. I think that's good for me. Hashem says, no. There's a punishment for that. That's not in the reward section. That's the punishment section. A really big one. People don't like it. I believe that I can Even a person says, no, I'm married. I'm not like this other guy. I'm not a wicked person. I have a wife. But I believe I can be with her all the time. No separation. Ever. No, that's also in the punishment section. Why? Because there's a separation during the month when she's niddah. Woman has a period. There's a break. Approximately 11 to 12 days a month. You're not together. Scientists have actually already proven this is also healthy for the women. Women that actually keep this law. tend to have much, much healthier lives. Less cancer, fewer problems health-wise, and the best part about it, a much, much better love life. Both intimately and just a relationship with the person. Why? Because of the separation. If I told you, eat steak 15 times a day, even if steak is your favorite food, after two, three, or four days, you want to vomit every time you hear the word "steak." It's too much. Right? So,

39:29This is why couples that, you know, move in together when they're 18, 19, 20, or 25 years old act like they're married. Everything is wonderful. The day they get married, they can't stand each other. What happened? They had too much already. There was no break. They thought that the single life was going to be like that all the time. As soon as they moved in together and got married and had bills to pay together, And as a little kid or two, running around the house, this is not what I'm used to. I'm used to my girlfriend always looking pretty and always, you know, made up for me. And all of a sudden, she's, I don't know, dressing in sweatpants and not exactly as attractive. Well, yeah, it's 5 o'clock in the morning. She went to sleep. She doesn't go to sleep with a dress and makeup on. What do you want? It's five o'clock in the morning, buddy. Well, yeah, but she doesn't want to go to clubs anymore. Yes, she has three kids in the house. She can't go to clubs. Why are you going to clubs? You're 35 years old. What are you doing? This is the problem. Too much ends up being a problem. Hashem says, no, you have a separation. Separation. You have a separation.

40:48It makes you miss each other. So when you're together, it's like the first time. This is why during the first plague in this parasha, each one of the plagues that Hashem gave and punished the Egyptians was a measure-for-measure punishment. One of the reasons He chose to turn all of their water into blood was because they did not allow, the Egyptians did not allow the Jews, the Jewish women, to go to the mikveh. They did not allow the Jewish women to go to the Nile River and go to the mikveh and become pure. This is a problem for Judaism. A woman has to go to the mikveh. A husband that's with his wife without her being in a mikveh is a very, very dear sin. It's the worst sin, and this is going to sound horrible, but it's just reality. was because they did not allow the Jewish women to go to the mikveh. They did not allow the Jewish women to go to the Nile River and immerse in the mikveh to become pure. This is a problem for Judaism. A woman has to go to the mikveh. A husband who is with his wife without her having gone to the mikveh is committing a very, very severe sin. It's a worse sin, and this is going to sound horrible, but it's just reality.

41:49It's a worse sin than being with his own mother. The punishment for being with a wife that's nida is a terrible sin. So obviously Am Yisrael is not sinning in this particular case because they're considered anussim. They can't do the mitzvah even if they wanted to. Because the Egyptians are killing them, beating them up, they can't do the mitzvah. But someone that's able to do it and chooses not to, it's a very severe sin. This is why having a relationship with somebody before you're married is never a good idea. Because the woman is always nida. She can't go to the mikveh unless she's married. So she's always nida. So, oh yeah, it's my girlfriend, we have such a great relationship. Yes, you realize that every time you're with her, she's causing you to sin a million and a half times, right? You realize that it's a serious amount of teshuvah you have to do. Just for being with her tonight, or tomorrow, it's another million and a half. And the next day, it's another five million. Oh, you had an interesting weekend? Great. It's another 15 million sins. How much time? She loves you? Oh, wow. What kind of love? Love like that? Who needs enemies? But she doesn't know either. She doesn't know, poor lady. She thinks she does love him. He thinks he does love her. They don't realize it's only lust. It's not real love. Love requires people to actually have a relationship with

43:14that's not based on physical. Sure, physical is part of a relationship, but the relationship is not based on that. Why? Because the physical doesn't last. So what Hashem is telling us here is that in order for you to understand any of the mitzvot that I have, any of the reasons why I put all of these plagues on Egypt, For you to ever get to a point where you can operate your life with a purpose, you have to remember one thing: Ani Hashem. I am G-d. I am Hashem. Why? Because that means that whatever I say never changes. It's eternal. It's forever. I never change my mind. Nothing. I said it once, that's it. I might as well say it every day forever. It will always be the same. It never, ever changes. To get us to that point of having that level of emunah, we have to look at our grandfathers and our grandmothers. Because they were much closer to Hashem than our generation simply because they had less yetzer hara than we did. Today with the iPods and the iPads and the television and the computers and the Facebook and the media and people walking around half-naked in the middle of the street thinking that it's a good look. Everything that's going on in the world

44:44We're swamped with yetzer hara. So even if someone tries to be righteous, it's much more difficult today to be righteous than it was a few generations ago. It's possible, or else Hashem wouldn't put us in this world. If there's a test, that means that we can pass it. So it's not an excuse. It's not a free ride for us to be resha'im. But at the same token, we have a heavier test than our previous generation. Our previous generation believed in Hashem. So, okay, but you have proof that Hashem exists. No, I don't have proof. He's in my heart. That's the previous generation. Well, do you know any scientific evidence that Hashem exists? What's scientific? I read a book. It says, "Ani Hashem," that's it, I believe it. That's what the previous generation said. Our generation is, "Prove to me that God exists." Okay, well, God has in His Gemara, in Masechet... Berachot, page 32, the number of stars: 1, 0, 6, 4, 3, 4, 0, and then 12 zeros after it. It's a number that's, in essence, close to 10 to the 18th power. It's a very, very big number. No one uses it, even if you use calculators and computers. No one uses that type of number. We already got this number 3,300 years ago at a time. We didn't even have a telescope. We only got telescopes 400 years ago.

46:00And the telescope of 400 years ago was not even the equivalent of goggles today—that's a toy at Toys "R" Us. It's nothing. We already got this number, and the goyim were telling us, "Ah, I see you guys are crazy. What is this number that you have here? This is the number of stars." So you see this? Okay, it's scientific evidence. When we finally confirmed this number scientifically, our generation, in 1994, NASA came out with research that came up with a number much closer to ours. About 10 years later, around 2004, a university in Australia came up with a number even closer than NASA's, using supercomputers and the best telescopes in the world, and, you know, millions and millions of dollars worth of research for something that Hashem simply wrote for us in the Gemara. Simple sentence. Paragraph. You want more proof? Look, in the Torah, in Parashat Bereishit, the first parasha... If you look at everything, when he says the word "Shemesh," which is the sun, or "Yareach," the moon, when he's talking about the creation of these big lights, this professor Shor in Israel saw that the numerical value of those letters, if there's a mathematical way to compare it, using that mathematical way to compare it to the actual

47:27words in different languages, but more importantly, to their actual measurement, their size. And to not make it overly scientific, the actual numerical value of the letters that equal sun, or earth, which is eretz, or the moon, is exactly symmetrical with the weight of the sun that we discovered scientifically. the size of the sun, the radius of it, the diameter of it, the distance between the sun and us, things that even an imagination couldn't make up. We have this in the Torah. More scientific evidence. It never ends how much scientific evidence there is to prove the Torah. Why do we only find out all this stuff now in just the past generation Because it's the worst generation. It's the only generation that needs proofs. The previous generation, Saba and Savta, didn't ask questions, is there a God? Prove to me there's a God.

48:41As a proof in our lives, they prove nothing. God says, "I believe in God." He did the Ten Plagues and the Ten Commandments. He beat up the Egyptians, the Romans, the Greeks, the Turks, the Spaniards, everybody. For us. I don't need any more belief. The fact that I exist is the best proof in history. But this generation, no, no, no, I need to show me, show me, show me that there's only, like it says in the Torah, for it to be a kosher fish... It has to have fins and scales. You will find fish with fins and no scales, but you will never find a fish in all of creation, even considering mutations, even considering scientific ways of trying to change things. You will never find a fish that has just scales and no fins. Ever. Ever. So what do I have? You have people, these heroes. No, no, look, there's a snake. A snake is not a fish. Yeah. No, no, but there's this other fish. It's not a fish. No, no, but there's this little lizard. Okay, but a lizard again is not a fish. And people are constantly looking for ways of proving the Torah wrong. Instead of just saying, you know what? This is an amazing fact. This is truly amazing.

50:08The one that said it had to guarantee that it can never happen again. It can never happen. You can never find a fish with just scales and no fins. That means the only one that can promise it is the one that created it. That's an amazing fact. That by itself is enough to say, okay, the Torah is real. It came from God. But what do people say? No, no, no. Maybe there is one. Maybe you don't know everything. What do you mean? If there were, you'd find many of them. If there were fish with scales and no fins, you'd find many of them, not just one. But no, no, no, if I find one, it's enough. No. See, that's the problem with our generation. So far, our emunah is non-existent. Why? Because we have very little Torah in our lives. Without Torah, we can't have emunah. The Ramban, in the letter that he wrote to his son, says, "Make sure to study Torah every day." ...and as often as possible, and review it in the morning and at night. Not just learn in the morning and at night. Review what you already learned. So after you learn, review it in the morning and at night. Why? To see what you can apply to your life. Which means that if you didn't learn, there's nothing to review. If there's nothing to review, you can't apply anything. If you can't apply anything, you're pretty much just as good as an animal.

51:35this is the basic breakup of it. The Baal Shem Tov, he has many, many amazing stories. He traveled around a lot. And each place that he went, there was always a reason for it. One time, The Baal Shem Tov comes to a town, and in those days they always welcomed strangers into their homes. If it was a righteous person, they welcomed the strangers into their homes. They let them sleep with their students. Today, just to go into your friend's house, you have to make an appointment two weeks in advance. In the old days, a stranger tzaddik comes with a few of his students. You let him in. You give him a room or two rooms in the house. The Baal Shem Tov goes to a house and you see the righteous person lets him in, and shortly after the Baal Shem Tov comes in with his students, someone knocks on the door—three knocks—and the owner opens the door. The cop says, "You have one hour left." And he leaves. The Baal Shem Tov asks him, "What was that all about?" He says, "I owe money."

52:50I owe money to the government, and they said that unless I come up with the money, they're going to arrest me. They're going to take me to the mayor, and they're going to put me and my whole family in jail. He says, "Then how can you be so calm?" The Baal Shem Tov is asking this righteous person, "How can you be so calm that not only do you look happy to me, but you even invite guests into your house? You invited me and my students into your house." Because I know that everything is from Hashem. If Hashem wants me to go to jail, that's exactly what I need to do. If Hashem wants me not to be in jail, I won't go to jail. That's emunah. An hour later, the cop comes back. He didn't get the money yet. Okay. He's coming with me. The mayor comes. And they start, they put him in the caravan, and they start riding away. The Baal Shem Tov and the students say, "Come on, let's follow him. I want to see this. I want to see this. This person is very, very righteous. He has such emunah. I want to see what happens." All of a sudden, somebody slows down the caravan and he says, "Wait, wait, wait." The mayor, one other mayor of the town, comes in. He stops him and goes to

54:19The person, this righteous person, talks to him about something. We can't hear what happens, and then he walks away. The horses keep moving forward. And then the mayor comes back, screaming again, "Okay, okay, fine, fine, fine." He stops, goes into the house, brings some money, gives it to the person, and they release him. He said, "What happened here?" He says, "When I went in the caravan the first time, I was going to go to jail. But then Hashem sent this mayor and he said, 'Where are you going?' I said, 'I'm going to the president's place to get to see him.' He says, 'Well, listen, I've been trying to buy some land from him for the last few months and..." But the last time that we spoke, we got into a little argument because I low-balled him. I told him too low of a price, and he got mad at me. So he doesn't want to talk to me, but I really want that land. So if I give you the money for what he asked for, can you do it for me? And I said, yes, I'll do it for you, but I need to pay a broker fee. He said, how much is the fee? And I told him exactly how much I need to pay the bill so I don't go to jail, which is a big bill. And he said, no, and he walked away.

55:47So I said, okay, no deal. And we went back into the horses. I was going back on the way back to jail. And then he said, no, no, wait, wait, wait. And he said, okay, fine, I'll pay your fee. And he gave me the money to pay so I don't have to go to jail. The Baal Shem Tov says, the first test Hashem sent him was to see if he's still going to honor guests at a time of trouble. The second test he got, testing his emunah, was to see if he believes in Hashem 100% or 50%. If he believes in Hashem 50%, where he's just going to get some of the money from this guy, so he can pay part of the bill, so the jail sentence is lower. Or he says no, unless he gets the full fee. That's full emunah. And he passed the second test.

56:47I came to this town, the Baal Shem Tov says, just to meet this man. Just so I see what happened here. It's the only reason we traveled halfway across the world, just to see what just happened here. That's emunah. Halvai aleinu. May it be on us that level of emunah. And that's one of the things we have to understand, is that in order for us to ever get to a point of having that level of emunah, We have to understand the basics. The very, very basic thing is that Hashem is reliable. You have nothing to worry about. Everything that's happening in your life is not only controlled by Him, but it's also for your own benefit. Even the bad is for your own benefit. So now, when Hashem was questioned by Moshe Rabbeinu at the end of last week's parashah, Moshe Rabbeinu was under the belief that Hashem is not going to save Am Yisrael. We suffered last week when Moshe Rabbeinu came to Pharaoh the first time. Pharaoh didn't listen. He says, "Who is this Hashem of yours that I have to listen to Him?" And he made the work of Am Yisrael much, much worse. So,

58:12Moshe comes back to Hashem. He says, "Why did You send me to do such a thing to make it worse for them? They would have been better off without me." And this is where Hashem says, "I am Hashem," meaning that, don't worry, now you're going to see. But initially, He rebukes Moshe. In the first verse, it says that anytime that Hashem, throughout the entire Torah, anytime Hashem... spoke to Moshe, it says, here is the first time it uses Elokim. And Elokim symbolizes judgment. So He was actually upset at him. But Chazal tell us that He says, unlike your forefathers, Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov,

59:13To you, I came with a smiling face. You only saw the good side of Me right away. So, I understand that you question Me because you never built yirat shamayim yet. You never built fear of Hashem yet. With Avraham Avinu, it says, when did Hashem say that He pretty much gave him his status? After the Akeidah, after 10 tests that he passed. after the last test being that he put his son to slaughter him and make him a sacrifice to Hashem, which Hashem stopped him at the last second, Hashem says, now I know that you fear Me. Now I know that you fear Hashem, which is pretty much the highest level you can be. So He says to you, you never went through that process. You never went through the process of getting to a point of fearing Me. you immediately got to love Me. But love, as Chazal says, if someone wants a connection with Hashem, if there's fear, if there's Yirat Shamayim without Ahava, if there's fear of Hashem but no love, it's an incomplete relationship. Meaning that it's a relationship, it's a good one, but it's not perfect; it's incomplete. But loving Hashem without fearing Him,

1:00:37it's nonexistent. It cannot be. Why? Because as soon as you recognize what Hashem is, in order to love something, you have to recognize what it is. Your husband can't tell you that he loves you if he never met you in his life. You can have as many certificates in the world saying that you're husband and wife, he lives in Germany and you live in Poland, but in reality, if you've never met, he can't tell you he loves you. You have to know each other. You have to understand what you're dealing with here. So, As soon as you recognize what Hashem is, to even get to a point of loving Him, as soon as you recognize what He is, you immediately fear. Why? Because you realize that immediately He's in control of everything. He's in control of all the molecules in my body. He's in control of my blood cells. He's in control of my brain. He's in control of my parnassah. He's in control of whether I have children or not. He's in control of everything. Somewhere that's not in that much control, of course, I have to fear it. So Hashem is telling him, the fact that you question Me, it's only because I never got you to go through the normal process. You saw My face as a smiling face, in essence. You didn't see a physical face, a figure of speech. But nonetheless, here is where we learn how important it is to develop this relationship with Hashem that has to go through levels.

1:02:03The next part in the parasha is that there's a segue where the storyline stops for a second, and it talks about the lineage of Moshe Rabbeinu and Aharon and where they came from. It talks about how the sons of Levi and Amram, their father, had Moshe and Aharon. But then it also talks about the sons of Aharon, the four sons of Aharon, the three sons of Korach, which also come from the Shevet Levi. I said an interesting chiddush about it yesterday, which we'll summarize quickly. It's that this paragraph seems like it's out of place a little bit. It's almost like the story of Tamar and Yehuda in the middle of the story of Yosef and his brothers. One minute we hear that Yosef and his brothers are having an altercation where they're selling their brother. And then it stops and talks about the marriage of Yehuda. And then it goes back to selling Yosef. So it's an interesting thing. But these things happen throughout the Torah a few times when you have to pay attention to them. Here in this case, it's telling us that all of this lineage that we're reviewing, who the father is, who the father's brothers are...

1:03:30who the sons are, who their sons are, who the wives are, and so on. At the end, it tells you, it all leads to Moshe and Aharon, and this is the same Moshe and Aharon that Hashem spoke to, that spoke to Pharaoh, that took Am Yisrael from Mitzrayim. So it's not a different Moshe and Aharon. So you know that this is a reliable source. There's no contradiction here. There's no different Moshe and Aharon that you would think. But even deeper detail within all of this is a few things that we can learn. First and foremost, we learn that Aharon and Moshe's father and mother were aunt and nephew. Amram was the nephew of Yocheved, his wife. In Judaism and in the Torah, you're not allowed to marry your aunt. but this is before we received the official Torah. Which means that as soon as they arrived at Mount Sinai, and their son, their 80-year-old son Moshe, went up to Mount Sinai, and officially became the first Jew in history, because he was the first one that got the Torah and accepted it. As soon as our little son, 80 years old, not exactly little, but our son came down,

1:04:59He tells Abba, Ima, I received the Torah, and it says here that the first thing you need to do is get divorced. That's what they had to do. Anyone that was married to their aunt or vice versa had to get divorced. So why is it telling us here that specifically mentioning that Yocheved was his aunt? It's telling us that there's no discounts. Even Moses' father and mother... had to change their life, had to make a sacrifice to accept the Torah. If Moses' parents didn't get a discount, why do you think you're going to get a discount? He got the Torah. The next thing after this, it lists the four sons of Aharon. Aharon, his brother. The Kohanim today come from Aharon. originally was supposed to be, Moshe was supposed to be the Kohen, but Moshe got punished. And part of the punishment was that when he debated with Hashem for not wanting to be the leader of Am Yisrael to take them out of Egypt, he thought he wasn't the appropriate person. And he debated with Him for a week, last week's parasha. So Hashem said, oh, okay, so if you would have accepted it right away, you would have not only been their Mashiach,

1:06:26that takes them out of Egypt, but you would have also been the Kohen, the Kohen Gadol. But now that you're arguing with Me on this, even though it's all coming technically from humility, now that you're arguing with Me about this, I'm going to give the priesthood to your brother. Okay. So now it talks about the four sons of Aharon, And if we fast forward a few weeks, to actually a couple of months, to the story of two of Aharon's sons, Nadav and Avihu, we find out that Chazal say they were more righteous than Aharon and Moshe. They were even greater than them, but a few minutes later, Hashem punishes them and kills them both. because they went into the Holy of Holies at an inappropriate time, and Hashem punished them. This, to me, is interesting because one of the things that Chazal teaches us as far as what were the reasons that Nadav and Avihu were punished by Hashem with them being so righteous, is that the fact that they were so righteous...

1:07:53got to their head. They got to their pride. And Hashem doesn't like pride. So, the fact that they were so righteous made them less righteous. They said, listen, we're so righteous, and our father is the Kohen Gadol, and our uncle is Moshe Rabbeinu. How can we find wives that are good enough for us, were too good for everybody else. Hashem punished them, and He killed them both. Hashem says, one of the biggest mitzvot you can do, this is in Masechet Sotah, and also in a few other places, the best type of tzedakah that you can give, the best type of charity that you can give, is anonymous. No one knows that you gave it. Except Hashem, no one knows. It doesn't matter if it's $1, $1,000, it doesn't make a difference what the amount is. Anonymous charity is the best. Why? Because then it shows that you're clearly doing it just for Hashem. You're not doing it for any other reason. You're not doing it because you know that if you donate $10,000 to the Beit Knesset, they're going to put some banner on the door that says, "Oh, Mr. Levy donated this wall."

1:09:20Or you know that if you buy this aliyah during the holidays, people are going to say, "Oh wow, he makes so much money; his business must be doing well. Let's do business with him." People want to do business with successful people. No one wants to do business with someone who's not successful. I remember early in my career in the investment business, I had a hard time in the beginning. And the first few years, I was pretty much just paying my dues, trying to survive. And then my dad told me, "Listen, why don't you call Uncle So-and-so and tell him to, you know, invest with you. He has millions." Okay. Sure, I'm always looking for people who have millions. So I called the guy, and we talk and talk and talk, and he knows what business I'm in. And yes, he has money. He just sold one of his hotels and so on. So we talked a few times. He says, "Listen, give me a few recommendations of things that you like. And if I like them, I'll buy them with you." All right. So I told him, "Okay, these are a few companies that I like." He said, "I'll get back to you if I'm interested." Now, being the fact that it was my uncle, I couldn't treat him like a normal client. I would call him, you know, regularly. He knew who I was. At least, that's what I thought.

1:10:48So, eventually I get on the phone with him and he says, "No, no, I'm not doing anything right now." Fine, okay, I let it go. It is what it is, no big deal. I really would have loved to have him as a client in the beginning because at this point I'm trying to get food to eat. I'm just starting out, I don't have any money. September 11th just happened a few months before that. It's not exactly an ideal time to be on Wall Street. So, some time passes. Maybe another two years pass. I'm already making a ton of money. A bad month is maybe making $100,000. And everything is wonderful. And one day, this guy emails me, this uncle emails me. And he says, what else do you have that's a good recommendation? And I said, huh? And he says, what do you mean? He goes, yeah, the last two recommendations, I made a lot of money on them. Do you have something else? Which means that the investment recommendations that I gave him, he bought them, but just not with me. He made a lot of money on them, just not with me. Why? No one wants to do business with somebody that doesn't have a lot of money. He's not successful. But now that I became successful, and on top of it, my recommendations worked,

1:12:09Now, maybe I'll call you, can you give me something else for free? He had even the chutzpah to ask for something else for free. You see? So, this is exactly what we see in the world today. Nothing changed. Nothing, this is not new, this is, you're not the only person that's ever done it, he's not the first or the last. But the point I'm trying to make here is that in order for people to want to help you, to do business with you, you have to be successful. So when somebody donates a lot of money in the synagogue, people see they're successful, they want to do business with them. Someone is doing that, yes, they're getting a mitzvah, but the reward for that mitzvah is being, 99% of it is being paid on the spot. Why? Because all that extra kavod, all that extra respect and business that they're getting as a result of it in this world is 99% of the reward. If they would have done it anonymously, no one would have known except Hashem. But that means that 100% of the reward comes in Olam Haba. The reward in Olam Haba, that 1%, once somebody arrives to the next world, to the real world, and they get that 1% that's left for them, because they spent 99% of it, they get the 1%, they see what the 1% is, in comparison to the 99%, they're not going to stop crying.

1:13:33with a little bit of respect and a few extra dollars that they made as a result of disrespect, they're not going to stop crying for wasting everything for just that 1% that they have left. You can't compare the two. So the Gemara says that someone who is proud, even giving charity ...in hiding, doesn't help him. Someone that's proud, someone that's a prideful person, that has ga'ava, that thinks who he is. Even if he pretends to be a righteous person and gives tzedakah anonymously, even that's not going to help him. Because pride is so detested by Hashem. Hashem hates pride so much that even the biggest, the best possible way to give tzedakah, it's not going to help him.

1:14:33This is in Masechet Sotah, page five. So, it's important to know these things, especially the extremities, how difficult it is to even get your head around some of these things where pride, you know, we don't really think pride is that bad. Okay, yeah, I know a guy or two that's arrogant, but you don't think of that person normally. You don't think of that person as a wicked person. Okay, he's arrogant. He thinks who he is, big deal. She thinks who she is, big deal. She has her head in the sky, but she really belongs somewhere around her knees. Okay, fine. You don't think of that person as wicked, though. Hashem does. Why? Because Hashem says, if they really believe, if they really present themselves as that type of a proud person, they're no different than Paro. No. Paro survived ten plagues. Hashem allowed him to survive ten plagues, each one more difficult than the other, whether it was the blood, where all of their water turned to blood. It seems horrible, but even horrible is an understatement. Why? Because every major civilization, especially in the old days, their entire parnassah,

1:15:58Depended on water. That's why you see all major civilizations live next to the water. You can't survive without water. All of your goods, everything depends on water. Even if you don't have any of your own goods, but you have, let's say, gold and silver and things like that, you still need to be next to water so you can export it and get the goods in. If you have no water, you have nothing. So, the first punishment was destroying their stock market. The first punishment was destroying their water. All of their water, which was actually their Nile River, was considered one of their gods, their false gods. Hashem says, the first punishment I give somebody is their gods, their false idols. And not only do I turn their stock market upside down and make it all go to zero overnight, all the water turns into blood, but on top of it, to embarrass this false god, I'm going to make it smell really, really bad."

1:16:58The next thing that he had to go through is frogs. Why frogs? Because one of the ways that they would torture the Jewish people is by waking them up in the middle of the night just to scare them. Making noises, waking them up, sending them to work extra early instead of waking up, you know, at 6 o'clock or 7 o'clock in the morning, more likely 5 o'clock in the morning. They'd wake them up at 2 o'clock in the morning. They wouldn't even let them sleep and make extra noise. And literally just torture. Why? To destroy their state of mind. The way wars are won is by destroying the state of mind of the other side. This is how the makhshimam, the Nazis, beat the Jews. First, they destroyed our state of mind. As a matter of fact, one of the things that you would see if you look at the Midrash, is that the things that happened to us in Egypt

1:17:58happened to us in the Holocaust. It was as if Pharaoh and Hitler were best buddies, and Hitler took instructions from him. It was as if it was the same thing. Just some things more modern, but in general, the same level of torture. Different generation. And obviously, many, many dead. May they rest in peace. But Pharaoh continued, and he has these frogs as a punishment for torturing the Jews. Now he can't sleep. Now nobody in Egypt can sleep except the Jews. Not only can't they sleep because there are frogs outside, but there are frogs inside their bodies. Inside their bodies, there are frogs. When they would sweat, the Midrash says that anytime somebody would sweat, the water coming from sweat would turn into a frog. I like it.

1:19:00Oh, that's ugly. The frogs were everywhere. Inside their bodies, inside their ovens, inside everywhere. It originally started with one giant frog, and then that giant frog turned into many, many millions. How did it do that? Because every time the Egyptians would beat it up, millions of frogs would come out of it. Now, the Steipler... Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetsky, Zekher Tzadik Livracha, says that the Egyptians were very, very smart people. They were very sophisticated people. They had necromancers and black magic, and, you know, they had different things. The ancient Egyptians were smart people. So what is it? What's going on? How could it be that they keep hitting the frog if they know that millions of frogs are coming out of it? Okay, so you hit it once,

1:20:00you didn't know. A bunch of, you know, thousands of frogs come out. Fine. You thought, okay, so that's enough. If I hit it again, I'm going to kill it. You hit it again. More frogs come out. Okay. The third, you do it a third time? Okay, let's say you do it a third time. But after three or four times, you get the point. The frog's not dying and more are coming out. Why would you continue doing it? Are you... overnight, what happened here? So the Steipler says, this is the power of revenge. When someone takes revenge, when someone gets angry and wants to take revenge, common sense does not exist anymore. Common sense does not exist. In your prayer every day in Shacharit, there is a section right after Amidah, that you read every day. Each one has a Tehilim. As a matter of fact, the one for today, for Wednesday, it says, it's Psalm 94, and it starts with, "El Nekamot Hashem, El Nekamot Hofi'a." God of vengeance is Hashem; the God of vengeance, appear. Revenge is

1:21:28is Hashem's to take, not ours. Why? Because we can't control ourselves. We become like Egyptians. Someone went against you, made you really upset, gave you a bad name. Stay quiet. Hashem will take care of it. Why? No, no, I have to get him back. I have to get him back. You're not going to get him back. You're going to end up turning one frog into millions. You're not going to get them back, but then everybody's going to say, "Oh, look what she did to him, look what he did to her." You become much worse off. Now, instead of having one enemy, you have a thousand enemies. "No, no, but then I'm going to tell them that I did this, I did this," so you do it again. So now, instead of a thousand, you have ten thousand enemies. It's never going to end. Learn from the Egyptians, learn from them at least. This is why we have it in the Torah. This is why the story is not just for the nice story. We know that we beat them up. No, because there's mussar to learn in every one of these plagues. Revenge is for Hashem. And we learned it today. Today in Shacharit, we said it. After the frogs, we had lice, but not the lice we know that the little kids have in kindergarten. I remember when I was a little kid, every time, you know, at least once a week, my mom would take me and my brothers...

1:22:57And after the shower, she'd go through our hair with this metal brush. And I hated it. But you don't know as a kid. You don't know what she's looking for. You grow up after, you see what she's looking for. But it's not that kind of lice. The lice they had, Chazal says, were the size of eggs. Huge, huge lice, closer to being a leech than lice. And everything turned into lice. Everything that was sand turned into lice. So much so that the ground was one and a half meters deep; when you would step in, it would all be lice. To get to the actual ground, you'd have to go through a meter and a half of lice. There was nowhere that the Egyptians could run. They had to go through the suffering. Why did they have to go through the suffering of the lice and having the lice suck their blood out? It's the exact same thing they had been doing to the Jews for decades. The most difficult part of the 210 years was the last 86 years; some say 116. Nonetheless, they tortured us for many, many years.

1:24:26killed many of us. And one of the things that they also did is they made sure that they would destroy our state of mind. They would try to influence the Jews not to have kids. One of the ways was by making us unattractive. How do you make someone unattractive? By destroying their hygiene. So they would never let us take baths. Someone that doesn't take a bath for a day or two is not exactly the most attractive person. Someone that doesn't take a bath for a year or two, you're borderline an animal. This is what the Egyptians forced on us. Hashem says, "Oh, you suck the blood out of My children? Let Me show you how it feels." Everything measure for measure. Why? He says it again. every plague. Don't think that it's coming from somewhere else. Don't think that there's any other reason. This is not a fluke. After the lice, we have wild beasts. One of the things that the Egyptians did that was very similar to the Romans and the Greeks is they would use the Jews as toys for entertainment. They would throw them into a cage with a lion and see what happens. Or they would send a Jew and tell him, "Listen, go into this place full of dangerous animals and don't come back unless you have a lion with you." But they don't give him any weapons.

1:25:51Egyptians did that was very similar to the Romans and the Greeks is they would use the Jews as toys for entertainment. They would throw them into a cage with a lion and see what happens. Or they would send a Jew and tell him, "Listen, go into this place full of dangerous animals and don't come back unless you have a lion with you." But they don't give him any weapons. meaning he has to kill the lion with his own hands, which is obviously not going to happen. Why? Entertainment. Romans did the same thing in their Colosseum, yimach shemam. Greeks, no difference. This is one of the reasons why sports are not exactly a very loved thing by the Torah. Sport comes from the word Sparta. Sparta is was one of the places that they would use Jews as toys for their entertainment. Now, yes, having sport is good to do if you're going to exercise. You know, you're actually obligated to keep good health. The Halachot of the Rambam, who gives all the Halachot, has a whole section about how you are obligated to take care of yourself physically. If sport is one of the ways you exercise, yes, absolutely.

1:27:19When does sport become a problem? When you're treated the same way that the Romans and the Greeks did. You become a fanatic. Instead of learning Torah, you watch a basketball game for two and a half hours. Instead of going to the beit midrash, you're watching the Super Bowl. Instead of going to the shiur Torah, you're playing ball with your friends in the softball league. Because you think that maybe a scout from Major League Baseball will one day find you at 47 years old and maybe want to get you to play for the Mets. I don't know why people play baseball when they're 47 years old. So serious. Okay, it's entertaining. Fine. But people take it to a completely different level. You can enjoy yourself. You can play sports. It's good. But remember, there's a priority list. Sport is not on top. So one of the ways that... they were torturers with these animals, so Hashem said, "Oh, you want to torture My children with animals? Fine. I'm going to bring any animal throughout the entire creation that's a beast, that's one that's able to kill man, I'm going to bring it to Egypt." This means every type of animal, even the ones that can't naturally come to Egypt. A polar bear needs snow; he arrived in Egypt with snow.

1:28:47Bengal tiger that needs a jungle; he arrived in Egypt with his little jungle. The wolves, or the, you know, black bears, or all these creatures that could not naturally come to Egypt, Hashem brought them to Egypt. It says it in the verses. I'll show you one in a second. He literally says that he brought them with their land. And on that day I shall set apart the land of Goshen, upon which my people stand. There shall be no swarm there, so that you will know that I am Hashem in the midst of the land. I shall make a distinction between my people and your people. Tomorrow this sign will come about. So here he's telling us that he's not only going to bring these polar bears and tigers and lions and all of these beasts.

1:29:53But this is going to be a way that he's going to show Pharaoh that he's not only the creator of the world, he's also in charge of every single detail of what happens on your day-to-day. When a Jew tells you, "Listen, why does Hashem care if I do Netilat Yadayim after I go to the bathroom? Or before I eat bread? Why does He care?" It's a good question. Why does He care? What does Hashem care if I even keep Shabbat? What does Hashem care if I eat kosher or not kosher? Or do a beracha before I eat? Or don't do a beracha? Why does He even care? He's telling you right here. This is what separates the Jews from the non-Jews. This is what separates someone who's righteous and not righteous. This is the key. You're either going to be an animal or you're going to be a human being. Someone who's a righteous non-Jew also is obligated to treat things with respect. They can't just eat things and be an animal. They have to do things like a normal human being. And he's saying that I'm going to show that I do care about every single detail. And I am involved in every single detail by bringing animals that could go everywhere because, unlike lice that have a limited amount of travel or the frogs

1:31:20that doesn't necessarily usually go from city to city; they usually stay around the same area. These animals could technically run everywhere. I'm going to show you that they're only going to go exactly where I want them to go. They're never going to go into the city of Goshen because that's where My Jews are. And even if one of My Jews leaves the city of Goshen, there's a little Jewish girl walking around, and lions are on the way to her, and there's a Jewish girl They'll just pass the Jewish girl. The Egyptian little girl dies. Why? Because I care about the little details. That's how I separate. That's how I show you I'm in control. And as it says at the end of verse 18, you will know that same exact thing, I am Hashem. It's again, over and over again.

1:32:20One of the interesting things about this particular plague is that, unlike the frogs where at the end Hashem had them all, they all either died on their own or vomited terribly. Meaning some of them went into the Nile River, and they ended up dying there. And some of them went into The fire, they jumped into the fire in order to sanctify Hashem's name. That was the will of Hashem. And as a reward, Hashem brought them back to life in the Nile River. So, the ones that jumped into the Nile River on their own died. The ones that jumped into the fire lived and were reincarnated; they went back into the water. Why? Because they went above and beyond what they were obligated to do. Same thing with a Jew. A Jew can either do the basics, or he can go above his ability. You have to decide what you want to be. You want to be basic? Fine, that's not a bad thing. You're still going to be okay. Or, you could be like, learn something from the frogs. The frogs said, listen, we could jump into the water, we complete our mission, we die, we go to, I don't know, Frog Gan Eden, and that's it, we're done. Or,

1:33:44We jump into the fire because that shows that Hashem is in charge of the creation. What frog jumps into a fire? They're not exactly the smartest creatures in the world, but they have fight or flight. It's an instinct, so they're going against their own instinct. They did it, and Hashem rewards them here. But nonetheless, He kills them. He kills the frogs, and there are many, many frogs that make the land of Egypt smell even worse than it smelled with the blood. With the lice, there is also a bunch of death. But at the end of the beast's plague, Arov, they don't die. He just sends them away. He sends them all away. to make sure that the Egyptians do not have any benefit whatsoever out of the beasts. What benefit could they possibly have out of the beasts? If he would have killed them, yes, it would have brought more bad smell to Egypt, but they're already used to it by now. What benefit would they have? Now the Egyptians can use their animals for their leather. There are not many Egyptians that have access to a polar bear jacket.

1:35:08or Bengal tiger pants. So they could use these animals to benefit. Hashem says, you're not going to benefit in any way, shape, or form out of these plagues. It's pure punishment. After that, since He punished, first He punished Paro in the beginning, where every time He would send Moshe, to meet with Paro, he says, go meet him b'voker, meaning in the morning. Go early in the morning, because Paro pretended like he was a god. He would tell everybody, "I'm a god, and how can I prove that I'm a god? My entire castle does not have a bathroom. There's no bathroom. Why? Because I'm a god, I don't need to go to the bathroom." But in reality, what he would do is he would hold it in for 24 hours, and then he would go really, really early in the morning, coincidentally at a time where no one was allowed out. Why? Because he's the one that made the law. You're not allowed to go out, let's say, at 4 o'clock in the morning. And he would go to the Nile River with a few servants. And even the servants wouldn't know. Why? Because he's in the water. And they would think, "No, he probably meditates." They don't know what he's doing. So, no one knew this.

1:36:27except God. So God said to Moses, make sure every time you meet him, go baboker. It says every time to meet, baboker, in the morning. Why in the morning? To meet him exactly as he's going to the bathroom, which completely embarrasses him. It shows that someone knows your secret, and it's exactly the most inappropriate time, most uncomfortable time, most embarrassing time. Why did he do it to Pharaoh? Because he thought of himself as a god. So the first punishment goes to The false gods. The second false god that he punished is the Nile River. He turned the Nile River into blood and also made it smell really bad. The third god that he punishes in this next one is the epidemic. The epidemic specifically hurt the rams. One of the gods of the Egyptians was a ram, and this epidemic specifically hurt the rams. and sheep and rams and so on. But He would take the animal that symbolizes the false god of Egypt, and He made them tie, each person would tie a ram to the corner of their bed for a few days, and then eventually slaughter it. And use that as the korban, the individual korban that each person has.

1:37:52and sheep and rams and so on. But he would take the animal that symbolizes the false god of Egypt, and he made them tie, each person would tie a ram to the corner of their bed for a few days, and then eventually slaughter it. And use that as the korban, the individual korban that each person has, which is what we, you know, in Pesach, it's one of the things that we used to do. Why? This was to, he made them leave it there for a while because he wanted to make sure that the Egyptians hear the ram screaming and yelling. They're being tortured. Their god can't save himself. He's nothing. Look, your god is being tortured. He's tied to the corner of a bed. He can't do anything. This is also why in the previous parashiyot, When he talks about the brothers of Joseph, when they didn't know that he was their brother and they came to Egypt, Chazal say that they didn't eat at the same table. Not with Joseph and not also at the same table as the other Egyptians. Why? Because the Egyptians detested the Jews because the Jews ate meat, whereas the Egyptians worshipped meat. They worshipped the cattle. They worshipped the rams.

1:39:17You would think that this sounds, you know, far away from us, right? The whole concept of worshipping animals. Baruch Hashem, it's because we all have a brain and we have a neshama, and we have a connection to Hashem. The sad part is, this still exists today. There's a whole country, a huge one, with nearly a billion people, that has a huge amount of them that believe that the cow is holy. in India. They literally believe that the cow is holy. It's something divine. And they do things as insane and as disgusting as drink its urine and other awful things. I used to have an employee who was from India. Back when he worked for me, I wasn't exactly religious, but it still never made sense to me. So I would tell him, wait, so you believe that the cow is God? He's like, no, no, it's not God. We respect the cow. I'm like, wait, I just ate cow for lunch, right? Your God? No, it wasn't exactly me. I was joking around with the guy, busting his chops. But still, I never, I couldn't understand it. Did I just eat your

1:40:48poor guy. Well, you know, they would do the same thing to me if I, you know, they wanted to go to a non-kosher place and I'd say, "No, no, I'm keeping kosher." They'd be like, "No, come on, I'll bless it for you. I'll bless the food for you." But he would tell me, "No, no, we respect the cow." But I never truly understood what that means until I started learning more and more about our own religion. And you know, by learning about our own religion, you learn about other religions as well, right? And it's mamash, an insane world. There's actually a place, I believe it's in Nepal, if I'm not mistaken. I used to carry a picture of it in one of my books. I showed it to people because people have a hard time believing this. There's a whole country, not just this, there's a people that worship rats. There's a temple, there are several of them, but there's one big one where there are thousands and thousands of rats. thousands and thousands of rats swarm this temple, and they make a big pool of, I guess, milk, coconut milk, or something like that, and all of these thousands and thousands of rats drink from it while people worship them. This is now. This is not like a thousand years ago. This is right now. Go on the internet, say, "rat temple," and you'll see this.

1:42:13Rat temple, you'll see this. I don't worship a rat. I mean, it's something amazing. And you see tourists, you know, Americans and Australians and, you know, white people. Oh, wow, this is great. If you want rats, go to the New York subway. Where are you going all the way there for? But it's mind-boggling how when you're closer to HaShem, this stuff seems insane to you. When you're far from HaShem You're a tourist. Wow, it's interesting. It's so spiritual. That's what people say. Yeah, I'm a very spiritual person. Oh yeah, what are you doing in India? I'm looking for myself. What do you mean you're looking for yourself? Go look in America and find yourself. What's wrong with you? What are you looking for exactly? You actually believe that a rock created the world? But right now there are over 80,000 religions and cults in the world. There's a lot. Every week there's a new one created. Obviously, no one has enough time to learn all of them, or even half of them, or even a quarter of them. But it doesn't take much time to realize that the only thing that's any, you know, remotely helpful to your life cannot be any of these things. It can only be the one that's divine, the one that's from the Creator, the one that's before all of them.

1:43:42And it's the only one that makes sense. The problem with Judaism and the Torah versus everything else, whether it's Islam, the Quran, or the Christians and Catholics, or the rats, or the idols, or the sun, or any other things out there, is that Judaism obligates you. Judaism makes you do stuff. Yes, the Muslim people do a few things; they pray five times a day, and some engage in violence, you know, all that stuff. But the reality of it is, even the good ones—not to make fun of all of them—but unfortunately, there's plenty of them that are bad, and sometimes you really don't know if there's any good left. But when it comes down to it, the real serious connection to God, the real serious devotion... that requires you to live a completely different lifestyle, is only found in Judaism. And the best part about it is that it's the only one that obligates you to be good. You cannot be a bad Jew and claim to be religious. A religious Jew who is bad is an oxymoron. Yes, you can do stuff. You can go to the Knesset, you can do,

1:45:11have a very long beard and a big hat, but if you're a wicked person, you might as well do nothing. If you're one of these people that's going against Rabbi Mizrachi and does a bunch of lashon hara, whether you have a beard or not is irrelevant. If your lifestyle is full of wickedness, you're wasting your time. Why? Because Judaism obligates you to be good. It obligates you to be the definition of good. Why? Because none of mankind's other religions have any concept of what good is. Everyone defines it differently. The Nazis define it by eliminating pretty much everyone that's not Aryan, especially if they're Jewish or black. The Muslims, pretty much eliminating everyone that's not Muslim. The Christians, you know, in general, the overall goal is that eventually you're willing to convert to their religion. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but ultimately you have to convert. And every other one of them has their own agenda of what they need to do. No one believes that anyone else can be right. No one believes that anyone else can be good. No one else believes that anyone else has a share in heaven, except the Jews.

1:46:40No one else obligates themselves to be good based on a divine definition, except the Jews. So here we see that Hashem is telling us that in order for Him to have a deep relationship with man, they have to understand that, number one, He is God. Number two, He created the heavens and the earth. The third lesson is that He does care about every single detail. The seventh plague takes us to the next lesson, which is hail. Hail was a very interesting punishment on the Egyptians because hail showed mankind, especially Paro, but also us today, is that Hashem is above nature. Hashem is not limited to nature. We are limited to nature. We are limited to time. We are limited to gravity. We are limited to everything. He has no limits. One of the ways He showed it in the plagues is through this particular plague. How? By forcing the angel of fire and the angel of water to make peace.

1:48:06When the plague of hail came down, it says in verse 24, chapter 9, there was hail and fire flaming amid the hail, very heavy, such as had never been in the entire land of Egypt from the time it became a nation. So, pretty much what the Torah is saying here is that these giant balls of ice had lava inside them. So it wasn't just big hail, but the actual ice had fire in it, but not just standard fire – lava, which the two cannot coexist. Fire and water cannot coexist. The fire will either melt the ice, or the water will overcome the fire. They cannot coexist unless Hashem is in control of it.

1:49:07So He gave them this particular punishment to make them and us today realize when He says, I am Hashem, He's telling us, I am above nature. If you looked into the stars, like originally, you know, Avraham looked into the stars. Avraham looks into the stars and he says, Hashem, based on my... Based on my... What I see as my fortune, based on my fortune, and looking at astrology, it says that there's no way that I can ever have kids. Hashem says, stop messing with those stars. Am Yisrael is above the stars. Am Yisrael is above luck. We have no luck. meaning that Hashem determines. The rest of the nations' luck is determined by the stars in a certain way. Hashem still decides, but nonetheless, they could see their fortunes, and their fortunes are somewhat determined by the stars. This is a whole completely different lecture. There's a rabbi that did a series about it. His name is Rabbi Eliyahu Kin. He's fantastic. K-I-N.

1:50:31He's a fantastic, very, very eloquent speaker. He's out of California, and he covers extremely interesting subjects. One of them was about astrology and each sign, the meaning of each sign. So you should definitely look into it. Eliyahu Kin. But Hashem says to Avraham, You're above luck. I decide. Don't worry. So now that we know that Hashem decides everything, He is above nature. He, in essence, controls nature. And in Hebrew, the word for nature is HaTeva. The word for God is Elohim.

1:51:32The numerical value of both words is 86. It's the same, meaning that God is or is nature. Nature is just a hidden way of how God appears to us. So now you have a situation here that Pharaoh and the Egyptians have been questioning whether all the plagues are coming from Moshe as a wizard or some type of divine being. They've had this question the whole time. That's why, even when we had the plague of the frogs, when Pharaoh begged Moses to stop this plague, he said, "Okay, when do you want me to stop it?" He said, "Tomorrow." What do you mean tomorrow? If you're suffering, why don't you just say now? Pharaoh was so stubborn and so committed and proud to try to prove

1:52:33that Moshe is a wizard, and it's really him doing it, and there's no such thing as a god, that he says, yeah, maybe Moshe is such a strong wizard that he knows that the plague, that these frogs are going to leave today. So I'm going to say, so he's expecting me to say today, so I'm going to say tomorrow. And tomorrow, it's already going to leave today, so tomorrow, I'm going to tell him, see, you're just a way, you're nobody, go away. So I'll suffer another day just to prove him wrong. My entire nation is going to suffer another day to prove him wrong. This is the mentality, unfortunately, of some Jews today. Some Jews, they spend their entire lives trying to prove the Torah wrong, trying to prove the rabbis wrong, just to justify their irrational behavior. if they spent even a quarter of that energy reading the Torah, learning it — forget the rabbi. Okay, you don't like the guy, fine. Find another rabbi. Look at what the Torah says. Follow what it says. Stop making up your own rules. If they just spent a quarter of their time on the good, they would have much better lives. But instead, we act more like Pharaoh every day.

1:54:01And this is why Hashem says here in the plague of the hail, "I want to make sure that there's no confusion anymore. I'm not limited to your limitations. I'm above nature. I'm going to show it through the plague. Those that believe it will be inside. Those that fear me, fear this plague, will stay inside with their cattle." This is verse 20: "Ha-yare et d'var Hashem me-avdei Paro..." it says: "Whoever among the servants of Pharaoh feared the word of Hashem chased his servants and his livestock to the house. And whoever did not take the word of Hashem to heart, he left his servants and livestock in the field. If you fear Me, By now, you'll stay inside. If you don't take these words to your heart, you're going to go outside; you're going to die. What does it mean, lo sam lev? They didn't take the words to heart. In Hebrew, lo sam lev means they didn't pay attention. So the translation is not perfect, but this actually has a very interesting lesson in it.

1:55:27It says, if they fear me, which the word is yirah. If they fear me, they'll be inside. If they don't pay attention, they'll be outside. What do you mean if they don't pay attention? It's if it's fear or no fear. It should say, if they fear me, they should be inside. If they don't fear me, they'll be outside. But instead, it says, if they fear me, they're inside. If they don't pay attention. So what does it mean? It says there's no such thing as someone who is not scared of God. There's no such thing. If they know that I exist, they fear me. If they don't fear me, that's only because they don't believe that I exist. And the only reason they don't believe I exist is because they're not paying attention to the details. Because if you pay attention to the details of creation around you, There's no way that the world was a random event. There's no way that some explosion led to everything that we have today. All the explosions that they could ever calculate, and every mathematical formula they could come up with, and every single computer in the world combined, all of it, every technology we ever had from the beginning of mankind until the end, cannot even make an eye.

1:56:50Just an eye. I'm not saying a brain or the blood system. Just the eye. Just the technology you have in the eye. They can't do it. They cannot replicate it. And this is what he is telling you here: that you only don't fear me because you're not paying attention still. And this is why I had to take this plague up a notch and show you that what's happening is not natural. Why? Why? Because the next plague is above nature. It's ice and water at the same time. Another interesting Midrash about this particular plague of hail is that after Moshe prayed for Hashem to stop the plague, it says that they literally stopped in mid-air. Because there was still hail coming down. But as soon as Moshe prayed, they stopped. They stopped in the middle of the air. And Hashem took them back into outer space. A part of them came back down years later during one of the wars that Yehoshua bin Nun, when he was leading Am Yisrael after Moshe, he had a war and Hashem helped him by bringing this hail against the enemies.

1:58:19But the larger part that's still remaining is going to be used in the war of Gog and Magog at the end of days, when Mashiach comes. So it's still in outer space somewhere. So if you see a ball of ice with lava inside it, you know that Mashiach is here. One of the interesting things that we need to realize is that each one of our prayers, Chazal put it there for a reason. We always mention the end of days usually in Aleinu, one way or another, because it's just apparent that we're in it. End of days doesn't necessarily need to be something we're scared of. The end of days could also be something we look forward to. Even though it's not necessarily going to be a good, fun event, it's still something that we're supposed to look forward to. We're supposed to look forward to the Mashiach. We're supposed to look forward to the salvation. We're supposed to look forward to a world without the Yetzer Hara. And Chazal knew this already many, many years ago when they constructed our prayers. And that's why there's constant talk of the Mashiach and the end of days throughout all of our prayers. Unfortunately, we get used to praying that sometimes we pray, you know, enough times that we forget what the actual meaning of the words are.

1:59:41So the last prayer in every one of the prayers, the last couple of paragraphs in all three prayers of the day, in Shacharit, Mincha, and Arvit, is Aleinu L'Shabeach, which is, it's our duty to praise the Master of all. In this particular prayer, and many others throughout the Tefillah, it in essence talks about the end of days, talks about how at the end of times, all of the nations are going to bow to Hashem. These nations are, you know, these nations are bowing to emptiness, to vanity, to idols. We bow to You, the King of all kings. There's nothing other than You. And at the end of time, the only thing that's going to reign is You, Your name. Obviously, I'm shortening everything, putting it in my own words. As it says, on that day, Hashem will be the King over all the earth, and on that day, Hashem will be one, and His name will be one. Meaning that all of the nations, whoever is left after the last war, after the end of days, will know that there is only one God. So,

2:01:05What Chazal is telling us here, the fact that we repeat this particular prayer three times a day, and there are several other ones in each of the prayers that mention the same thing, is that a Jew is constantly reminded of this time. Someone who is praying is constantly reminded of this time. Whether that person is a Torah observant Jew, or that person is a Noahide... either way, they're constantly reminded of that time. You're constantly reminded of what's called in Hebrew, "Ketz," the end. Why are you constantly reminded of the end? Because you have to work towards some type of goal. In order for you to be righteous, you have to live your life in such a way that you know that at any given moment, you're going to have to be in front of the judges.

2:02:07whether the judges are going to be in this world or they're going to be in the next world, you're going to have to be in front of the judges. And everything that you've done, you'll have to pay the bill. You'll either get the reward or the punishment. The reason why we're constantly reminded in our prayers about the end of days is because a Jew needs to think about the end in order for them to develop modesty, in order for them to develop humility, in order for them to develop a true sincere connection with Hashem, they have to realize that they're mortal. They have to realize that they're limited, and that at some point or another, every one of our actions will have to be accounted for. So, do we want to show up with a very, very big bill and no money? Or do we want to show up with a big bag of money, which is mitzvot, and a small bill?

2:03:10if we live our life without considering an end, without considering that the Mashiach can come at any day, without considering that we have, even for our standard thoughts of even retirement, let's say, if we never think about retirement, we'll probably never retire. Because you're never going to have money to retire. People that think about retirement when they're 20 and 30 years old and save and save and save, more times than not, they can retire. It doesn't guarantee that they can retire because they can lose the money. But the bottom line is that if you think about, if there is a goal that you're aiming for, you're more likely to reach it. But if there's no goal, there's usually no purpose. This is why it's in our prayer constantly. Because we have to aim towards that goal. We have to realize that at any given moment... God can be in front of us, and it's time to pay the bill. Now, I finished off yesterday's shiur with the same question I'm going to finish off today, because it's a very, very interesting question that we have to remind ourselves has the same exact thing to do with what I just said. When we think about everything that, you know, we have the seven plagues here, one is more difficult than the other. You have animals eating the Egyptians, you have lice eating the Egyptians, you have frogs...

2:04:33you have blood, I mean it's just disaster after disaster. But yet we see Pharaoh continuing to stay with a stubborn heart. For the first several plagues it was his own choice to stay stubborn. After a while, Hashem made a decision for him. He said, okay, you stayed stubborn when you had a choice, now you don't have a choice anymore. Now I'm removing your choice, now I'm going to keep you stubborn. But yeah, we look at it from an outside perspective, and we say, what a fool. What, you didn't get it after everything turned to blood? After the walls were bleeding, you didn't get it? After frogs were appearing out of your sweat glands, you didn't get it? After everything was lice, all of a sudden there was no mud, there was no sand, it was just lice, you didn't get it? When there was a you know, polar bear with snow on top of him, but he's in the middle of Egypt where there's only a desert. You didn't get it? It doesn't make any sense. How did you not get it? But then, it's easy for us to make fun of him from the outside. But then if we look at ourselves, we look at our own life, how many times did Hashem send us our own personal plague, our own personal nisayon?

2:05:54I didn't get the job that I wanted. My life is not exactly where I want it to be. I'm not happy. Trouble having kids. Trouble with money. Trouble, trouble, trouble. Unhealthy. Whatever. These constant tests, trouble, and anguish that we go through in life. Constantly. I don't know anyone who doesn't have tests. I don't think anyone exists if he doesn't have tests. I think if Hashem doesn't give you any tests, there's no purpose for you. You're already an angel. But after all of these tests that we get every single day, on the way to work, at work, on the way home from work, once we get home from work—from the kids, the husband, the wife, and the bill collectors—it's constant tests. Are we being Pharaoh? Are we being Moshe? Are we waking up and saying, Hashem, I need your help. I believe in You. I'm going to do what You want. You take care of this test. I can't do it. Listen, I'm doing as much as I can. I work as much as I can. This is what I can make. Hashem, You send me the rest. What do I do for You to send me the rest? I'll do what You say. You say to keep Shabbat, I'll keep Shabbat. You say to keep kosher, I'll keep kosher. You want niddah, I'll do niddah. Cover my hair, I'll cover my hair. Whatever You say in the Torah, I'll do it regardless.

2:07:21But as far as parnassah, it's up to you. You said it. You wrote it in Your book that parnassah comes from You. In the tractate of Beitzah, it says in the Gemara, it says that someone needs to understand that as far as parnassah, it's decided on Rosh Hashanah. It's decided from Rosh Hashanah to Rosh Hashanah. It's decided how much parnassah you're going to get, how much money you're going to make, with one exception: any money that you spend on a mitzvah. whether it's for a holiday, or Shabbat, or charity, is not included in what's decided for you on Rosh Hashanah. Rosh Hashanah is one decision. Tzedakah is a different decision. How is the other decision? How is tzedakah and the holiday money and the mitzvah money decided? Based on how much you give. The more you give, the more He's going to give you. He sees that you're using it, He's going to give you more to use, because in essence He can use you as a way, as a natural way, to give others. But if you're cheap, and He gives you $1,000 to give, but you're really only going to give $200 because you think that maybe the money is going to run away, and the world is going to end out of this, and there's going to be no money, this $800 is going to save the world. So what's going to happen? Hashem says, oh, I give you $1,000, you use $200, okay, so when you finish using the $800, I'll give you another $10,000.

2:08:48But you're thinking in your mind, no, I'm saving 800. Little do you know that if you would have given the 1,000, you would have gotten another 10,000. So mitzvah is not considered part of parnasah. What's decided on Rosh Hashanah as far as your parnasah, as far as your living, is your basic living. Every dollar you spend for Shabbat, Hashem pays for. Every dollar you spend for the holidays, Hashem pays for. Every dollar you spend for tzedakah and any mitzvah, Hashem pays for. It's not considered part of the living that He decides for you on Rosh Hashanah. The advice is, according to the Gemara, according to the sages, according to God Himself, spend as much on mitzvot as you can. Obviously, you have to be conscious. Don't just buy a bunch of books for absolutely no reason whatsoever. That's not a mitzvah. That's just being foolish. Some people buy, you know, 500 books on the first day of doing teshuvah. They haven't read one book yet. You go to their house, they look like they're a gadol hador. They look like one of the biggest sages in the world. The guy hasn't finished a Tanach yet. They just want to make people think, "Oh no, I have a lot of books." Well, okay, you have books. The library has a lot of books too. You have to read them. You have to read them.

2:09:52Fine, you buy one book at a time. Two books, fine. Have a few books extra, fine. You don't need to necessarily have one book in your house, but you don't have to have a whole library for no reason whatsoever. So when you do mitzvot, why? Because you spent $5,000 on books that you're not going to read for probably another 10 years. Instead, you could buy a few hundred dollars worth of books. The rest of the money, use it for mitzvot. There are people that are actually going to learn Torah. There are people that need money. You could do it for that. And if you do it for that, He's going to give you even more than the 5,000 you're going to spend on the books. And that's what He's trying to tell us here. If you spend money on My things, I'll give you money for your things. If you make My desires into your desires, I'll make your desires into My desires. Let's be careful. The key here is that we have to ask ourselves, are we today... Are we Pharaoh, or are we Moshe? Are we doing teshuva after Hashem rebuked us? In the first verse, Moshe did teshuva. You don't see Moshe questioning God after this. He did teshuva. Pharaoh is still questioning even in next week's parasha. He's still doubting God. At the end of every day, we have to ask ourselves, are we Pharaoh or are we Moshe?

2:11:20beginning of every day, we have to make a plan. Are we going to be Moshe? Try to be Moshe? Or are we going to try to be Pharaoh? Which one do we want to be today? Everybody wants to be Moshe. Why? Because Moshe, in the end, wins. Pharaoh, I'll give you a little bit of a preview of next week, dies. He doesn't win this war. So we want to be Moshe. And any time we have any doubts, problems with emunah, problems with is it going to work? Are these mitzvot worth it? Is this tzedakah really a good investment or should I buy a car? Is this mitzvah of keeping Shabbat worth it or should I go to the beach with my friends? Is doing all of these things really a self-sacrifice, at least it looks like it, especially when you're first starting out, Is this sacrifice worth it? Or am I losing out because I could be with my friends? Anytime you have this doubt, you go to parashat Vayera, or pretty much almost every parasha you have in the entire Torah, and you look for where it says, "God." Usually right before it says, "Ani." And now you know what it means. When it says, "I am God," it doesn't literally mean that you didn't know that He is God.

2:12:49He means all the details inside it. He's reliable, and for everything that you do that's good, there's a reward. If you're not good, there's a punishment. There's no discounts. There's no easy way out. We're in this world to work. But you can know for sure there's a big prize at the end for being Moshe, not Pharaoh. Any questions? Yeah, I have a question here. Is Pharaoh... acting because of pride or because of ignorance? Pride. It's pride, right? Pride was the problem here because you have a situation where someone that is in a very, very high position. He's the king of, in essence, the most powerful country in the world. And now you're telling him that instead of him feeling like he did until now, which is that he's a god,

2:13:50is that you're telling him that he's a nothing. Not only is he not a god, but he's a nothing. Because all of his power is about to be lost, because all of his slaves are leaving, because they have a real God, and he has to endure this embarrassment. So for him to go through that, while having that type of pride, is just not possible for him, at least not easily. So in the beginning, the first several plagues, Hashem leaves him with his own choice, and he makes the bad decisions on his own. But after a while, I believe it's after the fifth or sixth plague, Hashem removes his choice. Which is actually what Chazal tell us happens with many leaders even until today. If Hashem wants certain things to happen, He removes the free choice of those leaders in order for Him to do His will. And this, because He removed Pharaoh's choice, because He removed his choice at the end, and when there is the official exodus, we leave Egypt and we go through Yam Suf, we go through the Sea of Reeds, and all the Egyptians die, only one survives, which is Pharaoh. So unlike what I just said before, Pharaoh dies, I meant in the overall war, but as far as physically, he actually doesn't die. He's the only one that's left out of Egypt.

2:15:20And the reason why Hashem does not kill him is because He removed his choice. Amen. So, I have another question. Go ahead. Can we say that we learn our lesson here that there are two ways to learn? One way is being obedient, and the other way is to learn the hard way. which has happened to Pharaoh in this case. Hashem had to send him the plagues for him to learn, but instead, he didn't learn anyways. He didn't... He learned eventually. Eventually he learned. Eventually he knew that Hashem is real. The tenth plague, even in this plague actually, in the eighth plague when he asks Moshe to... To stop it, he says, he doesn't say just stop it, he says, this time I have sinned. Hashem is the righteous one, and I and my people are the wicked ones. This is Chapter 9, Verse 27. So, he admits that there is a God, there is a divine power, but still, the fact that he witnesses all of these miracles, and the fact that he witnesses something that's beyond human,

2:16:43there's not enough to make him do teshuva. This is one of the sources where Chazal say that miracles don't make people do teshuva. It may spark the beginning, but it's not going to keep you religious. We could use Pharaoh as an example. After seeing one plague after another, according to logic, he should have done teshuva after the first plague. But, at the same token, we have Am Yisrael, Not too far later, when we're on Mount Sinai and we receive the Torah and we hear God's words and see His words in the sky and see the sounds, we stare while Moshe is up there getting the Torah, we make an eigel. Or even after this, after the eigel, and we see the miracles and we get food from heaven every day for 40 years, we still question God over and over again. So, miracles don't make people religious. They may shock you, they may get you to go on the right road, but to stay religious, there's only one way, and that's through Torah. It has to be through willpower because a miracle is not going to survive. It becomes a distant memory. Today it's fresh. A miracle happened, somebody survived, chas v'shalom, or some type of accident,

2:18:10or a surgery, or an illness. I mean, there are countless people who have witnessed miracles and have become religious, and there are many more who have, you know, witnessed miracles, even near-death experiences, and stayed not only not religious, but against God. You know, so it's the miracles, you know, initially people get psyched up about them, and they're excited, but after a short period of time, usually, they get forgotten. So with Paro, even though Paro is a wicked person, he still had a mission. His mission is to teach us what not to be. There's a lot of mussar that we can learn from Paro—what not to do. It's easy to make fun of him and how foolish he is, but little do we know that we act like him sometimes. You know, Hashem gives us a test. Instead of seeing that it's Hashem's test, we're like, no, no, I made a mistake. You know, we blame ourselves, like we're in charge. No, no, I lost the money. No, I should have worn a jacket, and that's why I got sick. Yes, there are certain things that are, you know, within our control, but in reality, it's His decision. So...

2:19:40The key is to work on our middot, on our character, on our emunah, and develop a deep relationship with Him. One very, very easy way to do it, at least one of the things to do, obviously other than learning Torah and doing mitzvot, is to talk to Hashem every day. Recommended is to do it at night. or morning, or as often as you want, but do it at least once a day, every day. Have a set time that you talk to Hashem. Every day. So, for example, at the end of the day, before you go to sleep, five minutes, two minutes, whatever you want, just talk. Talk, not next to people, talk by yourself, and actually talk like you and I are talking. Talk. In a language that you understand, you don't have to do it in Hebrew, you don't have to do it in any specific language. You can do it in the language that you speak and in your own words. You don't have to use special words. Speak like you speak, like you feel. "Hashem, it's difficult for me to connect. Hashem, it's difficult for me to keep. Hashem, help me with this, help me with this. Thank you for this." Don't forget, you know, don't just ask. Thank Him also. But talk to Him. Every day. "Today this happened, today that happened. I can't believe she did this. I can't believe my boss..."

2:21:02did this, I can't believe my customer did this, what do you think about that? Talk to Hashem for two minutes. You do this for a few months, it'll change your life. Now, I'm not telling you that He's going to talk to you back. You just came to a few shiurim, you're not Moshe Rabbeinu yet. You're not Moshe Rabbeinu yet. But He will answer you. He will answer you in different ways. But you have to do it for a while first. Usually, it's three months. Three months shows that you're serious. You do it for a week and you expect Hashem to come in a burning bush for you. What else? Give me more. No, the questions are good. The questions are sometimes more interesting than the shiur. My other shiur in my house, there's this one guy. that comes to the shiur, and the conversations we have after the shiur, for another two hours, are better than the shiur. I told him yesterday we should actually record our conversations instead of the shiur. That's all right, that's all right. Questions, I like questions. Anything else? You have questions? Questions? Baruch Hashem, I'm glad to be here again, and, you know, Baruch Hashem, we learned Torah, we continue to advance. If there's any other questions throughout the week, let me know.

2:22:25I still don't know when my next trip is to California and a few other places. So basically we're still on schedule for two weeks from now. Okay. But if anything changes and I'm going, then obviously I will let you know. Okay. See you soon. Baruch Adonai le'olam. Amen ve'amen. Thank you.