Shiur Torah #71 The Foundations of True Emunah That Can Save Us In The End of Days

0:00Thank you again for having me. This shiur, before I forget, I always forget these, the shiur will go to Ilui Nishmat Gabriel Ben Kamuna and also Zhora Bat Kachla. May their souls rest in heaven and protect us also, and their zechut help us, and also a refuah shlema to Lourdes Garcia, Arturo Cotto, Michael Ben-Sara, Edilama Guerrero, Migdalia Claro, Josefa Mato, Paulino Claro Suarez, and Sara Batzar. and protect us also, and their zechut help us, and also a refuah shlema to Lourdes Garcia, Arturo Cotto, Michael Ben-Sara, Edilma Guerrero, Migdalia Claro, Josefa Mato, Paulino Claro Suarez, and Sara Batzar, May Hashem give them refuah shlema. May Hashem give all of Am Yisrael refuah shlema very fast so we can spend all of the extra energy we possibly can get doing His will, doing His mitzvot. That's one of the things that someone needs to understand is that if you want Hashem to give you refuah shlema, to give you parnasa, to give you good,

1:21give Him a reason. Because what happens with mankind in general, it's not just Jews, mankind in general, is that we constantly ask Hashem for stuff. Give me money, give me a zivug, give me kids, give me a new job, give me this, give me, give me, give me, give me, give me. And then Hashem says, okay, you know what? You're My son, I love you, you're My creation, I love you, I'll give it to you. But what happens? After He gives it to you, you forget about Him. Or even worse, you use it against Him. So there are some people, unfortunately, some Jews, that Hashem gave them brain power and the ability to understand things, to use a computer, to do good things, but instead, they use all of this knowledge that they have to go against the Torah. So they make whole websites against rabbis, they make whole websites against the Torah itself. There's even people in Israel, which is mind-boggling to me. If it's in the exile, if it's around the world, it's easy to understand. Because if you're far away from the land, maybe it's easy to be infected by the tumah of the world. But when you're inside Israel, it's unbelievable for me to find out stories where there are people that are supposed to be smart people, but they spend their entire energy and resources, in every way, shape, or form, just trying...

2:43...to make people get off the Torah, leave the Torah. So instead of making people become religious, they try to make people not religious. And the worst part about it is that there are actually people who donate for these causes. There are actually people who donate for these causes. So, before we started, we were talking about what's happening in the world. The situation is very, very clear: the world is heating up. The war is continuing to be fought quietly. But here and there, you hear about these disasters that are happening in the world. From time to time, you hear about them. Whether it's terrorism in Israel that apparently the rest of the world doesn't care about—they only care about the Arab terrorists being killed. They care about that. The Jews being killed, they don't care. Or you hear about bombings that are happening around the world. Or you're hearing about the constant conflicts between the governments and the threats. So it's very, very obvious that the world is heating up and we are only 30 seconds away from having a war. And only 30 seconds away from some fool pressing a button and fulfilling the last prophecy that we have, which is right before the Mashiach, there will be a war called Gog and Magog. So, in this week's parasha, we learn... between the governments and the threats. So it's very, very obvious that the world is heating up, and we are only 30 seconds away from having a war. And only 30 seconds away from some fool pressing a button and fulfilling the last prophecy that we have, which is right before the Mashiach, there will be a war called Gog u'Magog. So, in this week's parashah, we learn

4:11something very, very critical. There are many lessons in this week's parashah, like any parashah, but we learn something very, very critical. I discussed a little bit yesterday, but we'll go over it again in more detail, B'ezrat Hashem, which is one of the things that's going to help you survive times like this. Not that there's going to be more times like this, but times like this. And it's interesting that right now in this week's parashah, we're talking about the exile from Egypt. the exile from the worst place on earth and was supposed to go to the best place. But the exile itself wasn't easy. It wasn't a wonderful experience like we're reading about from a distance of 3,300 years. We're reading about, oh, Am Yisrael left Egypt, what a great thing. In reality, we learn during the first few verses that just the first word, it says Vayehi, and it happened. I talked about this in more detail yesterday, that any time a verse starts with the word "Vayehi," it indicates something bad is ahead, or something bad is happening. This is just the first verse of Parashat Beshalach. In the next couple of verses, it says, "Vayasev Elokim et ha'am derech ha'midbar Yam Suf, ve'chamushim alu Bnei Yisrael me'eretz Mitzrayim."

5:39It's in verse 18. So God turned the people toward the way of the wilderness, to the sea. The children of Israel were armed when they went up from Egypt. Now, the literal translation of chamushim is armed. They had weapons. But another translation for that word is that it is one-fifth, 20%. And Chazal is telling us here that in reality, what that sentence is indicating—one of the reasons why the first word of this parasha is indicating something bad—is because Am Yisrael were not happy at this moment to leave Egypt. Why? Because just a few weeks ago, 80% of Am Yisrael were killed by Hashem. Only 20% left Egypt. Why did the 80% get killed? Because they didn't want to do teshuva. They didn't want to leave the material world. They didn't want to learn Torah. They didn't want to do mitzvot. They didn't want to do it. So Hashem said, "Okay, if you don't want to do it, you have no purpose in the world. At least the goyim, they have a purpose. Some of them have a purpose to help the Jews. Some have a purpose of going against the Jews. So them, I'm not going to kill."

7:06whether they're from Greece, Rome, America, or anywhere else in the world, I don't have to kill them because they're not doing Torah. They're not obligated by the same level of Torah as you are. But you are a Jew. You are obligated to follow it. You have no choice. It's not free choice like people think. It's a choice: you do it, you get a reward; you don't do it, you get punishment. It's not like people think that free choice means you can do whatever you want, and then Hashem will just deal with the consequences. He's, you know, He's just going to forgive you. If you do what He says, He loves you extra. If you don't do what He says, okay, don't worry about it. That's what people's mentality is. And it couldn't be further from the truth. The choice that Hashem really gives us is that if you do what He says, you get reward. If you don't do it, you get punishment. So it's just like, for example, if somebody says, "Come to work and I'll give you $100. But if you don't come to work, I'm going to send my hitmen, and they're going to beat you up all day."

8:06That's the choice that we really have. It's reward or punishment. There's no nothing. There's no, if you don't come to work, you get nothing. You could just take the day off. So, Am Yisrael here is very, very upset because only 20% survived. As a matter of fact, some of the sages say that only 1 out of 500 actually left Egypt, meaning a half of a percent. Not even a tenth of a percent. A, um, a, um, 1% of 1,000 is 10, so I guess 2 out of 1,000 actually left Egypt. My gosh, I actually read—where is it? Oh, here it is, I'm nervous. In Me'am Lo'ez, this is really mind-boggling. I never knew this, even though I read it and I took notes on it, I just never noticed it. or remembered it, is that actually one sage, there's a couple of sages in Mekhilta and different Midrashim, that say it wasn't one out of five, it wasn't one out of five hundred, it was one out of five hundred thousand who survived. So, you're talking about one out of five hundred thousand.

9:31That's too little. That pretty much means that Hashem nearly annihilated the entire nation. Why? They didn't want to do teshuva. So, the estimate that they have here is that if the number of Jews that left Egypt was 3 million, which is the lowest estimate there is, the number is probably much higher, the original number that was in Egypt was somewhere around 300 million Jews. Obviously, this is a much larger number than the Jews that are available today. Some numbers are even higher than that. But nonetheless, when the Jews left Egypt, we found out something very, very important about Hashem. He's not kidding. He's not kidding. He's not like mankind where He says, do something, you don't do it. He says, okay, you know what, no big deal. We talked about last time I was here, when he constantly mentions in the last few parashot and in this parashah again, "I am Hashem. I am G-d." When he says "I am G-d," he means "I am G-d that I keep my word. I don't change my mind. I'm not like mankind where I say one thing one day and I change my mind the next day. I don't break my promises. I don't forget. If I say there's a reward and punishment, there's a reward and punishment."

10:58if you don't want to do what I brought you to this world to do, I don't need you. So when people say, listen, but it says in the Torah, God is merciful. How is He merciful if He killed, according to this sage, 499,999 Jews out of every 500,000 and only let one survive? How is that mercy? Now on one end, you can see, no, wait a minute, Chas V'Shalom, maybe that's not mercy. But in reality, it is mercy. The fact that so many were bad, and He still didn't just give up on the whole nation like He did in the times of Noach. He technically had 499,999 reasons to destroy the whole world. Forget just the nation of Israel. And He only had one, maybe, reason to keep it. And even the ones that survived, it wasn't like they were tzaddikim. they were still at the 49th level of Tumah, the 49th level of impurity. They were just one level away, one sin away, from getting to level 50, which means they're part of the 500,000. He has to destroy them. They're one sin away. So even the ones that are left are not exactly in good shape. So technically, He had all the reasons, Hashem, to destroy everything.

12:23So the mercy in that time, you see, is that He didn't destroy it. Where's the mercy in our time? It's even more today than it was back then. Because, number one, Jews are not exactly all doing everything He says around the world. Many of us are not. But He doesn't punish us the same way. He gives us time. We violate Shabbat, no one's dying. You don't see people all of a sudden, you know, the guy drives, you know, turns on the car on Shabbat, chas v'shalom, the car blows up. You don't see that. Someone smokes a cigarette on Shabbat, all of a sudden his head blows up. You don't see that either. He's not punishing you. Or someone eats pork on Yom Kippur with some cheese on it. You don't see him choking to death. You don't see him choking to death. Someone even says things against Hashem. Lightning doesn't strike him. He gives him more time. More time to eventually wake up because this is the last chance. There's no second chance. This was the first chance here in Egypt. That's why the punishment came right away. Here, He's giving us more time. He even has more mercy on us now.

13:47Because this is the last chance. The Mashiach is around the corner. Now, one of the things that caused Hashem to have mercy on the 4 out of 5, or the 499,999 out of 500, and let the one live, is the fact that they had enough emunah. they didn't have a lot of emunah, which we'll learn from this parasha. But they had enough emunah to go into the desert without knowing where they're going. They're leaving a civilized country, if you will, even though there were resha'im and merusha'im in Egypt. But in essence, they're leaving a place where there's food, there's commerce. They're not slaves already for several months because pretty much the... The kingdom was destroyed. They could go back to a normal life, possibly, but they're trusting Hashem to go into the desert. Even if it's one person, it's most likely that person is not going to survive in the desert, let alone millions of people with no food. Where are you going to find water? Where are you going to find food? So, this was enough emunah to get them out.

15:15And this is one of the things that's going to get us out. Emunah is one of the most important things that you need to work on every single day in order for you to survive the end of times. Right now, Baruch Hashem, we're in a good situation. No one's attacking us. We're able to practice our religion, even publicize it on the internet, say what we want. We live in a wonderful country that at this point gives us freedom. The fact that some of the leadership in the country are not exactly pro-Jews is a different story, but nonetheless, Hashem is allowing us to practice our religion freely. Unlike the people in the Holocaust, Hashem, what happened there, or the people during the times of Egypt, we weren't allowed to do anything. Or the times of Rome or Greece. where their purpose was to destroy Judaism, especially the Greeks. So right now, Hashem is making it easy for us to practice Judaism. He's making it easy for us to connect to Him. If we connect to Him, we have a chance of surviving. But if we waste our time and focus all of our attention on sports, money, women, men, and all the material in this world,

16:42that we're giving up on the biggest opportunity of a lifetime without realizing that it's our last opportunity. Now, how do we get to a point of building this emunah? Chazal says that there are two things, there are only two things that are going to help someone at the end of times: Torah and Gemilut Chassadim. The Torah, meaning not only learning Torah every day, but practicing Torah. Can't just say, listen, yeah, you know what? Thank you for giving me this advice. I'm going to read 15 minutes or an hour a day of Torah, but I'm not going to keep anything. I'm just going to read it like a book. I'm going to read it like Harry Potter. I'm going to read it like one of these novels that is a bestseller in The New York Times. I'm going to read it. Isn't that Torah? No. It's not Torah. When Chazal says Torah, it means not only learning Torah but actually putting it into action. Doing what it says. Because if you're just reading it like a book, that by itself is a sin. It's not just a book. It's not just a history book. The second thing is Gemilut Chassadim. Gemilut Chassadim is doing something, as we were saying before, beyond just money.

18:08Yes, it may include money. It may not include money. But most importantly, it's something that includes your time, where you are donating your time. You're donating your effort. You're doing something that's above and beyond what you would normally do. One of the best gemilut chasadim that you can possibly do, especially now, is, as we were saying right before we pressed the button of on, is kiruv. getting other Jews to become religious. Now, if you're a good speaker, you can give, you know, if you know Torah, you're a good speaker, you could teach Torah. If not, you can give them a disc of somebody else that speaks. If you don't have a disc, bring them to a lecture. There are all types of ways of doing kiruv. It doesn't all require money. If you already have a Facebook account or a Twitter account, instead of tweeting about what Paris Hilton ate last week on Tuesday at 3 a.m., tweet a shiur Torah by Rabbi Mizrahi or Rabbi Zamir Cohen or one of these rabbis. Stop wasting your time with nonsense. If you're on Facebook, if you see a nice shiur, or you see one of these short clips that we've been putting up over the last week, or anything else that's out there, press like, share it with your friends, don't be so selfish.

19:32Spread the words of Torah. Some of it requires money, but it doesn't necessarily need to. Why is kiruv so good? Because the Gemara in Masechet Bava Metzia says that someone who brings other Jews who are far and makes them religious is given the power to override Hashem's decrees. This is mind-boggling when you think about it. Someone that makes other Jews religious, Hashem is giving him the power to tell Hashem, "No, I disagree, I want this person to live." Hashem decides, "Listen, I need to punish this person, chas v'shalom, I'm going to give him a disease, and he's only going to have a week to live." If that person is lucky enough to know a righteous Jew that does kiruv, and that person comes and cares enough about this Jew, and he starts praying to Hashem, and he says, Hashem, no. I don't want You to kill him. He's going to do better. Give him another chance.

20:54According to Chazal in the Gemara, this is the Oral Torah; this is not some hidden book that no one knows about. This is in the core part of the foundation of the Torah. Hashem, in essence, can say, yes, something that was already decided, even if it's a death penalty. Obviously, if we can do something like that for others, we can do stuff like that for ourselves. Why does Hashem care so much about people that do kiruv? Why does Hashem consider them something that's beyond just righteous? There was a shiur by Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, zt"l, and he was talking about this tractate in Bava Metzia, but also describing a kiruv person or kiruv rabbi's afterlife. He says the highest level that a righteous person can reach is where the Malachei Hasharet, the angels of God, are. The righteous person reaches that level of heaven. He's going to be with them. He's going to be directly with the servants of God. There's only one level above them. That's literally above the angels of God. And there's only one kind of person that goes there.

22:16Someone does Kiruv. So even if someone is the Gadol HaDor, someone knows Torah, you know, like it's flowing out of his mouth, it's something amazing. He knows everything by heart. The whole Gemara, the whole Zohar, the whole Mishnah, the whole Chumash, Tanach, hundreds of thousands of books. His whole life he's been in a room closed just with Torah. Never made a sin in his life. But he didn't do Kiruv. Okay, so he gets to a higher level in heaven, b'ezrat Hashem. Some little guy doesn't know even a quarter of what this tzaddik knows, but he brings Jews back. He brings Jews back to Hashem, gets to a higher level. Why? Because if you think about it, at the end of Masechet Sotah, when it talks about the end of times, Hashem is giving us a very, very critical message. He's telling us that after all of these prophecies come true, which we talked about, whether it's promiscuity, inflation, war—all bad stuff—I'm going to put Am Yisrael in a situation where you will have nothing to rely on other than our Father in Heaven.

23:43So whether you have money, your money is going to be worthless. You thought you had power, you're not going to be a peasant. You thought that your looks are going to get you somewhere, your looks are going to be worthless. Everything you thought was meaningful, I'm going to put you in a position where it's completely worthless, and there's only one thing that you can rely on: Me. God. That's it. Avinu She'baShamayim. Avinu She'baShamayim means our Father in Heaven. So when he's saying that the ultimate purpose, in essence, of the ultimate climax of this world is for us to get to a point where we can only rely on our Father in Heaven. So what is it telling us here? It's telling us here that no matter what we do, we're still His children. So if one of my children is not only righteous with Me, but he's so worried about my other children, his brothers and sisters, to bring them back to Me. Him I love extra. Her I love extra. Because not only is she doing the right thing already, okay, she's keeping mitzvot, she's keeping Shabbat, she's keeping kosher, she's doing all the things, she's doing whatever she can. Whatever she's supposed to, she's doing it, it's fine. But she's doing chesed with Hashem.

25:13You could even say, you're almost in essence, you're doing the favor, not just obviously you're the one that's benefiting, Hashem is perfect, but in essence, it's almost like you're doing the favor for Hashem. You're doing the chesed for Hashem because He has a lost child somewhere. Completely lost, has no concept of what God is. Has no concept of what's happening in the world around him. And you're getting this boy or girl to open a Torah every day for a little bit of time, to learn some Torah, to do mitzvot, to do something, to connect him with God, it doesn't get better than that. It doesn't get better than that. So, someone that really wants to connect to Hashem on a bigger level should spend as much energy as they can doing it. Again, like I said, not everybody is a speaker, not everybody is a scholar, but there are ways to do it for very, very cheap. And very, very simple. Whether it's pressing like, or sharing videos, or bringing people to shiurim (Torah lectures), getting people to a point where it's not you just pressing like, like, like all day like a robot. Obviously, have some purpose. Send it to people. Do something beyond just being a robot. If Hashem wanted robots, He would have just created angels. He doesn't need humans. So, obviously, go out of your way to do chesed (kindness) with Hashem. When you go out of your way to do chesed with Hashem,

26:41He will go out of His way to do chesed with you. In this world and the next. Now, Am Yisrael, in this situation, had a difficult, difficult time seeing the chesed that Hashem was giving them. Why? Because they were in the rut. They were in the difficulty right now. A bunch of their friends and family died. They're going into a desert. It's not exactly known to be a pleasant vacation spot. And on top of that, they just found out that Pharaoh is coming after them. Now, it says here, Pharaoh approached the children of Israel, raised their eyes, and behold, Egypt was journeying after them. And they were very frightened. Now, hikriv means approached, literally, in English, but hikriv also means brought closer. The literal translation would mean it brought closer. It's in verse 10, 14:10.

28:07Hikriv is a kiruv. Kiruv means you brought close, you brought people back to Hashem. So, in essence, what Chazal is telling us here is that Pharaoh, by chasing and scaring Am Yisrael, did kiruv. Why? Before they knew that Pharaoh was chasing them, they were unhappy, they didn't have 100% emunah. They didn't see the chesed that Hashem was giving them. They're complaining a lot. When do people do teshuva? When problems start. You go to a hospital near the emergency room, intensive care unit, hospice, where people are dying, cancer center—everyone is religious all of a sudden. Even the ones that were anti-Torah, they see a rabbi, "Rabbi, come give me a blessing." Why? Because they know that it's possible for them to go meet their Maker. They become religious in the last second. Problems start, people become religious. People lose money, they look at Hashem. People lose health, they look at Hashem.

29:32They gain health, they look in their pocket, they look at themselves, they look in the mirror. Do you ever see somebody that goes to the gym and instead of looking in the mirror, they look at Hashem and thank Him? Usually, they look in the mirror. Why? Because they look at their own muscles. That's what people do in the gym. They look at their own muscles. Why do you think a gym... I remember when I was a kid, I used to go to the gym. That's all you do. You look in the mirror the whole time. Oh, my muscle is bigger today, it's smaller. That's what you do. So that's the reason why the gyms are full of mirrors. Of course. You want to look at yourself. That's all you do. You look at yourself. Every gym in the whole world, they're all full of mirrors. Why? Because people need to look at themselves. Oh, today my muscle is bigger, today it's smaller. People are full of themselves. Someone that's built like an ox. He doesn't look at Hashem and say, "Thank you, Hashem, for giving me the strength." He looks at himself. "Look what I did." Someone that just won the lotto and makes a lot of money in his job. Most of the time, not all the time, but most of the time, when you ask them, "So what made you rich?" The first thing that he says is, "I. I."

30:44i did... I worked really hard. I was very smart. I did this. I was... No, I did nothing. Hashem gave it to you. That's it. That's really the answer. But nobody does it though. Very, very few people do it. So in this situation, when Hashem wants to bring us closer... the most common and effective weapon to make this, or tool, to make this work, is bringing disaster. And that's why He brought Pharaoh. Pharaoh came, and that's why it says Pharaoh brought back the children of Israel. He made them look up. And that's why at the end of the verse it says, the children of Israel cried out to Hashem. after they saw they were frightened, the children of Israel cried out to Hashem. It didn't say they were crying to Hashem before this. Technically, every day you pray, you're supposed to cry to Hashem for sins you've done in the past, sins you're doing today. The fact that you're not connected to Him as deeply as you should be, you make mistakes all day. You're supposed to cry a little bit to Him every day, technically.

32:09It doesn't say that they cried the day before or even when they left Egypt. They didn't cry anything. Why didn't they start crying? Pharaoh came. And that's why Chazal says that Pharaoh made better kiruv than a thousand fasts. You know, when you do fasts, for example, it's like you do a sacrifice. It's a self-sacrifice. It's supposed to make you more spiritual because there's less material in you. That's one of the reasons why we fast. So, he says the kiruv that Pharaoh did was better than a thousand fasts. Same thing with Haman. Haman HaRasha yimach shemo, who tried to destroy the nation of Israel during the holiday of Purim. We're going to learn about the Megillah and things like that. It's an amazing, miraculous story. But Haman got the zechut of having his descendants all do teshuva and becoming sages. when he himself tried to destroy and wipe out the entire nation of Israel. He was the Hitler of his day. He was worse than Hitler. But his descendants did teshuva, converted, and became sages, became chachamim. Why? Because even his wickedness was used effectively. What? It made the entire nation of Israel do teshuva.

33:37When they found out that in the next few days, next week, there was a decree being passed that every Jew needed to be killed, everyone fasted. Everyone did teshuva. That's why Hashem sent it. So when people ask a difficult question of why did Hashem bring the Holocaust? Where was Hashem? Where was Hashem during the Holocaust? First of all, we need to know that Egypt was much, much worse than the Holocaust. Much, much worse than the Holocaust. More people died. More people suffered. This does not discount what happened during the Holocaust. But people need to know that, number one, the Holocaust was not the first or last tragedy that happened to the nation of Israel. Many calamities have occurred throughout our history. And all of it was by the same Hashem. And all of it was for the good. As difficult as that is to hear and even say,

34:54Everything Hashem does is for our own good. And I know that people don't like to talk about it, and I know that people get offended, but again, this is clear in the Torah. Rabbi Akiva says, "Everything that the Merciful One does is always for the best." This is in tractate Berachot in the Gemara. What does it mean, everything is for the best? is that Hashem has an unlimited number of options of what to do. He's not limited. So let's say, for example, we want to go from here to New York. There are many ways of getting there. We can go there by plane, we can go there by car, we can go there by train, we can go there by boat, or by chopper. But even when we use those few options, there are different directions to take.

35:55We can go around the entire continent of North America to eventually arrive at New York, or we can go a straight shot on I-95. So there are many, many, many different options of how to do each thing. What Rabbi Akiva is teaching us here is that every choice that Hashem makes is the best possible option. It's the option with the best possible outcome. Out of all the possible choices, there cannot be a better option. Even if it's something that's perceived and recognized as terrible by us, it is the best possible thing that could have happened. It's easy for people to talk about Egypt, despite tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of Jews dying. than it is to talk about something as recent as the Holocaust. So let's talk about Egypt. How could hundreds of millions of Jews dying be good? When Hashem told Avraham that he's going to bring his descendants to Egypt and they're going to be under servitude for 400 years,

37:18He also made a second promise, which was that eventually we're going to get the Torah; He's going to give the nation of Israel the land of Israel. And in essence, there's an ultimate purpose for all of it. So we know that in order for us to get from point A to point B, we have to go through the middle. Why? Why? Hashem created the nation of Israel as an am k'she oref, a stiff-necked people. Stubborn people. Now, a young person that's 18, 20, 25 years old is usually stubborn most of the time, especially if they don't have Torah in their life. They usually think they're smarter than everybody else. Abba and Saba don't know anything. Ima for sure doesn't know anything. The fact that they're 20 years older than me doesn't mean anything. I'm young. I'm smarter. I'm more innovative. I don't need to learn from their mistakes because I'm not going to make their mistakes. All of us were on that boat and all of us are in that boat right now. Either we know a kid that's doing it or we were the kid that did it. That's just the reality. Every young person thinks that they are better than the previous generation, especially if that young person doesn't have Torah. Torah changes that.

38:46But nonetheless, the nation of Israel is very, very young and very, very stubborn and unbearable. Now, in order for someone to receive the holiness of Torah and understand it and connect to it and get to a point where they can actually become one with it, stubbornness to that extent and arrogance to that extent makes it impossible. Hashem specifically says, an arrogant person and I cannot be in the same room. He disgusts Me. Someone that's arrogant disgusts Hashem. So when someone comes from a nation that's known by Hashem, Hashem is giving us the description, "I'm a stiff-necked people."

39:46Part of the reason for sending us through this disaster, or what's perceived as a disaster of Egypt, is to soften us. Because as you see, that 18-year-old kid is very stubborn, and at 25 he's even worse. Because now maybe he has a few dollars to his name. Or maybe Saba or Savta gave him a few dollars, so now he thinks he's very, very strong. He thinks he's even smarter. At 30, he's still stubborn. And he starts maybe having some kids. 35, he softens a little bit. At 40, a little bit more. By the time he reaches the age of 70, it's as if they are two different people. The boy and the old man would not be able to, if they were at the same time, they would not be able to be in the same room. Because the old man has already been beaten up for 70 years. He knows that all the things the boy used to think are all nonsense. Nonsense.

40:46not smarter than everybody. He's not smarter than anybody. The experience of the people before us was very, very valuable. The experience of the people before us was extremely valuable and, unfortunately, ignored. And the old man now realizes how he wishes he had done things differently. He has more patience now. he's a better version of what he used to be. But in order to get there, you have to go through hardship. A person who is very good at giving advice, or a person who is very good at going through difficult times, has to have experience. That's why usually if you have a... People like to have personal coaches. Obviously, different people have different skill sets. But if you're looking for a psychiatrist or a coach or someone that you could really connect to, my personal recommendation is to try to find someone really old. Because that could assure you that that person has a lot of experience. He went through life. Or someone that went through hell.

42:14Someone that went through a lot of problems. I can tell you personally, as you guys I'm sure by now maybe saw shiur number 45 or some of the other shiurim where I talk about my personal life, I went through my own version of hell in this world. I thank God every single day for it, because if I didn't, I wouldn't be able to speak to you guys and have any context other than just reading some verses to you, you know, without really knowing the meaning behind it. Experience means you went through problems. The reason why a 20-year-old employee is worth a fraction of what someone who has been at the company for 20 or 30 years and is 40 or 50 years old is not because the 50-year-old is smarter. It could very well be that the 20-year-old is much smarter than the 50-year-old. His IQ is 200. The 50-year-old is normal. But why is the 50-year-old getting $500,000 a year and the young 20-year-old maybe getting $30,000? Because the 50-year-old has 20 years' worth of problems as a history. He knows how to deal with problems. He knows how to deal with all of these issues. And that's what got him to that point. Hashem needed us to go through problems.

43:35needed us to go through suffering because the way He created us, He created us as kings. The first man, Adam, was a king. He was the only creation. He was the prime of creation. He named all the animals, all the trees, everything. He had wisdom beyond our understanding. He had beauty beyond our understanding, so much so that if you compare a human to a monkey today, it wouldn't be a fair comparison of us to him. It wouldn't be fair. Look, us, you know, obviously a human being to us looks better than a monkey, right? But if you compare a human being to Adam, it's actually worse than a human to a monkey right now. Brilliant. Beauty. Connection. Direct connection with God. You're the only human being on earth. Momentarily until Chava comes. I mean, even when Chava comes, and the sons come. Fine. Okay, there's four people. There's six people. There's ten people. Fine. Still, you're the number one. You're the first person. You're called Adam HaRishon. You're the first man. You're always going to be forever known as the first person on earth. So He created us as kings. The soul of Adam HaRishon was split up into all the souls in the world today.

45:04all of us still have that bit of kingship that we had at that time. Some of us act like we're still kings even though we're barely servants. And that's one of the things that Hashem needed us to understand: that in order for us to receive the Torah and fulfill it, we had to go through challenges. So, when Paro took hold of the Jewish nation and turned them all into slaves, the stubbornness of the nation of Israel slowly but surely became weaker and weaker. And even though you look at, for example, different parts of Jews around the world, whether they're Israelis or Spanish or American Jews or Yemenite Jews and so on, each one has their own traits and their own flaws and their own positives.

46:06but in general, we're not necessarily known amongst the world as the most humble of people. Some of us are, but for the most part, Jews are not necessarily known as the people that are low-key and quiet. We're usually loud. We usually want to get attention. Especially Israelis, from my knowledge. If an Israeli comes into your store, you know about it. If you have an Israeli customer, you make sure you remember him. That's just the way we are. So this is after we went through 3,000 more years of problems. So imagine how we were before Egypt. Wow. I can't imagine. So now, Pharaoh comes because he's being used as a tool To number one, get Am Yisrael to look at Shamayim, look at Hashem, and remember that everything is in His control. So Moshe tells the nation of Israel, you have nothing to worry about. Do not fear, stand fast and see the salvation of Hashem that He will perform for you today. For as you have seen Egypt today, you shall not see them ever again.

47:35At this time, there were three types of Jews: those who wanted to go back to Egypt and become slaves again, those who were willing to fight, and those who wanted to kill themselves. There wasn't exactly a bunch of hopeful Jews. Not many were very hopeful. Many, many gave up. But, rightly so, in a sense, if you're just looking at the limited world of material, without G-d, unfortunately, it's very easy to give up. In front of you, you have an ocean. Around you is a desert, and somewhere according to Chazal and Me'am Loez and a few other sources, it says 9 million Egyptians are on their way to attack you. It's not 600, you know, the parasha says 600. He came with 600 special chariots. Pharaoh brought 600 chariots of his, and the rest of his army. So it doesn't actually say the exact number. According to Chazal, it was 9 million soldiers at least. It's a nation. A nation came to attack a nation.

49:04Not 600 people; maybe they throw some spears at you, beat you up, put you in handcuffs. It's like if you've ever seen the plague that we had of locusts, it covered the entire sky—you couldn't see the sky. It was darkness, complete darkness. So imagine not just human beings. Very, very scary. So if you look at the material world, it's very easy to give up. If you look at the material world today, it's very easy to give up too. Everything is betting against you. People hate you because you're Jewish. They're going to continue hating you. They've always hated you. In general, unless you stay secluded next to your people, you have no chance. Without Hashem, you have no chance. The fact that the Nation of Israel still exists is by itself the best proof of God ever. If you look at the world itself, you have 7.5 billion, maybe even almost 8 billion people in the world. The Nation of Israel is a statistical anomaly. We are 14, 15, let's say 20 million Jews in the world.

50:28But yet you hear about Jews and Judaism every single day, for good or bad, in the news, in all types of media, in Nobel Prize winners, science, medicine, finance. Every major field has to have some type of Jew involved, for good or bad. We're not even around in error, based on the larger number. That by itself should get us to look at Hashem. Okay, you know what? Not only am I part of this tiny nation that should never be mentioned. I mean, there's plenty of nations that are much bigger than the Jews, but no one even knows who they are. When was the last time we talked about Kazakhstan? When was the last time we talked about Georgia? What was the last time you talked about many of these countries in that area of the world? Okay, yeah, a few people obviously know where they are if you know parts of the world. But in general, you ask the average American, where is Georgia on the map? Where is Kazakhstan? Where is Pakistan? Some people, the only thing they know is they think Pakistanis and Indians are the same. Little do they know that they're actual mortal enemies. If you call an Indian person a Pakistani, they probably want to kill you. I'm telling you. You call a Korean...

51:41Chinese or Korean? You have a problem. Yeah, yeah. It's an offense. So we're a small, tiny little number. It's not even a rounding error because if you round 7.9 billion, you don't round 7.9, you know, to a billion. It's either 7.9 or it's 8 billion. So it's not even a rounding error. and you're part of that nation, that makes you special. We have to decide special how. Special in a bad way, special in a good way. Hashem is telling us that here, many of them were not having a lot of emunah, were not connecting to Hashem on a deep level. Despite all the miracles, despite all the good that He gave them, despite all the tools that He gave them, despite the wealth that they took with them out of Egypt, despite even more wealth that they just found, when they reached the Migdal, which is right next, right at the opening of where, Chazal says, the sea split. The Sea of Reeds split. There's actually, till today, there is a...

53:09a column, an old, old column there, and it used to have engravings on it discussing the entire Exodus, the entire story of Yetziat Mitzrayim from 3,300 years ago. The Egyptians decided to erase everything somewhere around 20 or 30 years ago. But it literally had the entire story of what happened during the Exodus on this pillar, and according to the Chazal, that's where the sea split. It's still there today. They just have a sign that's still there, but they erased a lot of the things off of it. Around that area, the nation of Israel, before the Egyptians arrived, found one of the three major treasures of Yosef HaTzadik. Yosef, who was the Viceroy, which is number two behind the Pharaoh, made Egypt so wealthy.

54:10He made them so much money that he had to divide up their gold, wealth, and diamonds into three areas. One of the areas was right next to where the Sea of Reeds split. There was a cave over there, and the nation of Israel discovered that gold too. That was part two of the wealth that Hashem promised to Avraham Avinu. When Avraham Avinu was told, the prophecy. Hashem said they're going to leave with great wealth. So the first part of the wealth we got during the plague of blood, when we sold the blood for water, and also the items that we took from the Egyptians when we left. The second part we got right before we crossed the sea. The last part we got after we crossed the sea and the Egyptians drowned. All their bodies came out, and they were all full of gold. To show their honor and their respect and all their pride, they brought all of their wealth with them. Whatever they had left, they brought it with them. So when Hashem drowned them, Israel inherited all of it. That's why to me it was kind of confusing. How come they go to war and then they go with all their wealth? To show power.

55:30In those days, they didn't have power like we have today where you have F-16s and different special planes and tanks and submarines. Why do you think Russia came to Syria with the biggest submarine in the world full of 200 atomic bombs? They don't need 200 atomic bombs against Syria or even against the entire world. Five, six of them could destroy the entire world. They came to show their power, to show their strength. Mm-hmm. or to destroy the world. I'm not sure. But most likely to show their strength and their power. So the Egyptians didn't have a submarine, but they had money. They were the strongest country in the world financially. Not only that, they had a lot of people. So they brought 9 million people, if not more, many of whom were adorned with gold, jewels, and diamonds. So when a little peasant, a little former slave, just a week ago you were a slave... you barely have any food to eat because you had to run out of Egypt, sees this very intimidating soldier that's full of gold. The soldier doesn't have to beat you up. You already lost just by looking at him. It's intimidating. So despite all of this money that Hashem gave them already, gave them the first two parts of this treasure, the third part He's going to give them after they cross the ocean. But the first two parts, already they lost the emunah.

57:03Why? Material doesn't help our emunah. Material hurts our emunah. Having money is a more difficult test than not having money because to have a connection with Hashem is much more difficult if you're rich than if you're poor. If you're poor, you need help. So who are you going to cry to? Okay, your parents? Fine. After a while, your parents say, okay, you know what? Get a job. You cry to your wife. Your wife says, okay, after a while, go get a job. Cry to your kids? Abba, don't cry to me. I have school and homework right now. What do you want from my life? I still need money for my new PlayStation coming out next week. Get a job. You cry to your friends, and they're like, listen, buddy, I have my own problems. Leave me alone. Nobody wants to hear you. Nobody likes a miserable person. Nobody wants to have a miserable person around. It's just a reality. Who are you going to cry to? You're going to cry to Hashem? The biggest nightmare for a person is not having money to feed his kids. Biggest nightmare. You can give him disease, chas v'shalom. You can give him all types of problems. Not having money to feed his kids? Might as well go to a concentration camp. It's the biggest nightmare for a person.

58:28Whether it's a mother or a father, obviously a mother is closer to her kids, probably even more than the father is, but nonetheless, someone that cares about their children, which is most normal people, even the thought of not having enough for their kids can bring someone to make decisions that are against logic. Whether it's robbing stores, killing someone, or stealing, they'll do anything to feed their kids. They will go starving; they don't have a problem. But to have little kids starving, it's not an option. So someone poor has an easy time connecting to Hashem if he wants. Someone rich is the same person as the guy that goes to the gym. The first thing he looks at every morning, most of the time, if he doesn't have Torah already ingrained in him, he looks in the mirror, he looks at himself. You ask him, how did you make all this money? The first word out of his mouth is, "I..."

59:28i did this, I did that, I did this, I did that. There's a famous legend about one of the Rothschild family members. I'm not sure if it's 100% true or not. It may be a different person. The story itself is true. I'm just not sure if it's them or not. One of these wealthy people got to a point where they were so rich that they had a building where, in essence, the building was just to support their gold. The only reason why they had this building was just to have this giant safe to hold all their gold. One day, this rich person came into his safe, his fancy safe with all this gold worth an infinite amount of money, and said, "You know what? One thing I know for sure is that even God can't make me go hungry." He had all this money. And at that moment,

1:00:28The automatic door of the safe shut. He could scream as much as he wanted. All the employees had already gone home for the weekend. The employees thought he had gone away on vacation. Two days, three days, four days, five days—no food, no drink, but lots of gold, lots of diamonds. How much are they worth after a week? Nothing. And that's why on the seventh day he cut himself, and with his blood, he wrote on the wall what happened, this whole story. And in the end, he said, "Hashem proved me wrong." And he died on the eighth day. Money is not necessarily something you should pray for as much as we do.

1:01:29because it's a very, very difficult test. I had somebody come to my shiur last night, and, you know, we're talking about emunah, we're talking about getting closer to Hashem, we're talking about praying really seriously. You know, when you pray, it's good to go like this, which is a spiritual way of trying to get some of the thoughts out of your head and focusing on the prayer. He says, yeah, I pray, I pray that God gives me the ability to buy this condo. First he gives me this condo, and then he continues his speech. So I was going to say it, but sometimes I try to hold my tongue because I'm a little blunt at times. But one of the other guys couldn't hold himself. He goes, "That's your dream? We just had a shiur for two hours. We're doing everything. That's your dream, just to buy this condo? That's it? That's your ultimate dream, just to buy a house? Then what?" Then, okay, you have a house. Rent. It's not like you're homeless. You have a house. Okay, so instead of paying interest on a mortgage, you're paying rent. It's not really that much different, by the way. I'm from the finance business. In reality, unless you're buying the house 100% cash, the first 15 years of your 30-year mortgage is complete interest. You're not benefiting in any way, shape, or form over rent. The only way you're benefiting is if the house appreciates in value. If it goes from $200,000 to $300,000, then, of course, you made money on other people's money.

1:02:51But if the house goes down in value, then you're better off renting. But nonetheless, you know, it's not a finance class. We're, you know, focused on the Torah. You're thinking about, you just learned Torah, we're trying to get closer to Hashem, but the mind of most people is constantly dragging them to material. They constantly connect Hashem to material. If Hashem gives me this, then I will do this. This is not only a bad idea; it's a sin. You're not allowed to give Hashem conditions. Every day during our prayer, part of our prayer, we say that we're Hashem's servants. When was the last time a servant asked his owner for anything? The fact that Hashem allows us and even wants us to pray to Him, and asking for things, is already a benefit. It's already a chesed from Hashem to us. But when we're not really doing much for Him, and treating Him like He's Santa Claus—give me this and I'll be a good boy—it's not exactly a rational relationship, to say the least. It's like behaving like kids.

1:04:20Worse. At least the kid is a kid. He has an excuse. Conditions. We're just bigger. We're just bigger kids. So now, yeah. So now, you have Moshe Rabbeinu telling the nation of Israel, "Do not fear, stand fast, and see the salvation of Hashem." And there's a very good verse here that is not only a good verse, but it's also a verse that I personally say every day. because the first letter of the verse starts with the letter Yud, which is the first letter of my name, and the last letter of the verse is Nun, which is the last letter of my name, and I say it during the Amidah prayer. At the end of Amidah, there is a section where it's a segula to say a verse out of the Torah that starts with the first letter of your name and ends with the last letter of your name. The reason why this segula exists is because After someone dies, the Angel of Death comes to him at his grave and asks him what his name is. Now, when you just wake up, you're not exactly alert. So Chazal say that you're going to forget your name. And every time he's going to ask you, he's not going to ask you nicely. He's going to smack you in the head. He's going to keep hitting you until you remember your name.

1:05:47So if you say this verse during your prayer every day, you're going to remember your name. So if anyone doesn't have a verse already, give me your name, and I'll get you a verse as soon as possible, so you can add it to your Amidah. I'll also show you exactly where it is in a Siddur, where it is in the Amidah, so you can add it. So the verse is, Adonai yilachem lachem, v'atem tacharishun. Hashem yilachem lachem v'atem tacharishun. That's what the verse means. You should just sit back and relax. This is verse 14:14. Hashem will take care of everything. You just sit back and relax. It's a wonderful verse. Imagine a life like that. Imagine a life where Hashem will take care of everything and you just sit back and relax and do nothing. That's the definition of emunah. Because Hashem is doing everything for you anyway. Your parnasah, He gives it to you. Whether you work 5 hours or 18 hours, the parnasah is going to stay the same. He decides what you get.

1:07:16Whether you're male or female, He decides. Small, tall, short, live 80 years, live 60 years, live 150 years, rich, poor, all of these choices are made by Him. The only choice you make is whether you're righteous or not. Whether you have Yirat Shamayim, fear of God, or not. That's it. It's the only choice you make in this world. whether you're going to comply with His mitzvot or not. Excuse me. So now, Hashem is telling you that if you have emunah in Me, then you're recognizing that I do everything. Even if you don't recognize it, I still do everything. But when you have emunah, then you're recognizing that I'm doing everything. Now, what's the advantage of recognizing that Hashem is doing it

1:08:17He's doing it anyway. What's the advantage? Whether I know He's giving me my money or I don't know, He's still giving me my money. Right? What's the difference? When you don't have emunah, your thinking is that you're doing it, so you're breaking your head non-stop and wasting your time working non-stop and thinking that everything is in your power. Whether you make the deal, don't make the deal, get the customer, don't get the customer... You think it's in your power. You struggle your whole life. You don't stop worrying, the stress, you lose hair, the kids are annoying you, the wife you wish you never met her, the husband you think he's a curse, your in-laws, everybody, you hate them. You're miserable all the time because you're so stressed out. You have no Hashem in your life. Somebody has no Hashem in his life. I'm giving you a description of my past life. I had all the money in the world with no happiness whatsoever.

1:09:21In reality, yes, Hashem is telling you, I'm giving you everything anyway. You just didn't recognize it. When you do recognize it, when you do recognize that Hashem is giving it to you anyway, that He's fighting the war for you anyway, what's the advantage? And you shall remain silent. No stress. No stress. No anxiety. No worries. Parnassah? He deals with it. IRS? He'll deal with it. Foreclosure? He'll deal with it. I'm doing what He wants. I believe in Him. I learn His Torah. I do His mitzvot. Hashem, problems, that's Yours. Me, You told me if I do what You say, I shall remain silent. I remain silent. That's emunah. That's literally, I'm telling you. It's funny, but it's real. That is 100% emunah. That's the definition of 100% emunah. You just relax. Do nothing.

1:10:24Problems, Hashem, that's Yours. You said You're going to deal with them. You said You're going to fight the war. You said, me, I relax. I sit silent. Okay, I'm sitting silent. The only thing I'm saying, I'm saying, I learn Torah. I'm nice to my wife. All of a sudden, the fact that she calls me 87 times a day is okay. The kids breaking half the house is okay. You pray for it, Hashem. Right? On Shabbat, I go shopping, you don't look at the bill, you don't worry about whether it's $3 or $4 for the cookies. Why? Because Hashem said He's going to pay for it. In Masechet Beitza, it says that every dollar that a person gets is decided on Rosh Hashanah, from Rosh Hashanah to Rosh Hashanah. Your parnasah is decided from Rosh Hashanah to Rosh Hashanah. But, there's one exception. All money that is used for a mitzvah, Shabbat, or holidays, or tzedakah, is excluded. It's not part of your parnasah. The parnasah is decided as one thing. Okay, Hashem says you're going to make $100,000 this year from your job or from different things. But your tzedakah money, your money you spend on Shabbat to make a nice dinner, have guests,

1:11:50What Hashem is doing here, it's not part of your parnasah. That's extra. That's money. It's on Me. It's not included in your parnasah. It's above. As much as you give, I'm going to give you 100% back, if not more. That's why when you go shopping for Shabbat, you have guests over, even if it's just your family, don't worry about whether it's $3 for the cookies or $4 for the cookies. Hashem is paying for it anyway. What do you care? I'm telling you, this is one of the best pieces of advice you can follow as far as Shabbat is concerned. That's how you can enjoy. Because sometimes, listen, money is tight. It's tough. Not everybody is making millions. Sometimes money is tight. You're thinking, should I buy this? Should I buy that? Should I buy this? Should I buy that? So I learned this from my chavruta, my Rabbi, Rabbi Ephraim Kachlon. He says, the whole week, we try to do whatever we can. But on Shabbat, I don't look at the bill. I don't look at the cart; whatever my wife wants, whatever the kids want, we buy it. And this is an avrech, this is somebody that makes 2,000 shekels a month from the kollel. 2,000 shekels is $500 a month. The rest of the money, you know, is purely from Hashem. He doesn't know how he pays his bills every month because the bills are closer to 10,000 shekels a month. So every month he starts with negative 8,000, which is the same thing as every avrech, every person that's learning Torah in Eretz Yisrael.

1:13:16They don't make the money from the yeshiva, from the kollel. The kollel pays them 2,000 shekels a month, $500 a month. But a normal family, even if they're frugal, even if they save, even if they live in conditions we would see as unbearable, it's still going to cost them. A family with five, six kids is going to cost them $2,000 a month, which is, you know, 8,000 shekels. So you're getting 2,000 from the kollel, You're at the kollel from 8 o'clock or 9 o'clock in the morning until 7 or 8 o'clock at night. There's no time for a job. You're learning 12 hours a day. And when you get home, you're with the family for one or two hours and you study again. You study on your own. You don't watch TV. You're studying all day. And the next day, the same thing. There's no vacation. You study non-stop. So there's no time to make money. How all of these, there's approximately a hundred thousand, from what I know, avrechim, people that live like this, where they literally make two thousand shekels a month, but the bills are eight thousand, ten thousand a month. How they live, no one knows. Including them. But every month the bills get paid. To be an avrech is a very, very big privilege. Because you have to have emunah to do it.

1:14:42You cannot be an avrech without emunah. Unfortunately, a lot of people fall. A lot of people don't make it. They do it for a little while, maybe they have some savings, they have some help from families, from friends, but then Hashem sends them a test to see where their emunah really is. The money didn't come from the expected place, the extra money that you're missing. The extra 6,000 you got used to coming from Abba and Ima, or you got used to it coming from this big donor from America. It stopped. Let's see what you do now. They get tests. Baruch Hashem, many withstand the test and stay strong, but once in a while, you hear of somebody falling. It's rare, but it happens. Hashem is telling us if we do whatever He says, He'll fight our wars for us. This should teach us where we should reach, where we should aim for, as far as emunah. We need to get to a point where we recognize Hashem 100%. That's the goal. How we get there, we're going to get to in a few seconds. After this, Hashem says to Moshe, "Why do you cry to Me? Speak to the children of Israel and let them journey forth." Ma titz'ak eilai?

1:16:08Now at this time, Moshe is, you know, the nation of Israel is crying. Moshe cries to Hashem. He tries to keep the nation strong. But at the same time, we're still stuck. Nothing's happening. So he starts crying to Hashem. Hashem says, why are you crying to Me? This is an interesting question. Who else am I crying to? When I cry to Pharaoh, he's trying to kill me. I cry to the desert, it's not going to answer. The ocean, it's also not going to answer. Who else do I cry to? The nation of Israel, they're crying to me. I can't cry to them. Who else do I cry to? So here was the secret behind this. Each nation has an angel. When a nation does good in this world,

1:17:09It gives their angel power. When a nation does bad, sins, it weakens their angel. But each nation has a different purpose. I'm primarily talking about the Jewish nation. When the Jewish people perform good deeds and Kiddush Hashem, and they do mitzvot, it gives our angel power. When we commit sins, it makes our angel weaker. And it actually makes the enemy angel stronger. So the way this works is that if the nation of Israel commits sins, our angel gets weaker. As our angel gets weaker, the other angels get stronger and decide to pick a fight with him, taking advantage of the fact that he's weaker. If they start fighting in Shamayim, a war begins here. It goes back here. So our actions lead to their fight, which leads to the war down here. It's a boomerang. It's a consequence of our actions. The angel of Egypt came with the Egyptians, with the 9 million Egyptians that were coming. He came with them.

1:18:35the Jews started crying because they not only saw 9 million Egyptians, but they also saw an angel. It's like, well, maybe Hashem left us because He's giving them an angel. They didn't know about this. And the angel goes to Hashem. His name was Mitzrayim, which is also another word, you know, the name of the nation. And he says to Hashem, "Hashem, it's not fair. If you're going to split the sea and you're going to let the Jews..." pass through it, but drown my people? It wouldn't be fair. Okay, my people, the Egyptians, they're idol worshipers. You are disgusted by idol worship. I understand. Drowning them, you're right. But the Jews are also idol worshipers. They're idol worshipers and they're idol worshipers. Why save one and not the other? Why? So when Moshe Rabbeinu cries to Hashem, he says, save us, do something. Hashem says, why are you crying to me? The angel of Mitzrayim has a good argument against you. He has a good case against you. And according to my own laws for myself, I can't split the sea for you. I can't do anything.

1:20:03I made laws not only for mankind with the Torah; I made laws for myself. I have to give myself limits. Right now, the angel of Mitzrayim has a case against you. I can't split the sea for you. Speak to the children of Israel and move forward. Move forward with a mitzvah. Do something. Do something that can tilt you to the better side. Because right now, you're losing. You have to do something. In this case, just saying, Hashem, please help us, is not enough. Hashem, we believe in You, it's not enough. You have to move forward. By moving forward, He's saying, you have to put your emunah into action. Show Me that you believe in Me. Don't tell Me that you believe in Me. Husband that tells his wife, "I love you" every day, but ten minutes later he slaps her in the face. The wife says, "Do me a favor, don't tell me you love me. I'd rather you not love me than slap me." Hashem says here, right now the angel of Mitzrayim has a case against you. Telling Me you believe in Me is not going to help you. Crying to Me is not going to help you. You need to do something.

1:21:35As Moshe continued to pray to Hashem regardless, Hashem gave him more instructions. He said, lift up your staff and stretch out your arm over the sea and split it. Go, try, try splitting the sea. Try it. The sea is supposed to be split right now. Go do what I was going to tell you to do anyway and try to split the sea. Chazal say that the sea didn't split. First time Moshe did it, it didn't happen. It didn't split. This angel of the sea came and also said, "Listen, it's not fair. Why should I split for idol worshippers?" One man saved the entire nation. One man, not Moshe, that's rarely heard of, took his emunah,

1:22:37into action. His name is Nachshon ben Aminadav from the tribe of Yehudah. The tribes were fighting about what's going to happen. What should we do? What should we do? Hashem is telling us to move forward. There's an ocean in front of us. Where do we move? Nachshon ben Aminadav says, Hashem said, be humble with Hashem, be naive with Hashem, just trust whatever He says, have emunah. He says, go forward into the ocean, go forward. We didn't take swimming classes in Egypt, so He obviously knows we're not going to swim across the ocean. I'm going into the ocean. He jumped into the ocean. He started walking into the ocean, all the way to the point where he started to drown. It reached his nose. It was covering his nose, it was covering his mouth. He was drowning. People followed him. They started drowning also, but he was the first, and that's exactly when Hashem split the ocean. That showed Hashem emunah, but in practice. Saying you actually believe in Hashem, okay, yeah, I believe, I believe, I believe, but what are you willing to do to show it?

1:23:54Nachshon was willing to put his life on it. Why? Because Hashem says, if I say that I'm going to take you out of Egypt, I'm bringing all the plagues, taking you out of Egypt, bringing you to Eretz Yisrael, what, just to kill you? It's not even logical. So you have to not use your logic with Hashem. Just listen to the instructions of what He says. Another interesting Midrash is that it's also a misconception that that the sea split into two. The sea did not split into two. It split into twelve. The way that the sea split, it looks like this. The Ramban wrote it in his book. If you guys probably saw the movie The Ten Commandments from, I don't know, 30 years ago or so, The movie makes it seem like the sea split into two and the nation of Israel went from one side to the next side. That's not necessarily what happened. What actually happened is that the sea split into twelve to give each tribe their own tunnel. And not only that, it didn't go to the other side. It came back to the same side. It was a half circle. I'll show you the drawing so you can see. It's somewhere in here.

1:25:28So each tribe, the sea split like a half-circle, meaning that we went from, let's say this is the beach, the ocean split, we went here, and we came back to the same beach. We didn't go to the other side. In the movies, they say that we went to the other side. And the common misconception that people think is that we went from here to another side. We didn't. We went from here and came back to the same side, just a different spot. So this also naturally helped Hashem with the whole concept of the Egyptians because as the last Jew arrived back at the beach, the same side of the beach, the last Egyptian entered the tunnel. So the last Jew that went, you know, the first Jew that arrived back at the beach didn't see the last Egyptian that entered the tunnel. So he didn't really know that he went in a circle. And the Egyptian went in thinking that the Jews are somewhere else. He couldn't see them because it's a circle. So there's a corner, and you can't see past the corner.

1:26:55And that's why they continued going, and that's when Hashem made Moshe bring back the ocean to destroy all the Egyptians except one. The one that was left, it says in verse 14:28, "There remained not a one of them," which in Hebrew it says, "lo nish'ar bahem ad echad." Chazal say, "ad echad," One of them actually means there was only one left. Who? Pharaoh. Pharaoh was the only one left. There were a few reasons why Pharaoh was left. The first reason is because the fact that he went against the nation of Israel scared them, forced them to do teshuva. They gave him some zechut, even though he was wicked. Second reason. His free choice during the plagues was removed. He lost his free choice during half the plagues, approximately. Not all of them, but half of them, approximately. It wasn't really his free choice. If he had his free choice, he probably wouldn't have decided to continue keeping Israel. When Hashem removed his choice, He already, at that moment, decided that He's going to have him survive.

1:28:20But also because, at that time, Pharaoh, even though he was in the ocean, saw his entire nation completely destroyed in Egypt, completely destroyed in the ocean. We're talking about millions and millions of people here, drowning and dying. And he's the only one left. At that moment, he recognized God. But completely. And that's why... In the song, a lot of people don't know this, but we say this in our prayer every day. In chapter 15, the nation of Israel starts singing a song. Then Moshe and the children of Israel chose to sing a song to Hashem. And they start singing the song. It's a famous song, we say it in our prayer. But there's one part that was always interesting to me. is that there's one word in the song that we say in two different ways. In verse 11, 15:11, it says, "Mi kamocha ba'elim Hashem, mi kamocha nedar bakodesh, nora tehilot, oseh fele." So it says, "Who is like You among the heavenly powers? Who is like You, mighty in holiness, too awesome for praise, doer of wonders."

1:29:48Doer of wonders. So chamocha and kamocha both mean "you." But they're both spelled exactly the same with different vowelization. One is saying chamocha and the other one says kamocha. This is not a mistake. Every single dot, every single vowel, every single letter, every single verse in the Torah is there for a reason. So when you say it in your prayer, you say it every day. Why do we say chamocha one time? In the very same sentence, not like it's a different paragraph. Very same sentence, you're saying chamocha and kamocha. It's because in this song, the chamocha was actually said by Pharaoh. The kamocha was said by Am Yisrael. Who is like you—the first time you said chamocha because Pharaoh was completely without energy. He was... floating in the ocean, recognizing G-d, but you didn't have the energy. So you didn't have the energy to say ka. So you said chamocha. The nation of Israel had a lot of energy. They had just crossed the ocean, so they said ka. So the next time you read it, it will probably make you look at it a little bit differently. It's something that we read every day, but never notice what it is. I always thought it was a mistake.

1:31:16I understand it, so somebody forgot about it after that. We're not going to get into the details of it, but actually, after this, if you know the story of Yonah, Yonah was commanded by Hashem to go to the city of Nineveh and tell them to do teshuvah. And the city did teshuvah after the whole story, but the city did teshuvah for 40 days. The king of Nineveh was Paro. St. Paul that we're talking about right here, he survived. He went and became the king of Nineveh. And that's why when Yonah came to a bunch of goyim, he didn't go to Jews. He went to goyim. What does Hashem care about these goyim? He went there because Paro knew who God was, more than the goyim. He saw God already. He saw what happened. So when Yonah came and said, "Listen, if your nation doesn't do teshuva in the next 40 days, He's destroying the entire nation," everyone did teshuva. Everyone did teshuva. So Hashem sent him to a nation of non-Jews because He knew that they could do teshuva. He doesn't give us any test we can't pass. So now we talked a lot about emunah, but how do we get there? There are two things...

1:32:45that we need to understand. Emunah is not something that you can just wake up and have. It's something you have to work on. In the last verse of chapter 14, verse 31, it says, "Vayar Yisrael et hayad hagedolah asher asah Hashem b'Mitzrayim, vayi'ru ha'am et Hashem, vaya'aminu b'Hashem u'veMoshe avdo." On that day, Hashem saved—I'm sorry, Israel saw the great hand that Hashem inflicted upon Egypt, and the people revered Hashem, and they had faith in Hashem and in Moshe, His servant. Got it? This is a very, very important verse to understand the order of how things work. So it first says that Israel saw

1:33:48the great hand of Hashem. Hashem doesn't have a hand. He doesn't have a body. So what does it mean when it says Hashem, they saw the great hand of Hashem? They saw the Creator's creation. You can understand the Creator, the significance of the Creator, only by His creation. Because one of the 13 principles of faith is that He has no image or the likeness of an image. So when it's saying here great hand of Hashem, or Hashem got angry, or Hashem's, you know, anything like that, Hashem is not limited to anything physical or emotions. So, the key to understand is that this is just for us to understand how to read it. But, the meaning here is that when you know a hand, a hand has some, you do something with a hand, you take action with a hand. So, here he's telling us that first, the nation of Israel, they recognized

1:34:49the Creator's creation, the Creator's power, the work of Hashem. So the first thing we need to do is look around. Look at the Creator's creation. The only way we can connect to Hashem is first to recognize that Hashem exists. If you want Hashem in your life, pay attention to what He did. Whether it's your own body, and the recognition that the smallest cell, the smallest cell in your body, is more advanced than this entire world. The smallest, tiniest cell. If you look at just a cell, for example, just a tiny little cell, in the science book that I gave you guys, at the end of the book, it talks about the cities of the future. And it's really giving you

1:35:50the reality of a single cell, but being treated as if it's a city. It tells you that this city is connected to all the other cities, where that city knows what every other city everywhere else is doing, and every other city knows what that city is doing. That city is exact and very precise, having protection protection walls around it, to allow only the things that it wants in and only the things that it wants out. And not only does it make sure that only things that it wants go in and go out, but the amounts that come in and out have to be exact. It's not like the supermarket where they order $500,000 worth of goods and $300,000 of it. It goes to the garbage because it goes bad, and they sell 200,000 and hope to survive the month just by making a small profit margin off of the 200,000 they sold. A grocery store, if they sell vegetables, being in the vegetable business is very difficult. Why? Because if you don't sell your vegetables right away, they go bad, and people are not willing to buy them.

1:37:09So if you go into the vegetable or fruit business, you already have to have it as part of your calculation that a large number of your goods, of your merchandise, is going to go bad. It's not like a clothing store or a computer store or a car shop where you know that even if they don't buy it today, they can buy it tomorrow or next week. As a matter of fact, something that's very interesting about the car business, and it shows you how fake this world is, is that when you go to every car lot that's a brand new car lot, the salesman is very adamant to make sure that he's giving you, you know, telling you that he's giving you a good deal. This car is, I don't know, $30,000, $40,000. It's made with these parts and it's really worth $40,000. It's a great car. And yada, yada, yada, yada, yada. And I bet you the salesman himself doesn't know even that every car manufacturer overproduces. is that when you go to every car lot that's a brand new car lot, the salesman is very adamant to make sure that he's giving you, you know, telling you that he's giving you a good deal. This car is, I don't know, $30,000, $40,000. It's made with these parts and it's really worth $40,000. It's a great car. And yada, yada, yada, yada, yada. And I bet you the salesman himself doesn't even know that every car manufacturer overproduces the number of cars that they need every year. So, for example, if General Motors knows that they're going to sell a million cars, they're not going to produce a million cars. They may produce seven million cars or six million cars. Why are they producing so many more, and what do they do with the rest? Those are two good questions, right?

1:38:37The reason why they produce so many is because General Motors is not a private business. They're a public company. So people are expecting them to show growth. They're expecting them to continue to grow every three months when they announce their earnings. They expect them to be better than the previous three months and better than the previous year. And if they're not growing, the stock will go down. If they are growing, the stock will go up. So even though they know they're only going to sell a million, I'm just making up these numbers as a hypothetical, but it is a fact, everything I'm telling you. Even though they know they're only going to actually sell a million cars, they're still going to produce six million because the shareholders, who are going to buy their stock, expect them to have six million produced. They don't care if they're going to sell a million or not. They still expect them to make six million because that may give the indication that they have the ability to sell six million even though they don't sell six million. They sell one million. So the next question is, what do they do with the next five million? If you go on Google Maps, there's actually a website, a great website, does great research, called Zero Hedge. That's actually where I found this out years ago, maybe five, six years ago. Maybe less. Um,

1:40:04I was doing some research in the finance business and found this. Actually, on Google Maps, there are different lots of land around the world, all over America, in England, all over Europe, all over the world. Huge lots of land the size of cities. I'm not talking about lots of land like your car shop here. I'm talking about the size of, you know, Boca Raton or Miami, like huge, huge lots of land that you can see from outer space, full of brand new cars that will never ever be sold. It's all the extra cars that they produce and never ever sell. And they're going to destroy all of those cars. But they can't destroy them fast enough. Boca Raton or Miami, like huge, huge lots of land that you can see from outer space, full of brand new cars that will never ever be sold. It's all the extra cars that they produce and never ever sell. And they're going to destroy all of those cars, but they can't destroy them fast enough. So they have to take on all of this huge, massive amount of land until they eventually destroy them. And they can't. I said, the first question I asked is, why don't they just sell them for less? Okay, the car was worth, a week ago, it was worth $30,000 at the car lot. The salesman was really convincing. He told me it's worth $30,000. Today it's worth bupkis. It's worth nothing. So instead of that, sell for $5,000. Everybody's going to buy one.

1:41:22Even if you don't need to buy it. The car is worth $30,000. You buy it for $5,000. Why not? Right? You have 5 million of them. Better than destroying them. No. They don't want to destroy the value. They'd rather destroy them than sell them for a discount. Which is completely mental. It's completely ridiculous. But it would destroy the car market according to them. So they'd rather lose billions and billions of dollars on this massive production just to make sure that the illusion, the illusion that their growing continues. It's all an illusion. It's all a complete illusion. You're showing the world that you're growing, but in reality, you're suffering with a cancer inside. And that's the car business. So here you have Hashem telling you, get out of the illusion. Get out of the illusion and open your eyes and look at what I've done for you. The cells in your body are very precise to the point that they're more sophisticated than the entire world around you. Just one cell, a tiny cell that you can't see with the naked eye. You need a microscope. One cell has more technology in it than all the computers in the world. One tiny cell. He's telling you, if you pay attention to this one cell even more,

1:42:49You pay attention to the technology of your eye. Even more, you pay attention to just the proteins in your body and how they work. If the proteins in your body don't fold the right way, you lose your ability to eat, sleep, walk, breathe, and function. You have trillions upon trillions of proteins in your body. And each one of them has to have something called a protein fold, where it has to fold a certain way—a precise way. If it folds the wrong way, chas v'shalom, you're crippled. Chas v'shalom, can't see. Chas v'shalom, can't breathe, dies. One tiny one. This is a microscopic thing. You have trillions upon trillions of them. And every one of them has to fold exactly the same way. One scientist tried to figure out what are the chances of one protein folding the right way. And he says, in order to just, not to figure out what the chances are, but to figure out how to figure out what the chances are, would take an infinite amount of time. If I used all of the computer power in the world, he says...

1:44:17It would take me 10 to the 127th power in years, pretty much infinity in years, just to figure out how to figure it out. And this is what you have in your body every day. You open your eyes, you breathe in, you breathe out, you eat, you chew, your teeth. I mean, think about your teeth. If your teeth were lined up the wrong way, Not like they are right now. Right now, you have your molars in the back. What if the molars were in the front? You'd change things a little bit. You'd be like an animal. Why? Because the molars are on the side; you chew in the back. You don't chew in the front. You just break something in the front, and you cut it in the front, but you chew in the back. Now, when you chew, all of the food goes against your cheek. Now, if you chewed in front... there'd be nothing to protect the food. Everything would go out of your mouth. So your teeth are precisely aligned. But did you also know that the material that makes up your teeth and the material that makes up your nose is exactly the same? Same exact thing. But this one is very, very hard and can break very, very hard things. And this one, nothing. Nothing.

1:45:46Same material. Hashem says, if you pay attention to My creation, you'll understand the significance of the Creator. That's step one. After Israel saw the great hand that Hashem inflicted upon Egypt, they recognized the creation, and the people revered Hashem. Immediately, they became scared of Hashem. Immediately they had Yirat Shamayim. Yirat Shamayim is fear of Hashem, fear of the Almighty. Why are they scared? As soon as you realize how significant He is, you also realize how much of a nothing we are. As soon as you realize who and what He is, you realize how much You depend on Him. And everything is dependent on Him. Nothing is in your control. When you realize this, how could you not be scared? Technically, we should be praying 24 hours a day. We should all be praying 24 hours a day. Please, Hashem, make my body work. Make my body work. Forget about parnasah. No, parnasah, let me be homeless. Who cares? Make my body work. Just let me live another second. Every second is a gift. Every second is a gift.

1:47:11As soon as they saw the Creator's creation, they immediately became scared. And after they became scared, they had faith in Hashem and in Moshe, His servant. Only after they saw the Creator's creation and recognized the Creator's creation did they fear Him. After they feared Him, then they believed in Him. You cannot believe in God without being scared of Him. All this mumbo-jumbo that people sell, Jews in the world and Christians and others, that you can love God and connect to God and you don't need to be scared and He's all loving and everything is great and there's nothing to be scared about, is all nonsense. Mm-hmm. if you know what God is, even to our understanding of course, if you're not scared, you're either mentally ill, or you really don't believe in Him. You just think it's a nice story. There's no such thing as believing in God, or loving God, without being scared of Him. And this is a verse that tells you exactly how to get to that point. First, you have to recognize that He exists, to recognize His creation.

1:48:37Once you recognize that He exists in His creation and His significance, of course, you're going to be scared. And only after you're scared, then you actually have faith. Then you can get to a point of believing in God. Only then does it say, which means that if you're not scared of God, there's a part of you that doesn't believe in Him. You can tell yourself all you want, and we can tell ourselves all we want, that we believe in God. If part of us is not scared of God... then that means that part doesn't believe in Him at all. Believes in something, but not the real God. Maybe Santa Claus. And if you believe in God, then you can get to the point of believing in His servant Moshe. What does it mean, believing in His servant Moshe? Once you believe in God, then you're going to listen to His servants, the righteous Jews, the rabbis who are going to teach you His words. We don't have the privilege of talking to God like Moshe did. That's why God sent rabbis and different people to teach us His Torah. Only if you believe in God are you going to be able to believe in His servants. But so long as you have doubts...

1:50:06you're also going to have doubts in learning too. But if you get to that point, then you can go to the next verse. And the next verse says, "Then Moshe and the children of Israel chose to sing." Once you recognize the Creator's creation, you'll immediately be scared. Once you're scared, you'll have belief. Belief in Hashem. Once you have belief in Hashem, you're going to listen to what the rabbis say, the righteous ones, not the ones that just collect money. You're going to listen to what they say and do the words of Hashem. Put them into action. And if you do what Hashem says, then your life will be like a whole song. Then you can sing. The problems, the stress, the issues, It has nothing to do with you. It's Hashem's problem. He already told us before: He's going to fight our war, and we sit silently. After this song, and we'll finalize with that, after this song, let's see, questions. Questions are always good. We have the whole story of the manna,

1:51:35where the nation of Israel complains again to Hashem. This is at the end of chapter 15. No, actually, it's a different section. The manna is, sorry, chapter 16. We get the manna, we complain to Hashem, and He gives us two types of food. First, He gives us meat because we cry that we want meat. So, He gives us slav. Slav is quail. That's in verse 13. But in addition to that, He gives us the manna. Manna is food from heaven.

1:52:36Rabbi Yishmael says that manna was food that was completely absorbed by our blood system. Where Am Yisrael did not have to go to the bathroom for 40 years. Why? Because every food that you eat, part of the food turns into blood. That's why people say you are what you eat. Your food turns into blood. That's why when you eat treif, you eat pig, you eat animals that are vicious, or disgusting, you become disgusting. Not only spiritually, but also physically. You see, people that eat that type of food generally are not exactly, they don't have the best middot in the world. And they're not the healthiest people in the world. For anyone that was watching this, I know everybody here doesn't eat this stuff, but anyone that's watching this and still has a doubt about eating pig, Aside from it constantly being talked about in the Torah several times not to eat pig and other animals like it, but it specifically mentions pig, camel, and others, there are many, many proofs today of how no one should ever eat pig. Not just Jews, but no one. No one should ever eat pig at all. It's a disgusting animal. Everyone always knew it's a disgusting animal, but there's a very easy way to prove that it's a disgusting animal amongst all of the animals out there.

1:54:05is that a pig, unlike all other animals, does not sweat and does not have sweat glands. This means that when you sweat, you're removing toxins out of your body. So if you don't sweat, all the toxins stay inside. Now, if you... Rather than doing this because it's kind of disgusting, you can watch a YouTube video instead. You can see what people did. They bought a piece of pork and poured Coca-Cola on it. And within a short period of time, it's just a fresh piece of meat from Costco or wherever they sell this disgusting meat. But nonetheless, it's a fresh piece of meat. They put Coca-Cola on it, and you see all the worms and maggots come out of the pig. It's a fresh piece of meat. This doesn't happen with other animals, which means that it's impossible for pig meat to ever not have bugs and worms and disgusting things that nobody in their right mind would ever want to eat. That's all the toxins. So, yeah, it's disgusting, but it's good to know because, unfortunately, a lot of people enjoy the taste without realizing how much harm they're causing to their bodies.

1:55:34Every time that Hashem gave us a mitzvah, He gave it to us for a reason. There's always a benefit to it. The real reason of why we do all mitzvot is because Hashem said so. The fact that there's a benefit is the chesed from Hashem. It's good. It's great. But now we've reached a point where our generation is so far from Hashem that unless we see a benefit, sometimes we decide not to do it. So, it's good to discuss the benefits of these things. Whether it's brit milah and how it's better for a male to be circumcised throughout their entire life for health reasons, or it's kosher meat, much better quality meat. When an animal is shechted in a kosher way, the animal's defense system does not attack itself, whereas when an animal is slaughtered or killed... in a non-kosher way, its own defense system goes against it, which means that the meat of its own body becomes full of toxins, even if it's not pig. There are many, many benefits to doing the mitzvot. In our generation, we're finding out about those benefits, which is good and bad. On one end, it's good because it's giving us more, you know, strength to do what we need to do. Anyway...

1:56:57On the other hand, it also shows us how far we are, because our grandparents didn't need this. One good thing, by the way, if anybody ever wants to test it, is by going to righteous farmers. If you go to a righteous farmer in Israel, who observes the mitzvot, a farmer is obligated to stop all work on the seventh year. Now, Hashem made a deal with anyone that's growing. where he said, on the sixth year, you work six years, on the seventh year, it's a sabbatical year. So the first question is, what can I do? The answer is nothing. You leave everything there. You don't have to touch it, you don't have to sell it, you don't have to do anything. So you have a big business. It's not like a tiny little garden in the backyard. It's a farm. They have all these fruits and vegetables. All of it's going to go bad. Hashem says, don't worry.

1:57:58On the sixth year, I will give you enough for three years: for the sixth year, for the seventh year when you won't be making any income, and for the eighth year. Why the eighth year? Because even after you start working, it's not going to go back to where it was right away. And this is a proof that we see today with farmers. It's still going on today. Unfortunately, not all farmers do this. But righteous Jewish farmers who do this see the miracle with their own eyes. Every year, they work the same way. It's not like they work extra in the sixth year. It's the same effort. But in the sixth year, the amount of produce that grows is three times the normal amount, without them doing any additional work. They make three times the amount of money in the sixth year. It's something unbelievable. So there are many, many ways of seeing proofs of God if we just pay attention to the details, whether it's through farming, our bodies, science, or whatever you want. There are many, many ways of getting to this point. But unfortunately, the nation of Israel constantly doubts, and during the time that we got the manna, it was one of those times that we went to Hashem and didn't have enough faith in Him again.

1:59:24Because when He told us, "Listen, take the parnasah that I'm giving you, eat everything that I'm giving you, and pray to Me again, so I'll give you tomorrow." Because if Hashem just wanted to feed us, if it was purely about feeding us, then He would give us the manna once, like a pill, and we'd never have to eat for 40 years, just like we didn't have to take a shower, and we didn't have to go to the bathroom. So, Hashem is beyond power. He's beyond any limitations. If it's just about feeding us, you can say, okay, I'm going to turn off the feeding button in your body. It's not going to work anymore. For the next 40 years, you don't have to eat. Just like Moshe Rabbeinu, when he went up to Har Sinai for 40 days and 40 nights, he didn't eat, he didn't drink, he didn't sleep. He was completely spiritual. That's not possible for a human body if the human body is depending on itself. So if Hashem wanted to just feed us, He could just give us, even if He wanted us to act naturally, He would just give us enough manna to last us, and we would just eat. Every day. But instead, He gave it to us every day. The reason why is because if He would have given it to us once, we would have forgotten about Him. If Hashem gave us the manna just one time, we wouldn't look up every day.

2:00:47It's just like, for example, if someone who's rich wants to make the biggest mistake in their life, they should give their money to their kids while they're alive. If someone who's rich has a lot of money, and he wants to make a mistake, then he should give the inheritance to the kids while he's alive, not when he's dead. Why? Because if he gives the money to his kids while he's alive, he's going to see what it's really about. There's actually a famous story where someone did just that. He gave all of his kids his money, control of his money, and all of a sudden, they weren't coming over for Shabbat. They were too busy to visit, too busy for this, "I'm running the business, I'm doing this, maybe next week, maybe next month." All of a sudden, the father went from being the most important person in the family to "our father, but, you know, we're busy, we're too busy for him." did just that. He gave all of his kids his money, control of his money, and all of a sudden, they weren't coming over for Shabbat. They were too busy to visit, too busy for this, "I'm running the business, I'm doing this, maybe next week, maybe next month." All of a sudden, the father went from being the most important person in the family to "our father, but, you know, we're busy, we're too busy for him." So the father went to a rabbi and he said, "What should I do?" The rabbi said, "You made a very big mistake, but I'll help you. What can you do?" He says, "Tomorrow, you call your sons and you tell them, 'Listen, you need help.' And when they ask you what, tell them, 'Listen, I need you to help me bring this big safe that I just bought to the house.'"

2:02:17I need you to help me with it. They're going to ask you naturally, "Why do you need such a big safe? You gave us all the money." No, no, I just gave you the cash. The real money that I have is a bunch of diamonds and jewels. And I'm changing places. I need the safe for it. And that's exactly what happened. A safe shows up. They think it's full of money and jewels and diamonds. And all of a sudden... Each one of the brothers is showing up and fighting over the father. "He's going to come to my house for Shabbat." "No, my house for Shabbat." "No, he's going to come to me. My wife needs to see him. The kids, no, why?" They're fighting over him now. He lived seven more years. After he died, everyone shows up at the lawyer's office and they open the envelope.

2:03:18Here's the key to the safe. They go, and everybody's excited to open this massive safe. If the millions that he gave us already were not his real money, imagine what's in this safe. We've been waiting and serving him for seven years. They open the safe and they see a letter: "This is a gift to my wicked sons who, after I gave them my money, forgot who I even was." So the only way that I can get my righteous sons back is by telling them I have more. These are some of the things we have to realize. When we get a lot from Hashem, we can't be like these wicked sons. We have to be like the righteous ones. We have to fight for Him. You see someone saying bad things about Hashem, you've got to fight for Him. You see somebody saying bad things about the Torah, you've got to fight for Him. You've got to defend Hashem. You've got to be the righteous son. Don't be the ones, oh no, he gives me so much, let somebody else deal with that problem. It's not my problem. Somebody told me the other day, why are you so involved in this whole Rabbi Mizrachi debate, where people are bad-mouthing him, even though it's all lies, but nonetheless, people like to say, why are you so involved? I said, what do you mean? How could I not be involved? This is what you're obligated to do also.

2:04:44If you believe in the Torah, you're obligated to defend the truth. Because it's not your fight. This is what he tells me: it's not your fight. I said, it's the fight between good and evil. If that's not my fight, what's my fight then? What's the point? If you're not fighting for good, then you're on the other side. There's no middle. There's no such thing as that. No, no, no. Let somebody else worry about it. Listen, I have, you know, I have to take care of my own problems. I can't. I have, you know, my hundred million dollars that I have in the bank. It's busy in investments. This yeshivah, let it close down. We'll worry about something else. Let somebody else donate to this yeshivah. That's what some people say. They know that some yeshivot are having problems. They can barely survive. And they have the money. But they don't care. They don't care to help. They don't care to help people that need. I'm telling you, the more people are in need... the more people that have don't want to help. The only people that people want to help are people that don't need help. Like everyone wants to lend Bill Gates money. But no one wants to lend someone that doesn't have money any money. It's just the reality. The only way we can do what's truly right and good is by first acknowledging what it even is.

2:06:09if we leave right and good to our own subjective definition, if we're using our own definition to determine what's good or bad, we're guaranteed to make mistakes constantly. Because we don't really know what's good and bad. We determine what's good and bad based on our opinion. One person may think that going to the beach and hanging out naked is great, whereas The rest of his community is going to think he's a psychopath. They don't want to live next to him. One person may think that it's okay to steal from people, while the rest of his community is going to say this guy is, there's something wrong with him. But he says, no, but I'm stealing to feed my kids. The rest of the community is going to answer, "Okay, go get a job instead. What do you have to steal for?" "No, but my kids want a lot. They want PlayStation and Xbox and Game Boy and this one and that one." "Okay, go get a job." He goes, "No, but I had a job. But I can't afford all those things." "Okay, so don't buy them." So his definition of good is obviously flawed. He thinks that he's doing good by stealing things.

2:07:26Because the stealing is helping him give his kids everything. But giving his kids everything is really destroying the kids and his own life. So if we leave the definition of good to ourselves, we destroy ourselves spiritually, materially, and in every way possible. We can only listen to the instructions of Hashem. When the nation of Israel questioned Hashem about the manna, they made the mistake of not listening to what He said, and instead of eating everything He gave them and trusting that He's going to give them more tomorrow, they tried to save it for tomorrow. This showed, again, a lack of emunah. Because they said, okay, He's giving us food today, but maybe He's not going to give us tomorrow. So they saved it. And obviously the... questioned Hashem about the manna, they made the mistake of not listening to what He said, and instead of eating everything He gave them and trusting that He's going to give them more tomorrow, they tried to save it for tomorrow. This showed, again, a lack of emunah. Because they said, okay, He's giving us food today, but maybe He's not going to give us tomorrow. So they saved it. And obviously, the food went bad immediately, showing them that everything turned into worms and maggots. Moshe got very furious at them. And then, on Shabbat, when he told them they got the Shabbat, the mitzvah of Shabbat, before they got the Torah. We hear about the Shabbat here in this parashah. Moshe is telling them, listen, collect on Friday, food for Friday and Shabbat, because on Shabbat,

2:08:55You're not going to have manna. Don't go looking for it. You're not allowed to go looking for it on Shabbat, the day you rest. So we already got Shabbat before we got the written Torah at Mount Sinai. This, again, is another one of the many proofs that the foundation of Judaism cannot exist without its main pillar, which is Shabbat. There's no Teshuvah without Shabbat. There's no Judaism without Shabbat. There's no connection to Hashem without Shabbat. You could do Tefillin five times a day. You can pray 24 hours a day. You could learn Torah and know everything by heart. If you don't keep Shabbat, it's all worthless. It's the bottom line. It's not what I say; it's what G-d says. Someone could do the 613 mitzvot, even though technically you can't do 613 mitzvot because some of them apply to women and you're a guy, or some of them apply to men and you're a woman. or some of them apply to the Beit HaMikdash, and we don't have one. Some of them apply to the Kohanim, and you're not a Kohen, so you can't really do 613 mitzvot. A lot of people are scared of the 613. In reality, you maybe could do 150, 200. At best. But let's just say you found a glitch in the system, and you did 612 mitzvot. Except one. And the name of that mitzvah is Shabbat. Worthless.

2:10:23Your 612 are worthless. No share in the World to Come. That's what Shabbat is. If that doesn't give you an understanding of what Shabbat is, of how much of a foundation it is, nothing else will. I could tell you about punishments and Gehinnom and all that stuff and scare you to death, but it's not going to help. Because you need to have common sense here. It's not about being scared only. It's about common sense. Without a foundation... Nothing can exist. And that's what Shabbat is. That's why we got the Shabbat, and it's mentioned literally in this parasha, before we got the written Torah. And the nation of Israel, obviously, made a mistake here again. Moses told them, don't go collecting on Shabbat. And a few of them went and tried collecting some manna.

2:11:26Hashem obviously wasn't very happy with them. Moses obviously was not very happy with them. And he tells, you know, God tells Moses, "How long will you refuse to observe My commandments and My teachings?" That's in verse 16:28, chapter 16:28. Hashem said to Moses, "How long will you refuse to observe My commandments and My teachings?" This teaches us a few things. Number one, it teaches us that the mitzvot and the Torah are two separate things. Two, it uses the word Torahs. It's not Torah. It's not singular. It's plural. Why? Because He's referring to both the written Torah and the oral Torah. Written Torah and the Oral Torah. Some people say, where does it say Oral Torah in the Torah? When Hashem refers to the Torah, in many cases in the Torah, it's referring to Torot. Plural. More than one Torah. So if it was just the Written Torah, which is what I have in front of me, then it would be Torah. No "s". So here,

2:12:54It actually says again, Torot. So it's more than one. So that's referring to both the Written Torah and the Oral Torah. So He's telling you, how long are you going to refuse to observe My commandments, My teachings? I only gave you guys. You guys are on the 49th level of tumah. You're one sin away from being destroyed like the other 80 or 99% that I destroyed. That's why I gave you the manna. Because I needed to purify you. You can't get the Torah unless you become purified. But in order for you to be purified, you can't just eat the food. You can't just eat the manna. You have to do some mitzvot. That's why I gave you some mitzvot. I gave you Rosh Chodesh. I just gave you Shabbat. I gave you a few things to do so you can go down from 49 levels. But now you're already violating the Shabbat to look for the food that's going to help you?

2:13:55It's like drinking poison and expecting somebody else to die. It doesn't make any sense. How do you think that you're going to look for manna to help you become more spiritual by violating the most spiritual thing that I ever gave you and ever will give you, which is Shabbat? How could you do it? It doesn't make any sense. How long are you going to refuse? Why are they refusing? It's not because they want to go to war with Hashem. They're refusing because they have no emunah. The same reason why people work on Shabbat. They don't work on Shabbat because they want to go to war with Hashem. Nobody wants to go to war with Hashem. Even the wicked don't want to go to war with Hashem. Only one wicked person that I know of in history, whose name was Titus, actually wanted to go to war with Hashem. He was stupid, so he did it. Normal people don't want to go to war with Hashem.

2:14:55Even if you don't like Him, you still don't want to go to war. Even if you don't believe in Him, you're still not going to want to do it. If He exists, then you say to yourself, "I don't want to go to war." If He exists, I don't want to go to war with Him. No one that's logical would ever want to go to war. So people that are violating, whether it's today or 3,000 years ago, or violating the mitzvot, it's not because they want to go to war with Him. It's because they don't believe in Him. Or, they don't know about Him. Most Jews know what Shabbat is. Most Jews have heard what Judaism is and what the Torah is. But just because they've heard that there's a day in the week called Shabbat, does not mean they know what it actually means. What are the consequences of not keeping it? I know myself, before I kept Shabbat, may Hashem forgive me for all my sins, before I kept Shabbat, I thought that if I didn't work on Shabbat, That's enough for my level. Like, I thought that there are levels of keeping it. I figured that, okay, listen, I'm not working on Shabbat. Instead, I'm going to, I don't know, vacation or play cards or do whatever other nonsense I did at that time in my life. So I figured that if I don't work, that's enough. Why? Come on, I don't have to drive and use electricity and watch TV and go to the movies and use money.

2:16:23go to restaurants, what's so bad about it? What does Hashem really care if I do all those things? I'm relaxing. That's my relaxation. I go to the casino, I put $30,000 on the table to play Texas Hold'em. That's my relaxation. He said, "Shabbat, you're supposed to rest. I'm resting on the poker table." That was my, that's my illogical logic. That's the human logic that's flawed. I don't consider myself stupid, but that was my logic. He said, "Rest, I'm resting. And I'm even resting better if I win a hand, another $30,000. It's more fun for me. So I'm thinking that I'm not necessarily a tzaddik, but I'm not wicked. I'm not an enemy of Hashem. My prayers will still be answered. I can still be counted in the minyan." I was wrong about all of it. Violate Shabbat, you can't be counted in the minyan.

2:17:25Violate Shabbat, your prayers will not be answered. Violate Shabbat, you are an enemy of Hashem. This is Torah saying, not me. Obviously, Hashem keeps you in this world because He doesn't want you to be His enemy. He didn't want me to continue being His enemy. He knew my potential. He knew that I could potentially keep Shabbat at some point or another. even though He had to put me through my own version of Gehenom to get to that point, nonetheless, I got there. Everyone else that's watching this, that's here, that hasn't gotten there, can get there, can get to much higher levels than I have. Again, it's not that hard. It's just fighting the Yetzer Hara. The question is, how stubborn are we? How much of an Am Keshe Oref are we? if we're a stubborn, stiff-necked nation, then we have to go through Egypt in order to do teshuva. But if we're wise people, we just follow the instructions and have emunah that it's all going to work out and He's going to fight our wars. When you pay attention to His details, you're going to be scared of

2:18:50When you're scared of Him, that's already a very high level of teshuva. Very high level. I wish that we could truly be scared of Hashem like we are scared of mankind. No one's scared of Hashem like they are scared of mankind. Hashem, you violate one of His major mitzvot, you don't cry even for one second about it. A cop pulls you over, Oh, you're going to cry for a week because he gave you a $300 ticket. That's reality. Before he even pulled you over, you're already scared that he, maybe he's going to turn the light, you know, every time somebody passes a cop, they always look in the mirror. Is he going to pull me over? Is he going to pull me over? I drove 70 on a 60, I'm not sure. Everybody's scared of this cop. Nobody's scared of Hashem. So for scared of Him, then we can believe in Him. If we believe in Him, then we can listen to the teachings. If we listen to the teachings, then we can sing. At the end of this parashah, we went to war with the nation of Amalek. The nation of Amalek is our eternal enemy. They only exist to go to war with Israel. That's it. There's no other purpose for their creation.

2:20:19Hashem created them purely as the source of evil. That's a tool for Him to wake us up. That's it. And that's why when Moshe chose Yehoshua bin Nun to pick the soldiers and go to this spiritual war, it wasn't just a physical war. It was a spiritual war. Moshe had to stay on the mountain with his hands up in order for us to win the war. So obviously you already see this is not a normal war. What does him standing up on the mountain with his hands up really matter for somebody with a sword? So you already see that this is not a natural war. One of the reasons he was standing up was to keep the sun in the sky because the Amalekites would win the war if the sun went down and it became dark. So this was, according to the Sages, This war was completely spiritual, barely, you know, the weapons didn't matter. There were a lot of special effects, if you will. And Moses had to win it with the nation of Israel through spirituality, through connection with Hashem, through 100% Emunah. And that's why it says here at the end, in 17:12, Moses' hands grew heavy.

2:21:49So, he took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur—Hur was the brother-in-law of Moses and Aaron; he was the husband of Miriam—supported his hands, one on this side and one on that side, and he remained with his hands in faithful prayer until sunset. So, Not just prayer, but faithful prayer. There's a difference between going to the Beit Knesset and just going to the prayer and finishing the prayer in two seconds just so I can go home or maybe just talk to the guys and finish. Or even praying at the house just so I can say, "Okay, Hashem, I did tefillin today. It took me about two and a half minutes. Hopefully, it takes me two minutes tomorrow. Let me go to work and make money now." That's one form of prayer. And there's prayer where you spill your heart out to Hashem. Prayer where you're really talking to Hashem and not thinking about anything else. That's the ideal prayer. In the beginning, and even later on, it's not easy to get to that level of prayer every time. That's why the Sages used to meditate for an hour before they would pray.

2:23:19just to get ready for the prayer. And they would meditate an hour after the prayer to come down from the level they reached during prayer, to return to normal. That's serious prayer. Obviously, we're not at that level. But what he's telling us here is very simple. If you're going to pray, at least understand what you're saying and believe it. Have a prayer that's full of emunah. Don't just say, "Hashem, do this," "Hashem, do this," "Hashem, please this," "Hashem, help me," "Hashem, help me." But believe that Hashem is going to help you. Give Him a reason to, obviously. But believe in what you're saying. Know what you're saying. This is one of the main things that is the foundation of emunah.

2:24:21When we have the mitzvot that Hashem was telling us we needed to have, when we didn't do them, He says, "How long are you not going to do My mitzvot? I have a Torah." So He's telling us two things we need. We need the mitzvot, we need the Torah. And Moshe is telling us here that the way to connect to Hashem about all the mitzvot and the Torah that we're practicing is through our emunah and our tefillah. Obviously, each part of these four is built up. It's not as simple to say mitzvot. It's not as simple to say Torah. It's not as simple to say emunah. It's not as simple to say tefillah. Each one of them is built up. But those are the four pillars of a true connection to Hashem that's complete. We need to work on each one of them every day. A little bit every day. You can't get to completion overnight. And that's why I tell you that when everyone's talking about Mashiach, And everyone's talking about, you know, what's going to happen at the end of time. Oh, maybe I could do, you know, teshuvah at the last minute. Teshuvah takes time. It's not an overnight process. Someone told a story one time that you could do teshuvah in one second, in the last second before somebody dies, and he didn't tell it well. Even though technically it's true, it's not true like people understand it.

2:25:44Someone can do teshuvah in the last minute of their life means that someone has gotten to a point where he's in the last minute of their life, they're on their deathbed, and they recognize Hashem, and they feel bad for the bad things they did. That is a level of teshuvah. But I can assure you, that's not enough. It's a level of teshuvah which can turn some of the sins that you're aware that you did into shogeg, which means not on purpose, but it doesn't turn them into mitzvot. So if we spent our entire life making sins, and in the last minute of our life we realize, okay, we made this sin, and that sin, and this sin, and I feel bad now, okay, great. Now you have those sins that turn into accidental sins, so the punishment is less, but you're still missing out on mitzvot. You're still going to arrive up there with no mitzvot. You still can't go to Olam HaBa or Gan Eden or any of that stuff. So to say that I can just do, you know, just do Teshuvah in the last minute, it's not realistic. To do Teshuvah takes time. You have to, number one, stop sinning. Two, start collecting the diamonds. Start collecting the mitzvot so you can arrive up there with some serious wealth, real wealth that you can keep. And the way to do these things is through the Torah.

2:27:12You can't do mitzvot without Torah. Why? Because even if you like to give tzedakah here and there, or you like to do a mitzvah here and there, without knowing the reason why, eventually you're going to stop. It's just a trend. You used to give a dollar every day to this homeless guy, okay, eventually the homeless guy moves. Then what? Or you like to do a mitzvah, you have no idea whatsoever why you're wearing the kippah on your head, because right now it's a problem in Europe to wear a kippah. So people are saying, no, you should wear a kippah, you should wear a kippah, you should wear a kippah. No one's talking about why you should wear a kippah. Why even, you know, it's not enough people talking about why we wear a kippah, why we wear tzitzit, why we do all these things. To just show that we're proud of being Jewish, okay, great, but it's not enough. Okay, so we go through a trend. So we wear a kippah for three months, six months. a year, and then it's over. Okay, the trend is over. I take the kippah, put it back. Just like what happened after September 11th. Every American house had an American flag. September 11th happened, everybody became a patriot. And that happens in every terrorist event. After terrorism happened in France, everyone put French flags on their Facebook profiles. Everyone all of a sudden became patriotic with France. And, you know, it's great, it's nice, but it's fake.

2:28:34It's not real. Because it's a trend. It goes away after a while. So, our mitzvot cannot be a trend. Our mitzvot need to be real. You need to know why you're doing them. The instructions of why you're doing them are in the Torah. Once you have the Torah, you have the second part. Torah is every day, 15-20 minutes a day, an hour a day, two hours a day, as much as you possibly can. whether it's through CDs, through books, through YouTube, everything that's Torah is considered Torah. Whether it's lectures, some level of Torah. It doesn't need to be a book. If you're not a big reader, okay, watch YouTube. If you don't like YouTube, come to lectures. But don't go to lectures where the guy is, you know, telling you you're a tzaddik and you don't even keep anything. Go to lectures where somebody is giving it to you on your head a little bit and reminds you what's the purpose of life. After you have this Torah, then you have a shot at starting to build your emunah. By recognizing already that you're doing the Torah and mitzvot, you're recognizing the Creator's creation, you're recognizing that part of the Torah teaching is mussar, which teaches you how to have yirat Hashem. It teaches you how to be in awe of Him. Then you're believing in Him. You're doing what He wants. That's when you have emunah.

2:30:03It's the third piece. After you have the third piece, your tefillah, which is the last one, will do the rest. Because at that point, after you have those three, the tefillah will come naturally. Why? Because every word out of your mouth will be a prayer. Every word out of your mouth will recognize Hashem. Every two seconds you're saying, Baruch Hashem. Somebody says, how are you? You could say, good. You could say, Baruch Hashem. Somebody says, you know, what do you think is going to happen? B'ezrat Hashem. Or you could say, I don't know. Both are right. I don't know is right. B'ezrat Hashem is even better though. Because it's in His hands. Once you have those three pieces, the fourth one will finalize the job. And that's exactly what happened at the end of this parashah. In order for us to win the war, we had to do mitzvot.

2:31:04we had to learn some Torah, but since we had a problem with emunah, Hashem had to send Amalek to wake us up. When we're lacking in any one of these three, we're lacking in mitzvot, we're lacking Torah, we're lacking emunah, Hashem sends us problems. If you have problems, that's because you're missing one of them. Or perhaps your tefillah is not good. If you have problems, Hashem is talking to you. Something's wrong here. Maybe all of them, maybe one of them, maybe half. We don't know. You know. You and Hashem know. You know how much effort you're putting into your Torah. You know how much effort you're putting into the mitzvot. You know how much effort you're putting into everything. Are you putting as much effort into Hashem's work as you are into the work that you want to do? You know. You have to be the biggest judge of your own behavior.

2:32:04When you're doing all of these three, the first three, your tefillah will take care of itself. Your tefillah will be natural. Your tefillah will be every word that comes out of your mouth. And that will get you to a point where doing the Gemilut Chassadim, that we talked about in the beginning, of Kiruv, it won't even require effort. Why? Because just talking to you will make people religious. When you have the mitzvot as part of your life, that means that people see you, they know you're Jewish. You act Jewish, you look Jewish, you're modest, you cover your hair, you wear a kippah, you go to Beit Knesset. People know you're Jewish. Your mitzvot show that you're Jewish. When they talk to you, they see what you're talking about. If you're talking about baseball, basketball, football, stock market, okay, great, you're like everybody else. You talk about Moshe Rabbeinu, the manna, the exodus, you know, Avraham Avinu, David HaMelech, Mashiach, you talk about things like that, think about the foundation of Judaism, okay, he knows Torah. Parashat Shavua, he knows Torah. Not like he learned in yeshiva 25 years ago. He's telling me about this week's parasha, he's up to date.

2:33:29When they ask you, what do you think is going to happen in the world? And you show no worry whatsoever. What do you think is going to happen with our company? And you show no worry whatsoever. What do you think is going to happen with this, that, and the other thing? And you have no worry. Not just show no worry, but you have no worry. Then you're showing the Emunah. These things are the foundation of what your purpose in life is. And when you have all of these, it's very, very easy to do kiruv. Because people are going to want to be just like you. He has no worries. He knows what he's talking about. Doesn't look so bad that if you keep one day a week, he doesn't work.

2:34:31or he goes to the Beit Knesset, meets a bunch of Jewish people a couple of times a day, it's not a big deal. It's not so bad. And for some reason or another, when he prays, Hashem answers. This one, two, three things happened, and to the surprise of everyone, Hashem answered his prayers, and they happened. You start seeing miracles in your own life. And the chesed that you're doing for Hashem gets results. Why? Because you get other people to become religious through your actions. You're not only selling them to come to a shiur Torah because it's good for them. You're going there because you're joining them. You're with them. You tell them to become religious because it's fun. Because it's good. Not just because you want to push somebody into some cult and get them to donate some money for you or something like that. When you do all of these things, doing kiruv becomes easy. It becomes natural. And at that point, your tefillah can override the decrees that Hashem has decided.

2:36:03There's nothing better than that. Any questions?