Shiur Torah #84 Great Questions & Answers from Miami

0:00V'shem Hashem Na'aseh V'natzliach, Shehu Torah, Zot Hashem, this will also be for refuah shleimah, Lourdes Garcia, Moshe Ben Menachem, David Ben-Estel, Edilma Guerrero, Sarah Guerrero—no, Gutierrez. Gutierrez. Cesar Jimenez, Angela Schiffman, Jocelyn Morajon, Isabel Perez, Josefina Matos, Estefany Meir, Jose Avila, Guillermo Solano, Klaus Meir, Marcella Matut, Edward Matos, Sarah Balsara, Joshua, Mikael Ben-Hadassah, Mikael Ben-Zara, Arturo Cotto, and also Bechor Ben Ezra, David Ben Esriah, Doris Bat Jorah, Gabi Ben Doris, Osher Ben Doris, Ruth Glassman, Debbie Bat Rachel, Eddie Meister, Levana Bat Sarah, Sarah Bat Levana, Bill Deutschman, and Bill Deutschman. Thank you. B'ezrat Hashem, everybody will have refuah shleimah, all of Am Yisrael, anyone.

1:28B'ezrat Hashem, all of the people that are suffering right now with all of these attacks that we have in Israel, every single day there's something, some other bad horror story. And little by little we're realizing that Hashem is maneuvering the world to prepare it for the end of times, to prepare it for the times of the Mashiach. Whether it's the prophecies that Yishmael will torture us, And some prophecies say we'll even take control of Israel for nine months. Or it's that our friends will turn into enemies. Or it's having, you know, even things that we see day to day, that the mothers-in-law and their daughters-in-law will not get along. And unlike in the past, if you look at our grandparents' days, you know, the mother-in-law was like a second mother. Today, a mother-in-law is almost an enemy in many families. And it's not necessarily intentional; it's just that things are happening. It's constant problems. If you look at a lot of problems that people have with shalom bayit, it usually has to do with the in-laws. It's usually the father-in-law doesn't like the daughter-in-law, or the mother-in-law doesn't like the son-in-law, or vice versa.

2:50But a lot of times, the biggest problems are usually between the daughter-in-law and the mother-in-law. And this is, we went over this in one of the shiurim, we went over a lot of the prophecies that it says in the Oral Torah, in the Gemara Masechet Sotah, page 49b. It talks about one after another of the different prophecies that are going to happen at the end of times. And when you read it today, it's like reading the newspaper. Because every single thing came true. And one of the things that I'm seeing especially now, personally, Baruch Hashem, we have a lot of success reaching many people all over the world. People want to convert, people are doing teshuva, and there is a lot of good news on that end. But also, at the same time, the more success you have with bringing purity to the world, the more the Yetzer Hara is going to attack you. Every single minute, not just every day. If it was every day, it would be good. Every single minute there's an attack. ...on something that we're doing, whether it's somebody making a silly comment, or this guy writing me anti-Semitic remarks on the internet, all types of things. Every single minute there's some type of attack from the Yetzer Hara. Baruch Hashem, this is all good news, because it shows that this is obviously effective. If the Yetzer Hara didn't care about what we're doing, we would have to change. But since the Yetzer Hara is so busy interfering with our life in every single way, I know it's effective.

4:16One of the other prophecies that it says actually in the Gemara Masechet Avodah Zarah is that at the end of times, at the times of Mashiach, right before he comes, there's going to be a lot of people leaving idol worship and converting to Judaism. Not just becoming Noahides, but actually converting to Judaism, leaving everything. And this is one thing that I've seen a drastic amount happening over this last year, especially personally, I see a lot of people that are reaching out, and we're helping them convert. There's a group of, I think, four or five families in Texas. We did a shiur for them last Sunday. We're going to post it soon and probably do a series about conversion. It was maybe a five-hour shiur on the internet. And it was amazing how these people are willing to leave everything behind, including some family members, including some friends, including their house, they have to move to a Jewish community, including everything. Why? Because they love Hashem. They found the truth and they're going after it. And it's not easy. It's not easy. It's not easy in any way, shape, or form. But once someone knows that something is true, they have to decide, is it true 100% or 99%? If it's true 99%, it means it's 100% right.

5:38Because if anything has a little bit of a lie in it, it's a lie. There's no half lie, half truth. The reason why Christianity is considered idol worship, and something you can't even think about as far as being close to it, is because it's the biggest lie in history. Why? The reason why over 2 billion people believe in Christianity is because they used a very, very good tactic. They wrapped a huge lie with the biggest truth in history. Because if you notice, the New Testament, the first two-thirds are the Torah. It's the Tanach. They don't teach it, but it's part of the book. The last third, the only thing they teach, is the New Testament, which is completely full of lies. So somebody says, look, I have a book, you know, the Torah is about 300,000 words, 300,000 letters. The New Testament is about 100,000, it's about a quarter. So let's say 400,000 you have. So somebody says, listen, Avraham, yeah, yeah, I know him. I heard the Jewish people talked about him. Moshe, yeah, I heard about him. Even the historians talked about him.

6:52Joseph, yeah, yeah, he also, there's a lot of proofs. See, two-thirds of the book, everyone knows. The Arabs agree, the Christians agree, even the Buddhists agree to some extent. Everyone agrees. If two-thirds are true, then of course the last third of what? What did the Reverend say? Oh, he said J.C. did this, this, okay, so he did it. Because two-thirds are true. And that's how all big lies are made. They put truth... to wrap the big lie. But no one notices the lie. So we're seeing that a lot of people are leaving this lie. And in the Masechet Avodah Zarah, it says there's going to be a lot of converts before the end of times. But then the Gemara asks, well, are we going to accept converts after the Mashiach comes? And it says, no. Just like we didn't accept converts at the time of King David,

7:52And we didn't accept converts at the time of King Solomon. Why? Because at those times, we were rulers of the world. King David ruled the world. Even those who went to war with him lost easily. Solomon was at peace with the entire world. He was married to a thousand women from different countries in order to have peace, not because he was a crazy person who wanted that many wives. So, we had complete peace. and that complete power, and strength, and everything you could possibly imagine. So to join the nation, when we're in complete control of the entire world, by saying, oh no, I'm going to keep some mitzvot now. No, why? That's not really a big deal. Everybody wants to join the winning team. When we're losing, that's when you can show whether you love us or not. And that's why Batya, the daughter of Paro, actually received her name from Hashem Himself. Her name, Batya, is not really the name she was born with. Batya means daughter. Bat-ya is another name for Hashem. Daughter of Hashem. Why? Because Batya was the daughter of Pharaoh, and she realized that his idol worship is complete nonsense, and she also realized that Hashem is real, and she left. She said, I'd rather go be part of the nation of slaves, just to be part of the truth.

9:23So she left everything to be with the slaves, not just a winning team. The losing team, the slaves, just to be with the truth. This is the difference between someone that says this is either 100% truth or it's not. And she still ended up having a reward in this world, but as far as the next world, they say she's one of ten people that left this world without ever dying. The reward is endless when you go on Hashem's side. Endless. But you could only show if you're serious when we're losing. Right now, we're losing. Right now, we're controlled by the entire world. Even though Israel is a modern country and we have modern technology and a decent economy and so on, the reality of it is every time we sneeze, we have to ask America if we could say, you know, if we could say a "bless you" to each other. If we want to go to war with anybody, we have to ask for permission. If we want to protect ourselves, we have to ask the media if they're going to publish it or not. We don't have real control. We don't have the King David or King Solomon type of control. We have nothing. Anti-Semitism is the highest it's been since World War II, since the Holocaust. In America, anti-Semitism is over 40%. We live in Florida. I've lived in New York.

10:51That's not real America. Real America is not a city. Real America is suburbs. Oregon, Oklahoma, you know, certain parts of Texas. And in those places, some people have never even met a Jew, but unfortunately, in some of those places, they hate Jews just because they've heard a stereotype. So over 40% of Americans admit that they're anti-Semitic. That's not good news. We're not winning. And the 60% that don't talk about whether they hate us or not, it's not that they like us. They just don't outright say that they hate us. So we're seeing that Hashem is telling us, "Listen, if you join now, then I know it's authentic. Then I know it's real. But to join the chosen people, to join eternal reward, it's going to cost you. You can't just be part of the winning team just because you said, 'Oh, I want to join.'"

11:52Jewish people have been suffering for thousands of years. And you say, oh, listen, I'm just going to join because I like it. Obviously, every person that wants to join has to pay their dues. And converting is not easy. Even if you have the money. Even if you have the knowledge. It's still not easy. Different people, you see the stories of these converts. They're the most inspiring stories you could ever see. On the internet, we try to publicize some of these stories. Every one of these converts has an amazing story. Every one of these converts has such a strong story that I want you to be inspired by them. It's such an inspiring story, but it's full of hardship. Full of hardship. Got rejected from here. This one left me. That one went through hardship. Lost my money. All these things. Why? But they went for Hashem. And now, when they're telling the story, you see smiles from ear to ear. They're the happiest people in the world. But they have to pay their dues. And this is exactly what the Gemara is trying to tell us. You can join the winning team before it's too late. But remember, your time is limited. You can't wait years. We all know Mashiach is around the corner. Whether it's the situation that's happening with North Korea, firing a new missile every single day, and going against all sanctions and deals and everything that we have with them, and pretty much outright saying that...

13:19They can't wait to use a missile that can reach America. And they can reach certain parts of America now, or at least U.S. soil. Or Iran, with that marvelous deal we had, where we gave them $100 billion, and now they're shooting missiles every day, violating the deal. Every day. They said, no, no, we're not going to do anything. Just release the money. Okay, as soon as the money hit the bank account, the "on" button for the missile was pressed. It's a joke. But you see that Hashem is maneuvering things no differently than He maneuvered in Megillat Esther, which we're going to learn about this week. We're going to read, b'ezrat Hashem, on Purim, Wednesday night and also Thursday morning. Tomorrow night, I'm going to do a shiur specifically about Megillat Esther. But if you have any specific questions about it, we can talk about it today. But you’re seeing that there are a lot of things happening in the world that are very similar to Megillat Esther.

14:22One of the things we did in the shiur is that we have this, uh, WhatsApp group for anybody that wants to join. It's a really, uh, good group, full of good people. And, uh, I also do a 10-15 minute audio shiur every, you know, five days a week, I'd say. Uh, different chidushim, different divrei Torah every day. Um, that I can't post anywhere else. I don't have it on the internet or, uh, on YouTube. And, uh, I also put my shiurim there and things like that. But, uh, Today we said a nice thought that we had, is that if you notice, in the beginning of Megillat Esther, after Achashverosh's wife, Vashti, went against him and said, I don't want to come. She did not want to come. because she wanted to go against him, she didn't want to come because Hashem punished her and gave her the disease of tzara'at. And her entire body was full of infection and so on. But as soon as he heard that she didn't want to obey him, he asked his advisors, he asked the rabbis, what should I do? The rabbis said, listen, if we tell him that he should kill her,

15:45tomorrow morning, when he's not drunk anymore, he's going to say, oh, my wife is gone, he's going to kill us. If we tell him, no, don't kill, don't do anything, then he says, ah, you're not real leaders, you're not worth anything, he's going to kill us anyway. So I would get out of this and say, oh, listen, they told Achashverosh, since the Beit HaMikdash was destroyed, the power of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish court, was also destroyed. So since that day, we're not allowed to pass any laws. So we can't help you. It's against our religion. So they got out of it. So then, Achashverosh went to his other advisors, his non-Jewish advisors. And the last one that's mentioned, Mehuman, he is really Haman. He's named differently. It's really Haman. He named seven people, and he was the seventh one, but Haman actually responded first to what he should do. And he said, "Listen, not only do I think you should kill her, but I also think that you should change the law. Right now, every time before you make a decision, you have to ask us what we think. You have to have your advisors. I don't think you should have advisors. I think you should do whatever you want. You're the king. You're a ruler of 127 countries. What do you need advisors for?"

17:07so this looks like, initially, it looks like it's a bad thing for us. It looks like this is all the power to one person, and Chazal tell us that Achashverosh was a bigger anti-Semite than Haman. So now, he's going to have all of the power to the worst person on earth. Later on, we find out that at the end of the story, obviously, when Hashem maneuvers the world in a way that Esther comes to Achashverosh and she tells him that Haman wants to kill her and the rest of our people, and then he decides to hang him, we realize that Hashem provided the cure before the ailment. How? If Achashverosh did not listen to Haman's original advice many years before to kill Vashti, and change the government, that he's the only one that's the ruler, then later on, when it was time to kill Haman, he wouldn't have been able to kill Haman because he still would have had to ask for advice. So this whole story is full of bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. We're thinking there's bad news. Hashem, why are You punishing us? Hashem, people are stabbing us. Hashem, people want to kill us. Hashem, they're sending missiles against us. They're taking our money. They're taking this and taking that. Hashem is telling us, no, all of those things...

18:34That's just to wake you up. The cure? I already provided you the cure before you even knew you were sick. I already provided the cure. Same thing is happening now. Hashem already has a solution. He told us about the solution 3,300 years ago. He told us Mashiach is going to come. He told us we're going to rule everything. This hardship right now? That's to wake us up. To see if we believe in the Torah 100% or 99%. 99% we're not going to make it. 99% means we're no different than everybody else who doesn't believe. 99% means we're skeptical. Right now is the time to decide whether we believe in the same Hashem that's in the Torah or some other false god. Hashem is real. That we know for sure. The other gods, I don't believe in them either. So, right now, all the difficulties that we're going through, this is the time. You have to pick. You have to be part of Team Hashem or everywhere else. And you're seeing a lot of people choosing Team Hashem. They're converting. They're doing teshuva. They're getting stronger. Even religious people that are seeing some of the shiurim, they're realizing, listen, I look religious, but I have a really big problem. Last week,

19:57We took a battle against the Yetzer Hara, a very big battle that I've been trying to do for a long time, but it always interferes. But Baruch Hashem, we succeeded last week. We made a shiur that's very rare in the English language about wasting seed. Wasting seed was about the second half of the shiur. And in the English language, there's only two other rabbis that I know of that ever spoke about it, as far as online: Rabbi Mizrachi, and Rabbi Mizrachi along with another. But there are thousands and thousands of rabbis. No one is speaking about it. And it would blow my mind. Why? Because wasting seed is one of the worst sins in Judaism. It's not only a bad sin for Jews, it's a bad sin for non-Jews. Even non-Jews are not allowed to do it. This is for all of humanity. And no one talks about how bad it is. What's the punishment? What happens? What is it? Where's the proof? And so on and so forth. I'm not going to go over it now. But we went over a lot of details. It's a must-hear for anyone—adults, everyone. Teenagers, anyone that has kids that are about to be teenagers, already teenagers, is a teenager, is an adult. Whatever it is, everyone must hear this. You need to know what the truth is. And obviously, taking on that responsibility.

21:20was very good. It's a big success. A lot of people are responding and they're, Baruch Hashem, doing teshuva. But by the same token, the Yetzer Hara doesn't like me very much right now. So what we're going to do is cut the video and make just a shiur and even do more. We'll do more shiurim about it. That's the only way to fight the Yetzer Hara. The Gemara says, if the Yetzer Hara comes to you and he wants you to sin, any sin, whether it's Chas V'Shalom, Chilul Shabbat, wasting seed, eating non-kosher, every sin. Everybody has a different Yetzer Hara. Yetzer Hara comes to you and he wants you to sin. Say Shema Yisrael. Say Kriyat Shema. If that doesn't work and you still have the Yetzer Hara, you still have the inclination, you want to do something. You want to do something bad. Something against Hashem. He says, learn some Torah. Why? Because Hashem said, "I created the Yetzer Hara and I created the Torah as a potion. It's a cure for the Yetzer Hara. Nothing else works." Because Yetzer Hara is stronger than everyone else. He's bigger than everyone else. He's smarter than everyone else. All of mankind put together that ever lived. How are you going to beat him? He says, you can't beat him. The Torah can beat him. But what if the Torah doesn't work, Hashem? He says, remind them of the day he's going to die. This is Masechet Berachot. Why, why, why, why this order? Kriyat Shema,

22:47to you. He wants you to commit a sin. What do you say? Shema? Shema Yisrael, you're calling God. What is he doing? You're reminding yourself that there's a God. Yetzer Hara is not God. He's Yetzer Hara. He's one of God's servants. Remind yourself that there's a God. Maybe you won't commit a sin. That doesn't work? Learn what God said. Learn Torah. If remembering that God is not enough, at least learn what He says. Learn the truth. Learn the truth. If learning the truth is not enough, remind yourself of the day you're going to die. Why? Because on the day you're going to die, if you already know the Torah, and you know that there's a God, and you know it's true, then on the day you're going to die, you also know that it says in the Torah, you're going to have to pay the bill, my friend. For this little sin, for this big sin, for this thing that's five minutes of pleasure, you have to pay the bill. So this is what the Gemara says. So, when the yetzer hara fights us, we have to fight back. There's only one tool: publicize Torah. Make more people do teshuva. Do more kiddush Hashem. If you have an opportunity to do even the smallest kiddush Hashem, the smallest one, you can buy your olam haba with it. Small kiddush Hashem. There's no such thing as a small kiddush Hashem, but even like a small version of a kiddush Hashem, you can buy your olam haba with it. Hashem gives you special protection for it. If you could do a big one,

24:17Not many people have that merit. Not many people are put in a position where they can do a big Kiddush Hashem. So today I thought that aside from talking about some of the introductions we talked about now, maybe we can go over some questions you guys have. B'ezrat Hashem, we're going to Yerushalayim, to Eretz HaKodesh, to Israel, and the next week. So we're going to be there for a while. So there's no limits on the questions, there's no limits on time. And ask away. If it's not Hashem, Hashem, Hashem, He'll give us the answers and we'll be able to answer. So, Chavrei Haklali (general members), okay. Who's going to start? Go on, please. Anyone. Okay, we're going to have a specific... Do you want to throw the topic or you want to ask... No, no, just throw questions away. Whatever you think of. Put him or... Any question? Any question. Any question, if I know it, I'll answer it. If I don't know it, I'll find out. Okay, but... About the last week's parasha, I have a question. Then we'll go to Purim. Okay. The one that is coming up, and we might have a lot of questions in the afternoon. Last week's parasha was very interesting...

25:38since it talks about the rules. The rules of the korbanot. The korbanot, and that means, you know, the way it's, the laws of purity, the way also we should behave in life. Why is Hashem asking for the sacrifice when Hashem created everything? So, I'm departing from the truth, right? So, that's my question. Why? Why does He need the sacrifice? Yeah. The truth is, He doesn't need the sacrifice. The heavens and the earth are all His. Right. We are all His. The sacrifice, this is, you're talking about parashat Vayikra, we're talking about a lot of laws of different sacrifices. The secret, or better yet, the key to all of the sacrifices is have in common, is that we're all giving it to Hashem, and they all have to go through this special ritual that Hashem specifically told us how to do it. Now, in reality, Hashem doesn't eat, He doesn't drink, He doesn't need any of these things. If He wants animals, He can just create more of them for Himself or just take what He has. The reality of it is that when we're doing a sacrifice,

27:00First and foremost, as it tells us here, we said it in last week's shiur, it says, "When a man among you brings the offering to Hashem." Now, when it says a man, in Hebrew it says adam. Now, a man really is ish, but adam is a little different. Adam is... You know, when you're saying to somebody, be a good person, you're saying, be like, you know, a pure person, be a good person. So here we learn something very interesting. Hashem is telling us that before you bring me the korban, you have to do teshuva. If you're going to give me the korban, I don't need your animal. I don't need this animal. You have to do teshuva first. You have to be a good person first. You have to do what the Torah says first. If you've done teshuva, and you're bringing the korban as part of your teshuva, then the korban will be to Hashem. The korban will be to Hashem. But, at the end of that same verse, you shall bring your offering. First it says, bring your offering to Hashem.

28:23Your offerings to Hashem. The second one is you bring your offering. There's no Hashem in the second part. Why? Because if you're a ben adam, if you are doing serious teshuva, and you really mean it, then the korban, I'll accept it. It comes to Hashem. But if you're not a ben adam, if you're not someone that's doing teshuva, it stays your korban. It stays your dead animal. You just killed an animal. It means nothing to me. I don't need it. So, first and foremost, we know that this is our teshuva. We don't have korbanot anymore today. We learned last week in the book of the prophet Hoshea, and also in our Siddur, we say every day in Shacharit, and several other places in the Torah, that our words—meaning our prayers—replaced the sacrifice, replaced the korban. It's in Hoshea, verse 14:3. Hashem, when there's no Beit HaMikdash, Hashem gave us another way. It's also in different parts of the Torah itself. Our prayers replace our korban. So this applies to us. If we go to the Beit Knesset, and what are we doing? Hey, Joey! Hey, Steve! Hey, how are you? And you say hi to everybody in the middle of the tefillah. When I say you're friends with everyone, you have only one enemy. Him. Everyone else likes you.

29:48He doesn't like you because you're treating His house like it's a playground. In Masechet Sotah, it says something very scary. It says if a kehillah, a house of G-d, a small version of Beit HaMikdash, chooses a chazan, That's unfair, that's not considered an avon. An avon is like someone that's not straight. Not straight with the Torah. Makes sins on a regular basis. Even sins like shaving with a razor, by the way. When he prays, when he's the chazan, the moment he's a chazan, Hashem doesn't hate anyone more than him. And because of him, he curses the entire kehillah. Page 16, Masechet Sotah. It's not such an easy thing. No, no, you be chazan today. No, no, you be chazan. No, come on, you do it. You didn't do it. You know, everybody picks a chazan like they're friends. If the guy is not a serious Baal Teshuva, a serious tzaddik, run from the Beit Knesset. Run, run. You're better off praying by yourself. If the guy that's a chazan is not righteous, run away. You're better off praying by yourself. A lot of places, unfortunately, unfortunately,

31:16And now they don't know this Masechet Sotah. They don't know this Chumash. So they bring their friends. Oh yeah, you just drove to the Beit Knesset on Shabbat, but you look so good. You know what, you be chazan. You have a nice voice. You have a nice voice, be chazan. Drove to the Beit Knesset on Shabbat? Okay, come on, go be chazan. They don't realize, making him a chazan, you're giving him the kavod, you're giving him the honor, but you know what he's returning to you? He's returning to you a curse. You're giving him an honor, he's returning a curse. He's getting a curse also, but who wants to be? You want to give an honor. Who wants a curse in return? Don't give me this. I won't give you anything back. It's a big deal to be a chazzan. Why? Because you're a chazzan in the house of Hashem. So, when we're praying, we have to understand it's serious business. Every time we pray, it's a korban. Korban in Shacharit. Korban in Mincha. Korban in Arvit. It's a Korban. Every time we're doing a sacrifice. If we're coming to Hashem, we're saying, yeah, listen, why, you want a bull? Here, here's a bull. Here's a bull. You think Hashem's going to be happy with your Korban? Maybe He'll make the bull fly in the air and drop on your head. Who do we give a bull? I need your bull. Everything is mine. So, same thing with prayer. We go to pray, we have to be serious.

32:34We have to do teshuva, we have to really say "I'm sorry." We have to really say "Hashem, thank you." Serious. So, this is the first thing we need to understand about the korbanot and how it relates to our life. The second thing is, why do they kill the korban? Why don't they just put them all in like a zoo? Or make like a big farm for Hashem's korbanot? Because what Hashem is telling you here is that the korban, you see how it's being slaughtered? It's supposed to be you. you're supposed to be killed. You're supposed to be slaughtered for the sins you made. But I'm not going to kill you. I love you. So I'm going to give you a chance. I'll take just the animal that you bought for $500. I'll take just the prayer that took you 15 minutes. It takes the animal because in the order of creation for the level of... Sure, sure. So that's the key is that it changes...

33:34It replaces us. So every time you pray to Hashem, you have an opportunity to talk to Him, to thank Him, to say I'm sorry, to connect with Him, and to get a blessing. Or, the exact opposite. And that's why I tell people, on Purim, a lot of people make this mistake. You know, one of the things people do on Purim is they get drunk, which is actually, on Purim, it's actually a mitzvah to get drunk. But not drunk like you're falling on the floor. Drunk, like, you got a buzz. That's what drunk is in real, you know, in Torah language. It's not drunk like you're falling on the floor and, you know, you don't remember yesterday. And, but if you're drunk, you're not allowed to go to Beit Knesset. You're not allowed to pray when you're drunk. So if you're drunk, you know, during the afternoon, you're having a good time, you have a big meal, we'll talk about some of the halachot of Purim. It's great. But once Arvit comes, if you're still not feeling like a normal person, don't go pray. Wait till later. It's better to even miss the prayer altogether than to pray drunk. So, under no condition. Some people go there. Last year, a couple of people came to the Beit Knesset drunk. It's not good. So, go ahead, next question. You're supposed to prepare some questions for me. Yeah, do you have a...

35:00More questions, no? Any questions, no limits. Come on, this is not our first time. You guys even got me a new background. I feel like I'm already in Yerushalayim. Just want to ask in Spanish. Yeah, go ahead. I would like to explain a little bit about... because he talked about Chazan. And that came to mind, a question. When a person... When you read the Torah, you have to know what you are reading. You have to interpret well what you are reading. Simply knowing how to read without understanding is not sufficient. Okay, she's asking that a question came up to her mind when you were talking about the chazan. And basically, the question is, if the person does the aliyah, the person reads the Torah, opens the bimah, does the person have to know what they are reading, or do they only need to read the letters, pronouncing them? The one that's a chazan or the one that's getting an aliyah and he's standing next to him? The chazan or the person that's doing the aliyah.

36:21You know, specifically, the case that we have in the synagogue. The chazan needs to know what he's reading, right, right, right. But the one that's getting an aliyah, no, he doesn't necessarily need to understand every word, but he should, obviously. In the old days, there wasn't anything such as the aliyot. It was actually every person that would get an aliyah would be the chazan, meaning everyone would read for themselves. In our days, most people don't know how to read from the Torah scroll. So, the chazan would read for everyone. So, the person that has the aliyah has to follow along, trying to understand as much as possible. But usually, there's somebody on both sides, the right and the left, that actually has a siddur, and you could read. You know, even some of the things there, like if it's either during the same time or after, they understand what's being said. So, yeah, I mean, it's good to understand it. Obviously, really the responsibility of every Jew is to read the parashah twice, twice every week.

37:37And without the Mefarshim, without the commentators, and one with the commentators. Meaning three times really. So by the time Shabbat comes, you have already read it and you already understand what's going on. That's really the responsibility that we all have. Since that's not realistic for most people, because most people have never even read the parashah once, at the very least, we should try to read it, you know, read the parashah, or at least the beginning of the parashah, you know, before we go to Beit Knesset, maybe on Shabbat, maybe on Friday, um, and understand what's really happening. The name of Hashem itself? None. Zero. It doesn't appear at all. It's the only book in the entire Tanakh where Hashem's name does not appear. But every time it says HaMelech,

38:51Instead of Melech Achashverosh, HaMelech is referring to Hashem. And the reason why Hashem is doing this is because this is the last generation, as Deuteronomy says, the last generation of open miracles and of prophecy. And Hashem is, in essence, adjusting us to see some miracles, see some prophecy, because Esther was a prophet, Mordechai was a prophet. But at the same token, He's hiding Himself. He's hiding in the background. Because you're not seeing the same thing that we saw during King David's time. You're not seeing the same thing we saw during King Solomon's times or during Moshe's times. You're not seeing the same level of miracles as far as Hashem's hand in it openly as it usually is. You're seeing it more similar to our world today. So Hashem told us that He's going to hide in nature, in essence. He's going to hide His face from us, but He's still going to protect us. So, At the end of Megillat Esther, Esther tells the sages, "I want you to write this Megillah, I want you to write this story and send it around the world." So the sages tell her, "Don't you think that's too bold of a move? The goyim are going to be very angry that we're writing this because it's a story against them." She says, "Don't worry about the goyim, it's already known." What's known? Everyone knows the story, and everyone believes that Hashem did it.

40:20Even the goyim. So you have nothing to worry about. It's so obvious that Hashem did what He did. You know, just a few days ago we were going to be annihilated. Today we're, you know, building the Beit HaMikdash. The son of Esther built the next Beit HaMikdash. Just a little while ago, everybody was going to be destroyed. Now we're going to build the Beit HaMikdash. Everyone knows. Even the goyim know that Hashem did it. So that's the thing. It's a... Hashem, on one end, made huge miracles that even the goyim saw, but on another end, He didn't do it as openly as He did during Mitzrayim, or in the desert, and King David, and so on. So that's why in Megilat Esther, His name does not appear with the Yud, Heh, Vav, and Heh, like it is in the other 23 books of the Tanakh. But it's still a book that had Ruach HaKodesh to write it, because there's a lot of secrets.

41:20in Megilat Esther, that are absolutely extraordinary. That whoever wrote it had to have Ruach HaKodesh, had to have the Holy Spirit in him, to actually be able to write it. Because you're seeing even things like, for example, the way we know, for example, how Achashverosh wore the garment of the Kohen HaGadol, You know, he inherited the treasures of the previous king, of Cyrus. And he inherited the treasure of the previous king, who eventually got to Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar is the one who destroyed the Beit HaMikdash. Part of destroying the Beit HaMikdash is he took all of the holy garments, the Menorah, and everything. So Achashverosh decided to take this and use it, and he put the Eight garments of the Kohen Gadol. How do we know? Because when it talks about his clothing, the chet, the letter chet, is extra large. It's really big. Much bigger than the normal letters. And chet, the numerical value of chet, is eight. So we know that the chet means eight. And he wore the eight garments of the Kohen Gadol. This is not something that your average intellectual could write. These are codes within it.

42:47The other thing we know is, actually we learned a few weeks ago, there's Torah codes. So, for example, these are some of the things we're going to go over in tomorrow's shiur, so you should definitely watch it. But I also did a shiur about this, about Megillat Esther last year. So, if you can't wait for tomorrow's shiur, you can already watch some of the stuff from last year. This is some good stuff. But we'll try to put some new things. But one of the things, for example, that it says... is the Gemara asks, where is Esther in the Torah? You know, it's saying that everything is in the Torah. Where is Esther in the Torah? So it quotes the verse, Hashem is saying to Am Yisrael, I will hide my face. But using Torah codes, if you count the Aleph, and then 12,000, I think 12,983 letters, I hope I'm right with the number. You get to the Samech, and then another 12,983 letters. You get to the next letter, and so on. It spells out the word Esther. But why? Usually, Torah codes use small numbers. It's usually between every letter. If you're spelling, let's say, Moshe, it's Mem, and then let's say you skip 10 letters, or 50 letters, then you get the Shin, you skip another 10 letters, or 50 letters, and you get the He. So...

44:16usually, the bigger the skip, the less valuable it is as a code. But in this case, it's very, very valuable. Why? Because the 12,000 number is the exact number of letters that are in the Megillah. And the same exact thing is with Mordechai. Mordechai, the Gemara asks, "Where is Mordechai in the Torah?" in the Torah, and it's in the section of Torah that talks about incense, the incense offering. And again, then you skip the 12,000 or so letters, you get to the Resh, and so on. So you see that the names, even though the Megillah was written, I think about 1,500 years later almost, or about 1,000 years later, after, almost 1,000 years later, after the five books of Moses were written,

45:16we already knew, Hashem already knew of the story before it happened. So, there are a lot of secrets within the Megillah. Even though it was written many, many, many years later by a person, and not given to us at Mount Sinai like the Torah was, like the Five Books of Moses were, obviously it had to have divine intervention to write it. So, Hashem's name is hidden behind the scenes throughout the entire Megillah. Okay, let me go back for a moment. The question, I think we didn't finish, about reading the Torah without knowing the meaning of what you read. For example, myself, I don't understand Hebrew, but I know how to read it. Is it kosher if I go up to the bimah and read the Torah? No, the chazan should know what he's reading. or whoever, not the aliyah, the aliyah, no. Whoever reads in the Torah should know, because our Rabbi, he knows when he reads. So he should be the only one that reads the Torah. So all the people that don't understand, they should not read. Okay, that was her question. Okay, so we're clear on that. Yes, no, the cantor, the chazzan, the ba'al koreh, the one that's reading from the Torah, should not

46:38only know how to make sounds. He needs to know what he's actually saying. I've got a question. Yeah. In the... Hashem gave the five books of Moshe, right? So, the other books that were written like Shmuel and Hoshea and other books, when they were written or... at the time that they took place. So, by the way, before I start the answer, it's 12,196 letters. 12,196 letters. And the Mordechai starts in the quote, "the verse is Mordor." Mordor is pure myrrh. It's a part of the incense offering. So, the Five Books of Moses and the rest of the books go as follows. So first in the, when Moses went to Mount Sinai. He didn't get the entire Torah. What he got is he got it through all of the parashot until parashat Yitro. Until Exodus, about the middle or actually early part of Exodus. The book of Exodus or Shemot. Why? Because up to that point is up to where everyone lived. So up to parashat Yitro is where the story was. He couldn't give him the entire Five Books of Moses because then he would tell him the future.

48:08So he gave them up to the point of where they were. They got to Mount Sinai, that's where they received the Ten Commandments, that's when and where they were up to, and that's the book that he gave them, up to there. Now, over the next 40 years, Hashem gave Moshe different parts to write in the Torah at different times during the 40 years. Um... the next couple of books, so Exodus is only the second book, or Sefer Shemot is the second book. Um, after that, he gave him the next two books, and he would give him different times to write a parasha, whether it's Parashat Balak, or different events that took place, or mitzvot that he told us. Pretty much the entire book of Vayikra, Leviticus, is all about different mitzvot. Um, Then, during the last five weeks of Moses' life, he wrote the last book of the five books of Moses, Devarim, which is Deuteronomy, which originally was not supposed to be part of the Torah. Originally, it was just, if you will, almost like a journal by Moshe Rabbeinu of his lectures and the things that he said to Am Yisrael.

49:30But obviously it's not like he just wrote a journal like we write a journal. He had Ruach HaKodesh. Hashem was obviously guiding every single letter that he was writing. So after he completed it, or towards the end, until about the last verse, there's a debate about whether Moses wrote the last verse, the last two verses of the book of Devarim, or not, because the last couple of verses talk about him dying. So whether he wrote about his own death or not, or whether it was Yehoshua who wrote the last couple of verses. Originally, it wasn't supposed to be part of the Five Books of Moses, but Hashem told him to include it. So that's the Five Books of Moses. The rest of the books, the other 19 books that we have, were written by the leaders of their time, whether it would be the prophet Yirmiyahu or Yeshayahu. it was written by them through Ruach HaKodesh. Hashem would tell them exactly what to write. It's not like they wrote... No, no, no. This is the Five Books of Moses we already finished. That's through Moshe. After the Five Books of Moses, Hashem told Moshe, and he wrote everything that He said. Okay. After the Five Books, there's different things. There's Yehoshua, there's Shmuel, and so on. Yehoshua is the Gadol HaDor after Moshe Rabbeinu.

50:57So, He gave it to the leaders, He gave it to Yehoshua, He gave it to Yeshayahu, He gave it to whoever was the leader, whoever the book was in essence about, aside from Am Yisrael, and He told them exactly what to write. And in a similar fashion, not exactly the same, but in a similar fashion to how He gave it to Moshe Rabbeinu, they had Ruach HaKodesh, and we see that through the fact that each one of them every page of it has prophecies and proofs that it's authentic, and it couldn't have been written by a normal human being. So, that's pretty much the entire Tanach. That's the entire 24 books of the Tanach. The Gemara and, you know, originally the Oral Law, all of the Oral Law, which is the details behind all of our mitzvot, all of the things we need to do in order to get close to Hashem, to serve Hashem, all the details of how to do that, of every one of our mitzvot, from things as big as Shabbat, to Netilat Yadayim, to the lulav on Sukkot, to everything, all of it was given to Moshe Rabbeinu on Mount Sinai. But we weren't allowed to write it, that's why it's called Oral Law, we weren't allowed to write it until

52:25uh, later on, almost, uh, this is about, uh, almost 1,500 years later, a little over 1,000 years later, the first, uh, person that put the Oral Law into writing, which included commentary and interpretation of the Torah, uh, was Yonatan ben Uziel. He, uh, was one of the greatest people that ever lived and he, um, After he wrote the first commentary and, in essence, the interpretation of the Torah, the entire land of Israel experienced a huge earthquake. Then a bat kol, a heavenly voice, came out and said, "Who disclosed My secrets to mankind, to the sons of a woman?" And Yonatan ben Uziel responded, he said, "It was me, and you know I didn't do it for my father's honor, and I didn't do it for my own honor. I did it for You, because if I don't write it, we both know that it's going to be lost, because the generations are continuing to deteriorate. We don't have the same memory and holiness as the previous generations. You know, the previous generations were able to memorize everything about the Oral Torah instantly."

53:50We, if we want to learn one page of Gemara, when you first start, it'll probably take you 10 hours. You know, there's actually a story. I think I told you guys one time with somebody else that there was a boxer. I'll tell you the story about the boxer. No, no, no, I remember. So, one time there was a boxer, a Jewish boxer, but completely non-religious. And, you know, his son... you know, started growing up and, you know, he went to Jewish school. He said, listen, you know, he didn't care for religion, but he figured, you know what, I'm going to send him to Jewish school so he at least knows that he's Jewish. One day the kid comes home with a kippah and tzitzit. The boxer father got so upset. He said, "What, you dare to bring this stuff into my house?" and beat him up. He said, "Don't ever come into my house with that stuff. It's anti-religion," but he's sending him to a Jewish school. So, the next day, the little kid goes to his rabbi and says, "Listen, Rabbi, I came home with this tzitzit and this kippah that you gave me, but my father almost killed me, and I can't do it. What should I do? I can't not wear it; I need to wear it. I know what it means, but, you know, pikuach nefesh. Ha, ha, ha."

55:18It's pikuach nefesh. And he says, "Listen, go home again with it. If you see him getting mad, as soon as you see him, you know, changing his face, then ha ha ha, say, 'I'm just kidding, it was just a joke.' And take it off. But if he doesn't say anything, then continue." That's what the kid did. As soon as he came home, the father looked at him, thought to himself, "If this kid didn't learn by now after the beating I gave him yesterday, I..." It's probably crazy. So you just let him go. And that's with the kid that he continued learning Torah. And little by little, the kid became a talmid chacham. As the kid started growing up, he eventually moved away to learn more and more Torah. He said, listen, he started realizing I have to help my father do teshuva. So how do I do it? Every week, he would send him this leaflet that says the divrei Torah of the week.

56:21And you know, the father once in a while would pick it up and see what it says. And one day, the father calls the son, he's like, listen, this rabbi that keeps sending me his stuff, he keeps talking about this Daf Yomi, Daf Yomi. What is this Daf Yomi? What is this Gemara stuff that he keeps talking about? He keeps making a big deal about it. So the kid explains to him, Abba, the Gemara is the Oral Torah, it's very important, it's the secrets of the world, it's the secrets of Judaism, secrets of the Torah. He goes, okay, but what's this Daf Yomi? He says, if you learn one page per day of the Gemara, you could finish it in seven and a half years, the entire Gemara, which is a huge, huge undertaking. The rabbi that came up with the idea of Daf Yomi is Rabbi Meir Shapiro from Lublin. So, Yeah, but this rabbi is saying that it's such a big deal to learn one page. Oh, yeah, it's huge. One page, it kills a lot of yetzer hara that you have. It does this, it does that. Which, by the way, I don't know if I said in last week's shiur, or for anyone who's watching last week and this week's shiur online, learning Gemara and learning hard Torah is the best way to repent for all sins. The harder the Torah, the more sins you're repenting for, especially the wasting seed.

57:46So the easy Torah, like the stuff when you're just reading stories, it's good, but it's not the same level of repentance. It's not as powerful as learning stuff that's difficult and makes smoke come out of your ears. So the father said, "You know what? I'm going to do it. I want to do it. How do I learn one page?" "Really?" "Yeah, sure." Okay, so he got him one of these yeshiva students to learn with him. Now, this boxer maybe got punched in the head way too many times. He didn't exactly have the best brain in the world. It took him a while to learn one page. It took him a whole year. But when you say learn, you're talking about memorizing? No. Just understanding the basics. Just understanding the basic meaning of it. No, listen. Even if you read one page a thousand times, you're not going to know everything about it. You may memorize it, but you still don't know everything about it because there are secrets in it, endless secrets in every page. That's why we know for sure that the Gemara is also through divine intervention. There's an endless amount of secrets in every page of the Gemara. But this guy was just trying to understand the basics. Like, for example, Moshe went to the store. That's what he was trying to understand, what that means. That's it.

59:13basic meaning of that one page. Now, one page in the Gemara, just so you know (in parentheses), one page in the Gemara is not like one page in a book. Because one page in a book is just one page. One page in the Gemara is actually two sides. It's on both sides. So, in essence, it's really two pages. But it's considered one daf. So, it took this boxer about a year to finish one daf. After he finished one daf, he tells this talmid that's, you know, taught him this one page for the last year. He was very happy. He goes, I want to make a party. I want to make a party. Party? For what? I completed one page. The guy was like, you know, usually, people make a small party when they finish one masechta. They make a huge party like a wedding when they finish the entire Shas. They finish the entire Gemara. Yeah, you make a big party, but for one page, nobody makes a party. But he's not going to tell this to the guy. So he says, who is that rabbi over there? You know, there are pictures of rabbis and names on different leaflets. I want to call this, I think it was Rabbi Moshe Feinstein. I want to call him, I want to ask him. Okay, call him, ask him.

1:00:40So, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein was a very, very humble man. He would answer his own phone, which I'll tell you another story about him after. And he calls him. He says, "I want to make a party, I want to invite you to my party." He says, "Oh, okay, why do you want to make a party? What's the occasion?" He says, "I finished one page of Gemara." So Rabbi Moshe says, "Okay, I'm going to come to your party." He's a Gadol HaDor. He's a giant of giants. He hangs up the phone and tells them, see, he's coming. People were like, what? The Gadol HaDor is coming to your party for one page of Gemara? So now, of course, the news spreads. This becomes a huge party. If the biggest rabbi in the world is coming to this party, everybody's going to come. All the biggest rabbis came. Which rabbi is coming? He had a huge event. Big rabbis came.

1:01:40Rabbi Moshe Feinstein came, finished the Gemara, he finished the party. Later that night, he went to sleep, and he died. So they asked the rabbi, the biggest rabbi in the world, can I ask you something? We're supposed to learn from our rabbis through their actions. Gemara says you learn more if you have a tzaddik next to you. You learn more from their actions than from their Torah. So you ask them why they do what they do. You see throughout the entire Gemara, the students of all the major rabbis always ask their rabbis, why did you do this? Why did you do that? Why did you pick up this? Why did you say that? So they asked him, why did you come to the party? He says, sometimes when he called me and he told me that he finished this one page, i knew for him, that was the biggest thing in the world, and he completed his tikkun. And sometimes a person comes to this world just to finish one page of Gemara. So I had to come for this party. So Rabbi Moshe Feinstein was a giant. He's a giant, not was. He's a giant.

1:03:07But similar to Moshe Rabbeinu, we learn his middot. No one is as humble as Moshe, but we learn from Moshe Rabbeinu how to be humble. Because it says in the Torah that, you know, in essence, on one hand, Moshe was the prophet of all prophets, the king of Am Yisrael, the Mashiach. You know, he was the Goel. Even the Mashiach, when he comes, is not going to be as big as Moshe Rabbeinu. No one's ever going to be as big as Moshe Rabbeinu. But at the same time, it also says that Moshe Rabbeinu is the most humble person that ever lived and ever will live. No one will ever be more humble than him. So a lot of what we learn about humility, we must learn from him. Because usually, the bigger the person, the bigger the ego. So he was the biggest, but the ego was the lowest in history.

1:04:08Rabbi Moshe Feinstein learned about, obviously, the love of Torah and was a giant among giants. And one day, he was walking in the street, and a woman was chasing after a kid. She said, "Moshe! Moshe!" So Rabbi Moshe turns around and says, "Yes, how can I help you?" She goes, "No, I didn't mean you. I meant my son." So for him, you know, he didn't think to himself, oh, she should call me Rabbi, I'm a giant, I'm a big talmid chacham, at least kavod ha-rav, everyone calls me Rav HaGaon. No, he didn't think twice about it. She said Moshe, he goes, my name is Moshe. He turned around, yes, how can I help you? That's the difference, my friends. That's the difference. When you have Torah... On one end, you become a giant, but on the other end, you realize how much of a nothing you are. And that's what makes you a giant. The bigger we think we are, the smaller we really are. And you see it amongst these big rabbis, these big sages. They didn't earn their significance and their names in the Torah because they were, you know...

1:05:35really smart. Plenty of smart people. As a matter of fact, Yehoshua says in the Gemara, he wasn't even the smartest guy. He wasn't the smartest guy amongst his generation. But Hashem chose him to be the leader and gave him Ruach HaKodesh. Made him the biggest. Why? Because he was the most humble. He was the most humble of all of them, that's why He gave it to him. not because he was the smartest. And that's what we see as a repetition throughout the entire Torah. The power of humility is stronger than any brainpower anyone could ever have. And that's one of the main things we have to work on. Go ahead, next one. Another question. So, the 24 books of the Tanakh, are they... The Haftarah, yes, what we read, yes. So, there's the five books of Moshe, there's the 19 other books after it: you have Proverbs, you have Psalms, you have Jeremiah, Isaiah, all the prophets, and so on. And the Haftarah comes from those books, different sections of those books.

1:06:59Originally, when we had the reading in the Torah in the Batei Knesset, it was without the Haftarah. It was just the reading from the Torah. And as a matter of fact, to finish the entire Torah wasn't like we have it today, where they would finish the entire Torah, the entire five books of Moses, every year. It used to be once every three years. It would take longer. But as the generations passed, the sages feared that as we continue to deteriorate and become further and further from Hashem, lower and lower in mitzvot and so on, lower and lower in holiness, they were afraid that if we didn't repeat the Torah at least once a year, we'd forget it altogether. So they lowered it and minimized it to make sure that each parashah is read once a week, and sometimes there are two parashot in one week, in certain parts of the year, to make sure that we complete the entire five books of Moses every year. But I believe it was at the time of the Greeks, where the Greeks tried to destroy Judaism. Unlike the Romans, and unlike the Nazis, and unlike many of the enemies of Am Yisrael that tried to just kill the Jewish people, they just didn't want us to exist, the Greeks didn't want to kill the Jewish people. The Greeks actually gave a lot of Jewish people high-powered positions in politics.

1:08:26gave them money, gave them power, and so on. They just wanted to kill the Torah. They wanted to kill the whole concept of monotheism. They wanted to kill the whole concept of holiness. Their belief was that God created the world and then He left. And there's other gods and other idols you can worship, and so on. And as long as the Jews existed, as long as the Torah existed, they knew that it negates their entire belief. This small little nation is killing their belief. So, What they tried to do is they outlawed learning Torah. And we said, okay, so we're not going to learn the Five Books of Moses. We're going to learn the Nevi'im. It's not the Torah, they would tell them, they'd fool them. No, it's not the Torah. It's just the Five Books. It's the other books, just prophets and so on. Okay, you're allowed to learn that stuff. So what the Jews did is that during the time they weren't allowed to learn Torah, they would learn the books of the Nevi'im and they found different sections.

1:09:27from those books that relate to the actual parasha. So if you notice, each week when you read the haftarah, the subject that the haftarah talks about has to do with the parasha itself. So even though later on we were able to learn the Torah, since the minhag was what already became chazakah, already became pretty much something that we got used to, they never changed it, and until this day we read both. Both of them. Next. Why do we wear costumes on Purim? What is your opinion? Because I've been told the way you dress is the real you. Yeah, right? So if you dress however you choose, it's your personality. Yeah, but there are a few things that are for Purim. First, we have to—men, women, and children, actually. You know, children, not babies, but children—must hear the Megillah. You have to hear it twice: once at night and once in the morning.

1:10:47The second thing that we do is we give matanot le'evyonim, which means we give money to the poor. How much money? You have to give it to at least two poor people, the value of a meal. So a meal is, let's say, I don't know, seven dollars, eight dollars, or ten dollars for a meal, so you have to give the equivalent amount to two poor people. If you can give it to somebody who is learning Torah, that's preferable; it's the biggest mitzvah. If you don't have anybody who is learning Torah, then you give it to just somebody who is poor. The third thing is you have to give at least two mishloach manot, which is, you know, a meal. It's supposed to be a meal, whether it's like a sandwich or a drink, something that somebody can make a meal out of. Some people give cookies, even though technically cookies are not really a meal. So in essence, what you're supposed to do is give mezonot and a drink. It's preferable that you give something that could be a meal and not necessarily just candy. Candy is not considered a complete mishloach manot. The fourth thing that we do is, on the first night, you read the Megillah. You're not obligated to have a big meal even though it's a fast day. On Wednesday, it's a fast day. It starts in the morning and ends right before you finish the Megillah around 8 o'clock.

1:12:10It starts, I believe, down here about 6 o'clock in the morning. And after you finish the Megillah, which is also around 8 o'clock at night, you go home; you can have a big meal, small meal. There's no obligation to have any special meals on Wednesday night, but on Thursday, there is an obligation to have a big meal, a festive meal in essence. In the afternoon, you can have people over, you can do it by yourself, it's up to you. Maybe have a couple of drinks, it's a... What they say, actually, you're supposed to get tipsy enough to the point where you're not sure if it's Haman or if it's Mordechai. But remember, yes, it's good, get drunk, enjoy, whatever, but it has to be to a limit to the point where you're not thinking that you're going to go to a Beit Knesset and pray there. There you go. So, one second, one of the minhagim that we do... is we dress up. So why do we dress up? There are a few reasons that we dress up. One of the reasons is because, as part of Hashem's way of showing us that He's controlling everything, when He made Haman walk Mordechai on his horse, they changed clothes. Mordechai wore Haman's clothes, and Haman wore Mordechai's clothes.

1:13:34Because Mordechai said, listen, I'm going to walk with my sack. I've got to have special clothes. So Haman gave him his clothes. So later on, when he was walking him with the horse, Haman's daughter saw that somebody that looks like Mordechai is walking her father, because she thought that Mordechai was her father, because he was wearing his clothes. So she took the chamber pot, because in those days there wasn't a bathroom in the toilets like today. She took the chamber pot, it was in a bucket. And she poured it and it ended up being on her father instead of on Mordechai. And after he looked up and she saw that it's actually her father that she put all over with the chamber pot, she jumped off and killed herself. So that's how the wicked get punished by their own weapons, their own poison. So one reason is that Mordechai and Haman exchanged clothes. That's the one that I generally, you know, look at most. There are a few other reasons, but that’s the one I know there’s a source for. But in general, as far as the event itself, it’s very festive, it’s a lot of fun, and actually, people should dress up. Even adults should dress up. But it doesn’t mean that the costume you use, like the question he asked,

1:15:02You are that person? No, it's not supposed to be. It's not supposed to be. I was reading an article in which it said that the way you dress is the way you are. It's the second you or yourself, your ulterior, your alternate personality or something like that. Exactly. Psychologically, I mean, they could say a lot of things. I mean, they also say that the way you... Psychologists also say that the way you describe your dog is the way you really are. So if you ask somebody, what do you think your dog's personality is? Now, obviously, your dog doesn't talk. So you ask them, what is your dog? And people say, oh, no, I think he's very smart. And I think he's the boss. And I think he's this, and I think he's that. Usually, they're describing themselves. Or maybe they bark too much. but usually the people that describe their dogs, usually they're describing what they really think of themselves. So, yeah, there may be something to it, but I mean, I wouldn't really take it too... You know, if somebody dresses like a criminal, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're a criminal. Actually, there's a good joke I heard. This guy was so cheap that...

1:16:25He had a lot of money, but he was really, really cheap. He was so cheap that when he would take money out of his pocket, even the faces on the dollar bill would wipe their eyes, saying, "Finally, we're out!" But anyway, one day his son comes to him and says, "Abba, I want a costume for Purim." And he says, "Costume? I want you to make something." He goes, "No, no, Abba, I want to be a cop. I want to be a cop." Father looks at him. He's thinking about how much money a cop costume is going to cost. "Why don't you be a criminal instead?" "No, I don't want to be a criminal. I don't want to be a criminal. I want to be a cop. I want to be a cop. I want to be a cop." "Okay, fine, fine. I'll buy you a costume for a cop." All right, so a couple of weeks pass, and the father comes, and he gives his son this tiny little broken plastic gun. He goes, "Okay, here you go. You're a cop." Yeah, but Abba, you said, "I'm going to be a cop. Where's the costume?" He goes, "No, no, you're an undercover cop. No one's going to tell you're undercover." Next question. Okay, last week's parasha, by the way. Did you watch the last six years? Yes, yes.

1:17:53It says, Hashem spoke to Moshe. I kind of forget. Every time he describes the scene, Moshe waits outside until Hashem calls him. So Hashem is everywhere. So why, first of all, does Hashem call him in particular? And then he’d been everywhere while they... And if someone else heard when he was called, but it was only Moshe. Well, Moshe is the leader of the people. He’s the prophet of all prophets. So it’s like, for example, if a king has a special message, he’s not going to give it to the guy that cleans the bathrooms. He’s also not going to give it to the guy that helps the guy who cleans the bathrooms. He gives it to his... vice president. So he's going to call him. That's why he called Moshe. Moshe is the one that was closest to Hashem more than any other person that ever lived. And the key secret to it is that Moshe was humbler, more humble than any person that ever lived, which is the reason why he reached such a high level. To give you an understanding of how humble he was, we said it in last week's shiur, but we'll say it briefly.

1:19:20the beginning of the parasha has the small aleph. So there's one thing I didn't say in last week's shiur, is that, well first off, the small aleph of Vayikra, when you see Hashem is calling Moshe Rabbeinu, it says Vayikra el Moshe. So Hashem is calling to Moshe. Now later on in the Torah, Hashem calls Bilaam, the wicked prophet, But for him, it says Vayikar, it doesn't have the Aleph. Now, the reason why he doesn't have the Aleph is because when Hashem called Moshe, He called him because He wanted to speak to him. When He called Bilaam, He wasn't really excited to speak to him. But Moshe didn't see himself as who he really was. He didn't see himself as this big deal. And he said to Hashem, no Hashem, I don't want to have an extra letter. I'm a prophet and he's a prophet. So please, let's say, let me remove this Aleph. And Hashem said, no, no, no. You're My son, you're special, you put the Aleph. So one thing I didn't say in last week's shiur is that Moshe said, please Hashem, let me at least write a small Aleph. So he wrote a small Aleph. Now at the end, of course, Hashem is precise. Everything He does is complete. Everything He does is perfect. So Chazal say,

1:20:46that at the end of writing the Five Books of Moses, there was a little bit of ink left. There was a little bit of ink left. And obviously, Hashem was going to give a precise amount of ink. The reason why there was a little bit of ink left is because of this small aleph. It was supposed to be a big aleph. So Hashem took the little bit of ink and He put it on Moshe's face. And that's why it had a shine on Moshe's face. That's why his face lit up. and he had to wear a mask all the time because his face, from his humility, became the most extraordinary face that ever lived. So, on one end, we know exactly why Hashem is talking to Moshe Rabbeinu, because Moshe Rabbeinu, as big as he was, thought of himself as absolutely nothing. As far as why speak to him in the Mishkan, So again, if you have a special message for a special person, you're not going to tell them to go meet you in the middle of the street. You're going to invite them into your house. The most special person. If somebody tells you, "Listen, I want to meet you," and I say, "Come to my office." Okay, so come to my office. He says, "No, no, no. Come to my house. And come have dinner with me. And sit down with me." That shows that there's obviously a relationship there. It's a meaningful relationship there.

1:22:12Hashem brought Moshe Rabbeinu to the holiest place that ever existed. Why? Because he was the holiest person that ever lived. Okay. So that's why the Mishkan was, in essence, the Beit HaMikdash of the desert. Okay. And then there was the Beit HaMikdash after it. But the Mishkan was actually even holier than both the first and the second Beit HaMikdash. So Hashem, in essence, was inviting Moshe to His house on earth. Next. As soon as I turn off the camera, you guys have 37 questions. Yeah, I know. I have to pretend. Okay, I'm turning it off. You said one day that for you to give tzedakah, you have to know where it’s going. Yes. You have to know who the person is and what it's doing. So, for example, if you're giving it to an organization, you have to know where that organization uses the money. So, for example, a lot of people give billions and billions of dollars to big organizations like the Red Cross.

1:23:14if they do just a little bit of research, not a lot of research, just a little bit of research, they realize that a huge portion of the money that they give does not actually go to the cause. I saw some statistic online, I don't remember the numbers, but it's an overwhelming majority of the money, well over 50% of the money, that goes to these big organizations like the Red Cross and other ones that are similar. More than 50% of the money goes to the CEOs and the executives and the company and the investments. It doesn't go to these poor little children that they have commercials on TV showing you this starving little baby in Africa. It doesn't go there. So, if you're going to give it to an organization, make sure it's a Torah-related organization. Again, not every place that says they're a Torah-related organization is really kosher. You have to investigate. especially when it becomes, you know, a decent amount of money. When it's $50, $20, not everybody's going to do research on $20. But if you're investing hundreds and hundreds or thousands and thousands of dollars into, you know, into tzedakah, you have to research it, just like you research an investment. So if you're going to give money to those organizations, you want to see what they do with the money. Where could I see it? Where could I see what you do?

1:24:34And they'll show you. And any righteous organization is going to be happy to show you what they do. If you're giving it to a person, you have to make sure that it's someone that you know is, you know, actually learning Torah, or publicizing Torah, or is related to Torah, and not just some guy that has a beard and hat. A beard and hat does not mean you're righteous. You know, if Osama bin Laden put a hat on, he would also look just like every black-and-white, you know, person that walks around. So, you have to know, what do they do? What do they do with it? I know everybody obviously needs money. But at the same token, you want to invest your money in the best possible way. So, as we've always talked about, the two best investments for tzedakah is for someone that learns Torah all day, or someone that helps people do teshuvah. Because every single mitzvah that they do, you get it. the mitzvot are like fire. So for example, if you take a candle, and you have one candle, and you want to light a second candle. Lighting the second candle, after you light the second candle, the first candle stays the same. The fire doesn't go down. It's the same thing with mitzvot. Every time you help someone that's learning Torah, you're going to get, depending on how much you help them. If you help them with $20, you're not going to get all of his mitzvot. You're going to get a proportional amount.

1:26:01But let's say you're helping somebody. Let's say if he needs, I don't know, if he needs $2,000 a month to survive, and you're the one that's giving him the $2,000. We're just giving you numbers to make it easier to understand. And you're giving him pretty much everything he needs to survive, then you share pretty much 100% of his mitzvot. But if you're giving him $20 and he needs $2,000, then obviously you're going to share a lesser amount. I don't know exactly how Hashem dictates it, but what I do know is that, logically, you're not going to get as much as the guy that's given him everything he needs. But one thing you need to understand is that the Chafetz Chaim did the math of how many mitzvot someone who learns the Torah makes. Every time you read a letter, one letter—not one word, one letter—in the Torah, it's considered a mitzvah. So by saying, Vayikra, which has five letters, I just made five mitzvot. El, it's another two letters, another two mitzvot. Moshe, it's another three letters, I made another three mitzvot. So the Chafetz Chaim did the math, and he said that an average Talmid Chacham can read 60,000 letters per hour, and if he studies 10 hours a day, that's 600,000 letters, which means that he

1:27:20made 600,000 mitzvot per day. Someone that's sustaining that person also gets 600,000 mitzvot. Because, like I said, it's like fire. It's not like it's 600,000 split into two. It's not that he gets 300,000 and you get 300,000. Because the mitzvah is like fire, the one that's learning Torah has 600,000 mitzvot, and the one that's sustaining him also has 600,000 mitzvot. So that's why it's considered one of the two most profitable ways of investing your tzedakah money. And it's extraordinary. And obviously, if he learns more, he does more, you get even more. Now, kiruv, on the other hand, as far as helping people do teshuvah, most people agree that it's even higher. And the reason why is a few things. Number one, anyone that's going to do kiruv has to learn some Torah, obviously. So they get some mitzvot, maybe not as much as someone that's only learning, because you have to do lectures and a bunch of things, but the way it works with kiruv is that every single person that you help do teshuvah, every mitzvah that that person ever does, you get. So, for example, one guy came to me. Before he came to me, he was a complete atheist. Now he's a Shomer Shabbat, shomer mitzvot; on Sunday, he's going to have a kosher wedding, an Orthodox wedding.

1:28:45Oh Hashem, great results. Every time that person does a mitzvah, it goes to my account. Anyone that contributes to me has that. Same thing with Rabbi Mizrahi and people that do that. So, the beauty of it is that if, let's say for example, with him, there's other things, he's going to have children. Those children, instead of being atheists, little atheists walking around with no purpose in life, they're going to be little tzaddikim. Ha! You learn Torah from the beginning. Every mitzvah they do also goes into the account. They're going to have kids, which also goes into the account. I'll tell you an amazing story. A little over a year ago, I brought Rabbi Ilan Nava to Boca Raton. He came to Florida, and we arranged for him to come do a shiur in Boca Raton. We arranged it, invited some people, and Baruch Hashem, it was a very successful shiur. Um... Now, when you do these things, when you arrange for rabbis to come, you never really know the outcome. You never really know how people react. I mean, yeah, everybody likes it, they enjoy the lectures, and so on, but you don't really know if it changed anybody's life. Once in a while, Hashem sends you a present to show you the outcome. So, Rabbi Ilan Nava, I spoke to him the other day, and he says, I have to tell you this story.

1:30:11He moved to Israel after he had the lecture in Florida. He moved back to Israel and he comes to America once in a while to do lectures. But I'm in touch with him, baruch Hashem. He's an amazing, amazing person. And he calls me and he tells me he has the amazing news. He said, listen, I did a lecture last night in English in Israel. And a few religious girls came up to me after the lecture. And the first one says, oh yeah, we saw you in Florida. I saw you in Miami. Oh, yeah, great, baruch Hashem. The next one comes to me and she says, yeah, I also saw you in Florida. I saw you in Boca Raton at the Mizrachi house, which is where we had the event. I said, oh, okay, baruch Hashem. She goes, no, you don't understand. You changed my life. He's telling me, he's like, I don't know. I'm looking at her. She looks completely frum. She looks completely religious. So I said, how did I change your life? She goes, before that, before you came, I was planning to go to university. I had already scheduled I was going to college. and my boyfriend was non-Jewish. A minute after I heard your lecture, I called my boyfriend, I broke up with him, I canceled my plans to go to college, and I came to a seminary, to a yeshiva for women in Israel, and I've been learning for the last year. I became completely religious. One lecture. One little bit of fire did everything. Now, if you think about it for a second,

1:31:41If that lecture didn't happen, Chas VeShalom, that woman, her children, and her husband would all suffer. If she goes to college, she's definitely marrying a non-Jew, especially if she's already okay with being with a non-Jew. The kids are not going to be Shomrei Mitzvot at all. Everybody's future is a disaster. One lecture, one tiny lecture, change the future for everyone. And it's amazing how it happens. I mean, I'm telling you, I get these emails from people that watch the shiurim online, or other shiurim that I post, whether it's Rabbi Yaron Reuven, Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi, or anybody else, and you're seeing the power of how it changes people's lives. Just like you were telling me before, start keeping Shabbat, Baruch Hashem. Everybody's doing teshuva here. The power of teshuva is extraordinary. People just don't know. Once you get a little bit, once you get... A little bit of fire, that's it. It spreads, it's everywhere. And right now, at the end of times that we find ourselves in, the Torah tells us, the sages tell us in the Gemara, there are only two things that are going to save us at the times of Mashiach: Torah and Gemilut Chasadim. Torah is not only learning Torah, but actually following it. And Gemilut Chasadim is acts of kindness. What act of kindness? Giving somebody a ride to the hospital? Yes, that's an act of kindness.

1:33:08But what's the highest level of kindness you could ever offer anyone? Introducing him to Hashem. Helping somebody do teshuva. You help somebody do teshuva, you help somebody go back to Hashem, there's no form of kindness that anyone else could give him that's superior to it. So much so that the Gemara says, a person's father versus a person's Rav, his Rabbi, the Rabbi is more important. if both his rabbi and his father are in jail, and he only has money to release one of them, he has to release the rabbi. Why? Because the father brought him into this world. The rabbi is bringing him to the next world. So, when it comes to tzedakah, there's many, many rabbis out there. But you have choices. There's many talmidei chachamim out there. You have choices. So you investigate. If you see one rabbi, he's great, he has a nice kehillah, and he hosts 80 parties a year, and he gives free donuts. Great! I don't know if anybody's doing teshuva because they're eating donuts, but nice, whatever it is. Then you have a rabbi like Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi, who just did a campaign of giving free 1 million CDs in Israel. He's making thousands and thousands of people do teshuva.

1:34:35I'm a partner in what he does. I buy his CDs and give them out to people. You know, and I'm in the business. I'm doing Kiruv also. He's part of the reason I'm doing Kiruv. So, that's somebody I would want to partner with. Same concept with Rabbi Alon Anava, same concept with anybody that's doing Kiruv. Why? Because I know that the donut parties, I don't know how many people are getting close to Hashem with. Kiruv, I see results. So also with people that are religious. There's one guy that's religious. He has a nice uniform. He has the whole black and white. He looks great. His beard is all groomed up. But I don't know. I see him in the store every time I'm there. So I don't know how much time he's spending in learning Torah. Then another guy, I only see him once a month. But every time I go to the Beit Midrash, he's always there. Okay, that guy I want to invest in. You know, and there are plenty of those people, many of them that I know in Israel, who are very, very special people, and unfortunately, most of them live in poverty. So, it's important to look into those things, mainly because you're showing Hashem that you care, and you're not just giving money away like you'd say you're doing Hashem a favor because just like the korban, Hashem doesn't need your money. He has it. Everything is His. He wants to see that you care.

1:35:51you investigate who and what and how you're going to do everything. That shows that it's part of the teshuvah. It's part of the teshuvah. Next? I think we only answered three questions. It's been two hours. What other questions do we have? No more questions? There have to be more questions. So, you asked me something about prayer, to talk about prayer, but I actually have a joke about prayer. I heard a couple of jokes today. They're really good. I'm really usually not good with jokes, but today I heard like five good jokes. So, this one guy is in the middle of Amidah. You know, they're praying Amidah. He's supposed to be quiet. In the middle of Amidah, he takes a pack of cigarettes, and he goes like this, and then he puts it back in his pocket. So after they finish the prayer, they're like, come on, man, what are you... You were thinking about your cigarettes in the middle of prayer? You couldn't wait? He says, no, you don't understand. As soon as I said, "Hashem, open my lips," my mind went, I started going on vacation. You know, you only get those thoughts when you're in the middle of prayer, by the way. You don't get those thoughts in the middle of the day. No one's thinking about vacation during the middle of the day. They're thinking about it during prayer, when they're supposed to be talking to Hashem. He says, my mind went somewhere, I went on vacation.

1:37:17And all of a sudden, I see myself in the airport. I said, you know what? I'm in the airport. Let me go to the duty-free. I went to the duty-free, and I said, you know what? Let me get some cigarettes while I'm here. And the woman asked me, okay, what kind of cigarettes do you want? I said, I couldn't talk, so I showed her what I had. You don't talk in the Amidah, all right. You don't talk in the Amidah. It was also... A guy decided he's going to, you know, he needs to make some money. So he decides, you know what, I'm going to make some money. I'm going to rob the Beit Knesset. The Beit Knesset has a couple of really expensive Sifrei Torah. You know, the Sifrei Torah, it could be anywhere from, you know, the cheap ones are $25,000, $30,000. But there are ones that are really old. It could be hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more. It's this Beit Knesset. Let me just take a couple of them. And then, you know, I'll get my million dollars. So he decides to break into the Beit Knesset in the middle of the night, but as luck would have it, that night was a meeting between the Gabbai de Rav and the president of the Beit Knesset. And they're in the Beit Knesset in the middle of the night, and they see him. He's like, all right, well, listen, guys. They all thought he was a tzaddik. He's like, what are you doing here, robbing us? He goes, listen, now you saw me, I'm robbing the place. I'm already here. I already broke through the window. I'm doing it. But since you saw me, I have to kill you. But I'm a nice guy.

1:38:46So I'm going to give you guys each a last wish. What's your last wish? So, no, not the rabbi, the president, the cantor. So the rabbi says, listen, you know what? For many years, for many years, I had this drasha, I had this pilpul Torah, this lecture. I wanted to say, it's really, really heavy. It's about halachot. It's boring for most people, but it's my dream lecture. It's only an hour and a half. You let me say it, I'll die happy. He says, "Okay, okay, I'll listen to it. We have time until the next morning. Fine. What about the cantor? What do you want?" He goes, "You know what? They never let me read how I want to read because they always tell me what to do. So I have a certain tone in my mind, a certain music in my mind. If you let me read and sing like I want to sing, I'll die happy. It's only 45 minutes." He says, "Okay, fine, I'll listen to you. What are you going to do?" Then the gabbai... He says, "Okay, what do you want?" He goes, "Kill me first, so I don't have to listen to this guy's drasha and this guy's music." "No, no, give me some questions." Yo leí que como mínimo en Purim teníamos que regalar dos seudot de comida.

1:40:15She read that in Purim, they should give to the poor no less than two seudot, two meals. How would that work? Yeah, you're supposed to give two meals, not per person. It's just two meals in general, so two different poor people. There's actually also something called Machatzit HaShekel that we have to give during this month. It's actually since the first of Adar. and you're supposed to give it before Purim. So there's something called Machatzit HaShekel, which is half a shekel, what they used to give at the times of Moshe Rabbeinu. And that's separate from the presents, the meals you give to the poor, or the money you give to the poor. That is also the value of a... This year it's a... 22 shekels based on the value of silver. So it's somewhere around $5 per person. So let's say there's a family of two parents and three kids, doesn't matter the ages, they have to give that $5 per person. And it's good to give it to the poor. So that's separate from the Purim. That's something we do for this month. It's Machatzit HaShekel. Um,

1:41:43And as far as the Mishloach Manot, it should be something that someone can make a meal out of. So, whether you want to make some type of pastry or something like that. I mean, most people don't give sandwiches because most people don't trust each other in today's world. Okay. But if you're giving it to somebody you know, then that's good. Or what you could actually do is if you're inviting people... to your home, you know, then you could, in essence, what you're giving them can count as that meal, as that Mishloach Manot. That... Or you give the money. Or you give the money. A dollar and a half. Five dollars? No, that's the five and a half dollars; that's for something we do during this month that's outside of Purim. Then there's the money that we give to the poor. That's also about the value of a meal. And then there's the Mishloach Manot, which is, you don't necessarily give it to the poor. You give it to your friends or family. That's not exclusively to the poor. That's usually to family. But if you're hosting people for that lunch, then that can count as the Mishloach Manot. And if you're not, then it's, you know, usually people gather a few cookies or something, a pastry and a drink, and you give it to them.

1:43:06If you don't have time to do it, I'm sure some Jewish stores can sell them prepared already. The whole concept of why we do all of these things, why we give money to the poor, why we give meals to each other, the whole concept of it is to do the opposite of what Haman was trying to do. Haman was trying to destroy the people because, before Haman, we weren't unified. We were Am Yisrael, But there were a lot of problems between each other. The reason why Am Yisrael, the Gemara says, why did Am Yisrael deserve to be destroyed? We almost got destroyed. We were minutes away from being destroyed. And I say because the rabbis went to the party of Achashverosh and they enjoyed it. They enjoyed the party of Achashverosh, even though Mordechai told them, don't go. Why are you going? It's a party for the Goyim. They're celebrating that the Beit HaMikdash, the whole party was because he was celebrating that the Beit HaMikdash wasn't built. So why are you going? You're going to enjoy it? It's like somebody burned your house, and you're going to go and celebrate with them that he burned your house. How could you do it? So for going and enjoying it—not only going, going you can have the excuse of saying, listen, it was the king, he would kill us if we didn't go.

1:44:28But they not only went, they enjoyed it. So there was a lot of separation and lack of unity among the nation. And that's the reason we deserve punishment. And until this day, that's the reason we don't have the Beit HaMikdash, because there's baseless hatred. You know, we hate each other for no reason. You know, some Sephardim don't like Ashkenazim, some Ashkenazim don't like Sephardim, the Yemenites don't like this one. this one, you know, people don't like each other, oh, he's too tall, he's too short, he's too dark, he's too Spanish, he's too Ethiopian, he's too Israeli, everybody has a complaint about each other. It's all nonsense. It's complete nonsense. If he's a Jew, you must love him. If he's a convert, you have to love him even more. There are a lot of people who don't realize that the obligation to love converts and how much you need to love converts is superior to loving a person that was born Jewish. It's even more. And people don't know that because there's unfortunately a few kehillot that are actually against converts. Not only do they not love them, they're against them, they reject them. They don't let them in the synagogue. It's crazy. But this is the olam hasheker, this is the world of lies, that everything is upside down in our world.

1:45:45It's a lot of confusion, which is also one of the prophecies. There's going to be a lot of confusion at the end of times. And it's happening. We're seeing all of these things happening. So Haman almost got his way because of our actions, not because he was supposed to be rewarded. He was Amalek. He was actually part of a nation that Hashem guaranteed and promised on His name that He will destroy Himself. And he was the leader of them. We only got that close because of our own actions. So, the whole concept that saved us is the same; the whole action that saved us is the same action that we try to do today with the Mishloach Manot, with giving money to the poor, which is to do the opposite, which is to unify each other. Usually, when there's a big party, the rich people party, and the poor people wait at the end, hoping there's some leftovers. No one cares to invite the poor. you pour him, you invite everyone, you make sure everyone is enjoying. The poor are happy, the rich are happy, and this is also the reason why the Machatzit HaShekel that we learned from Moshe Rabbeinu a couple of weeks ago, it didn't matter whether someone was very rich or someone was very poor. Everyone, the maximum they were allowed to give towards the Mishkan was the Chatzi Shekel, the half a shekel of pure silver. Why?

1:47:13Because he wanted to make sure that everyone gives the same contribution. No one is just giving a lot because he has a lot, and no one is unable to give much. Everyone was able to afford that. And at the same time, everyone knows that they're only half. They're incomplete. They're incomplete without each other. Machatzit means half. Half a shekel. So everyone needs to know that without the rest of the nation, they are incomplete. So, this whole pouring is one of the things that's supposed to unify us. And we have to use it that way. One of the reasons that people like to wear costumes is because it helps people become unified. Most of the hate that we have for each other is because of the way we look. It's superficial nonsense. If you look at racism in general, that's the foundation of racism. It's not because we don't like somebody's thoughts. You don't know his thoughts. You look at the guy, he's black. Oh no, I don't like him because I'm white. The other guy looks, he's black and he's white. No, I don't like white people because of this, this, and that. You don't know the guy. Maybe his wife is black. People are foolish, to say the least. When you have a costume, no one knows what you look like.

1:48:42all year round. So this is actually a time that can help us become unified because we can, you know, be who we really are and meet people for who they really are. And, you know, you never know. Maybe you'll end up getting a few more friends whom you hated for no reason whatsoever for so many years just because of the way they looked. Oh no, she has a, you know, women especially have this issue with each other for some reason or another. Women love to go to war with each other. I don't know why. Oh no, look who she thinks she is. She didn't even say anything. What do you mean she thinks she's... No, look at the way she walks. Why? It happens. It's like these cat wars. It happens a lot. It's sad. But, you know, isn't that true? Women constantly go against each other because of the way they look? It's true, no? Am I making this up? I'm not making this up. Women, no. They're constantly, it's always, look how she looks, look what she did. It's constant. Guys? But it happens. It's a ga'avah contest. It happens a lot. It happens. So the point is that the costume helps us with things that we can't do on our own. Nothing, you do it. I know you guys are all tzaddikim. Talk about the other people, they do it.

1:50:00But the costumes are supposed to help us become more unified. And, listen, it's a, we need it. I had an issue today, today, yesterday, I think it was, on the WhatsApp. If you notice, during the generation of Noach, Hashem decided to destroyed the entire world. The generation of Noach made an endless amount of sins. They stole, they committed acts of homosexuality, bestiality, wasted seed, everything. It was against each other. It wasn't against God; they were just going against each other. This guy didn't like that guy, this guy didn't like that guy, and so on.

1:51:01It was today's church. Today's, yeah. So, you guys are all behind. You don't know what's up. So, if you fast forward about 350 years, you arrive at the Tower of Bavel. At the Tower of Bavel, the people gathered together and they decided that it was around the year 1648, I believe, since creation. And they decided to rationalize what happened 300 years before at the time of Noach. Because the sons of Noach were still alive. The people of the flood were still alive. You know, the ones that survived. So, they knew people that were there. Which is crazy, but they knew people that were at the flood. But they still went and they said, you know what? I don't think what you guys said is right, that God destroyed mankind because they were evil. I think this god takes a break. Every 1650 years, He takes a break, and He destroys the world, and He wants to rebuild it. So what are we going to do? We're going to build a tower, tall enough to reach Him, before the 1650 years pass. So by the time, you know, the 1650 years pass, we're going to reach Him, and we're going to fight Him and beat Him,

1:52:26And even if we don't find Him, at least we're going to be tall enough that the water won't reach us. These were the scientists, the smartest people in the world of that day. Much smarter than anyone today, by the way, even though it sounds very foolish. Because again, they didn't have tractors and so on to build this giant tower. And they still built it. But their war was not against each other. Their war was against Hashem. And if you think about it for a second, why didn't Hashem, eventually, how did He punish them? He didn't kill all of them. He destroyed the tower. He changed the languages. He brought 70 languages to the world. So until that point, there was only one language in the world, which is the holy language. The same language that Hashem used to create the world. But until that point, everyone spoke Hebrew—the holy language of Hebrew, not the modern Hebrew of today. But then, He created the other languages. And that's it. This is a little confusing. If anything, based on our logic, or at least my logic, He should have killed the people of the Tower of Babel first.

1:53:51Because at least the people of the generation of Noach didn't go against Hashem. They went against each other. They made their own sins. The people of the Tower of Bavel, they went specifically at war against Hashem. So you would think, going against Hashem, okay, I'll kill you. That's the problem. But Hashem didn't kill them. Why didn't He kill them? He said the generation of Noach... I didn't mind them going against Me. They didn't go against Me. They went against Me by making sins. But what I couldn't stand, what made Me disgusted, is that they were going against each other by stealing from each other and by also wasting seed, which is killing the future. So going against each other, I couldn't tolerate. I had to destroy them. The people of the Tower of Babel, even though they were going against Me, Hashem is humble, even though He's Hashem. We learn humility from Him, really. We have to emulate His middot. They don't mind Me. What I do mind is how My children are. At least, you know what? Even though they were all going against Me, at least they were together. And for that, it was worth it to save them. This is how much Hashem loves unity.

1:55:16At the time right before Megillat Esther starts, King Cyrus, King Cyrus, takes over and he decides that it's time to fulfill the prophecy that the prophet Jeremiah said 70 years before and let the Jews build the Beit Hamikdash. Unfortunately, only 42,000 Jews show up. Millions and millions of Jews in the world. Only 42,000 show up. Let's start building the Beit Hamikdash little by little. that it's time to fulfill the prophecy that the prophet Yirmiyahu said 70 years before and let the Jews build the Beit HaMikdash. Unfortunately, only 42,000 Jews show up. Millions and millions of Jews in the world. Only 42,000 show up. Let's start building the Beit HaMikdash little by little. Hashem sees, I have millions of Jews around the world, only a small percentage show up, obviously it's not time. Obviously, they don't believe. Obviously, they don't love each other. Obviously, there's no unity. They don't get the Beit HaMikdash. What did He do? He put Achashverosh in power. Achashverosh took over power from Koresh, and the first decree, first day on the job, he stopped the Beit HaMikdash.

1:56:42In the middle. No unity, no Beit HaMikdash. No unity, no connection to Hashem. Because the Beit HaMikdash is the house of Hashem. We fast forward to the end of the Megillah. Esther has a son with Achashverosh. His name is Darius. This is after Am Yisrael was nearly annihilated. The only reason they saved themselves from annihilation is because they all did teshuva together. Everyone was together. Hashem says that together we're going to put their own person in charge. So we see here that the power of unity is very, very significant in Hashem's eyes. It even saves us from times that we're against Hashem. Not that, chas v'shalom, we should ever be against Hashem. But you should see that even from the Tower of Babel, even they, as wicked as they were, were given an opportunity to do teshuva. We have the same opportunity today. We can use Purim. It's time to do teshuva and connect to each other.

1:58:10Get everyone back to Team Hashem. Get everyone back to the truth. I'm not saying, you know, become friends with people and go out to bars every night. I'm talking about getting people back to the truth. Getting people back to the Beit HaMikdash. Getting people back to Torah. Getting people away from the world of lies that we're surrounded by. To go to bars with people, all you're doing is helping them sin. That's not helping them. That's not unity. Unity is getting them back to the truth. And the biggest chesed you can do is give them a disk or give them a link to help them do teshuva. That's the biggest kindness you could ever do for somebody. Because someone who is lost in this world and thinks that this whole world is just for the purpose of partying and making money and all of that stuff, or even if they think that it's just about working and providing for the kids and going to college, they're wasting their life away. So the opportunity we have now is to tell people the secrets of how to connect to Hashem, what He wants. He wants unity, and He wants us to do what He said. It's not that difficult. It's really not that difficult. You know, and it's an opportunity for us. And again, I think that the Chag Purim is an opportunity, a really good opportunity to recruit, to get people back. Why? Because even people that are completely not religious like Purim. There are two holidays

1:59:40that non-religious Jews love, Hanukkah and Purim. Why? Because both of them don't obligate you. You don't have to do anything. Both of them are parties. But the most interesting thing is that usually the non-religious people, what's their excuse for not following the Torah? Because they say they believe sometimes. They say they believe in God, but they don't follow the Torah. Why? They say, no, no. the rabbis made up all these laws. The funny thing is that the only thing that they follow is the rabbis' holidays. You know, Purim and Hanukkah weren't biblical holidays. They were holidays that the rabbis came up with. So it's funny that, you know, they're against the rabbis, but at the same time they're only doing the things that the rabbis said. And Chazal actually say that at the... when Mashiach comes, all of the holidays will be canceled except Purim and Chanukah. Why? Because Hashem doesn't want to offend the Rabbis. No? Anymore? I know if I shut off the camera, I won't tell you when I shut it off and I don't have one question. As B'ezrat Hashem, you know, it is always fun.

2:00:59doing shiurim here. The most successful shiurim have always been here. B'ezrat Hashem, I will come back from Yerushalayim with some more chidushim, some more new things. I'm expecting to hear some great news from you guys, B'ezrat Hashem, about the Beit Knesset, the kehillah, teshuva, everything. I'm already in Yerushalayim now, I feel. But we'll be doing a lot of shiurim over there. B'ezrat Hashem, we'll do some in English, some in Hebrew. So keep an eye out for them. And again, if anybody is not in the WhatsApp group that I have, definitely join, because I won't have regular text messages while I'm there. So either way, you should connect with me through WhatsApp, and aside from that, you should join the group, because I send my shiurim through that. I also do a 10-15 minute voice recording every day about Divrei Torah, which is sometimes good to hear during the day. ...gets us a little stronger about Emunah, about Parashah, different things. So anyone that's not on it, join now and... WhatsApp. WhatsApp, yes. I don't think I have your phone number, but give it to me and I'll connect you after it. I don't have a WhatsApp. Okay, so we're going to get you. I used the email. Email. We'll get you WhatsApp. We'll update you soon. Baruch Adonai le'olam. Amen.