Shiur Torah #90 The Secret to The Blessings In Scary Parashat Bechukotai

0:07B'Shem Hashem Na'aseh V'Natzliach, Shiur Torah, great to be back, another Shiur. This week's parasha is Parashat Bechukotai, a very, very difficult parasha. Most people don't even like to hear it because this parasha, even though it starts with a lot of blessings, is also one of the two most difficult parashot in the entire Torah. It talks about the curses. But there's also a lot of good in this parasha, a lot of good to know at this time of the year. But before we start, also I want to do refuah shlema, refuah shlema le David ben Esriah, refuah shlema le Doris bat Jorah, Chaya bat Leah, Michael Cotto, Lourdes Garcia, Amparo Bolufe, Idil Magolero, Cesar Jimenez, Jocelyn Morejon, Bela Blor bat Sivia, Chana Vasquez, Jessica Putney, Putney, Putney?

1:14Karina Vasquez, Jorge Hernandez, Isabel Perez, Josefina Matos, Marcela Matut, Estefan Meir, Jose Antonio Avila, Guillermo Solano, Klaus Meir, Guillermo Suarez, and Ruben Pablos. May Hashem give all of them refuah shleimah. We have so many different things today, and Am Yisrael is suffering in so many ways. You have sickness, poverty, problems with the government. Every day there's something new. And Hashem is telling us that the way to get to Him is through difficulty. If you're having an easy time in life, then it usually means that actually spiritually you're in trouble. Why? Because Hashem has shown us time and time again throughout the Torah, whether it was Avraham Avinu, Yitzchak Avinu, Yaakov Avinu, Moshe, Aharon, David, Shlomo, anyone that you want to mention. Anyone of the sages, anyone of the forefathers, anyone that's really close to Hashem, whether in this generation all the way to the creation. Then usually it means that actually spiritually you're in trouble. If you're having an easy time in life, usually that means that you're disconnecting from Hashem. If everything is going fine, the job is paying on time, you've got a brand new car every other year, everything seems fine.

2:34then it usually means that actually spiritually you're in trouble. Why? Because Hashem has shown us time and time again throughout the Torah, whether it was Avraham Avinu, Yitzchak Avinu, Yaakov Avinu, Moshe, Aharon, David, Shlomo, anyone that you want to mention. Anyone of the sages, anyone of the forefathers, anyone that's really close to Hashem, whether in this generation all the way to the creation, Every one of them had difficulty. But that's what made them who they are. Now, this is not necessarily something that we yearn for. We don't want to necessarily pray for difficulty. But to give you an understanding of the difference between this generation and, let's say, the generation of the Gemara 2,000 years ago. When the tzaddikim would see that things are going too smoothly, everything is going fine. No problems. For 40 days straight, they didn't see they had any tikkun, any kaparat avonot, everything is going fine. They started going in the middle of the street and picking up big rocks and moving them, just making their life more difficult than it needs to be. Why? Because they were scared if something is not difficult, maybe Hashem is giving up on them. And these are tzaddikim. These people are learning Torah all day.

3:55And they're scared, oh, maybe Hashem is upset with me, so that's why He's given me all my reward in this world. They were scared of getting any reward in this world. Us, in this generation, we want all of the reward in this world, and we want to guarantee that the next world is even better. But on top of that, we're not willing to do anything. Hashem says: "Keep Shabbat." I'll keep half Shabbat. Kosher? Okay, at the house. Modesty? You know, maybe when I go to the Beit Knesset, I'll be modest. But maybe when I go to the wedding, that's when... you know, when a woman is modest, a woman that's modest shows up to weddings modestly. Because at home, you know, when no one sees her, she'll do everything. She'll cover her hair, she'll cover... it doesn't matter to her, nobody sees her. But when she goes to the wedding, that's when she wants to show off to everyone. That's why you see sometimes women, even religious women, they cover their hair with a scarf the whole week, all year, except when there's a wedding or a bar mitzvah; she shows up with a wig. Because she wants to, you know, she wants to look good. It's a problem. It's a problem. And that's unfortunately one of the difficulties.

5:41With the Satan, you have to be prepared. This already happened to me a few times with this new camera. These are brand new batteries. They just died in five minutes. Satan doesn't like it. B'ezrat Hashem, we can have a very good shiur. So... The thing is, though, with modesty, with mitzvot, with closeness to Hashem, you have to constantly remind yourself that Hashem is watching all the time. There was one time a woman came to a rav, and she's talking to him about a few things, and she's modest, and she says, "Listen, kvod haRav, I just want to let you know, don't look at me right now like I'm really modest. I just covered my hair for you. But when I'm at work, I don't cover my hair." He says, why not? He goes, you know, it's not really in fashion now. It's not exactly what we do. He says, so why are you covering for me then? He says, no, I want to respect you. He says, well, you know what? You really should respect Hashem more than you respect me.

6:57No, no, I respect Hashem. He goes, so this is what you could do. Only wear the Kisui Rosh wherever Hashem is. If He's not somewhere, then don't cover it. She went home, and she started thinking. You know, it sometimes takes a few minutes for someone to realize what you're saying. She went home, and she started thinking about it. She said... where Hashem is. All day, I ask Hashem for help. I ask Hashem to give me health. I ask Hashem to save my kids. I ask Hashem to give me a good marriage. All day, I'm asking Him for things. But at the same time, I'm being ungrateful by not doing what He says. It's not fair. It's not a fair relationship. So she called the Rav, and she said, "I'm taking it upon myself. I'm a married woman. I have to cover my hair all the time because Hashem is everywhere." She took it. Sometimes the most logical statement can reach someone. But sometimes you have to be clever because people will rationalize everything.

8:04Now, in this week's parashah, we have A lot to learn. Baruch Hashem, we did a lot last night. We had a shiur last night. We covered a lot of the parts of the curses, the difficulties, and the tikkunim. We'll cover a few of them today, but today I want to cover a few other things before that. Really, I want to talk more about, number one, Shavuot, which is coming up, b'ezrat Hashem. And two, a little more about the blessings. Curses we talk about all the time. So let's talk about the blessings a little more. So, first off, we have Shavuot coming up. Now, anyone that's listening to the daily chiddush that I do, the audio, we did a chiddush, I think, about a week or two ago that's still, you know, very relevant today. We just had, not too long ago, we had Pesach. And then now we have Shavuot. Pesach is a reminder of the Exodus. When Hashem made miracle after miracle after miracle, every single day there were miracles to destroy the biggest civilization in history, the most powerful civilization in history, because they had control of everything. The entire world was paying Egypt taxes. It was a very large nation. One of the Midrashim says they had at least 900 million people. Some say even more.

9:31very rich, very powerful, and took this powerful nation and made them beg their slaves to leave. This is the first and last time something like this ever happened. In essence, the slaves, which is Am Yisrael, turned into the masters. They gave them gold, they gave them money, just go away, just go, go. So Hashem wants us to be reminded of something like this every year. It's one of the mitzvot of the Torah. Someone who violates Pesach, it's like violating Shabbat—karet. A big holiday. He wants us to be reminded of Yetziat Mitzrayim all the time. Every day we have to be reminded in Shema Yisrael; we have to say it twice a day. And then Shema before we go to sleep. So technically three times a day, but the major obligation is twice a day in Shacharit and Arvit. And He wants us to be reminded of something like this. Why? Because it was completely unnatural. There's no way to explain it in a natural way. Anyone that has read the story, listened to the story, and actually believes the story, there's no way to explain such a thing in a natural way. It has to be siyata dishmaya. It has to be help from Hashem.

10:52100% from Hashem. So when someone realizes that Hashem did so much for us, obviously this is a big deal. Then we have 50 days later, from the second day of Pesach all the way until Shavuot. We have Shavuot. What's Shavuot? Shavuot is the day we actually receive the Torah. This is, in essence, the most important day in history. It's even more important than creation itself. Because the Torah... was created by Hashem 974 generations before the world was created, which in essence means it's superior, it's more important than the world. And actually, the holy books, the Zohar HaKadosh, say that before this world, when they ask what happened before this world, actually Hashem had six other worlds, six other civilizations before this. This is the seventh and last world. So we already know that the Torah was around before us, and the day we got it, in essence, gave this world meaning. Without the Torah, the world has no purpose. So we went from happiness to happiness—from the Exodus to actually receiving the purpose of the world, which we receive in the Torah. But in the middle, we have disaster.

12:20In the middle, we have the Omer that we count from Pesach to Shavuot. But the first 34 days are not exactly happy. Why? Because those 34 days are a memorial for the 24,000 students that Rabbi Akiva had, and they died. Almost every day, 700 students died. So, I thought to myself, why would Hashem connect? Okay, so we have happiness, great. We have another happiness, great. But why have misery in the middle? What's the connection? Everything has to have a meaning. Hashem could have made this happen in any month of the year. And if they were sinning then, they were probably sinning right before, they probably would sin right after. So why make it happen right here? What's the connection? So, I saw an insight... Interesting thought. Now, to give you an understanding of Rabbi Akiva's students, it says the least of them, out of the 24,000, the least one, the worst student out of everyone, had enough Kedushah and wisdom of Torah to revive the dead. It's the least of them. In essence, this one person, this one Tanna,

13:38had more Torah in him than the entire world we have today combined, including all the Chachamim, all the Tzadikim—whoever is around. Everyone combined is not equivalent to one, to the least of them, not even the greatest of them. So in essence, if you guys remember, a couple of years ago, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef passed away. And they say that almost a million people, if not more, showed up to his funeral. It was the biggest funeral since Moshe Rabbenu. In 3,300 years, there's never been a funeral like this. Even the goyim showed up. People who are not Jewish would show up because they had respect for him. Even enemies would show up. Everyone respected him. He was a giant of giants. And he wasn't just a giant of this past generation; he was a giant for generations. Imagine one of the, this is, but it's still Rav Ovadia. If you compare Rav Ovadia to one of the talmidim of Rabbi Akiva, you can't compare. It's two different worlds. Even if you compare the Rambam, the Rambam that lived 800 years ago, the most important posek in history,

14:54and one that he explained all of the rules that we have today, all of the mitzvot, that we got eventually from, in the Shulchan Aruch. The Shulchan Aruch got it from the Rambam. He took it, where? From the Gemara, from the Oral Torah. The Rambam, all the Sephardim called themselves Sephardic because of the Rambam. Not because the Rambam was Sephardic. Not because the Rambam was Spanish. He wasn't Spanish. But because a large part of his life, he lived in Spain. So due to that, All the Sephardim call themselves Sephardic because that's where he lived. The Torah is from there, even though he lived a part of his life in Egypt as well. A lot of Sephardim think that their origin is originally from Spain. It's not. Some yes, some no. But anyway, the Rambam, as great as he was, and he talked, he put interpretations about the entire Torah, all the halachot, everything, everything you can imagine, he touched on. Whether it's Mashiach or creation, anything you want, he has it. The Rambam was not even good enough to be a student of Rabbi Akiva. That's how great Rabbi Akiva's students were.

16:08So imagine, just like we have Rav Ovadia, who passed away a couple of years ago, imagine 700 of those every day. By the time you finish crying for the first one, you're already crying for 699 others. By the time you finish crying for the second one, you have to cry for another 700. So this is a big loss. It's a big loss of Torah. But how much Torah? How much Torah is this lost? So the Gemara in Tractate Megillah says that in the Tanakh it mentions the names of 55 prophets. It's 55 prophets: 48 males and 7 females. Seven females were prophets and 48 males. But Hashem told us in the same part of the Oral Torah, it says how many prophets there were in history. Okay, we know in the Torah it mentions the names of 55, but were there any more? Hashem says yes. There were at least 1.2 million prophets throughout history. 1.2 million people that had a direct connection with Hashem, higher than any sage can have. A prophet is higher than Ruach HaKodesh.

17:26The sages ask, okay, Hashem, we're missing. How come we don't have their Torah? Where's their Torah? Fifty-five is great. We have Moshe Rabbeinu, which is the foundation of the Torah. That's five books. We have 19 other books. That's divided up among the other 54 prophets. But where's the other million? The million two? The answer is, their prophecies were only relevant to their generation. Meaning that anything that's written in the Tanach, whether it's the five books of Moses, or it's Tehillim (Psalms), or it's Kings, or any Ecclesiastes, anything you have in the Tanach, every verse you can find, if you know how to do it, if you study enough, and you have a mesorah and siyata dishmaya, you can find relevance of that verse to you, in this generation today. Every verse is eternal. Every verse, every letter is eternal. Not one letter is extra, not one letter is not needed. Okay, so now we understand that all of this Torah, technically, it's more than what we have. Our Torah is only from 55 prophets. And those 55 prophets gave all of their Torah.

18:50to the 24,000 students of Rabbi Akiva. But now Rabbi Akiva's students died, and Rabbi Akiva had to start all over again with five new students: Rabbi Meir Baal Hanes, Rabbi Yehuda Bar Ilai, Rabbi Yossi, Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, which is... Right. And Rabbi Elazar ben Shamua. So these are the five students that Rabbi Akiva started all over again with. So in essence, six people inherited all the Torah that we have today. Now, how much Torah do we have today? There was a story about Rav Ovadia where this journalist wrote an article without meeting, without asking Rav Ovadia anything. He... wrote an article about Rav Ovadia saying, "Listen, I don't know why everybody listens to him anymore. He's old." This was when Rav Ovadia was probably in his 80s—82, 84. He says, "I don't know why anyone listens to me. He's already old. He probably has a bad memory. Maybe he says one thing today, he says something else tomorrow. Why does anybody pay attention to this old man?" So Rav Ovadia, who doesn't usually pay attention to these people, paid attention to this and he invited this journalist to his house.

20:17The journalist said, "Okay, fine." He comes to the house in Har Nof, in Jerusalem. Rav Ovadia says, "Listen, I saw you wrote an article about me, and you have some facts about me, you have some information about me that I wasn't even aware of. You say that I have a bad memory. How do you know I have a bad memory?" The journalist responds, "Because, no, I mean, with all due respect, you're old. I mean, naturally, people... deteriorate over time. Someone that's 25 years old is going to have a sharper brain, usually, than someone that's 80 years old. That, by the way, only works in the secular world. In the Jewish world, in the Torah world, you only improve with age. Because the Torah improves you. Now this... This journalist, secular journalist, didn't know any of this, obviously. So everybody says, "Okay, you know what? Let's test it out. Let's test out this memory that's bad. I'm interested in finding out for myself." He says, "Okay, go see my library." He says, "Yeah, it's a very respectable library." And the journalist wrote, "There were at least 30,000 books. 30,000 books."

21:28And Rabbi Ovadia has a library in his house. 30,000, not 3,000, not 300. We know, after we finish one book, we get really excited. Everybody gets a little excited after they finish one book. You finish two books, you finish a set of five books, the Five Books of Moses, we already think we're, you know. He has 30,000 books in his library. Okay, but there are a lot of people. Sometimes you go to people's houses. They have a big library, a lot of books, but the guy's not exactly a genius. So the books look good, but he doesn't actually read them. So everybody says, listen, pick any book you want. It's a big library, a lot of books. Pick any book you want. Tell me the title of the book, the name of the book. Open it anywhere you want, and just tell me the first word. First word. Anywhere you want. He goes, "Kvod HaRav, come on, this is, I don't want, I'm going to write another article about this. I don't want to make the situation worse than what it is. You're supposed to have some respect." He goes, "No, no, come on, what do you care? Just do it. I want to check my memory." He goes, "No one can do what you're asking me to do. Just please, pick any book you want." So this journalist says, "You know what?"

22:42He wants to do it. I'll make an even bigger article out of this. Why not? So he goes and climbs the ladder to find something that he knows is not a trick. So he looks for something still dusty. You know, even if you read all those books in your life, which is a miracle of its own just to read them once. Even if you read them once, you still couldn't read them all anytime soon. Probably 50 years ago. So there are probably some books that you haven't read in a long time. climbs the ladder, takes something all the way from the back, has some dust on it, says, he says the name of the book, opens the book anywhere he wants, he picks a page, he says, first word. Rav Ovadia tells him every single word that follows after it. He recites the entire book by heart. So the journalist is shocked. He says, He says, "No, it's probably a trick." He tries again, goes to another book, opens the book, opens the page, tells him a word, and Rav Ovadia gives him everything on that page by heart. Everything on the page by heart, and he continues. The power of Torah has no limits. It's not a physical power. It's a spiritual power.

24:02For the first time in his journalistic life, he saw what that means. He wrote an article again after that. He says, not only was I wrong about his memory, but I don't think anyone in history has a memory like him. It's not human what he has to know 30,000 books by heart. Not just learn them, you read them 50 years ago, you read a book. To know it by heart. It's not normal. And this is just the books he had in his house. He had more books than that. So now we already know that from Rav Ovadia there were at least 30,000 books. But obviously, if you go to hebrewbooks.org, they have about 75,000 books for free, for anyone that wants to download books in Hebrew and English. holy books, hebrewbooks.org. They have about 75,000 books. You go to other publishers, in so many words, Judaism and the Torah have tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of books. And all of those books, all of that wisdom, all of the Torah, even the books that some guy is writing right now, the foundation of all of it is from those six people.

25:18Rabbi Akiva and his five students. Hundreds of thousands of books are the Torah of just six people. So now, imagine if one out of those 34 days, Hashem would have said, you know what, let's skip today. Let's not punish 700 students and let's leave them alive. Imagine you have the Torah of 706. How much Torah would we have? Or if it was two days, 1,406. All these books, tens of thousands of books, you have from just six people. So now, how does this connect to Shavuot? Hashem told us, "I took you out of Egypt for one purpose: to give you the Torah." Anyone who did not want to receive the Torah, as we said in previous shiurim, did not survive. Hashem killed them.

26:18Whether it was 80% or 99% of the Bnei Yisrael is irrelevant. The point is, whoever didn't want to do Teshuva didn't want Torah. Hashem said you have no purpose in the world. So, on Pesach, we started that mission. On Shavuot, we achieved the mission. We said, "Na'aseh v'Nishma" (we will do and we will listen). but you fast forward 3,300 years, this generation doesn't have much appreciation for Torah. Unless you're in the Torah, you're learning, you know what it means. Most people don't actually have much of an appreciation for the Torah. So, when do you have appreciation for something? When you know that you don't have it anymore. Someone that has a relationship problem and decides to break up, When they're in a relationship and there are problems, they don't care. I'm better off without her. I'm better off without him. I'll find this. I'll do this. Or somebody says, you know, they're unhappy with their job. No, I'm going to quit, and they're going to miss me. But the same thing happens for everybody. Forty-eight hours after the breakup, whether it's through the job or the relationship or anything else,

27:42We already second-guessed ourselves and think we made a mistake. Ah, you know what? Maybe I should have just talked to the boss and asked for a raise in a nice way. Ah, you know what? Maybe what he did wasn't so bad. Maybe I could have just had some patience for him. Or patience for her. Everybody regrets it. Why? Because they don't have it anymore. We appreciate what we don't have. And this is exactly what Hashem did in the Omer. If He just gave us the Torah, we have a bunch of books, we have tens of thousands of books, like, okay, it's 10,000 books, 100,000 books, a million books, who cares? I'm not going to read any of them. That's what the average person is going to say: who cares? But when you realize how much knowledge is in those books, and it only came from six people, and we technically had 24,000 of them. And not only that, those 24,000 got their books, got their knowledge from just 55 prophets. What if we had the Torah of the 1.2 million prophets? So that's why when someone asks, what do you do in Olam HaBa? The answer is always the same. You go and you learn Torah.

28:58Learn Torah—why do you want to learn Torah? Don’t you already know Torah? You finish the Chumash once or twice, that's it. Gemara, why do you finish Torah? When you realize how much Torah there really is versus how much we have, you realize, oh, you can learn Torah and connect to the Torah for eternity and it's still not going to be enough. Still not going to be enough. But obviously, the higher the level of Torah, the more you enjoy it and the more you connect to it. Nonetheless, this is exactly what Hashem did to us. On one end, He punished us. But just like Rabbi Akiva says at the end of the tractate of Berachot, Masechet Berachot, Kol de'avid Rachmana, tav le'avid. Everything that the Merciful One does, everything that Hashem does, is always the best. What do you mean, always the best? So, Hashem has an infinite number of ways—He's everything—to get you from point A to point B. There are no limits. You can get there with a helicopter, you can get there with a plane, you can get there with a car, you can get there with a boat, you can walk there, you could limp—there's an infinite number of ways to get you from point A to point B. Every time Hashem makes a choice, it's always the best possible choice. He never gets the second-best choice. So even...

30:21the disaster we had of losing 24,000 students, or perhaps not having the Torah of 1.2 million prophets, is also for the best. How do we know? Because today we learn that all of this beauty of this Torah that we have today is just from a few. Then it makes us want the rest. And that's what Hashem wants to remind us. You left Egypt, you're going to get to the Torah, but before you get to the Torah, Don't wait till after. Before you get to the Torah, think about how much you want the Torah. Start appreciating the Torah for what it really is. If you start appreciating the Torah for what it is, once you arrive at the Torah, you're going to value it. You're going to read it, you're going to learn it, you're going to comply with it, you're going to fulfill it. But if you get there and you don't really know what Torah is, you're going to show up, see a lot of books, and think, "Eh, okay, I'm not really interested." But if you think about what the significance of the Omer is, you realize how much Torah there really is, how significant it is, how powerful it is, that it can get someone in his 80s to memorize tens of thousands of sefarim without even a hiccup. No secular scientist or journalist can even memorize 10% of that.

31:42Even the smartest guys can't. It's not possible. Even if you're talking about whoever, Einstein. It's not a human thing. So this is now to remind us that now we're going to arrive at Torah, something to think about. Once we're going to get to Shavuot, ah, you know what? That's why Shavuot... One of the, it's not a commandment, you're not obligated to do it, but one of the minhagim that they do is to, the night of Shavuot, study all night. Study all night, usually they do it at the Beit Knesset, all the way to the morning, you have a Shacharit, you know, you study all the way to praying, and then you go home. It's a couple of times a year we do that. Shavuot is the main day that people do that. In essence, to show Hashem how much we yearn for His Torah, how much we want it. But now that we know what we're missing, it makes us want it a little bit more. So this is Shavuot. Again, it's a very special holiday. It's, in essence, the most important day in creation because it fulfills the day of the giving of the Torah. It's not like Yom Kippur, where we're constantly saying to Hashem that we're sorry. Even though the Gemara says that Shavuot is also Judgment Day.

32:54it's also a day that we're judged. But nonetheless, it's not a day like Yom Kippur where we have to fast. I mean, on Shavuot, you eat, you enjoy. And as a matter of fact, one of the reasons why you eat dairy products on Shavuot is because when Moshe came down from the mountain, from Har Sinai, He came down with the Torah, and the Torah had all these rules. One of the major rules is kashrut, how to slaughter kosher meat. Now everyone that was anticipating Moshe wanted to prepare a big party. He's getting this Torah; we're going to celebrate. So they already took to him, preparing for millions of people. You're not preparing a barbecue for five people; you're preparing for millions of people, which takes time. So what did they do? They started slaughtering the animals. Before he came down, they started slaughtering the animals. So when he came down, he said, all those animals that you slaughtered, tens of thousands, millions of animals, you have to throw them out. You can't eat it. Why? It doesn't follow the Torah. The Torah gives a law of how to slaughter an animal. So all these animals are not kosher. So, in essence, what everybody ended up eating was dairy products. We couldn't eat meat. There wasn't enough time to make another party.

34:10So we eat dairy products, so that's the reason why on Shavuot we eat dairy. So now, in this week's parasha, Parashat Bechukotai, it starts off with something that connects us to the power of Torah. It says, So the first verse, I actually read a little more, I read the first two verses. The first verse is, if you will follow My decrees and observe My commandments and perform them, then I will provide your rains in their time and the land will give you its produce. And Hashem starts to give us a line of blessing. if we fulfill His will. If we do what He says. Now, the first verse of this parasha is very special and should be studied because it separates the verse just like several times we've done in these shiurim. Sometimes every verse is special, every verse is extraordinary. But once in a while, you can see that the verse can be broken up into a few pieces.

35:41and we'll give you a lot more clarity. So Hashem first says, if you will follow My decrees, then it says, and observe My commandments. In essence, it kind of sounds like the same thing twice, but it's not. And perform them. So this we explained last night. First and foremost, if you follow My decrees, the Ohr HaChaim HaKadosh says that this means if you study Torah with sacrifice. Meaning if you make a sacrifice in order to study Torah. What does it mean, sacrifice? Meaning if someone is retired, has nothing to do all day, if he studies an hour, two hours a day, it's not a sacrifice. Someone works a full day, studies 15 minutes, 20 minutes a day. If he's already doing that for several years, it's not a sacrifice. If he just started, just started keeping Shabbat last week, and for the first time he ever started Torah, he's studying 15 minutes, like I suggest to people to start with, then obviously, yes, for him it's a sacrifice. But someone that's already doing it for 5, 10 years, learning an hour or 15 minutes a day or something like that, it's not a sacrifice. What's a sacrifice? What's Mesirat Nefesh? Doing it when it's most difficult.

37:08At night, when you're really, really tired, you want to go to sleep? You want to get your eight hours? No. I have to learn some Torah. Hashem commanded us to learn Torah. I'm going to get seven hours of sleep instead of eight. Yes, but I'm tired. But you're obligated to comply with Hashem. To fulfill the purpose of this world. In the morning, I've got to go to work. Okay, you've got to go to work, but you have to wake up a little extra early. If you know that you don't have time to study in the afternoon, you have to make sure to study in the morning. So maybe you have to wake up an extra half hour early to study. The Ohr HaChaim says that when someone arrives in Olam HaBa, the regular Torah that he had, when everything was convenient, it was in the afternoon, he was retired, just studying an hour here, an hour there, just for leisure, doesn't help him much. What Torah helps him? The one that he made the sacrifices for. And he says that type of Torah is what Hashem is commanding you here. The Torah that's difficult to learn. Listening to stories, you know, reading stories of tzaddikim is enjoyable. But for men, especially for men, because they're the ones that are mostly obligated in Torah, it's not enough.

38:28What's Amalut BaTorah? It's the Torah that's difficult. It's Torah that really makes you work; it's the difficult subjects, not just stories. Stories are fun. Read them. But that can't be all your Torah. It has to be the difficult parts, the parts that are hard to understand, the parts that make you think. That's why I say, once you get used to learning some Torah and it's a regular part of your life, you have to learn, after you've learned the Five Books of Moses with commentary, you have to start learning Gemara. Why? Because the Gemara not only gets you closer to Hashem and is a difficult part of the Torah, but it also improves your brain. It literally improves your brain, physically and spiritually. I can tell you from my own experience, In college, I had a 3.9 GPA, which is almost the perfect GPA, even though I only went for one year. In high school, I was a top student. In the Wall Street days, I had eight different licenses. Each license required like a 150 to 300 question test. So you can say that I was a pretty good student. Comparing today, to those days, after a few years of Torah, I honestly, myself, I look at myself like I used to be a monkey. Not that I'm this big chacham, it's just that your brain changes so much that even for business, even though I'm not involved in any business whatsoever, even when people ask me all the time, they ask me for business advice. You know, they ask me for marriage advice, business advice, this advice, that advice, so you help them with all the things that you have. But even to give business advice, which used to be my profession.

39:44to those days, after a few years of Torah, I honestly look at myself like I used to be a monkey. Not that I'm this big chacham, it's just that your brain changes so much that even for business, even though I'm not involved in any business whatsoever, when people ask me all the time, they ask me for business advice. You know, they ask me for marriage advice, business advice, this advice, that advice, so you help them with all the things that you have. But even to give business advice, which used to be my profession, And I'm not doing it already for years. I'm better at it now. Why? It's all the power of Torah. All the power of Torah. It's really, the more you learn Torah, you start seeing your brain improve. It's really amazing. So the Chachamim say, the more difficult your Torah is, the more significant it is. That's what you're going to have when you get to Olam HaBa. But this Torah is not just to learn. It's not like a history book or a math book or a science book. It's this Torah. Why learn it? So you observe my commands. You learn what to do. Why do you need to learn what to do? The last step, so you can perform them. Torah is not just to learn for intellectual stimulation.

40:51Yes, it's pleasing, it's great, it's amusing, it's stimulating. That's why some of the major scientists who started learning Gemara not only did teshuva, and some of them actually were mamash atheists, believed in nothing. They started learning Gemara, and not only did they actually end up doing teshuva, and some of them even became big rabbis, but they became much better at what they do. they do it not just for the mitzvot; they do it because they find it stimulating more than anything else. But the key is to perform the Torah, to put it into action. This is why the beginning of the verse says, "If you will walk with my decrees." It literally means "if you will follow my decrees," but it's not really "follow my decrees"; it means "walk."

41:52Why didn't it say "if you would keep my decrees"? Why did it say "walk with my decrees"? Keeping mitzvot, even in religious communities, is not exactly the most difficult thing in the world. If someone comes from a secular world, yes, of course, it's very difficult. It's very difficult. Someone is used to eating non-kosher, dating a new girl every week. He's used to the secular world. Then for him to even keep the smallest mitzvah is already a big deal. But I'm not talking about him. We talk about him enough. The religious world. Sometimes you see in the religious world, people are wearing black and white. They have the hat. They have the beard. They have the peyot. But their emunah, their emunah level is literally less than someone who doesn't keep anything. It happens. When you see them at the Beit Knesset, they pray for two minutes, they're finished, like robots. They do the mitzvot like robots. They became robots. But as far as belief in Hashem, how do you know somebody's emunah? You see how they handle stress. Someone is short on money.

43:07If that guy can't handle it, he's always angry about it, he's always upset about it, he can't control himself, then you realize, you see, that guy, it doesn't matter whether he's wearing a hat or he's not wearing a hat, he has no emunah in Hashem. Because if he actually believes what the Torah says, that everything that Hashem does is for the good, then he knows that what happened to him is for the good. Okay, it's a test, but that's the point. You got a test. The test is to test your emunah. If you're going through a test, that means Hashem wants to bring you higher. Not because He just wants to torture you. He wants to bring you higher. If you're not getting a test, that means that Hashem gave up on you already, which is not a good thing. But you see, sometimes somebody has all the uniform, the outside, but nothing inside. No emunah whatsoever. And this is because it's easy to get used to things. A monkey... If you teach a monkey how to behave a certain way, he'll do it. That's why they have monkeys in a zoo. The monkey can flip five times in a row. He can do headstands. He can peel the banana in the exact way that you want him to peel it. He can do whatever you want. He's a monkey. If you tell the monkey, "Listen, every day stand up straight for a few minutes and then I'll give you a cookie," he'll do it. If you tell the monkey to sway a few times, he'll do it.

44:37If you tell the monkey, "Go wash your hands before you eat," he'll do it. It's not really a big deal. So what's the difference between us and the monkey? If we have no emunah, nothing. Someone has no emunah, and they go and they sway. When they go to Beit Knesset, they sway. But in reality, they're thinking about the job. They're thinking about the sale. Yes, thank you Hashem for doing this. And what am I thinking about? Actually, this guy screwed me. I can't believe it. He's not thinking about Hashem. In the middle of prayer, he's thinking about the guy that screwed him. He's thinking about the girl that he saw that's pretty. He's thinking about everything else except Hashem. He's praying though. He's saying the words. Even if he says it out loud. But he's thinking about something else. He's somewhere else. Why? Because he has no emunah. So someone like that and a monkey, no difference. But this is many of us though. So this is why Hashem says, you have to work on your emunah. You have to not only learn this Torah, fulfill it, and perform it, but you have to perform it out of love. Now, Or HaChayim HaKadosh,

45:51lived about 300 years ago. You know what? I learned once that a monkey got offended because they compared him with a human being. In today's generation, it's possible. Yeah. It is possible. Yeah. So Or HaChayim lived about 300 years ago. A lot of the Midrashim that we read and talk about come from him. Major, major sage. knew the entire Torah like an angel. But his Torah in those days, there were no phones, and there was no internet. People didn't know what others looked like. So his Torah became very famous worldwide. He was the Gadol HaDor, the greatest of his generation. His Torah books became very, very popular. But people didn't know what he looked like. It's not like they drew him on the book. So sometimes, as I said in the beginning of this shiur, sometimes the sages, when they see that life is too easy, they take something on themselves to make life difficult. But in other cases, sometimes when the sages get a message from Shamayim, that there is a gezera, there's a decree from Shamayim on Am Yisrael. Am Yisrael made a sin, one of the sins that we learned about in the last few weeks,

47:17And Hashem says, in this parasha, if you do these sins, I'm going to punish you. And He tells about all these punishments. One punishment after another, after another, after another. There are five levels of punishment, from taking all of your money, all the way to the end of mamash, Hashem yirachem, eating your children. Parents would have to eat their children. And this is actually, if anyone checks out history, what happened at Beit HaMikdash. Beit Hamikdash was surrounded by the enemy for three years, so no food could come in and out. No food could come in and out for three years. Eventually, they ran out of food, and that's what parents actually had to do. And there are other disasters in this parasha. Anyone who wants to develop Yirat Shamayim, go and watch the shiur we did last night. We're going to post it later today. It's very important to read this parasha. Very, very important to read this parasha. Because as difficult as it is to read, it's required because it's in the Torah in order for you to develop Yirat Shamayim. So now, the Ohr HaChaim heard from Shamayim that there is a decree against Am Yisrael. He says, I'm going to take it upon myself. Instead of you punishing all of Am Yisrael, punish me. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to go into exile.

48:41I'm going to leave the homeland. I'm going to go into exile where no one knows me. So in essence, wherever I go, people will think I'm some homeless guy. They won't give me any respect. They don't know who I am. I'm pretty much homeless. So this is what he did. He went to one of the far countries where no one knew him. And he arrived in this community where their rabbi was a very, very holy man who would occasionally receive Torah from Shamayim. They would disclose Torah to him from Shamayim. They would tell him certain things that are in the Torah that he didn't learn himself. Someone else taught it, but in some faraway place. It's a form of Ruach HaKodesh, and so on. So the Ohr HaChaim goes to the synagogue, but nobody pays attention. He's like this homeless guy. That's what they think. So he listens to, this is now Thursday. The rabbi says, last night I had a dream and disclosed to me 14 interpretations about the first pasuk

50:07pasuk, first verse of Parashat Bechukotai. Fourteen interpretations that came from the Gadol HaDor, Ohr HaChaim HaKadosh, HaTzadik, HaKadosh. They disclosed to me what he taught the world. Fourteen different understandings of this particular verse. And I'm going to tell you. So when he said the name of the Ohr HaChaim, He said his full name, which is Rabbi Chaim ben Attar. Rabbi Chaim ben Attar. So when people heard Rabbi Chaim ben Attar, you know, everybody was very excited. This is the giant of the generation. But then we have this, what they think is this homeless man saying, no, no, he's not kadosh, he's not nothing. He's just Chaim, Chaim K, Chaim K. He's nice. I know him. People started, what? Started yelling at this homeless guy. How dare you insult tzaddikim? This is the biggest giant of the generation. How dare you call him a regular name like that? He's like, I know him. I know him. He's not a big deal. He's not kadosh. He's not holy. He's not nothing. So the people wanted to beat him up. The Rabbi calmed them down, and he taught them the 14 interpretations.

51:29verses. Fourteen interpretations of this verse. The next day, Friday night, the Rabbi says again, "I had a dream last night and from Shamayim again they gave me fourteen interpretations. New interpretations. Now we have twenty-eight of the first verse of this parasha." that came from Rabbi Chaim ben Attar, or Chaim HaKadosh, a tzaddik, and then he starts giving a bunch of compliments. He's tzaddik, he's kadosh, he's this, he's that, he's gaon, he's a malach. And everybody's cheering and happy, and then you have this homeless guy again. No, he's not, again, I keep telling you, he's not kadosh, he's not holy, he's not nothing. I know him, he's just Chaimke, he's Chaimke. Everybody wants to beat this guy up again. Come on, how dare you? Again, go against the rabbis, the tzaddik. How could you say that? You rude person, you're the type of person that's just here to make everyone angry, to go against the Torah. You know, in those days they respected Torah. It's not like today where some people do things specifically against the Torah. For example, I found this guy on the internet. He makes videos.

52:52makes videos. He makes videos specifically to convince people to leave Judaism. And he's Jewish. Not only Jewish, he's Israeli. And he makes Hebrew videos to convince people to leave Judaism and become non-religious. That's all he does. Video after video after video after video. So it's not like that person, that rasha, which we actually learned last night in the Gemara, Masechet Rosh Hashanah. People always ask me, "Come on, you know, sometimes you say things that are a little extreme. Someone that violates Shabbat has never-ending suffering. Where does it say it in the Torah?" It actually says it in the Torah. It says it in Masechet Rosh Hashanah, page 17. We went over it last night. There are certain types of people that Hashem says, even after I shut down Gehinnom, Their Gehinnom is going to be separate. It's going to continue. And one of them is someone like that. Someone that's a makhti arabbim, makes other people sin. That's his focus. Other people are people that are heretics or mock the Torah and so on. Anyway, so they get angry at this guy, but the rabbi is kadosh. He calms everyone down again. Okay. Shabbat morning. You know, usually Shabbat after you pray, you have a shiur.

54:20So the rabbi says, I had a dream. They gave me from Shamayim 14 new interpretations of the first verse of Parashat Bechukotai. Now we have 42 interpretations. Interpretations of this, and each one of them, they all match. It's not like different interpretations where one contradicts the other. It's different understandings that all build on each other. Just to show you how significant the Torah is, or the Tzaddikim, one verse, they make 42 different books you could write on, on one verse. Fourteen new interpretations of the first pasuk of this parashah, Parashat Bechukotai, were taught by Rabbi Chaim ben Attar, the Ohr HaChaim HaKadosh, HaTzadik, HaGadol, and everyone was cheering. Then this homeless guy, again, no, he's not a tzadik, he's not a kadosh, he's nothing, he's just a Chaim, he's not a big deal, he's not even a talmid chacham. This time, everyone wanted to really beat him up.

55:33And even the rabbi got upset. Even the rabbi couldn't take it anymore. In those days, the synagogues were a little different than today. Outside of many synagogues, there used to be a cell, a jail cell. Where someone that went against the rabbis, they would put him in that cell. And where would that cell be? Right next to the door. So everyone that would walk into the synagogue would spit on him and insult him. Why? Because those people that are put in that cell are people that went against the tzaddikim. In those days, they respected the Torah. You can't go against the tzaddikim. Go against the tzaddikim, it's mamash, it could be a death penalty even. So the rabbi says, put him in the cell, we'll deal with him and give him punishment after Shabbat. So they put him in the cell. After they finished Mincha, that's what they were about to do. They finished Arvit, they wanted to do Havdalah.

56:38All of a sudden, they hear earthquakes outside. There's thunder, lightning, the whole world is shaking. And everyone gets mamash scared. It's like wind, it's just, it's like something unnatural. Everybody becomes very scared, with all this noise, all the strange noises outside. And all of a sudden, they hear a knock on the door, a smash on the door. And the rabbi goes to the door, he opens the door, and he sees a giant demon. A huge, giant, bad angel. Obviously, he's scared. He says, "What are you doing here? This isn't..." And the angel tells him, "You should be ashamed of yourself." He says, "Why?"

57:39What did I do? He says, "I am the angel that is in charge of lighting Gehenom after Shabbat. Because on Shabbat, Gehenom is shut off. For anyone that kept Shabbat throughout their life but still ended up in Gehenom for different reasons, they don't suffer on Shabbat. The fire on Shabbat is shut off." He says, "I am the one that's in charge of lighting it back on." But they told me in Shamayim that I'm not allowed to light Gehenom back on until Rabbi Chaim ben Attar does Havdalah. And you have him in jail. You should be ashamed of yourself. The Rabbi collapsed in fear. ran to the Or HaChaim, begging him for forgiveness. "I didn't know, I didn't know, I didn't know." Of course, he didn't know that this was part of my mission. So they gave him a cup, and he did Havdalah. The demon left, and life went back to what it was. But this is to give us an understanding of who the Or HaChaim is.

59:04So when he says something, we should pay attention. So the Or HaChaim says, it means it's learning Torah with difficulty. If you have an easy time learning Torah, you learn for 15 minutes and you don't feel like anything changed, you didn't learn enough. If you learn for an hour and nothing changed, you didn't learn enough. If you got tired, that's when you push yourself. That's when it counts. That's what the Or HaChaim is saying here. That's the Torah that's going to get you to Olam HaBa. The difficult Torah. Because that's when you show to Hashem, I love the Torah more than I love my body. I'm sacrificing my body for the Torah. And this is something, I heard this story actually from Rabbi Ephraim, Rabbi Ephraim Kachlon, whom I study with from Jerusalem. Anyone that speaks Hebrew that doesn't listen to his lectures is mamash missing a piece of the world to come. It's mamash, every one of his lectures or teachings is like out of this world. It's all chidushim. He never repeats the same thing twice. He doesn't have 30,000 books; he has 3,000 books in his library. I told you in last week's shiur. It's unbelievable. So, he's...

1:00:23something out of this world. I think he was born in the wrong generation. So anyway, Hashem says, if you do all of these things, I'm going to give you all these blessings. The rain will come on time, which means that your parnassah is going to come exactly when you need it. Not always when you want it, but when you need it. Sometimes we have problems. We have, you know, we have a little shortage in parnassah. We start questioning Hashem. Hashem, why did You do this? Why did You do this? Actually, on the way here, I probably made every single mistake on the road you could possibly make. I wasn't really paying attention. I was paying attention to something else. And I made literally every single mistake. I passed a highway, and then it cost me like a half hour, 40 minutes. I was thinking to myself, why did this happen? Finally, when I got to the highway, I realized that right on that exit was a fire truck putting out the fire of the accident, and everyone behind it for miles was stuck bumper to bumper.

1:01:42Hashem wanted me to show up here and not be stuck in traffic because it could have taken a lot more than just an hour late. So you see, when Hashem wants you to be somewhere, sometimes you have to go through difficulty. If you believe in Hashem, it's easier; it's still difficult, but it's easier. If you don't believe, you don't follow, you still suffer anyway, and it's much worse. But in the end, you see that He did it for you. I was thinking to myself, 40 minutes, I'm thinking, why did I make this mistake? Then I made another mistake. Another mistake. It was literally like the navigation was taking me everywhere that I shouldn't be. It was unbelievable. Usually, it's easy to get here. Usually, it's one road, make a right, make a left, that's it, it's done. But today was a special journey, but now I know why. In the end, I found out why. So now, Hashem is telling us Because Hashem didn't make a GPS. Hashem is the GPS. Hashem is the GPS. So now, Hashem says that if you do all of these things, you're going to get exactly what you need, but you're also going to have surplus. Now, the part about the blessings is only about 11 verses. The part about the curses is

1:03:07it's 30 verses. It's three times more curses than blessings. So, Ibn Ezra, the Ibn Ezra, says that people who have empty heads, meaning those who have no, no, you're not in front of the camera. Go enjoy, enjoy it. It actually, when you chew, stimulates the brain. Someone that has a tough time staying awake, it's good to chew. It's good also in the morning. It's one of the things you do in the morning. You chew the gum or chew something. Helps you wake up. So I showed up an hour late, so he's a little tired now. So anyway, so Ibn Ezra says... The people with empty heads, meaning they have no brains, think that just because there are fewer verses about blessings, that means that Hashem has fewer blessings and more curses. So it's the opposite. He says that the blessings, they're all so generic and open that there's not enough room.

1:04:19To give all the blessings. So he's giving you ten really general blessings. The rain can mean 500 different things. The waste about the produce can mean another 500 different things. There's no end to these blessings. Just like the Torah says that the blessing is 500-fold of the punishment. But in this case, he says the punishment is very precise for two reasons. Number one, because Hashem wants to just limit it to that punishment. Even if it's a big punishment, He wants to limit it to that punishment. But number two, because He wants people to know exactly what the punishment is going to be, so they have Yirat Shamayim, so they fear Him. Now, we've been learning together for about a year, I think, together, something like that. A little less than a year, maybe. A year and a half. So, very often we learn about Yirat Shamayim, which is opposite of this generation. I spoke to somebody today. He's, b'ezrat Hashem, interested in having us do a shiur, also in another place in Miami.

1:05:33called the lighthouse. Lighthouse, lighthouse. They want me to come do a shiur over there, maybe even do something more regularly. But what attracted him to my shiurim? What's it? He said, "I agree with you," he says to me, like I made it, it's my interpretation. It's not my interpretation. I agree with you that Torah today, Torah that's being taught today by the majority of the English-speaking world. This is more of a problem in the English-speaking world than it is in Hebrew. It's still a problem in Hebrew, but in the English-speaking world, it's much more of a disaster. The Torah has become like a subject. It's like something to learn. It's nice. It's like leisure. It's like someone wants to learn science, they'll learn about science. They want to learn about flowers, they'll learn about butterflies. Torah became a subject. But Torah is not a subject. Torah is a way of life. Torah is a part of you. Torah is the purpose for this world. But when you only teach about the nice things and nothing that obligates you, then it's just a subject. It says you teach a lot about Yirat Shamayim. That's what we're looking for. So you see that Baruch Hashem

1:06:51I can't believe it myself. I mean, the last few years I've been doing this, two, three years I've been doing Kiruv, the amount of people that this has reached from corners of the world, it's hard for me to understand. Logically, I can't explain it. I can't explain why someone in Australia will sit down and listen to my shiur for two hours. I can't explain it. Why someone in California will do Teshuva, start doing Tefillin, Shabbat, get married, do everything. Why? Because he saw a few hours of Shiur HaTorah. I can't explain it. Someone, Baruch Hashem, right now is finalizing their conversion. One of my students in Florida, actually, finalizing their conversion next week. She's coming with us to New York. We're going to do her conversion, B'ezrat Hashem. Can't explain things like that. This is mamash. If it's not for Hashem, you can't explain it in a natural way. And we're talking about hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people that are connecting to these shiurim and changing their lives because of it. What's the difference? There are many people that know a lot more Torah than I do. They've been learning for a lot longer, learning for 20 years, 50 years. What's the difference? Why is that one rabbi that knows a thousand times more Torah than I do, he maybe gets 10 hits on YouTube,

1:08:07or five people show up to his class, but no one really changed their life, and all of a sudden this guy that just did teshuvah not too long ago is influencing people. Different teaching. They may be saying stories, but only stories. We say stories and give it on the head a little bit too with the story. It's what Hashem wants. If Hashem did not want you to be scared, He wouldn't put it in the Torah. If you notice, anyone that read Tehillim, Psalms, any psalm you want. You see that one of the major character traits that David HaMelech had is fear of Hashem. In tefillah, in Mincha, we read most of the, more than half, about 65%, 70% of the psalms are in our prayer, our daily prayer. So in Mincha, after we say the Vidui, after the Amidah, we have Tehillim number 25, Psalm 25. In Psalm 25, David HaMelech starts with asking Hashem to lift him

1:09:34that he trusts Him not to let him get to a point of embarrassment and he's telling Hashem how much he believes in Him. But then he tells Him a few things that are relevant to what we're talking about here. He says, "Lead me in Your truth." Why does it lead me in Your truth? There's only one truth. Not what people translate it to and interpret it to, light Torah, hard Torah. No, he's too hard, he's too... No, he says, Your 100% truth, exactly what it says, that's what I want. Lead me in Your truth, the one way You have, and teach me. For You are the God of my salvation. David HaMelech, who had everything—had power, had money, had anything he could possibly want—all he wants here from Hashem is, give me Your truth as it is, because that's the only way I'm going to get to my salvation. Being half-religious, you're not going to get to salvation. Doing a few things that Hashem said and a few things you don't feel like doing, you're not going to get there. David HaMelech is telling you this.

1:10:44Later on he's saying, He guides the humble in justice and teaches the humble His way. Why humble? If you notice in this week's parasha, there are five levels of punishment. Five separate levels of punishment. Five layers of punishment. And to avoid repeating what we said last night, and also get you interested to watch last night's shiur. We'll go to the bottom line. Instead of going over each punishment, it will also give you an easy time to go to sleep tonight. You won't have to think about punishment. But it's five different layers. You don't do teshuva, more punishment is coming. After this, you don't do teshuva, more punishment is coming. Again and again, Hashem does it five different times. On the fifth level,

1:11:48He said that Hashem is, in essence, telling us, the initial teshuva that you're doing, I'm not going to accept it. Like after I punished you four times, and then I started the fifth time, and then in the middle of the fifth time, you start doing teshuva, I'm not going to accept it. I'm not going to accept the teshuva. Why? Because you were so stubborn that after four punishments, you still didn't do teshuva, I'm going to have to finish the fifth punishment before I start listening to your prayers. Why? To eliminate your pride. The fact that you had enough pride to go against me despite the punishment. Why? Because Hashem says it specifically, you treated me with casualness. What does it mean, treat me with casualness? You treated my Torah like it's casual, like you can keep this and not that. Keep this one, but not that one. Keep Shabbat, only halfway. Keep kosher, only at home. Be modest, only in front of the rabbi, outside, half-naked. You know, people make their own rules.

1:12:54That's what people do. Hashem says, you treated me with casualness, I'm going to treat you with a fury of casualness. This is in verse 26-27. If despite this you will not heed me, and you will behave toward me with casualness, I will behave toward you with a fury of casualness. Now in verse 26:40, he says, "Then they will confess their sin and the sin of their forefathers." Finally, they're doing Teshuvah. Finally, they're doing Teshuvah for the treachery. with which they betrayed me. I gave them everything. I gave them their eyes, their hair, their life, their parnasah, their kids, their buildings, everything they have. They treated me with treachery, meaning they were going against me. But to the point where Hashem Yitbarach took it personally. After they finally confessed their sins, so now they started doing teshuvah, so everybody says, no, except teshuvah. Teshuvah is good. No.

1:14:15And also for having behaved towards Me with casualness. So now, going against Hashem is one level of going against Him, one sin. That Hashem already gave us five punishments for it, Hashem yirachem. But He says that treating Me with casualness, with picking and selecting what they want, saying, no, this is not relevant to our generation. Separate. Going against Me, you're already in trouble. But treating Me with casualness, you are on a different level, my friend. And this is why I too will behave toward them with casualness, and I will bring them into the land of their enemies. Even after they start doing Teshuvah, instead of accepting them right away, I'm going to actually put them in the land of their enemy. Perhaps then, after they are scared to death, they're surrounded by Nazis, they're surrounded by Arabs, they're surrounded by ISIS, then they're not going to depend on the IDF, or on the U.S. Army, or on Mossad, or on some ally that's not really an ally. Why are they going to do it? Perhaps then...

1:15:35Their unfeeling heart, the heart that pretty much didn't have any connection with me, will be humbled. Then they're going to stop saying, no, we won the Six-Day War because our army is strong. No, we defended ourselves against terrorists because we have good technology. No, we're good today because we're allies with America. Nonsense. Four thousand missiles were shot at us not too long ago. One casualty, if that much. Our weapons didn't work against it. Even with the millions and millions of dollars they spent on their weapons, the missiles still landed. But they missed. That's not up to us. That's not up to the IDF. That's not because of the U.S. That's not because of any allies. That's 100% from Hashem. But do you see any army leaders saying, "Oh no," or see Benjamin Netanyahu saying a special prayer to Hashem, "Oh yeah, thank God"? No.

1:16:39He always started a Chumash lesson. But that's also what Ben-Gurion did. But Ben-Gurion was a big kofer. This is the thing. He says... That's why their teshuva, after you are so proud of yourself, of your army, of your power, of your allies, of your money, of your technology, I'm still not going to accept your teshuva. Why? Because you still have some pride left. I'm only going to accept it after more punishment is going to come, and you're going to be humbled. Meaning, you have no choice. And that's why the Rambam says in Hilchot Teshuva... He says, those that survive the End of Days, whoever survives— not everyone's going to survive. Gog and Magog, we already talked about it— two-thirds of the world gets eliminated, and whoever's left, not everyone's going to survive. But he says, those that do survive, everyone will do teshuva, either by force or by will. It also says that his source is from Yechezkel.

1:17:49Either you're going to be forced to do teshuva, or you're going to do it because you want to. This is, in essence, what Hashem is telling us here. He says, okay, you started, but you still have a little bit of pride. You still think that it's your wisdom that won the last war. You're still living in the past. You think that maybe you can do it all over again. You have to take out every little bit of pride in you, in your neshama. Remove it. You have no reason to be prideful. whether you're Bill Gates, or you're some basketball star, or some guy that opened a new business, no one, even if you're a big talmid chacham, even if you're a giant sage, you have not one ounce of reason to ever be proud. You have nothing to be proud about. Nothing is from you. And this is what David HaMelech is telling us. Those that are humble already, Hashem teaches His way. To them, He connects. Because they're already humble. Not humble? Then we go back to the parasha. I hope you don't get the translation. I hope you don't get the translation. Well, what's the translation? Just tell the translation. No, no, no.

1:19:15I hope you don't get it. So now, so now, did I miss something? Yeah, but it's, don't worry about it. I'm gonna ask my wife, my wife speaks Spanish, she's gonna get a translation. So now, how do we get to this Torah that we talked about from Or HaChaim? Or HaChaim gets to a point of 42 translations for one verse. How do we get to that? How do we get to that type of connection with Hashem, that type of knowledge from Hashem? It also says it in the same Tehillim. David HaMelech says, "The secret of Hashem, He discloses to those that fear Him." He doesn't tell the secrets to those that kiss the mezuzah 500 times a day. unless they fear Him. If they kiss the mezuzah on the way to going out with their non-Jewish boyfriend or girlfriend, or they're on their way to go to a barbecue on Shabbat, or they're on their way to doing something that's against Hashem, they could kiss it a million times, it's still not going to help them. Why? Because the secrets, He only gives them to the ones that truly fear Him. I'm not talking about loving Him. Fearing Him. Fear comes before love.

1:20:36Now, in every one of these stages of the curses, every time Hashem goes to the next step, He says, if you don't do teshuva, then I'll do this, this, this, and this. But He doesn't actually say "if you don't do teshuva." What does He say? But if... you will not listen to me and you will not perform all of these commandments. This is the beginning. You're going to get all these different... This is the first stage. Now after the second stage, after he already gave the punishment, the punishment is not given because he likes to torture us. Punishment again is to help us do teshuva. So the second stage, he says, if despite this, despite the punishment, you do not heed me, I'll punish you further. Meaning if despite all of this, you're still not scared of me.

1:21:44i'm going to punish you more. And the same thing, he starts off the third one. You're not scared of me? Again, the fourth one. If despite all of this, you will not be chastised towards me, and you'll behave casually with me. You still have no Yirat Shamayim. More. The fifth curse, the worst one. If, despite this, you will not heed me. Again, it says the same thing. Every single time it says, if you don't have Yirat Shamayim. So here we have two opposite extremes. On one end, David HaMelech is telling us you want to know Hashem's secrets? Like the Ohr HaChaim did? You want to get all those blessings that it said for the first ten verses of this parasha? One thing you need to do. If you have fear of Hashem, he wrote it here. If he wrote it here, it's relevant for all generations. He wrote it here. The secrets of Hashem, He gives to the ones who fear Him. But really fear Him. Not fear Him like they're hiding behind a couch, but they're eating a cheeseburger. Really fear Him. They act with fear towards Him all the time, not just sometimes. You want the secrets like the Ohr HaChaim had? Fear Hashem.

1:23:07But on the other hand, if you don't fear Hashem, you would think, naturally, okay, so I fear Him, I get secrets, I don't fear Him, nothing happens. This is the mistake of this generation. People consistently think that we have free choice to do whatever we want. This is 100% wrong. We do not have free choice. We have choice, not free choice. And we learn it from this parasha and this Tehillim. Because the choice is to fear Hashem or not fear Hashem. If you fear Hashem, it says you will get the secrets. You'll get all the blessings. You'll have an ultimate connection with Hashem, and Hashem will send a special angel just to make sure to help you. That's how much Yirat Shamayim is worth in Shamayim. But on the other hand, Not having, he says, when you don't have Yirat Shamayim, you have all of the worst possible punishments come to that person. That's not free choice. That's choice. If it was free choice, then that would mean if I do it, I get something. I don't do it, I get nothing. If I go to work, I get $100. I don't go to work, I get zero. That's the free choice that people think they have. That's not what we have.

1:24:32What we have is if I go to work, I get $100. I don't go to work, they come to my house and they beat the hell out of me, and I end up going to the hospital instead. That's what we actually have. That's choice. There's a consequence. And that's what Hashem is telling you. But it's two very, very opposite extremes. So only a fool will go against it. And this is what we're dealing with today. Now, the parashah talks a lot about all of these different punishments. And as a matter of fact, anyone that goes into the words can see that many of these things, if not pretty much every one of them, actually happened throughout history as recent as the Holocaust. One of the things that it says is that ten women will be in front of just one oven. And whatever food someone eats, it's not going to be enough. It's exactly what happened in the Holocaust. People would beg to get, what, a little bread for the whole day and still not, never being enough. That's why Hashem, you see all those poor people, even the ones that survived, see them, they're all...

1:25:59Terrible, terrible thing. But we can't deny the fact that this is all done by Hashem. No one performed anything against Hashem. Hitler is not more powerful than Hashem. Hitler is a messenger of Hashem. Even though he has a special place in Gehenom, the point is that he is the tool. Anti-Semitism, as despicable as it is, as horrific as it is, as much damage as it's brought to Jewish people for thousands of years, is the most effective tool that Hashem has. Why? Because if we do everything that He wants us to do, we get all the blessings, we never have war, everyone's scared of us, everything is fantastic, nothing's going to happen. If we don't do it, what ends up happening is that people, like I did when I first came to America. I was 10 years old, and I looked up to all the Americans. They all spoke so nicely, this language that you couldn't understand, and they all looked smarter, and they all looked cooler. And the next thing you know, I wanted to be like them. I didn't want to be Jewish. I had no interest in being Jewish. I wanted to be like them.

1:27:26And this is where we are today. Many Jews are in a position where they want to be like the bohemian. If you ask a young kid, 17 or 18 years old, who is going to public school, "What's the difference between you and the rest of the people in your school?" they'll either say "nothing" or actually say "they're much better." I'm not saying that the non-Jews are not good. but someone who's born Jewish or converts to Judaism and is doing the will of Hashem is officially part of the chosen people, is officially supposed to be a light to the nations. So if instead of being the light to the nations, you're viewing yourself as part of the nations, we have ourselves a problem. If you think the nations are the light, And you're the darkness that needs it. It's an even worse problem. And that's where I was.

1:28:34And that's what I see a lot of people do. And that's why I keep telling people, education is very, very important. People don't think it's a big deal. No, no, he's going to go to Jewish studies after school. After he goes to public school, he's going to go to Jewish studies. It's not good. Why? Because most of the day he is around different people who are not going to influence him positively. And if you look at today's environment, it's getting worse and worse. They passed a law recently that boys and girls have to use the same bathroom, or wherever they feel comfortable. I mean, I don't know. I think I told you guys this last time I was here, a prophecy that sexual crimes are going to increase drastically. I mean, this doesn't really need to be a prophecy. This is just pure logic. Today, I don't know much about it, but a high-level university had a shooting, and I don't know how many people he killed, but this has become normal in America.

1:29:36You don't hear about this in Israel. You don't hear about this in religious neighborhoods. Quite frankly, you don't really hear about this in most places in the world, unless it's coming specifically from terrorists. You don't hear about stories of some 16-year-old kid flipping out and killing everyone in school. You just don't hear about it. This is in America. And we've become so numb... because it's happened so many times that when it happens, it's like, oh, okay, flip the channel to the next channel. Let me hear better news. You completely disregard that 30 people just died by a teenager who had his whole life ahead of him because, I don't know, maybe his girlfriend broke up with him or something. I don't know what happened to this kid. This is the environment we live in. Why? Because we're constantly going further from HaShem To such an extent that we want to be like the other nations. It's not that we don't see a difference between us and them; we want to be like them. And that's why you see how people dress, how they act, what they do. There's this thing that people do. They have... They have...

1:31:00They celebrate the holidays that they find fun, but they also celebrate Jewish and non-Jewish holidays. So you have Jewish people. There's another one. Thank you. You have people that are so far off the derech, that they want to celebrate Hanukkah because they like to light candles, but they also want to put up what they call a Hanukkah tree. it's a Christmas tree, but they call it a Hanukkah tree. This is mentioned in the Torah, in the book of Jeremiah, as well as in this next book that we're actually going to learn. We're finishing a book, Parashat Bechukotai is the last parasha in Vayikra. We're going into Numbers, Bamidbar. It's in there. We'll learn about how we're not allowed to have trees.

1:32:05But people are so far that they actually have a Christmas tree in their house. They're thinking, "Oh, I'm being good for my kids. I'm teaching them both, giving them an option." They think that they're doing good. But the kid grows up, and he's confused, and he becomes a disaster. And he lives amongst a generation where shootings in a high-level school that you pay $50,000 a year to attend— you figure you pay $50,000 a year, not get paid $50,000. You pay $50,000 to get there, you figure at least your life is okay. Maybe I'll even get some books. Maybe I'll even get some degree or something. The last thing on your mind is that I'm going to pay $50,000 and my life's going to be at risk. If I need my life to be at risk, I'll just go to the army and they pay me instead. And I learn the same thing anyway. Who thinks about, I'm going to send my kid to college and his life's going to be at risk from some psychopath?

1:33:16failed a test or something, or I don't know, whatever could possibly happen in an 18-year-old kid's life, and he decides to kill everyone. And this is normal now. It happens in Colorado, it happens everywhere. It's happening everywhere, all over the country. And they still don't want to call it terrorism. And Hashem is telling us here, You want to avoid all that chaos? Just do what I said. That's it. I'm not asking you for too much. What is it like? I heard this story from Rabbi Nissi again. He says, imagine there was a king, and the king had the most precious daughter. He had one daughter. give her anything, but one day his daughter had to get married. So the daughter chose this young guy who didn't really have much, wasn't anything special. But the king says, "Listen, I'm going to give you the most precious thing that I have."

1:34:33I'll give you my daughter. It's all I have. I don't have anything else. I just have my daughter. And on top of that, I'll give you all the money in the world. Whatever you want, I'll give you. I only ask you for one thing. Just one thing. Everywhere you go, travel in the world, everywhere you go, just give me a small little room. Small, tiny little room. For me to stay, to live with you. That's it. I'm paying for everything. I'm paying for the big mansion. I'm paying for the plane. I'm paying for the land. I'm paying for everything. All I want is a tiny, tiny little room. That's it. Sounds like a good deal, right? That's God. God says, I'm giving you my daughter. What's my daughter? My Torah. I can't disconnect from my Torah. The holy books say that the Torah is actually a piece of Hashem Himself. I can't disconnect from the Torah. So wherever she goes, I have to be there. But I'm giving it to you. All I want you to do is give me a little bit of room. That's all I'm asking you for. Just read it a little bit once in a while. You haven't started, you never learned Torah in your life, 15 minutes a day. Start with 15 minutes a day. You can't read a book, watch a little shiur.

1:35:56You can't watch something, listen to it. Whatever, there's a million ways to learn Torah. You cannot show up in Shamayim with an excuse. There's no excuse. There is no excuse. No one can show up in Shamayim with an excuse saying, "Oh no, I didn't know." No such thing. You cannot show up and say, "I didn't know." And this is one of the most important things we have to realize. Hashem is not asking for much. We're the ones that are non-stop asking. We're the ones that are non-stop asking, and even after we get, we still complain. He's giving us everything we have. He's given us the parnassah, He's given us marriage, He's given us Torah, He's given us... What don't you have? If someone lost their eye, they'd pay an infinite amount of money to get a new eye. When Steve Jobs, the guy that made the iPhones and Apple computers, Well, the CEO of the company ran behind it. When he got sick, he had to get a new liver. And to get a new liver is not easy. It's not easy. You have a list of people waiting to get a new liver. But when somebody's worth six or seven billion dollars, they don't have to wait in line. So he didn't have to wait in line. And he got the liver pretty quickly.

1:37:25But what? So did Cheney. Yeah, so did Cheney. And so did many other rich people. But the point is, how much did it cost? It doesn't matter. He would give all six billion that he has for that liver that all of us have for free. You have it for free. Would you pay six billion dollars for your liver? You didn't pay any six billion dollars, right? I didn't pay six billion for my liver. He would pay every single cent that he has. For that liver. We have it for free. So you already know you have six billion dollars. So if anyone asks you, "Are you rich?" you can say, "I'm a billionaire." Why not? I'm only rich if I value what He gave us. But this is where Emunah comes in. Because we have to, in order to get to that point, we have to realize that everything that Hashem does is for the good. Did I tell you guys the story about the Baal Shem Tov and the guy that carries water? Did I tell you guys about the story? So the Baal Shem Tov one day sees a guy carrying water. He's carrying water.

1:38:45I ask him, how are you doing? And he says to him, Baruch Hashem, Kvod HaRav, everything's okay. Good, Baruch Hashem. The next day he sees the same guy, again carrying water, it's just as hot as it was the day before, nothing changed. Same guy, same water, same weight, same heat. Yes, Baal Shem Tov asks him, how are you? You know, Kvod HaRav. Very tired. This job is so difficult. I don't know why Hashem is doing this to me. 20 years I'm carrying this water. For what? I don't have anything to show for it. So the Baal Shem Tov answers, he goes, "Why am I getting a blessing?" He says, "You help me understand the question that I've been asking for many years in the Torah. How does my difficulty have anything to do with the Torah?" He says, "In the Mishnah, which came before the Gemara..."

1:39:52It says that Hashem judges us once a year, from Rosh Hashanah to Rosh Hashanah. Meaning on Rosh Hashanah He decides whether someone is going to live or die, whether someone is going to have parnasah, how much they're going to have, whether they're going to have health, whatever. He's judging us. Rosh Hashanah is judgment day. It's not Yom Kippur like a lot of people think. It's actually Rosh Hashanah. So if someone is going to get parnassah for the year, and how much they're going to get, Hashem decides on Rosh Hashanah. So if, let's say, someone's going to get $50,000 for the year, that's decided on Rosh Hashanah. But the Baal Shem Tov says, but the Gemara, which came after, says something different. It says He judges us every day. So I always ask myself, why? Does Hashem need to judge us every day for our parnassah if He already judged us in the beginning of the year? You already made a decision. Hashem doesn't change His mind. He says, "My thoughts are not your thoughts." He doesn't change His mind like us. He doesn't change His opinion. It's the same thing. So why would you bother

1:41:11changing your mind or doing it again if you already did it once. Hashem does one thing. He created the world; you don't need to create another world. He created you once; He doesn't have to create you again. That's it. The Baal Shem Tov says, finally, after seeing you in the last two days, I finally understood. He says, on Rosh Hashanah, Hashem decides how much parnassah you're going to get. But every day, based on your actions, He decides how you're going to get it. So, if on Rosh Hashanah He decides, "Okay, this guy is going to get $100,000 this year," but then the next day he gets fired from his job, he is still going to get $100,000. Perhaps on day 350, where he was struggling the whole time, He wins some type of deal. Or perhaps, Chas Veshalom, he gets into a car accident. Or something happens where Hashem decides that's how you're going to get your parnasah one day. It doesn't have to be through your job. It can be through your job. But it doesn't necessarily have to be. It's all based on your actions. So I saw yesterday, he said, yesterday when I asked you how you are doing, you were very happy. You've been doing this job for 20 years, but you were still very happy.

1:42:40Today, you're not so happy. And I can tell you why. Yesterday, you did good things. Or actually, the day before yesterday, you did good things. And when you went to sleep, your neshama went up to shamayim. And they told you, "Good job, you did good today. So tomorrow, you're going to have a good day. Things are going to go smoothly for you. Your parnasah is going to come very smoothly. You don't have to worry." The water that you're carrying will feel a little lighter. Your roads will be a little smoother. Your horses are not going to give you any problems. Everything's going to be fine. So when you finally arrived at my door, you were smiling. Everything was good because your neshama already knew you had good news. But during that day that you had good news, you didn't exactly do good things. You made some type of sin. He did something. So when you went to sleep again, your neshama went back up. He told you, "Oh, you made a big sin. No good. Tomorrow's going to be a difficult day. Tomorrow you're going to go to parnassah, same parnassah, same water. But it's going to be much more difficult. Your horse is going to give you problems. Your roads are going to have curves. There's going to be traffic."

1:44:03Your water is going to feel extra heavy because your shoulder is going to hurt. So now, the parnassah you're going to get anyway. Hashem said you're going to get it, you're going to get it, don't worry about it. How you're going to get it is up to you. How Hashem is going to feed you is up to you.

1:45:20If you do His will, He already told you, He promises you. He promises you you're going to get all the blessings, work is going to be easy, everything is going to be easy. But if you're seeing that there's problems in your life, you have problems with shalom bayit, Hashem is talking to you. You have problems with parnassah, the waters are a little heavier, Hashem is talking to you. Your foot started hurting but you're not really sure what it is, Hashem is talking to you. Anything is not going right, Hashem is talking to you. He's telling you, "I don't want you to get to stage one, two, three, four, and five of the curses. I want to tell you now so you can do teshuva now before it's too late. Because once I put the decree, that's it. I put the decree." And that's one of the most important things we have to understand. Be'ezrat Hashem, Parashat Bechukotai will one day be like it used to be. It used to be when people would read Parashat Bechukotai in Batei Knesset, they would read it extra loud. They would scream this parasha. Why? Because the reason why Hashem put this parasha

1:46:31in the Torah, and the same thing with Parashat Ki Tavo, and the same thing with pretty much half the Torah that talks about punishment or consequences, is to help us develop Yirat Shamayim. If we don't fear Him, we won't do what He says. That's just human nature. He created us, He knows. So they used to be in previous generations, and in our grandparents' and great-grandparents' generation, they would scream this parasha much louder than a normal parasha. Why? Because they wanted everybody to do teshuva. In today's generation, many batei knesset, they read it extra quiet. They whisper. They don't want to hear it. It's the opposite of our grandparents. Instead of helping people do teshuva, They whisper it. No one wants the aliyah. You know how everybody fights to have an aliyah on Shabbat? "No, I want the aliyah." "No, I want the aliyah." "I'll donate more money." Everybody fights to have the aliyah. For this week's parasha, pay attention in shul. No one wants the aliyah. Usually, the chazan stays by himself. No one wants the aliyah because they think it's bad. In reality, it's actually a big segulah. It's a good thing to have the aliyah of this parasha. That means you're closer to Hashem.

1:47:48To finalize things, I'll give you a good story I heard also from Rabbi Fein. We did a shiur in Israel, and he said this in one of his shiurim about kiruv. Eliyahu HaNavi is obviously one of the great figures in history. He started as a man, became a prophet, and ultimately became one of Hashem's personal angels. You mention Eliyahu HaNavi in all Sephardic shuls and even Ashkenazi shuls. It's a big deal, especially in Sephardic shuls. But most people don't really learn his works, what he wrote, his Torah. There's a relatively unknown book among the non-religious world called Tanna Devei Eliyahu. The teachings of Eliyahu HaNavi, the teachings of Elijah the Prophet. He actually has his own book. that he wrote. And many of the things that he taught are also in the Gemara. They're also in the Oral Torah. So the Yaron Avichai says different stories. And one of these stories, one of the sages asks him, "Tell me something that I don't know about the times."

1:49:14of when Joshua was alive, Yehoshua bin Nun. Yehoshua was the Gadol Hador after Moshe Rabbeinu. Eliyahu Hanavi says, Hashem said to Yehoshua, you told the nation of Israel that I am a jealous God and I don't forgive. Why did you do such a thing? When they sinned against me in Egypt, I forgave. When they sinned against me with the manna, I forgave. When they sinned against me with the meat, they wanted extra meat, I forgave. They sinned against me even with the golden calf, I forgave. They sinned against me with the Midianites, I forgave. So why are you saying that I don't forgive? You're saying Lashon Hara about me? Hashem is saying this to Yehoshua bin Nun. Yehoshua bin Nun says, "Hashem, I didn't do it for me. I did it for You. I wanted to scare them so they would do what You say." And Eliyahu HaNavi says, "I don't know how to understand this, that Hashem was so thrilled and excited about this answer that Yehoshua bin Nun gave Him, that Joshua gave Him."

1:50:42that He kissed him on his forehead and on his hands. He kissed Yehoshua for doing this. So when you teach Yirat Shamayim, that's how you get to Ahavat Shamayim. When you teach everything else without Yirat Shamayim, you're teaching nothing. This is what we need in our generation. this is why Hashem is helping us so much. Well, right now we have the CD drive coming out with our own CDs. Each CD is going to be 30 hours of shiurim, both long and short. Some shiurim are the lectures like we have here, and some of the shiurim are just audio, like 15-minute clips. called the daily chiddush, very popular on the internet, Baruch Hashem. So the CDs are going to have a combination of both. So if someone doesn't have time to listen to a two-hour lecture, they don't have any excuses anymore. Listen to a five-minute shiur. You have five minutes, you have ten minutes, you have fifteen minutes, everybody has five, ten minutes.

1:51:57I think the CD, b'ezrat Hashem, is going to be very, very popular. And our plan is to, excuse me, b'ezrat Hashem, come out with new CDs every month, every month and a half, with all the shiurim. B'ezrat Hashem, next week we're going to be in New York. There are lectures every night. I actually have to change my flight to add more shiurim. On Sunday, we're going to be doing a shiur in Staten Island. The next day in Brooklyn. The next day, we're doing a shiur with Rav Mizrachi. We're doing it together. And the next day, again, there's a lot of lectures, and there's a lot of Torah in the world right now, and people need it. People need this Torah. So anyone that wants to give out CDs, it's only a dollar a CD, give out as many as you want. This is not a moneymaker; this is a non-profit organization. This is just to give out the CDs, give them away, just like we give the books out, and the Rav Mizrachi books. But this is one of the ways we taught in yesterday's shiur. One of the ways that someone can limit the number of tests that they have in their life. Every one of us has the Yetzer Hara. Every one of us sometimes gets big tests that are hard to pass. Whether it's money or it's this or it's that. So in the Mishnah, Pirkei Avot, Hashem is teaching us something very, very important.

1:53:22We mentioned this before in previous shiurim, but it's worth it to say it once again, just to understand the power of kavanah. In the Gemara in Kiddushin, it says that Rabbi Akiva, and similarly stories about both Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Meir Baal Hanes, both of them were giant sages, filled with a lot of Torah, But one day, both of them almost fell, almost fell for the same sin. And at the last minute, which was a woman, a pretty woman. But at the last minute, this pretty woman turned back to what she really was, and it was actually Satan himself. It was actually the Yetzer Hara. turned into a woman to entice them to show them that they're actually virtually sinners, technically. But why did he show them at the last minute? Satan says, if I didn't hear in Shamayim, he said the same thing about both Rabbi Meir and Rabbi Akiva: if I didn't hear in Shamayim that the Torah of Rabbi Meir, or in the case of Rabbi Akiva, and the Torah of Rabbi Akiva is very important, be very careful

1:54:44of Rabbi Meir, be very careful of Rabbi Akiva. If I didn't hear this in Shamayim, I would slaughter you right now and cut you in half for being the sinner that you are. Almost sinned. Now, when this happens to a regular guy today, he sees a pretty woman, Hashem doesn't send any messengers to stop him all the time. He sees a pretty woman, he can't control his yetzer hara, he falls, and Hashem makes endless sins. So how come Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Meir get it, and we don't get it? What is the difference? Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Meir, they did something that all of us can do for a lot cheaper. They did it with a lot of Torah. They sacrificed their lives. They knew a lot of Torah. They learned a lot of Torah. They connected to Hashem at the highest possible level. We can do it with a dollar. One dollar. What is it? Zikui HaRabim. doing Kiruv. Where? Because it's their teaching. In the Mishnah, Pirkei Avot, chapter 5, verse 21, it says, כל המזכה את הרבים אין חטא בא על ידו. Whoever influences the masses to become meritorious, whoever influences the masses to do teshuva shall not be the cause of sin.

1:56:10Someone that's involved with kiruv, whether it's giving lectures, or it's giving CDs, or it's putting links on the internet, or sending text messages of different shiurei Torah that are motivating. Anything that you do, that's something that's part of your life. Now you're doing it once a week. Something that's an everyday thing, five minutes a day, ten minutes a day, whatever you contribute. If you can't contribute time, you contribute money. But it should be both. Or at least the time. But to get people to do teshuva. Why? Because that's, in essence, helping Hashem fulfill the world. Fulfill the mission of the world. How do we know? Because the rest of this Mishnah says... Moshe, which is talking about Moshe Rabbeinu, sees Satan doesn't like this. He interrupts. This is an alarm, it's not even a phone call. It says, Moshe Rabbeinu, why would he have such a special deal with Hashem?

1:57:34Because he was righteous, he had merits, and he influenced the masses to be righteous. So the merit of the masses was to his credit. Everyone that did teshuva because of Moshe Rabbeinu, every one of their mitzvot also went to his account. Every time you give somebody a CD, They do teshuva, it costs you $1 a CD, or you got it for free, or you just sent a link for a shiur, whatever you did, somebody did teshuva, from that moment on, every single mitzvah that they do also goes into your account. It goes into your account and their account. A mitzvah is like fire. People think, no, wait a minute, if somebody does a mitzvah, how could it be two? So it'd be 50-50. So if he does ten mitzvot, I get five, he gets five. No, that's not how it works. A mitzvah works like fire. Just like when you want to light one candle, it lights a second candle. The second candle has nothing. The first candle has the light, the fire. When you light the second candle, it has light, but the first candle stays the same. It doesn't change. That's a mitzvah.

1:58:48So you help somebody do a mitzvah, you help somebody do teshuva; every single mitzvah that he does or he ends up influencing somebody else to do, goes into your account. This is why if someone helps somebody do teshuva, that person helps his wife or her husband do teshuva, they're going to have kids. All those kids are going to grow up little tzaddikim. Now you have, instead of one person, you have six people all doing mitzvot for the rest of their life going to your account. That's from one CD. give a thousand CDs, and buy yourself the next world. And this is why Rabbi Ovadia, Zecher Tzadik Livracha, we started a shiur with him, and we'll finish a shiur with him. Rabbi Ovadia said, when someone is a Tzadik, according to the Torah, someone born a Tzadik, did mamash, learned Torah his whole life. When they finish this world, and they get to the real world, they get to the highest level,

1:59:50which is next to Mal'achei HaSharet, the angels of G-d. They get to right where they are. Someone that's a true Tzadik gets to that level. We're already thinking, "Wow, I'm not a complete Tzadik. Hopefully, I even get to Olam HaBa Bechlal, forget about getting to the highest level." That's what any normal person with no pride thinks. People that don't do anything and have pride think they're already in Olam HaBa now. But someone that's trying to do Hashem's will is hoping he just gets there. And Rabbi Ovadia says, the one that's really, really righteous, he gets to right next to the angels of G-d. Because there's only one level higher, which is where G-d Himself is, to be next to G-d. And only one type of person can go there. Who? Someone who does kiruv. Someone that helps people do teshuva, you help somebody do teshuva, you go to a level higher than Malachei Shareit. Higher than the angels of God. You're going to be right next to God Himself. Source for that is in the book of Yirmiyahu. So a CD or a link or a text message

2:01:07can get you an infinite amount of reward. In reality, we can't learn as much Torah as Rabbi Akiva. We can't learn as much Torah as Rabbi Meir. But we don't need to. We need to learn some Torah. We need to do Hashem's will. But we also have to do Hashem's will with some action. That's why I say with every lecture, Oh Hashem, it's five minutes. Everyone take upon themselves five minutes a day to do kiruv. Five minutes a day, whatever way you can. Five minutes a day, do something. Give a CD out, give a link out, give a text out. Five minutes a day, publicize Hashem's Torah. If you can do more, do more. At least five minutes a day, make it a permanent part of your life. Every day. Every day. You know, it doesn't matter. I'm not going to sleep. I'm not going to function until this five minutes that I do for Hashem to bring back His people. Whether it's the righteous gentiles or it's the Jews that have no clue. Regardless, bring them back to Hashem. As it says in the book of Yirmiyahu, you'll be like My mouth.

2:02:15Just like I say something and it happens. He said and He created the world. From His words, He created the world. Kepitieh means you'll be like My mouth. You'll say something. You'll pray for something. And it'll happen. So it also happens with your prayers. Your prayers get first-class treatment. Any questions? Baruch Adonai Le'olam. Amen ve'Amen. You press the red button.