Shiur Torah #92 When Rabbi's Refused To Wake Me Up, HaShem did, and It Hurt!!!! (Camp Ohr HaSimcha)

0:03Thank you for coming. Baruch Hashem. Because of Sarah organizing this shiur, Baruch Hashem, for the Irgun of Ora Simcha. Baruch Hashem, everyone will learn something, some mussar skills, some things that are a real-life story. It's not a fake story. It's not a fairy tale. It's not a myth. It actually happened. And Baruch Hashem, we can take something from the story and apply it to our life because in today's world we find ourselves, according to the prophets, in a time where the sages called the "end of times." But at the same token, very few people are prepared. The main reason for that is because most people are too consumed with the material world. to be consumed with their job, consumed with the next shidduch, consumed with life. The Torah tells us that every Jew is obligated not only to follow the Torah, but they must learn it first. In last week's parasha, it says, "If you will follow my decrees,"

1:30and observe my commandments, and perform them. So there's no such thing as just a Torah; it's a nice book, it's a history book, it has a few good stories, and we can follow whatever we want. But that was my mindset. So before we get to some parts of the Torah, I'll tell you a little bit about my story and who I am. And why this parasha, as well as parashat Ki Tavo, which is another relatively difficult to listen to parasha, I experienced a small part of it. Now in last week's parasha, Hashem says if you listen to all these commandments that I tell you, you get all these blessings. He has ten verses full of blessings. Wonderful, endless blessings. In this world and in the next world. Everything will be wonderful. You want parnassah? I'll give you more than you ever need. For you, for the generation after you, forever. Anything you want, everything is mine, He says. Anything you want, I'll give you. There's no shortage of money. There's no shortage of the ability to heal man. He created them. Anything you need, I'll give you. But, if you don't listen to Me,

2:52and he spends the next 30 verses explaining the horrors that we would go through for not following. Now, most people in the world today don't really care for those 30 verses. They either don't know them or they heard them here and there, but they don't necessarily apply them to their lives as much as they should. I was the epitome of that. I was born in Israel and moved to the United States when I was 10 years old. So this is about 26 years ago. Now, in Israel, we learned a little bit of Torah in school. I mean, it wasn't too difficult to find a religious school in Israel. But as soon as we landed in America, religious school was a little different here. They actually charged money. We didn't really have much money. So my parents said, okay, just go to the school with the rest of the boys. So, I went to public school. And before I knew it, I saw all these kids who didn’t speak Hebrew, but they seemed so much cooler than me. They seemed so much more hip and so much more connected, and they had so many friends, and they spoke this wonderful language that I didn’t understand a word of. I only knew the first three letters of the alphabet because it was on a cereal box. That’s as much as I knew.

4:16But all of a sudden, I'm finding myself wanting to be them. Not just like them, but I want to be them. So that's what I started doing. This is the problem with parents that don't understand the value of Torah today and send their kids to public school where they don't actually understand. It's not necessarily just the teaching that's a problem. It's the environment too. If you're surrounded by people that are living life as if it has no purpose, you will eventually think life has no purpose. If you're surrounding yourself with people that think that the show on MTV is the greatest thing since sliced bread, then that's what you're gonna do eventually. So, it's not necessarily just the teaching. I mean, yes, learning English is good, learning math, learning history, all of those things are wonderful. that are living life as if it has no purpose, you will eventually think life has no purpose. If you're surrounding yourself with people that think that the show on MTV is the greatest thing since sliced bread, then that's what you're gonna do eventually. So, it's not necessarily just the teaching. I mean, yes, learning English is good, learning math, learning history, all of those things are wonderful. In general, the point of school is not necessarily to learn those things because 99% of what you actually learn is useless. You're not going to use history in your career unless you become a historian, which barely makes any money, so I don't know why anyone would become a historian, but let's say you want to become a historian. Maybe you'll use your history lesson. Math is very good, but you don't necessarily need school to learn that. I mean, just learn it from life. You need to know how to balance your checkbook, get change from a grocery store, you learn the basics of math. You don't need to know the sine and cosine of a number. As far as learning English, you live long enough, you'll learn it. So what about all these other subjects? Why do they teach you all this art history and European history and all of these wonderful subjects? What's the point, especially when you go to college and they make you pay for it?

5:33get change from a grocery store, you learn the basics of math. You don't need to know the sine and cosine of a number. As far as learning English, you live long enough, you'll learn it. So what about all these other subjects? Why do they teach you all this art history and European history and all of these wonderful subjects? What's the point, especially when you go to college and they make you pay for it? Pay $40,000 a year to learn a bunch of stuff that's completely useless in actual life. Why? Because it teaches you how to think. That's the point of school. I think school is very important if you actually have a point. Now, if you're going to school for a communications major, just so you can get a job at the local supermarket after college, then you should not go to an expensive school. Do your parents a favor, go to a cheaper school, maybe even go to a yeshiva or a seminary. There's no point in going to school with no actual aim or purpose. But if you're going to be a doctor, a lawyer, an architect, or someone that has an actual ambition, then yes, school could be good. But the one thing that you can't do is forget Hashem like I did.

6:49So I went to school. I was a very good student. I was an A student. I was at the top of my class in high school. I had advanced placement classes. I was already getting college credits in high school. I went to Binghamton University, which is a top New York State school. And after one year, I had a 3.9 GPA, and I decided to quit school. And the reason was, I already knew how to think, and I knew what I wanted to do. I didn't want to be in school for another 100 years. So I said, "Okay, well, I learned how to work already when I was a young kid. As soon as we came to America, we all started working." And... You know, maybe it's time for me to go to work. I know how to sell. I know how to think. Let's do what I've already done for the last seven years. When I was 17 years old, I was working at different stores and retail stores already making $100,000 a year. Being in school, hanging out with a bunch of college kids and drinking beer all day was really doing nothing for me. So I left, and I joined the workforce. This time it was full-time. And eventually, I landed a job on Wall Street.

8:04became a stockbroker. Now, I always liked business. I liked money. I liked finance. And I didn't necessarily know that much about it, but anything that I liked, I liked to study. So I started studying it while selling and while working and doing whatever I had to do to survive in the business. After the first three years of working for other people, making at maximum maybe a thousand or twelve hundred dollars a month, working 15 hours a day and making them rich, but me poor, I finally got the opportunity after September 11th because my partner, or so-called boss, quit. September 11th happened, the financial markets collapsed. making at maximum maybe a thousand or twelve hundred dollars a month, working 15 hours a day and making them rich but me poor. I finally got the opportunity after September 11th because my partner, or so-called boss, quit. September 11th happened—the financial markets collapsed. And a lot of people left the business. And I was all new in a new company and excited about the world. I said, all right, well, this is a great time to build a business. So I started calling people to get business from them. I didn't know that my partner was going to quit. I didn't know this guy was going to quit. He came after September 11th and he gave me $81.12 as a check for two months' worth of work.

9:18So then those two months I made less than $1,500. It was $81.40 a month, a little less than minimum wage. So I went to the manager or the owner of the branch. This is a big company, a company called Raymond James. And I told him, "Listen, I want to go on my own. I want to actually be my own broker, manage my own clients. I don't want any more partners. I don't want any friends. I don't want anyone. I just want clients. I want to make money." He says, "Great. That's wonderful. You're a young kid. You're ambitious. But why should I give you this opportunity?" Well, I said, "I'm hungry. I work harder than everybody else here." Why not? He said, well, listen, do you have any money? I said, after this last check, not so much. He said, well, it's going to cost you about $4,000 a month just to walk into this office for the rent, for the computers, for the internet, for me, for me, for me, and all these other fees that he had for me. So I said, okay, fine, I'll pay you. He said, how are you going to pay me? I said, I have no idea, but I'll find a way. He said, what's your aim here? What's your...

10:24What word did he use? What's your goal here? He used a different word, but I can't remember it. Oh, what's your intention here? What's your intention here? And me, this 21-year-old kid that had already spent the last three years paying my dues, I was a little bit ambitious and naive. I said to buy you out. He was already in the business for almost 20 years. I barely knew how to scratch my head, but I'm telling him I'm going to buy him out. He found it amusing and he said, fine, as long as you have my money on time, go for it. This was approximately October of 2001. Now, when you first start in the brokerage business and you have to pay people money just to survive, that means that every dollar that you make goes to other people. So, for the next six months, I lived a very poor life, to such an extent that I had to borrow a dollar from one guy named Dimitri every day so I could buy coffee and a donut.

11:25And that was my food for the day. And I'd have to sneak on the bus every day and pretend like my MetroCard had money. You know, I put the card in. I obviously knew there was no money on it. And then the driver would say, "Oh, listen, there's no money." I'd respond, "Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm sorry. Let me open my bag and I'll get you another one." And I'd go to the back of the bus praying. I think that was my only prayer for the day, praying that he wouldn't call me back and throw me off the bus. And this is what happened for the next several months. Difficult life, but manageable. After six months, I started making a little bit more money than what I was paying this guy. and the fact that I was so ambitious during a terrible market, during a terrible economy, during a time that everyone was running away, Hashem blessed me with a lot of success. And in November of 2002, just about a year after I started, I made $117,000 in one month. So now, all of a sudden, I became...

12:39That office's number one guy, and that company's one of the top people. But that was just the beginning. By August of 2003, I became the number three top-producing broker in the entire country for the entire company, which had about 5,000 people with an average career of about 20 years. I made my first million dollars. Every month, if it was a bad month, I would make about $125,000. It was a bad month. So then the time came that I had to continue expanding. I'm an entrepreneur. I'm Israeli. What am I doing working for anyone? So I started my own company. I started hiring people. And money kept coming in. Religion, not so much. God, once in a while. By 2004, Whatever I was making the year before doubled again. By 2006, I actually started getting some fame. And they picked me up on a channel called CNBC. So I showed this in a lecture I did in Los Angeles, in the actual video, but not during the lecture. But Sarah had the idea that maybe I could show it now so you could see that I'm not lying to you. It's not a made-up story. So, these are a couple of clips.

14:06of me, it is me, you can see, even though I don't really look the same, on CNBC. I saw it, so you don't have to worry. Are these two new wave radio neophytes overspending on the likes of Stern and Oprah and under-delivering for investors? We're going to ask a new face to swap on the street. That's next. As we told you earlier in our program, Sirius Satellite Radio this morning reported a loss in the fourth quarter, a penny worse than analysts were looking for. Sirius is blaming higher programming costs for the shortfall. Take a look at the stock in pre-market trade. We're off nearly 5% on the news. Yesterday, of course, XM Radio reported fourth-quarter results. The loss there was also wider than expected. Shares got hammered after an XM director quit, saying a crisis could be in the offing at the company. Pardon the pun, but is there serious trouble ahead for the satellite radio business? Here with his instant analysis is Ron Rubin. He's an independent trader, president of Rubin Enterprises.

15:13We were hoping you'd come in because you had some interesting analysis on this whole Howard Stern versus Oprah situation. But let's just start first with Sirius. You own shares of Sirius, not XM. Stocks are down 5% this morning. What do you think? It's a buying opportunity. The bottom line is that these two companies have a huge opportunity. There are only two companies in the entire sector. it's not like the software sector or the internet. There's only two companies in the entire sector. There's roughly 354 million people or places that could actually have these radios. That's not including Canada, which is about 34 million. And there's only two companies, and everybody out there is predicting what they're going to do over the next five years, which I think is wrong because between the two companies, there's only about 10 or 11 million subscribers, and it's just the beginning. so as far as the company itself is concerned, we're predicting that the company is actually underestimating what they're going to do over the next year and over the next several years. They should be able to get to about 7.5 million subscribers by the end of the year. And the business model will allow them that once they break even, once they get to approximately 5 or 5.5 million subscribers, they should be able to generate about 70% of the additional

16:29You guys want to continue watching the rest, or do you get the point? I'll show you another clip. You can't use the stock information; it's already 10 years old. And then, actually, I'll show you the second clip in a minute. So by 2006, I got to a point where I started getting some name recognition on Wall Street, and money kept flowing in all the way to the point that in May of 2006, I made $1.6 million for the month. Most people hope to do that in a lifetime. I was doing it in a month. The best part about it, it was a legitimate business. I wasn't stealing from anyone. I wasn't cheating anyone. I was doing kosher business. I've actually had many offers from people that are crooks to cheat people, but I never really saw the need to cheat people and always had some type of fear of Hashem just for that, though not for everything else. My father always told me you could do any business in the world two ways. One, you could do it the honest way. It'll take you a while to make money, but you'll survive.

17:47and you'll make a lot of money over the long run. Or two, a dishonest way. You'll make a whole lot of money right away, but you won't survive. So I chose option A. It seemed logical. So I continued making money, continued growing the company. Some of my old bosses came to work for me, which was very, you know, very nice for the ego. But then, I thought that, you know, since I'm not gonna keep all these mitzvot, even though I did a little bit of teshuvah when I was 17 years old, so many years before that, I kept Shabbat for a year and a half, and after I stopped learning and stopped caring, I just dropped everything and went back to doing nothing. But I figured that, you know what, if I donate some money, then everything is okay. And this is unfortunately one of the teachings that happens today with people that call themselves rabbis, but they're really not. They're just people that wear a costume. They tell you that if you donate money, everything is going to be fine. You don't have to keep any mitzvot. As long as you donate money, you're a Jew, and everything is going to be fine. This is an outright lie. There's no such thing as a free ride.

19:08Hashem said, do all of My mitzvot. He didn't say some, and He did not say, if you donate money, forget the mitzvot. There's no such thing. And I actually had a long debate with a so-called rabbi about this, and he was insisting that this is what he's been doing for 20 years. I told him that he should lock himself in a cage and stay away from people. Because it's a chilul Hashem, and he's causing people to live in an illusion. How do I know this guy? He told me for 10 years. All these years that I worked on Wall Street, my door was always open to anyone that wanted anything. Some people wanted money. They had problems with their rent. They had problems with their life. They had problems for whatever reason. They had gambling problems. They'd come to me. Family, friends, employees, and anyone else they knew always came to me. I didn't really have much time for people, so I would just ask them, "How much does your problem cost?" They would give me a price. I would write them a check, and they would leave, and I would go back to work. That was my nature. I didn't really care for money. I just liked making it. So along with those people were people that were religious. And they would come at least twice a week. Once in a while they'd give us a parashat hashavua. Once in a while they'd say nothing. Once in a while they'd tell us to put on tefillin. Once in a while we'd listen. Every time they asked for tzedakah. And Baruch Hashem, every time we were able to give them.

20:34Sometimes more than others, but in general, money came in, money came out. But not once, not one time, did anybody ever tell me to do teshuva. Not one time did anybody ever tell me that if I don't keep Shabbat according to the Jewish halacha, according to seven places in the Shulchan Aruch, according to the written Torah, the oral Torah, and everything in between, you're not considered Jewish. No one ever told me. You're born Jewish. You qualify. You have the ticket to Olam Haba. But if you don't keep Shabbat, the basic foundation of Judaism, it won't work. You show up to the next world and say, oh, it's a very nice ticket. But behind the ticket, it says the instruction. It says, if you don't keep Shabbat, the ticket doesn't work. No one told me. So now, I was thinking to myself, after I did teshuva, which we'll get to in a second, why didn't anybody ever tell me? And then once I started teaching, I started realizing that this is the strategy. The strategy is that in the politically correct world that we live in, no one wants to offend anyone. No one wants to be a mochiach. No one wants to rebuke, and no one wants to hurt anyone's feelings. So much so,

21:59that even if we know they're drinking poison, we won't tell them because maybe they'll be offended. Yes, but he will die. Yeah, but at least he won't be offended. He'll die in peace. But if you just tell him he can just drink the water instead, they didn't think about that part yet. And this is exactly what happens today. We've become so politically correct, so worried about people's feelings that we forgot Hashem. So, for 10 years, people think that, oh yeah, listen, if he comes and we give him shiurim, over time he'll do teshuva, over time he'll do teshuva, over time they'll do teshuva. You know how they tell people, listen, come to the Beit Knesset even if you have to drive. This is very common in other places, not really New York because there's, Baruch Hashem, a Beit Knesset on every corner. But in other places, it's very common for rabbis. And I'm not talking about an actual kehillah, I'm talking about actual people that call themselves a rabbi. to tell people either nothing, knowing that the guy drives on Shabbat to Beit Knesset, or actually telling him to drive, and they think that over time, if he's gonna come to Beit Knesset, eventually he's gonna do teshuva, eventually he's gonna get it since nobody else drives. The problem is that 60% of the kehillah drives. So even if one guy wants to change, he's like, wait, but the other 59% are still driving. Why would I? Why am I gonna walk? I'm not a sucker.

23:17So the rabbi's strategy is, listen, if he comes long enough, eventually he's going to be ready. So the rabbi comes to him, and he tells him, listen, you know, you've been here for a year, you've been driving on Shabbat for a year, maybe you should stop driving. Just like we learned, parashat Ki Tissa, you're not allowed. He says, you know what, rabbi, I'm not at your level, I don't think I'm ready. He's thinking, since I've been driving for a year and the rabbi said it's okay, it's okay for another year. What's the big deal? So he procrastinates. Another year passes, and the rabbi comes back and says, listen, you're still driving. He's like, yeah, you know what, I'm still not ready. If it was okay for the first two years, maybe I could get myself another two years. And there go 20 more years. And that's why my first student that arrived at the shiur... Never knew that you're not allowed to drive on Shabbat. He's been driving to the Beit Knesset on Shabbat for 25 years. Orthodox shul. Not Conservative or Reform that give bar mitzvahs to dogs. I'm actually talking about an Orthodox shul. He's been going for 25 years driving. No one knew, he didn't know. He's not exactly an Einstein. He said, listen, I knew some people don't drive, but I thought that's just a higher level.

24:37i was not at that level. I was basic. I was basic cable. They were HBO. He didn't know. Why? No one ever talked about it. We got used to it. And this is where I was. So now, these people had a strategy where they figured that if they're going to come to my office, ask for the donation, eventually... I'm going to do teshuva. So let's do the math. Let's just say I had my office for 15 years, but let's say it was 10 years to make the math easy. And let's say they only came once a week, even though at minimum it was twice a week, but let's say it was once a week. So that's 52 times a year times 10 years. So it's 520. That means that you had 520 tries to get me to do teshuva, to get me to keep one Shabbat. I didn't keep one Shabbat. So if it's not gonna work after 520 times, when is it supposed to work? This is why I constantly preach this in many of my lectures: that this long-term strategy of telling them it's okay to be a sinner until they do teshuva never works. I am the example.

25:57I donated a Sefer Torah we had written in Yerushalayim. I donated a ton of money to Batei Kenesiyot. I donated to all types of organizations. That made me feel good. I like giving. As far as keeping mitzvot, whatever was easy. Kosher, if the restaurant was a good restaurant, I'd eat kosher. Holiday, eh, if I cared for it or not. Pesach, okay, fine, I'll eat matzah, I don't care. I like matzah and chocolate. Yom Kippur, fine. Tisha B'Av, nah, that's not for me, I'm sorry. That was my mentality. I'd pick and choose. Why? No one said anything. But this is why Hashem specifically made a very big mitzvah. You must rebuke your brother. If you see your brother sinning, you have to rebuke him. But you have to do it in a nice way. You have to do it in a civilized way. You can't, obviously, embarrass him in public. But if you have a friend or a family member that you know violates a certain major sin, whether it's Lashon Hara, or it's Shabbat, or it's Tefillin, or it's any mitzvah, you know that this is something that's important to Hashem. Whether he knows it's important or not is irrelevant. He obviously doesn't think it's important because he's not doing it. But the point here is that if you know that he's making a sin or she's making a sin, you have to find a time and a way to get to them. If you can't speak, if you don't have a speaking ability,

27:23Find a CD, find a link to a shiur, and give it to them. "Hey, listen, this is a great shiur." "What is it about?" "Oh, I don't know. It's just amazing. If I say it in words, it's not enough. You should just watch it." When you tell them nothing about it, they'll be even more interested, just because of curiosity. You should give them a shiur. You want to find my shiurim? You'll find some on TorahAnytime.com, and you'll also find them on my website, BeEzratHashem.org. There are many shiurim, over 300 hours of Torah, on a lot of different topics. Or you can find Rabbi Mizrachi's shiurim; he has plenty of good material, amazing material. My favorite is "Torah and Science," the movie. It's four hours of brilliance. The debate with the Christian professor has actually made more people convert and do teshuva than probably most other shiurim in the world because people see how beautiful our Torah is and how divine it is. And how foolish everything else is, you want to be part of it. You want to be part of the chosen people. It's not just about showing them how foolish their religion is. You see how precise ours is. So now, Hashem had His own plan. I had my plan where I told people, listen, I'm going to be 100 years old and still in this business. If I'm already making millions of dollars right now, Bill Gates should be worried. In a few years, I'm going to get to him.

28:46But Hashem had different plans. He didn't bring me into the world to be a monkey. He didn't bring me into the world to be just a money maker. He doesn't need my money. He needs me to be a Jew. So He sent me to Wall Street for training. And then the second part started. Now, Hashem told us in last week's parasha, five different levels of punishment for anyone who does not follow the Torah. Chazal asks, why is it that the punishments have so many more details than the reward? Well, there are a couple of answers to that. The first answer is that in this world, we don't know what good means. Everything we think is good usually isn't. What do people think is good? Money. Women. Power. Most of those things lead to a lot of sins. Now, of course, you can use all of those things for good, but in general, most people don't. It's a very big test. It's actually a bigger test to have a lot of money than to not have money at all. But nonetheless, he told us that the details of the punishment, Ohr HaChaim explains, that if I give them the details of the punishment, they'll be more scared.

30:14And if they're more scared, they're less likely to sin. Now, I didn't read this parashah in 2006. I thought that I was just on CNBC. I was getting famous. I was on Bloomberg. I was on CNN, all these wonderful channels. So I had a problem that bothered me once a year. It was an annoying situation. And I went to a doctor and he told me, "Listen, it's a simple surgery. It's an elective surgery, meaning you can choose to have it or not. It doesn't change your life. But if you want to have it, you'll have the surgery. You leave the same day, which obviously shows it's not really a serious surgery. The surgery is maybe an hour, hour and a half. You go home. You'll feel a little discomfort for a couple of days," which, by the way, in medical terms means a lot of pain. but you're back to work in a couple of days. So I figured, you know what? I'll have the surgery on Wednesday. I'll rest a couple of days. I'll rest the weekend. I'll go back to work. Every day costs money. Every hour is about $3,000 an hour at that point. Can't waste too many days. So I went and I had the surgery. There was one problem, though. I didn't wake up the same.

31:38When I woke up from the surgery, this elective surgery that was supposed to be very, very simple, my whole body changed. A nerve problem spread through my entire body, and I woke up from the surgery screaming my lungs out in pain, asking my mother and my wife to kill me because the doctors wouldn't listen. The pain, to give you a small bit of detail, because I don't want anyone to vomit, was similar to if you take a knife and you just start cutting somebody open over and over and over again, and it won't stop. That was it. Now, I never took drugs; I liked my brain, so I never used drugs. But I never knew how they would affect me. But they started giving me them. But it didn't work. My body rejected all medicine. So time passed, and I'm screaming and yelling and screaming and yelling, and no one has a clue what just happened. The doctor kept saying, it went well, it went well. The doctor, you know, my wife was telling me after the fact, obviously, I was too busy screaming. Everything looked fine. It was bigger than I thought, but I wasn't, wasn't a, this shouldn't happen. Eventually, they gave me enough morphine to kill a large animal, the most amount legally allowed, and my body eventually calmed down. And then, foolishly, I listened to them when they said, listen, you seem fine, go home. I was so excited that the pain stopped, I figured that, okay, it's over. I experienced a small part of this agony I heard one time in my life. I'm gonna go home. My dad picked up some shawarma on the way home. I went home. I had my shawarma. It's delicious shawarma.

32:59a large animal, the most amount legally allowed, and my body eventually calmed down. And then, foolishly, I listened to them when they said, listen, you seem fine, go home. I was so excited that the pain stopped, I figured that, okay, it's over. I experienced a small part of this Gehinnom I heard one time in my life. I'm gonna go home. My dad picked up some shawarma on the way home. I went home. I had my shawarma. It's delicious shawarma. Very famous shmooze, I say it in almost every shiur, and then you'll understand why. I went to sleep. I said, everyone, it's an interesting day. Thank you for coming. I'm going to sleep. I went to sleep and I woke up about 45 minutes later, screaming in pain, worse than I had just a few hours earlier. Only this time, it didn't stop for 62 days. Only this time, the pain didn't stop, ever. I took 50 painkillers a day. Anything and everything I tried, nothing worked. The only thing that would calm me down for about 15 minutes would be putting boiling water on parts of my body because the pain from that would be a little more than the other one. It would numb it. That's it.

34:25My body started failing, my eyes started bleeding, my ears got infected, I started peeing blood, and slowly but surely I started dying, in a very interesting way. After 62 days, the pain started subsiding to the point where it was manageable. I was only taking 20 or 25 painkillers a day, but for me, it was like heaven. Half the day is okay, the other half is, again, oh, it's fine. I figured I had a second chance at life. I started going back to work, little by little. Walking from here to, let's say, the door, which for a normal person would take maybe 10 seconds, for me it would take about a half hour. It was hard to walk, hard to move, and the pain was all over my body. It had nothing to do with the surgery. Something changed in my entire body, and no one knew what. but I figured that things were getting better until nine months later when I woke up with pain in my leg. I thought that maybe I had pulled a muscle, but the next day it became unbearable. I had to go to the emergency room, and they told me that I had an internal infection called an abscess in between the rectal and the leg muscle.

35:46that it's big enough and close enough that if I didn't come within a few hours, I would probably die because it would explode and go into my bloodstream. So, I had to have an intensive care unit take care of me for the next couple of weeks next to the dying people. And it was a surgery worse than the first. It's okay. So now, Second surgery was also interesting. Recovery was at least in the hospital this time, with 24 hours a day of morphine. I was just half asleep and drugged up most of the time, at least not screaming, at least not most of the day. But then after that, I started going back to work, started going back to life. And three months later, I have another incident, a new infection. Back to the emergency room, back to the surgery room. back to the intensive care unit. Another surgery. More screaming. Not fun. My world is collapsing. I'm starting to lose money because I'm not working. Clients are leaving. Friends are becoming enemies. Whoever can take advantage of the situation is doing it.

37:03You know, you have a lot of friends, by the way, when you have money. It's amazing. Anyone that ever wants friends, just have a lot of money. Everyone wants to be your friend. But as soon as you don't have any money, they leave. I don't know why. And that's what happened. Friends turned into enemies and everyone started taking advantage of the situation. Vultures. And then for the next seven years, I was in and out of hospitals on a regular basis, having multiple surgeries, tried to go to over 50 different doctors in every type of practice that they could have, whether it's traditional, holistic, to the point where I got to the point where I started becoming an experimental person. I was in and out of hospitals on a regular basis, having multiple surgeries, tried to go to over 50 different doctors in every type of practice that they could have, whether it's traditional, holistic, to the point where I got to the point where I started becoming an experimental person. i became part of a study that would inject ozone into my blood system to see if maybe that would clean it out and disinfect whatever infection kept reappearing in different parts of my body. Over 50 doctors, at least a few million dollars spent on trying to figure out what happened. We were not even trying to fix it; we were just trying to figure out what happened. Fixing it, we didn't think was possible.

38:27because my entire body got affected to the point where I couldn't walk anymore. One day I wake up, I think this is around the year 2008, 2008, 2009, and I realized that my legs had doubled in size. So I went to Cornell Hospital, supposed to be a lot of smart people, and they tell me maybe it's from the heat because it happened to be July. I told him, "What do you think, I'm an old woman that walks around with shopping bags? I mean, what do you mean the heat? I'm at home. I'm suffering from other things right now. What do I need? How do my legs double in size, and I can't walk?" He said, "We've never seen anything like this." My legs never went back to being normal. They little by little went down, but I wasn't able to walk very well. And I started getting to the point where I had to use a cane. became very antisocial, would see my family once in a while, and really the only reason I stayed alive was for my wife and my mom. I figured that I really didn't want to live on painkillers and doctors and nightmares every single day. But if I kill myself, then it's going to ruin their life, it's not nice. So I stuck around. The money didn't mean much. All the money in the world means nothing when you can't live. So after all this time,

39:53I tried everything in my power. I had money, I had power, I had everything you could possibly imagine to fix the problem. But when Hashem says, "Ani Hashem Rofecha," which means "I am Hashem, your healer," He wasn't joking. When I got to the worst part of the... mental battle, which became worse than the physical battle, because I didn't really want to live much. Hashem saw that I got to my end, so one day... My mom makes a phone call to different rabbis. She has this phone book of a bunch of names of different rabbis from all over the world she's met at some point or another, or she went to their shiurim, or she got the numbers. I mean, apparently every Jewish mother has a phone book of rabbis. So she started calling numbers all over the world, looking to find a rabbi that's going to give her poor son, who's dying, a blessing.

41:03But today, for an hour and a half, she's calling and calling and calling and no one is answering. Usually, they answer. Today, they weren't answering. Until she reached a number in Israel and a woman picked up the phone. She asks for a certain rabbi, and the woman says, "I'm sorry, it's the wrong number. There's nobody by this name." My mom, after an hour and a half or two hours of calling obsessively and no one answering, finally reached someone, and the person says that it's the wrong number. My mom breaks down on the phone and starts crying to this stranger. And as Hashem would have it, the stranger recognizes her voice and says, "Doris?" That's my mom's name. She says, "Who are you? How do you know my name?" She says, "I'm your niece, Penina. Penina." My mom says, "How did I get to you? I don't even have your phone number. We've never spoken on the phone before." She dialed the wrong phone number in a different country. But she reached someone that actually knows her and can recognize her voice. And she's never talked to her on the phone. And it happens to be the only person that can help. So Penina asks, "Why are you crying? What's wrong?" "My son, he's dying, he's this, he's that."

42:25I really think that he's not going to survive much longer. I need somebody to bless him. He says, well, why don't you talk to Rabbi Ephraim, my brother? He's a big talmid chacham. Even though he's young, he's something amazing. Everyone knows he's the family genius and tzaddik. But aside from that, he lives two buildings away from Rav Ovadia. He's one of his students. Of course, Rabbi Ephraim is going to talk to me. Of course, you're the famous aunt from America. He says, okay, so I'll call him. She gives him the number. She calls Rabbi Ephraim. And Rabbi Ephraim is not home. He's at the kollel, of course. He's learning Torah, but his wife reaches him, and he calls my mom back. And she starts telling him, now, when I left Israel, he's younger than I am, so we never knew each other. I actually didn't even know he existed. I didn't know he was born. I didn't know he was alive. I didn't know his name. I didn't even know I had a cousin by that name. So my mom is talking to him, and he asks, now he obviously doesn't know me, and he says, does he speak Hebrew? Because he doesn't speak English. And she says, yes, he speaks Hebrew. And he says, okay, so can I call him? Can I talk to him? She says, no, I don't think so; he doesn't even talk to us. I was barely talking to the family. And at that very moment,

43:52That very second that she said, which I only found out later, at that very second, I called my mother on the other line for the first time in at least five years. Anytime I would see my mom, I would come to her house, usually on Fridays, stay for a couple of hours, and leave. Never call my mom. Never call anybody because who wants to talk when you're in pain? But that was the first time I decided, let me call my mother. So I called her. And she's hysterical, crying on the other line. And I asked her, "What happened?" She says, "Talk to him, talk to him." And I said, "To who?" She thinks I know what's going on. She says, "Talk to Efraim." I'm like, "Who's Efraim? Who is he?" She goes, "It's your cousin." I'm like, "Why do I need to talk to him?" She goes, "Just talk to him, please. He can help you." I said, "Okay, just stop crying. I'll talk to whoever you want. Stop crying. You know, it's unbearable for a son to hear his mom crying. Or anyone, really." So I said, "Tell him to call me, I'll talk to whoever you want." So Efraim calls me. Now, after I did teshuvah the first time when I was 17, one of the main reasons that made me fall off was because I had made a bad assumption. I thought that anyone that called himself a rabbi knows everything.

45:13I didn't know that there are different rabbis who have different skills. Some rabbis are skilled at proving the Torah is divine scientifically. Some rabbis are good with issues of shalom bayit. Some rabbis are good with halacha. There are different expertise, just like there are different types of doctors. There are different types of rabbis. I figured that if he has a beard and a hat, he must know everything. So I would ask them questions, and most of my questions were usually related to science. I was very interested in science. And I would get different answers from different people. So I would ask, for example, where are the dinosaurs in the Torah? One guy would say, no, they didn't exist. So what do you mean they didn't exist? These are bones. So I'm like, all right, he's a liar. Next guy would say, oh, it's the Taninim Gedolim in the Torah. He happened to be right, but I didn't know that. Because the third guy said, Leviathan. It says in the Torah, Leviathan, that's the dinosaurs. But it says one. there's more than one dinosaur. That didn't seem right. So I said, okay, option one has no clue. Option two, sounds okay. Option three, it's a complete liar. So nobody really knows anything. So I just left. Because then I started looking at everything that's wrong with Judaism. I didn't look at myself. I looked at everybody else. But what I didn't realize is that Torah Judaism...

46:41is not based on the Jews, because the Torah existed before the Jews. 974 generations before Hashem created the world, He created the Torah. The Gemara says that once we got to Har Sinai, we got to a point where Hashem had to give the Torah to the world. In the Gemara Masechet Avodah Zarah, it says that He tried to give it to the other nations, and everyone said no. And then in Matan Torah, on the day of the Torah, which is next week, Shavuot, the most important day in history. Most people just think it's a holiday for cookies, cake, and cheese. Next week's holiday is the most important day in history. It's the day we got the Torah. Why? Because the Gemara says that if Am Yisrael would have rejected the Torah and said, "No, you know what? Torah, it's a little heavy. We don't want it," Hashem would have destroyed the world instantly. Not like Noach. He would have instantly brought it back to Tohu Vavohu, to nothing. Why? Because the only purpose this world exists is the Torah.

48:06So what does it mean for us individually? It means that it doesn't matter what everyone else is doing. If you're surrounded by heretics, move. The Rambam says that if everyone around you is a heretic or idol worshiper or to a point where there's no way you can help them, move away. And if your only option is the desert, it's a perfect spot. Be by yourself. Everyone else doesn't matter. If they're religious or not religious, it's irrelevant. If you are alone on an island, you still have to be Jewish. You still have to follow what the Torah says. You still have to be modest if you're a woman. Why would you be modest? Only monkeys and elephants are seeing you. Because Hashem said to be modest. In the Gemara Masechet Sotah, page 2a, it says that A man is gifted a woman based on his actions. If he's a tzaddik, he gets a modest woman. If he's a rasha, he gets an immodest woman, a prutza. Now, this is a little bit confusing. Why doesn't a tzaddik get a tzaddeket? And a rasha gets a resha'it?

49:31Righteous person gets a righteous woman. Wicked person gets a wicked woman. This is what it should say. But we know that the Torah doesn't have any mistakes. Rashi explains nearly 900 years ago, well before the world drowned to the level that it's in today, that of course the tzaddik is gonna get someone that's modest. Because if she's modest, she's more likely to be a tzaddeket also. But a wicked guy, he can only get someone that's wicked, someone that's not modest. Why? Because there's no such thing as a righteous, immodest woman. It does not exist. If she's not modest, she cannot be righteous. She already failed the test. Why? Because for a woman, 60% of her obligation in this world is modesty. So you all went to school. And school, the passing grade is 65 when I was in school. Maybe it's the same. Maybe today it's 30 because they have such low expectations. I'm not really sure. But I'm assuming, let's say it's 50-50. 51, you pass. 50, maybe. 49, okay, fine. You're going to special ed. So let's say it's 50-50. And the woman...

50:55It's not modest. She just took 60 points out of 100. That leaves her 40 points. So that means that even if she's perfect with every single mitzvah, she goes to the mikveh right on time. Shabbat is the greatest Shabbat in history. Every week she hosts hundreds of people, not five or six, hundreds. She has a whole hall just for her cooking. The candles are wonderful. The guests are happy. The kids are happy. The husband is excited just to see her, but she walks around like women do today, where they think it's nice to be half-naked. She failed the test. Why? She got 40 on everything else, but there's still 60 missing. She still didn't get to a passing grade. This is why women need to understand modesty is not a choice. It's an obligation. A choice would mean you can do it and get a reward and not do it and you get nothing. If I go to work, I'll make money. If I don't go to work, I don't get anything. That's choice. That's free choice that we think we have. But in reality, we just have choice, not free choice. Meaning, we do what Hashem says, we go by His laws, and we get a reward.

52:23But if you don't, it's not that we get nothing. We get the 30 verses in last week's parasha—the punishments. So it's like not going to work and they send people to beat you up. That's not choice. That's not free choice. That's just choice. That's the stuff I didn't understand because no one ever told me. I can't tell you that I would have listened if they told me. I don't know. All I do know is that at least I could make an educated decision. You can tell every kid in the world that drugs are bad for them. You can tell every woman that having a relationship before she's married is not really good. You could tell every guy that he should learn Torah every single day. You could tell people they shouldn't overeat. They shouldn't smoke. They shouldn't do certain things. They may listen. They may not. But at least they know. At least whatever decision they make is an educated decision. They're making a decision based on the information they have. If somebody wants to be immodest, at least they're going to be immodest based on what they know. Okay, I'm going to be immodest, but I have consequences for that.

53:48I'm going to steal, but I have consequences for that. Which, for example, one of my old bosses decided that he wanted to steal, so they just sentenced him to 12 years in jail about two weeks ago. Hopefully, he stays there for longer. Very wicked person. I honestly think that the jail system in America is the most demented system in the world because... If you look at the statistics, most people that leave jail leave worse than they came in. They go in there as criminals most of the time, obviously, if they're guilty. If they're not guilty, then it's unfortunate. But if they're guilty, they go in there as low-level criminals. But then they meet a bunch of other criminals, so they learn their trade. So now he's an expert criminal by the time he leaves. It's like a Harvard degree for being a criminal. So that's the reason why most of them go back to jail shortly after. It's a failed system before they even started. Because no one's going to hire a guy that came out of jail. So now he can't get work. So he figures, okay, I knew how to steal. But the other guy I was a cellmate with knew how to rob banks. I was only stealing from shopping centers. So now I have an extra skill. And then the other guy also knew how to do something else. So he said, okay, I have all these new skills. I can't get a job. Let's go for it. It's a failed system.

55:14But this is what happens when you go against the Torah. The Torah already told us exactly what to do. What to do with people that are criminals, what to do with people that are going against Hashem, what to do with people that are immodest, what to do with people that are fools or heretics, what to do with everything. How to make money in an honest way, how to be righteous, how to be honest, how to be happy, how to have a good marriage, how to raise kids. Everything and anything you could possibly want in life, the Torah has. And this is the reason why in every shiur that I have online, you'll usually hear that anything that's any good in life has to have a source from the Torah. It has to. If it's good, it has to have a source in the Torah. Whether it's a one-liner that somebody came up with, like for example, I remember I used to listen to rap when I was a kid, and there was this guy named Biggie Smalls. And he came up with this song, said, "More money, more problems." That's in Pirkei Avot. That's in Mishnah Pirkei Avot. I don't know if you read it, but it's in the Torah. And there are many, many other examples like it. So now I got to a point where I have this guy on the phone and I figured, okay, this guy called me, fine, let's talk to him. So he tells me a nice story about Tamar and Yehudah. I like it, so I start asking him questions.

56:40For the first time in my life, I get answers. But I don't just get answers. I get answers with sources on the spot, like I'm talking to a computer with a personality. I ask a question, he says, oh, he tries to make me feel good. He says, oh yeah, this is the same question that so-and-so, Rabbi so-and-so asked 852 years ago in this book on page this, and this is what he said. He remembers the page? Who remembers the page? So then I say, okay, let me try this again. This is cool. So I ask another question. It's like, oh yeah, that question. It's such a great question. It makes you feel so good. It's such a great question. This Rabbi asked this question 412 years ago, and it's in this book on this page. This is not smart. This is like not human. So I ask another question, and another one. And every single one he answers, whether it's business, science, marriage, anything. We talk for an hour and 40 minutes, full of Torah. It was unbelievable.

57:47A week later, he calls me on Thursday at 4 o'clock. We talk for three hours. Same exact thing. I ask questions. He has answers. A week later, we talk for five hours. Thursday, 4 o'clock, five hours. Straight. We don't even feel the time passing. I ask questions. He gives me answers. Answers with sources, page numbers, and I get into it. This is the greatest thing in the world. Who doesn't want to get answers? I didn't even know I had all these questions, but apparently, I did. The next week he calls me, we talk for seven hours. And that's how he continues every single week, Thursday at four o'clock, everyone knows, I don't talk to anyone else other than Rabbi Efraim for at least seven hours. Later on, he tells me that this whole transition was nine months. Nine months of nonstop questions. Every question you could possibly think of. I would start thinking of questions just to ask him to see if he knew. I mean, I just couldn't believe it. I mean, I was okay, I was decent as far as brain, but this guy was unbelievable. And anything, any subject, medicine, anything.

59:09So he says that he used to pray a special prayer before the call so he could have the answers. I'm like, what do you mean have the answers? You probably learned this stuff already. He goes, no, I didn't even know the questions. I never asked these questions. So I'm like, so how did you know them? He said, God gave them to me. On the spot, when you asked them, I had the answer. I never thought of the question to have studied the answer. This is what we call siyata dishmaya. When Hashem wants you to do something, He'll change nature for you, but only if you look for Him. It says in the book of Devarim, that after we sin against Hashem, many years to the point of worshipping idols... One of the worst possible sins, which, by the way, anyone who doesn't know, idol worshipping, which is as foolish as it sounds, is the same thing as violating Shabbat. The guy that's bowing to an idol in India or worshipping a cow is the same thing as the Mechalel Shabbat who drives on Shabbat to the mall. In God's eyes, it's the same thing. This is why every time He mentions a Mechalel Shabbat in the Torah, there's always idol worship next to it.

1:00:36always. This is also why in the Ten Commandments, they're right next to each other. They're always connected. I actually had a whole lecture about it in New York about a year ago. Anyone who wants to see it, it's lecture number 50. It was very popular because it was a different way of looking at Shabbat. Hashem is telling us in chapter 4 of Sefer Devarim (Deuteronomy), from verse 27 to 29, Hashem will scatter you amongst the people, and you will be left few in number among the nations where Hashem will lead you. There you will serve gods, the handiwork of men, of wood and of stone, which do not see, do not hear, do not eat, and do not smell. If anyone didn't notice, the two most famous false religions in the world are Christianity and Islam.

1:01:38Christianity's symbol is the cross. Christianity was born about 1,500 years after Judaism. Islam was born about 2,000 years later. We received this Torah well before all of that. But Hashem is telling us they are going to exist. He's telling us you're going to worship the handiwork of man, man-made religions. of wood, which is the cross—the cross is wood—and of stone, which is the stone in Mecca, which is where all the Muslims bow to every day. So, even after falling to such an extent that people become from Jews to Christians or to Islam, Hashem is telling us in the next verse, from there you will seek Hashem. Finally, eventually, when you're going to see that it's all false, it's all nonsense, you're going to start looking for Hashem, you're going to start looking for answers. From there, you will seek Hashem, your God, and you will find Him. That's the good news. If you seek Him with all of your heart and all of your soul. Hashem is always there.

1:02:58But He's only there if you really want to look for Him. Now, obviously, you're not going to find Him in a cabinet, you're not going to find Him in a store, you're not going to find Him in a mall. You're going to find Him through His Torah. If you do what He says, you'll start feeling Him. But as long as you're doing everything against what He says, He says, "Oh, they don't want to do what I say, so that means they don't want anything to do with Me. If they don't want anything to do with Me, good luck." You're on your own. Life without God is worthless. So now that I finally started getting answers from Rabbi Ephraim, I started realizing that this is actually real. I started realizing this Torah is not just a storybook; it's not a history lesson. It can actually be proven scientifically. It can actually be proven rationally. It can be proven in any single way that you want to prove it. So I started keeping some mitzvot and little by little got stronger and stronger. But the most important part was that I finally found out that there's a price for not doing what Hashem says.

1:04:21Some people get it early in their life like I did. Some people can go 50 years and everything looks fine. They have a Ferrari, they have a big house, they have a wife, they have kids. Everything looks wonderful from the outside. That's usually not good news. That usually could mean that Hashem is paying them their reward in this world and is giving up on them. As it says at the end of Parashat Va'etchanan, He pays His haters, which means people who are not keeping His mitzvot, because He calls the ones that keep His mitzvot His lovers. In the same verse, "I pay My haters cash to their face to destroy them. I will not delay their payment. Cash to their face, I will pay them." So if you see someone that it seems like everything is wonderful, they have a hundred million dollars in the bank, they have a great career, wife, children, buildings, fame, and fortune, but they're doing everything against Hashem, it could mean one of two things. One, the time hasn't come for them to do teshuva, or they haven't run out of time yet. Or two, chas v'shalom, G-d gave up on them.

1:05:41Which means that the few mitzvot that they did accidentally, they did a bar mitzvah, so they did tefillin for the first and last time in their life. They ate kosher by accident at some point. They did a bracha because somebody told them, "Listen, you should do a bracha." "Okay, fine, I'll do a bracha just to please you." They gave some tzedakah to some homeless guy. They did a few mitzvot. Hashem says, "When am I going to pay them? I can't pay them in the next world. They have no next world. I have to pay them now." So the building, that was for the tefillin. The wife, that was for tzedakah. And so on. Hashem is going to constantly give you answers. He's constantly going to give you chances, but you have to pay attention to the details. Now, at Mount Sinai, we got a few things. We got a written Torah and we got an oral Torah. Most people

1:06:55think that we only got the Written Torah. They don't like to believe in the Oral Torah, especially people who are not religious and especially if they're Christian. Christians cannot believe in the Oral Torah because the Oral Torah says that their religion is fake. So that doesn't really work well for them, especially if there's a part in the Gemara that says that their idol is in the worst part of Gehinnom. It's not exactly a good part for them, even though he was a Jew. But people have a hard time believing that the Torah is real. So what I want to do with the rest of this shiur is leave you with a few things where you know that, number one, there's a God and you can prove it. Two, God gave us instructions, and it cannot be anything else other than the Torah. And three, those instructions have two parts. There's the Written Torah and there's the Oral Torah. And we know both of them. And four, the last part, is that the Rabbis we talk about when we talk about Gemara are not exactly the ones we think about today.

1:08:24They, from the ones from two thousand years ago that actually gave us the laws and explained everything to us, were different from us in such a way that the wisdom of today that we think is so big in the medical world, for example, where someone invented a new machine or someone got a Nobel Prize for something that he did or didn't do, like Obama got a Nobel Peace Prize—I have no idea for what piece, but he got it—but they actually did things and knew things that are even superior to our technology today. So now, if we have all of those pieces and we know it's real, we should find out what the rest is, which is what the Torah says, and we should start doing it. But if anyone has any doubts, you can ask in the middle, after, whenever you want. In 1962, they came out with CPR.

1:09:43Someone came up with the CPR movement and the world celebrated this invention that you could save a life mouth-to-mouth and a little bit different mouth-to-mouth and nose for babies. And the world celebrated this new wisdom. This is just a little over 50 years ago. The problem is that anyone that would have learned Torah could have avoided that whole celebration, and not having that, because they could have learned it from Chazal, Chachamenu Zichronam Livracha, our sages, and Yalkut Shimoni, that shows that not only have we had this technology, this brilliance of saving a person's life, but we've actually, it was common, common knowledge all the way back in the days of Moshe. could have avoided that whole celebration, and not having that, because they could have learned it from Chazal, Chachamenu Zichronam Livracha, our sages, and Yalkut Shimoni, that shows that not only have we had this technology, this brilliance of saving a person's life, but it was actually common knowledge all the way back in the days of Moshe. when the 10 spies went to Canaan, which later became Israel, the giants there were very, very scary, and one of them screamed at the Jews, at the spies. And Yalkut Shimoni says that they all passed out from fear. Then one of the Canaanites blew air into their mouths in order to revive them.

1:11:12This is by definition what CPR is. And even the Canaanites knew this. This is in the Oral Torah. One example. Now, this already shows us that there's some wisdom here that we should look into. Now, these very same sages only have this wisdom because it had to come from the Creator. How do we know that there has to be a Creator? It's a very simple, rational argument. First and foremost, even if someone wants to believe the foolish theory of Darwinism and survival of the fittest and the Big Bang and all of that nonsense that they believe, if you look at some of the top scientists in the world, Whether you go back as far as Aristotle, or you go as recent as Stephen Hawking, you see that most people towards the end of their career change their mind. They change their mind about God. Stephen Hawking is mentioned several times. He's considered this generation's Einstein even though I think Einstein was a world away from him, meaning much higher than him.

1:12:37but that doesn't really matter. The point is that he's changed his mind several times, at least a handful of times during his career saying, yes, there is a God, no, there isn't a God. Why? Because he says, we still can't explain how it started. So even if, let's say for example, there was one cell and the cell went through mitosis and split into two, and then two split into four, and four split into eight, and it eventually became some fish, and the fish became a lizard, and the lizard became a monkey, and somehow I arrived. Let's say all that happened. Where did the first cell come from? Let's say all that coincidence happened. The trees became trees and the brain became the brain, and every one of us has the same type of brain with the same cells and everything else. And every time someone bleeds, somehow that system tells the blood to clot the hole so you don't bleed anymore. But if you take the same amount of blood and you put it into a balloon and you make a hole in the balloon, it doesn't stop.

1:13:48It doesn't clot. It just continues coming out. So who's telling your blood to stop? Who's telling it to start? So they can't explain the first cell. And this is why most of these geniuses or so-called geniuses towards the end of their careers, when they can't get any more answers, resort to, "There has to be some intelligent design." Funny thing is, is that if they all go back to their forefather, their genius, the first philosopher, the first scientist that was really well known, which is Aristotle, or at least even more known than Plato, then they would see that at the end of his life, Aristotle wrote a letter, which you can find in Midrash of Me'am Lo'ez, as well as online in museums, to his top student. Who was his top student?

1:14:49Alexander the Great, who conquered the entire world. He was his top student. He sent him a letter and he says, I wanted to tell you this years ago, but I was afraid you were going to kill me. But now, since I'm already old and I don't care, I figured that I have to tell you. Everything that you've learned from me is complete nonsense. I've discovered something called the Torah. And I've learned that not only is everything that I've taught and all of my books complete nonsense, but anyone that learns them will be punished for them. And I only wish that each and every single one of them will be burned and no one will ever study from them because the only thing that could ever be true is this Torah. This is the number one guy in history. Why doesn't anybody listen to him? Even Darwin, at the end of his life, said there has to be a God. Nobody reads that chapter. They just read the first one when he says a bunch of mistakes and accidents led to something. So the Torah gives us a lot of insight. For example, that Hashem is in control of nature. And He put information in the Torah that no one else could have ever known. At the end of his life, he said there has to be a God. Nobody reads that chapter; they just read the first one, where he says a bunch of mistakes and accidents led to something. So the Torah gives us a lot of insight. For example, that Hashem is in control of nature. And He put information in the Torah that no one else could have ever known.

1:16:17For example, when he told us that we have to eat only a certain type of fish. The fish has to be kosher. How do we know if it's kosher? Does it have a sign? Is there a K on it? No, he says it has to have fins and scales. But Chazal explained to us that you will find many fish with just fins, such as a shark or a dolphin, which only have fins and no scales. However, you will never find, ever, including mutations or any experiments you could imagine, a fish with only scales and no fins. There are over two million species in the world, and you will never find one fish with just scales and no fins. with just fins, you have a shark, you have a dolphin, which just have fins and no scales. However, you will never find, ever, including mutations and any experiments you could imagine. There are over two million species in the world, and you will never find one fish with just scales and no fins. ...never, which means that if we find a single fish with just fins and no scales, there's a mistake in the Torah. If there's a mistake in the Torah, it's no longer divine; the whole thing is not valid. Now, Moshe couldn't have written this. How could Moshe know all the fish? He was in the desert; there wasn't even an ocean. And even if he went to the ocean, you know how many fish there are? Over 40,000 different types of fish...

1:17:41No one scientist, no one person ever knew all of them or could know all of them. Even with the computer programs, we're still finding new things in the sea. But this is a guarantee from the only place that can guarantee it: the source, a.k.a. God. Hashem also told us that you have to eat a certain type of animal. The animal has to qualify... and be kosher, not just by the way that it's slaughtered, but also by signs that it has on its body. It has to have split hooves, and it has to chew its cud. There are several animals that do this. There's the sheep, there's the cow, deer. The giraffe is actually kosher, but we don't know how to slaughter it.

1:18:42And it'll probably kill us in the way because it's a very strong animal. But Hashem gave us a sign here too. He says that any animal that's kosher has to have both of these signs. 99.999% of the animals in the world do not have any signs. And Hashem says they're not going to have any signs. They're not going to have any signs at all. Except those animals that He specified, they'll have both signs. With the exception of four animals. Four animals will have one sign. The rabbit, the hare, the camel, and the pig. They will all have just a single sign. Okay, great. What does this mean? it means that if we find a fifth animal—He said four—which means if we find number five, or number six, or number seven, or even four and a half, there's a mistake in the Torah. This means that whoever said there's only going to be four with a single sign in history, there can never be another one, including mutations.

1:20:04including evolution, including everything else you could imagine. Only the Designer of these animals and this world and heaven and the earth and everything in between could have ever said that. This is all in the Torah. So we know that obviously this information had to be divine. But how do we get to a point of understanding this Torah? The Christians say that they don't want to believe in the Oral Torah because rabbis put it together. Whereas the Torah of Moshe Rabbeinu, the Five Books of Moses, we know everyone agrees, whether it's Islam or it's Christianity, they all believe that we got that at Mount Sinai. No one disagrees with it. But the Oral Torah, they don't believe. So how do we prove that the Oral Torah is actually from G-d? Well, first and foremost, we have to understand that the Oral Torah has several parts. There is the Gemara, there is the Mishnah, there is the Zohar, there are Midrashim, there is the Shulchan Aruch,

1:21:27But one major part of all of them that most people don't actually know exists is something called Keter or Codex. What is this Codex? Now, if anyone spent a Shabbat at a Beit Knesset, they saw the scroll—the Torah scroll, right? Now, if you know the Hebrew language, you know the Hebrew language has two parts. It has the letters, and it has these dots called Nikud. Now, unlike English... called Nikud. Now, unlike English that the vowel system is letters, the letter A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y, they're all considered vowels, which means that one of those letters has to be in every single word in the English language, meaning that they're the foundation. Just like every building has to have a foundation before they build the tower, whether it's a house or a 100-story building, it has to have a foundation. Every word in the English language has to have one of those letters as the foundation.

1:22:30Whether it's A or it's I or it's U or it's all of them is irrelevant. The point is one of those letters has to be in the actual word. In the Hebrew language, we don't have such a thing. We don't have letters that are vowels. Instead, we have something called Nikud, which means that these points actually change the meaning of the word. Whether it's a Shin or a Sin is based on the Nikud. Now, the Torah scroll you have in the Beit Knesset, The Holy Torah scroll has one major law: you're not allowed to have Nikud. You're not allowed to put Nikud in it; there are no vowels in the Torah scroll. So what is this like? It's like, for example, if I wanted to say the word Moses. Moses, a simple word, a pretty important figure in history. Moses is in English; we'll compare it to English, M-O-S-E-S, right? Simple enough.

1:23:31Now if we took the vowels out of Moses, what do we have? We have M, now we can't use the O anymore. We have an S, and there's no E, and we have another S. So Moses has turned into Ms. Now if you read "Ms. got the Torah at Mount Sinai," it doesn't really mean much. Who's Ms.? Which means that without vowels, we cannot read anything. It's not that you just can't understand the mitzvot in Judaism without the Oral Torah; you can't understand the Torah. You can't understand anything. So that's why Chazal have a book, or actually a scroll originally, called the Codex, which is actually a scroll with Nikud. And this is how every book originally had to be copied from generation to generation. But nonetheless, that's why anyone that's a Chazzan, anyone that reads the Torah on Shabbat or during the week, they study before. They can't just read it off the cuff unless they have many, many years of experience. They study it. Why? Because they study it with the Nekudot. They study it with the vowels. And then it's partial reading, partial memory.

1:24:52Because you could pronounce the same five letters in a few different ways. So when someone says that there's no such thing as Oral Torah, it's pure ignorance because, again, without this part of the Oral Torah, there is no Torah. You can't understand even one sentence. You won't know who Moshe is, you won't know who Hashem is, you won't know anything. Nothing. Not even the first parashah, not even the first sentence of the Torah will be legible. So this is one major thing. The second part is that the same types of extraordinary information that we have in the written Torah, which we showed in fish or animals, we also have in the Gemara. For example, in Masechet Berachot, page 32, Am Yisrael is complaining to Hashem after He destroyed the Beit HaMikdash. telling Him, "Hashem, even a husband that leaves his wife, even if you ask him many years later, 'Do you remember your first wife?' he'd remember her. But You left us. You know, after You destroyed the Beit HaMikdash, You disconnected from us." So Hashem responds this way.

1:26:16He says, "My daughter," He calls Am Yisrael "My daughter." There are 12 constellations that I created in the firmament, meaning that the universe is split into 12 parts. This is what we actually call the mazalot, those signs. And about each and every constellation, I created 30 army commanders. And about each and every commander, I created 30 legions. And about each and every legion, I created 30 raaton. And about each and every raaton, I created 30 karaton. And about each and every karaton, I created 30 gistira. And about each and every gistira, I suspended in the firmament 3.65 million myriads of stars. Chazal looks at this, and this doesn't really mean much to anyone what I just read. But then at the end, we have a significant number.

1:27:22We have 3.65 million. We have a bunch of numbers before: 12 times 30 times 30 times 30 times 30 times 30. And at the end, Hashem is telling us that all of those numbers are connected to one thing. They're all stars. Which means that Hashem specifically told Chazal exactly how many stars exist in the universe. One of the main things that NASA has spent billions and billions of dollars doing is trying to figure out this number. In 1994, just about 20 years ago, they came out with a number: 10 to the 21st power. So, 10 with 21 zeros after it, or one with 21 zeros after it. That was their estimate. University in Australia, about 10 years later, 2004, came up with a slightly smaller estimate, which is 10 to the 19th power. So they got a little closer. If you do the math with all of these numbers, you come out with an exact number: 1, 0, 6, 4, 0, 3, 4, 0, and then 12 zeros after it.

1:28:49which, if you do the math, if you do the calculations in the same format they did, it's approximately 10 to the 18th power. This means that the more advanced science becomes, the more it can finally catch up to our Torah that we've had for over 3,000 years. It's not that science is disproving the Torah; it's that science is finally catching up to the Torah. This is just about stars. Another thing that we learn is that anyone who looks at the sun on a sunny day can't look at it for very long. I would say the maximum before you start losing your vision is maybe about a minute, a minute and a half. We usually start tearing within about 10 or 15 seconds. There was one heretic that came to one of the sages and he said, "I want to see God. I want to meet Him." This is such a silly thing to say. But the sage, with his cleverness, said, "Yeah, no problem. You want to see God? No problem. All you have to do is one thing." He said, "What?" "Look at the sun for the next day. Just one day straight."

1:30:17If you do, I'll come back here. I'll take you. I'll show you God. I'll be fine. Why not? He starts looking at the sun. The sage starts walking away. About 30 seconds later, he's screaming, "No, no, hey, hey, come back, come back. Come back, watch." He's all tears everywhere. He looks like a mess. He's like, "What happened? It's only 30 seconds past." He goes, "Yeah, I can't. I can't look at the sun. I can't see." He goes, "Oh." The sun is one of the smallest servants that Hashem has. And you can't even look at His small servant and you want to look at Him? This is one of the things that people need to understand, that all of us at some point wanted God to speak to us personally like we're Moshe. Everyone wants God to speak to them. I remember myself, when I first started doing Teshuva, I started learning, I started reading Tehillim, I swore that Hashem is going to answer me at some point. Like one point say, Yaron. Yes, God, what do you want? I thought it was going to be one of those movies. I honestly thought it was going to happen. But Hashem speaks to you in different languages. He speaks to you in different ways. He speaks to you through actions. You just have to pay attention.

1:31:32But David HaMelech told us something extraordinary in Tehillim. Tehillim, chapter 19, verse 5. David HaMelech tells us that, in the end of days, the tzaddikim will be healed by the sun. And Hashem, the wicked will be burned by the same sun. How is this going to happen? Hashem is going to take the sun out of its shell. Now, the last time I looked at the sun, there was no shell. It just looks like a big ball of fire. There's no shell. You can't see a shell. You just see a big ball of fire. You can't see anything. And this is what scientists thought, and the smartest people in the world thought, for most of history. Until the last generation, until the last 20 years, scientists realized and found out after taking X-ray pictures of the sun in 1989, and they found out that the real sun is actually inside a shell.

1:32:57It's inside something that's containing the nucleus, the hot part. Because the hot part, the one that's in the middle, is 15 million degrees Celsius. But because of this so-called shell, by the time it gets to the shell, it gets down to only 6,000 degrees Celsius. Now, anyone who knows a little bit about the sun knows that it's exactly in the only place where it could exist and we could exist at the same time. Meaning that if the Earth moved one degree closer to the sun, the whole world would burn—one degree. One degree further, and we'd all freeze. So, the sun is in a precise spot, of where it needs to be. But not only that, if this shell had a little bit of a problem where there was a crack somewhere, it wouldn’t only be 6,000 degrees, it would be 15 million degrees. Or even if it was 6,001 degrees, the world would cease to exist. Now, David HaMelech already knew this 3,000 years ago.

1:34:25Scientists just discovered it recently. Now, one of the main things, one of the main career choices for anyone that wants this book, let me know and I can send it to you. It's an amazing book by Rabbi Zamir Cohen. It has two names. One is The Coming Revolution and the other one is Science Comes of Age. It's the same book, just a different name. I give them out for free, so anyone that wants it, just tell me and I'll send it to you. One of the main professions that Jewish people like to choose is being a doctor. Everyone is very amazed at the genius of doctors today. They come up with all these different things. But I'd like to tell you that a lot of the credit that they're getting is not really due to them. Because if you just listen to Torah, you'd actually know a lot of the stuff that they just found out in recent generations. For example, only in the last generation or two, did surgery become painless.

1:35:37If you look at surgeries that happened 100 years ago, 150 years ago, 200 years ago, many people died from the pain and suffering because there was no anesthesia. And the only form of anesthesia they had would more often kill the person than actually put him to sleep. They either gave him alcohol or, in some cases, actually gave him poison. And hopefully, he'd wake up. So these are the smartest people in the world in that generation. Usually, the biggest mistakes are made by the smartest people. But now we've come up with this new technology, with this way to give anesthesia, to get people to sleep, so they don't feel the pain. No one wants to feel the pain. But if we look at the Gemara, we see that Rabbi Elazar, the son of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai,

1:36:40Nearly 2,000 years ago, not only had a surgery that the Chazal give exact details of, but he had a surgery that you could not even do with today's technology. He had a liposuction over 2,000 years ago, but if you ask the best doctors in the world, to tell you that the amount of fat that they took out of his body is not possible with today's technology. It's too much. The person would die today. But 2,000 years ago, the Gemara says, they gave him a drug to put him to sleep. They put him on a table made out of marble, which obviously shows that they knew about germs because marble doesn't retain all the germs that other materials do. And they took out buckets of fat from his body. And why did he do all of this? Not because he really cared about how he looks, but because someone accused him of being a wicked person. So he's saying, listen, I have studied Torah my entire life. I've given up my life to study Torah. And when you become such a holy person, it's not just your neshamah that improves, it's your body that improves. So much so,

1:38:05that you can make your body become holy, become similar to your soul. So you say, I want to see what happens to my body after I die. But I can't wait until after I die. Because as we all know, when someone dies, immediately worms and snakes and all types of interesting creatures eat that body up, and over the next year, the body becomes just bones. But it says that the righteous, nothing touches them. They stay whole. They're truly righteous. So he says, okay, I want to see it. So he took out fat from his body. He says, let me see what happens to it after I put it in the hot sun. Now, obviously, if you just put a steak, you don't need to think about a body part. Just take a steak. You buy it from Pomegranate or something. Put it outside. Or actually, buy a non-kosher one. You don't need to waste the money on a kosher one for an experiment. Eat the kosher one. So... You take a steak, you put it outside, any day, it doesn't even have to be a hot day, and come back three hours later, not three days, three hours, and you'll see it full of worms and maggots and all types of interesting creatures. Another interesting experiment to do for anyone that has ever doubted why Hashem told us not to eat pig, bacon, and white meat, all these wonderful names that they have for it.

1:39:31One of the main reasons is not only because He said it in the Torah, but He said it's also a filthy animal, and you become what you eat. When someone eats that type of animal, they start taking on its nature. Why? Because a pig will eat anything. Something alive, something dead, anything you throw in its way, it'll eat. But a pig is the only animal that doesn't sweat. Every animal sweats, including humans, but the pig doesn't sweat. Now, it doesn't seem like a bad problem. No one wants to sweat. But in reality, sweating is what saves your life every day. If you didn't sweat, if you ever got sick, even with a mild cold, without sweating, you could never heal. So, sweating is a mercy from Hashem. Animals sweat, except the pig. Which means that even if a snake bit a pig, it wouldn't affect it. Wouldn't affect it. Why? Because the pig is so impure, so poisonous, that nothing can affect it. It keeps everything inside.

1:40:57And that's why if you take a slice of bacon or any type of pig meat and you just pour a little bit of Coca-Cola on it, just a little. Put a little bit of Coca-Cola. Within a few minutes, you'll see all the maggots come out. Even if they just killed the pig five minutes ago. You'll see all the maggots and worms come out of the meat immediately because they're always there. It can never be clean. It's a filthy animal. It's always been one. It always will be one. And people that eat it are just outright fools or ignorant of this information. This was one of my issues that even though I never ate pig, it's just that as far as eating kosher, I never understood. Is it just that a bunch of rabbis have a monopoly on the market or is there a real meaning to this stuff? So for example, I started looking at things and said, okay, so there's this juice called Sunny Delight.

1:41:59really, really orange, orange juice. And until about five years ago, it wasn't kosher. Now, if you don't know this information, you'd say to yourself, why would orange juice not be kosher? It's orange juice. For heaven's sake, it's orange juice. It's oranges. You squeeze them. You put them in a bottle. I buy it. I drink it. I'm happy. You're happy. What's wrong with this orange juice? Rabbis have a monopoly. It's their fault. It's their fault. It's their fault. But then you start learning. And you see that the reason why Sunny Delight was not kosher was because the company decided that they wanted their orange juice to be more yellow than standard orange juice. How do you make orange juice more yellow? You add an ingredient. It's called beetles. Crushed beetles. Millions and millions of crushed beetles.

1:43:00Create a yellow orange juice. So we're drinking this orange juice. Who cares about these rabbis? I'm showing them. I'm eating them. I'm drinking this orange juice. And at the same time, we're eating beetles. Same thing with pizza. I thought, ah, these rabbis. It's cheese. What could possibly be wrong with cheese? It comes from a cow. There's cheese. There's tomato. There's bread. What's wrong with all these things? It's just three ingredients. I'm not going to eat the pepperoni. Fine, I'm not going to eat the pepperoni pizza. But a regular slice of pizza? What's wrong with a regular slice of pizza? And then you look at the ingredients. You don't need to look too far. You can go to any supermarket, and you look. A regular supermarket, not a kosher supermarket. You go to a regular supermarket, and you see kosher cheese. Maybe there are four or five different kosher cheeses. Non-kosher cheeses, 150.

1:44:02Why is there such a huge difference? Why are there only a few? What, the rabbis couldn't convince the cheese companies to put a kosher symbol on it? No. In the Gemara Masechet Avoda Zara, the sages say you're not allowed to eat the cheese of the goyim. Why? Because they use lard as part of their ingredients. They use meat. And they use one particular part that comes from inside the stomach of different animals. In today's age, the most common animal that they use to put into cheese is the stomach of the same pig we just talked about. It's a cheap animal, and it's not usually a part that you want a steak from. So they use it for cheese. Now, if you had known that when you're eating this nice, delicious slice of pizza, you're also eating this gross animal and the grossest part of it, would you still eat it? Probably not, right? That's why Hashem said you have to learn this stuff.

1:45:25And that's the main thing that I tried to do. Once I got into this stuff, once I got into Torah, I became obsessive. I started learning and learning and learning and started realizing that there's actually answers for everything in the world. Whether it's science, history, medicine, anything you want. Either Hashem told us directly or He told it to the Sages and they have had this information already for thousands of years. The only thing we need to do is look for it. Just like He told us, if you look for Me with all of your heart and all of your soul. Not if you just look for Me somewhere one day and then you give up. But if you look for Me with all of your heart and all of your soul, you'll find Me. So these are just a few things that... You can see that the Torah, whether it's the Written or the Oral, has many examples. There are hundreds. I could spend the next five hours giving you different proofs that the Torah is divine. One major thing I would recommend to everyone is to take time and watch the movie by Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi called Torah and Science. It's four hours. You can watch it in parts, obviously. Listen, it's time for Torah.

1:46:48You’ve got to make time for Hashem. It's four hours, but you can watch it in pieces. You can watch one hour here, an hour there, half an hour here, half an hour there. But still, you know, it's four hours of amazing proofs from the Torah, scientific proofs of the Torah, similar to what we talked about. And you can see in an unequivocal way that the Torah is divine, in a way that you can apply to your life. Proving God is not too difficult. Proving God, you know that, again, even if you believe in the foolishness that everything started from one cell, you still look at the fact that where did the first cell come from? Another proof is something that's a little more scientific, but I'll try to cover it in a minute or two, is if you look at the world, and you look through a scientist's eyes, they tell us that everything is made from atoms. Everything is energy. And these atoms technically have two key parts. There's a proton, and there's an electron. There's a neutron, but let's say one small ball, one big ball. We'll make it simple, not too scientific. Whether it's you, or it's me, or it's the table, or it's the house, or it's a building, or the camera, or the pig that we just talked about so much, everything is made out of these small, tiny little atoms.

1:48:15But scientists also found out that 99%, 99.9% of an atom is completely empty space. It's nothing. Nothing there. Why? Because the difference between the small ball and the big ball is similar to the difference between us and the sun. So most of this, what looks like one ball, is nothing. is nothing. Why do we see something solid? Why do we see her? Why do I see you? Why do I see this laptop? Why do you see everything solid? Because it's spinning really, really fast. What is it like? It's like a fan. If you have a fan and it's going really fast, it looks like there's a single blade. There's one blade. But if you slow it down, it looks like there are two blades. If you completely stop it, then you see, oh, it's four blades.

1:49:15Why did I only see a single blade in the beginning? Because it went really, really fast. So the atom is spinning really, really fast, making everything look like it's actually solid. But in reality, nothing is solid. It's an optical illusion. Hashem says to the prophet Yirmiyahu, if it's not for My covenant day and night, the covenant being learning Torah, if there's not someone in the world learning Torah 24 hours a day, someone somewhere has to be learning Torah. Not 24 hours consecutively, but someone in the world has to be learning Torah. If not for this covenant, the rules of the world would cease to exist. What does it mean the rules of the world would cease to exist? You guys heard of gravity? You know, that thing that makes you fall down every time you want to jump really high? You heard of oxygen, the stuff that you breathe? You heard of all this stuff, right? Those rules cease to exist. Can I just say one thing? One second, let me finish the point. But one main thing connecting to this atom is that what happens if the two dots...

1:50:40stops spinning. Then, just like the fan exposed the truth, which was that there are four blades, the atom will expose the truth, which is 99.999% nothing. The world doesn't explode if the atom stops spinning. It just disappears. It ceases to exist. So when people think of destruction, they think, oh, Noach. No. It doesn't mean that Hashem will destroy the world in a natural way that we think of. The Torah is so important to Hashem that if there's not a person learning Torah in the world, the atom just stops spinning. Everything disappears. And the actual matter that exists, according to scientists of the entire universe, all of the actual matter that actually exists, because there is something in the end, all of it can fit into a box of matches. So the actual something we have is almost nothing. So what's your question?

1:52:01Somebody has to be studying at all times, regardless of whether it's 3 o'clock in the morning in Australia or 12 o'clock in the afternoon in America. The point is that Hashem is saying that someone has to be studying at all times in order for Me to agree to have this world exist. Are women included in the learning or is it men? Men are obligated to learn Torah every day. Women are obligated to learn enough to raise a Jewish home. This means that you have to know the basics. You have to know about Shabbat. You have to know about modesty, which we talked about earlier. You have to know the basics. You cannot be an ignorant person and expect your kids to become tzaddikim. There's no such thing as a righteous person that's ignorant. No such thing. Why? Because in order for you to be righteous, in order for you to be good, you have to know what the definition of good is. If you leave the definition of good to your own logic, then that means that Hitler was good too. He used his own logic.

1:53:19According to him, in his crazy book that just got republished a few months ago and sold out in a matter of minutes—because there are still crazy people in the world, no less than there were 70 years ago—he thought he was doing the world a favor by destroying anyone who didn't look a certain way, even though he himself did not look like it. Most notably, he picked on the Jews, but according to his logic... He was doing the world a favor. Now, you obviously know that it was wrong. So what makes you think you're right? What makes you think that your logic is any better than his? Okay, fine, you don't want to kill six million people, great. But it still doesn't mean that your human mind is right. The only one who could possibly know how to use logic the product, the best possible way, is the Manufacturer, a.k.a. Hashem. Hashem is the Manufacturer. He gave us an instruction set. He's telling you, this is the instruction set of how to function. If Steve Jobs came out and we never had phones and he gave us this box and we never saw a phone before,

1:54:49We think, wow, very nice, fancy-looking box. Maybe it's a weapon. Maybe it's a cup holder. Maybe it's a door stopper. We want to know what it is. How does he know what to do? How does somebody know what to do? There are instructions. We have to have instructions. Anyone knows that if you want someone to use your product, you have to give them instructions. So, if the creation knows enough to know that they need to give instructions, obviously the Creator should also know. And the Creator gave us instructions. And in those instructions, He told us: your logic, unless the source of it is from My instructions, is wrong. Not sometimes, all the time. Including me, including you, including the smartest scientists in history, including anyone. If this logic we have does not have a foundation in the Torah, it cannot be right. Which is very, very difficult for the pride to handle.

1:56:07Why? Because our pride tells us, nah, come on, I'm such a smart guy, I read so many books, I know this book by heart, I know that book, I'm this and I'm that, and I have this degree and I have that degree. And the closer you get to Hashem, the more you realize that you know nothing. And this is one of the things that was difficult for me. I had eight security licenses, which each one of them, the minimum was 150 questions. I had... ...a few other licenses, a few other degrees. To tell me that I know nothing, it's kind of rough. But then I realized that I know nothing. So you start learning. And as you see me today, I don't look sick. Because Baruch Hashem, I'm not sick. What was the cure? Torah.

1:57:09Just stopped. Once in a while, I get a few pains, but if you compare today to just a few years ago, I already have the share of Olam Haba. Can't compare. This is like Gan Eden. I had pain 24 hours a day, seven days a week, no Shabbat for the pain. The pain didn't take a break. all the time, surgeries on a monthly basis. It got to the point, I'm not gonna be too graphic, because I want you guys to sleep at night, but it got to the point where I hated doctors so much that I started giving myself my own operation. Whoa, what does that mean? I cut myself to make the infection come out of the body. Once you go to 50 doctors and they all make your body worse, you get to a point of hating them. And each one of them was supposed to be smarter than the other. This one was in the business for 20 years, this one is a doctor for 30 years, this one has a room full of plaques that mean nothing, the other one has a room full of plaques that maybe mean something, maybe not, but he doesn't even want to see me. All these degrees, all these brains, all this power, and all of it meant zero.

1:58:31Money wasn't an issue, so no one could ever tell me, "Listen, you didn't pay me enough." Time wasn't an issue because I had all the time in the world. But it got to a point that, like I told you before, I became just an experiment for people to try stuff out. I tried steroids like the athletes use, HGH, and testosterone. I tried ozone, I tried acupuncture, I tried everything you can possibly imagine to fix it, to slow it down, to do anything. To even just diagnose it, just tell me what's wrong. Why does it keep coming back? Why do I keep getting infections? Why am I in pain 24 hours a day? Why, why, why? No answers. The only answer was from the same One that gave me the disease. Which happens to be the same One that created you too. He's the One that gave it. He's the One that took it. So when people ask me, you really believe in this G-d stuff? I say, I don't believe. I know.

1:59:52Why? I see it every day. I see miracles every day. Anyone that's ever had emunah issues, you want to hear about a miracle, call me. There's a miracle every day, either my personal miracle or somebody else that's connected to me, a student or someone. Someone that's connected to me in some way has a miracle every single day. What's the difference? We look for it. Miracles are happening in your life every day also. You just have to look. Sometimes we think that, you know, I really have bad luck today. There's a lot of traffic or I got a flat tire. But if you actually fast forward things the way they were supposed to happen, you realize what actually happened to my wife one time many years ago, which is that she had a flat tire, but that flat tire actually saved her life. Because if she was exactly where she was supposed to be at the time she was supposed to be, she would have been hit by an 18-wheeler truck. So sometimes, things that seem unfortunate are actually the biggest miracles you can find. You have to look for them, though. And as Hashem said, if you look for Me with all your heart and all your soul, you'll find Me.

2:01:19And this is the main thing that I want to leave with you guys. The Torah is not a history book, as we've said several times. What's in it, you can prove that it's divine and it's from Hashem. Whether it's the written Torah, the Oral Torah, one main thing that we've learned from me personally, from my story, or from this parasha that we saw last week, is that Hashem is not kidding. He's not joking. He's not our friend. He's our God. He told us that we have to follow these laws. The least that you can do is find out what they are. Find out what it is. Find out what it is. Try it out. Taking a vacation once a week is not so bad for anyone that's not keeping Shabbat. Being modest is not exactly the worst thing in the world if you actually care about your body and pride and really want to be a preserved woman and not one of these women that's in today and gone tomorrow. You know, we used to have women in this public school that people would call them, you know, much worse names than that. But we get to a point that it was normal to have multiple boyfriends at the same time, and you can understand the rest. Being a parent at the age of 16 became a normal thing in today's world. Why? Because people think that they want to grow up and they want to do what they want. They don't want to listen to a shaman. They want to create their own thing.

2:02:44Much worse names than that. But we got to a point where it was normal to have multiple boyfriends at the same time, and you can understand the rest. Being a parent at the age of 16 became a normal thing in today's world. Why? Because people think that they want to grow up and do what they want. They don't want to listen to Hashem. They want to create their own thing. Now, us, we know that, Baruch Hashem, we have Judaism, we have Torah, we have mitzvot, we have a mission in the world, we have a purpose. But the most important thing that we have to understand is that just like we know that modesty is important, just like we know that Shabbat is important, everything else the Torah says is also important. So, to finalize everything, I would tell you that if you have any questions about Judaism, about Hashem, about science, about anything and everything, please ask.

2:03:47You should not go to sleep with even one question. If there's an actual question, there has to be an answer. If I don't know it, I'll find it for you. But you shouldn't live without finding the answers. Because there has to be an answer. Because if you don't have answers, it's very easy to create excuses not to do the rest. So do what I did, ask questions, and maybe I'll be your Efraim, or maybe I'll find you another Efraim. Any questions? I know you have questions, but as soon as I turn off the camera, everybody asks questions. Okay, I'll pretend I turned off the camera. Anyone? Okay. Thank you very much, everyone, for coming, and also support this organization for the righteous things that they're doing. They're trying to do kiruv, which is extraordinary. They're trying to help people get to Eretz Yisrael. They're trying to help young girls get back on the derech, get closer to Hashem. And you know what? Listen, I just came back from Eretz Yisrael about a month ago. It does have something special. The Torah over there is amazing. The Kedushah over there is amazing. And if you want to see miracles,

2:04:57It's probably easier to see it there than anywhere else in the world. Thank you for coming, everyone. If you want to see any of the shiurim, you can see them on TorahAnytime.com or, like I said, my website, BezratHashem.org. Yeah, I'll press it. Fine. Thank you.