Shiur Torah #94 HaShem Took His Million$ Back and Gave Me Emunah Instead!

0:01we have an amazing shiur Torah, an amazing group. Thank you for coming. Also, thank you very much for organizing this whole thing. Of course, thank you. So, it's a... You see, in today's world, you have... A rabbi like this, that's right in front of me, that is willing to tell the truth. In today's world, you can't find too much of the truth, unfortunately. And one of the main reasons is because we live in a world that is politically correct. Unfortunately, politically correct doesn't make people do teshuva. Doesn't make people do teshuva. Why doesn't it make people do teshuva? Because when you're politically correct, you worry too much about people's feelings. Now, if I came here and I told you, "Listen, you're all tzaddikim, everything is fine, no one needs to do anything, just give a little tzedakah and everything's fine," everyone's going to leave saying, "Wow, he has a very good business," and you're going to go back to your life and nothing's going to change. But if I'm going to tell you what God said,

1:27And what God said is a little bit different. What God said is a little bit different than what most people say. What God said is a little harsher. What God said is a little stronger language than everyone's tzaddikim. God told us last week, last week's parasha, im bechukotai telechu. He said, if you walk with My mitzvot, meaning if you take My laws everywhere with you, whether you go on vacation, God has to be with you, you have to be religious. When you're home, you have to be religious. When you're in your business, you have to be religious. What does it mean to be religious? Being religious means you have to have Yirat Shamayim. The foundation of religion is to have Yirat Shamayim. Know that Hashem is watching you at all times. Shiviti Hashem l'negdi tamid. If you really believe that Hashem is watching everything that you're doing, you'd act a little differently. But my story doesn't start with religion. My story doesn't start with the truth. I wasn't as fortunate as your Rabbi over here. My story starts with Alma DeShikra—the world of lies. Now, the world of lies is very interesting because the whole time you're in it, you think it's the truth.

2:58I was surrounded by people that were not willing to tell the truth like your Rav, but they liked money. I had a lot of it, which I'll tell you how I got it. And for many, many years, they came, they collected, and they said nothing. And it cost me a lot. So I came to the United States when I was 10 years old, which is about 26 years ago. I knew three letters of the alphabet because it was on a cereal box, ABC. But when you're 10 years old, you come to a new country, you learn a language pretty quickly. I liked studying, I liked books. And my parents, unfortunately, did not know that if you send your kid to public school, he automatically becomes a goy. Not because he wants to, but just because that's his surroundings. When you see a bunch of kids, you know, when you're a kid, and you see a bunch of kids, you're intimidated by them, you look up to them, you think they're all cool, you want to be like them. So when you see a bunch of Italian kids, and Spanish kids, and black kids, and all types of Irish kids, with the crosses and the earrings and everything else,

4:25I said, "Oh, wow, I want to be like them." Because you want to be liked. So even though I grew up in a house that kept some basic mitzvot, kept them solid, as soon as we landed in America, we became goyim. We still did kiddush on Shabbat, like most houses do, but we would go play video games right after. We got a little older, we went to the movies. got a little older, went to the clubs. I dedicated a lot of time to school; I was a good student. I started working when I was young, maybe when I was 10 or 11 years old—pretty much as soon as we came to the United States. I always had some money in my pocket and helped the family out. By the time I was 17 years old, before I went to college, I was working in the electronics business like a lot of Israelis and Syrians did at the time. I was already making $100,000 a year, so I already knew what money was at a young age, but I also knew that I didn't want to be in this business forever or even for a long time. So I went to college. I went to Binghamton University. I had a 3.9 GPA.

5:40They considered me a talmid chacham in the secular world. After a year, I dropped out. Why? I was surrounded by losers. I saw no purpose in going to college. I already knew what I wanted. I wanted money. And the only reason I think people go to school is, the only purpose for school, unless you have a specific profession you're going after, if you're going to be an architect, you're going to be a doctor, you're gonna be a lawyer, you're gonna be an accountant where you actually need a degree, otherwise, it's a waste of time. The only purpose for school in general is to teach you how to think. You're not gonna use the history lessons you learned in social studies. The gym classes you took in high school are not going to help you in life unless you continue working out forever. Math classes you could probably learn just working at a grocery store or just use a calculator. So generally, school is actually a waste of time for most people if you're not willing to dedicate yourself to a specific profession. Since I already knew what I wanted to do,

6:47I didn't want to be a lawyer, I didn't want to be a doctor, and I didn't want to be in school for 100 years. I was already used to money. Seventeen years old, making a lot of money, I go to school; everyone is just smoking pot all day and going to clubs. It was fun, but it was a waste of time. So I left, and I went back to the computer business and started selling computers again for a few more months, made some more money, but then decided that it's time to leave. I have to get something that's better. Why? Because I realized that I didn't really like the business. It wasn't the most honest business in the world. But the second thing is that I realized that I had a cap. And when you're ambitious and young, you don't want anyone to give you a ceiling. I knew that the only guys that were actually making real money with the owners. And I definitely did not want to be an owner of a store like that. So I left. I ran into an old high school buddy, and he told me, "Listen, you should go into the car business." I said, "Okay, fine. Let me go into the car business." So I go meet somebody in the car business, and I have a meeting with the owner. And he said, "Oh, come in, come in." I told him, "Wait a second. You know, I'm young. I'm 18 years old. I have a ponytail." I told him, "Wait before I spend any time here."

8:02You mind telling me how much your top guy makes? And the guy was taken aback. He's like 50, 60 years old. He sees this little kid asking, how much does your top guy make? He says, oh, maybe like $150,000. I said, oh, OK, thank you. I'm not interested. I said, "What? What do you mean you're not interested?" He said, "No, I'm already making a little over $100,000 and I've only been there for a year. If your top guy is making $150,000, that means he's been here for at least five years. For me to wait five years for another $50,000 is a waste of my time. Call it big-headed, naive, or ambitious." So then this friend told me, "I think you're crazy, but if you want, you can get into the business I'm in, but you're definitely not going to make the money that you're making now." I said, "What do you do?" He says, "I'm a stockbroker. The guys that work in my office, my bosses, make a lot of money. They make real money. But it takes a while." I said, "OK, introduce me to them. I always liked business. I heard a little bit about the stock market. I invested a few dollars into it. Why not?"

9:04I go into this office like if anybody's ever watched the movie Boiler Room. A bunch of crooks steal money from people. That was the office that I went into. And I saw, I didn't know, obviously, about all the stealing and the stuff that they were doing. And I went into this office, and I see everybody's young, in their mid-twenties, early thirties. There are Ferraris and Porsches and all types of brand-new cars in their parking lot. Everyone has a brand-new suit that costs at least a thousand dollars. I said, "Okay, I'm making money, but these guys are really doing it. So I asked the guy, 'What do I do?' He says, 'Listen, you make some calls to prospect people. You don't make any actual sales. You have to study for a test, and then you start working.' I said, 'Okay, how much money do I make?' He says, 'You make $250 a week. You make $1,000 a month, which is pretty much what I was making in a few days.' I said, 'Okay, no problem.'" Can I start tomorrow? He said, yeah, sure. Okay. So I started working. This place was in Staten Island, New York. A month into it, I started noticing that things were a little strange in this office. I wasn't making any sales. I was just learning or asking people if they were interested in hearing from my firm or getting a package from the firm. But a month into it,

10:25We had to start work early. We had to start work at 8 o'clock in the morning on the dot and leave at 8 o'clock at night with, I think, about a half-hour break a day. Long schedule, tough schedule, but you can manage. So one day at 7:58 in the morning, I'm reading the Wall Street Journal because I'm starting to learn about this business. I got into it, and my boss gets into the office very angry, and he looks at me in the office. He goes, "What are you doing? Get on the phone." Now, I have a little bit of self-respect. I don't like when people yell at me. So I told him, okay, relax. It's 7:58. So he, with his Italian hothead, said, relax? You relax! Get out of here. You're fired. Go home. I said, are you sure? He was all pumped up and, you know, all gassed up. And I'm talking, are you sure? I'm very calm and collected and not understanding why he's so angry at 7:58 in the morning. He said, yeah, get out. I said, okay, fine. I leave. See, the Satan works in this lecture also. I forgot to turn on the iPad. It's okay. So...

11:41I leave the office. Maybe about an hour later, my friend calls me. He says, "Listen, he said you can come back." I said, "I'll never work for him again. I don't work for people that talk to me like that." A few days later, I find another job, another brokerage firm in the city. Small firm. And the guy there He's very ambitious, very hungry, much smaller office, only a few people. This first office had at least 100 people. This place only has maybe three or four. But he's very ambitious, very bold, and very arrogant. And he happened to be a friend of my brother's. So I go and I start working for him. Within a few months, I start training other people. And on the side, I'm spending as much time as I possibly can learning about this business. I worked for him for the next year and a half, two years. After two years, I realized that he's the only one that's actually making money. I'm only making, at best, maybe $1,200 a month. And he's buying Porsches and houses and jewelry for his family and everything in between. It's just unbelievable. And I still could barely survive.

13:03So after a couple of years of doing this, I decide that it's time for me to leave. We get into a disagreement. I walk away. And I go back into the electronics business for a few more months. Then the firm next door, which was actually a big firm, calls me and says, do you want to come back to the business? One of the guys there offers me a deal. He says, listen, if you come in, I'll be your partner. We'll split. You won't be a trainee. You'll actually be a real broker. And you won't work for me; you'll actually be a partner. I said, okay, that sounds good. Before that, I want to get my own licenses and so on. So I take my licenses, I pass the tests, and I start working somewhere around July of 2001. A couple of months before a very interesting event happened in the world. July or June of 2001, something like that. So anyway... I start working, and within a few days, I realize that my so-called partner is a very lazy person. I'm showing up to the office at 7 o'clock in the morning; he shows up somewhere around 10:30 or 11. He leaves at 3:30 or 4; I leave at 8 or 9. A little bit of a different schedule. After a month of working, our deal was that he was supposed to pay me $2,200 a month just as a draw until I actually start making money from commissions from all these clients that I'm bringing in.

14:27After a month passes, I tell him, okay, I need my money. And he tells me, no, no, I hold the first check in case you screw me. What a nice guy. So the owner of the branch doesn't say anything. The rest of the people in the office who know this guy is not exactly the most honest person on earth don't say anything. They're politically correct. So another month passes. I said, okay, now you owe me $4,400. I brought in 25 accounts, which is a lot considering. Pay me my money. And he gives me a check for $81.12. A personal check, nonetheless. So I said, what's this? Lunch money? And he says to me, "No, this is what we earned from the commission." I'm like, "This is not what we earned from the commission. Just from the accounts that I brought in, we earned a few thousand dollars." He goes, "No, but I had this expense and that expense and this expense and that expense." But it has nothing to do with our deal. He goes, "What deal?" I said, "The deal that you told me to get me in here where you told me that you're going to pay me $2,200 just to walk in as a draw and I'll pay you back because we have a contract."

15:44I said, "What contract? No, you told me you're going to give it to me. What do you mean contract?" He goes, "I don't remember telling you anything like that." As you learn from the rest of the story, money makes people do strange things. If you ever want to get to know someone, put a lot of money in front of them, and they'll mutate into what they really are. When someone doesn't have money, they're usually nice, unless they're very bitter. But when someone has a lot of money, or suddenly gets rich quick, they usually become a little bit of a different person than they were when they didn’t have money. So now this guy has obviously put me in a really bad spot. I'm at a point where I only have maybe $2,000 left in my bank account from the savings that I had. Not enough money to really survive for long. And I go to the branch manager, and I tell him, "Listen, the guy screwed me. I don't want to be a partner with him anymore. I want to be on my own." He says, "Yeah, but you're too new, and I'm not really sure I can trust you. And also, just to work here, you have to pay me rent. You have to pay me for the computer. You have to pay me for this. You have to pay me for the coffee, the paper, the this." And he created all these fees, minimum $4,000 a month. I said, "OK, I'll come up with it." He said, "Let me think about it." I said, "All right, fine."

17:11He thinks about it over the weekend, over his break. He comes back from the break. He says, "All right, you know what? Why do you think you should do this? Why should I let you do this?" I said, "Because I'm ambitious. I know what I'm doing. I work harder than everybody else in this office. And I have potential." He says, "Yeah, but where are you going to come up with the money?" I have no idea. He says, "What's your intention here?" I remember this question for the rest of my life because the answer was more interesting. I said to buy you out. So he's in the business for almost 20 years, I'm this young 20-year-old kid, and I think I could buy him out. He was amused, and he said fine, you could start working on your own after this break that we had before it for some reason. I said great. I start working a few days, and then September 11th happens. September 11th put us out of work for a few weeks. And then when we came back, this former partner of mine, I found out that he quit the business. A lot of people quit the business after September 11th. And now, all of a sudden, I had to build a business in the worst market in history. I said, all right, this is a good opportunity.

18:34So I decided, you know what, I have to catch up to these old-timers. The only way I can do it is by working twice as much as them. They work from 9 to 5; I'll work from 8 to 12. I'll start the day, leave the house around 5, get to the office around 6:30, do a little bit of reading, and start making some calls at 8. Continue until about midnight when I can't see anymore. Get back, go out on the bus. Get home at around 2. Get a couple of hours of sleep and there you go. Their two days will be my one day. Eventually, I'll catch up. In the beginning, it was very, very hard because I didn't have any money coming in, and any money that would come in went directly to this wonderful boss of mine. For the first six months, it got to a point where I was living on nothing. All the money that I had left, I would start selling things just to pay the rent because I don't like to owe people money.

19:40but it got to a point where I had to borrow a dollar from this guy, Dimitri, every day so I could buy a coffee and a donut, and that was my food for the day. And every day, I would sneak on the bus with an empty MetroCard and tell the bus driver, "Oh, it's not working? Like I didn't know." And I'd say, "OK, you know what? Let me check my bag. I'll get another MetroCard." So I go to the back of the bus. and fall asleep praying that he doesn't throw me out of the bus when he realizes I'm not coming back. And this continued for about six months. After six months, I got my first break, started making some money, made $5,000 for the month. Next month, made about $7,000 for the month. The clients I was getting started sending me some referrals. I was getting more and more clients, building the business. And eventually, the one big investment that I made, I was investing everyone into the same thing. It ended up working out in November of 2002, about a year after I started. In a market that went down 26%, we made over 70%, and I made $117,000 in a month. That was the beginning. I got my first break, got my first big check. Life was never the same. The next month, I made about $60,000. The following month, I made about $180,000.

21:01And from that point on, a bad month would be about $75,000 to $100,000. By August of 2003, I became the number three producing broker in the entire country for that firm, which had about 5,000 brokers with an average career of about 20 years. I was only in it for a couple of years. I made my first million dollars of actual take-home money. So I don't really know how much it was above that because I paid a bunch of fees and all of that, but I took home about a million. And then I decided it's time for me to go and start my own firm. I have money. I know what I'm doing. Why not? I hired a bunch of people. I started my own company. Every one of the companies that I've ever opened had my name on it, Reuven something. The first one was Reuven Enterprises, then it was Reuven Capital, and Reuven Strategic Wealth Planning, and a bunch of Reuvens everywhere. So, I started hiring people, started building a business, and then it got to a point where a bad month was about 200,000 to 250,000 dollars. I was making a few million dollars every year.

22:11Gave some money to people that needed it, donated some money, bought a Sefer Torah. Throughout all of this time, keeping barely any mitzvot. I think any mitzvah I kept was by luck. I believed in God, but in my own version of it, which is like most people in today's world. We believe that there's a Creator because we need Him when we're sick, when we're poor, when we're hungry. But the stuff that he said, I don't know that much about. I don't have that much time for it. I'm very busy, God. I need to work. I need to make money. People think that God has done everything, can do everything, created the heaven and the earth and everything in between. But when it comes to parnasah, no, He's limited. I need to help Him. That's why they work on Shabbat. That's why they work overtime. That's why they spend their life chasing money and not even giving Hashem the opportunity to show you what He can do. Hashem tells you one major thing: I will help you as much as you believe in Me. If you believe in Me 100%, then I will give you 100% of your parnasah.

23:25Either way, everything He gives you. But when I say He's going to give you 100% of your parnasah, He's going to give you 100% of your parnasah without working. Money will show up. How? I live like that, and I have no idea. Avreichim that are in kollel live just like that for many years. Like my Rav in Yerushalayim has been living like that for his whole life. He still can't explain how he pays the bills, and when he goes to the supermarket for Shabbat, he doesn't even look at the price and buys everything in sight. Who's going to pay for it? That's Hashem's problem. I do what He wants. He says, if you do My will, if you make My will into your will, and you make His will into your will, He'll make your will into His will. He says it. so he says, "Okay, this is what I'm going to do. That's who I learned it from. It works." So then, moving on with the story, Hashem sent me to Wall Street to become a big success. I thought He sent me to become the next Warren Buffet or the next Bill Gates or the next something big. If I'm already making a few million dollars in my early 20's, watch out Bill Gates; by the time I'm 40, you're going to work for me.

24:56Little by little, I started adding to my friend's collection. When you have money, all of a sudden a bunch of people show up. They all want to be your friend. Anybody know why? I thought it was just because I was a nice guy. But for some reason, it had to do with the money. So they come, and every misken in the world, every poor guy in the world that wanted a job, I'd give him a job just because I had money and he needed a job. So I'd give him a job. Some of them were terrible. Some of them were okay. Some of them were thieves. But I gave everybody a job. Little by little, the firm grew. I started training people. My main focus, aside from investing my own money, investing clients' money, and doing research, my main skill set was as a salesman. I was the ultimate salesman. I could sell anything to anyone at any time for the highest price possible, and they'd enjoy it more than they'd enjoy it if they bought it on sale. I taught people how to sell. I created my own system.

25:56And when the average broker on Wall Street was hoping for a $50,000 transaction, people were begging me to take their $500,000 because that was my minimum order in many cases. If you wanted to do business with me, you had to have that kind of money. If I called you and you offered $100,000, most of the time I would tell you, no, I'm not interested. You make good money if somebody invests $100,000 with you. Make $4,000 or $5,000. Make $2,000. It depends on what you charge. me was not I was not interested, and also, I was the most expensive guy on Wall Street. Most brokers like to discount their trades; they would charge one percent, two percent, but they would also turn the guy and constantly trade his account just to create more fees. I would usually do one transaction every year, two years, sometimes three years, but my transaction was high. Because I figured that if you're investing with me, you're really investing for real. You're not investing just for me to make money. You're investing for you to make money. And it's going to take a couple of years for you to make money. For all those years, you're going to give me a headache about this money you invested with me. You need to pay me for it. So I would charge. And nobody minded. Anybody that did business with me was willing to pay me a transaction fee. If somebody sent me a million bucks, I'd take home $40,000, $50,000 for the day, go home, sometimes work more.

27:19One day, a bunch of my guys went on a ski trip, and I was the only guy in the office. I told them I'd show up at the ski trip, but I actually have to work, unlike you people. Somehow they didn't feel they needed to work, even though they were my employees. So, I show up to this ski trip. I said, there was no business today, right? I said, I don't know. I showed them, no, actually, today I made $26,000. This guy called me. Every one of them wanted to kill themselves because every one of them could have gotten the same call. So anyway, money was plenty, and now I started getting fame. I went on CNBC, Bloomberg, CNN, and started writing articles. Baruch Hashem, everything was going fine. But Hashem didn't send me to the world to do that. He didn't send you to the world to make money. "Everything is Mine," is what Hashem says. "Everything is Mine." Which means if you want something, I'll give it to you. But if you don't use it right, I'll take it away. I'm only lending it to you.

28:47So as I continued, I started making myself feel better because every week, somebody religious would come to my office at least two or three times a week. I had an open-door policy. Anyone that needed something could come to my office, whether it was someone that needed money for rent or someone that needed money for tzedakah, they'd come to the office. I would say on average, it was two to three times per week. Somebody religious would come to my office. Sometimes they'd tell us about parashat hashavua. Sometimes they'd convince someone to do tefillin. Sometimes they'd just come to collect money. But nonetheless, they came. Now, if we do the math, I had the office for about 15 years. But if we just use 10 years, and instead of using two or three times a week, we say once a week. Once a week, 52 times a year is 52 times. Times 10 years, 520 times. Which means that someone had 520 opportunities to tell me I'm a goy. to tell me that my lifestyle is wrong, to tell me that if I don't keep Shabbat, nothing else that I do matters. According to the Shulchan Aruch in seven places, according to the Torah Shebichtav, the one we got from Mount Sinai, Parashat Ki Tisa is one of them, and eleven other places. According to the Gemara,

30:09which is the foundation of the Oral Torah, according to practically every single major rabbi that's ever written in history about Shabbat, even including the ones in this generation, and according to even a simple book that I recently read by a rabbi, a very tzaddik rabbi from Jerusalem named Rav Zevichi. of Pinchas Zevichi. He wrote a simple book, not this thick, about the blessing of Asher Yatzar. Asher Yatzar, a simple blessing, is the one that you say after you leave the bathroom. A secondary subject is the halachot of when to say Yehei Shmei Rabba in Kaddish. So Asher Yatzar is a very simple blessing. There's not really much to know about it, apparently, until you read this book. You figure you say you have to use Kaddish. But who says it? So when he discusses this issue in this very, very simple book, at some point, the issue of Shabbat comes up. And he says, of course, if someone that says Kaddish and he doesn't keep Shabbat, no one says Yehei Shmei Rabba.

31:33The question is why? He says because he's a goy. He's not considered Jewish according to halacha. And he gives you 50 sources. 50 simple sources. So if he's writing about something like this in a very basic, simple book about Hashem Yitbarach, it's not even about Shabbat. We find out, we realize ...that the halacha of who's considered a Jew and who's not is common language for anybody that's learning Torah. So when someone like me or someone like Rav Mizrachi, who's been doing it for 22 years, or someone like HaRav is telling you, "Listen, if you don't keep Shabbat, you have a serious problem with Hashem," they're not kidding. This is basic level, first-grade Torah... People that don't like to hear that they're not considered Jewish according to Hashem because they don't keep Shabbat, has nothing to do with me. I didn't write it. Hashem didn't ask me for permission. He wrote it. He gave it to Moshe. Eventually, I got it. I'm just telling you what He says. I'm a parrot. It has nothing to do with me. But if someone is going to write it in a book that's called a sefer Yetzirah, we know that this is common language for the religious people who want to learn Torah.

32:54We need to keep Shabbat. I didn't keep Shabbat. On Shabbat, I would spend my time going to the casinos, playing Texas Hold'em, playing with the best players in the world. The biggest game there was, when I would show up, they'd start a new game. Not really a good sign, by the way. But I was a good player because I had no fear, because I had lots of money. And I beat a lot of players. I played in tournaments. I won some. I didn't realize that I was stealing this whole time. Most Jews don't know that gambling is stealing. That's the problem. While my business was kosher, very kosher. I did honest investments, honest fees, honest everything. My hobby was a big problem. Why is gambling stealing? If you're betting against, you know, you're thinking, okay, listen, I'm going to play Texas Hold'em with my buddy. He's my friend. We're going to pay for 100 bucks. What's the big deal? It's just a bunch of friends. Not $50,000 like Mr. Reuven. It's not, it's $100. The problem is that even if your friend has millions, millions and millions in the bank, but he loses even $100 to you, he doesn't really want to give it to you. Betting against, you know, you're thinking, okay, listen, I'm going to play Texas Hold'em with my buddy. He's my friend. We're going to play for 100 bucks. What's the big deal? It's just a bunch of friends. Not $50,000 like Mr. Reuven. It's $100. The problem is that even if your friend has millions, millions and millions in the bank, but he loses even $100 to you, he doesn't really want to give it to you.

34:18No one wants to give you anything, not from a loss. He'll lend you the money if you need to borrow the money. He'll even give you a gift if he has millions and he's generous. But he'll never want to lose it to you. Which means that when you win that hundred dollars, you're stealing it from him. And there's one problem with stealing versus every other aveirah, every other sin. Even if someone found a way to be a righteous person... If they have stealing in their hands, when they show up to the door of Gan Eden, they will not let you in. No thief has ever entered Gan Eden, and no thief will ever enter Gan Eden. The person has to go back in a gilgul and come back to this life, to this world, and pay back the neshama that he stole from. This is a problem. This is a serious problem because we Jews, we like to gamble.

35:19Second reason why gambling is not allowed is because gambling is done in a place that's usually full of immodesty. If you actually end up at a casino, what's there? It's not only not modest, but it's a full house, especially when the guy shows up with a kippah, like I used to go and see people. All the fake Chasidic guys with a nice hat and the peyos and the black and white sitting at the same table next to me. Same game. By the way, those people, if you ever see them, they're not real. If they're in a casino, they just wear a costume. Don't be taken aback by anything. They just like to wear a costume. You wear a costume on Purim, they wear a costume all year round. A righteous person belongs in two places. or three, either he's studying Torah, he's at work to provide for his family, or he's at home taking care of his family. A casino is not one of those places. So, people like that have a special place in Gehenom. Why? Because they're doing something much worse than stealing. They're making the worst possible sin in Judaism called Chilul Hashem.

36:44Someone like me, before I became religious, would justify myself because of them. I said, listen, I'm here, I'm not religious. I'm being me. What are you doing here? You're supposed to be this holy person. You get to know all these gamblers, by the way, whether they're professionals that you see on television or they're just a guy that's starting out. They're all degenerates, by the way. Every single one of them is a degenerate. Most of them do not have any money, even if they just won a $2 million tournament because they usually borrow the money from somebody else and they owe the money. They're all degenerates. And in general, 99% of them do not have any money. But nonetheless, we Jews are not allowed in those places. The last part of why gambling is not allowed is because Chazal say that if gambling were allowed, the world would become like Sodom and Gomorrah. So aside from the immodesty, which obviously goes against protecting your eyes and creates a lot of sins (which we'll talk about tomorrow), and aside from the stealing, you're putting yourself in a very, very big dilemma with Hashem.

37:57So, you have to stay away from those places. Now, what do you do if you've already gambled or you already stole? You want to go to Gan Eden? You want to do teshuva? Chazal already knew this. So, what did they do? They implemented something from the Torah that all Jews are obligated to do. You have to give tzedakah. It's not a hobby. It's not something that you should do. It's recommended. Like, you know, 9 out of 10 dentists recommend this toothpaste. It's not that. You have to give tzedakah. There's two forms of tzedakah. There's tzedakah that every person has to give, at least a perutah, something minimal. Obviously, if you have more, you should give more. And then there's ma'aser. Ma'aser is 10% of your net income after paying the main bills that you have. So, for example, if somebody makes $1,000... They have $900 in bills. You could just add a zero to those numbers if you live in New York. You have $100 left. You give $10 ma'aser. You can give it for this Beit Knesset. You can give it for a talmid chacham. You can give it for kiruv. Give it for a righteous cause. Don't give it to just any guy that's wearing a uniform without knowing him. Make sure your ma'aser is an investment. Don't be a fool.

39:21Don't just give it to anyone. If it's a dollar, you don't have to research. But if you're really giving money, make sure your money is invested well. You don't want to be like this guy that I know, Hashem yishmor, it's actually a very, very close relative of mine. Starting to do teshuva, but you know, when you start to do teshuva, you still have your past life with you. He actually had a card club. He had a card club. Very tough to leave that business. Especially when one day he sees a so-called religious guy show up. Black and white, beard can sweep the floor like Rav Mizrachi says. The peyos, the Baal Shem Tov would be proud. Only problem is the Baal Shem Tov would probably throw him into Gehenom. Not just for entering the club. Not just for playing in the game. Not just for that. Because what he was doing was taking out the checks of tzedakah that people gave him and buying chips. He has a penthouse in Gehinnom. No, he does. Hopefully, he does teshuva. I don't know how you can do teshuva for something like that. Very, very difficult to do teshuva without suffering. Serious suffering. Serious, serious suffering. And that's what we're going to get into now.

40:51So now, I have all this money, I have all these wonderful friends that enjoy my money. I have a nice hobby; I go to the World Series of Poker, I play some games. In May of 2006, I have the best month of my career—I make 1.6 million dollars in a month. Printing money. Making money was last year. This year we're printing money. So I decide to go on vacation. I go to Vegas for a month, play some games, have a good time. I still make about $200,000, $300,000 for the month back at work when I barely work. Everything is good. Then when I come back home, I'm kind of bored. So I figure, you know what, let me start taking care of my health. There's this thing that's been bothering me for the last 10 years. Two-thirds of all human beings actually have it. It's called hemorrhoids. It bothers me once a year. Let's see, what's the problem of removing it and never having it bother me ever again? So I go to the doctor. The doctor says, "Listen, it's a very simple surgery. You come, you have the surgery. It takes maybe an hour, two hours. You feel a little bit of discomfort," which in medical language means pain.

42:14For a couple of days, you go home, you relax, you go back to work on Monday. So I'll get a couple of days' vacation from work, a little discomfort, not so bad. That's what I thought. When Hashem gives you all the money in the world, and you don't do the right thing by Him, He'll start sending you tests. Even when Hashem doesn't give you money, and you don't do the right thing, He'll give you tests. and you don't do the right thing, He'll give you tests. As we all know, the world has changed. If you ask your parents, your grandparents, and you ask them, how was the world when you were a kid, when you were my age? You'll never hear, no, it's the same thing. It doesn't exist. Why? Because we find ourselves, according to the Torah, in the time that we call the end of times. Anyone that watches the news for five minutes can realize the Third World War has already started. It's just quiet. Before Russia sent all of their planes, helicopters, jeeps, and tanks, they sent a ship with 200 atomic bombs to Syria. Accordingly, they're saying that it's to fight ISIS. I don't know why you would need even one atomic bomb for ISIS. So whoever buys that story is a fool.

43:34If that wasn't enough, since that was September of last year, if the 200 atomic bombs were already used up, we need some more. So, about two months ago, they sent a submarine that's the biggest submarine in the world with more atomic bombs than the original ship. We just don't know how many. This is also for ISIS. So, we realize that this is not for ISIS. You don't need to be Einstein. You see that the United States is heating up every day. Everyone wants to fight. Israel is becoming the most hated country in the world on a regular basis. It's actually becoming popular to be anti-Semitic. A recent study from just a couple of years ago said that over 40% of Americans consider themselves anti-Semitic. These are our allies. Missiles are being shot at us in Israel on a regular basis. Jews are being beaten up all over the world. Some of them are being killed, Hashem yishmor. I think there were a few incidents in Brooklyn as well recently. The world is not the same. The world is heating up. According to the Nevuot, according to the prophecies, you can find all over the Gemara, all over the book of Ezekiel, Zechariah, and also even the Chamishah Chumshei Torah.

44:54We have every single sign we need for the end of times, except one, the Mashiach himself. If you go to the last page of the Gemara Masechet Sotah, page 49, it says, these are the things that are going to happen at the end of times before the Mashiach comes. When you read it, which I did a few days ago in a shiur in Staten Island, anyone that wants to watch it, and get some serious yirat shamayim, but seriously get the truth and wake up, you listen to it and it's like reading the newspaper. The daily news. Everything they said is going to happen, which was unheard of in those times, is happening as we speak. So Hashem had to speed up things. He said, my son, I love you, but you're a rasha. You have all this money and you're justifying giving tzedakah and helping people, and you think that's enough. You gamble with the parnassah that I gave you, even though relatively to what I had, it was nothing. If I gambled $50,000, it didn't really mean much.

45:56But nonetheless, you do nothing for me. You're not fulfilling your purpose. And if you don't fulfill your purpose, which is learning Torah and observing it, I don't need you. What's my source? My source is the Torah. When we left Egypt, the next parasha after we left Egypt starts with the word Vayhi. In general, any parasha that starts with the word Vayhi means tzaar, means sorrow. Why was Am Yisrael in sorrow after they left Egypt? They just left slavery. Why would they be in sorrow? Because later on it says Chamushim left Mitzrayim. What's Chamushim? Chazal explain it. It's one out of five. Twenty percent. Twenty percent of Am Yisrael or Bnei Yisrael, left Egypt. What happened to the other 80%? 80% died. Hashem killed them during Makkat Choshech, the Plague of Darkness.

47:05But then there's an interesting Midrash in Me'am Loez. Me'am Loez was written about 300 years ago by a genius, Rabbi Culi. I highly recommend you buy the series or at least buy a few of the first books and start reading the series. It gives you at least 500 to 600 sources, whether it's Gemara, Zohar, Sifrei Tzaddikim, all types of things for every single verse in the Torah, and it puts it in a story format. Sifrei Tzaddikim, all types of things for every single verse in the Torah, and it puts it in a story format. Go to moznaim.com. I do not own the company, so I don't make any money from it, but I highly recommend it. Very, very enjoyable series. And according to the Midrash, and you know Midrash is part of the Oral Torah. It's part of the Torah we got from Mount Sinai. The Midrash says no. Chamushim does not mean one out of five. Chamushim means one out of 500,000. Which means that only two of Bnei Yisrael survived Egypt out of every million. 99.98% died in the plague of darkness. Why? They didn't want the Torah. Hashem created the Torah 974 generations before He created the earth, before He created mankind, before Am Yisrael was even something we knew existed.

48:29Which means that the purpose of the world is the Torah, even before the Jews. If the Jews, chas v'shalom, rejected the Torah at Mount Sinai, according to Gemara, Masechet Avoda Zara, Hashem would have destroyed the world instantly. No second chance. No teshuva. No giving it to another nation because the other nations already rejected it. So now we have ourselves a dilemma. Whether it's 80% or 99% is irrelevant. The point is that Hashem is not kidding. I didn't know this. So I continued to work. Continued making money. But now I'm having the surgery. This elective surgery is supposed to give me a little bit of discomfort. Only now, on November 18th of 2006, I wake up out of the surgery with a different body. My body changed forever. Something happened during the surgery that changed my nervous system. And everything from my neck all the way down to the bottom of my feet was in pain. But not pain like you have a headache. Pain like if you take a knife and you just start cutting somebody open over and over and over again. A little bit like that.

49:51Oh, and there were also electric shocks too. We don't know why. After several hours and the maximum amount of morphine legally allowed to give a human being, eventually, I calmed down. Eventually, I stopped asking my wife and my mother to kill me. They released me; they sent me home. We picked up shawarma on the way home. I hope it was kosher. I got home. I thought, oh, so that's what getting home looks like. Fine. I'm going to sleep. It's wonderful. Thank you very much, everyone, for coming. I'm going to sleep. I go to sleep, and I wake up 45 minutes later. The only problem is that this time it's worse than the first time. And this time it does not stop. The screaming does not stop. Not after an hour. Not after a day. Not after a week. Not after two weeks, not after five weeks, only after 62 days. For 62 days, the screaming did not stop. For more than 15 minutes, I couldn't sleep. My body started dying. I started bleeding from my eyes and every hole in my body. I got infections everywhere, and no one could explain it. No one could explain the diagnosis. No one knew why I was screaming.

51:23And even later on, when I tried to file an insurance claim because I had a disability policy, they rejected me after six months of research, saying it's impossible for that to happen. If you want the money, you have to sue us. I never sued them. Don't waste your time suing insurance companies. So after two months, 62 days of a wonderful experience of getting home, I eventually decided start getting back to my life. I'm only taking 20 painkillers a day instead of 50 or 60. I start managing, able to walk to some extent. From here to the door, which would take somebody normal about 30 seconds, would take me about 30 to 40 minutes, but I'm managing. I go back to work. Life is not the same, but I figured that I got a second chance. I still don't do teshuva. Nine months pass because that's the amount of time that Hashem gave me to do teshuva. I don't answer. He gives me a pain in my leg. I think I pulled a muscle. The next day, I'm in an emergency room, an intensive care unit, undergoing a surgery that, if I hadn't come at that time and had waited even another hour or two, the infection inside my body would have blown up, gotten into my bloodstream, and I would have died within hours.

52:47So I spent the next two weeks in intensive care units next to people who are nearly dying. Some are actually dying. Their screams sound familiar to mine. After a few weeks, I'm released from the hospital. Lots of fun. I go back to the painkillers. I still don't do teshuva. Three months later, As you've noticed, the time keeps getting shorter. This is one of the signs from Hashem, when He's running out of patience for you. The signs, in the siyata dishmaya, slowly disappears. If you do teshuva when you're in your teens or early 20s, you have 90 to 100% siyata dishmaya. To do teshuva is easy. The beginning is hard. To commit to Hashem is hard in the beginning. It's a test in the beginning. But if you do teshuva, you have miracles on a daily basis. Mamash miracles. And I'm not exaggerating. I'm not a prophet. I'm not anything. If you do teshuva in your early 20s, you have siyata dishmaya that's unbelievable.

54:03You don't do teshuva, you get to your 30s, siyata dishmaya gets lower; you're now down to about 70%, maybe 60%. It becomes a little more difficult to do teshuva because without Hashem, it's nearly impossible to do teshuva. So with less Hashem, of course, it's more difficult to do teshuva in your 30s. But then you have some, you still have 60-70%; it's still amazing. But you skip. You go into your 40s and 50s. Now you're down to maybe 40-50% siyata dishmaya. Very difficult to do teshuva. You figure, nah, I still got my fun times today. 40s like the 30s. I still got more time to party. You get into your 50s and 60s, then it's almost impossible. You're maybe 20%, 25% siyata dishmaya. You wait until your 70s, it's almost impossible for you to do teshuva. Almost impossible. And even if you do teshuva, only a miracle will get you to a point to do a complete teshuva. Because doing teshuva takes time. You need to learn what to do. You can't do teshuva one day like people think. No, I'll do teshuva the day before I die. Isn't there a Gemara about that?

55:14It just means you should say sorry. It doesn't mean that you're actually going to get to Gan Eden because you said "I'm sorry." It means maybe Hashem is going to give you less of a punishment—a few less million years in Gehenom. It doesn't actually mean you're going to Gan Eden because you said "I'm sorry." Okay, maybe He'll give you a Gilgul, and you get back to this world. But since we just talked about that we're at the end of times, who knows if there's going to be enough time for you to get back to this world. Don't rely on Gilgulim. Reincarnation is not exactly reliable anymore in our generation. Mashiach comes in five years. Mashiach comes in five weeks. Mashiach comes in five days. Somebody dies without doing teshuva. Even if he's born on that day, what's going to happen? He hasn't done teshuva. He's nothing. It takes time to do teshuva. Anyone that's done teshuva knows. So now, three months later, another infection, another surgery, another intensive care unit. My body continues to fail. A month later after that, another infection, another surgery, another intensive care unit, and this continues for the next seven years. For seven years, I had pain 24 hours a day. Maybe once in a while I would have a break where instead of a level 10 pain, I would have a level 2 or 3 pain, but I got to a point where I got used to pain.

56:41What most people would jump off a bridge for was, was my normal. So now, when you're in pain, you can't really function and work. You can't be this ultimate salesman you used to be. The money you have means zero. Because all I had in those days were many bottles just like this. Five, six of them, which are antibiotics and painkillers and all types of things. Baruch Hashem, I'm not taking them anymore. But just so you know, I had many, many of these. I have so many of them that I collect them. I know the names. I know the doctors. I know the inventors. You become an expert. "No, doctor, this one doesn't work for me." He goes, "How do you know?" I said, "I tried it 50 times." But the other thing I have is something also very interesting that a lot of people like. is my nice gold business card. I only have a handful because the people yesterday liked it a lot, but anyone that wants it, I could send it to them. It's a metal business card, that's gold, but it's not obviously real gold, I'm not a fool. And that was my business card. How much is it worth? Nothing. Why? Because when you're in pain, nothing's worth anything. I spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on doctors,

58:04Medicine, I became an experiment. I went to over 50 different doctors just to find a diagnosis, not even a cure. I gave up on a cure. I eventually told my mom to stop blessing me because my mom believes in Hashem. She has strong emunah. She lights candles, and when she lights her candles, like 30 candles, she davens (prays) for me about this and about that, and she always says, "Please..." Bless my son, he's dying, he's this, he's that. And every time I would talk to her, she'd give me these blessings and eventually one day I'd just lose it and I'd say, Ima, stop blessing me. Hashem hates me. And if He doesn't hate me, He probably forgot about me. Now, all this time, the same way the money came in, it starts running out. And those friends, remember those friends I was telling you about? They weren't my friends anymore. They became enemies. They started stealing from me. They started cheating me. They started stealing my customers. They started stealing stuff from my office. They took advantage of every single thing they could, similar to an animal—I think it's called a vulture. So this continued for many, many years.

59:30Life became unbearable. I wanted to end my life, but I only felt bad for two special women in my life, one of them being my wife, and the other one being my mother, who wouldn't stop crying over me. I knew that I would ruin their lives if I died. But I got to a point where I couldn't walk; I had to use a cane, and I became very antisocial. I would see my parents maybe once every few months. I wouldn't answer any phone calls. Business was going downhill. Problems were going uphill. All of a sudden, the government started taking interest in some articles that I wrote about them, calling them out for being cheaters and liars. They started auditing my firm, and even though they couldn't find anything, because, Baruch Hashem, everything was kosher, I couldn't stop them from torturing me. And they pretty much parked in my office. After they finish one audit, they bring another audit. At one point, I think it was in 2009 or 2010, I had six simultaneous audits. Six audits at the same time. Which only firms like Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch would have. And even they wouldn't have six of them at the same time. I was a tiny little firm. We were making money, but relative to the real firms, nothing. When Hashem wants you to get back to earth, He has His ways. And one of the things that I didn't realize is that the same One that brought me into this world is the same One that's doing it. He didn't forget me. He doesn't hate me. He's trying to save me. But as Shlomo HaMelech says, "The pride of man will be his downfall."

1:00:57get back to earth, He has His ways. And one of the things that I didn't realize is that the same One that brought me into this world is the same One that's doing it. He didn't forget me. He doesn't hate me. He's trying to save me. But as Shlomo HaMelech says, "The pride of man will be his downfall." My ga'avah was my skill set, my ability, my money. Why should I worry about anything? Hashem gave me something to worry about. Eventually, I gave in and I said, you know what? I gotta go to this guy. God, answer my prayers. I started davening.

1:01:58didn't work. I said, ah, somebody recommended this Rav to go to shiur Torah. All these religious people that would come to my office had no recommendations whatsoever. They just hoped that I'd continue to give them money. Still didn't tell me there's anything wrong with my life. So I went to shiur Torah every Tuesday. In the beginning, maximum I would survive five minutes. Five minutes, fall asleep. Couldn't take it. It was very interesting. But there were so many sins on my soul; there's something called a klipah, a peel, a shell, that's around your soul every time you make a sin, which makes it very, very difficult for you to learn Torah. You have a lot of sins and a lot of impurity, especially if it's wasting seed, especially if it's Chilul Shabbat, major sins. You develop a shell around your soul, so you can't learn Torah like you want to. I was a Talmid Chacham and everything else. You give me a company, I can tell you exactly how much it's worth. You give me a business, I'll tell you exactly how to fix it, how to grow it, how to market for it. In that world,

1:03:25i was better than anybody else I knew. I'm sure somebody else better exists. I just didn't know them. Torah world, five minutes. Next week, five and a half minutes. Next week, capped out at six. So I started forcing myself to stay up. I said, you know what? I'm going to write down every single thing he says. If you keep moving, you have to stay up. So I started writing down everything he said. This was Rabbi Pinto in the city. It was very interesting, but I still didn't do teshuva. Here and there, I started doing tefillin, giving some tzedakah—whatever I had. Money was running out the door faster than I could count. But anybody that needed help and I had some money, I'd give it to them. Money never really meant much to me. It's like making it. Eventually, my health started deteriorating again to the point where I wanted to commit suicide. I reached my limit. Obviously, Hashem knew. And that's when the first miracle happened. My mom saw me in a really, really bad condition, and mothers know exactly who you are without you saying a word. She knew that I didn't have much time left, at least not psychologically.

1:04:47So she decides to take one of these books that she has, these phone books that she has, she collected the rabbis' names from all over the world, with phone numbers, and she starts calling every single rabbi in the book. For almost two hours she's calling rabbis, but nobody's answering the phone today. Then she reaches a number in Israel, a different country. A woman answers the phone, and she asks for a certain rabbi. And the woman says, "I'm sorry, it's the wrong phone number. There's no such rabbi here." My mom breaks down and starts crying to this stranger over the phone. And then, Hashem shows us Himself. The woman says, "Doris?" which is my mother's name. She says, "Who is this? How do you know my name?" She dialed the wrong phone number in a different country, and she got not only a person who knows who she is and recognizes her voice, which is not very easy, by the way, especially since they've never talked to each other on the phone in their life, but also the only person who can help. And she says, "Who is this?" She goes, "This is Pnina, your niece."

1:06:10How did I get to you? I don't even have your phone number. We've never talked on the phone. She says, I don't know. But if you got to me, then obviously Hashem has a reason. Why are you crying? She tells her the story. My son is dying. I need some help. I need to speak to a rabbi. She says, why don't you talk to my brother, Rabbi Ephraim? He's a big talmid chacham. Although very young, he's extremely accomplished. He's written six sefarim by the time he was in his early 20s. He's one of the talmidim of Rav Ovadia. He finished the Shas four times before he was 20. This is somebody special. This is one of those people that's not from this world. He's from the wrong generation. Why don't you talk to him? These extra facts I added because I know about him. But she said he's a talmid chacham. I found out these facts later. She says, will you talk to me? She goes, yeah, of course. You're a Doda Doris from America. The Aunt Doris from America. Of course she's going to talk to you. You're a famous aunt from America. So she calls Rabbi Efraim. Rabbi Efraim is in kollel, of course, like a Talmid Chacham that he is. But he calls her back. And she starts crying to Rabbi Efraim. Now, I did not know that Rabbi Efraim exists. Because when I left Israel, he was still a child. He was born maybe a couple of years before. He's younger than I am.

1:07:37I didn't know he existed. I didn't know anything about him. And he didn't really know much about me. So he asked my mom, "Does he speak Hebrew?" And she says, "Yes, he speaks a little bit. He speaks Hebrew." "Okay, so can I call him?" "No, he won't talk to you. He barely talks to us. Barely talks to his own family." And at that very moment, which I found out later, I called my mom for the first time in years. The real reason why I called my mom is because I figured that if I'm going to commit suicide, I should be nice to my mom for a little while. I got to my peak and called my mom. My mom is hysterical, crying. And she says, "Talk to him." And I said, "To who?" She's hysterical, saying, "Talk to Ephraim." "Who's Ephraim? What do you want me to talk about? Why are you crying? What does Ephraim do that you're crying because of him?" "No, he can talk to you. He can help you. He can help you."

1:08:39I said, okay, anyone you want can just call me, just stop crying. So Rabbi Ephraim calls me. He tells me the story of Yehuda and Tamar. I find it very interesting. I start asking him questions, questions I had my whole life. And for the first time in my life, I get answers. But not just answers. I get answers with sources. Sources. If you ask me questions, sometimes I'll provide you a source. Sometimes I'll tell you I'll get back to you. But he was something different, a tzadik. And not only that, when I would ask a question, he'd make me feel good about it. I'd ask a question, and he'd say, oh yeah, this rabbi asked the same question as you 852 years ago. In this sefer, on this daf, this paragraph. And he gives me exactly what it says. I'm like, wow, how do you remember the daf, b'chlal? Who thinks about the daf? I thought I was smart. This guy was an alien!

1:09:44So then I ask another question. He goes, oh, wow, that's a great question. Makes you feel so good. I'm like, yeah, of course I ask the same question. What do you mean? I'm from Wall Street. Of course I ask the same question as the Rambam. Little do I know that I'm closer to being a monkey than the Rambam. He said, oh, yeah, this rabbi asked the same question 412 years ago on this page, this paragraph, this daf. And I ask everything. So the first conversation was very nice. An hour and 40 minutes. The following week, he calls me Thursday, 4 o'clock. We have a conversation for three hours, same thing, questions, answers, sources. The following week, Thursday, 4 o'clock, a five-hour conversation. The following week, Thursday, 4 o'clock, a seven-hour conversation, straight, the whole time Torah. But questions about everything. Business, money, dinosaurs, science, anything you can think of. I couldn't believe it. I was getting answers. It was like a high, something unbelievable. The pain all of a sudden was not relevant. I didn't care if I was in pain or not. I was getting answers. Finally, you're finally finding the reason for even being in this world. You're finally getting answers.

1:11:08Getting answers for anyone that hasn't gotten answers in their life, you have to try. As Hashem says to us in Sefer Devarim, chapter 4, if you look for Me, you'll find Me. But only if you look for Me with all of your heart and all of your soul. You can't look for Hashem like a cat. You look behind the garage, oh, He's not here, we're going to buy another one. It's not fish. You look in the aquarium. Eh, he's not there. I think maybe he died. No. Hashem is the purpose of life. Hashem is everything. You have no Hashem, you have nothing. Strive with all your might to find Hashem. You have no Hashem, you have nothing. I had millions. I had nothing. with the millions in the bank and still having nothing, still being depressed, still being miserable every day. The reason why I worked so much was to escape the misery I actually lived. So now, finally, I'm getting answers and for the next nine months this continues. The average conversation is about seven hours. Five to seven hours, usually seven hours.

1:12:30I get into it so much, everything I learn I start to teach my wife. She loves it also, we're getting answers, we're asking questions. He later on tells me that he used to pray a special prayer before our conversations to have the answers. I said, what do you mean have the answers? You knew the page number, you knew the Rav, you knew the year. He says, but before you asked the question, I didn't know the question existed. I never asked a question. I didn't ask the same questions you asked. I never cared about that stuff until you asked it. That's what's called siyata dishmaya. You want siyata dishmaya? You want help from Heaven? You want a special deal with Hashem? Do kiruv. Spend time, spend five minutes a day. Everyone has five minutes? Raise your hand if you have five minutes a day. Everyone has five minutes a day? Five minutes? You're nodding, so I'll take the nodders up, yeah? Five minutes in the back? Five minutes? Five minutes? Everyone has five minutes, right? Okay. Everyone, Baruch Hashem. Five minutes. Okay, so let me show you, I'll provide you a source. You like sources. So I learned from my teacher, I have to provide sources these days. We don't believe just the Rabbi's words or anything like that. I wouldn't believe me either, by the way. So we go to the Book of Jeremiah. The prophet says what Hashem says.

1:13:53Book of Jeremiah chapter 15 verse 19: Therefore, thus said Hashem, "If you repent, I will bring you back and let you stand before Me." The first part means Your teshuva is always welcome. I won't treat you as a second-rate citizen. Even if you did idol worship, which is, by the way, in case someone doesn't know, it's the same thing as Chilul Shabbat. Someone that's Mechalel Shabbat, and someone that prays to Buddha, or to JC, or to some other cow like they do in India, or even in some cases to motorcycles. In fact, I actually have pictures of people praying to motorcycles. In India, they do. It's one of their gods.

1:14:53I have proof. One of my helpers lives in India. He shows me all these different types of idol worship they have. Hashem, it's unbelievable what people pray to. Shabbat, idol worship, same thing. In Hashem's eyes. To me, I love you anyway. But to Hashem, it's more important than me. Mechallel Shabbat, idol worship, same thing. Another source of proof: Notice, every time Chilul Shabbat is mentioned in the Torah, idol worship is right next to it. Right next to it. Ten Commandments, right next to Chilul Shabbat. You have to keep Shabbat, fourth commandment. Next to it, idol worship. Every single time in the Torah. Check it for yourself. Don't take my word for it. Every single time. Why? To Hashem, it's the same thing. Same thing with homosexuality, by the way. Homosexuality, which in today's politically correct world, we have parades for them. We honor them. According to Hashem, it's not that they just deserve karet and all these punishments, but in Hashem's eyes, it's the same thing as bestiality. What's bestiality? Being with an animal.

1:16:15Man with a man, it's the same thing as man with a donkey. How do we know? Every time in the Torah, it mentions homosexuality, it mentions bestiality—same thing, same punishment, same exact thing, right next to each other. In Hashem's eyes, it's not nice. You can have desires, but it doesn't mean you have to act upon them. Yes, some people are born a little off; they have desires, I understand. I don't buy everybody's story, but nonetheless, let's say somebody, let's just give them kaf zechut and say, they have desires for the same sex, or she has desires for the same sex, fine. Doesn't mean you have to act upon it. Somebody has a desire to kill. Does that mean they have to kill? As a matter of fact, each one of you is created with a certain desire. There are certain people that have a desire for blood. A lot of them, many millions and millions of people, have a desire for blood, but they have a choice. They can either become a murderer, a butcher, or a surgeon. All three see blood, and they're fine with it. It's your choice. Same desire, but you can use it in multiple ways. I wouldn't recommend the murder, by the way, if anyone was thinking that was the right answer.

1:17:37Most Jews prefer the third; the doctor makes more money. So, actually with kosher meat, maybe not, I don't know. So, I start doing teshuva, I start listening, I start keeping some mitzvot, I start praying, I start crying, I start realizing that I'm in a serious problem. What's my problem? Aside from the money being lost and running out of my life, aside from all of my friends becoming enemies, aside from all of this disaster that I'm living, I realized that my situation at home with the love of my life is not okay. The only woman that would have ever stayed with me through this disaster was with me. The woman that dedicated her entire life just for me. ...that should have left years ago, was excited to be with me. Excited. I'm in pain, she's excited to be with me. Take care of me, make me food, clean my wounds, the blood, get home that I was living with, treat me like I was a king. Run my company, built my company. Anything you want, genius. This is Gan Eden. But she wasn't Jewish. She wasn't Jewish. When someone is Jewish, he's not allowed to be with a non-Jew...

1:19:07But she wasn't Jewish. She wasn't Jewish. When someone is Jewish, he's not allowed to be with a non-Jew. Now, I always knew that, but I couldn't justify this being wrong. When people would tell me, "Listen, don't you want her to convert and have Jewish kids?" I said, "If she wants to be Jewish, she'll be Jewish. I can't tell her to do something I'm not doing. I'm not a hypocrite. And you can't just make somebody stop believing something. She had a pre-existing faith. Can't make her stop believing it. I used to make fun of it a little bit. I would call her religion 'remix.' You know, Christianity—the remix." Don't you want her to convert and have Jewish kids? I said, if she wants to be Jewish, she'll be Jewish. I can't tell her to do something I'm not doing. I'm not a hypocrite. And you can't just make somebody stop believing something. She had a pre-existing faith. Can't make her stop believing it. I used to make fun of it a little bit. I would call her religion "remix." You know, Christianity—the remix. But I can't tell her, listen, you have to do this, you have to do that. I'm not doing anything. But now we're learning Torah together, and she's starting to ask questions. But then she says, yeah, but I can never convert. There's no such thing. I said, no, no, I heard people convert. She goes, no, I don't think it exists. That's how little we knew. We didn't know that Rabbi Akiva, the greatest Baal Teshuva in history...

1:20:35from converts, the one my mom mentions 50 times a day, the one that's mentioned on practically every single page, came from converts preceding Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Meir, the foundation of our Torah, both converts. Tzipora, Moshe's wife... Rachav, Yehoshua ben Nun's wife, converts. Some of the greatest people in all of history were converts. So much so that you mention it in your tefillah every day. But not only do you mention it in your tefillah, but I'll actually show you something that most people don't notice. You actually recognize it in your tefillah that a convert is higher than you, a natural-born Jew. In your tefillah, in the Amidah, the foundation of prayer. Everybody knows what the Amidah is, right? Tefillat Shemoneh Esrei. Baruch Hashem. Right? You know. You say...

1:21:52You know this part, right? It's towards the middle, so about the middle. So now you have tzaddikim, chassidim, the remainder of the nation of the House of Israel, the scholars, the righteous converts, ...and us. You notice something here? It goes in the order of importance, closeness to Hashem. Tzaddikim, of course, are in Hashem's first class, VIP section. A tzaddik gets 310 worlds and reaches Mal'achei HaSharet. Who are Mal'achei HaSharet? Hashem's personal angels.

1:22:55After that, you have the Chassidim, which are the pious, and so on and so forth. Eventually, it's us. Hopefully, we make it. But before us, says Gerey HaTzedek, the righteous converts. But now going back to the issue that I almost forgot, Baruch Hashem had Siyata Dishmaya, I managed to remember, this proof that you guys needed about kiruv. Who gets more than 310 worlds? Who gets to a higher level than Mal'achei HaSharet? Someone that spends time every day doing kiruv. How? Hashem said here, if you do teshuva, if you do teshuva, I'll accept you 100%, you won't be a second-rate citizen. But, if you bring forth an honorable person from a glutton, meaning you bring, you make a baal teshuva,

1:23:55then you will be like My mouth. What is it like to be like Hashem's mouth? Hashem says to Chazal, "I created the heaven and the earth, and I can revive the dead. You're the same as Me. Your prayers, whether you're asking for a new job, a ben zug, an honorable wife, an honorable husband, Good children, full health, parnassah, refuah shleimah, more siyata dishmaya with your Torah, more siyata dishmaya with your teshuvah. That's just the beginning. What do you need to do? Five minutes a day. Start with five minutes a day, kiruv. You have CDs over here, anyone that wants, I have many more in my car. Give CDs out. You have more time, if you spend any time on the internet, see lectures that are good, whether it's my lectures, Rav Mizrachi's lectures, anyone else that you like that's really strong, that tells people the truth, press like, press share, who knows what's going to happen. Do kiruv five minutes a day. Once your Shabbat comes out,

1:25:12Five minutes. The first five minutes before the cigarette, before the coffee, before the phone call. Five minutes to Hashem. But every day. If you can do more, do more. It's a good deal. I wasn't a fool, as you can tell, in the business world. You can't make that kind of money when you're just a fool. I didn't leave the business world to do kiruv for nothing. This is just becoming a bigger investment. It's an investment for a real world. Spend time doing kiruv. Because kiruv is what saved my life. After I realized that we can't stay the same, we can't stay together, I couldn't bring myself to leave her. She's the only person that would tolerate me. So now I started learning about Christianity. Because you can't stop making someone believe something. You can't tell them, "Hey, stop. Believe this." It's not ice cream. "No, no, it's a bad one. Eat the chocolate."

1:26:13can't. So what do you have to do? If anyone's ever had a debate and you want to win, you have to know more information about their subject than they do. Not about your subject, because your subject is biased. Your side is biased. They're not going to take your word for it. You have to know more about their side. Use proofs from their side, from their life, and you show them how they're wrong by using their own information. This is how the best lawyers in the world win arguments. This is how the best debaters win arguments. This is how politicians win arguments. This is how you win. You cannot win with your tools. You have to win with their tools. And then after you've gotten the head, then you use your tools. Just strategy. Also good in sales, by the way. So now... I start becoming obsessive, not only with learning Torah, but also learning about this avodah zarah they call Christianity. And I see that there's a lot of mistakes, there's a lot of contradictions, but I still think at this point that, yeah, it's just Judaism is better. I don't think that it's necessarily Christianity is fake, I just think it's better. I think Judaism is better and Christianity is like second class.

1:27:35There are mistakes in it. There's some guy that has some crazy story. And for some reason, everyone draws him with long hair and a beard. He looks like a rock star. I don't know. Whatever. They want to believe this crazy story. Fine. It's still second best. Because you continue your Torah. Just go to the original. Why go to the remix? So I start becoming obsessive. I listen to this Rabbi Tovia Singer. Genius. Knows more about both the Torah, of course, and the New Testament than any Christian in the world. Any Catholic, any Christian, any scholar. He knows it by heart. He knows every pasuk. It's amazing. And he speaks fast like a Wall Street broker. I liked him. The guy was amazing. Full of information. bring this to my wife, excited. You know, it's like five o'clock in the morning. I'm as excited as, again, like, you know, Einstein. And I bring her this thing, and she shoots me down like I'm nothing. "He speaks too fast for me. I'm not interested. I can't understand what he says, and I have to look up the verses. He mentions 50 verses in two seconds. I can't read, I can't even hear or listen or write that fast. Not interested."

1:28:56So, what do you do when you have no choice? You cry to Hashem. Hashem that you just met for the first time in your life. You start crying. You start reading Tehillim. You start praying with tears. You want your prayers answered? Start crying, man. There's no shame in crying to Hashem. Women, be machmirim in crying. It's good to cry to Hashem; it's the best thing in the world. That's how prayer is. Why? Because when all the gates of heaven have been closed, the only one that remains open is the gate of tears, especially when it's coming from a mother, by the way. So now, I cry to Hashem. I learn His Torah. Work is becoming more and more meaningless to me. Money never really meant much in the first place, but as I continue to lose money, I start caring less and less. However, I need to find an answer. I find other debates, other rabbis, other proofs. I even have Rav Frying send me information; he even spent time learning this stuff just for me. He writes this whole journal, this whole letter of proofs against Christianity.

1:30:19I prepare this project for my wife and I'm like, "Here." I'm so excited. Usually, it was like 4 o'clock in the morning. She's trying to sleep and I'm wired, and I give her this thing, or sometimes it's the first thing I give her when she wakes up. Instead of saying good morning, it's like, "Here, honey. I stayed up all night and I prepared this thing for you." She's like, "Leave me alone. What do you want from my life? Let me drink coffee, wake up, something." I was scared now. He says, "I gave her this information. It's nice, but it's not enough. You cry some more. You pray some more. You start fulfilling the Torah. You start fulfilling the Torah with the foundation of all of Judaism."

1:31:19The one major mitzvah we got before we received the Torah, right before Mount Sinai. Anyone know? Right before we arrived at Mount Sinai, we got a really big mitzvah. It's such a big mitzvah that without it, 612 mitzvot are worth nothing. Such a big mitzvah that without it, even if you found a patent... To keep 612 mitzvot, which is not possible because not everyone is a Kohen, not everyone is a woman, not everyone is a man, not everyone has a Beit HaMikdash, or apparently none of us have it. But let's say you found a way to keep 612 mitzvot, but you don't keep this one single mitzvah. According to Chazal, it's worth nothing. It's called Shabbat. Start keeping Shabbat. Prayers start getting answered. One day, I go on the internet, and there's a recommended video for me. It's called "The Debate" by Rav Mizrachi. I watched this on my own, and for the first time, I realized that I was terribly wrong about Christianity. It's not second best. It's completely fake.

1:32:44It's completely man-made, has zero truth in it. Nothing. I get excited. I bring this to my wife. I tell her, you gotta watch this debate. It's really good. It's this, it's that. She’s like, fine, fine. It's three parts of this debate. It's like three and a half hours. She goes, all right, I'll watch one part. So we watched this part. I have to convince her to continue watching this one part. She doesn't really like it even from the beginning. At the end of part one, I'm as excited as can be. I'm like, wow, do you realize what it's done? She says, well, the Christian is a moron and the Rabbi is arrogant. Not interested. But even though she's keeping mitzvot with me, she's keeping Shabbat with me, she's keeping mitzvot with me, and she thinks there are problems, but she knows there are problems with Christianity. She always knew, even before me, her whole life, she created her own religion. But she never thought, okay, I could just create my own religion, pretty much, from this.

1:34:13After about a week of convincing and convincing and convincing, eventually, I convince her to watch part two. Part two is a little more convincing, but still not enough. She thinks the rabbi is still arrogant, and the Christian is still a moron. I'm running out of options. I try to convince her to watch part three. And until this day, she hasn't watched it. But something changed in between. So I try to convince her, and convince her, and convince her, and our life is becoming hell. My pain continues. The money problems continue. The government issues continue. But one new issue that I never had a problem with, which is shalom bayit. We never had a fight, Baruch Hashem. Until this happened. Now, all of a sudden, we're fighting every day.

1:35:16Not even about the religions, just about the fact that I'm being a little bit fanatic. To convince her that there's something wrong with it. Because now that I found out it's fake, I'm not thinking about saving me or this marriage. I'm thinking about saving her. For me, it's pikuach nefesh. It's like someone's in a fire, and they don't know they're being burned. Someone's about to drink poison, and you have to stop them. So eventually, enough tears, enough prayer, enough studying Torah, Baruch Hashem, and less and less work. Hashem has mercy, and He sends me another video recommendation. This one is called Torah and Science, also by the same amazing, but until this point, was known as this arrogant rabbi. Which, by the way, for anyone who obviously doesn't know the story from last night,

1:36:18She's Rabbi Mizrachi's number one fan. She's watched probably every lecture he has. I would estimate at least 85 to 90% of them. There have been thousands of lectures. But the Satan works very hard. He's not going to release you from a full-time job for him to go work for Hashem so easily. So then we watched part one of Torah and Science. It's three parts. Anyone that wants to see it and hasn't seen it, I have CDs in my car. It's an amazing four-hour lecture about proofs of the Torah scientifically. We watched part one. At the end of part one, we're both amazed. Whatever belief and emunah that I had went up 500%. Whatever belief and emunah she had also went up 500%. We had never seen the world the way he proved it in part one. It's two o'clock in the morning, and we press on part two. The Satan, as I said, works really hard. Part two doesn't work. We go to another source, find the video, part two, and part two still doesn't work. We can't find part two.

1:37:27Of course, if you go right now to part two, you'll see part two works everywhere. But that day, it didn't work anywhere. Apparently, a very big tzaddeket was coming to Am Yisrael. He couldn't let it happen. So now I have a little bit of a scratch. When I read a book, I'm one of those people that has to read from cover to cover, literally. Like, you know the part where they say, "Thank you to my wife for letting me write this book"? I read that. I'm one of those guys that actually reads that stuff. Or in the beginning, when they say, I don't know, the title of the book and who the publisher is and it says ArtScroll Series, I actually read that. I have to read it from cover to cover. I don't know. Shame I have a scratch in my head. I have to read it. So, skipping from part one to part three was a really big stretch for me. It was really hard. But I said, I finally got this girl to watch part one. She watched part two. It's not working. I said, I can do it. Let's watch part three. We press part three, and it works. We watch part three. It's amazing. It goes from 500%. Now we're closer to a thousand. Because you're seeing Hashem.

1:38:44It's not about believing in Hashem. Anybody can believe. Any moron can believe there has to be a Creator. You don't have to be a genius to believe there has to be a Creator. Even if you love science and you think everything came from some cell and the cell turned into another cell and another cell went through the process of mitosis and it went into four cells and four cells became eight cells and somehow it became a fish and the fish grew legs and became a lizard and the lizard somehow became so perfect it became a monkey and the monkey is here. Let's say it all happened. Even if you believe in that, Where did this first cell come from? Where did the first cell come from? There has to be a Creator. There has to be. Someone had to put the first cell in the world. You don't need to be a genius for that. Science or no science. But knowing God is what Hashem commands us. You need to know that I exist.

1:39:50Part three helped us know. Now she's telling me at the end of this lecture, we're both on a high. It's four, five o'clock in the morning now. You know, watching a popcorn. We're having a good time. We're discovering God is like the greatest thing in the world. She says, listen, a lot of my questions have been answered, but... i still need to know that it's allowed, i still need a sign from Hashem. And generally, you're not allowed to ask Hashem for signs. Just so anybody knows, Hashem does not allow us to ask for signs. You're not supposed to even look for signs. That's why He told Avraham Avinu to stop reading the stars. Even though technically there is wisdom in reading the stars. There is. You can find a lot of things out by reading the stars. Judaism, not allowed. We're above the mazal. The stars are the mazal. We're above the mazal. Meaning, our actions dictate Hashem's actions. Whatever your mazal is, your actions can change it. If Hashem says, listen, right now his mazal is to lose all of his money.

1:41:15you do certain things, you can change it. Right now, his mazal is to have a horrendous time at work. Marriage, chas v'shalom. Anything. You do certain things, you can change your mazal, 100%. As a Jew, you have a privilege over the rest of the world. You are above the mazal. Know that forever. So now, She says, "I need some type of sign. Neither one of us obviously knew this. I need some type of sign." But she gets to a point where anyone who's never met a convert should know that one of the reasons why Hashem mentions the convert more than anything else in the entire Torah is because of the special privilege they have in the world. He says, "Jewish nation, He's our Father. But for the converts, I'm their Father and their Mother. Because they have nothing. When they convert, their parents are not considered their parents anymore, spiritually. Physically, they're still considered their parents. Biologically, they're still considered their parents. They're still supposed to honor their parents, as long as their parents are not anti-Semitic."

1:42:38supposed to honor their parents, but nonetheless, spiritually, they are not considered their parents. So I am their Father and their Mother. And He puts an obligation on Am Yisrael to love the ger. You have to love converts, not just respect them. You're not even allowed to pressure them. They deserve special treatment. You can't be a Jewish salesman with a convert. So now, The problem with converts, or the problem that they go through, is that in between leaving the lie and discovering the truth, or accepting the truth, even after they've discovered it, they don't necessarily accept it right away, there's nothing. There's an empty spot in the middle where they have nothing. And in this world, that's Gehinnom.

1:43:39because even if you believe a lie your whole life, you don't know it's a lie. So, for you, it's true. Even if someone thought money is the cure for all diseases, all problems, and everything in the world, despite the fact that it's a complete lie, as you've obviously seen from this story up until this point, hopefully, until you really realize it, to you it's true. I thought it was true. Once you realize it's not, you have to replace it with something. Okay, so if money is not the cure for everything, what is? If the New Testament is completely false, how do I know the Torah is real? How do I know Hashem wants me to do this? So a lot of converts get to a very, very big mashber, a very big dilemma, a very big depression in the middle between leaving falsehood and accepting holiness, accepting the Torah 100%. And that's what my wife got to. And that night, she went to sleep and she prayed to Hashem, saying, either give me a sign or take me from this world.

1:45:00Because there's no way that I could leave my husband, and she knows I wouldn't leave her. But she knows that she can't stay with me either. And it's better for her to die in her crazy mind than for me to go to Gehinom. Tough spot. But Hashem doesn't give you a test that you can't handle. And the very next morning, she wakes up Bad mood. But I am on a high. It's like maybe 7 o'clock in the morning, 8 o'clock in the morning. She's in a bad mood. I completely ignore the bad mood. Why? I found part two that works. By the way, most of this time I'm not sleeping, I'm completely losing my mind, but I'm getting the answers finally, Baruch Hashem. I find part two. In part two of Torah and Science, Rav Mizrachi shows something amazing. He shows something called Torah Codes, which are hidden mathematical secrets in the Torah of all information that exists, past, present, and future. We just need to know what we're looking for.

1:46:28Now, we got the Torah 3,300 years ago. Approximately, a little over 3,300 years ago. But Hashem gave us information in the Five Books of Moses that is relevant until the end of time. How do we know? In the Gemara, Masechet Megillah, Chazal come to Hashem and say, "Hashem, there are 55 prophets..." mentioned in the Tanakh. But how many prophets were there in history? We get the answer: at least 1.2 million. Double the number of men between the ages of 20 and 60 that left Mitzrayim, which was 600,000. Double that, at least, which means 1.2 million. So why are only 55 mentioned? 48 males, 7 females. What, the other million too? Their Torah was not important? Hashem gives us an answer. Their prophecy, these prophets, was only relevant to their generation, which means that the Torah that we have, the Tanakh that we have,

1:47:45Of course, the Five Books of Moses are part of the Tanakh, but the rest of the 19 books, a total of 24 books, Hashem is clearly telling us, are relevant forever. Anything that's mentioned, every letter, every dot, every nekudah, every sentence, everything, is relevant for eternity. So, anyone who has a crazy excuse to drive on Shabbat to beit knesset, saying Moshe didn't have a car and that’s why he didn't drive on Shabbat—these excuses that the Conservative or the Reform make up for themselves to drive on Shabbat to beit knesset—it's no such thing. Everything that's written in the Torah is relevant to you. It's relevant to you, it's relevant to you, it's relevant to everyone. Hashem knew you were going to exist when He wrote the Torah. So in this Torah, He also gave us a prophecy, He also gave us a promise. That after we make many, many sins, He's going to send us to the four corners of the world.

1:48:55And here he says in chapter 4 of Sefer Devarim, Deuteronomy, verse 27, Hashem will scatter you amongst the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where Hashem will lead you. There you will serve gods, the handiwork of man, of wood. and stone, which do not see, and do not hear, and do not eat, and do not smell. So he's telling us that not only are we sinners, and because we're sinners, he's going to scatter us amongst the whole world, but we're going to become worse even. After he scatters us, instead of doing teshuva, like a normal person, we get worse. What do we do? We start doing idol worship. but a specific type of idol worship. Man-made idol worship is not new; it has existed since the time of Avraham. But he's mentioning a specific type of idol worship: the god of wood and of stone. Wood should sound familiar to everyone. The cross is wood. Every Christian, Catholic, they always have these crosses. That's their sign, a false god of wood.

1:50:21After that, the god of stone. What false religion is the god of stone? Mecca, Islam. Why? You go to Mecca; their Jerusalem is Mecca. What's in Mecca? It's a big, giant square stone they all worship. They'll pray to it in that direction. So, this could be, this is nice. It's literal Torah. But maybe he's talking about a different word. Well, just because it's similar to the cross, just because it's similar to Mecca, doesn't necessarily mean it's that. That's his translation. Why would you believe it? Because, yishtabach shemo ha'el Hashem is very perfect. Using Torah codes, which in essence means that using mathematical equations to have skips. between letters to find words hidden within the words. Words within the paragraph. But it has to be an equal mathematical skip. So, for example, if you want to find the word, let's say, house. And I'll just do it in English for argument's sake. But you want to find the word "house" anytime it appears in the Torah, other than the literal.

1:51:45then it would look for the H and then the O and then the U and then the S and then the E, but each one, the space between the H and the O, and the O and the U, and the U and the S, and the S and the E has to be equal. Meaning, if the space between H and O is 50 letters, then O and U also have to be 50 letters. it can't be 50 and then 37 and then 12, because that's just random. It has to be an equal mathematical skip between each of the letters, because then you can clearly see it's by design. It's not just a random number. But not only that, when you find some of the most extraordinary codes, not only do you find an equal mathematical skip that's usually very small, 50 letters or less, but the verse and the paragraph that you find that word also has to do with the subject you're looking at. So, for example, the Shoah, the Holocaust, the horrible Holocaust, you'll find every single word relevant to the Holocaust, whether it's Hitler or his helpers, his generals, or the gas chambers.

1:53:08All of the disasters that happen, all of the words related to that, it's in the parasha that talks about the punishment Am Yisrael is going to have when they go against Hashem. Specifically, parashat Ki Tavo. One of the most difficult parashot in the entire Torah. Am Yisrael doesn't have a free choice to do whatever they want. They have choice. Meaning that if you do what Hashem says, you get reward, endless reward. If you don't do, there's punishment. It's not just nothing. So, now we have in this verse, we have a Torah code. The first word of this verse in Hebrew is Vehefiz, which means Hashem will scatter. Ve'efitz, you find the letter Hey. The second letter of that word is Hey. You skip 50 letters, you get to the word Etchem, letter Chaf. Skip 50 letters, you get to the word Yishme'un, letter Mem. What does it spell? Mecha.

1:54:33As we said, it's Islam. Again, in the same sentence that talks about the god of wood and the god of stone, we found who the stone is. Interesting. Right after that, same word, ve'efitz, also has a Yud. Fifty letters, you go to the word Shema. Shema. Get the Shin. Another fifty letters. letters, you get to the same word as in the Mecca, you find the Vav. In Yishme'un, which is Yimach Shemo V'Zichro, J.C. You find his full name inside the very same verse that says who the false god of wood and stone is. It's the only place in the entire Torah that you find it And it’s in the very verse that describes them literally. To me, I’ve seen before this time, before I saw this video, I saw other codes that were very, very interesting. And to me, this was extremely impressive. And the other codes he mentioned from the Rambam and several others were very, very good. But to her, that was it. She converted on the spot. That was the sign. That was everything.

1:55:57That was Har Sinai. That was the Exodus. That was everything. She took everything on instantly. Baruch Hashem, we continued studying. Shortly later she converted, went to the Beit Din. We had a chuppah the same day just to make sure it's kosher. Same day she converted in the morning. A few hours later, chuppah, kiddushin. A couple days later, Israel. Covered hair, tzniut, everything. Prayers every day, Limud Torah, something. Now I know why the Satan was working so hard. And that's when the miracles began. Miracles continued to happen. My health continued to improve. As obviously you see me today, you don't see me twitching, you know, clenching my fists, or yelling or screaming. I'm sorry. 99% perfect. From time to time there's some pain, but it's Gan Eden compared to what we had in the past. But still, as I was doing teshuva, I still had to pay the bill for the past. When you earn money and you don't do the right thing with it, and you make it your life...

1:57:25Hashem has to show you that money is nothing. In the Gemara, it says a story about a very big tzaddik, Nakdimon ben Gurion. Nakdimon ben Gurion was so righteous, the Gemara in Masechet Avodah Zarah says he's one of three people that Hashem stopped the sun for in place. At a time when the Jews would have a pilgrimage, they would all come up to Jerusalem. One year, there was a drought, and they didn't have enough water. Nakdimon ben Gurion, who was one of the three people that financed the entire nation of Israel, had a lot of money. He made a deal With some Arab saying, "Listen, I'm going to buy these 12 wells from you and I'm going to return them to you full with water on a specific date. And if they're not full with water on a specific date, I'll fill them with coins, with money." That's how much money he had. The day came, the wells were dry. Nothing. The Arab sent somebody in the morning, "You have to pay up."

1:58:45He said, "No, no. I said today. I didn't say right this morning. I said till the end of the day." "What, the end of the day? Even if it rains all day, it's still not going to reach the top of the well where I gave it to you." He says, "You worry about your part. I'll worry about my part. I have Hashem." This continued to happen every few hours. He would send a messenger to bother him. "Listen, nothing's full. There's no rain. There's nothing. It hasn't rained in months." You think it's going to rain? Not only is it going to rain, but it has to rain like the flood of Noah in order to fill this up. He says to Hashem, prays to Hashem. Hashem starts a serious rain. In a very short period of time, it fills up the wells even more... than what he received it. So now, Nicodemus sends a messenger to the Arab: "Pay me for the extra water that I gave you." The Arab says, "Listen, only your nation, your God, can do things like this. But I still have a problem with your God because technically, you said you're going to pay me by the end of the day. The sun already went down before it filled up." Nicodemus says, "One second..."

2:00:08He goes back to pray. Praise to Hashem, Hashem, Hashem. You know I did this mitzvah for You, not for me, not for my honor. Just for You, for Your nation, for Your people, for kiruv. He said no one can get hurt from a mitzvah. It's impossible. In the long run, no one can get hurt from a mitzvah. It's against nature. Sometimes it looks like you're getting hurt. You give tzedakah, the guy ends up being a bad guy. You do somebody a favor, he ends up being not such a kosher person. In the long run, don't worry. No one in history has ever gotten hurt by a mitzvah. So Nakdimon ben Gurion prays to Hashem. Hashem opens up the clouds, brings back the sun to where it was, and a miracle happens. The sun is back in the sky. That's how much of a tzaddik he was. As far as being generous, we learned from that story, plus the fact that he was one of three people who gave Am Yisrael food, finances, and everything they needed for years. Saved their lives. But one day, the Gemara says...

2:01:28One of the Rabbanim sees a woman looking through the waste of a horse or a donkey. Was it a donkey or a horse, you remember? Horse or a donkey, one of these animals. She's looking through the waste. He says, "What are you doing?" She says, "I'm looking for some chita, I'm looking for some food." He sees her face. He goes, "What food? Your father is the richest man in the land." She says, "No, no, no. Not anymore. He lost everything. Everything. To the point where his daughter had to look through the waste of a horse or a donkey for food." The Gemara says, "Why could such a thing happen?" He gave a lot, but according to his standards, according to where he was, it was not enough. That's how much Hashem cares about your tzedakah. You can't be cheap with Hashem, because in reality, He gives you 100%.

2:02:49And He says, I gave you 100%. What did you want? 50,000? I gave you 50,000. You wanted 100,000? I gave you 100,000. You wanted a million? I gave you a million. What did you want? I gave it to you or no? He says, yes. Give me 10,000 back. I gave you 100,000? Give me 10,000 back. Give it to My people. Give it to the tzaddikim. Give it to talmidei chachamim. Give it for Torah. Don't give it to the casino. No, Hashem, you know, I know you gave me the 100,000 last month, but this month is really tough. Oh, it's really tough? It's really tough? Okay, I said, you know what? Don't give me the 10%. I'll just take the 90 back. So you switch. You're left with the 10%. That's exactly what happened to me. Everything was lost. But each time it was lost, I continued to learn Torah. And just like I was obsessed with Torah, about finding the truth for myself and for my wife, I fell in love with Hashem. When I left New York just a couple of years ago, I still had a small part of my business. I had a small fund. I still had a few hundred thousand dollars left of my own money.

2:04:17I lost 80% of whatever I had. I had maybe a million, million and a half the year before. I lost 80%. It was a bad year. I still had a couple hundred thousand dollars left. Now, if you lose 20 million and it goes down to a million, it hurts. If it goes from a million to 200,000, it actually hurts more. Because 20 million to a million, you're still living technically the same life. You're still okay. You're still not necessarily begging for change. But you go from a million to 200,000, you have to change your life a little bit. Now what happens if you lose the last couple of hundred thousand? It depends. Do you have emunah? Do you believe in God? Net, 100% God exists. Can anyone raise their hand and tell me, "I 100% believe in God"? He created the heavens and the earth. He's overseeing and responsible for everything, and I have no doubt. It's a tough question sometimes, especially when you're going through hell, right?

2:05:37But this is what God wanted me to do. He wanted me to get to a point where I have to believe in Him. I can't tell you I'm a Tzaddik or even a Chacham or anything. But one thing I work on a little bit is Emunah. And if you want to get Emunah, you have to work on it every day. It's like a muscle. But how do you work on a muscle? By ripping it apart. Anyone that's ever spent time in a gym, If you know the body a little bit, you know that every time you lift weights, at the end of the workout, if you actually worked out well, your body is swollen. But under the skin, why is it swollen? Because all of your muscles ripped. It's just like if somebody punched you in the arm a few times, it becomes swollen because a few things ripped inside. Same thing with a workout: you’re ripping your muscles in order to grow them. So, in essence, you have to create pain in order to eventually grow, in order to eventually create pleasure. Same thing with emunah. Same thing. I'll finish off with this because I know it's late. Unless you guys want to go on for another few hours.

2:06:55But I'll give you a secret of how to get to emunah, and I'll tell you just the first step of how I got to some emunah. After We left Egypt. Hashem destroyed the largest civilization in existence and made their slaves into the masters. So much so that the Egyptians begged, begged Am Yisrael to leave. And not only did they beg them to leave, they gave them a bunch of gold, silver, diamonds, a huge fortune. Still, Am Yisrael did not have emunah. How do I know? Because as soon as they got to Yam Suf, the Sea of Reeds, they got scared. Huge ocean. Where are you going to go? All of a sudden, they noticed the Egyptians. They're coming to get them. This is a problem. Why? Because they didn't send five Egyptians, like people think.

2:08:20Chazal say that they sent 9 million Egyptians. That's the smallest number. Some say much more. 9 million Egyptians. Big army, lots of weapons, very, very scary. After Hashem split the ocean for them, He didn't just split it right away. When Moshe tried to split the ocean, initially, the Malach, the angel of the ocean, said, no, I won't split the ocean for you. Why? He goes to God. Not only him, he brings the Malach of Mitzrayim, whose name is Mitzrayim. He brings the angel of the Egyptians. Each nation has an angel, so the angel responsible for the Egyptians... They come to Hashem and say, why? Why are you going to split the ocean for these Bnei Yisrael and kill the Egyptians? Okay, the Egyptians worship idols. We know. They worship idols. But the Bnei Yisrael also worship idols. Just last week they were worshiping an idol. This is why, when Hashem did not split the ocean,

2:09:49Moshe started screaming to him. He says, "What are you screaming to me? Move on. Move forward." What does it mean, move forward? It means, do something. Because right now you've already used up all of your credits. You've used up all of your credits. I can't split the ocean for you. Because the Mekatreg, the angel of Egypt, has a case against you. He's right. They worship idols, and you worship idols. And whatever credit you had, you've used it up to get here. Show me you believe. Don't tell me you believe. Don't kiss the mezuzah on the way out of the Beit Knesset and go to a barbecue on Shabbat. Don't kiss the Sefer Torah on Shabbat, get excited, and eat non-kosher on Sunday. Show me you believe.

2:10:49Don't give tzedakah to the Beit Knesset or to kiruv or to anything with stolen money. Whether it's from your gambling or from your stealing in business, He doesn't want your stolen money. He wants kosher money. Show me you believe. I need actions. A part of Am Yisrael was willing to die. Jump into the ocean, just die. It means suicide. Part of what Am Yisrael says, let's just go back to being slaves. And a part of Am Yisrael says, let's go fight. At least we're going to die with a fight. But the one who was willing to die, no, I'm just willing to die. He said, listen, if Hashem brought us here, He brought us here. But there was one specific person. He didn't think that he was going to die. He actually believed in Hashem. His name was Nachshon ben Aminadav. Nachshon, the son of Aminadav, from the tribe of Yehudah. And Nachshon said, "Hashem created the heaven and the earth; this is nothing for Him. Hashem brought down the largest nation in history; this is nothing for Him. Hashem brought us all the way here and made all of those miracles for us; this is nothing for Him. If He brought us here, and He says move forward,"

2:12:18I'm going to trust Him. And he takes the steps into Yam Suf all the way to the point when it covers his nose. Meaning he was willing to die to prove he believes in Hashem. And at the moment it reached his nose and he started swallowing water, that's when the ocean split. Hashem says, you have to show me you believe. But why did I read you the verse after this Kriyat Yam Suf? Where it says, after Kriyat Yam Suf, after we crossed the ocean, Hashem let all the Jews, all Am Yisrael, cross safely in miraculous ways and drown the Egyptians. Then it says this verse, says here in Parashat Beshalach in Shemot (Exodus) chapter 14, verse 31: "Israel saw the great hand that Hashem inflicted upon Egypt, and the people revered Hashem, and they had faith in Hashem and in Moshe, His servant." You read this in your tefillah every day, by the way. In your prayer every day, you read this verse.

2:13:40So Hashem said, Nachshon ben Aminadav showed you emunah. Showed you that he has it already. But the people of today, not just you, everyone today, need a little more than that. He could have just been crazy. We need instructions. How do I get to emunah? How do I get to trust Hashem? 100%. Three steps. Three steps. First, it says—well actually, I'm sorry, four steps. First, it says, Israel, the nation of Israel, saw the hand that Hashem inflicted on Egypt. Israel saw. What does Israel saw? They paid attention. Pay attention to the world around you. You can't miss God. Can't miss Him. If you pay attention, you look at this table, you know somebody made it, right? Why? Because it couldn't just appear. Like some of these morons think that the world just appeared. Everyone here is brilliant. They know this did not appear. Somebody had to put it together. Who? Somebody that makes tables. Some builder put it together.

2:15:07The city, somebody or somebodies put it together. What about the sky? Obviously, a Creator had to put it together. Pay attention to the world around you. Look into the mirror. Look into your own eye. Notice that your eye is the best camera that was ever invented. Notice that the brain of the biggest fool in history is still more advanced than all of the technology that ever existed from the beginning of the world until the end of the world. If you learn a little bit about scientific facts, you can see Hashem. And anyone who wants scientific facts proving Hashem, you could either buy a book by Rabbi Zamir Cohen that was translated into English called The Coming Revolution, or if you ask me, I'll send it to you for free. It's an amazing book. B'ezrat Hashem. Anyone who wants to read it has to promise that they're going to read it, because it costs a lot of money. And I don't want to let down anyone who's giving to our organization for no reason. You have to read it. It'll change your life. So first, pay attention. That's what he says. They paid attention finally. After everything he did for them, finally, they paid attention. Okay. Step one. Step two. As soon as we pay attention, we realize there's a God.

2:16:33And this God is holy. This God is great. This God is in charge of everything, including the cells that are in your body. Including something called protein folding. Your body is full of trillions and trillions of proteins. In order for you to exist, each one of these proteins has to fold in a precise way. An exact way. If one protein, one out of trillions and trillions and trillions of them, folds the wrong way, a person can't see, can't hear, chas v'shalom, die. One protein. He's in charge of that too. So if you're, obviously if you believe in this great God and He's even in charge of these small proteins that you depend on, He's in charge of the oxygen we all breathe. What are you going to do? Same thing as Am Yisrael. Vayir'u. What's "Vayir'u"? They feared. Of course, I'm going to be scared. Only somebody crazy or ignorant is not going to be scared of God. He's in charge of everything. Not just my parnasah, my wife, my zivug, and my business. He's not just in charge of that. He's not just in charge of whether I'm going to get an ace on the fourth card. He's in charge of everything. Of course, I'm going to be scared. Yirat Shamayim, the foundation of Judaism. Without Yirat Shamayim, you have nothing. Nothing. Chazal says,

2:17:59A connection to Hashem only based on Yirah is an incomplete connection. It's a connection nonetheless, but it's incomplete. Why? Because it's good to have Yirah and Ahavah. Both fear and love. But if it's just fear, it's incomplete. But a connection with just love, just Ahavah, Chazal says it's no connection at all. It's worth zero. So the last two steps, and then I'll let you all go home. After we notice Hashem, we fear Hashem. It says, after you have fear, then you can say, "Ah, now I know what it is." Of course, I can believe He's in control. And once you have emunah, once you have v'ya'aminu, Then you know who Hashem is referring to here when He says Moshe Avdo. What was Moshe? Moshe Rabbeinu. Moses, our Rabbi. That's the Oral Torah. The Written Torah told us the basic foundation, the story, the mitzvot, but how to do them, what to do, how to do, we don't know. That's the Oral Torah. When you have

2:19:27Just a little bit of time to spend, to pay attention to the Creator, you're going to fear Him. When you fear Him, you can actually say you have emunah. When you have emunah, you're going to start doing what the Oral Torah says, which means that you have to study Torah. And where I got to, Baruch Hashem, after losing all of that money about two years ago, I had only a couple of hundred thousand dollars left. And I had already started doing lectures. On Tuesday, that was my shiur kavua, my last shiur of the week. I did one shiur a week at the time. I still had the business. One of our investments went terribly wrong. I woke up in the morning and got the news. It was not good news. At 9:30 in the morning, the market opened. By 9:35, I was wiped out. I have zero. Nothing. I say, what do you think I say at this point? Losing the first few million, it's tough. Losing the last million, it's tough. The last couple of hundred thousand, either it's the toughest, and you're going to commit suicide, or something else. The power of Torah...

2:20:51It's stronger than everything else, especially when it has to do with Kiruv. Hashem gave me the zechut to say the same verse that Job said after Hashem took everything from him: "Hashem natan, Hashem lakach, yehi Shem Hashem mevorach." God gave, God took, may His name be blessed. I shut off the computer and went to prepare for my shiur for the night. And ever since then, I've been living on a miracle every single month. I haven't worked since. That's it. This is what Emunah is. B'ezrat Hashem, all of you get some koach from all of this, learn from this, and b'ezrat Hashem, we all do teshuva.