Shiur Torah #96 What Religious Jews Dont Know About Secular Jews (New Jersey)

0:01In the name of God, we will do and we will succeed. In the name of God, we will do and we will succeed. In the name of God, we will do and we will succeed. and all of Am Yisrael, b'ezrat Hashem. Great to be in New Jersey. It's our first time here giving a lecture. I've been to New Jersey many, many times, but Baruch Hashem, we have a good reason now to spread some Divrei Kodesh. So today, you know, I've talked about my personal story several times over the last week. Each time that I talk about my personal story, the teshuva story, you know, I always try to make the rest of the lecture not necessarily the same because, you know, anyone that's watching the lectures will get bored after a while.

1:02But the main thing, I think, one of the main struggles in today's world, common to both the frum world as well as the non-religious world, is belief, is emunah in Hashem. People have a hard time giving Hashem the benefit of the doubt that He's got everything under control. Whether you're religious or not, in order to really live a fulfilling life, you have to have some level of emunah. Because if you really believe that everything is in your hands, slowly but surely, Hashem shows us that we're helpless. Now, the Sages say that the signature of Hashem is emet, truth. That's the signature. This is why any time people ask, "Well, how come we can't change the Torah and adapt it to our times? Moshe didn't have a car. That's why he didn't drive on Shabbat. Maybe if he lived today, he would drive on Shabbat." All types of things that people try to rationalize. But once something becomes a halacha, as it did a couple of thousand years ago and all the way from 3,300 years ago with Moshe, that's it. It was a stamp. It's emet.

2:21whether it's relevant or not is irrelevant. Once it becomes a halacha, it cannot change. You could obviously use the foundation of halacha to adapt to the times, because obviously we didn't have electricity 100 years ago, but you're still using the same basic foundation. You cannot change something. You can't say, no, this one doesn't count anymore. We're going to change it to something else. You know, back then, they had camels. Today, we have cars. So we should change. Can't do that. But this word of emet also has the roshei tevot of the three things that someone needs to live. In order for someone to live a fulfilling life, They have to have the basic foundation. And if I could show it to you in the words themselves... I think it's kind of small, but we'll try. Sometimes it's easier to do visual than it is to... Oh, no, it's too small. You're not going to see it. My small handwriting is not going to work. So...

3:34What's Emet? Rashi Tevot Emet is Aleph, which stands for Emunah. You have to have Emunah. You want to have a fulfilling life. You want to survive the week with all the difficulties, with all the stress, with all the problems, with all the issues. You have to have some Emunah that Hashem has it under control. You came to this world to be tested. You came to this world to pass these tests and grow. And obviously, whatever test Hashem is giving you, He knows you can pass. Whether you pass or not is up to you, but He knows you can pass it. The second part is mitzvot. Hashem didn't give us the Torah just for, you know, historical purposes. He didn't give us the Torah just to study it. Oh, very nice, Moshe Rabbeinu, Avraham Avinu, Yitzchak. Very nice stories, very entertaining. Great, thank you very much. No, He said, listen, Torah is something that you have to fulfill. And the way you fulfill it is with mitzvot. The third part, taf, is Torah. Torah. You can't know what the mitzvot are, and you can't even know how to get to emunah without Torah. But now, once someone removes emunah from that equation, from those three letters, what do you have left? Mem and taf. Met. Dead. So yes, you can do the mitzvot, and yes, you can learn Torah day and night.

4:59But if you don't work on your emunah on a regular basis, you're the same thing as a robot, which is dead. Nothing. It's lifeless. The golem, exactly. That is a problem that we have in the religious world. ...that a lot of people learn a lot of Torah, Baruch Hashem, they are giving Hashem more and more reasons to keep the globe spinning, keep the atom spinning, keep the world running, but... No, it's okay, have a seat, have a seat. Keep the globe spinning, keep the atom spinning, keep the world running, but... and... But what happens is they get too stuck into the pilpulim of the Gemara and the sugyot, and this one said this and that one said that. And it's very good. This is generally the reason why Hashem allowed us to have a machloket, allowed us to have a difference of opinion, because He wants us to argue. He wants us to debate. Because with debate, you arrive at the truth.

6:13And with debate is how you create zealousness and fire inside someone who is a talmid, dedicating 12 hours a day to learning Torah or more. Listen, if you read a book, if you read a science book for 12 hours a day, okay, after a while you get bored, you want to go to the park and, you know, play with your dog. But if you learn Torah for 12 hours, you want to go for another 50 hours if you can. Because there's fire in the Torah. But sometimes we get so stuck into the differences and the machloket and all of these different things that are mentally stimulating that we forget why we're even doing it. And when you're seeing people in a Beit Knesset that sometimes you see, you know, you have a prayer, and sometimes it's in the middle of Amidah, sometimes it's in the middle of Kaddish, sometimes it's in the middle of Kadosh Kadosh. You see them taking out their phone, looking at the phone, scrolling, and it's not that they're scrolling the prayer, they're scrolling the baseball game, or the stock market, or whatever emails they want to look at. It's in the middle of Beit Knesset. You're in the house of Hashem. You're looking at your phone. This is giving us a sign that

7:24We're not connected. We don't really believe 100% what we just said. We don't believe. We have a safek. We have a little bit of a doubt that Hashem is really here. Because it says, when we pray in the Beit Knesset, especially in the Minyan, Hashem comes also. So if you really believe that Hashem is there, you're going to play with your phone to, you know, think about if your wife texts you or not? If your boss is upset at you, or if the stock market went up or down, you're going to really text, Hashem is over here? So it shows that we have a little bit of a doubt. Why do we have a little bit of a doubt? Because we're not working our emunah muscle. In the secular world, there's a different problem. A lot of people believe that they believe, but they don't want to do. They believe that they have a belief in Hashem, that everything is from Hashem. Except parnassah. Everything is from Hashem. He created the heaven and the earth. But I still have to work on Shabbat. Why? But He created the heaven and the earth. He has money too. He has money. Don't worry. No, no, no. I need to work on Shabbat because He didn't give me enough money in the six days. Yes, but He said that if you work six days, or in America five days, He'll give you parnassah for not working. Because you didn't work on the seventh. He's going to give you parnassah in the six days. Not because you worked six days.

8:49So there's a very, very wide gap between the frum world and the secular world, where it's gotten to the point where in the religious world, some believe, and I think most believe, that the non-religious people are not religious because they don't want to be. Because they don't like God, and they don't feel like doing it. It's your reality. Listen, he wants to work seven days a week. That's why he works seven days a week. He wants to go out with a non-Jew. That's why he's going out with a non-Jew. He wants to eat treif. That's why he's eating treif. He wants to. It's pure desire. And I'm here to tell you that coming from that world for most of my life, it's 100% false for 99% of the cases. There's always somebody that's crazy. That just doesn't want to do it even though he knows. But the reality of it is that the problem with the secular world is that they don't know. They know some parts of the Torah. Some don't know anything. But they know some parts of the Torah. They know somebody named Moshe got the Torah. They know there was an Avraham. They know there was a Yitzchak. They know there was a David. They know there are characters. But they don't really know what it says.

10:09They don't know that God is serious. So I went to shul on Shavuot in Staten Island. Rav Zev is a very holy rabbi. He's mamash amazing. We did a lecture there last Sunday. Somebody, I spoke about him in one of my lectures. He's mamash born in the wrong generation, I think. He's one of these very, very special people. Knows the whole Torah. It's sitting in the palm of his hand. But if you look at him and talk to him, you wouldn't even think anything. You can mention anything you want by heart. Anyone by heart can tell you the verse, tell you the page number, tell you everything in the nicest way in the world. Unbelievable. Knowledge like this, I think I have to be reborn five times. Maybe then I can get there. Unbelievable. But many of the people that go to most shuls, you know, that are not 100% from communities, are not religious. They come to shul a couple of times a year. And secular people tend to like Shavuot. It's party time. You know, you study all night, you eat food, everybody talks about the borekas that you're going to make. There's always one guy or two guys that are preparing the food for everyone. It's fun, you study all night with the guys. Not a bad thing. But sometimes we forget why we got there.

11:25Why we're even there? You know, when Am Yisrael got to Har Sinai, and we're about to receive the Torah, Hashem told us, make sure that the animals don't eat from the mountain. And don't touch the mountain. Like she said, don't touch the mountain. Why don't touch the mountain? Because they want to eat. Why would they care about the mountain? Because it was food. Hashem put an enormous amount of flowers and beautiful things that He covered Mount Sinai with, so the animals would eat it. So I'm thinking to myself, this is all they think about? Food? We're getting the Torah, the purpose of the world, the only reason why this world exists b'chalal, It's not the Jews. It's the Torah. Why? Because the Torah was created 974 generations before the world. And if the Jews didn't accept the Torah, or the Israelites didn't accept the Torah, they wouldn't become Jews. If somebody else would have come along and accepted the Torah, they would become the Jews. So we know that the purpose of the world is the Torah. And all these animals think about is food?

12:43They don't notice that there are angels in the sky, words being printed in the heavens, thunder, lightning, and the angels coming down and placing a crown on each member of Am Yisrael. These are amazing things, and all they can think about is food? This is what distinguishes us from animals. But it's our choice. And sometimes when you don't know, It's not your fault that you don't know up to now. It's your fault if you continue your life not knowing. The animal is instinct. That's what they are. They work off of instinct. But a human being is not living off of instinct. If he's clear-minded and he's healthy, yes, of course, he has instincts, but he has to work with his own logic. So sometimes when you come to Beit Knesset two, three times a year, and you're only thinking about the food, it's a good way to get you in, but to keep you in for the rest of the year, we have to tell you the truth. And a lot of the people that I spoke to over there, mamash, they have no idea whatsoever what Hashem said. So, for example,

13:58I started telling them about Shabbat, how someone who violates Shabbat, according to halakha, is not considered Jewish. This is very harsh to people's ears in our generation, but it's what Hashem said. I didn't write it. I actually saw today something very scary. If anyone has, if you have the Yalkut Yosef in English or in Hebrew, in the preface, in the beginning of the book, they have different... excerpts from different sages. I say, what is the consequence of violating Shabbat? And I forget who the sage was that wrote it and where the source was, but he says, someone who violates Shabbat is considered a beast. In those days, according to the Sanhedrin, they would give him the death penalty. And they would be doing him a favor. It's better that he die than not keep Shabbat. When you go into the secular world, tell people this, like, why, Rasha, what do you mean? You're advocating murder. This is what Chazal said. This is what the sages said. Where did they get it from? They got it from God. They got it from Mount Sinai. I didn't say it. It's not my words. So I tell these people, look, listen, you know, you have to keep Shabbat, you have to keep kosher, you know, different things. It's like, no, I don't know. I don't think it says that. So you show them sources. You open a book, you show them sources.

15:23He said, "I don't know. I've been going to Beit Knesset for 20 years." One of the guys tells me, "I've been going to Beit Knesset for 20 years. I never heard this stuff." So I tell him, "Okay. You were here last week?" He says, "Yes." I said, "Last week in America, we read Parashat Bechukotai. Do you remember Parashat Bechukotai?" He goes, "Yes, I remember Parashat Bechukotai." I asked, "You have read Parashat Bechukotai more than once?" He goes, "Yes, I have read Parashat Bechukotai at least 20 times." I said, "Do you remember in Parashat Bechukotai that there are five levels of punishment?" He says, "Yes, I remember there were punishments. I don't know about five," he says, "I remember there were punishments." I said, "Do you remember the fifth level of punishments?" He goes, "I don't know, I remember those punishments." I asked, "Do you remember that the fifth level of punishments, if we don't do what Hashem said, what we do?" He goes, "No, I don't remember exactly." I said, "Okay, so maybe I can refresh your memory. Do you remember that Hashem said that if we still don't do teshuva after the first four punishments," And if we still treat Him with casualness, meaning we pick and choose whatever mitzvah we want to do—Shabbat, sometimes kosher, sometimes this, sometimes that, pick and choose. Do you remember that the last part of the punishment, He said that you'll get to a hunger so bad you'll have to eat your children? I said, what? What do you mean? Where does it say that? He said, it says that because this happened. I said, yes. It happened at the Beit HaMikdash. The enemy surrounded us for three years.

16:49us for three years. No food came in. No food came out. We got the starvation. Hashem, that's what happened. Hashem's not kidding. He says He did. He really says that? I said, yeah. He goes, I don't remember. I said, okay. You know why you don't remember? Because you don't understand Lashon HaKodesh. You don't understand Lashon HaKodesh. Most Jews do not understand Lashon HaKodesh. You're reading it and you're making sounds. You're saying the ah and the ooh and the wah and all of these things, but you have no idea what it says. So yes, you can make the sounds, but actually understanding what the words say, you have no idea. This is why I always recommend everyone to read it also in the language they understand. If English is your first language, it's not a shame, it's not embarrassing to read it in English. Because it's more important for you to understand what it says than to just make sounds. If Hashem wanted sounds, He'd make you into a donkey.

18:03You need to understand what it says. Once you understand what the Torah says, you don't even have to worry about the sages. You don't have to worry about the Gemara and the Shulchan Aruch and everything else. Just by basic understanding of the Tanakh or even just the five books of Moses. Basic level understanding with Rashi. So you understand even what the basic meaning is. You'll know that Hashem is not kidding. And this is the major disparity between the secular world and the religious world: the religious think that they're doing it because they want to, and the secular have no idea what's going on. And this is where I found myself. I was born in Israel, came to the United States when I was 10 years old, had some basic biblical studies until the age of 10, but then as soon as we landed in America, we joined public schools. We admired the goyim. We wanted to become like them. Had earrings, ripped jeans, played sports. Went to Beit Knesset maybe twice a year because my dad forced me to. What city was it? Staten Island in New York. Same Beit Knesset, actually. Same Beit Knesset. We were there originally when it was still just a side apartment. Baruch Hashem, they have a very nice, beautiful Beit Knesset today.

19:29Initially, the Rav wasn't there. Then later on, the Rav joined about maybe 15 years ago. And, you know, we'd go to the Beit Knesset here and there. Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, that's about it. Pesach, they tell us we can't eat bread anymore. Pizza? Fine. Okay, so we'll eat this matzah stuff. Matzah with chocolate is very delicious for young kids. So that's the way we lived. Once in a while, you hear Divrei Torah here and there, but in general, very, very limited. And little by little, this foundation that your parents worked really hard on giving you, slowly but surely disappears. Little by little, you have no interest whatsoever in eating kosher. And as we know from what Hashem told us, if you don't eat kosher, meaning you become impure, but the word is missing an aleph, which means that when someone eats non-kosher, they become spiritually stupid. This means that they could be the most brilliant mind in architecture, in science, in math, and everything else, but when it comes to the Torah, it's unbearable to them. You could tell them something 500 times, and they won't understand it.

20:48At least not like a normal person that's eating kosher. And sometimes even to listen to a shiur Torah is almost unbearable to them, like it was for me when I first started doing teshuva. I would go to the shiur, I would prepare the whole day. I was psyched to go to the shiur. Five minutes into it, I fell asleep. Next week, I got so upset, I said, oh, this week I'm going to stay up. Five minutes into it, sleep again. After a few weeks of doing this and struggling, I said, oh, the only way I could do it is if I write everything he says. Then I'm forcing myself to stay up, and that's what I did. And little by little, you peel off the klipah, you peel off this peel that you have on your soul from all the sins you've gathered for so many years. So, I got into public school, learned, and was a good student. At age 17, I went to Binghamton University. After the first semester, I had a good GPA. I had, I think, a 4.0 GPA or 3.9 GPA. After the first semester, I came home.

21:59And it was, you know, I think it was like a month, a two-month break. And some rabbi came to my parents' house, which they tell me today was actually Rav Mizrachi. And anyway, they convinced my dad to send me to Monsey for the break. So I go to Monsey. I think it was a few days, maybe a week. I don't remember exactly how long it was. It shook me up a little bit. I decided I'm going to start keeping Shabbat. So when I go back to Binghamton University, which has many Jews, but not necessarily everyone is religious, I'm going to wear my tzitzit, and I'm going to keep Shabbat, and I'm going to start eating kosher. I went to Binghamton University. Second semester, I kept Shabbat. Everyone went out on Friday nights; I stayed home, miserable. I would listen to shiurim here and there. This lasted until I dropped out of school after that semester because, for me, college wasn't appropriate. Even though I was a good student, I already knew what I wanted to do, and it wasn't being a doctor, lawyer, or anything that required a degree.

23:17I dropped out of school. I got into a different field initially. I went into electronics, which is what I was doing before college. Made some money. And I was keeping some mitzvot. This lasted for about a year, year and a half or so. After a year, year and a half, I stopped learning. It wasn't too long before I dropped everything. Without Torah, it's impossible to stay religious. At least... Real religious. Religious like a robot, there are many of them. Hashem does not want robots. Like we were talking about before, if you have emet, which is the emunah, mitzvot, and Torah, these are the three pieces you need to have in order to connect to Hashem. But if there's just mitzvot and Torah, where it's just, you know, you know what you need to do in Torah, so you're doing the mitzvot, but you have no actual real emunah, then there's no aleph, then you're just met, then you're just dead. Just a robot. It's okay for you to play with your phone in the middle of tefillah or in the middle of learning; you stop your learning, and you play with the phone. Anything distracts you from learning; you don't really believe anything you say, but you're doing it because you're part of a Jewish community. And it's just like the Africans who walk around with underwear in Africa, to them it's normal. If we showed up over there with our suits, they'd look at us, look at these crazy people walking around with these extra clothes.

24:41and we're looking at them, thinking, look at these crazy people who have no clothes on. Shame. We should give them some of our clothes. They look at us as crazy; we look at them as crazy. Same thing with someone that has no emunah. He goes to beit knesset, but really, he's crazy. Why? Because he doesn't really believe anything he says. So work on your belief. Stop being a robot. So, without learning, you can't have this emunah. Without really, really digging into things. And it's not just the halachot, but it's also proofs. Proofs. Scientific proofs of Hashem. Proofs that, you know, rational proofs of Hashem. Mussar. Why did Hashem write this verse? Why did Hashem write this parasha over here? Why is this parasha connected to the last parasha? Get into it! Just like you treat your job like it's the number one thing in the world, treat Hashem because He is the number one thing in the world. So I stopped learning Torah, fell off everything. I eventually left that job and I got into Wall Street. Somebody told me that they make a lot of money over there. I already knew a little bit about the stock market. I started investing some extra money that I had. And I made money, which of course was beginner's luck.

25:53and actually one of the customers that bought a computer from me was a stockbroker. He gave me a four-letter symbol. He says, "This is how I'm going to make a million dollars this year." So I started researching this company. Thank you very much. I started looking into this company. It was like a regional bank, and I decided that I'm gonna buy this stock, and I made money on it. So I just got into the stock market. In those days, 1998, everyone was into the stock market. So I started investing some money. Then somebody tells me to become a stockbroker. I became a stockbroker. I worked for the first place for maybe a month or a month and a half. I got fired because I wanted to actually learn about the business instead of just being a robot. That wasn't allowed. And so they fired me after about a month. Then I left. I went to work for another place. I worked for him for another couple of years, made him millions, made me nothing. And then I went to this big firm. And after getting screwed around for a few months, my so-called partner in this other firm left the firm because of September 11th. September 11th happened.

27:10A lot of brokers left the business, so I told the owner of the office, "Listen, I don't want any partners. I know I'm new here, but I'm very ambitious. You see I work harder than everybody else. Let me go on my own, meaning let me start getting my own clients." He's like, "Alright, well, you have to come up with $4,000 a month to pay the bills." I said, "Okay, I'll come up with the money." He says, "Do you have any money?" I said, "Absolutely not. I have maybe $1,000, $1,500 in the bank." I don't have $4,000. He goes, "How are you going to pay me?" I said, "I have no idea, but I'll pay you. I'll work hard." So now everyone else in the office was working; they were already in the business 15, 20 years. So everyone was working normal hours, 9 to 5. So I figured, I can't catch up to their experience anytime soon. So what could I do? I'll work double what they work. They work 9 to 5. I'll work from 8 to 12. So I started the day. I got up at 4:30, 5 o'clock in the morning. Got dressed. Not feeling it at this point. Got on the bus.

28:1945 minutes later, I'm at the office, reading the newspaper, knowing what was going on in the market. 8 o'clock in the morning, sharp, I started calling everyone I could to start getting investors in the worst possible market environment. Everything was going down on a daily basis. The market was crashing. You know, it was already crashing in 2000, but after September 11th, it really took a dive. And I'm trying to get investors. Now, the good thing about being new is that you have no clue. So you don't even know you're in trouble. You're just hopeful. You're just excited that you have an opportunity to work. So I'm working and I'm getting investors. Baruch Hashem, here and there, I'm getting a few guys to invest. ...and investing in a down market, which is, by the way, the only time to invest. Anyone who wants to invest and make real money has to invest in a down market, not an up market. An up market means the money already went up, people already made the real money. There's no more real money to be made; there's more risk than there is reward. In a down market, when everyone's running away, that's the time we take the cash, and that's when you invest. Not that I'm giving anyone investment advice, but if you're ever going to be in the market anyway...

29:29You should do that. Whether it's the real estate market, the stock market, or any other market, you have to buy when everyone's selling and sell when everyone else is buying. If everyone's buying, it means things are too expensive. If everyone's selling, it means things are getting cheap. And you don't necessarily need to be a hero and spot the bottom. If something seems cheap enough and you have patience to wait a few years, you'll be fine. No one catches the bottom. The only way to know the bottom is after you've missed it. So now, I'm getting investors. The first six months are very, very difficult because I'm making no money whatsoever, and the only money I'm making is going to this boss, to this owner of this branch. But during these six months, I'm struggling financially. Every little penny that I have is gone. I start getting a second job on the weekends to make the extra money to pay the rent because I'm already living on my own. After college, I didn't go back to my parents' house. I got my own apartment. But I got to a point where I had to borrow a dollar from this guy, Dmitri, every day so I could buy a donut and coffee. That was my food for the day. And every day, I would sneak on the bus.

30:46pretend that my MetroCard is in my bag, and I would put a MetroCard in there with no money, and tell the guy, "Okay, listen, I have to get the other MetroCard, it's in the bag, so let me not hold up the line, let me just go in and sit down, I'll come back with this MetroCard." And I go to my seat and fall asleep, and pray that he doesn't kick me off the bus. A few times he kicked me off. You deserve a little bit of embarrassment in life, Baruch Hashem. So anyway, this was the first six months. So poverty, I know. I know it pretty well. Living off of a donut and coffee every day, not easy. I think the homeless guy was giving me some food at some point. It was tough. But then, after six months, I finally got some of these investors to start sending some more money, and I made my first $5,000. To me, it was all the money in the world. Wow, I could eat real food now. I went and bought myself a real suit. It was great. I think it was like $300. It was like the greatest suit in the world. It was green. I don't know why I picked green, but it was a green suit. So anyway, but now I started getting these clients, and now every month keeps going higher. $5,000 becomes $7,000, and then $10,000, and $11,000. And then this big investment that I was investing in this whole time, in November of 2002, about a year after I started there...

32:14It works out, the stock goes up drastically, and I sell it, and I sell it for all of my investors. I make $117,000 in a month. To me, I was a millionaire. I break, you know, the office record. No one's ever made that kind of money in one month. And it's Friday. And after I finished all of my commissions and all of the clients and made all the sales, I go back on the phone and start getting, go back to get some more clients. So one of the guys, this guy Michael, in the office asked me, he goes, what are you doing? Why don't you go and party? For what? He said, you just made a lot of money. All of us are envying you. You made all this money. I said, yeah, but Monday. He goes, what Monday? He goes, Monday starts a new month. I have to work. To me, celebrating the money was not even part of the equation. To me, this was supposed to happen. This is why I worked. I worked to make money. It worked great, so I have to continue working for the next project. This mentality that people have that you're supposed to have this celebration every time you win, I don't know, it just wasn't part of my mentality. Maybe I should have, maybe I shouldn't have, but the point is that, to me, I was doing what I was supposed to, I was making phone calls. But then the next month was another big month; I made another $60,000. Then the next month, I made $180,000, and the money kept flowing in. By the time I was 23, I made my first million dollars.

33:42And then I decided to leave the firm and start my own company, which is a natural thing for a Jewish person to do. We don't like to work for anybody, especially if we have some money. So anyway, I started my own company, started hiring a bunch of people: some guys to make calls for me, to do analysis for me, secretaries, and so on. And the money kept flowing in. You know, a bad month would be $150,000, $200,000. Good months would be much higher. And all this time, I'm justifying my life as far as with Hashem, because I believed in God, by... donating money and helping anyone who needed money. Somebody needed money, they'd come to me. Generally, I wouldn't really ask them what the problem was. I wouldn't go into the whole detail. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I'd usually get to a point where I'd just ask them, how much does it cost? They'd tell me how much it costs. I'd just write them the check and they'd go away. And I'd go back to making money.

34:48because for me to listen to a two-hour story was not exactly the ideal way to spend my time. So they tell me, "Okay, I need $5,000." I'll give you $5,000. Go. Let me go back. I was very, very generous with my money. I gave a lot of money to family, to friends, employees, and anybody and anyone that wanted it or needed it. And some of the people that were very common receivers of the money were religious people. Every week, there were at least two or three religious people, in some cases rabbis, that would come to my office and ask for donations, and also sometimes give us Divrei Torah, or some, you know, two-minute Divrei Torah. Sometimes they'd convince some of the guys to do Tefillin, and I had an open-door policy. Anytime you want to come, come. And they came for years. I had the office for about 15 years. They came throughout all of that time, at least two or three times a week. And as much as I'm upset at those very same people today, they're actually part of the reason why I give lectures. Why am I upset at them? Because, let's just do the simple math.

36:10If let's say they came for 10 years, not 15 years. Just use a round number of 10. Instead of coming three times a week, they came once a week. So that means at minimum 52 times a year over 10 years, 520 times. So someone had 520 tries, 520 opportunities to tell me to keep Shabbat, to tell me to stop being a goy. to tell me anything that would change my life. Anything other than give me tzedakah or a d'var Torah. Anything. Anything life-changing. Hey, by the way, you're married to a non-Jew. This is a problem. Maybe at some point. i understand you don't know me in the beginning. I got it. First ten times. Let's just give it 50 times. Took you a year to get to know me. Two years to get to know me. A hundred tries, you can't tell me that intermarriage is bad. You can't tell me that the fact that I go to casinos on the weekends is not a good thing. I understand two years to get to know each other. When is this strategy supposed to work? 520 times it still didn't work. When is it supposed to work?

37:34And this is, again, one of the major issues between the religious and non-religious. When the religious think that the non-religious world is not observing because they don't want to, they'll continue being politically correct and not tell you. They're not gonna tell you, listen, by the way, according to everything that Hashem said, you have a serious problem. Well, what kind of problem? Oh, when you finish this world, you're going to a really bad place. For how long? Forever. What do you mean? I can't fix it? Yeah, here you can fix it. What about when I get there? Uh-huh. Can't fix it over there. Because why? I can't negotiate? Because try and negotiate with the IRS. If you could convince them, you can convince Him too. Can't convince anybody. Can't work out a deal with Hashem. Here's your time.

38:34Can't do teshuva once you go up there. Can't do teshuva if the Mashiach shows up tomorrow. No more teshuva, no more conversions. That's it. This is your chance. So if it really was more than 520 times, a lot more than 520 times, but even if it was just 520 times, and you still don't tell me? And this is all because of this poison we have in our society today called political correctness. We don't want to hurt people's feelings. So we tell people, listen, don't have the surgery because it's gonna hurt. Okay, but if I don't have the surgery, I'm gonna die. Yes, but at least you're not gonna be in pain. As ludicrous as it sounds, that's what political correctness is. We don't want to hurt people's feelings. It's nonsense. You have to tell people the truth. Once you tell me the truth, I'll decide for myself like an adult. Maybe I still want to be a Mechalel Shabbat, even though I know. Maybe I still want to eat pig, even though I know. Maybe I still want to do everything that I’m doing, even though I know. But at least it’s an educated decision. Once you don’t tell me, then you’ve made the decision for me. And if you make the decision for me, it’s not fair. Because maybe your decision for me is not the same decision I would make. It’s at least a 50-50 shot that I’m going to make the right decision.

40:01can't tell me it's guaranteed I'm not going to listen. Like a lot of people say, no, Chazal says that if you know that someone is not going to listen, then it's better not to tell them because then it turns their shogeg into mezid. It turns their accidental sin into intentional sin. This is a complete misunderstanding of the Divrei Chazal. They're not talking about the very basics of Judaism. When they said, if you don't tell somebody and you know they're not going to listen, they didn't mean, don't tell somebody it's a Mechalel Shabbat, it's, you know, nothing, or it's okay. No, they said, listen, if the guy has a bad attitude and he's in the middle of his anger, you don't have to tell him at that moment, listen, it's not good to be angry, Hashem is not going to accept your prayers, He's not going to be in the same room as you if you're angry, it's the worst... character trait to have. You can't tell him at that point because he's not going to listen to you. That's what they meant. That's a middah. It's not that there's eternal Gehinnom for it. It's not like, "Oh, listen, Hashem slaps you a couple times and everything's okay." She's not kidding.

41:24Zera levatalah, wasting seed. People don't have an idea of how bad it is. Not a clue, not a clue. How do I know they don't have a clue? Because the only reason I came to New York was that a couple of tzaddikim asked me to come to New York because they saw a lecture that I did about wasting seed. Now, how come they saw my lecture? Why did they get to my lecture? Because if you look really, really, really hard, you spend the next three days looking. That's all you do for 24 hours a day. That's all you do. Look, because this is what I did. For a lecture in English about wasting seed, which is one of the worst possible sins a Jew can commit, and a goy. A goy is also not allowed to waste seed. Look for a lecture non-stop. You'll only find three in English. In Hebrew, you'll find plenty. Rabbi Daniel Assor makes plenty of them. I think he talks about it more than anybody else, but it's in Hebrew. In English, there are only three. The total, before last week's shiur, total time of all three lectures, is approximately an hour and 25 minutes. 55 minutes is my lecture.

42:4118 minutes is Rabbi Elan Anava, and then the rest is Rabbi Mizrachi. He actually made a very, very extensive lecture about it, but it's not in public hands, meaning you can get access to it, but not on YouTube. Bottom line is, no one wants to talk about it other than the three people I just mentioned in English. Why? It's not politically correct. It's a very intimate issue. It's not exactly coffee table language. Okay, but yeah, but you realize that this generation, this is one of their disasters. You realize Hashem destroyed the entire world because of this sin. Noach's flood, know anyone that's heard of Noach? That was the reason. That was the reason. Wasting seed. No one wants to talk about it? No one cares?

43:42So they asked me to come here specifically to do a shiur about that. So, baruch Hashem, on Thursday night we did a three-hour lecture about it. Even more sources and more information than the first 55 minutes we did in Florida. Both physical, both scientific, and spiritual sources. And there were a lot of disruptions from the Satan. The Satan did not want this shiur to come online. I had to use three different cameras to make this shiur. That's why it's not posted yet. This camera that you're seeing behind you, the sound stopped working after five minutes. So this mic, do you see the blue light? It shut off after five minutes. I didn't notice it until an hour into it. But at the same time, because I knew this camera always gives me problems with, you know, Satan likes my shiurim apparently, and he likes to interfere with my cameras, so I always have a secondary camera. Why do I have my iPad? I usually have my iPad in front of me that records me also, but I didn't know what I was going to talk about tonight, so I didn't put the iPad. I'm like, ah, maybe he's going to leave me alone after last week's shiur. So I had the iPad on. The iPad died after two hours. Died, battery, died.

45:07The camera died after about two and a half hours. So the sound didn't work for the first hour. At least we have the sound from the iPad. But we have to change it. We have to connect it. The camera died, even though it had six hours' worth of battery. Six hours' worth of battery died after two and a half hours. And then the last half hour, I recorded from my iPhone. So now when I got home, I was... videos, six different videos that we have to put together to somehow make this three-hour shiur. Baruch Hashem, today we worked on it. I think later tonight, b'ezrat Hashem, we're going to publish it. Everyone needs to watch it. Obviously, the Satan doesn't want this lecture out. There's a reason why no one talks about this topic. But at the same time, we have to. We have to talk about the things that are affecting us. If I keep telling you, "Oh, listen, let's talk about shalom bayit." Okay, shalom bayit. You have 50,000 lectures about shalom bayit. You don't need me for shalom bayit. Once in a while, we talk about shalom bayit. Once in a while, you want to learn the mitzvot of, I don't know, Chanukah and Sukkot and Yom Kippur. Hashem didn't bring me to the world to tell you about this stuff. There are plenty of much, much smarter people who can teach you about it. I have never been politically correct.

46:26This is why Hashem put me to the rest of the tikkun that I'm about to tell you. So now, I'm on Wall Street. I start making money. A lot of it. I donate some money to Beit Knesset. I buy a Sefer Torah. We have a whole Sefer Torah written from scratch in Yerushalayim. My mom told me when I was 16 years old that it's the biggest mitzvah in Judaism, apparently. So I said, okay, when I have money, I'll write a Sefer Torah. So I had a Sefer Torah that was very expensive, but at that time wasn’t. Written, most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I actually saw it today again, Baruch Hashem. Still beautiful, still amazing. Even when I looked at it today, I said, you know what? It's probably the only reason Hashem actually gave me a second chance. This mitzvah that I did for the Sefer Torah. Yeah, giving donations to, you know, a Beit Knesset is good. Giving a donation to somebody that's poor is good. But Torah? It's a different world. Different when you compare. There's two, you know, when you give tzedakah

47:35You have to look at it like an investment. We just talked about the stock market moments ago, right? So when you invest in the stock market, if you have some money to invest in the stock market or in real estate or in a business, what are you going to invest in? Something that you think has the most amount of potential. Same thing you have to look at with the real money you're going to invest in tzedakah. Now, when you invest in Torah, meaning in someone that's fulfilling the Torah, someone that's learning Torah all day, You need to know that according to our sages, each letter that you read in the Torah, each letter, one letter, not a whole word, not a whole sentence, each letter is considered a mitzvah. Why? Because according to our sages, Hashem put Himself in the Torah, meaning that each one of the holy letters, the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, is actually His name. Each letter is His name. Aleph is His name. Bet is His name. Each one of the letters is one of His names. So when you read it, not when you read it in a newspaper. You read it in a Torah, you're reading Hashem's name. It's a mitzvah. Someone's learning Torah, each second, they read a letter, another letter, another letter, another letter, they make a mitzvah. So the Chafetz Chaim did an analysis. He said the average talmid chacham can read 60,000 letters every hour. 60,000 letters.

49:00If he studies for 10 hours, that's 600,000 mitzvot. Someone that's helping this talmid chacham, someone that's helping this person that's dedicating his life to Torah, is not just sharing in those mitzvot. It doesn't go 300,000, 300,000. Because mitzvot are like fire. Just like if I took, if I wanted to transfer fire like we did on the Chag, from candle to candle, when I moved the fire from one candle to the candle that didn't have any fire, after I lit the second fire, the first candle stayed the same. The fire didn't go down. Same thing with a mitzvah. So that means he got 600,000 mitzvot and I got 600,000 mitzvot. Now go try to get 600,000 mitzvot in another way. Okay, you did tefillin, one mitzvah. You did bracha on food, another mitzvah. You left the bathroom, another mitzvah. Prayer, another few mitzvot. Let's say you got 150 mitzvot a day. Let's just say, you know what, you're a big tzaddik, 2,000 mitzvot for the day. You're still missing 598,000. Why? Because you go into the business world, you can't study Torah like a Talmid Chacham.

50:19So you're still missing 598,000 mitzvot, meaning that your entire year, maybe you'll catch up to one of his days. So it's worth it to invest in a Talmid Chacham. There's only one mitzvah that according to the sages is even more profitable, or could be more profitable—not guaranteed, but could be more profitable depending on the success of it—which is kiruv. When you invest in kiruv, you inherit, in essence, the mitzvot of every single person that does a mitzvah as a result of it. So, for example, you have a disc. I brought you some discs for anybody that wants to take it for themselves or to give them out. Each disc costs one dollar. I don't charge you. Everything is free here. For anyone that wants to sponsor the CDs that we have here, These precious souls sponsor the CDs. Think about it. They give you a CD. Each CD has 30 hours of Torah on it—Torah lectures. Some short 15-minute clips and some two-hour lectures. You give it to somebody, and they do teshuva. Every single mitzvah they ever do goes to the person that paid for that CD. Forever. Now that person is going to get married one day. He's going to convince his wife to do mitzvot.

51:39They're going to have kids. Kids are going to become talmidei chachamim. Each one of them is going to do 600,000 mitzvot a day. All of that goes for one dollar. All that goes into the account. So if the kiruv personality is successful, has things that are spicy and get people to wake up, it's a big investment. For very little. That's why when I told one of my students in Australia that we're coming out with our first CDs, he was so excited that he made me excited about it. He said, "I can't miss this opportunity." He sends me $1,000 right away. He's like, "Get CDs out there right now and I'll get you some more." There's someone that knows what it means. Most people don't know. So I thought that I was buying my way into Gan Eden with my few donations. The problem is that it says, "Donations, your tzedakah is going to save you from death." It didn't say it's going to get you to Gan Eden. So what does it mean? Save you from death, meaning that all the sins that we're making, Hashem is going to give us some more time to do teshuva.

52:53The mavet you were supposed to get for violating Shabbat, because according to Hashem, in Torah it says, mot yumat. Violate Shabbat, mot yumat. You give tzedakah, okay, I'm going to give you another Shabbat. You give more tzedakah, I'm going to give you another Shabbat. Eventually, you're going to run out. Eventually, you're going to run out of time. But that tzedakah is buying you more time to do teshuvah. It's not buying you Gan Eden. You show up over there with no Shabbat, all the tzedakah in the world is not going to help you. You could be Bill Gates, give all of his money to talmidei chachamim, it's still not going to help you. You still have to make, you still have to collect your own mitzvot, your own obligation. You can't just give the obligation to others. So yes, you can buy and help and do good things, but if you're not fulfilling your own purpose, you have yourself a problem. So this was the reason why I got very upset once I learned that

53:53This tzedakah is not helping me. It's buying me more time. But eventually, I have to pay the bill. So when rabbis didn't want to tell me, and the people that knew didn't want to tell me, I even had one of my employees who was a rabbi. He was a rabbi, he was a certified rabbi. And he never told me. The only excuse I can give all of them, The only kaf zechut I can give all of them is they figured that I don't want to do it, not that I don't know. But I'm telling you now, I didn't know. I knew what it was, but I didn't know the significance. Like most Jews know that there is something called Shabbat, but they don't know the punishment for not keeping it, or for kosher, or for all these other things. So when no one wanted to tell me, eventually Hashem had to. Now when Hashem tells you, it's a little different. When Hashem tells you, it hurts. So in the beginning, after 10 years in a row, almost 10 years of being in the business and things working, things stopped working. I started having some issues with the company, business, this, that, but I was still making a fortune. In May of 2006,

55:15Even though two of my deals didn't work out, we still had to get out of them. By getting out of them, we made some money for clients, still okay. My fee, $1.6 million in one month. Printing money. We were making money a few years ago, and now we're printing it pretty much. So, more than enough money to go around. We no longer look at price tags. Convenience is the only thing we look for. I go on vacation, play some poker tournaments with some of the best players in the world, and think that I'm living life. All this time I'm pretty miserable inside, but I'm trying to fill this time either with work or with things that are supposed to be fun. Real happiness I don't have. Then, as Hashem started giving me some of these issues, I realized that I have to make certain changes. I figured, you know what, let me start taking care of my health. So, in November of 2006, just a few months after I made the most amount of money I ever made in a short period of time, the best year I had in my career, I decided to have an elective surgery to fix something that was bothering me once or twice a year.

56:42Went to the doctor. He said, "Listen, it's a common problem. Two out of three people have it. The surgery is an elective surgery. You come in in the morning, a couple of hours, you leave. You're a little bit uncomfortable for a couple of days, and that's it. No big deal." I said, "Okay, no problem. I'll schedule the surgery for next week." I go in the next week. I go into this simple surgery, and I wake up a different person. The person that went in was very rich, decent as far as intellect, very, very proud, giving, and fairly healthy. The person that came out can't stop screaming in pain. Ever. The entire body changed. From my neck all the way to the bottom of my feet was hurting, the type of pain, if you could imagine, which hopefully you can't. Like if you take a knife and you start cutting somebody open over and over again, that pain, everywhere. Eventually, the amount of morphine they gave me was the maximum amount of morphine legally allowed to give a human being. They said that most people would die with half of it. Eventually, it calmed me down and they sent me home.

58:10I went home, ate a sandwich, went to sleep, and woke up 45 minutes later. Only this time, I was screaming worse than I did the first time. But this time, the screaming didn't stop for 62 days. And for 62 days, The most amount of consecutive sleep that I can get is about 15 minutes. I wake up with pain, the pain of someone stabbing me, and I'm getting electrocuted from the knife at the same time. My body starts failing, my organs start failing, I start bleeding from different parts of my body that have nothing to do with the surgery. I urinate blood, blood comes out of my eyes, and infections come out of my ears. All types of tza'ar, is what we call it in Hebrew. All types of disasters practically coming out of all parts of my body. And it gets to a point where everyone thinks that I'm probably going to die. Just a very horrible, horrific mitah meshunah, strange death. Hashem has mercy on me after those two months. And the pain starts subsiding.

59:28where instead of taking 50 to 60 painkillers per day just to live, now I'm only taking about 20, which is still completely out of this world, but to me it was almost like Gan Eden. I get a second chance. I start going back to the office, even though I can't really do much because I'm in pain all the time. And I walk very, very slowly because moving is very difficult. So, for example, to walk from here to the end of the room would take me somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 minutes or so. where for a normal person it would take about five or six seconds. And every single step I say "Ow." Little by little, I start going back to my life, but still no teshuva. I think I have a second chance at life, maybe I'll donate some money. Maybe I'll put on tefillin a few more times, but real teshuva, it's not in the cards. Anytime that I feel good, I'm gonna go have fun, go on vacation, go play some poker. That was my life. So Hashem said, Oh, you didn't get it the first time? Okay, so let me send you a second message. Nine months later, I get a pain in the back of my leg. I thought I pulled a muscle. By the next day, I can't move. I go to the intensive care unit. They cut me open. They say that if you wouldn't have come within the next couple of hours, probably the infection you have inside your body would have blown up, gotten into your bloodstream, and you would have died.

1:00:55so you got here right in time. Not that it had anything to do with me, I just didn't want to miss any work, but my leg was hurting too much. And now I go into this horrific surgery, and I'm in the intensive care unit next to the people that got shot and are pretty much dying for the next two weeks. And I have to have an IV of morphine 24 hours a day, because... The wonderful nurses and doctors have to follow procedure, and they have to keep reopening this thing every few hours. Fun. Leave the hospital eventually, go back home, no teshuva. Go back to my life, write some articles, get some press on the business. Three months later, Another infection, different area, intensive care unit, surgery, intensive care unit, Saint Balagan, few weeks, surgeries, painkillers, no teshuva. When Hashem wrote, "a stubborn nation," He thought about me. But it's not that I'm not doing teshuva because I don't think it's good.

1:02:24I'm not doing teshuva because I don't think it's relevant. I'm not thinking this is from Hashem. I'm thinking this is just misfortune, bad luck. This too shall pass. I was a very, very optimistic person. Never thought that this is going to continue for the next seven years. all the way to the point that I went to over 50 different doctors in all types of medicine, all types of practices, holistic medicine, traditional medicine, countless surgeries. It got to a point where I became a subject in an experiment where there was something called ozone therapy, where they inject ozone into your IV. and thinking that they're going to purify your body. It actually feels like chemotherapy. You feel like you're dying after the injection. It's a horrific, horrific feeling, and it didn't do anything for me. Maybe it works for other people. For me, it didn't work. It actually made me feel worse. But I became part of a study, started taking steroids like the athletes do, which insurance didn't cover.

1:03:44And my money, as soon as it came in, was running out even faster. Oh, and also those friends that I had, all those friends that you inherit when you have money, they also left, and they usually took something with them. And this continued for seven years. And when Hashem wants to bring you down, to get you to wake up, He has His ways. Says, that the pride of man will be his downfall. The fact that I thought it was happenstance, it was coincidence, it was just bad luck, was actually another reason for Hashem to give me even more of a difficult delivery, a difficult teshuva. Because as He said in last week's parasha, if you didn't do teshuva, and you still treated Me with casualness, meaning this is two separate parts. If you didn't do teshuva after all the punishment that I gave you, that's one level, but you still treated Me with casualness and you think that things are happenstance, coincidence, and luck, it's a different level of punishment. It's two separate parts. And each one of the five levels starts with that verse.

1:05:08If you still didn't do teshuva, and you treated Me, you went with Me, which means you treated Me with casualness. Which also connects to wasting seed, but that's a different shiur. Because keri also means being tamei from wasting seed. So continuing this battle, the money is being lost, and the funny thing is that even the things that are supposed to work stop working. So, for example, because I was wealthy and had all this money, all these different people would sell me stuff. So, I had this disability insurance company come to my office one day before all this happened. They said, "Listen, you're making all this money. What if something happens?" I'm like, "Something happens? I'm in my 20s. What could possibly happen?" I'm laughing at the guy. I said, "Listen, what if something happens? Listen, what's a few thousand dollars a month for you? It's not really a big deal." He said, "No, it's not. What do you want from me?" He says, "Okay, you buy this policy, and this insurance company, if something happens, will pay you $35,000 a month for life, for this, and then I think another $100,000 a month for your business." I said, "Okay, whatever. It's a few thousand dollars a month. No problem. Okay, fine. Sign it."

1:06:26So now something happened. Big insurance company, big bill for a few years. The two are supposed to match. So after things finally started calming down, I was able to comprehend life. I called the insurance company and filed a claim. They investigated the matter for six months. Six months' worth of paperwork, tax returns, proofs, medical documents, and witnesses. My own doctors talked to them. After six months' worth of investigation, they concluded to deny me. Under what cause? What happened to you is impossible. It does not fit any classification of something that could happen to somebody. and we don't believe it. Like, yeah, but you have proof. You have medical proof. I have countless hospital stays. I have this. I have that. Like, yeah, we don't know what that is. If you want, you can sue us. Actually, if you want, you can sue us.

1:07:32Now, good luck suing an insurance company. Just so you know, I was actually in the insurance business a little bit. Don't waste your time suing insurance companies unless it's a death benefit because that's the only one you're guaranteed to win. Everything else you're guaranteed to lose. And the reason why is because they'll outspend you. Part of an insurance company is doing insurance, but a bigger part of it is lawyers. which look for every single reason in the world to deny claims. An insurance company's job is not to pay claims; it's to collect premiums and reject claims, but they have to reject them legally. So there are lawyers and more lawyers that work for them, looking for reasons to reject claims, whether it's health benefits or other types of car benefits, anything that you need. So, for example, most people that have a flood in their house If they tell the insurance company they had a flood, if they even use that word, and they don't have that word in their insurance policy, they're not going to cover it. Oh, you said you had a flood. Yeah, but it wasn't a flood. The guy actually said it was something else. Like, yeah, but you used "flood." That's it. We're denying you. Yeah, but half my house is ruined. It's like, okay, but it was a flood. It's not a policy flood.

1:08:46They'll use anything they can to reject you. It's a horrendous business. It's heartless. So now I didn't really care that much that they denied me because I already had plenty of money. I didn't necessarily need money. I didn't think that later on I would lose everything. I just figured, okay, whatever. Okay, so I thought this stupid insurance policy is going to give me a little over $100,000 a month. No, it's not giving me anything. Fine, whatever. I'll make my money back. I didn't think that the next seven-year journey was ahead of me. So, little by little, I'm losing more and more money. Little by little, my health is deteriorating more and more. More things are happening. Eventually, my legs swell up to the point where I can't walk. I have to use a cane. I'm in different hospitals. And I get to a point where I realize that there's no cure for what I have. And God bless my mom, who cried over me all the time, her and my wife. Well, really, the two reasons why I stayed around were because, you know, you start getting to a point where you don't really want to stay in this world when you're in so much pain. And my mom, every time I would talk to her, she would bless me. So, I got so frustrated one time. I told her, "Ima, please stop giving me blessings. God hates me."

1:10:09And that's really what I believed. How could something so bad happen to someone that did so many, what I thought were, good things? I gave money to this one. I gave money to that one. Money, money, money, money. I figured that's my job in this world: to give people money. I never cared for money. I like making it. But as far as having a value for money, I think it's completely worthless. So for me, giving money was very easy. You need money? I have it. Take it. This was not my tikkun in this life. People have a hard time with money. It's hard for me to understand it because I don't share that desire. I like making it because I am very competitive. But as far as how people worship it, I don't get it. It's hard for me to understand that. But just like I can't understand other things, they can't understand why I'm even doing this. The point is that for me, giving it away is, oh, you need it, I have it, fine. Usually, I had this thing that I would do, and Baruch Hashem, I still do it now, that anytime somebody would come up to me and they would need money, like, for example, a homeless person, I would just take whatever money I had in my pocket, and the first bill that would come out, I would give it to them. Whether it was a dollar bill, a hundred-dollar bill, a twenty-dollar bill, it didn't matter. If it was the only bill, that's what they would get. Why? Because if that's what came out, that's what Hashem wants to give them.

1:11:29Giving was never a problem. So I figured, but I figured that was my obligation in this world. And I'm here to tell you that's the only reason I got more time. If my time ended, I would be in trouble. It just bought me more time. So then, after being very, very anti-everything, I became very, very desperate. And somebody told me about this shiur Torah that I should go to. And I said, okay, fine, no problem. Let me go to this shiur. And that's the one I told you about, where I would go and fall asleep after five minutes. So I tried learning a little bit here and there. I didn't do teshuva yet. I just started learning, maybe, you know, using my mind for something else other than business. Maybe something spiritual started, like doing tefillin here and there, but nothing really changed. And the health deteriorated again, because I would have breaks of a few months where I would feel almost like a human being, and then things would deteriorate really, really badly. So during one of those breaks, I started going to the shiurim, and then things deteriorated really badly.

1:12:44And it got to a point, the last time I got to it, it got to a point where I said, "Okay, that's it, this is it. I can't take it anymore." I look at my wife, and I say, "This poor woman, she's stuck with me. I gotta get, you know, this young girl, she's stuck with me." I feel bad for her already. And I got to my point of just, I couldn't take it anymore. And Hashem tells you, you know, He's going to give you a test, but each test is one that you can pass. I got to the point where I couldn't pass this test anymore. And that's when my first miracle, big miracle happened. My mom one day calls, she sees me this way, and my health has deteriorated, my spirit is down, I'm really, really depressed. It's very difficult to be around me because I'm in a lot of pain. Imagine someone sitting in front of you, you're trying to have dinner, and all of a sudden the person just starts screaming at the top of their lungs for the next two minutes because he feels like someone's electrocuting him. It's very, very disturbing.

1:13:50So I couldn't deal with it anymore. And my mom has this little phone book that has all these rabbis' phone numbers. She starts calling everyone. All over the world, wherever she can find these phone numbers, she keeps calling these rabbis looking for a blessing for her dying son. Almost two hours worth of calls, and no one answers the phone. Eventually, she calls a number in Israel. And a woman answers the phone, and my mom asks for a certain rabbi. The woman says, "I'm sorry, it's the wrong phone number" in Hebrew. After you tried for two hours desperately to reach a rabbi, and someone says you've finally reached a soul that actually answered the phone and it's the wrong phone number, what do you do? Start crying. He breaks down to this strange lady on the other side of the phone, and he says, "Hashem makes the miracle," and the voice on the other side of the phone says, "Which is my mother's name." "Who are you?" My mom is shocked. "How do you know my name?" She goes, "I'm Penina, your niece." My mom says, "How did I reach you? I don't even have your phone number. We've never spoken on the phone." My mom dialed the wrong phone number.

1:15:11...in a different country, and not only reached a relative, even though they've never spoken on the phone before, but also, as we happened to find out later on, she reached the only person who could help her. So Penina was her name, or is her name, and she says, "Why are you crying?" She tells her the whole sob story: "My son is dying, suffering." "Yes, everyone already heard, but we didn't know it was this bad." She says, "I need to find a rabbi that's going to bless him." And she says, "Okay, so why don't you talk to my brother, Ephraim. Rabbi Ephraim." She goes, "You talk to him?" He goes, "Yeah, he's a big talmid chacham. And he's also close to Rav Ovadia. Lives a couple of buildings away from him. If anything, he connects you to the Rav, Rav Ovadia." He says, "You would talk to me?" "Of course, you would talk to me. You're the aunt from America." You know, you're the aunt from America. Of course, everyone knows you. So she calls Rabbi Ephraim. Rabbi Ephraim isn't a caller like a tzaddik that he is. But he calls her back. Now, I didn't know that Ephraim existed. When I left America, he was still a baby. He's younger than I am. And we never talked. I never knew he existed. Apparently, he knew I existed, but still, we didn't talk.

1:16:35And so she tells him my story, and Ephraim, with his wisdom, asks, "Does he speak Hebrew?" And she says, "Yeah, yeah, he speaks a little Hebrew." So he asks, "Can I call him? Can I talk to him myself?" She responds, "No, he won't talk to you. He won't talk to us even. He barely talks to the family." And at that very moment that she says he won't talk to you, I, for... whatever rational reason you could come up with, but it's really not rational, I decided to call my mom for the first time in a very, very long time. I saw her every month or two, even though they were only a half hour away from my house. I just stopped visiting. But I would never call. But that day, I decided to call my mom. At that very moment, she's on the other line telling Rabbi Ephraim, he won't talk to you. And I hear my mom saying, I hear my mom crying on the other line. And I ask, Ima, why are you crying? What's wrong? What happened? She says, please, talk to him. Talk to him. I'm like, who? She says, Ephraim. I'm like, who's Ephraim? Why is he making you cry? She says, no, no, he can help you. He can help you. Just please, talk to him. He can help you.

1:18:07He can help you. And I said, okay, just stop crying. He can call me. Whoever you want to call me, just tell him to call me. I'll answer the phone. Just stop crying. It's unbearable for a child to hear his mom cry. So Ephraim calls me, and we say a couple of words, and he says, you want a story? You like stories? I said, yeah. He goes, you ever hear of the story of Yehuda and Tamar? I said, no, never heard of the story of Yehuda and Tamar. He tells me the story of Yehuda and Tamar with some secrets, part of the Torah. Now later on, years I mean, not even just later on, like a few months or even years later when I started learning Gemara, I finally realized how smart he really is. He could have picked any number of stories, knows a lot of stories, knows a lot of Torah, Baruch Hashem. He's one of these people that, Be'ezrat Hashem, could be one of Gedolei Yisrael. He's a very, very special soul, big time talmid chacham. He was a genius since he was a kid, finished, you know, the Shas four times before he was 20, already published six books before he was 25, working on 40 different books, special, special type of wisdom, not something normal.

1:19:27And his emunah, unreal. Lives 100% on emunah. Miracles every day are normal for him. If the sea split for him, I wouldn't be surprised. But he's a special person. Yet, if you look at him, you talk to him, as normal as can be, you wouldn't think he's anything special. So he tells me Yehuda and Tamar. And I'm in love with this story. Ever since then, I've always loved the story of Yehuda and Tamar. It's in the Torah. Why did Hashem make the Mashiach come from there? It's to fool the Yetzer Hara that knows that once the Mashiach comes, Hashem promised to slaughter the Satan. So the Satan is always trying to interfere with the Mashiach coming. So that's why Hashem made it happen in such a strange way where Judah would sleep with what he thought was a harlot, which later on we find out is a tzaddeket, Tamar. But that wasn't the real reason why he told me this story. Why did he tell me this story? Because in the Gemara, tractate Avodah Zarah, it's one of the places where they use the story of Judah and Tamar as one of the sources and one of the places of how we know that intermarriage

1:20:55has been forbidden since the creation. It was already taught in the yeshiva of Shem, one of the sons of Noach. How do we know? How do they use the story of Yehuda and Tamar in the Gemara? They say, Yehuda was a tzaddik. He's not a rasha. But how do we justify burning his daughter-in-law? Why burn her? says because if his two sons already died, and if she got pregnant, the only way for her to get pregnant without thinking that it's him is if she was with one of the goyim, and at that time, the death penalty was on the spot. This is one of the sources. Now, I had no idea about this whole thing. I only found this out later on, many, many years later.

1:21:55That's his wisdom. So he tells me the story of Yehuda and Tamar. I like the story. I start asking him questions, questions I've always had. Show me dinosaurs in Torah. I know there are dinosaur bones. I've asked three different rabbis. Each rabbi gave me a different answer. One guy said there's no dinosaurs. Another guy says it's called Taninim Gedolim. Another guy says it's Leviathan. I said no one knows what they're talking about because they all gave me three different answers. How could it be? So I ask him questions, and he not only gives me answers, but he gives me answers with a source, a page number, and a place on the spot. So I'm like, ah, this is pretty cool. Okay, maybe he already knew this question. So I ask him another question. He gives me another answer, place, and source. And now, each time I ask him a question, he makes me feel good about the question. So I ask him a question. He says, oh, yeah, what a great question. Oh, so-and-so, this tzaddik, so-and-so asked the same question 850 years ago on this page at this time. Of course, he asked the same question as me.

1:23:04So then I ask another question. He goes, oh, what a great question. He goes, you know, the same question was asked by this sage at that time 312 years ago. And he gives me the page number and source. And I'm like, how does he know this? So I start asking him business questions. I'm like, ah, he's not going to know business. He goes, this is a good question. Shlomo HaMelech answered this question on this verse at that place at this time. It's unbelievable. So I ask him all types of questions. We talk for about an hour and 40 minutes. Amazing. I thought I was smart, but this guy's in a different world. The next week, he calls me Thursday, 4 o'clock. We speak for three hours, same type of conversation. I ask questions, he gives me answers. And he gives me some stories in between. The next week, we talk for five hours. Thursday, 4 o'clock, five hours’ worth of Torah, questions and answers. The next week, 4 o'clock, seven-hour conversations, questions and answers. And this continues every Thursday at four o'clock, with an average call of about seven hours. Until today, for the next nine months, it was pure questions and answers. Every question that I could ever come up with, I would ask him, and I would actually get ready with questions. And I'd finally get answers. And anyone that ever had questions,

1:24:27and you actually finally get answers, like real answers—not like an opinion answer, but a real answer, like this is what Hashem said, and he showed it to you that it was written before you even thought that there was a question, he already provided you an answer. It's like having a cure before you knew you had a disease. It's a high. It's invigorating. And even though my world around me is completely disintegrating, the money is disappearing, the friends are turning into enemies, health is deteriorating, it stops mattering. It doesn't matter anymore. It's just, okay, it's annoying, at times it's really bad, but when the call comes, when Thursday four o'clock comes, The world stops. Everyone knows, don't bother me, don't knock on my office, don't call me, don't do anything. I will not answer. Thursday, four o'clock, it's me and Rabbi Feiner. The whole world stops on Thursday. And that became like my Shabbat. So after answering all these questions, and little by little, he said, listen, you have to start studying on your own, too. So I said, yeah, I'm studying a little bit here and there. He goes, no, no, you have to start studying every day.

1:25:43I said, every day? Really? Every day? He goes, yeah, yeah, every day. I said, how much every day? He said, study 15 minutes a day. I said, but I'm already studying with you for seven hours, so what if we just study for eight hours instead of seven? And that's it. He goes, no, no, no. I'd rather you study 15 minutes a day every day, even if you have to replace the entire seven hours. I said, why? He said, it's the same thing as eating. If I told you, listen, don't eat for six days a week, but one day eat for 24 hours, how long are you going to survive? I said, not even a week. He said, exactly. Your soul has to eat every day. You starve it the whole week. Yes, it's fun to learn together for seven hours, but you're not going to progress this way. So now I started studying and I get into it. So 15 minutes all of a sudden became an hour, and two hours, and three hours, and so on. Then I find out as I start learning, one day he calls me, he's like, listen, I have to tell you this chiddush. I said, well, what's chiddush? He goes, I read in the Zohar. He always wanted to give me bad news in an interesting way because

1:27:01He has, everyone has their way of being a mokhiach, being a, you know, giving a rebuke, giving you advice that's not exactly solicited, but something that you need to hear. His way was, with his wisdom, he's like, listen, I read in the Zohar that Rabbi Meir Baal Hanes says that someone that's married to a non-Jew will lose all of his money, his health, and so on and so forth, and a few other things. And I said, what? No, he doesn't know what he's talking about. I don't even know who Rabbi Meir Baal Hanes is. All I know is that my mom kept mentioning his name every time she prayed. Rabbi Meir Baal Hanes is Elohai Rabbi Meir Aneini. You know, there's a prayer that you say, "the God of Rabbi Meir, answer me." She always said Rabbi Meir. I'm like, ah, it's some guy that my mom mentions. Well, I know. So he tells me that in the Zohar it says this, and I'm like, no, he doesn't know what he's talking about, this woman that I'm with. She's the greatest thing I ever have. Yes, she's not Jewish. But I can't force her to be Jewish. I'm barely Jewish. You're going to force her to do something I'm not doing? And he probably wasn't thinking about me when he wrote that. He doesn't know what he's talking about. And I argue with him.

1:28:23Little do I know that this is not really just in the Zohar; this is pretty much in the entire Torah. But he wanted to give it to me in an interesting way. So then, I start learning about it. And I start saying, okay, yes, this is obviously a problem. Now, the problem with intermarriage is that if you have someone special, you don't want to lose them. But at the same time, you can't keep things the same. Now, every time I learned, I would teach her everything I'm learning. And the funny thing is that even before Ephraim came along, for some reason, my wife is a tzaddeket, she was always a tzaddeket, she always wanted me to be a religious Jew. She brought me a Tanach, maybe 10 years before that. You know, it said, once you learn. And she would tell me to stay home on holidays. I'm like, why? What am I going to do at home by myself? She goes, no, I'll manage the office. You stay home. Go learn some Torah. I'm like, why? What am I going to learn Torah for? I'll learn it when I'm old and retired.

1:29:45She always wanted to be religious. So every time I would learn something from Ephraim, everything I would learn, I would go over it with her, and we'd both enjoy it. But she was born Christian. And like many, many Christians today, by the way, many of them don't actually believe in the New Testament. Many of them end up creating their own religion. Why? Because anyone with a little bit of sense knows that it's all shtuyot. It's all nonsense. First, they tell you that the guy is born out of some, you know, just appears because the father went away and never committed relations with the mother. And somehow, when the guy came back, the woman is pregnant. And she says that God made her pregnant. Now, I don't know about you, but that kind of seems a little suspicious to me. Number one, there's no witnesses. Number two, who else are you going to say did it? Because if you tell him that somebody else did it, he's going to kill you. The second thing is, if God really wanted something like that to happen, why you? You weren't anything special before. And three, why didn't He do something like Mount Sinai? He gave us the Torah. The whole world knew about it.

1:31:04And then, as you keep moving on to the story and say, wait a minute, no, no, he's not God. He's the Messiah. What do you mean he's the Messiah? Is he God or is he the Messiah? God's not the Messiah. It's not the same thing. And then they tell you that, no, he died. Wait, God died? How? Who killed him? The whole thing doesn't make any sense. It was illogical from the beginning. So I would always, actually, throughout our relationship, even before we became religious, make fun of it. I would call it the remix. I'm like, oh, she would say something, and I would say, oh, wow, that's probably from the remix. Because I'm like, yeah, you guys use our Torah as number one, and you guys have like a remix. You started your own thing using our stuff. So we'd make fun of it, jab at each other. It was funny. But by the same token, what happens with a lot of Christians is that they know the story itself doesn't make any sense whatsoever. So what they do is they take whatever parts they like, and they create their own religion. What is the common one that everyone likes? As long as you believe in this guy that died, you don't have to do anything. It's a get-out-of-jail-free card. You don't have to do anything. Nothing. Makes sense, just believe in the guy. Kill somebody, believe in the guy.

1:32:27Steal? Don't worry about it. He suffered for your sin too. He knew you were going to commit that sin. It's the dumbest thing in the world, but that's the one thing that everyone grabs on to. Now, she made her own religion pretty much. And even though she knew a lot about the Old Testament, she didn't know that conversion was possible. She thought that the Jews were the chosen people. And you could only be born that way. You can't join the chosen people. So she thought, oh, it's great. I'm with a Jew. But I can't join. So now when someone believes something, you can't make them stop believing it. You can't just tell them, listen, stop. Do something else. You can't. You have to say, what do you do? You have to prove to them that what they believe is a mistake. And the only way you can prove to them that what they believe is a mistake is that you have to learn everything they know and more than what they know. So then I started learning about Christianity. I started watching debates. I started reading some books, and I started becoming a little bit fanatic about it. And...

1:33:52You know, I'd learn until 5, 6, 7 o'clock in the morning. And the first thing I would, you know, as soon as she wakes up in the morning, I would tell her, "Look, look, look, I found another mistake. It says 70 in the Old Testament, and the Torah says 70. You know, Yaakov came down to Egypt with 70 people. The New Testament says 75. What happened to the extra five?" She goes, "I don't know. Let me drink coffee. Leave me alone. It's 7 o'clock in the morning." You know, we never had shalom bayit issues until this. It was a battle. And it got to a point where we both realized, number one, obviously there's an issue with Christianity, but that's something else. Number two, which is more critical, is that we can't continue. Can't continue as is. Now to me, I always told them, if I have to wait for you 70 years, I'll wait for you 70 years. Why? No one in their right mind would have done for me what you did for me.

1:34:54No woman, Jewish or not Jewish, would have stayed with me through all the suffering I went through. Cleaning my blood, making me feel like a king despite the fact that I felt like a bug. Her whole life was dedicated to me, making me happy, running my business, building the business, doing anything and everything with nothing in return. All she saw were problems for me. The money—she didn't enjoy any of it. Very simple woman. Never wanted anything. All she wanted was for me to be happy. So I'm like, how could Hashem give me something so good, but at the same time it's so bad? It can't be. It can't be. He doesn't make mistakes. So I said, I'm going to find a way to fix it, because that's apparently my tikkun. And it's apparently her tikkun. I found out also... From Rabbi Ephraim, he says that one of the reasons why Hashem sent the Jews, even though it was a punishment initially, to the four corners of the world, initially it was a punishment, but there's always a to'eles, there's always something good out of everything that Hashem does. One of the reasons that He sent us to the four corners of the world is to convert the people that He promised them, they're going to convert before the end of times.

1:36:20Because when Hashem gave us the Torah, before He gave us the Torah, He went to all the nations and He asked them, who wants the Torah? And everyone rejected it. But there were a few in each nation that wanted it. But since their leaders didn't want it, they couldn't accept it themselves. So Hashem promised them that there's going to come a time that I will bring you back into a generation that I will put you in a situation where you can convert. where you can receive the Torah completely. And I'll put you in an unusual circumstance. Sometimes you meet people that weren't born Jewish, but they love Hashem and know more about Torah than most Jews. It's unbelievable, and I've met many of them, Baruch Hashem. Also, in the Gemara, Masechet Avodah Zarah, it says that before the end of times, before the Mashiach comes, there's going to be an enormous amount of converts. The Gemara asks, wait, there's going to be converts when the Mashiach comes? It answers, no, no, before the Mashiach comes. Because after the Mashiach comes, there's no more conversion. There's no more teshuva and there's no more conversion.

1:37:24And you're seeing now an enormous amount of converts coming from all parts of the world. I have people that want to convert in India, in Bulgaria, in Australia, in Africa. In my WhatsApp group, I have, you know, there's so many of them in my WhatsApp groups. I have one group that has maybe a thousand people, a kehillah of people that want to convert. I mean, an enormous amount of people in France, all over the United States. Just today, I got a new phone call from a guy that actually lives close to where I live, who wants help with conversion. People are all of a sudden discovering the truth, and they're willing to give up everything. Everything. Money, job, family, anything and everything you want. Why? Just to do and be what we already have and, unfortunately, take for granted sometimes. This is part of the reason why the Gemara says that converts, a righteous convert, are also like a skin disease for the Jewish people. Why like a skin disease? Because when a convert is really, really righteous, they get to such a high level that they make the Jews look bad, the natural-born Jews look bad, because we take it for granted. But again, to make a convert, you can't make them; they have to believe it, they have to do it themselves.

1:38:42On one hand, I said, listen, I'll learn this and I'll know everything there is to know about this New Testament nonsense and prove it and do it for seven years if I have to. I'm not letting go. On the other hand, she's thinking on the other side, she's saying, no, listen, according to your Torah, which I believe, and I read, I can't stay with you. Because if I stay with you, you go to Gehenom. And I don't want you to go to Gehenom. So she started praying for Hashem to kill her. Why? She says, I can't leave you. Disaster. My whole world, I thought it was bad already. This just got worse. The health is irrelevant whether I have pain or not. This is nonsense. The love of my life wants to kill herself. But she's not going to kill herself. She's praying to Hashem because she believes in the same Hashem I do. So what do I do? What do you do when you have no choice? Pray to Hashem. You pray, and you pray, and you pray, and you don't stop praying. And you start learning. You start fulfilling your Torah. And eventually, your prayers break the wall. Because Hashem hears every single prayer you ever prayed. The reason He doesn't answer is because maybe you didn't pray enough.

1:40:12There are only two reasons why Hashem doesn't answer a prayer. Either you didn't pray enough, or the answer is no. Sometimes the answer is no. But the no is good for you. You just don't know yet, because Hashem knows the whole picture. Someone was praying for a million dollars, but Hashem knows that as soon as he gets this million dollars, he's going to blow it on nonsense, and he's going to ruin his life. So He is not going to give a million dollars. So the guy all this time thinks he's praying for nothing. But in reality, Hashem is doing him a favor. He's going to give him the million dollars at a different time when he's more of a human being and he can handle the million dollars. But eventually the prayer gets answered. This is why in the parashat Va'etchanan, the word Va'etchanan has a numerical value of 515. This is where we learn that Moses prayed to Hashem. He begged Hashem To let him come into Eretz Yisrael. He prayed 515 times until Hashem said, "Rav lach," enough. No more prayers. Why no more prayers? Because if you pray one more time, I will have to let you into Eretz Yisrael. And I don't want you to go. I don't want you to go into Eretz Yisrael. Now we think this is mean.

1:41:35When we don't know Torah, we think this is very mean. Why don't you just let him in? Let him hang out for a week. He'll leave, he'll die, he'll do something. Let him in. Moses even asked Hashem, let me in as a bird. Let me in as a cow. Not even as a human being. Hashem says, no. If you come in as a cow, someone will slaughter you as kosher shechita, and then they make a blessing. No good. If someone catches the bird, slaughters it, puts it as a korban, No good. Can't. Why doesn't Hashem want Moses to go into Eretz Yisrael? Because Hashem knows the future. And Hashem knows that He made a deal with Moses that everything that he does is going to be permanent. The Torah, eternal. It's permanent. Never changes. Moses, number one prophet, will always be the number one prophet. Mashiach is not going to be as big as Moses. The Mishkan that Moses built in the desert is more holy than both the Beit HaMikdash Rishon and Sheni. It was never destroyed, and so on. Am Yisrael that he saved from Mitzrayim, even though they had a lot of problems and punishments, and so on, is eternal. Everything that Moses did was eternal. Now, if Moses would have gone to Eretz Yisrael, the first thing he would have done is what?

1:42:59built a Beit HaMikdash. Now, if he built a Beit HaMikdash, that means it has to be eternal. But Hashem already knows the future. He knows that 1,300 years later, or a little less than 1,000 years later, Am Yisrael is going to sin. And Satan is going to come and he's going to say to Hashem, listen, according to Your Torah, according to Your stamp of Emet, of truth, You have to destroy the nation. And when it actually happened, Hashem told the Satan, He says, you're right, but instead of destroying My nation, I have something that can go against it. The only thing that can go against it is My own house. I'll destroy My own house so I don't have to destroy My nation. And this happened twice. Now, if Moshe would have built a Beit HaMikdash, Hashem wouldn't have been able to use this. He wouldn't have been able to destroy His own house. Which means, we wouldn't be here. That's the reason why Hashem couldn't let Moshe into Israel. So we think it's mean until we learn the mercy. So then I start learning some Torah, learning some proofs, and Hashem eventually answers my prayers. He shows me this debate by Rabbi Mizrachi, and I watch this debate, and now I realize that, unlike what I thought all this time, I used to think that Christianity...

1:44:26was just second best. Like, I didn't necessarily think it was fake. I thought it was foolish. But I didn't think it was fake. I didn't think it was avodah zarah. After watching the debate, I realized it's avodah zarah and it's fake. It's man-made. So now, my whole situation turns into pikuach nefesh. My whole situation is like, now it's not just about having her convert for me. Irrelevant for me or not. I have to save her from avodah zarah because she's a tzaddeket. She's a tzaddeket. So then I want to show her the debate. And the debate was three parts. I show her the first part. After the first part, she says, the Christian guy is a moron and the rabbi is arrogant. She didn't like Rabbi Mizrachi. After about a week or so of...

1:45:26Debating. I convinced her finally to watch part two. Similar conclusion, a little bit more proofs, though. She says, yeah, the Christian guy is still a moron, and the rabbi is still kind of arrogant. Part three, until this day, she never watched. So this didn't work. For me, it worked. For her, not so much. But now we start looking for other sources, we look for other proofs. One day she finds something on the internet, which I think is on a website called AskNoah. And she finds a rational explanation, a rational proof of the Oral Torah. Now, until this time, the major issue that the Christians have, and pretty much everyone has, with Judaism, with Orthodox Judaism, is the Oral Torah. The major difference between Orthodox and everything else is the Oral Torah.

1:46:38whether it be Conservative Jews, or Reform Jews, or Christians, or Arabs, you know, Muslims, or anyone else, everyone says, yeah, the written Torah, the Five Books of Moses, the Tanakh, we believe all of it. The Gemara, the Zohar, all that Oral Torah, Shulchan Aruch, all those things, nah, that's just from rabbis. Little do they know that there's more proofs in the Oral Torah than we even know of in the written Torah. But nonetheless, She finds this thing and explains the Oral Torah, and then she realizes, wait a minute. There's something in the Oral Torah that we never knew about, that without it, there is no Torah. Meaning that without it, there's no religion at all. What is it? It's called Keter in Hebrew, which in English is called Codex. What's the Codex? The Codex is the scroll... that has the Nikud. Now you go to the Beit Knesset, you see that the scroll that you read from doesn't have Nikud, doesn't have the dots. Right? You're not allowed to have the dots. The dots and the dashes and so on. But in the Sefer Torah that you read here, you have. Now what are the dots? The dots are actually the vowel system.

1:48:01In Hebrew, unlike English that has a vowel system that's based on letters, A-E-I-O-U and sometimes Y, Hebrew, the holy language, doesn't have letters as a vowel system. They have these dots, this Nikud, which means that without it, we wouldn't be able to read anything. How so? So for example, if I wanted to say Moses, now Moses in English is M-O-S-E-S. Now, if I took out the vowels from Moses, you take out the O, and you take out the E, so now all you have is M-S-S. You have "miss." It's a different word, which means that without the vowel system, it's not only that we wouldn't know the mitzvot, we wouldn't even understand one single sentence in the entire Torah. Not just us, but everyone. So anyone that says they don't believe in the Oral Torah, that means they don't believe in the codex either, a critical part of the Oral Torah. You can't just say, "No, I believe in the codex, but I don't believe in the rest of the Oral Torah." It's either yes or no. You can't just pick and choose. So now when you realize that this Oral Torah is a must, there is no Torah without Oral Torah. Now you have something. So she finds it. This was our first break.

1:49:29So then, I continue praying. And by the way, prayer means that you're not just praying to Hashem, please Hashem, please Hashem. Prayer means you're crying your heart out. You're crying your heart out and the more tears that come out, the better. Usually, the tears of a mother work. So one day I see a lecture recommended to me. It's called Torah and Science. also by the same rabbi called Rabbi Mizrachi. So I watched, I tell her, "Listen, Torah and Science looks pretty cool; let's watch it." She says, "Who is it?" "Same rabbi." "Okay, fine, let's just watch it. Torah and Science seems interesting." This also has three parts. His lectures were long, four hours. So we watch part one. Unbelievable how our world has changed. It’s like an hour, hour and a half lecture or part, with proofs in the Torah, scientific proofs—the fish, the fins, and the scales, and this and that. I mean, I could go over the whole lecture by heart, but it would just take too much time. The point is that it changed our world. It's two o'clock in the morning, and we're like, "All right, let's watch part two." You know, we're on a high right now. We just found the truth, we're finding proofs, and wow.

1:50:50Click on part two. Part two doesn't work. Okay, we look for it somewhere else on YouTube. Part two doesn't work. Go to the website. Part two doesn't work. Anyway, I look for an hour and a half for part two; it's not working. Now, I have a little bit of a quirk that most people find funny, which is that I'm the kind of guy who has to read every single page of a book. You know, like the preface and the part where people say, thanks to my wife and the publishing house, and I have to read that too. I have to read the credits. I have to read everything. I have to do everything in order. So, like going from part one to part three for me was like mesiras nefesh. It was a sacrifice for me. I said, "You know, but we're so excited, let's watch part three." She said, "Really, you can do it?" Yeah, she already knows me. "You can do it?" "Okay, fine, watch part three." Part three is just as invigorating and as amazing as part one. The whole world changed. But now she knows for sure that there's something seriously wrong with Christianity. She knows for sure we can't stay together this way. But she doesn't know for sure if Hashem wants her to do it. She needs permission from the Torah. Now we've already discovered that these converts are very welcome in Judaism and so on and so forth throughout the last several months already, even the last couple of years.

1:52:17But she needs something from Hashem. Even though you're not allowed, technically, to ask for a sign from Hashem, apparently her prayers go higher than mine. Because that night she again went back to one of our intense prayers where she says, "Hashem, either kill me or show me that You want me to do this because I can't continue to put him at risk." So, she wakes up the next day and horrendous mood. First time in so many years that we've been together that she woke up in a bad mood because she still doesn't have her answer. And I've been looking all night for part two. Instead of acknowledging her bad mood, I'm as excited as ever. I was like, "I found part two. I found it. It works." She said, "Okay, fine. I'll watch it." Instead of going to work, instead of doing anything, let's watch part two. Watch part two, and part two has the answer. Part two was where Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi actually gave us the information about Torah codes. The Torah has...

1:53:37some very, very interesting information that's beyond what is normal; meaning that if you use mathematical equations, mathematical formulas, you can find hidden messages within the Torah. And without going into the details of Torah codes to save some time, we're almost finished. he went to, one of the proofs that he showed Torah codes is the proof that Hashem already wrote about false religions that will happen in the future that were already written in the Torah. With specifics. Now anyone that just reads the plain verse would already know what it means, but there's even more when you use Torah codes. So in the book of Deuteronomy, Sefer Devarim, chapter 4, 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 men, of wood and stone, which do not see, do not hear, do not eat, and do not smell. So, He's telling you that after all the sins you made, I'm going to spread you amongst the four corners of the world, and over there, you're going to get even worse, you know?

1:54:52Worship idols, man-made gods. What kind of gods? The gods of wood and the gods of stone. Now, anyone who thinks about the other leading religions in the world, who is the god of wood? It's the cross. The cross is a wooden cross. Who is the god of stone? Mecca, Islam. Their main place of worship is in Mecca. It's the big square stone. Now, this seems nice, but it could also mean other things. It's subjective. Until you use Torah codes. Once you use Torah codes and look for these false gods, you look for the word Mecca. Not only do you find it, you find it inside this verse. So then you want to look for the other false god. You look for Yimach Shemo V'Zichro, JC. Where do you find him? Also inside this exact verse. Both false gods.

1:55:53literally described in this verse. You find them exactly in this verse. Coincidence? I don't think so. For me, this was amazing. I mean, I've seen other Torah codes before this, but this was something special. For her, it was a breakthrough. It was the sign that she needed, and And she literally converted on the spot, meaning that everything changed at that moment. She said, "I'm ready to convert. Whatever we need to learn, whatever we need to do," she took on everything. And Baruch Hashem, there was a lot of siyata dishmaya in the conversion. It happened very, very quickly within a matter of a few months. Because we'd already been studying for a couple of years, we already knew a lot. In a matter of a few months, we converted. We had the wedding the same day to make sure that everything was kosher. Converted in the morning, chuppah at night. A couple of days later, we were in Israel. And that was the major turnaround. But now, again, at that point, obviously, we knew that Hashem had made some serious miracles for us.

1:57:14But why leave Wall Street? Once I came back from Israel, I still had a small fund that I was managing. But I really got into the Torah, and I started realizing that this disparity, this huge distinguishing gap between the religious world and the non-religious world, is just growing bigger and bigger. The religious people think that the non-religious don't want to do it. The non-religious just don't have a clue. So I decided, you know what, I'll continue working a little bit, but I'll start giving some lectures. So, you know, I have, Baruch Hashem, Hashem gave me the ability to speak. Whatever I learn, I'll teach. So I started teaching initially in New York. I would do some things in Seudah Shlishit at the Beit Knesset, say a few words. And people really took to it. People really liked it. They would ask me if I have something else for the next week. And then we decided we wanted to move to Florida. And I said, you know what, let me just start a shiur at my house. And I started a shiur on Tuesday nights. The first shiur was with one person, just me and one guy. And after a couple of shiurim, more people showed up. But I found that this one guy goes to Beit Knesset. He's been going to Beit Knesset for 25 years. But on the third shiur, what does he tell me? He goes, I don't understand.

1:58:37what do you mean you can't drive to Beit Knesset on Shabbat? I told him, I don't understand. What do you mean drive to Beit Knesset on Shabbat? He goes, I said, you can't drive. You can't drive on Shabbat anywhere. He goes, no, no, no, but to Beit Knesset. I said, yes, you cannot drive to Beit Knesset. You can't drive anywhere unless it's to a hospital. So why didn't anyone tell me? I'm like, what do you mean why didn't anyone tell me? He goes, I've been driving to Beit Knesset for 25 years. No one ever said anything. He's serious? He goes, yeah, I mean, don't get me wrong, he's not a talmid chacham, he didn't learn any Torah, but he's just an innocent soul, that just his Torah, his whole connection to Hashem, would be once a week, he'd go to Beit Knesset for Shabbat. The rest of the week, here and there, he'd read some Tehillim, and during prayer, somebody told him it was good, but that's it. So his entire Torah was what he would learn during prayer or whatever on Shabbat. So when no one told him that you're not allowed to drive on Shabbat, how is he supposed to know? And that's the thing. So when someone thought they were doing him a favor,

1:59:58by not insulting him, by not putting things on him that are a little too difficult, by not this and by not that, in reality, they're murdering the person. And that's when I realized, Hashem needs more Jews. not businessmen, and little by little I started getting out of the business world. Eventually, I lost the rest of what I had as far as money, but at that point, I didn't really care much because I started seeing miracles on a regular basis. I realized that if Hashem said what He said in the Torah and I say that that's true, then He also said that if I do His will, He'll do my will. So if I go recruit Jews, He'll worry about the problems. If the Torah is real, then it has to be real 100%. It's either real 100% or it's fake 100%. I have scientific, rational, and every proof you could possibly imagine that it's real. Things that I've seen, things that I've read, things that I've imagined. I mean, just a lot of proofs. So if that's true, then what it says is true.

2:01:13And Hashem says in Exodus chapter 14, verse 14, when Am Yisrael saw all the miracles and still had emunah problems. They still had emunah problems when they got to Yam Suf, the Sea of Reeds. They saw the ocean in front of them and the Egyptians behind them. They started worrying. So Moshe says to them, "Hashem yilachem lachem ve'atem tacharishun." God will fight your wars and you shall remain silent. Meaning if you fulfill what Hashem's will is, He'll fight your wars. You just sit back and relax. You just... But you have to fulfill what He says. But again, you can't just fulfill what He says like a robot because that's not really fulfilling. The third part of the equation is not just mitzvot and Torah. The third part of the equation is emunah.

2:02:14To have emunah, you need practice. The seven-year struggle for my life, apparently, that was practice. I don't recommend it. There's an easier way. It's a much easier way. It's called learning Torah, learning Mussar, learning about emunah, and exercising that muscle every day. The most important part of emunah is to look for Hashem in everything. You wake up in the morning, anything that you see, find Hashem in it. When you pray, think about why you're even praying. Why am I praying? It says Hashem wants you to pray. Yeah, okay, but does He care? He cares enough where, according to Torah, He shows up. Now you can't imagine an image But if you're praying with enough concentration that is deserved because there's a King next to you, it's easier to pray. When you go to your business on the way to work and let's say there's a traffic jam or a delay, instead of thinking, ah, I'm going to miss this appointment.

2:03:36I'm going to miss this doctor's appointment. I'm going to miss this client appointment. I'm going to lose this contract. I can't believe I have a flat. I can't believe this guy cut me off. No. You have to think about what favor is Hashem doing for me now? How is He saving my life? Because if, yes, maybe according to my plans, if I go 69 miles an hour, I'm going to arrive at work at this specific time. But according to Hashem's knowledge, if I go 69 miles an hour, I can arrive at an accident at the wrong time. So this traffic jam, this entire traffic jam, is just for me—to delay me, to save my life. The guy that cut me off slowed me down just enough so I missed the exit. Because at the exit is where problems are. And Hashem did all of that for me. Every Jew is obligated to think that the entire creation was created just for him. You start looking for Hashem on the way to work. That means when you get to work, you're not worried about parnasah. Why? Because Hashem is with you. So you don't think, oh listen, maybe I should cheat this guy and not really show him the brand new product. I should just show him the refurbished product.

2:05:00or I shouldn't necessarily tell him all of the disclosures. I just tell him just enough so he buys it. He doesn't have second thoughts. No. If you believe the parnasah is from Shamayim, you'll conduct your business honestly. Because it's irrelevant what the competition is doing. It's irrelevant what everyone else is doing. Whatever you're entitled to, Hashem is going to give you anyway. It's much easier to be honest. When you have emunah. Because you believe it's from Him anyway. What difference does that make? I don't have to contribute. He has money. I don't have to cheat to make money because He's going to give me anyway. Obviously, having Yirat Shamayim also helps. No Yirat Shamayim, you can't get the emunah. When you go home and your wife's upset about something,

2:06:02wife's upset about something. How is emunah going to help you? This is what Hashem sent me. That she is helping me because she's upset. She's helping me work on my middot. There's nothing wrong with her. Something's wrong with me. Because if I get upset, she probably had a difficult day. She has a right to be upset. But Hashem knows that I don't have patience. And immediately when she's not upset, I get upset. But the only reason why He sent me here, like this, with a Tisha B'Av mood that she has, is because He knows that if I pass the test, and I know that it's from Him, then instead of attacking her back, I'll just listen. And she's actually helping me work on my middot, developing some patience. Instead of being upset that my son failed the test, maybe I have to work on myself and spend some more time with him, and maybe I could teach him a few things. Every single test you have in your life is because Hashem is giving it to you to develop your character. How do we know? Show me one place in the entire Torah

2:07:25Entire Torah, not just one part of it, where it talks about somebody having a good time. Avraham went on vacation to Tahiti. No, he didn't go. Moshe Rabbeinu took a break from Am Yisrael and, you know, went on a weekend to the Bahamas. Aharon HaKohen and Hur decided to go to a spa together. Doesn't say any of that stuff. What does it say? One tikkun after another. One disaster after another. But why are they mentioned? Everyone, all of Am Yisrael went through tikkunim. You're going through tikkunim. I'm going through tikkunim. Everyone, why are we not mentioned in the Torah? Because they passed it. Which means that the entire reason why we're here is to pass these tests. All of these tests are to develop our character. Baruch Hashem, I had the fortune to eventually pass it. I think I kind of failed for about six and a half years. But eventually, I passed. The point of giving this lecture is so you don't go through the same journey.

2:08:38you learn from the journey, you realize the will of Hashem is for you to have emunah, mitzvot, and Torah, and definitely not be a robot. Do what He says, but believe in what you're doing, and b'ezrat Hashem, this gets us closer and closer to Him on a daily basis, from the beginning of the day till the end of the day, to the point where living without Him, for even a second, becomes impossible. And if that's the life you're going to live, That's a life full of miracles that's worth writing about. Any questions? Baruch Adonai le'olam. Amen ve'amen. One second.