Sigmund Freud Psychology, Sports on Shabbat, FREE WILL, Unique Desires - STUMP THE RABBI (15)

0:14We have our Wednesday night "Stump the Rabbi." We're up to number 15, Baruch Hashem. The key as usual is to ask some questions, some questions with nafka minna, questions with relevance to our lives, our day-to-day lives. I know people ask me questions to no end when they send them on WhatsApp and emails and all types of things like that. And you really wouldn't imagine what kind of zechut you guys have to be here because there are plenty of people from all over the world. The key, as usual, is to ask some questions, some questions with nafka minnah, questions with relevance to our lives, our day-to-day lives. I know people ask me questions to no end when they send them on WhatsApp and emails and all types of things like that. And you really wouldn't imagine what kind of zechut you guys have to be here because there are plenty of people from all over the world. that send questions non-stop on the internet, but since there are so many, they have to wait. So sometimes a person can wait 10-20 minutes in order to get an answer. Sometimes they have to wait several months. For example, when it comes to questions, I always tell people, the best thing that you can do if you want to ask questions or you have a personal matter and you want me to guide you in some way or another, the best thing in the world that you can possibly do is come to the shiur.

1:22And the reason why is because I already designated a block of time that I know that once I leave the house, I'm only coming back once I've finished, once everybody is pretty much out of questions. But questions that matter, not the questions that you're going to repeat every week. Questions that matter if somebody has a personal issue, somebody has a specific topic. Whatever it is, I know that if you came to this shiur, I'm here for you to try to guide you the best that I possibly can, b'ezrat Hashem. The second best is if you send it on WhatsApp. You could join our WhatsApp groups by sending a text to 917-468-2324 or to Michal, and you could join our groups. You'll get a daily update, also the short clips that we have of, you know, the daily updates of our events, but also... If you want to send questions, you could send questions to that number. Aside from being part of the group, you can send questions to my number. Whatever issue you have—personal issue, family issue, business issue—we'll try to guide you by the way of the Torah. That's the second best. But again, that also sometimes takes time. Depending, you know, the way we look at it is based on priority, as well as how much time it's going to take to answer the question.

2:43It's high priority, meaning there's something that has to be done right this second. For example, somebody sends me a question about a woman who is about to give birth. So, when a woman is about to give birth, everything else stops. I have to answer the question. Why? Because that's something that you have to know right this second. For example, if... I'm about to give birth. What do we do once I give birth between me and my husband? First and foremost, you need to know you're not allowed to touch your husband. Why? As soon as the water breaks, you're officially niddah. You're officially niddah. You're no longer allowed to touch your husband. So even handing him the baby, you're not allowed to hand him the baby. You have to put the baby down, and he picks him up, and vice versa. And as far as picking the name, for example, people have a lot of trouble picking the name. Generally speaking, the name is picked for a boy on the Brit Milah, but since it's policy in the United States that they do not let you leave the hospital,

3:48until you pick a name. That means you have to pick a name before the Brit Milah, if it's a boy. So you have a couple of days to pick the name. You also need to know a few things about picking names. Don't just pick any name. You know, don't make it a name of an animal. Don't make it a name of something like some, you know, foolish couple in Israel picked the name, like several years ago, maybe 10 years ago. They picked the name, like, like the button, like on Facebook. Or some people pick names of wicked people. It's a very popular name to have the name Nimrod. Nimrod is a very popular name. Unfortunately, Nimrod was one of the most wicked people who ever lived. It's like calling your Jewish son Hitler. It's no different. So you need to know, you should pick names from the Torah, but names of the good people. If you want to name after somebody, it shouldn't be somebody that is alive. It should be somebody that has passed away, but only if that person who passed away is righteous. Don't name your kid after somebody who passed away or even someone who is still alive if they are wicked. For example, don't name your kid Herzl or Ben-Gurion. These are wicked people.

4:57You may like the name all you want, but it's not a good name to have. Why? Because these are wicked people. These are people that went against the Torah. They were openly kofrim. So you have to put some thought into it. But in general, as far as the order, who picks the name, the wife or the husband, the Torah tells us that typically the minhag, all the way from the time of Yehuda, is that the woman picks the name first for the first child, and then the husband picks second, unless the wife doesn't care. She's the one that carried the baby for nine months, not you. You should let her pick the name first. But if she doesn't care and she allows the husband to pick the name, no problem. So these are just some of the quick, off-the-top-of-your-head type of things that somebody who's about to give birth needs to know. So that takes priority. Why? Because it's about to happen. It's today, it's tomorrow, and so on. There are also other things that are pressing issues. Somebody has a special tikkun of some type, or somebody has a major difficulty that they're dealing with right now, or it's a business issue, they're about to go, or they just finished a meeting. These things take precedence. The second one, the way we usually try is if it's a short answer, a yes or no type of answer. If it's a yes or no type of answer, those usually get answered first.

6:13Why? Because I could answer a hundred of those by the time I answer one long answer. And WhatsApp is usually the quickest. After the WhatsApp, then the emails. Unfortunately, the emails have gotten so backed up because we already have hundreds, hundreds of WhatsApp messages and questions per day that by the time you get to the email, it looks like a spam box. So I have right now, at this point, emails all the way from June of last year that I haven't answered. I'm sorry I haven't answered them. It's nothing personal to anybody. It's just really impossible to keep up. So I tried to answer. I answered some people that even send me a message the same day sometimes because they're usually short answers. But if you're gonna send a megillah, you're gonna send me like a parashat shavua on email, most likely, not only is it not gonna be answered, most likely I'm not gonna look at it. Why? It's nothing, it's not personal. It's just simply, there's just so many messages. of last year that I haven't answered. I'm sorry I haven't answered them. It's nothing personal to anybody. It's just really impossible to keep up. So I try to answer. I answered some people that even send me a message the same day sometimes because they're usually short answers. But if you're gonna send a megillah, you're gonna send me like a parashat ha'shavua on email, most likely, not only is it not gonna be answered, most likely I'm not gonna look at it. Why? It's nothing, it's not personal. It's just simply, there's just so many messages.

7:13But again, all of these people that send the questions, and we do our best to help them, whether it's for conversion, or it's for teshuva, or it's for family issues, or whatever it is, halachic issues, Torah questions, all of these people, Pray that one day they can be in the chair that you are in. Why? Because that means that they can ask questions live. They can ask as many questions as they want. There are no boundaries. There are no limitations as long as you're speaking the right way. And so this is something you should take advantage of. Now, many people today are very impressed by secular knowledge, whether it be the knowledge of technology, psychology, different types of monetary systems, and so on. But little do we know that anything that's of any value, meaning anything that's any good, has a place in the Torah.

8:13So much so that one of the main things that I remember studying as a kid, when I was maybe 15 or 16, was advanced placement psychology classes. And we learned about this Jew named Sigmund Freud. Famous Jew, unfortunately wasn't exactly a righteous Jew, but nonetheless was a famous Jew who came up with some interesting theories about psychology, about the state of the mind, and how it's really split into three. You have the conscious, the subconscious, and the unconscious, and so on. And in 1899, exactly 120 years ago, he came out with his book, which rocked the world. And until this day, his work is studied. In essence, what he tells you is that there are certain things in your mind that are in the front of your mind. I ask you, if I say the color blue, immediately you're going to see, oh, there's blue. You can visualize blue. I ask you something, what's one plus one? You're going to say two. You don't have to really think about it. It's a reflex already.

9:20There are certain things that are in the back of the memory. You have to think about them. I ask you, what did you do, you know, six months ago? You have to think about it. And if you have a relatively normal memory, you're going to remember, oh, six months ago, I actually lived on this and this block. And you can remember certain things that happened. Where did you live 10 years ago? You're going to think about it for a minute or two, or maybe a second or two, depending on how fast your mind is. And you're going to say, oh, 10 years ago, I lived in such and such place. Who was your teacher when you were this age? Oh, you're gonna think about it, maybe you're gonna remember it, depending on your memory, but generally speaking, that's the way it works. You also have the subconscious. It's the stuff that, you've seen in your life, but you don't really necessarily think about very often. But when push comes to shove, these things happen and these things come to the front of your mind immediately without even realizing what just happened. And many times, the things that we thought are forgotten really are still in the front of our mind.

10:20Now, there are obviously more details. Nobody start sending me emails. No, there's more details. Sigmund Freud said this and that. I'm not planning on giving you the entire book. You can read the book if you want. But you could also read the Torah. You could also read the Torah and you'll see that Rav Wolbe already wrote that everything that Sigmund Freud said was already written by Rabbi Yisrael Salanter 50 years before Sigmund Freud was even born. Where did Rabbi Yisrael Salanter, the person who started the Mussar movement almost 200 years ago, get it from? He got it from 2000 years ago. Where? It's in our Torah. It's in our Written Torah, it's in our Oral Torah. If you simply understand the mitzvot, certain mitzvot tell you how to do and what to do. And I'll give you a couple of examples to see the wisdom of the Torah.

11:21The Torah says that if somebody did something bad to you, you should not take revenge on him, but also don't hate him. Now, this is relatively understandable. Okay. The Torah tells us that Hashem is responsible for all revenge. You're not allowed to take revenge. Even if somebody did something really bad to you, he cut you off, he stole money from you, I don't know what he did to you, you're not allowed to take revenge. Even if somebody did something terrible, you're not going to take revenge. Why? Hashem is the one that's responsible for revenge. So, the Torah says don't take revenge. Okay, so that we can understand. That way, if you believe in HaKadosh Baruch Hu, you can understand, listen, this happened to me because HaKadosh Baruch Hu allowed it, fine. I'm not allowed to take revenge against this guy. No problem. She did this, this, and that to me, I'm not allowed to take revenge against her. That's a mitzvah from the Torah, just like eating kosher, tefillin, Shabbat, and so on.

12:22But what's hard to understand is how come it says don't hate him too? Okay, the fact that I'm not allowed to kill him even though he killed somebody that I love, I understand that. The fact that I'm not allowed to beat him up after he beat me up, okay, I can understand. Why? That's Hashem's responsibility. But, I mean, I should remember it though. I should remember every time I think, "Oh, Tzvika, I hate that guy." Why? That guy did the whole list of things that he did to you. So how could it be? So Chazal tells us, the whole mitzvah is trying to teach you that if you have real emunah and bitachon in HaKadosh Baruch Hu, you have to truly believe that not only is Hashem responsible for delivering the revenge that perhaps you want to take, but also Hashem is the one that took liberty and actually is the one that allowed this to happen in the first place. Which means that there's no reason for you to hate this person. Hashem only allowed him to curse you or hit you or do whatever it is that he did to you for different reasons. It's not him. He's just a messenger of Hashem. He's just a stick that Hashem chose to hit you with. Which means that our mitzvah here is to teach us that even our minds are supposed to be controlled. Even our minds are supposed to be controlled to what extent.

13:46To the extent that even what you think, even what you think has to be something that you work on. So much so that the Gemara Masechet Yoma, page 29a, says that somebody who looks at bad things, it's worse. The results of him seeing bad things are worse than the actual action itself. Why? The action itself is a one-time thing. Let's say, for example, somebody just had a desire. He wanted to eat a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich or something. He ate the sandwich, but he's finished. He's not going to think about that sandwich 20 minutes from now. He finished the sandwich. As soon as he finished the sandwich, he already forgot about the sandwich. He's done with the sandwich. He's not going to think about that sandwich five, six hours from now, saying, "Wow, that was such a delicious sandwich." He's finished. The appetite is fulfilled. He's done. It's over.

14:47If he looks at the immodest woman, even if he doesn't touch her, even if he doesn't see her in real life, he just sees a picture. He sees it on the screen. That, Rabotai Yekarim, the Gemara teaches us almost 2,000 years ago, is much worse than the sin itself. Why? Because that image is going to be imprinted in your subconscious for eternity, forever. It's never leaving. The neshama records something, it's done. Your best-case scenario is now to start doing teshuva and repress that memory. Put it so far back in your mind that it's not that you forgot it, it's that you have so many other things that have replaced it. What other things? Good things. So everybody has seen something that's immodest. Everybody has seen something that's inappropriate at some point in their life. Men, women, irrelevant. Everyone has seen something. How can we get rid of those thoughts? You can't. are only people that have an empty mind. Why? What empty mind? They build buildings, they just got married, they have kids, wow, what do you mean empty mind? Empty mind meaning empty mind of Torah. If your mind was occupied with fulfilling the Torah, learning to fulfill it, there's no way you'd be making sins. Impossible, impossible for you to make sins now.

16:17are only people that have an empty mind. Why? What empty mind? They build buildings, they just got married, they have kids, wow, what do you mean empty mind? Empty mind meaning empty mind of Torah. If your mind was occupied with fulfilling the Torah, learning to fulfill it, there's no way you'd be making sins. Impossible, impossible for you to make sins now. Our Torah tells us that we have to cling to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. We have to act a certain way. We have to make sure that we treat our bodies and ourselves in a certain way. But most importantly, we have to protect what these eyes see, because these are the windows to our soul. Because once these eyes see it, it's recorded in our mind and it can imprint in our subconscious, or what Sigmund Freud called the subconscious, And that's something that's not going to go away. So what does a Ben Torah's mind look like? Do you ever wonder? What is it like, for example, what does Rav Kanievsky's mind look like? What does he think about? And you can say, well, he probably thinks about mitzvot. Thank you. But what's his mind really look like? We'll give you an example. My Rav told me, there's a famous story about Rav Kanievsky from recent years. Several years ago, Rav Kanievsky,

17:43Who is the current Gadol HaDor today, his father was the Steipler Gaon, had Ruach HaKodesh. One time somebody walked into the Beit Midrash of the Steipler Gaon, looked like a Hasid, beard, hat, suit, everything. Immediately, the Steipler Gaon never saw him. He was in his room, and the guy just walked into the Beit Midrash, big building, much bigger than this. Immediately, the Steipler Gaon says, Rasha, Rasha, get out of here! Mechalei Shabbat! People got scared. "What? Who? What?" Everybody's looking at each other. "Who?" They saw somebody just came in. He goes, "Get out, out, out." He goes, "What do you mean? What? I want to ask a question to the rabbi." He goes, "No, you are Mechalel Shabbat." He goes, "How do you know?" He goes, "The rabbi knows." "How does he know?" "Ruach HaKodesh." Ruach HaKodesh is having an idea that Hashem literally implants into your head about what's happening right now, what happened in the past, and what's happening in the future to such an extent. It's almost like prophecy. Now, his son is the current Gadol HaDor. Several years ago, Rav Chaim Kanievsky had a stroke. His grandchildren took him to the hospital. And the doctor said, "Listen, you had a stroke, you know, and with certain treatment." So he asked, "Can you do me a favor? Can you write something for me? You know, to see how it affected you." I know that my father, God bless him, he had a stroke.

19:08almost two months ago. And immediately when we got to the hospital, they started asking some questions and they asked him to write something. They asked him to write something to see how it affected his mind. Did he forget? What is he going to write? So what did Rav Kanievsky write? Who wants to volunteer an answer? Let's take some guesses. What did Rav Kanievsky write? No, give me an answer. Guess. There's no wrong answer. No, no, no, give me an answer. What did Rav Kanievsky write? A Mishnah. A Mishnah. Chazak. No? Next? A Gemara. A Gemara. No? Next? What do you guys guess? The biggest rabbi in the world, he's called Sar HaTorah, meaning he is like the prince of Torah in our generation. One of the giants of the generation. What did he write after a stroke? A Torah scroll. No? In the back. Ladies, what is the biggest rabbi in the world going to write?

20:10You know what he wrote? No, you want another guess? You know, I thought that too. I thought he's gonna write something. You know what he wrote? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. That's what he wrote. So the doctor said, "Okay, good." But then he tells the grandson, "It's a little unusual." The grandson says, "Why?" He goes, "Well, usually people write their name." Usually, people write their name. I ask them to write something without telling them what to write. The typical person writes their name. I mean, it's okay. He wrote numbers and it's in order. It's not a problem. It's just a little unusual. So the grandson was interested. Why? Because he knows that his grandfather is a Sefer Torah. It's a living Sefer Torah. So everything has a reason. So he says, Grandpa, how come you wrote numbers? How come you didn't write your name? So after a stroke, Rav Chaim Kanievsky says,

21:18What do you mean? Don't you remember? The Gemara in Masechet Gittin says never write your name on a blank piece of paper. Let somebody take it and write something on top of your name, and that becomes the contract you have to hold by. Meaning that after a stroke, his subconscious mind is filled with so much Torah. He knows not to write his name on a blank piece of paper. Why? Maybe somebody's going to write, "Oh, you wrote the name? Okay, so I sell everything to Joe for nothing. Signed, Rav Kanievsky." He already knows it. His subconscious mind is full of so much Torah, he knows not to write his name. That's the mind of a ben Torah. to have such a mind. So the key is to encourage us all to make sure that we ask the questions that matter to us, ask the questions that encourage us to get closer and closer to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. And the final thing I'm going to tell you before we start with the questions is that some people ask how come every single shiur talks about Yirat Shamayim?

22:31Every single shiur talks a little bit, or a lot, sometimes a lot, sometimes a little, about Yirat Shamayim. Maybe I should talk about reward. Let's talk about Gan Eden. Let's talk about Gan Eden, you know, the nice things. Okay, so let's talk about reward. I'm going to tell you something about reward. The Prophet Malachi says the following: what's going to happen when Mashiach comes? What's gonna happen when Mashiach comes? So the Prophet Malachi in chapter 3, verse 16 says the following: Then those who fear Hashem spoke to one another, and Hashem listened and heard. And a book of remembrance was written before Him for those who fear Hashem and those who give thought to His name. They will be the precious treasure for Me, says Hashem, Master of Legions, on the day which I bring about, and I will have mercy on them as a man has mercy on his son who serves him. That's reward. That's as much as you get. Those who fear Hashem spoke to one another, and Hashem listened and heard. And a book of remembrance was written before Him for those who fear Hashem and those who give thought to His name. They will be the precious treasure for Me, says Hashem, Master of Legions, on the day which I bring about, and I will have mercy on them as a man has mercy on his son who serves him. That's reward. That's as much as you get.

23:44If you're Hashem, Hashem says you're going to be the precious. You're the jewel. You're the best of the best. When? When push comes to shove. Mashiach comes, it's going to be a war. Two-thirds of the world are going to die. It's called Gog and Magog. It's going to be bombs. It's going to be a lot of chaos everywhere. The so-called American friends are not necessarily going to be friends anymore. The European friends are not going to be European friends anymore. The Arab enemies are going to stay enemies as they are. Everybody's going to go against Am Yisrael. Even Am Yisrael will go against Am Yisrael. Why? Because there's two parts of Am Yisrael. There's Am Yisrael HaKedoshim and then there's Erev Rav, the wicked. They're going to fight against Mashiach. And HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, you want to be saved? You want to be the precious one that I'll have mercy on when it comes to judgment? You want to be the precious one that I protect in this monstrous World War III? Fear me. Fear Me during your life. So when the time comes on that big day, you will be My precious. What does somebody do with their precious jewels? What does somebody do with their precious possessions? Protect them. You want protection? You learn about Yirat Shamayim and you apply it to your life. That's the best and ultimate reward that a person can get in life. Now with that being said, please B'Chavod, who wants to start with the questions?

25:12Yes, if you could pass the mic to him. He has the mic. Why do we light a fire during Havdalah? So, Havdalah is a very interesting step. If you look at the Midrash Me'am Loez, he says we do several things that are interesting. When it comes to the fire, not only do we light the fire, but we also look at our fingernails and put them against the fire to see how the light reflects on the fingernails. The fire is to separate the holiness from the mundane. One thing that we're not allowed to do on a holy day, on Shabbat, on Yom Kippur, is to light fire. We're not allowed to light fire; we're not allowed to create. So this is something that we're not allowed to do. So HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, in order to have a sign that we're going back into the mundane, light a fire. So a bigger question would be, okay, the fire I get. Why? HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, light a fire, you're separating the holy back to the mundane, no problem. But what's with the fingernails? What is the significance? Fingernails are the same on Shabbat as they are on a weekday. So the Midrash Me'am Lo'ez says,

26:33HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, don't just light the fire to symbolize that you're going back into the mundane, into the regular world, but also remind yourself of what happens when you leave the holy. The Gemara says in Masechet Shabbat that as soon as Shabbat comes in, if a person prepared themselves the right way, meaning a person keeps Shabbat, a person is someone that honors Shabbat, he gets another neshama. He gets a second neshama, which enters into that person. Some of the chachamim, some of the tzaddikim who knew how to honor Shabbat, literally felt something. For example, there's a story from about 40 years ago of one of the Gedolei HaDor who was in the hospital, literally on his deathbed, with wires coming in and out of him everywhere. But he was known that every time Shabbat came in, he would dance and go and jump. But now he's old and he's on his deathbed. So everyone, you know, is sad and sitting next to him. The minute that Shabbat came in, all of his talmidim that saw it, all of a sudden they literally saw him get up like a 20-year-old, take out all the wires from his body, and start dancing in the hospital. As soon as Shabbat was over,

27:56Went back to the deathbed, and he died. The extra neshama, he felt it. He felt it. So that neshama enters, that second neshama enters. That neshama should give you a special feeling of holiness, a special feeling of kedusha, closeness to Hashem, especially if you're learning Torah on Shabbat, which gets a reward that's a thousand times more significant than learning Torah during the rest of the week. Now, at the end of Shabbat, when you do Havdalah, that neshama leaves. Part of the reason why we smell the incense is because the neshama that's left feels sad. So, the incense makes it feel good; it gives it a good feeling. It's gone, but don't worry, it's going to be okay, it's going to come back next week. It's almost like a little going away party for the neshama that's left. "Okay, listen, I'll be back next week." But what about the fingernails?

28:58So, Rav Kuli, in Midrash Me'am Lo'ez, says, remember that when you leave the Kedusha, there's a lot of danger. Why? We learned from Adam HaRishon. Adam HaRishon was such a beautiful being that his skin was shining like a diamond. It was so beautiful and so big that the malachim, the angels, thought he was God in human form. That's why Hashem put him to sleep. The angels know, oh, he's not God. Why? Hashem doesn't go to sleep. But they thought he was God for a second. That's how beautiful he was—huge and beautiful and shining like the sun. The only thing that Hashem left us that resembles part of his beauty is how our nails look when they're really shining against the fire. So Havdalah is supposed to remind us, listen, You're leaving the beauty, you're leaving the Kedusha right now. That's what your nails are for. But also remember what the nails represent. It's a beauty that, unfortunately, was minimized. Why? Because Adam HaRishon sinned. So now you're leaving the holy, but don't stop being holy. Don't go and stop being holy. You have to be holy for the rest of the week. And start already preparing for Shabbat on Motzei Shabbat.

30:18So that's why we have the fire, but even more so why we act the way we do as far as looking at our nails against the fire. Next question. You guys are mute today? Usually there are 87 questions. Okay, so somebody asked online, and I'll answer that question. Hopefully that gives you guys some more ideas. They say, "I've been keeping Shabbat and kosher for the last few months so Hashem could give me something. But after I've done all of this stuff, like teshuva, I still didn't get it. And bad things just keep happening. So why, after doing these mitzvot, is nothing good happening?" This, believe it or not, is a fantastic question. It's a question that I battled with myself when I first started doing teshuva. for the last few months so Hashem could give me something. But after I've done all of this stuff, like teshuva, I still didn't get it. And bad things just keep happening. So why, after doing these mitzvot, is nothing good happening? This, believe it or not, is a fantastic question. It's a question that I battled with myself when I first started doing teshuva. When I first started doing teshuva, I was very, very sick. And my business was going into the toilet. I lost almost 90% of what I had. But still, there were a few million dollars left. I figured that hopefully, from what I have left, Hashem will build me back, I'll get back in, and I'll get healthy, and so on and so forth. And I started praying, and I started learning, and I started reading Tehillim.

31:45I would read almost the entire book of Tehillim every two days. 150 Tehillim every couple of days with tears, with crying, with this. And I was sure that not only good things were going to happen right away, but I was sure God was going to talk to me. You go cry three, four, five hours straight to HaKadosh Baruch Hu on the 35th floor in New York, you're going to start thinking that Hashem is going to start talking to you. Same thing. Well, guess what? Not only did Hashem not talk to me, but bad things continued to happen. In fact, they got worse. I lost 80%, and then I lost the rest too—a 100% loss. Balance went to zero; actually, it went to negative. The health continued to deteriorate. ...hospitals, pain, all types of wonderful things. And it was hard to understand how, and who, and what, and when until I started paying closer attention to the things that I was reading in the Torah. And I realized that all of these mitzvot that Hashem said to do, He didn't tell me, "Do them so now I'm going to do whatever you want." He said, "Do them because I'm God." That's it.

33:17Meaning, He's not promising us that if you do this, He's guaranteeing that everything that you ever desire and want, and so on, He's just going to write a check for it immediately. Anyone that tells you that if you start keeping Shabbat, you're going to start making a lot of money; if you start watching your brit, you're going to start making a lot of money; if you start doing such and such, everything is going to work out—if they say it in that type of tone, they're a liar. Why? Hashem doesn't owe you anything. Can it happen? Yes. Does it entice Hashem for it to happen? Absolutely. But always remember, Hashem does not dance to our tune. If we violated His mitzvot for 15, 20, 25, 35, or 45 years, and all of a sudden we started keeping Shabbat and mitzvot and started learning for six months, what do you think? You ruined everything for 30 years. Now, for six months, you're a golden boy and everything's going to be okay?

34:20It's gonna take a little longer than six months to fix 30 years of damage, just like anything else in life. If you go and you work for a company, and you work, and you work, and you work, and you develop, and you go up the ladder, and so on and so forth, and one day you make a mistake, and that mistake costs the company a million, two million, three million dollars. Now, if that company is smart, they're not gonna fire you. Why? They just spent three million dollars educating you. What's the point of firing you? Now you know what not to do. Firing you is not going to benefit anyone. We just spent $3 million educating you on what not to do. Fine, now that you know this, you have an experience that nobody else in the company has. Okay, so can I get a raise? No, that you can't get. Can I get a raise this year? Absolutely not. Can I get a raise next year? Maybe, most likely not. Why? Well, you just lost $3 million, buddy. It's going to take a while for your work to get you to a point where you've made up for this damage you caused.

35:30So we've caused damage for a certain amount of time by not following the mitzvot, by walking around immodestly and getting Am Yisrael to sin as a result of it, by stealing, by cheating, by lying, by doing all of these things that HaKadosh Baruch Hu said no to. So okay, now you're starting to do the stuff He said to do. Good. You're obligated to do it anyway. And for you to get on the good list... Get all the things that you want. It's probably going to take a little time. Some people get more or less depending on who they are. Hashem knows exactly what to give you and when to give it to you. But remember that sometimes HaKadosh Baruch Hu is going to give you difficulties during your teshuva in order to help you, not to punish you. Helping you by giving you difficulties because He sees that you're serious about Shabbat. He sees that you're serious about modesty. You throw out all the clothes that aren't modest. You throw them out; you even made a video cutting all of it. You put it on the internet to encourage other girls to wear modest clothes. So, you're not buying new clothes but still have the miniskirts and the tank tops in the closet. Maybe one day you want to wear them. You're serious. You're throwing everything out, you burn it, and...

36:51That means that in order for you to go back to your modesty, it's going to take some effort. You have to go back to the store, and it's embarrassing, this and that. So you've put a fence around the fence. You left the girlfriend, but you didn't just leave her. You changed phone numbers. She doesn't even know where you are. You moved away. Why? Because you know that if you're going to stay, she has your phone number, she's going to call you, and it's only a matter of time before you fall. So what did you do? You not only left her because you want to watch your brit, but you also changed your phone number and went somewhere else. You're far away. You're out of touch. You're not staying friends. We're not platonic friends. There's no such thing as platonic friends in Judaism. Why? You want to watch yourself. So you took serious teshuva, serious measures to make your teshuva serious. So HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, "Wow, I'm impressed by your teshuva, and I love you so much that I'm gonna give you a little bit of extra difficulties right now. Why? For two reasons. One, I want to see if you really love me. I want to see if your teshuva is real. Are you doing it because you expect that after you keep Shabbat for three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten months, I'm gonna give you like a lotto ticket?"

38:08So really, you're not doing teshuva because you care, because you fear Me, because you love Me. You're really doing teshuva because it's like work for you. It's like you work for free for 10 months because you're expecting a lotto ticket at the end. So I want to see if you love Me. Better yet, better yet, I want to see you deal with these difficulties. Deal with these difficulties and find a way to justify them in the Torah. How could I justify these difficulties in the Torah? Well, you realize, wait a minute, if I'm doing teshuva, that means that I'm realizing that what I've done in the past is wrong. That driving on Shabbat was wrong. That eating pig is wrong. That stealing money is wrong. That doing such and such is wrong. Okay, so if it's wrong, obviously it requires a punishment. Now Hashem says, I love you so much and I am enjoying your teshuva so much, I'm not going to give you punishment in Gehenom at all. I still have to give you punishment though. So what am I going to do? Instead of a thousand years or a million years in Gehenom, I'll give you money problems for six months. Who prefers Gehenom instead? Raise your hand. Nobody's going to raise their hand. Why? When you realize what Gehenom is like, you don't want Gehenom for a second.

39:21So Hashem likes our teshuva sometimes so much. He's actually going to give us difficulties. Why? Because He wants to give us that punishment here for a few months and, in some cases, even for a few years. Why? So that way you don't have any punishment at all. You can go straight to Gan Eden, you go straight and sit next to HaKadosh Baruch Hu and have an eternity of good. So with that... We thank Hashem for the problems. And that's what it says, that if a person knew how valuable their suffering is when they're doing teshuva, they'd actually pray for it. They'd pray to get suffering. Now, none of us are at the level to pray for suffering. It already comes automatically. But the point is, don't get discouraged because Hashem is not dancing to your tune. Remember, He is the King. He doesn't owe you anything. You're obligated to keep His mitzvot with or without anything, with or without reward. And Rabbi Yisrael Salanter said that if somebody understood what it means to get punished by HaKadosh Baruch Hu, they'd simply do all of the mitzvot just not to get punished. Forget about reward. They wouldn't even want reward. The only reward they would want is not to get punished.

40:40when somebody actually understands what punishment is. So the person that asked this had the same question I had years ago. How come all the things didn't work out right away? Because HaKadosh Baruch Hu had a different plan for me. He wanted to see if the teshuva is real. He wanted to see if I'm gonna withstand a test. And most importantly, He wanted me to pay for some of my own crimes in this life, in this life. rather than going to Gehinnom. Now, in the beginning, it was very, very hard for me because when you're in the fire, you can't help it; you feel the burn. When you're dealing with problems, you can't help it; it's hard. But I promise you, once you understand the will of Hashem and you realize that He's really doing it for you, you're also gonna realize that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Eventually, times do get better. Eventually, you start enjoying the mitzvot and the Torah much more. But you have to toil; you have to fight for it; you have to work hard for it. You eventually get to a point where your state of mind becomes like heaven. You simply are at a point where you're happy, you're content with whatever you have, despite whatever problems exist.

41:46You understand why you're even in this world, you have the answers for things, and even the things you don't have answers for, you know that the answers exist, you just haven't learned them yet. The point is, I will tell you, that Hashem does give you pleasure in this world too. It's just that you have to work hard for it. You can't just sit there like watching a movie and expect Hashem to spoon-feed you. You're not gonna get to Gan Eden by being spoon-fed. It's gonna take a little work. And that's what we need to do and we need to understand. Anybody with questions? Oh, now we have two. Pass the mic, please. Can I play ball on Shabbat? Can you what? Play basketball. Did you come to the shiur yesterday? Yeah. I answered yesterday. I said, guys, somebody asked me how come basketball is not allowed on Shabbat. So I'll answer it briefly. I think this is probably the third or fourth time I've answered this question, by the way. You guys should pay attention. Children are allowed to play with balls on Shabbat because they're children and they're not commanded on the mitzvot. Adults, on the other hand, are not allowed to play with the ball by themselves on Shabbat unless...

43:00They're playing with children, meaning a father is playing with his child, and it's part of their oneg Shabbat, their enjoyment of Shabbat. But if the father just wants to play basketball by himself, or the adult, which according to Judaism is a male who is 13 years old and a female who is 12 years old, they are considered adults according to the Torah. So, that person plays with a ball on Shabbat, it's a problem. And there are a couple of reasons for it. Number one, since he's not a child, that ball is considered muktzeh. It's the same thing as touching a pen on Shabbat; it's forbidden. Why? Because this is something that doesn't belong on Shabbat. Shabbat is a time of holiness. So, to play basketball on Shabbat is no different than talking business on Shabbat. It's bringing the mundane of the six days of the week to a holy day. And instead of enjoying the holy day that HaKadosh Baruch Hu created just for you, by talking to Him, by praying to Him, by learning His Torah, what are we doing? We're just making it an off day. We're making it a day off of work, a day off of school.

44:04Hashem obviously doesn't take that lightly, and the prophet Yeshayahu says to the people of his time, who used to simply talk business and mundane things. Just talking about some property that maybe they want to buy or some property that really looks good, and the prophet Yeshayahu calls them mechalelei Shabbat. He calls them as if they drove on Shabbat. Why? How dare you bring the mundane to the holy? So I know that there are going to be plenty of rabbis who play basketball too, unfortunately. But a lot of people have titles of rabbis. It doesn't necessarily mean that they're rabbis. A lot of people have titles of Jews. It doesn't necessarily mean that the Torah calls them Jews. I'm just telling you what the halacha is. You can keep it. You can, you know, not keep it. That's up to you. If you want to go to Gan Eden, I promise you there's no basketball court in Gan Eden. There's no basketball court in Gan Eden, and I promise you there's probably not a single basketball star that ever went to Gan Eden. Why? Because if you're a basketball star, that means that your life is the ball. Your life is the ball. HaKadosh Baruch Hu wants Him to be your life, the Torah to be your life. You have six other days to play basketball. You have six other days to play soccer. You have six other days to play whatever sport or thing that you want to do.

45:20Why are you using Shabbat for that? Do you even know what Shabbat is? Do you know that the Chachamim were so careful with Shabbat that when the Gaon MeVilna, when his wife, when his mother, when his own mother, just wanted to talk about just, you know, how things are, how are you doing? He rebuked his own mother. He said, Ima, Shabbat, meaning we can't talk about anything. Everything that comes out of our mouth, the words that come out of our mouth, have to be about Torah. To such an extent that the Chachamim debated among each other: Are you even allowed to say "Shabbat Shalom" on Shabbat? Why? Maybe it's not really the holiest thing to say. But then they said, no, no, you're allowed. Why are you allowed to say "Shabbat Shalom"? Now we're going to answer: We're allowed to say "Shabbat Shalom" to be nice to people. No, it has nothing to do with it. It has nothing to do with being nice to people. can go like this and be nice to people? No! Why? Because "Shabbat" is one name for God, and "Shalom" is also a name for God. So, in essence, you're saying two different names of Hashem. That's the reason. The point is, they were so careful with Shabbat that they would be scared to touch something that could possibly be muktzeh. To what extent

46:44One time, just a couple of hundred years ago, we're talking about our great-great-grandparents. We're not talking about something from 5,000 years ago. We're not talking about Moshe Rabbeinu. One time, by accident, he touched the peel, the shell of an egg. There was an egg; somebody peeled an egg and left the peel on the table. Now, usually you could take it, once you peel it, you could take it, throw it out, finished. But somebody just left it on the table. So the Gaon of Vilna touched it by accident, not on purpose. As soon as he realized what he was touching, he passed out. Passed down to the floor. Lost consciousness. So I go, please, please get up, please get up. He got up, he saw the peel again, passed out again. Passed out, mamash, lost consciousness. Got up, they threw some water in his face. Got up again, saw the peel, passed out again. Now it became pikuach nefesh. Why? You start passing out too many times, you could die. So his wife knew what was going on here. No one understood why he passed out. No one knew that he touched the peel. Only his wife realized what happened before he passed out, and she saw the peel on the table. So as soon as he got up again, she took the peel and put it in her mouth and ate it.

48:10Why? She says, now that he sees that technically you could eat it, it's not muktze. It's not muktze. So he's not gonna pass out. Now, technically the peel, you could have quite a few chachamim that say it's not even muktze. Quite a few chachamim, I tell you, say it's not even a problem at all. Meaning, on the possibility, on the doubtful possibility that maybe I touched muktze, he simply couldn't live with himself. Now let me ask you a question. If he knew so much Torah and he literally couldn't live with himself, touching something that could possibly be muktze, possibly. Anyone here think it's a wise idea to touch something that's for sure muktze? Even if it's called a basketball and people get millions of dollars for touching it all day, he knew a lot more Torah than we could ever know. And he almost died for the possibility of almost touching muktze. And we're touching it and we're throwing it and we're playing with it as if, what's the big deal? Rabbi, I'm having a good time. It's my oneg Shabbat. If that's your oneg Shabbat, then you don't know what Shabbat is about.

49:22So the answer is no. You cannot play basketball on Shabbat, but you can find a bunch of fake rabbis that will tell you you are allowed. It just depends. Which heaven do you want to go into? The heaven that's full of fire, that's full of those rabbis that tell you to play basketball, they're going to play basketball in the fire with you, or do you want to go to the heaven that the righteous rabbis go to? There's no basketball over there. There's only Kedusha over there. There's no fire. Depends, you know, you called, you know, Rabbi, Rabbi, heaven, heaven, but you know, a little different description of what happens in there. Next question. Yes, Niamh, I haven't seen you in a while. I missed you already. I was gonna cancel this shiur if you're not gonna come. So Does God know the future? That's the first question. Does God know the future, like my next movement, my next idea? If so, if He knows the future, why won't He tamper with it? I know He doesn't tamper with our free will. Ken? Why doesn't He tamper? If it's for the greater good, why wouldn't He tamper with us?

50:23So, HaKadosh Baruch Hu knows the past, the present, and the future. For Him, it's all the same. There is no past, there is no present, and there is no future for Him. It's all the same status. It's the same thing as if we could explain, for example, we have, psychologically speaking, a conscious, unconscious, and a subconscious. So, there's something that the conscious is something that immediately you're thinking about right now. The question you thought about is, you're constantly asking it, you know it's on the tip of your tongue. The unconscious is things that are repressed memories from a long, long time ago. But if you think about it long enough, you can get it. The subconscious is things that you don't even realize you know, but you've seen it or did it at some point in your life, and when push comes to shove, it'll come up. When a person is alive, he has to stretch a little bit, he has to work a little bit to use some different parts of his mind. But if a person passes away, or perhaps a person loses consciousness, and he has, let's say, a near-death experience, or he dreams,

51:30he dreams and he knows he's dreaming, he could literally feel all three of them at the same time, as if they're the same. Why? Because the soul is not limited to what the body is. The body is limited in that you can only use one or another at different times. The soul has no limitation. When you know you're dreaming, you can use a lot of different things if you know how to do it. Yes, you could do a lot of interesting things if you know when you're dreaming. You could fly, you could create a dream, you could create all types of things. Some of the Chachamim were able to use their dreams to go up to Shamayim and see what happens in Shamayim and get all types of interesting things over there. Many, many Tzadikim and Chachamim would literally go to Shamayim and see what's over there. Now, HaKadosh Baruch Hu, the Avdi from us, For Him, there's no conscious, subconscious, unconscious—no such thing. There's also no past, present, and future. But just like we, in a status of, let's say, the neshamah, there is no difference between us of all of these different states of mind, for Him, there is no difference between anything. For Him, He's the only thing that's actually one. Echad, one, a single thing—the only thing that actually exists that's one is Him. He is not separated from His thoughts.

52:46He is His thoughts. He's not separated from His past. He is His past. He's not separated from His future. He is His future. We, however, are separated. Even a human being is separate, made up of 248 different body parts, limbs, and 365 sinews and bones. So the point is that even a human being, though a single entity, is made up of parts. The nation is made up of parts. The camera is made up of parts; everything in the world is made up of parts. The only thing that's single is HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Same concept with His past, present, and future. So He knows not just your past, present, and future, but it doesn't mean that you only have one possibility. Meaning you have multiple possibilities. You only have one possibility for your past because it's already over. You have multiple possibilities for your present because that's based on your current decisions. And you have countless possibilities for your future, which are a result of your actions. So He knows all of those possibilities.

53:49And He doesn't tamper with which one you're going to choose. He just knows that if you choose this, you're going to go here; if you choose that, you're going to go there. And to Him, all of them are the same. In essence, He already sees all of them play out simultaneously. So when you choose something, it's different for you, but for Him, it's the same. It's very complicated. To such an extent that the Rambam, who actually details a little bit more than I just did, writes about it in Shemonah Perakim. There's a sefer called Shemonah Perakim, which is where we learn about the 13 principles of faith, as well as the commentary on Pirkei Avot, and different details about creation that the Rambam wrote. This is in the last chapters, the 7th and 8th chapters. He writes, "I'm only going to write about free will because I know people are going to ask, but in reality," It's impossible for us to understand it. The only way that you could actually understand free will is by being God Himself. This is the highest capacity that you can understand, which is what I just explained to you. There are some more details that the Rambam explains, and I'm summarizing it, but in essence, your human mind can never truly understand how free will acts, because you're limited as a human.

55:04But this is, in essence, how it is, and I gave you guys the story of how, or the example of how it works if I write the future in an envelope. You guys remember that part? Okay, so let's say, for example, we'll give you this. Let's say I tell you I know the future. Okay, so I write the future on a piece of paper, I put it in an envelope, and we put it in a safe deposit box. safe deposit box. I tell you, go do whatever you want. At the end of the week, you come back. Okay, there's a whole thing; 100 people come. Let's see what's in the box. We take out the envelope, we open the envelope, we see what's in the envelope, and what I wrote down already a week ago is every single thing that you did during that week. Now, the fact that I knew it before it happened, did that change your actions? No, you still did whatever you did. I knew it, I knew it, but I didn't change it. Why doesn't Hashem, the Hashem that knows all the possibilities of the future, why doesn't He just steer you in the right way? Why doesn't He just take the girl that's out of the equation and just throw her to Jamaica or something so you can go to work freely and without sinning? Why? Because that takes away your free choice. The only way that HaKadosh Baruch Hu can give you Gan Eden is if you earn it.

56:18is if you earn it. You have to earn it by doing mitzvot. If you do a mitzvah by not looking, then Hashem says, "Ah, my son didn't look? Okay, that's another $500 billion in spiritual dollars in Gan Eden." Why? Because he didn't look once. Oh, he didn't go to Las Vegas? Oh, that's another $500 zillion in Gan Eden because he didn't go, he didn't put himself in a test. And so on and so forth. So, He has to reward you for something. And that's why He gives you those tests. He doesn't alter your moves. Oh, yes, well it says in the Gemara, somebody that comes to become purified, somebody that comes to try to do teshuva, HaKadosh Baruch Hu gives them a hand. But someone that tries to become impure, somebody that tries to do bad things, Hashem also helps him. Meaning, if you want to do good things, Hashem will give you plenty of opportunities to do good things. For example,

57:23you want to give tzedakah. You want to give tzedakah, you want to be generous. So what's Hashem going to do? He's going to send you different opportunities. All of a sudden, no one ever knocked on your door for 10 years you live in this house. But you have this gut feeling, you feel like you need to give something. You feel like you need to give something. All of a sudden, Yes, sir, I have a daughter. She needs money. We have a wedding. All of a sudden, for the first time in 10 years, somebody knocked on your door. Why? You wanted to give tzedakah. Hashem can read your mind. He sent you somebody. Now, you didn't give him everything. You didn't give him everything. So Hashem sent you another opportunity. All of a sudden, you get an email. All of a sudden, you get an opportunity. But then, you ran out of money. You gave that tzedakah, you ran out of money. So what does Hashem do? Oh, I'll give you more money. He gives you, all of a sudden, a new client. That new client just gave you an extra $50,000. If you still remember Hashem and you still have this desire to give tzedakah, guess what? You give tzedakah, Hashem's gonna give you more money. So you come to become purified, and Hashem is gonna help you become purified. On the other hand, someone that wants to sin... Someone that listens to the things that we talk about, wasting seed and so on and so forth, all the sins of the Torah, and he says, "Ah, nonsense. Ah, this is nonsense. Who's going to protect their belief in this generation? Ah, come on, well, I'm going to stop watching movies. Ah, come on, this, Rabbi, you're crazy, you're this or that." Guess what?

58:44That guy, all of the zonot of the entire country are going to come to his door. Every five seconds, some girl's going to call him. "You want to go out, honey?" All of a sudden, he became Tom Cruise. Everybody wants to go out with him. All of a sudden, Mr. Popular. The guy has a nose over here and an ear over there, but all of a sudden, everybody finds him beautiful. Wow, you're so beautiful. You're so handsome. What handsome? Gargamel is better than him. But all of a sudden, Mrs. Wonderful wants to talk. Why? Because he wants to sin. Hashem says, you want to sin? I'll give you the girl. You want to sin? I'll help you sin. Why? You want to sin? I'll help you sin. You want to do a mitzvah? I'll help you do a mitzvah. But even more so, what happens if somebody made a sin? What if he murdered somebody? What if he murdered somebody? Is there any chance that Hashem is going to help him too? The answer is yes. How yes? The Torah tells us that sometimes somebody murders somebody accidentally. Accident. He didn't shoot him in the face on purpose. He was working at the top of the building, and he had some tools,

1:00:00Accidentally, his leg pushed one of the tools. The hammer fell from the fourth or fifth story and, Hashem decreed, it fell on somebody's head and he died. He technically killed him, but not on purpose. So, according to the Torah, at the time of Moshe Rabbeinu, the family of the person that accidentally died has the right to kill him. But they don't want them to kill him. So what do they do? They say, you killed him accidentally. You go to the mountains. Why? The family is not allowed to go to the mountains. When can I come back? When can I come back to my family? When can I come back to my wife and kids, my job, my company, my this? Oh, you can only come back when it's forbidden for them to kill you. Oh, when is that? When the Kohen Gadol, the biggest tzaddik of the nation, dies. When he dies, then you can come back. So now, Rabotai, all of the people in this mountain, what do they do all day? They all pray for the biggest tzaddik in the world to die. Why? Because they want to come back to their families. So what happens? The mothers of the Kohen Gadol, the mother of the Kohen Gadol, every so often would go to the mountain with a bunch of presents for all the people, give them food and clothes and all types of stuff. Why? Don't pray for my son to die. Don't pray for my son to die. So now,

1:01:23How would this work? Sometimes the Kohen Gadol would die literally a short while after someone killed another person. Someone went to that city, and a short while later, the Kohen Gadol would die. It was a new Kohen Gadol; he died, finished. But sometimes 80 years would pass before the Kohen Gadol died. Meaning this person spent pretty much his entire life in the mountains. So how does this work? The Gemara tells us that HaKadosh Baruch Hu gives the benefit, the merits, the reward, or the assistance to someone who has a merit, but He also gives someone a deficit or a loss if he deserves that too. How so? deserved. He did something for whatever reason; he did something. If he, let's say, for example, really truly accidentally killed the guy, he was really careful. He was not working in a building, but he was really, really careful. And Hashem decreed that this guy's gonna die below him, and He chose you to do it, but you didn't really do it on purpose. You were careful; you put everything right. You did everything right, but the guy still died.

1:02:48Because of that, oh, if this happened, that guy, I would actually have the Kohen Gadol die relatively soon. Why? Because you don't deserve to be in those mountains for 80 years. But if you're really not careful, if you're one of these people that have to keep telling you every week, "Hey, put the tools back. Hey, be careful. Hey, stop throwing stuff in the air." And you weren't careful. So, in reality, yes, it was an accident, but it was an accident as a result of carelessness. so then you do deserve to be in the mountains for 80 years. So even that, even the murderer, Hashem helps him too. Needless to say, He also decrees who the Kohen is going to be, whether it's a young Kohen or an old Kohen, or if the mother of the Kohen deserves to see her son die or not. Meaning that HaKadosh Baruch Hu manages the world with such precision that it's impossible for us to comprehend. The point being is, He doesn't change your choice, but the world around you will operate based on your actions.

1:03:49Yes. So how exactly do you have free choice if you were built in a way that, at the end of the day, the result is from Hashem, like the way He created you? Yes. So, like, how exactly do you have free choice because you were built in a way to choose that exact specific link, or, like, you know? Yes. So, the good question. The Zohar HaKadosh says that each person is born with certain desires. Some of us have universal desires, and some of us have our own personal desires that are unique to us. Universal desires, we have desires to eat, some people more, some people less. Universal desires, you know, we want to be liked. Some people care more or less for it, but generally speaking, people want to be liked. People need to eat, people need to be intimate, and so on and so forth. But then there are independent desires—there are certain things that you have an inclination for that somebody else doesn't. For example, there are certain people that have a desire to see blood. They have a desire to see blood; something in their brain works differently once they see blood.

1:05:12So HaKadosh Baruch Hu gave you that. He gave you that desire that you get some sort of pleasure as a result of seeing blood. Now automatically, all of us think with our movie-Hollywood minds, "Wow, this guy is going to be a murderer. He's going to kill people." No, not necessarily. He can do that. He can become a serial killer. He can become a murderer. He can become one of these crazy school-shooting kids. He can be. Or he can simply be a butcher. He can be a butcher and see blood. Or he can be a surgeon. He can be a surgeon, make $800,000 a year by performing surgery and still get the same pleasure seeing blood. But one is murder; it is not allowed. It's forbidden by the Torah and forbidden by the law. And the other is not only allowed, it's a mitzvah. It's a mitzvah to be a kosher butcher. It's a mitzvah to be a doctor who actually keeps Shabbat unless he has to for pikuach nefesh.

1:06:14It's a mitzvah to do these things. One is a sin, one is a mitzvah. So the point is that Hashem instilled in you certain natures within you independently, and it's your free choice to choose how you're going to use this talent, this desire, and so on. So He didn't instill in you this desire where there's no way for you to do something good with it. To such an extent that there's no good in the world that you can't enjoy. Rabbi Meir Baal HaNes, you guys heard of Rabbi Meir Baal HaNes? Yeah, you heard? Rabbi Meir Baal HaNes had a wife. Her name was Bruriah. Bruriah was a very, very smart woman. She even won a few debates against some of the other Chachamim. One day she said to Rabbi Meir, she goes, wait a minute. You say in the Torah that Hashem did not... put us in a situation where there's something in the world that we can't enjoy in a kosher way. So she says, I want to enjoy pig. I want to enjoy the taste of pig. Now you can't say the pig is kosher for shalom bayit. No, no, I'm going to give my wife pig and I'm going to give her a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich because of shalom bayit. You can't do that. So Rabbi Meir says, no problem. He went, he sent somebody to go get a certain type of fish that's found in Africa.

1:07:37called shibuta, and that fish, after you cook it, tastes exactly like bacon. Same thing, but it's kosher. It's a kosher fish. By the way, there's also a duck, a certain duck that's found in Japan. Till this day, there's a certain duck in Japan, if you cook it, it tastes exactly like bacon. Today, there's also soy that you can flavor like bacon, and there's also turkey bacon, and so on and so forth. The point is that HaKadosh Baruch Hu did not have us lose anything as a result of the mitzvot. We just have to know how to enjoy different things in a kosher way. Every desire that you have, you could fulfill in a kosher way, or you could fulfill it in a non-kosher way. Rabbi Gen said to a bunch of soldiers, "Listen, I do everything that you do. The only difference is, you're going to go to Gehinom for it, and I'm going to go to Gan Eden for it." So, they replied, "Yeah, that's not fair. That's not fair. Why am I going to go to Gehinom, and you're going to Gan Eden?" He goes, "Okay, you eat?" They responded, "Yeah, I eat also." So, what's the difference? He goes, when you eat, you eat non-kosher. I eat kosher. So, I eat, you eat. It's both good. But my food is kosher. When you eat, you don't even say a blessing to Hashem. I say a blessing to Hashem.

1:08:49Now you want to be, uh, you what else you want to do? You want to have fun, you have fun. How do you have fun? What, you want to have a wife? No, I have a wife also. You're going to go to Gehinnom for your wife? I'm going to go to Gan Eden for my wife. Why? My wife goes to the mikveh, I'm allowed to be with her. You touch and do whatever you want. Same exact performance, but for you, there's a sin; for me, there's a mitzvah. This is a mitzvah, meaning every single thing that you want to do, you can do in a kosher way. in a kosher way. You just need to know how to do it. You're allowed to play sports during the week. You're allowed to eat kosher food. You're allowed to have fun. Kosher fun. The point is that if you understand the Torah, you can actually have a fantastic life in this world and the next. It just has to be a kosher way to do it. has to be a kosher way to do it. And if you have Yirat Shamayim, you're afraid of going against Hashem, you'll always find a way to do it. Because like I said, someone that tries to become purified, Hashem will help them. So if you're trying to get closer and closer to Hashem, Hashem will help you. Next question. So you're saying that from your upbringing, you get to pick your choices, right? Like all your surroundings, all the environment. So in reality, would that really be free will then?

1:10:08Because God has already given you an image to go off. He's given you a background. So everything you know, you know because He put you in those situations. And you're making your decisions based on those. So it's not really free will in reality. It is and it isn't, meaning that it's a cause and effect. If, let's say, for example, I go to work, I'll get money. I know that. If I don't go to work, I won't get money. If I do a mitzvah, there's a reward for that mitzvah. What is the reward for a mitzvah? The reward for a mitzvah is another mitzvah. You do a mitzvah, so Hashem wants to reward you. What? He gives you an opportunity to do another mitzvah. That's why when somebody made a sin by accident, shogeg, the Torah says, go bring a korban, bring a sacrifice to the Beit HaMikdash. Why? What does the animal have to do with my sin? The cow didn't sin; I sinned. Why does the animal have to die? Because just like the reward for a mitzvah is another mitzvah, the punishment for a sin is another sin. Which means that now that I sinned by turning on the light on Shabbat accidentally, it's still a sin. Even though it's an accident, it's a sin nonetheless.

1:11:27So that means that the punishment for that sin would be an opportunity to make another sin. So the Chachamim say in the Torah, immediately, right after you made the accidental sin, go bring a sacrifice to the Beit HaMikdash. Why? That's a mitzvah. Break the chain. Why? Before you make your next sin, go make a mitzvah by bringing that sacrifice. Once you make that sacrifice, that's a mitzvah. You broke the chain. That means that immediately after you've actually made that mitzvah of the sacrifice, you'll have an opportunity to make a mitzvah instead of an aveirah. Which means that if you are on a roll of making mitzvot, Hashem will continue giving you more and more opportunities to make more mitzvot. If you're like hafif, you're like, whenever I get a chance, I'll do a mitzvah. Whenever I get a chance, maybe I'll do an aveirah. Then guess what? You're not going to survive the week. You're not going to survive the week. Why? Because there's only going to be sins coming. So a person that chases mitzvot, just like David HaMelech says in Tehillim, please Hashem, I want to chase mitzvot my whole life. chase me? So why do I chase mitzvot? Because he knows if I make an aveirah, I'll have an opportunity to make another one and another one, and who knows where I'm going to end up. That's also why the kids, young people, old people, when they go off the derech and...

1:12:40When somebody that's religious, born religious, you know, the hat, the shtreimel, the whole thing, the whole nine yards, and then one day you see this guy dancing in gay clubs. Like, what just happened here? What happened here? Like, how did you go from here to here? You went from Gan Eden to Gehinom in a week. Like, what happened? How does it go? How does it happen, this stuff? It happens in a very simple way, Rabotai. Same exact thing, just a funnier thing, but generally the same explanation. If a person makes a sin and simply doesn't care, he gets punished with an opportunity to make another sin. So the guy that went off the derech by just, you know what? I'm gonna smoke a cigarette on Shabbat when no one's looking. So he smoked a cigarette on Shabbat, no one looked. No one saw except Hashem. But then, all of a sudden, Shabbat ends and some goya comes over and says, "Hey cutie, what are you doing with that big hat of yours?" And all of a sudden, she wants to be his girlfriend. She never saw a Jew in her life, but she likes the hat. So now he smoked a cigarette on Shabbat, but now he has a goya girlfriend.

1:13:53where does she want to go? She says, "What do you want to do?" "I don't know, let's go to the casino." "Okay, fine." So then they go to the casino together. So you go to the casino, and then this, and then what happens? After three weeks, this guy's made so many avirot, he doesn't even remember what he used to look like. He used to look like a chasid; now he walks around with a tank top and shorts. The parents see him and ask, "What happened to you? How did you go from here to here?" Stop paying attention. You stop paying attention to the fact that you're making aveirot, and that's how it works. The Satan will take a person literally from Gan Eden all the way to the bottom of Gehenom. Why? That's how the system works. So if you watch yourself, you pay attention to the things that you do. Every time you make a mitzvah, good, look for the next one. Every time you make a mistake, you make an aveirah, you look at the girl that's half naked, you look at her, okay, I'm sorry, why? You broke. When you say, "I'm sorry" for the sin, that's a mitzvah. That's a mitzvah. So guess what? Instead of Hashem sending you another girl, He's going to send you an opportunity to do a mitzvah. You have to do teshuvah constantly. Constantly. We can't bring a cow to the Beit HaMikdash. There's no Beit HaMikdash today.

1:15:05But we could say "I'm sorry." When we say "I'm sorry," it's the same thing. That's the point of the chaos, to say "I'm sorry." You say "I'm sorry" to HaKadosh Baruch Hu for committing a sin, and He'll give you an opportunity to do a mitzvah. And you'll see, little by little, that it's a cause and effect; yes, you can, in essence, dictate what kind of opportunities you have in your life, whether you'll have more opportunities for mitzvot than aveirot. But again, it's only if you pay close attention. Yes. If God controls history and events, how do we have free will? How do all the historical figures do what they do if it's all being controlled by God? So, HaKadosh Baruch Hu does not control history in the sense that you're explaining it. Meaning, yes, HaKadosh Baruch Hu runs the world, and nothing is beyond Him. But everything is from Heaven except the fear of Heaven, meaning that He allows human beings to make free choices, and by their own free choices, certain things happen. There are certain cases, only a couple of cases that I can remember off the top of my head, where HaKadosh Baruch Hu removes free choice.

1:16:16Generally speaking, the vast majority of the population in the world, from the beginning of time all the way until Mashiach comes, have free choice undisturbed. They choose whatever they choose, and Hashem reacts based on their choices. He chose not to go to shul. He chose to just stay home. Guess what? He forgot to even pray at home. Why? Hashem made him tired. He went to sleep. He chose that he's going to watch TV. Hashem put some immodest woman on the TV. He chose to, you know, not check if it's kosher or not; Hashem made sure it's not kosher. Why? Because you didn't check. If you had checked, then maybe it would be kosher. I would allow you to enjoy something you wanted. So people make choices, and Hashem reacts to those choices. Generally speaking, throughout all of time, the vast majority of the population have free choice. There are only two cases that I know of, off the top of my head, that free choice is removed. And those cases are: one, leaders.

1:17:17Leaders of nations, once somebody becomes a major leader of a nation, whether it's Paul, or Obama, or Donald Trump, or Benjamin Netanyahu, or Putin, or any of these people that lead countries, their free choice is tampered with, sometimes completely removed. Why? These are the stick figures that Hashem uses to run His world. When bad things are happening to Am Yisrael, they're happening by some stick figure. Somebody's doing it. Whether it's Obama or Osama or someone in between them, somebody's doing it. Hashem is using that person as the stick against Am Yisrael. So those leaders have their free choice removed. There are a couple of examples that we see in the Torah. Pharaoh had his free choice removed. Sihon, the king of Sihon, had his free choice removed. Even Nebuchadnezzar had his free choice altered. The point is that when a leader becomes a leader, they may have had good intentions going into office,

1:18:22But once they're in office, they're simply a puppet of Hashem. They have free choice in their day-to-day life: with their wife, with their kids, whether to eat or not, whether to go to the bathroom or not, that kind of stuff, yes. But as far as what they decide, whether to press the nuclear button or not, whether to attack Afghanistan or not, whether to vote yes or no against Israel or not, Hashem decides that. Why? Because these are people that Hashem uses to run the world. The only other time that HaKadosh Baruch Hu removes free choice is as a punishment. And that I read to you guys about two months ago from the Rambam. He says that the worst punishment that exists in this world is when Hashem decides He does not want you to do teshuva. So He allows you to live and simply not want to do teshuva under any condition. Even if you have Moshe Rabbeinu come to your house, knock on your door. "Hey, I'm Moshe, here's the Ten Commandments." You say, "Yeah, Moshe, I'm not interested." Meaning a person could see the entire truth and still not do teshuva. Why? Hashem doesn't want it. The person could live a life without even thinking that what they're doing is wrong. Why? Because the punishment for such a person is that Hashem does not want him to do teshuva. He'll let them live a long life to make more sins so He could punish them worse. And this is in the Rambam. Let's go to the back with the next question. If you could, hold on one second with the mic. I can hear you, but the camera needs to also.

1:19:54How is it fair that they're getting punished if they're not making the choices? You mean the leaders? Yeah. No, the leaders are not getting punished. The people that, for example, we see when Pharaoh, it says that his heart was hardened, meaning that HaKadosh Baruch Hu, in essence, removed his free choice when push came to shove to release Am Yisrael after the first three plagues. Hashem did not allow him to release them. He wanted him to continue keeping them in Mitzrayim so He could bring all of the ten plagues, all of the ten major miracles. Now, The Pharaoh is the only one that survived the splitting of the sea. When Am Yisrael went to the Sea of Reeds, Hashem split the sea, Am Yisrael passed through the sea, and then the Egyptians, they drowned in the sea. But there was only one survivor. That survivor was Pharaoh. he actually became the king of Nineveh. He became the king of Nineveh, and he did teshuva. Why did Hashem allow him to do teshuva? Why did Hashem allow him to survive? Because he removed his free choice. So because he removed his free choice, he didn't deserve to die. He deserved to get punished, but not die. So that's something that you're right, when somebody's free choice is removed, they don't deserve to be punished, unless that removal of the free choice was the punishment itself.

1:21:24and it wasn't them that had the... they didn't have the idea of what to do. It was all him making the decisions, like saying they couldn't go or they could go. And their whole nation got punished, but they didn't do it. They did whatever the king said to do. The king said to do it, but he didn't put a gun to your head to do it. Meaning, somebody tells you, listen, go kill this person. There are three things that HaKadosh Baruch Hu says that if somebody tells you to do it, you have to die and not do it. If somebody tells you, come to my wedding, it's in a church. Come to my wedding. It's in a church. You cannot go to that wedding. They say, listen, if you don't come to my wedding, I'm going to kill you. You have to say, no problem. Kill me. I'm not allowed to go to a church. Why? That's what HaKadosh Baruch Hu says. You're not allowed to go to a place of idolatry. You're not allowed to worship an idol. Second thing, if somebody tells you to commit a sexual crime, somebody says, listen, go rape this woman or I'm going to kill you. You have to die.

1:22:28not allowed to rape anybody. You're not allowed to, uh, even have intimacy with your own wife when she's niddah. If somebody tells you, "Go be with your wife," but she's niddah, she's still impure, she just had a period, "No, no, I'll kill you if you don't. I have a gun to your head." Kill me then. Yeah, but she's my wife; she's allowed to me half the month. Right now she's not allowed to me. Okay, go be with one of these supermodels, non-Jewish supermodels. I'm gonna kill you. You have to die. Third thing: somebody tells you to go kill somebody. "Go kill him, or I'm gonna kill you." Meaning, "save your own life—kill him, or I'm gonna kill you." The Torah says you have to die. Why? Your blood is not more valuable than his. Even if he's a rasha. Even if he's Hitler. Anybody. Even if he's Hitler himself. unless it's a war. It's a war. It's a time of war. Unless you have permission from the Torah to kill him. Meaning you are in a war. You're allowed to kill him. But if it's just somebody, let's say he's a Mechalel Shabbat, you're not allowed to kill him. Dinah has to kill him. So now,

1:23:35Torah gave those rules to Am Yisrael, but also the non-Jews have some of these rules. They're not allowed to kill anybody. They're not allowed to torture anybody. They have the seven Noahide laws. So even though their king told them to go and kill Am Yisrael’s babies, every day they would kill 300 babies. just to take their blood and make a bath for Paro. On top of that, everyone that didn't meet their quota of making stones, they would kill their kids by putting them in place of the stone. The point being is that they killed, even though Paro told them to do it, they didn't have to do it, they chose to do it. Why? To save their own lives. And the problem is that when a person chooses these bad choices, Hashem has to punish him. Why? They could have fled. There were three leaders that Pharaoh had, three generals that Pharaoh had. When he asked them, "What do you think I should do with Am Yisrael?" One said, "You should kill them. Make them all slaves and then kill them." His name was Bil'am. Eventually, Hashem killed him.

1:24:41The second one didn't say anything. He was scared to say stuff. His name was Iyov. By not saying anything, and he ran away, Hashem punished him for not saying anything. Then there was a third one. He said, no, don't touch them. They're good people. They're the ones that put you on the map and made all this money for you and built your economy. And then he ran away after saying the truth. Hashem rewarded him to be the most important convert that ever lived. His name was Yitro. Yitro, parashat Torah, Matan Torah, the Ten Commandments that we get, the whole Matan Torah, is not called parashat Matan Torah. It's called parashat Yitro. A parasha named after Yitro, because he defended the truth, Hashem gave him the right to not only convert to Judaism, but his son-in-law was Moshe Rabbeinu. His daughter married Moshe Rabbeinu. So, the point is that everybody has a choice. Even if that means putting their life on the line, the Torah has rules for those people too. There are certain times when you have to sacrifice your life for the sake of the Torah, and certain times when you're not allowed to, so it depends. But in these specific cases, you have to. Next question. Okay, if you're in the back anymore. Anything? Okay, so pass it to the front. Somebody get the mic to the guys in the front.

1:26:05You said that the big leaders are basically like puppets of Hashem, right? Okay. So you could say the same thing about Moshe. He was the biggest; he led the whole nation. He was like a puppet then. Not the Jewish leaders as far as the righteous ones, the tzaddikim. We're talking about the leaders of, as far as the nations, like presidents, kings of those nations. Not the tzaddikim, no. No, I mean, the tzaddikim already think in a certain way of what does Hashem want. To be a tzaddik, you have to, in essence, destroy yourself, your own free will, your own desires, and simply replace them with what does Hashem want. There's no more "what do I want to do." is: What does Hashem want me to do? What would Hashem want me to do in this case? Would He want me to go home from the shiur Torah? Or would He want me to stay here for a little longer and get some more Torah? What does Hashem want me to do? Does Hashem want me to go home and watch a movie? Or does He want me to learn more? Does Hashem want me to go out with this girl or preserve myself and not touch her? What does Hashem want? That's what tzaddikim do. Tzaddikim constantly choose: what does Hashem want me to do?

1:27:18Also, somebody has a question in regards to what's the difference between the Sephardim and the Ashkenazim? Is it the same Torah? As far as the Torah itself, the five books of Moses and the 19 other books that we have, which is a total of 24 books of the written Torah and the entire oral Torah, which is the Mishnah, the Gemara, the Shulchan Aruch, All of that is exactly the same. All of that is exactly the same. The only difference between Sephardim and Ashkenazim is that Sephardim lived in the Middle East, while Ashkenazim lived in the countries of Europe and so on. And Ashkenazim have different customs than the customs of the Sephardim. That's the only difference. There's no different Torah. They both believe in the same Moshe Rabbeinu. They both believe that they're descendants of Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov. They both believe that the Mashiach is going to come. They both believe that you have to eat kosher and you have to keep Shabbat. They both have the same overall beliefs. It's just the way they practice certain things, certain customs are different because they lived in different parts of the world.

1:28:25What is it like if you lived, let's say, for example, in the Middle East? Most likely you are, you're, you... acted a different way as far as how you, most of the time, were poor in the Middle East. So they had different types of foods. For example, the Middle Eastern Jews, a lot of their food is dough-based — like jachnun, malawach — all of these different foods. You see, they're all based on dough. Why dough? It's the cheapest food you can possibly find that you can make in a desert that could fill you up and Now, the Ashkenazim, on the other hand, have different types of foods, more fish-based and things of that nature, like gefilte fish. Now, if you give a typical Sephardi gefilte fish, they're probably going to tell you, "No, thank you." Why? Because of different traditions, different customs. The same thing goes when it comes to the experiences they lived through. For example, the reason why the Ashkenazim do not eat rice on Pesach is not because it's chametz. Rice is not chametz. but they don't eat it because their custom is not to eat it due to their poverty a few hundred years ago. The Ashkenazim's poverty was so extreme that they would literally reuse the same sacks that they used for wheat. They would reuse, recycle, and use them for rice. They knew that the grains of wheat are so small that even though you've emptied it out, there's always going to be a few grains. So when you fill it up with rice,

1:29:55There's probably going to be some wheat in there. So the problem is they couldn't rely on themselves that the rice that they made didn't have wheat in it. So they made a rule that, listen, since we're all using the same sacks over and over again, and we can't know for sure that we removed all of the wheat from them, we're not allowed to eat rice. The Sephardim did not have that problem. They didn't have that problem. They had different problems, but not the same problem. So it became a custom that they adopted in order to protect their neshamot from eating non-kosher on Pesach. The reason why is because if you eat non-kosher on Pesach, you eat chametz on Pesach, it's din karet, it's a death penalty. So they preferred not to eat chametz on Pesach rather than get a heavenly death penalty. That's how righteous they were. So this is their righteousness. But now, years have passed, 400 years have passed, we don't have that problem anymore. Aside from the fact that we're wealthy people now, usually the factories that make rice don't have anything to do with wheat. And even if they do, they don't reuse the same sacks. So how come the Ashkenazim still don't eat?

1:30:59the rice on Pesach, because once something becomes a serious minhag over a few hundred years, it becomes part of the mesorah. It becomes part of the lineage, the history of the nation. You're not allowed to remove it. And the reason why is because if you remove this minhag today, most likely you'll remove a different minhag tomorrow. And it's only a matter of time before you start removing things that are not minhagim, but actually halachot. Like you'll actually start removing the laws. And that's where it becomes dangerous, because people don't really understand the difference between minhag and halacha. They think it's halacha to become drunk to the point where you can't even walk on Purim. It's not halacha. You don't have to do it. You can, and maybe even should, but you don't have to do it. You can get drunk, but don't make a fool of yourself in the middle of the street. There are certain minhagim (customs) that we can do and so on and so forth. Point being, rabotai, is that there's a very, very big difference between minhag and halacha. If you violate the minhag, you're not going to gain olam haba. But if you violate halacha, unless you do teshuva, you have a very serious problem. The next question is, is there a difference in spelling in the Torah for Sephardic versus Ashkenazi? No. The Torah is spelled a single way.

1:32:21In the Torah, all of the words are spelled the same way in a Torah between the Sephardic Sefer Torah and Ashkenazi Sefer Torah, with the exception of six letters. Yes, this is going to confuse some people, but it is the truth. We have three hundred and four thousand, eight hundred and five letters in the Torah scroll that you see behind me. There's a Torah scroll in there. That Torah scroll is the same Torah scroll that we had since Moshe Rabbeinu. Now, right now, there are three different types of Torah scrolls in the world that I know of. One is from the minhag of the Sephardim, one is from the minhag of the Masoret of the Ashkenazim, and one is from the Masoret of the Yemenites. Between the three, there are six letters that are different. There are six letters, not six words, six letters. Why is this not a big deal, like people are going to make a big deal out of it? Because those specific letters that are different between the scrolls of the Ashkenazim, Sephardim, or the Yemenites do not change the words. So, let's say, for example, the letter Aleph is used instead of Hei, or the letter Vav is used instead of no Vav.

1:33:42So what is it like? In the Torah, in Hebrew, we don't have vowels; our vowels are dots, the Nikud, okay? So, for example, to make the sound "O," you have to have a dot on top of the word, on top of the Vav. Now, sometimes that dot is going to be on top of the letter that you want that O to be around, or it's going to be on top of a Vav, a letter Vav with a dot on top of it. So you can make the same O this way or that way. What is it like? It's like, for example, in English, you could spell the word and the sound "night" two ways: one with a K, K-N-I-G-H-T, or one without a K, N-I-G-H-T. In essence, they both make exactly the same sounds. The Americans decided, and the English decided that one is going to mean a knight with a sword, and one is going to mean night like nighttime. But in reality, it's the same exact sound. In Hebrew, we don't have that. In Hebrew, if this is it, this is the sound, this is it.

1:34:54This is the word. So these words, there are certain words in the Hebrew alphabet that can be spelled in multiple ways. One with a vav, one without a vav. One with a yud, one without a yud. Because you can make that same sound in a couple of different ways. So this, unlike what people would simply think, oh wait, there are six different Torahs, there are six different, no, it's not six different Torahs, six different letters among the three different traditions. It's not six different Torahs. But in reality, everybody knows that the Yemenites are right. That's the truth. Everybody knows the Yemenite scroll is the right one. So why don't the Sephardim and Ashkenazim adopt the Yemenite scroll? Because everybody's too scared that maybe they're wrong. knows why because that's my tradition. My grandfather did this, my great-grandfather did this, all the way to Har Sinai. This is what they had, so most likely the Yemenite is right, but I'm not one hundred percent sure. So, this is what I have, that's what I go with. Why? Because it doesn't change. The Torah doesn't change the body of the Torah. Unlike what I thought initially, when this confused me when I first found out this information.

1:36:03Then I looked at it from the right perspective after talking to my Rav. It's not like Christianity that has 250,000 versions. We have one version of the Torah. Why? Because, like I said, the words don't change. And in fact, this proves the authenticity of the Torah, that out of 304,805 letters, there are only literally six different letters. Out of all of those, the New Testament, in comparison, has literally 250,000 different versions. ...and the versions are all independent of each other, meaning it's completely different sentences, different names, different places, different everything. Like the story changed: in one place Jesus has a horse, in another place he has a donkey; in one place Jesus has long hair, and in another he has short hair. And in one, he's gay, and in another one, maybe he is, maybe he's not. You know, I'm making hypothetical examples. The point is that the story itself changes. In Judaism, the Torah doesn't change. The story doesn't change. It's just how you spell specific letters. But as far as the way that's pronounced, the way that the words are pronounced between Sephardim and Ashkenazim, that's not according to the Torah.

1:37:24according to the Torah, the letter Taf is Taf; it's Torah. But the Ashkenazi tradition has their own tradition, and they have Saf, which Sephardim almost can't say. Little do they, they don't even use it. So we have Taf, they have Saf, or Saf, or something like that. I'm Sephardi, so I wasn't raised with that. But the point is, is that they say Shabbos, we say Shabbat, but they both mean the same thing. That's not halacha, that's minhag, that's a custom. That means that if my dear friend, by Goldberg over here, he's going to come to me, he says "Shabbat Shalom" to me, or he says "Shabbat Shabbat Shalom" or "Good Shabbos" to me, it means the same thing. Nothing's going to change. Now, if he goes to his kehillah of Ashkenazim, he's going to say "Shabbat Shalom." In the beginning, they might say, "Oh, maybe that Rabbi Reuven of yours has some influence on you." Maybe not. Why? Because they're still gonna know it's Shabbat. Point being is that nothing's really going to change. The language is not going to change. It's just certain customs, certain customs of how to pronounce certain words. Just like, for example, the dialect of English that we use in America is very different than the dialect of English they use in Australia, or the way they use it in England. It's the same language. It's just slightly different pronunciations and so on. Same thing with how people speak Hebrew.

1:38:44The way people speak Hebrew in Yemen versus how they speak Hebrew in Morocco, or how they speak Hebrew in Libya, where my grandparents come from, or how they spoke Hebrew in different parts of the world is different. It's the same exact language; it's just different pronunciations. The same way, for example, your accent here in Florida, if you're really a Floridian, is very, very different from a New Yorker. You're gonna say "Florida," and they're gonna say "New York." Sounds like a different language, but it's not. You know, so it's, again, also in Canada, I had to learn a little bit of Canadian because I did some business in Canada. I had to learn a little bit of Canadian over the years. Why? Because they say different things a different way. But I thought initially they were making a mistake, so I wanted to correct them. I said, no, no, you're making a mistake. They said, no, why? What are you talking about? I'm American. Everybody has different pronunciations; it's the same language, just a different way to pronounce it. Not a different religion, though, when it comes to the Torah. Traditions are slightly different as far as the customs because of different parts of the world, but the Torah itself and the laws are relatively the same. Anything else? I just want to clarify for me on

1:40:03The question was asked earlier that Hashem doesn't tamper with their decisions in a positive way. But there are certain parts of davening which would seem that Hashem does. Meaning? For example, one part of davening says, V'chof es yitzreinu l'shtabed Lach. Hashem forces us to be subservient to You. Another place says, V'sein b'libeinu l'havin u'l'haskil, lishmoa, lilmod u'l'lamed. Give us understanding to learn and to listen. Another place says, Hashiveinu Avinu l'Torasecha. return to see our Torah. Right. In another place it says, right, you know, all those... We're praying for Hashem to help us. It seems like, at least the first one, we're asking Hashem to force us to be subservient to You. Yes, because we don't have much trust in ourselves. So we're saying, Hashem... It's, in essence, a statement out of humility as well. The Tzaddikim that put together the Siddur were very, very humble people. And obviously, as you know, David HaMelech, who authored a good part of the Siddur, whether it's Sephardi or Ashkenazi, it contains Tehilim that David HaMelech put together. He was so humble that he called himself, "I am a worm, but not a person." That's how humble he was.

1:41:17So a lot of the statements that I mentioned in the Siddur and Tehillim are statements that we ourselves, per se, don't really feel that way. But in reality, the people, the tzaddikim that wrote it, not only did they actually feel that way, they're trying to teach us that we're supposed to feel that way. Just like, for example, that at the end of Amidah, we say to Hashem, you know, Hashem, I know I'm afar, I'm nothing, and please... In reality, which one of us thinks we're nothing? As soon as somebody cuts you off, you're like, "Do you know who I am? Do you know who I am?" Everybody thinks we don't know who they are. But yeah, we say we're nothing. Why? If you act a certain way, it'll lead to a certain type of behavior. If you... move around, it'll create a certain emotion. If you say certain things, it will influence your actual behavior. If you generally try to speak in a positive way, it'll lead you to do positive things. If you're a pessimistic person, and you speak pessimistic things, then it could lead to bad things happening. So, in essence

1:42:23Our words actually do influence our actions. And when we say to Hashem, you know, help us overcome our yetzer hara in so many words, and chase Your Torah, chase Your mitzvot, fulfill the Torah, fulfill the mitzvot, overcome our yetzer hara, and do this for us, pretty much force us to do it, in essence, what we're doing is, number one, out of humility, that we don't even think we have enough strength at our best to do it. Number two, out of knowledge that the yetzer hara is completely fire. And in reality, without HaKadosh Baruch Hu helping us, we can't do it. So we say, Hashem, we're going to have the... I can't really trust myself to do it, but I'm going to try to do it. You really do it, though. You do it. I'm going to try to do it, but You really do it. So, in essence, what ends up happening is that the Gemara that we mentioned earlier, that someone who wants to be purified, HaKadosh Baruch Hu helps him. So it's not that Hashem decides for him; it's that you've already made a decision to do something, and Hashem is just going to give you the push once you've decided to walk in that direction. You've decided to go left, Hashem is going to push you to keep going.

1:43:35you've decided to go right, Hashem is going to push you to keep going right, and so on and so forth. So He's not doing it for you, and He's not deciding it for you. He's simply pushing you once you've made that decision. So it's, again, it's also out of humility that the Chachamim had, and in essence we're supposed to have, too. That's also a, we, they were able to do much more than us but believed very little in their own ability. We can barely do anything but we believe that we can do a lot. So the tables turn, and we start becoming like them. Next question. Chavrutah. So sometimes a person—he or she—is trying to really do a good teshuvah and get closer to Hashem. And it seems like, you know, there is always a point of singularity that it comes down to.

1:44:36to the person where, like you said, they need to make a decision in which way to go. Yes. And, you know, there's always that opposite force that will go and say, you know, oh, but it won't even say. It's more like kind of playing tricks on you, right, and really manipulating you based on your level, right. What's the question? What are things that a person can do to... sort of, you know, calm that fire down? There are a few things. First off, any time that there is a yetzer hara that a person has, he has to, first and foremost, take a sefer Torah, take a shiur Torah, and press play. That's what the Gemara in Masechet Berachot says, that the yetzer hara is too big for you. The only way to beat him is with the Torah.

1:45:37So, first and foremost, have a lecture ready that you can simply press play, have a book handy, have a sefer Tehillim handy, do something, go learn some Torah. If the yetzer hara is too strong and even though you're learning Torah, in reality, you're reading but you're not even understanding anything that you're saying because you're still thinking about that girl or that boy or this or that. You're still thinking about the sin. still thinking about going to McDonald's, you're still thinking about doing all these aveirot. Even though you're learning, you're watching Yeshiva, but you're thinking about McDonald's the whole time. It happens sometimes. So the Gemara says that means you have a big yetzer. So, say Shema Yisrael. Why? Ask Hashem, ask for help, "Hashem, I'm trying. I don't want to sin. Help me." But sometimes that's not enough. Why? Hashem says, "No, no, son..." This one's on you. Why? I want you to pass this test. I want you to pass that test. So the Gemara says, Shema Yisrael doesn't work. Learning Torah doesn't work. Think about the day that you're going to die. Why? Because there are certain things that happen after you die. We learned part of it last week. It's called Chibut HaKever. What happens after a person dies, they go into the grave, if they were righteous.

1:47:00The exit from this world and entrance into the next world is almost like taking a hair out of milk. If the person is full of sins, it's like taking some type of thorn out of a sack. Meaning it's going to be really hard. It's going to be really painful. The different malachim, a malach patot, a malach ha-mavet, and a malach duma, and all of these malachei chabala, they're all going to rip you apart into 50 zillion pieces, and then put you back together, and then rip you apart again. And Hashem, why Rabbi Avraham Azulai says, He says, depending on how many sins they commit, they receive a punishment where these malachim can kill the person and revive him, kill him, revive him, kill him, revive him, kill him, revive him, over and over again, depending on how many times he committed a sin. And this is just in the kever. We haven't even gotten to Ge'enom yet. So a person thinks, "Oh, what's going to happen after I die? Who wants to die like this?"

1:48:09Who wants to die like this? And that's not even Gehenom yet. You want to know Gehenom? We have Shiur number 84. You go through that three hours by listening and studying it. You don't want to go to Gehenom. I promise you. So what does that mean? That means you have to learn what's going to happen after you die. Meaning you have to learn about what you have to fear if you fall for the sin. Once you learn enough about what the sin costs, The desire to sin simply leaves you. It leaves you. Why? You're thinking, wait a minute. They're going to cut me into pieces, huh? They're going to cook me up like a schnitzel. Oh, not schnitzel, barbecue? Oh, shish kebab. Oh, shish kebab. That's what they're going to do to me? Little pieces? Who wants to do this? He has to have, mamash, the Mesilat Yesharim says, have a vivid imagination and use it to know what's going to happen. Like all those scary movies that people saw? Yeah, it's much scarier. Think of that before you sin. Why? You're not going to want to sin anymore. You're not going to want to sin anymore. Why? It's not worth it. So now, a person needs to do that. Now sometimes, that's hard for a person to do because they don't even know Gehinnom exists, or their rabbi says there's no Gehinnom, or all types of things that make it difficult to even know that these punishments even exist. And that's why the Rambam, the Rambam in Hilchot De'ot, chapter 6...

1:49:36halacha number two says that it's a positive commandment to cleave onto the wise and their disciples in order to learn from their deeds as it says in Deuteronomy 10:20, "and you shall cling to Him," meaning you should glue yourself to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. So the sages ask, what do you mean? How is it possible for a human being to cling to the Divine Presence? How can you cling to HaKadosh Baruch Hu? How can you glue yourself to HaKadosh Baruch Hu? The answer is, they resolve the difficulty by explaining that this commandment is an obligation to glue yourself to Hashem. It's not like a recommendation; it is an obligation to glue yourself to Hashem. So how can we fulfill this mitzvah if Hashem is fire? How can we glue ourselves to fire? The answer is, to fulfill this commandment means to cleave yourself onto the wise, to the Talmidei Chachamim and their disciples. Therefore, one should try to marry the daughter of a Torah sage, marry his daughter to a Torah sage, meaning to a Talmid Chacham,

1:50:47he should have his daughter marry a Talmid Chacham, he should marry a Talmid Chacham, he should eat and drink with Talmidei Chachamim, he should do business with Talmidei Chachamim, associate with Talmidei Chachamim, in all possible ways, cling to the Talmidei Chachamim. Essentially, what does it mean to cling to Hashem? That's why the Talmidei Chachamim, the sages, have directed us, saying, "Sit in the dust of their feet and drink in their words thirstily." meaning always surround yourself with Talmidei Chachamim. So wait, we just said there's a problem. Sometimes the person is mistaken because of the rabbi. The rabbi told them there's no Gehenom. The rabbi told them everybody goes to Gan Eden. Hence, we see what the Halacha says. The Halacha says Talmidei Chachamim. Talmidei Chachamim don't say there's no Gehenom. Talmidei Chachamim don't say everybody goes to Gan Eden. People say it. They can call themselves whatever they want. It calls a rabbi, it calls a Pikachu. I don't care what they call themselves. But anyone that tells you there's no punishment is not a Talmid Chacham. So you have to find a Talmid Chacham. You have to find somebody that understands there is reward, there is punishment. Why? That is what our Torah says countless times. Countless times. And we have to literally be under the feet of the Talmidei Chachamim because they are our only saving grace. They're the only thing that's going to save us from ourselves, from our Yetzer Hara.

1:52:11A person needs to make sure to take advantage, any advantage they can, of being next to a Talmid Chacham. I can tell you what I do. Right now, we're going to finish this shiur shortly, and you're all going to go home. Some of you are going to go to sleep. Some of you are going to do a few things before you go to sleep. But for the most part, people are going to go to sleep. What I try to do is, after I go home and upload the video, wait until about the time that Rav Ephraim is on the road, and that's when he and I start talking. Why? He's on the road going to kollel. It's maybe a 20-minute walk, 30-minute walk. That's 20-30 minutes that I can talk to him. About what? Anything he wants. Why? That's 20 minutes I can get with a Talmid Chacham. I don't care if he tells me about nothing, which never really happens, but the point is, I'll be there. That's why the Chassidim, the Chassidim, they're constantly following their Rebbe. Why? They want to see how he lives. Not just the shiurim only, but how does he live? What does he do here? How does he shop? How does he this? How does he that? There's even sipurim in the Gemara. The stories in the Gemara that the talmidim of the chachamim would want to even learn how the chachamim are even with their wives. So one of them hid under the bed of one of the chachamim.

1:53:30under the bed just to see how he acts with his wife when they're intimate. But the chacham saw him and said, "Wait, what are you doing?" He kicked him out. The talmid said, "Wait, I want to learn, chacham." The chacham responded, "Oh, learn, learn. Why learn? Why learn? Not here. I'll teach you in the kollel. Not here." The point is that they loved the chachamim. They didn't do it for perverted reasons; they did it because they loved the chachamim. They understood that you can learn a lot from the chachamim. learn a lot from them. So if your rabbi is a chacham that says that there is reward and punishment, and that Hashem loves you, but at the same time he has rules, he has a Torah, and he wants to reward you but he's only going to reward you under certain conditions, and he doesn't want to punish you but he has to punish you under certain conditions, if you have such a person and that person happens to be a rabbi, glue yourself to that person as often as possible. If you don't have, find one. Find one. That's why the Mishnah in Avot says, find yourself a rabbi. Now everybody has to have several rabbis. You can't have just one rabbi. And the reason why is because you have to have multiple rabbis in Judaism. First and foremost, if you're Sephardi or Ashkenazi, you have to have your posek.

1:54:45which halacha you go by. You know, so you have the poskim, not just of the Shulchan Aruch, the Rama, but you also have the modern-day poskim, like Rav Elyashiv, the Chafetz Chaim, you have Rav Ovadia, and so on and so forth. You have certain poskim that you go by, you hold by. The ones that have modernized or applied modern-day to the Shulchan Aruch and telling you how to use the Shulchan Aruch from 500 years ago in today's world. You have modern-day poskim. They don't need to be alive. Most of the time, the big ones, unfortunately for us, for the most part, are gone. We have their books, we have their Torah, they're living forever as far as their Torah is concerned, but their bodies are no longer here, so you can't call them. But you have to have one like that. You can't pick and choose. On Mondays and Wednesdays, you would have Ovadia. On Tuesdays and Wednesdays, you would have Elyashiv. On Shabbat, you know, something else. You can't. You have to pick one. Someone that wants to pick his rabbis like he's picking, you know, shorts and t-shirts in a store, that's a rasha. Why? The Gemara Masechet Rosh Hashanah says,

1:55:56You cannot pick the leniencies of Beit Shammai and the leniencies of Beit Hillel, and you cannot pick the stringencies of Beit Shammai and the stringencies of Beit Hillel. You can't do that. Why? If you pick the stringencies of both, whoever's more stringent—if Beit Hillel is stringent, I'm going to go with him; if Beit Shammai is more stringent, I'm going to go with him—no, no, you're like a blind person in the night. Like a blind person in the night. Why? You want to be stringent? Wait, do you think that makes you a tzaddik? No, you need to know how to apply halacha. Any fool can tell you to be stringent about everything. That's not halacha. That's not what we're supposed to do. Don't torture yourself. Don't torture yourself. Oh, yeah, no, I want to be stringent. I want to, you know, walk around with no, you know, take my eyes out. Okay, how are you going to learn Torah then? There was one guy, it's a true story, maybe 20 years ago, who was walking around with a couple of chassidim, new in the neighborhood, and he saw the chassidim were holding him hand by hand. So one of the rabbis that we know saw him and asked another rabbi, "Who's that? Who's this guy?" He said, "Oh, that's a tzaddik." "Okay, who is he?" He goes, "No, it's one of my students." He goes, "A student?" He goes, "Yeah." He goes, "What's with the chassidim?" He goes, "No, he wants to watch his eyes, so he has covered his eyes. Like the Maggid of Dubno, he wants to cover his eyes, nothing. He wants nothing; he always goes like this, so he has something covering his eyes."

1:57:25And so he doesn't know where he's going to walk. He doesn't want to see any woman at all. So he has two people walking him to the shul. So he says to him, can you believe this? What a great student I have. Only six months baal teshuva. And the Rav says to him, you see him? Six months baal teshuva? My prediction? It's not going to be too long before he sins with married women. Hey, no, come on, you're talking about my students, my students. It's not nice. That's why I say, listen, not six months past. Six months past, he comes to him. He goes, "I can't, how did you know? How did you know?" Because what happened? He goes, "Remember that thing, the guy, they cover his eyes with two people?" He goes, "Yeah, yeah, they just caught him. He was with six different married women." He goes, "Because you cannot just jump and become one of the tzaddikim gedolei hador in six months. Cover your eyes as if, well, who asked you to cover your eyes like that?"

1:58:37Look down. No one says look at anything that moves. You saw something that's not appropriate for you to see, look away. Why are you covering your eyes when you're not one of the Chachamim from the Gemara? Who are you? Six months, do you even know Aleph-Bet yet? So it's very, very important to have a rabbi that's alive and can direct you and let you know what you are capable of doing. So you have the Posek, and then you have the Rav that's alive, who's going to guide you and tell you yes or no. So if you want to sleep less, you ask the rabbi, can I sleep less? If you want to read a new book, you ask the rabbi, can I read this new book? Yes, you have to ask the rabbi for permission. Why? What if you decide to read a book that's not on your level? And that book, the rabbi knows enough that that book is going to ruin you. A lot of people who become Kofrim, you'll see one common element. They've all read Guide for the Perplexed. The Rambam's Guide for the Perplexed. Now, Rambam is Kodesh Kodashim. Halvai, we could be a piece of dust that he walked on one time in his life. Halvai. We could graduate to be a piece of dust that he walked on one time in his life 900 years ago.

1:59:52His book is Kodesh Kodashim. But if you are not a Talmid Chacham, where you're baki, expert in Gemara, expert in Halacha, expert in ideology and Mussar, mamash, expert, like a Talmid Chacham kadosh, you're not allowed to even look at that book. Why? It'll confuse you to an extent that it could actually literally make you an atheist. An atheist. Why? It's very, very high level. Or better yet, people love to read the Zohar. People love to read the Zohar. Why? Because there's some commentary, we know from the Ari HaKadosh, certain beautiful things. Yeah, but he himself says, unless you're a Talmid Chacham, and you have certain requirements, you've gone over the entire Shas, and not just you read it for Daf Yomi with your rabbi for an hour a day, and you only listen for five minutes. You know what you're doing. People ask you questions. You know the answers. You also live a life of kedusha. You're a holy person. You watch your breath. You watch your eyes. You watch your behavior. You watch what you eat. You watch every single thing. You're a holy person.

2:01:02And you are married. And you're 40 years old. And a lot of different things. You have certain requirements. Don't even look at the Zohar. Why? It'll confuse you to no end. You can read certain Midrashim within the Zohar that are applicable for everybody. But as far as going through the whole thing, reading the names of the Malachim, reading the Kabbalistic stuff, you're going to read it? It's only a matter of time before you're Mechalei Shabbat. Why? You're not going to know what to do. And it's going to confuse you. It's not on your level. So, you have to ask your rabbi, "Can I do this? Can I do this? Can I do this? Can I do this? Can I do this? Can I do this?" Why? Because if the rabbi really is a Talmid Chacham, he's going to tell you whether you really can or can't. Whether you really can or can't. Now, if your ego is bigger than your rabbi, then nothing's going to help you. You're going to think, "Ah, no, my rabbi doesn't understand. I'm already at that level. I'm already at that level." I know one guy. He says to me, "Listen, I tried Gemara. I don't like it, so I only read the Zohar." I tried Gemara; I don't like it, so I only read the Zohar. I said, "Who's your rabbi?" He goes, "No, I don't have one." I said, "Oh, that's why. That's why. That's why." Why? If you had a rabbi, the rabbi would tell you, "Take that Zohar, put it back in the Beit Midrash. You're not allowed to look at it." Why? You have to learn Gemara. You have to learn Mussar. You have to learn Halacha.

2:02:25You have to learn these things. You have to learn the stuff you're obligated to do, not the stuff that you're not obligated to do. Now, there's beautiful things in the Zohar that we mentioned in lectures. These are things that are allowed. But, again, like I said, first you have to take advantage and fulfill the role that you're obligated to do, not the role that you're not obligated to do. The same thing goes with several other different types of Kabbalistic books. There are certain books that are fantastic to read; there are certain books that you simply shouldn't touch until you are really serious. So, you have to have a living rabbi, a living rabbi that's going to guide you, tell you yes or no, and someone that knows you, someone who knows your individual situation. someone that's going to tell you yes or no, and that someone, you have to listen to them like you listen to God. Not that chas ve'shalom, they're God, but the Gemara says, you have to fear your rabbi like you fear God. Why? Because if he's really your rabbi, and he's a talmid chacham, then what he's telling you is in essence what Hashem is saying.

2:03:28If he says something, whether you understand it or not, is irrelevant. Whether you agree with it or not is irrelevant. He says jump, you say, "How high?" How many people in the world can actually exist like that? Most people are like, "Rabbi, can I do this?" "No." "Okay, Rabbi, uh, I'm getting a new rabbi." Oh, I had another fantastic thing the other day happen to me. Someone said, "Rabbi, Rabbi, I need your help. I need a job." I said, "Four o'clock in the morning?" You need help at four o'clock in the morning? Yeah, no, it's an emergency, it's an emergency, it's an emergency. Okay, what? You ask the tough question, the tough question. We got the answer, Baruch Hashem. You would think, four o'clock in the morning, you get somebody an answer. Pikuach nefesh question. Give somebody an answer, four o'clock in the morning, thank you, Chacham, Rabbi, thank you. What? Something, right? Yeah, all right. Let me double-check. Maybe I could get in touch with this other rabbi because he says he has connections with Rav Kanievsky and he has connections with Rav Mazuz and he has connections with that one. I want to double-check. Why'd you ask me at four o'clock in the morning?

2:04:44If you're not going to take it, don't ask unless you are willing to accept it. Why? It's not good. It's not good. Which means, if you have a rabbi, you have to literally just say, if he says jump, you say how high. That's how I am with my rabbi. That's one of the biggest secrets that I believe is a part of our life. There are plenty of times that it has happened that I wasn't exactly happy with my rabbi's decision. I wasn't exactly happy with what he told me to do, and my ego was bigger than this room. I was on Wall Street, after all. I was an executive. I was the guy that called the shots; people worked for me. I didn't work for them. So, when somebody who is even younger than me tells me what to do, it wasn't easy to take. But I knew I didn't know what I was talking about. Why? He's the rabbi. He already learned the Shas countless times. He knows this, he knows that, you know, all these things. I'm still learning Alef-Bet. What do I know? What do I know? He says this is right. I don't need to know why he thinks it's right. I don't need to know why he thinks it's right and why I don't think it's right. I just know that he's right. Why? That's the way it works. You go learn the Shas 10, 20 times, you'll be right too.

2:06:08The point is that a lot of people don't want it. Why? They want to do what they want to do. They think the Torah is like something you pick and choose, like you're going to a library. "Oh yeah, this book, I'll buy this one, and I'll buy that one. It's on a discount. Oh, 20% off. Okay, I'll buy this one. Yeah, I'll read all this book." And they have a library of books in their house. They read six pages of that one, nine pages of that one, the middle of that one, the last two paragraphs of this one. "And yeah, this one, it's only 30 pages, so I read the whole thing." And I think they tell me they're chachamim. So don't kid yourself. You have to make sure that you put your head down. Rabbi says you do. It's hard. I can tell you from my experience, it's hard. It's hard every day till this day. But that's the secret. That's the secret. If it's talmid chacham, again, not just somebody that calls himself rabbi. So point is that you have to have, you know, someone that's a posek, you have to have a... living rabbi that's going to guide you, influence you. You could also have somebody that's a rabbi or just simply a Talmid Chacham that you're learning with as a Chavruta, somebody you can learn with. You could also have another rabbi that's the rabbi of the Kehillah. You know, it doesn't necessarily need to be your rabbi. He's just a rabbi that perhaps maybe once in a while you ask him a lot of questions, you exchange ideas.

2:07:25He tells you what's allowed, what's not allowed, the basic things, where can I find this, where can I find that? So you're going to have multiple rabbis, but the two key ones that you have to have and you simply can't live without are: one, you have to go by a certain Posek, And two, you have to go by a certain rabbi that's going to be your specific rabbi, that's going to be your influencer. Those are the two main ones. The other ones generally are interchangeable; they change over time. You move away, your chavruta is usually not going to come with you. You move away, that rabbi that has the kehillah over here is not moving away with you. You know, so certain things are going to change over time. But those two other ones generally are not supposed to change. Those are not supposed to change. But those are usually the most difficult relationships to maintain. Why? Because they hurt your ego the most. They hurt your ego the most. They make you feel like you're this big the most. And the reason why is because you learned halachah, but halachah doesn't make any sense to you. But you know that Rav Ovadia said that. So who are you next to Rav Ovadia? Zero. Nothing. So if he said it, that's it. It's allowed. Not allowed. Allowed, not allowed. Whatever he says, it's allowed. Why? You go do what he did. You go learn as much as he did, and you'll be right also.

2:08:36Reality is, you see, okay, now why did he say allowed, not allowed? Then you look at his book, and you see that he has 150, 200, 300, 400 different sources over the last 2,000 years that he remembers off the top of his head to prove his case. You go remember five sources. Maybe I'll give you a reward. I'll give you a plastic reward. You can walk around saying, "I have an award, look, look, I know five things." knows a few hundred off the top of his head just for one answer. He had a radio show back in, I think it was the '60s or '70s, and they recorded the entire show and ended up publishing a bunch of books. People would call into the show, and they would ask him questions, and he would give them answers with sources. 50, 150, 300, 400 sources off the top of his head. And every so often, the guy that was the host of the radio show would say, "But I just want to tell you, the rabbi does not have any books in front of him, nor does he know any of the questions ahead of time." And he would literally give you sources from all of the poskim over the last thousand years, 1500 years, off the top of his head.

2:09:48Any questions you ask, you guys are impressed by why I know. A few questions you asked me about yes or no or whether, you know, Hashem is going to help you or not. What do I know? It's the person. So if he said yes or no, your ego is minimized. That's because you think you should even have an ego. The same concept goes with when it comes to the delivering rabbi because sometimes the living rabbi is going to tell you to do things that you don't really want to do. He's going to tell you that you need to move to a certain place. He's going to tell you that you need to dress a certain way. He's going to tell you to read something you don't feel like reading. He's going to tell you to even learn how to sleep, learn how to go to the bathroom. You know, basic things that most people think that as men, as women, we should know by ourselves. No, you don't. He'll tell you to go say I'm sorry to your wife after she yelled at you. She yelled at you, but he's going to tell you to go say I'm sorry to your wife. Come on, Rabbi, I thought you were on my side. No, I'm not on your side. I'm on the side of Shalom Bayit. on the side of Shalom Bayit, that's what I'm on the side of. Go tell your wife, "I'm sorry." Yeah, but she's the one that yelled. Exactly, exactly, she yelled at you. Yeah, okay, go say, "I'm sorry." Why? She yelled at you. Go say, "I'm sorry." Why? But he's the one that yelled at me. He came into the house like some monster, yelling and screaming for no reason. I've been working all day, taking care of the kids. He comes to me like some government official coming to the house.

2:11:12Treats me like I'm some shifcha, some cleaning lady. Yells at me like I didn't cook. It's not hot enough. It's not this. And you want me to go say I'm sorry, Rabbi? Yes. Why? Shalom bayit. Yeah, but he's wrong. Okay, so say I'm sorry then. So what happens when I'm right? Say I'm sorry also. What happens if I'm wrong? You say I'm sorry also. Regardless, you say I'm sorry. Why? Shalom bayit. Do you want to be right? Or do you want to be married? Which one do you want? So sometimes the Rabbi is going to tell you that. He's going to tell you to go and minimize your ego and make yourself into nothing and go say, "I'm sorry." It's hard, but it's necessary. So, Yisurim bodedim yikarim is the most critical tool that a person can have. as far as their teshuvah, as far as their life in this world, they have to glue themselves to a Talmid Chacham, and if they can have an opportunity to have even multiple Talmidei Chachamim, they should have. But the last thing I would mention about this topic, and I think we'll finish for the night, unless you guys have some pressing questions, is that if you're going to ask multiple Talmidei Chachamim, multiple Rabbis the questions, you have to know there are actually ethical rules

2:12:30...that comes with questions, meaning if you have a question, it doesn't matter what the question is, and you've already asked one rabbi, whether you liked what he said or not is irrelevant. You got an answer, and you want to get a second opinion, a third opinion, a fourth opinion. You want to ask rabbis, can I, can I? You have to, the second time you ask that question... You have to give that rabbi that you're asking the question the answer you got from a different rabbi at the same time that you're asking the question, "Rabbi, can I do such and such?" And then add, "Rabbi so-and-so said yes." You're not allowed to ask the question without giving them the answer. That's a sin from the Torah. That's putting an obstacle in front of a blind person. Why? Because it is possible that the rabbi gave you an answer because he knows you better, so he gave you a specific answer. And this rabbi, who doesn't know you as well, is not going to give you that answer. It may make him look like he's wrong. And he's not wrong; he's right generally speaking, just not for your specific case.

2:13:42Or perhaps he knows you better than the other rabbi who doesn't know you. The point being is that if you already have an answer, you have to give the answer with the question. have to give the answer with the question. If you don't have an answer, you don't have an answer. But if you can ask multiple rabbis questions, you have to have some patience. Ask one at a time, get the answer, then ask the second one. Don't be like spam, sending your question to 87 different rabbis on email and hoping all of them answer. Then compare and contrast whose answer is what. Aside from being annoying, that also makes you unethical. So remember, there's a very famous story, "The Boy Who Cried Wolf." Eventually, nobody answered him, but the wolf actually came. You understand? So it's important to glue yourself to Talmidei Chachamim, but you also have to remember, Talmidei Chachamim—be careful, because when they bite, they bite like a fox. That's what the Mishnah in Avot says; they bite.

2:14:44They're fire. So that means that if you are going to go on the wrong side of the Talmid Chacham, it's not a good idea. It's not a good idea. Some of the stories you hear from the Gemara, for example, Rabban Yochanan, he thought one Talmid was making fun of him. He thought one Talmid was in a crowd. One Talmid was in a crowd, and the Talmid had a split lip, so it looked like he was always smiling. So Rabban Yochanan was old, looked at him and thought that he was making fun of him. Because of his Kedusha, he looked at him with his eyes, and the student died on the spot. Now, it's not murder; it's not because Rabban Yochanan wanted to kill him, but because of his holiness, the fact that the student upset him by seemingly making fun of him, Hashem decreed that he had no right to live. But then, when Rabban Yochanan found out that the student was not making fun of him, he resurrected him from the dead. But the point being, Rabotai, is that... even though this is a story from 1,500–2,000 years ago, the point is it teaches us that we have to be careful. We can't just treat them like they're an average Joe. A lot of people do this; it's very common, especially in the internet age, where it's so easy to send questions to 87 different rabbis on WhatsApp or email, like it's spam.

2:16:00Don't do that. Ask the question, be patient, and you'll get the answer. And when you get the answer, if you want to ask for another opinion, a second opinion, there's no problem. You can ask for a thousand opinions. But you have to include them with the question. Because that way, the people answering you are going to decide also, not necessarily just how to answer you, but whether to answer you. Sometimes they'll just decide not to answer you. Why? Because you already have an answer. There's no need. Somebody else needs the time. There's no need. When you have a lot of questions, you have to decide what's a priority and what's not. So that's it. Any more pressing questions, or are we going to go home? We're good? You guys have all the answers? Thank you very much for learning with me. The next time we're going to see each other is going to be here on Sunday. Thank you very much.

2:17:24Thank you for learning with me.