Snowball effect of sins (12 minutes)

0:37For the children of Israel against the Midianites, afterward, you will be gathered unto your people. Meaning Moses is going to die after this, which we'll go over in a second. Hashem is telling Moses to tell the people to go take revenge against the Midianites. Why take revenge against the Midianites? Because these are the very same people that caused Am Yisrael to sin and led to a point where we lost 24,000 of our men. They sent their immodest women. We failed the test. We failed miserably. Hashem brought a plague that was supposed to destroy the entire nation. Not just the 24,000. Hashem decided to destroy the entire nation, but Pinchas' act saved the nation. However, even though it saved them and stopped further deaths, 24,000 people had already been killed. So Hashem commanded them to take the entire nation and exact revenge.

2:06And the reason why is because, according to the Mishnah, someone who causes another to sin is worse than someone who kills him. It is worse to cause someone to sin than to kill him according to the Torah. Why? Rationally, it doesn't make sense to us. Rationally, it doesn't make sense to us. If one of the campaign people that people keep talking about, like Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, or I don't know, whoever else is in there running or walking or whatever they're doing over there, says, "Listen, by the way, all you sinners are going to Gehinnom because you're not modest," then throw them out. We tell all of you people that all these newscasters are causing people to sin. It's worse than murderers. I say, this guy needs to go to a mental institution. It doesn't make any sense to us. But obviously, if Hashem said it, then it makes sense. How does it make sense? When we realize the significance of a sin. The only way for a person to realize the significance of a sin is to understand its consequences on the soul and the spiritual reality that we may not see.

3:30What it is to be close to Hashem is once he starts realizing the significance of a sin. According to the Gemara, it says that each time a person sins, he creates shedim, he creates demons. And those demons are going to affect him. How are they going to affect him? They're going to cause him to want to sin even more because they get more power. This cycle can lead a person further away from kedusha, holiness, unless he repents and corrects his ways. Doing teshuva and returning to Hashem can break this cycle and bring a person back to a life of righteousness. When someone, what is this like? When someone is, for example, hanging out by themselves, most likely as a young kid, they're not going to do anything bad. They might do a few things to get attention here and there, but overall, little kids don't do anything really bad by themselves. However, if you have them hang out with another bad kid, most likely, they're going to start doing stupid things. If you have them hang out with a group of losers... All they do is smoke pot, steal things, and beat people up for fun. You're guaranteed that your son is going to become a complete loser. Guaranteed. There's no second chance. Guaranteed the kid becomes a loser. I actually had a friend when I was young, which I can't believe it's that many years ago. But...

4:51Nice kid. Really, really nice kid. Moved from Brooklyn to Staten Island where we were living at the time. And I remember in junior high school, we used to compete to see who would get higher scores on a test. Smart kid. I tried to be smart, too. We’d compete; he’d get a 90, I’d get a 91, he’d get a 90. We’d compete; it was a competition. But then once we went to high school, he started becoming friends with the neighborhood troublemakers. ...worse than all of them. Eventually, I think he became somewhat normal, but it took many years of beating up people and realizing that it's complete nonsense. Meaning that if your son or daughter is going to hang out with bad people, you're guaranteed to have bad results. Worse than all of them. Worse than all of them. Eventually, I think he became somewhat normal, but it took many years of getting into fights and realizing that it's complete nonsense. Meaning that if your son or daughter is going to spend time with bad influences, you're guaranteed to have negative outcomes.

6:14The same exact thing goes with sins. If you go to the movies, if you watch TV, if you go to the beach, if you go to the bar, if you do all of the things that you're not supposed to do, you're guaranteed to sin. As a matter of fact, Shlomo HaMelech says another guarantee to sin is if you get to a point where you're bored. Boredom leads to sin. It's Proverbs. It's an actual verse in the Torah. It says that boredom leads to sin. Meaning, you sit there and do nothing all day. Like, oh, I'm not hanging out next to bad people. How could that be? Boredom leads to sin. Whether it's wasting seed for men or other foolishness or other things for women. Either way, boredom leads to sin. Once somebody sins... One sin leads to another sin. Not because we want to sin, but because now, in the beginning, we were by ourselves. After we sinned, we created a demon. Maybe a few, maybe a million, depending on what kind of sin. Now we have influence. We have the influence of ten demons we created. We have ten losers trying to influence us to smoke pot for the first time.

7:45Much more likely to do it than when you only had one guy trying to convince you. So then the guy smokes, and now he creates more sins. Now he's friendly with more people. Now he's popular. He smokes pot. Now he's friends with 50 losers. Next thing you know, he's going to pot parties. So now if he's going to pot parties, what's going to happen next? Now he's going to start arranging his own pot parties. So now he's friends with 500 people. A couple of years pass. He advances in the world of failure. He starts selling pot. And everyone knows where this leads. Gets addicted to more drugs. Gets addicted to more drugs. Gets addicted to that disgusting lifestyle. Eventually gets involved with gangsters, murderers, and rapists. Has them all on his speed dial on his telephone. And this is why anyone that asks me about how unfortunately pot became a legal business in certain parts of America...

9:00And anyone that asks me about it, which has unfortunately been often, it's not allowed unless you're specifically giving it to sick people. Sick people, they have HIV, they have cancer, they have some type of terminal disease—yes. But the reality of it is, most people who buy it at the store are not sick. They're addicted, but they're not sick. They just found a way to get a card. They found some corrupt doctor to give them a prescription. And that's what happens. So they have an excuse to do something irresponsible legally. This is the same concept with our sins. The individual only started with one negative influence. And next thing you know, he's a drug lord in Colombia, shipping cocaine from ship to ship, from coast to coast. How did it start? It started with one sin. So by the time one day he wants to do teshuva, it's not that easy. It's not that easy to do teshuva when you're married to a goya, and you have three kids who are, according to the Torah, not considered your own.

10:20Even though biologically they're yours, according to the Torah, they're not yours. If they convert, they're even more so not yours. So much so that according to the Torah, you're allowed to marry them if you want. Chazal says you're not allowed because it would look weird to the rest of the people that don't understand Torah. But when someone has a daughter with a non-Jew, and she grows up, eventually, she's 20 years old. He was, let's say, 20 when he had her. She was born when he was 20. He gets to 40 years old; the girl grows up to 20, and she decides to convert to Judaism. He's actually allowed to marry her according to the Torah, according to Hashem. But Chazal says you're not allowed. Why? Because people would think we're sick. Why? Because according to Hashem, He sees us as spirits. He doesn't see us as human flesh. He sees all of us. And she grows up eventually. She's 20 years old. Let's say he had her when he was 20. So, when he gets to 40 years old, his daughter is now 20. If she decides to convert to Judaism, he is actually allowed to marry her according to the Torah, according to Hashem. However, Chazal says you are not allowed. Why? Because people would think it is inappropriate. The reason is that, according to Hashem, He sees us as souls, not just as physical beings. Point being is that once some guy has been making sin after sin, year after year, and now he's 50 or 60 years old, possibly married to a non-Jew or she is married to a non-Jew, with several children and finally discovers the truth, doing teshuva is not easy. It's not easy. It's still possible, but it's not easy. This is why all of you are relatively young, baruch Hashem.

11:45You have to understand, this is your shot. I heard if you wait, you lose your siyata di'shmaya. You lose more and more siyata di'shmaya. Each time you wait, each time you have an opportunity to do real teshuva and you don't take it, you lose a significant amount of help from shamayim. And you end up also, aside from losing the help, you go back to sinning. So you're creating more shedim, you're creating more demons. You're creating more of a negative influence in your life to do more bad things, which is going to make it more difficult for you to get rid of them. Even if the guy wants to do teshuvah, it's like hanging out with the 250 losers. Again, by the way, guys, I'm going to go to yeshivah instead. It's a hard change. Yes, it's happened before. And Baruch Hashem, it's happening regularly, all the time. But it's one here, one there. Not everybody's doing it all at once. It's hard. Why? Because they're used to it. They're used to that lifestyle. You've just experienced another shiur Torah.