Struggle - Blessing or Curse ( Ohel Joseph & Burho Toxer - NEW YORK)

0:13Those who are outside, please come inside. We're starting now, okay? All right. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you all for coming. Please turn off your cell phones, everyone. We're very fortunate and grateful for Rabbi Rubin being here today in New York. He came all the way from Florida. Formerly, he used to live in New York. He'll talk more about his life story as well. Very interesting. Personally, I didn't even know about Rabbi Rubin's history, his life story. Many people probably know all about it, having heard about "From Wall Street to the Western Wall." I didn't know any of that stuff. All I knew, Rabbi, was the videos that you, Rabbi Mizrachi, and many others do, the videos, the animated versions, and from there the Torah, and that's how people usually get attached to it. And I

1:15I saw this other logo. I kind of started investigating and looking for it. Oh, yes, there you have it. Then somehow I saw a video titled "From Wall Street to the Western Wall." I'm like, wow, fascinating. Those who know, you'll hear more about it tonight. Those who don't, and hopefully you'll have a chance to get to it. Anyway, long story short, without further ado, Rabbi Yaron Reuven, the floor is all yours. Thank you, thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. First of all, thank you very much for inviting me to this very beautiful shul, Baruch Hashem. This is a big kavod for the Torah. I love seeing beautiful shuls. It's one of the amazing things that Am Yisrael, Baruch Hashem, has merited to have. We have very, very beautiful shuls, and it's wonderful to see because it's a big kavod for the Torah.

2:26it's a big kavod for the Torah in a time where people invest so much money into their houses, so much money into their cars, so much money into their business, so much money into everything else, and many times you see that rich communities, they have like a little rinky-dink operation of a shul, like it's a hole in the wall that you go, you pray if you want, you don't pray if you don't want. Sometimes the air conditioner works, sometimes there's no air conditioner, but just make sure not to complain because we'll kick you out. So when you see, Baruch Hashem, a beautiful shul like this, it's a big kavod for the Torah, it's a big kavod for Hashem because every Jew needs to know that a shul is a mini Beit HaMikdash. A shul is a mini Beit HaMikdash. If the Mashiach decided, HaKadosh Baruch Hu gave him permission, he decided to come tomorrow. What do you think, he's going to use the stones of the ugly shuls to build a nice shul? No, he's going to look for shuls that have Kedusha in them, that give Kavod to the Torah. But on the other hand, I've seen many beautiful shuls in my life, and I usually don't talk about it.

3:41And the reason why is because a beautiful shul is only half the battle. The Gemara in Yerushalmi, Perek Chet, the last perek in the Yerushalmi, says there's a conversation between two of the tzaddikim, two of the tzaddikim are walking, One of them says, "Look at this town and all the beautiful shuls that my family built here. One shul, two shuls, three, four, five." Now you would think the other tzaddik would say to him, "Wow, what a family you have." What did he say? "Oh, woe unto us if this is what your family wasted their money on."

4:41What do we learn from you? What do we learn from you? The Tanna HaKadosh is telling him, woe unto us if this is what your family is wasting money on. Why? Why did you spend so much money on so many shuls? Why couldn't you spend on one beautiful shul and the rest on Talmidei Chachamim to publicize, to bring Shiurei Torah to the shul? Not just to build a building. We're not Christian. We're not building buildings. We need to build Jews. We need to build Am Yisrael. So when you have a beautiful shul and you have shiurei Torah in a beautiful shul on a regular basis, Baruch Hashem, like you guys have, it's not just something to compliment. That's ashreichem, ashreichem chelkechem. Why? Because you have a beautiful shul and you have beautiful Torah to complement it. But if it's just a beautiful building, what are we going to do with a beautiful building? What are we, Donald Trump? We have a bunch of buildings. What are we going to do with buildings? Any Jew that thinks about it could arrive at the same exact conclusion. Well, you think a little bit about it. We have building, building, building, building. People want to build buildings in this generation. Every organization wants to build a building. A building for this, a building fund for this, a building fund for that. We have a fundraiser, a million and a half dollars in 24 hours to build another building. Another fundraiser, a million dollars in 12 hours and another building. Everybody wants to build buildings.

6:04Now, for all of those that are building buildings, Baruch Hashem, I can't say that it's good or bad. What I can say is, what I've seen in my life, especially these last five, six years that I've been working hand-in-hand with Am Yisrael to try to get them back to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, is that between us, don't tell anybody though, between us, Am Yisrael doesn't need any more buildings. You know what we need? We need Jews. We need Jews. We need Am Yisrael, not the buildings of Am Yisrael. We have buildings, Baruch Hashem. Am Yisrael has so many buildings, we could build a building just to say how many buildings we have. A building with plaques on all the walls of all the buildings we have. What do we need? We need Jews. We need Jews to come back to HaKadosh Baruch Hu and say, "HaKadosh Baruch Hu, we love you, we're sorry, we're not serving you like we're supposed to." buildings, we need people to understand. What does it mean to be a Jew in today's generation? It's very difficult for people to be upfront about what it means to be a Jew now. Most of my life, I lived a secular life. I was born in Israel. I came to the United States with my family when I was 10 years old and

7:26and almost 30 years ago. And in Israel, we went to what's called a Masorti school, meaning you wore a kippah and tzitzit, but you went to the beach on Shabbat. You know, so you know it's a Masorti school. Masorti, you know. Masorti. You say Masorti. Masorti means Masorti. It's a sort of team with a t-shape. So every day you cut another mitzvah. Every day you cut another mitzvah. That's what Masorti is. You keep whatever you want. Every other day you cut another mitzvah if you don't feel like it. So, in today's generation, we have what's called Modern Orthodox. Orthodox wasn't enough. We added another name, Modern Orthodox, with a modern version. It's like a Jew with a Ferrari. What's so modern about the Modern Orthodox? He's modern. He's modern with the Modern Orthodox. What's the modern with the Orthodox? Modern Orthodox means that we are like the Masorti of 30 years ago, where what do we do if we don't like this mitzvah? We cut it out. So unfortunately, where I live in Florida, there's a lot of Modern Orthodox, and a lot of very nice people, but some of them forgot their clothes at home. They go to shul, but the clothes stay home. But they're Modern Orthodox. They go to shul. For example, I think if anybody wants to go into business, Florida and New York have the same problem. There's no clothing stores. They only sell underwear today.

8:50I don't understand. How come they only sell underwear? How come they don't sell clothes anymore? When I was a kid, they used to sell clothes. Today, they only sell underwear. I get to the airport, I only see people in underwear. I say, where are the clothes? How come nobody has any clothes on anymore? No, but think about it. You go in the streets. When I was a kid, the stuff that people walk around in the streets, you barely were allowed to go to sleep in it. Today they walk around in the streets with it. Why? What happened? What happened to us? And I'm not talking about the goyim. I'm talking about Am Yisrael. Let's talk about what happened to us. What happened to us? At some point along the line, we lost our sense of busha. We lost our sense of shame. We lost our sense of pride in being a Jew. And we forgot what it means to be a Jew. We forgot that being a light to the nations doesn't mean being a light to the nations by being like the nations. Be a light to the nations by being different from the nations.

9:51By being a leader to the other nations, not trying to mimic them, not trying to replicate them, not even trying to be jealous of them. If you want to tell your kid about someone to look up to, instead of using your Shulchan Shabbat to talk about Donald Trump and all of his buddies and all of the rich people on Wall Street, you are supposed to talk about Moshe Rabbeinu, Rabbi Akiva, all the tzaddikim, all the Tanaim. But unfortunately, this is... Not news. This is a reality check. So how come this all happened? I can tell you how it happened to us. Almost 30 years ago, we came to the United States, and we didn't really think much. We didn't really think much about how wide of a difference it would be for a kid to grow up being surrounded by non-Jews. So my parents made a decision that since they didn't have much money, they sent us to public school. Now, my brothers and I went to public school. I have three brothers, Baruch Hashem. And we went to public school. Now, what happens to you when you go to public school? Anyone who has, you probably in the Beit Knesset, you probably have a copy of the set of Me'am Loez. And in the set of Me'am Loez, you'll see in, I believe it's Parashat Yitro. And Me'am Loez says that a parent who sends their kid

11:13Public school to learn with the goyim in shamayim. They count that parent as an idol worshiper. Wait, but he didn't worship an idol. All he did was send him to public school. He sent him to PS 60-something. He sent him to PS 90-something. He didn't send him to the church. He just sent him to a public school. What's the problem? Kuli, they used to fast for a week at a time. When he was writing the Me'am Loez, he would fast from Shabbat to Shabbat. The whole time he was learning Torah—no eating, no drinking, no breaks. He would fast for a week at a time. He writes in his book, one of the most extraordinary books that has ever been written in the last 350 years. says a parent that sends their children to public school. In Shamayim, they write down, "Oh yeah, here's Steve, the idol worshiper, that took his kids to pretty much idolatry." Why idolatry? Because you have to do the math. Who is wise? Someone who sees what will be born out of their actions.

12:23What will be born out of sending your child to public school? What could possibly be born? He's not going to be born Rabbi Akiva. Moshe Rabbeinu did not go to public school. What will be born out of somebody that went to public school? What do you think? The new gadol hador is coming from P.S. something? No. What's going to come? You're going to have a kid that's cute, that's funny, that's Jewish, but by the time he graduates, he's a goy. He's cute, he's funny, he's a goy though. Something changed. What changed? He became a goy. Why? He's surrounded by goyim. He's surrounded by non-Jewish kids, and even the Jews that are in the school with him, they're also surrounded by non-Jewish kids, and everybody wants to be like their friends, just like the Rambam writes in Hilchot Teshuvah. He says, you are going to be a product of your environment. Sigmund Freud, the scientist, the psychiatrist, didn't invent it. Rambam wrote it already 700 years before him. are a product of your environment. When the battle between nature and nurture occurs, nurture wins, meaning you will be a product of your environment. If you're surrounded by goyim, you'll become a goy. If you're surrounded by reshaim, you'll become a rasha. If you're surrounded by tzadikim, you'll become a tzadik. If you're surrounded by Jews, you'll become a Jew.

13:40So how come, how can we make this mistake? Because sometimes the Yetzer Hara, the Yetzer Hara is like Pharaoh. What did Pharaoh do to Am Yisrael? Pharaoh knew that Am Yisrael is more numerous than the Egyptians. There were more Jews, there was more Am Yisrael, than there were Egyptians. But, Paul kept them busy. What did he do? He gave them a lot of work. He gave them a lot of work, a lot of work. So even when their Mashiach, Moshe Rabbeinu, came to help and save them, they told Moshe, "Moshe, we're too busy. We're too busy. I'm here to save you. I'm here to save you. You've been waiting already 200 years." He goes, "Yeah, you know what? Come back tomorrow. Come back tomorrow. We'll come back tomorrow. I'm here to save you today." "We're busy. We have to build the pyramid. We have to build the Sphinx. We have to build this. We have to build stuff. We're so busy. Who has time to talk to the Mashiach?" what is it? It reminds me of a story. There was one time an old man working in a field. Someone comes to him and says, "Listen, as it says in Sefer Yeshayahu, Eliyahu HaNavi is going to come before Mashiach. I'm here to tell you Mashiach is coming." He says, "Okay, uh, what are you, Eliyahu? Okay, one second, I gotta go ask my wife."

14:56go ask my wife. So he goes to ask his wife. He says, "Uh, honey, so the Eliyahu guy says the Mashiach is coming." She says, "Do me a favor, go tell him to go talk to Hashem. Tell Mashiach to come some other time, maybe he'll go somewhere else." So he comes back. "What do you want me to be?" He says, "Listen, my wife said..." You can't, you can't, you have to go somewhere else. And everyone says, what do you mean come somewhere else? Why? He says, because we just planted all of our plants in the field and the farm and the season. If we leave, all of our crops will go to garbage. We're going to lose so much money. So tell the Navi, go somewhere else. Go somewhere else because we already invested a lot of money in America. we already invested a lot of money in Germany. We already invested a lot of money in Spain. Go somewhere else, Mashiach; go tell them to go somewhere else. So, yeah, when he says to me, he goes, "Listen, you know the Nazis are coming, you know Edom is coming, you know it's coming, right?" He says, "Okay, hold on." I said, "Yeah, well let me tell my wife that all this stuff you just said is scaring me a little bit."

15:58She has a nice beard. No, let me go. So he goes back to his wife and says to her, "Amalek is coming. The Nazis are coming. Hashem, I have all this stuff coming. This is good, telling me our nevi’im to go take the Mashiach and the Nazis and let them deal with themselves somewhere else. We have crops to deal with." Sometimes we're so busy with work and money and the mundane that we forget the ikar of the world. We forget the point of the world. We forget to ask questions. We forget to do a little bit of cheshbon hanefesh. What is the point of our life? Why are we here? Like, does anybody here really think they came to the world to make money? Before you answer it and embarrass yourself, I'll answer the question for you. Who says to the prophet? He says to the prophet, "Mine is the money, mine is the gold." So why do you want my money? Why do you want my money? It's mine, the money. Why do you want the money? So it's my money, mine is the gold. You have to give me a real reason. If you want, I'll give you some, but it's my money. So it cannot be your purpose.

17:08Money cannot be your purpose. Why? Hashem says it's Mine. All the money, all the possessions, all the land, everything, it's Mine. So what? How could it be your purpose if it's all Mine? How could it be? It's like saying I'm married. To who? To your wife. How could I be married to your wife if you're married to your wife? It cannot be. So a person obviously has to understand money is not the purpose. So what is the purpose? Who gives us a Torah that provides us with an instruction set? Each and every single person has an individual purpose, an individual test, and the nation as a whole has a national test. The more a person learns from the instruction set of HaKadosh Baruch Hu, the more he realizes what his personal individual test is and how he fits into the global plan. But when a person is very busy... Dealing with the mundane, he forgets. What's the case? Years ago, a person by the name of Ovadia, a young kid, maybe 15 or 16 years old, went into a Bukharian shul, and he was learning there a little bit. He saw that there was a book from a previous generation on a high shelf, and...

18:31So, he wants to learn. Why? Because that's what you're supposed to do in a shul. You have to learn Torah. It's not just for looks. You have to go learn Torah. So, what did he do? He took one of the sofas and he climbed on the sofa to go get the book. The gabbai of the shul saw him, put his feet on top of this expensive $10,000 couch, started yelling at him. "Hey, what are you doing?" You know how expensive that seat is? You're putting your dirty feet on it? At that very moment, the richest guy in the community comes into the shul. The one that built the shul. He was so rich, his suit was made out of gold. You know, you Bukharians have very nice taste in clothes. You really do. I want to borrow some. But he comes in with a gold suit. Not even like imitation. Gold suit. He comes in. The whole thing is gold. He sees the Gabbai yelling at the little Talmid. He yells at the Gabbai. He goes, what do you think? Hold on a second. What are you yelling at? He takes off his suit. He takes off the gold. He says, come, son, come. He puts it on top of the couch. He goes, now step on it. Now step on it to go on top of it and get the book for you.

19:45Goodbye system because he's gonna ruin your jacket. That jacket is a million dollars. It's a million dollars. That's a million dollars. To him, learning that Torah is priceless. So what's a million dollars next to priceless? What's a million dollars next to priceless? It's nothing. That little talmid, you know, that little talmid ended up becoming Rav Ovadia zt"l. He became the Gadol HaDor. You're surrounded by good people. And Baruch Hashem, the Bukharian community has a lot of zechuyot because the Bukharian community has Kavod HaTorah. All we need is to add more Torah. We have to add more, more learning Torah. Like we're doing today, like you did before, like you did yesterday. Every single day we have to learn more and more Torah. Why? Because that's the only way we're going to ever arrive at a clear conclusion of what's the purpose of our life. When we came to the United States, we didn't know any of this stuff. So we went to public school and little by little we became goyim. Within a few years, I had four earrings. Within a few years, my dream was to become a football player. And then, after I finished my career, to become a psychiatrist.

20:50know no inkling of Judaism whatsoever. I mean, yeah, once in a while we would go to shul for the holiday. You know, we'd fast on Yom Kippur by sleeping the whole day. You know, we, uh, we'd, uh, celebrate Pesach by eating matzah one day and the rest of the time putting chocolate on it with some water so it became edible. That was our holidays. I mean, it was a superficial Jew. People will ask you, "What are you?" I say, "I'm a Jew." "Okay, wow, what makes you a Jew?" I say, "I don't know, it's my mom's fault." What makes you a Jew? What makes you a Jew? All I did know, though, really, was that being a Jew had to be better than being a Christian. Why? Their religion doesn't even make any sense. First of all, their God is Jewish. So why would I believe in being a Christian if even their God is Jewish? It doesn't make any sense. Second of all, why am I worshipping somebody that says he's God but he died? Like, what kind of God do you have? What kind of God is this that He dies? My God is alive. I don't have to be a genius. I want a living God, not a dead one. I don't understand why He's so powerful. He's so strong. He can't even defend Himself against a bunch of Romans. How does this make any sense? It doesn't make any sense. It never made any sense to me. So I didn't have to know a lot of Torah to have common sense. But unfortunately, our common sense is not enough.

22:14So as we grew up, little by little I did well in school, but shortly after, I realized that I'm not going to become a member of the NFL. I'm not going to become a football player because I'm still short, Jewish, and slow. And really, all I became was the dummy for the rest of the players to hit during the game because there's nothing I can do to defend myself. They were so big. Each one was like Amalek, five feet taller than I am. And I'm this little guy, it's like, where did you eat? How did you get so big? How? How is it possible for somebody to get so big? I eat the same thing you ate, but you're double the size. How is it that you're 13 years old and nine feet tall? How? What did you eat? People? What did you eat? Never, I never—because in Israel, there's no such thing as such big people. I never saw such big people. I saw my friend Moshe who was 13 years old. One of my classmates at 13 years old had a beard. It was a classmate who had a beard. I said, "How's it possible? He's 13 years old." It didn't make any sense. America was big on me, but little by little you become American and...

23:18and you do good in school and you work hard and you want to make something out of yourself. And I worked all types of odd jobs because I wanted to make money. I wasn't a bum like the current generation that wants their parents to pay for everything and anything that they have. Abba, I want a car. Go work. Abba, I want a house. Go work. That was the answer we got. Abba, I want a car. Go work, son. You want a car? Go work for it. Abba, I want a house. Go work for it. We didn't ask Abba for anything. Why? Because we knew the answer. You want something? Go get it. This generation, Abba, I want to eat. Okay, son, you're 18 years old. Let me feed you. You're only 18 years old. Let me feed you. Nu nu, say, ah. What, ah? He's 18 years old. Thirty-five-year-old kids still living with mommy and daddy. What happened? What happened to the generation? I don't know. I don't know. Something, you see guys, you're all laughing because you know it's true. But something happened in the last 30 years. Something happened. There's like a glitch in the system. Something happened. I don't know what happened, but something happened. They announced in England a few months ago

24:22New educational system for five-year-olds: What if you are a boy but you don't want to be a boy? We will have a former boy who is now a girl teach you how to be a girl when you're really a boy. They're having a transvestite teach five-year-olds about how they should maybe, if they don't want to be a boy, they can be a girl. If she's a girl and she wants to be a boy, how it's an option now? And guess what? The head rabbi, you call him a rabbi, the head rabbi of England, he said, "I think this is perfectly fine. I think this is a perfectly fine addition to our educational system in England." For what? To make monkeys? For whom? What are you going to do with this type of education? What does a five-year-old need to know about sex? He barely discovered that he has a member. Like, what does he need to know about sex? I don't understand. Something happened, you see, something happened. I don't see anybody disagreeing with me so far. Everything, we're all on the same page so far. So what happened? You see, HaKadosh Baruch Hu promised us a world that we can build and make beautiful or we can destroy.

25:47HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, "Your conquerors, your destroyers will come from within you." If you're asking, how did all of this happen? How did the world turn upside down? How did a lot of the disasters that happened, and you can name them, and I can tell you how. Usually, at the source, at the beginning, there's some Jew that's off the derech. A lot of people, when they want to cry, think about the Holocaust. And no one really likes to answer honestly what happened in the Holocaust. Why? You say, "Where was God during the Holocaust?" And people say, "Yeah, maybe He was on break. It was really the Satan; he took over. It was Hitler; he was evil. It was this one." It's not double time. Where was God? God did it. That's the answer. That's the Torah answer. Where was God during the Holocaust? What do you mean where was He? He was there, pressing the button.

26:51He was the one doing it. Why? Because we did not follow the instructions. And He wrote it in the Torah. The instructions being the Torah. He wrote it in the Torah. He wrote it in the entire book. He wrote it countless times. This is what happens if you don't follow the instructions. Now if you don't want to listen, why have you never learned Torah? Okay, so I'll have the goyim remind you of what I said. He said Hitler. You look at Mein Kampf, don't waste too much time, but just go to chapter 2. Chapter 2, the end of chapter 2, Mein Kampf. Hitler says, what? He's a messenger of God. Why? Because the Jews violated the covenant of Hashem. Hitler, evil of all evils, believed he was a messenger of God. And he says, why do I hate the Jews? I don't care about the religious ones. Why do I hate the ones that are the Zionist ones? Why? He says, because they're communists. They're communists. They ruined Russia with Karl Marx. What do you think he was? British? What do you think he was? Italian? He was a Jew. He was a Jew. The original creators of communism were Jewish.

28:05He says that Trotsky was another beauty. Trotsky over there tried to ruin the whole world with communism. So he says they ruined Russia already. Russia became anti-God, not just a non-religious country—anti-God. It was illegal, illegal to be a Jew. one of the people that really kept the covenant had to work in secret. So, there was a person who was known as the mohel. Why was he called the mohel? He was the one who was performing brit milah in secret. He always had a secret compartment in his jacket so that at any given moment, if someone said, "I have a baby," he was ready to go. That's how it worked in Russia. One day... A jeep, an army jeep, a Russian army jeep, pulls over right next to him. He starts saying Kaddish on himself, poor guy. He says, "A general pulls up next to me. I'm lucky if I survive the next five minutes." Then he gets the bad news. What's the bad news? "Get in." I don't know how he's saying "get in" in Russian, but it sounds scarier than "get in."

29:15get in. Let me scan the poor guy. He can't say no, so he gets in. He goes into the uh... thing and he starts seeing the general drive, drive, and drive. He starts to imagine himself, "Oh, this guy's driving out of town. What is he going to do to me? He's probably going to torture me." This sick person... Oh, he doesn't even want to say a word. He's not even saying hello. He's not even friendly. At least let me see my face. He's starting to do all the cheshbonot, all the accounting in his head. "What should I have done? What could this...?" The poor guy is already, uh, he's counting his minutes. As he gets out of the town, he pulls over next to this house. The general looks at him and says, "Go inside," in Russian. In English, he says, "Go inside and do what you got to do and come back right away." Not a word. The guy doesn't know what's going on. He has an opportunity to get out of the jeep. He runs out of the jeep and goes inside the house. He sees a mommy with a little package. The little package has a little baby. She's saying, "You're the mohel." But he didn't say no, obviously they know. He said, oh yeah. He said, okay, do it. He takes out his secret compartment from his jacket, performs the Brit Milah, runs out, and goes back into the jeep. Now he thinks, okay, at least I did the mitzvah before I died, because this general, he's still not trusting this general.

30:28He doesn't know what this general is. Maybe he doesn't know what's going on. So he continues to drive, and he sees the general continue to drive him back to town, back, back, back, but he's not going the same way he stopped. So he figured, oh, he's probably going to take him to jail or to some other place. Eventually, he stops in the middle of the city. He says, "Get out." So he thinks, oh, if I'm going to have my life, then at least let me ask a question. He said, "What do you want?" He said, "Why? What do you care about a Brit Milah?" The general said, "Listen, I'm a Jew, but I can't be a Jew now because of communism. But this communism stuff, it's not going to last forever. At some point, God's going to get involved and stop it. So I want to give my son an opportunity that whenever in the future this communism ceases to exist, my son at least has a sign, a sign that he belongs to Am Yisrael. And now he can choose: you want to be a part of Am Yisrael, you have a choice, but you have a sign to remind you constantly and not start with nothing. So I'm investing into my kid's future. And that's, believe it or not, the mesirat nefesh of Yisrael under communism. But unfortunately, there weren't that many tzaddikim like him." my son at least has a sign, a sign that he belongs to Am Yisrael. And now he can choose: you want to be a part of Am Yisrael, you have a choice, but you have a sign to remind you constantly and not start with nothing. So I'm investing in my kid's future. And that's, believe it or not, the mesirat nefesh of Yisrael under communism. But unfortunately, there weren't that many tzaddikim like him.

31:47Many of the people, unfortunately, joined the communists. Even 150,000 Jews joined the Nazi army. Believe it or not, they joined the Nazi army. They wanted to fight for Hitler, and they did fight for him. They believed that they were Germans. They didn't believe it. They got so far away from the source, they didn't identify themselves as Jews. Unfortunately, today we see the same thing in America. There are many Americans that are anti-Israel. They're self-hating Jews. They hate themselves. They hate Jews. They hate Israel. One of them is trying to run for president, Bernie Sanders. All these types of people, they hate themselves and they hate their nation. Why? How did we get to this? How did the world turn so upside down already for a few generations and... Well, HaKadosh Baruch Hu said, I have an instruction set. The instruction set is called the Torah. This Torah is a sefer that is not just an instruction set for you to connect to Me and have an eternity as a life, but also an instruction set of how you can have a life. You can have a life that's worth living.

33:06many people live a life, but few have a life that's worth living. Why? All day they spend their time in anxiety. They're constantly stressed out, they're constantly worried about things that haven't even happened yet. Ninety-five percent of the stuff we worry about didn't even happen yet. Did you ever notice that? We're worried we're not going to find a shidduch. Well... Maybe you will, maybe you won't. It's still a 50-50 chance. Why are you worried that you won't find? Why wouldn't you worry that you'll find it too fast? How come nobody worries that they're gonna find a shidduch and it's a bad one? Nobody worries about that. Everybody worries they're not gonna find a shidduch. Who told you that the shidduch is a good one? Where we're not gonna have any money, so therefore we decide not to have more kids. Who said you're gonna have kids? How come nobody worries about the kid part not working? How come everybody says, "Oh, Hashem commanded us to have kids, but I can't fulfill this commandment. Why? I don't have the money to pay for the kid." So what kind of God do people believe in? Some evil, psychotic God? That He told you to bring kids to the world so you could starve them to death?

34:17Like, is this really within our logic? Like, what? He told you to bring a kid. You are going to bring a kid and not have any money to pay for him? You're going to starve to death? This is the only reason why people don't have kids. They say, I can't afford another kid. Who says you can't afford it? Or, my current financial condition. Who says that your current financial condition will stay current? Who says? You see, the problem is that we constantly do the cheshbonot shamayim. We constantly do the accounting of Heaven, and that's what gets us into trouble. We think we can't do it, and therefore we're right—we can't. When I got a little older, I fell into the same trap, and I realized that in this world of America, in this world, you have to have money. I already started working when I was 10-11 years old. I had paper routes, worked at flea markets, and sold electronics—anything and everything that I could do. Eventually, I got into Wall Street and started making some money. Within a few years, I became a multi-millionaire, believe it or not, doing legitimate business. More details of that are going to be told in tomorrow's shiur. I don't want to repeat the same shiur twice, but...

35:40Needless to say, I found out or I discovered what Shlomo HaMelech has meant this whole time for 3,000 years. He's been saying something and no one wants to listen. What does he say? He says, all this materialism, all this money, it's all nothing. It's all nonsense. Like if you're going to invest your whole life in materialism, you're going to be heavily disappointed. Why? Why? because it is impossible, and I repeat, it is impossible to attain happiness by acquiring materialism. It is impossible to become happy due to your materialism. Impossible, meaning it doesn't matter how much money you have; it will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever—again, just to the tenth power—never, ever change your happiness status. It can acquire you cool stuff from Amazon.com. You can buy some stuff from eBay. You can go to the car lot and buy whatever car you want, depending on how big your credit is. You could buy a house and show off that you have 18 rooms, even though you only have one kid and a dog. So each person has three rooms. You have stuff like that. You could arrive at the lawsuits when people sue you with a limo, all types of fun stuff, all types of fun stuff. But as far as happiness,

37:09Now, if I was broke at some point, and I didn't know anything about money, did I tell you I would ask this guy, "What does he know?" But at one point, I made 1.6 million dollars in one day. At another point, I got to a point where I was making literally, on a bad month, two or three hundred thousand dollars. But all the money's gone. I lost every single penny, בעזרת ה׳ (b'ezrat Hashem). But the good news is that I actually learned a lot while I had it. I learned that it's a complete waste of time to dedicate your life to acquiring money and... You can do good stuff with money. Don't get me wrong. There's stuff that you need to do with money. You need to eat, you need to drink, you need to publicize Torah, you need to do mitzvot, and so on and so forth. But if your goal is to get money because you think that you need the stuff that the money gets you, and that's the only way you will obtain happiness, you're already in the wrong direction. You're going the wrong way. And your life becomes a life that's not worth living.

38:10At some point, all the money in the world stopped meaning anything to me. It was fun to make it. It was a challenge. Every month I would try to beat the previous month. But after a while, even that got boring. Okay, so what are you going to do? Okay, so now there's another million. Okay, so now there's another 100,000. So now there's another 50,000. So now there's another 500,000. So what? What are you going to do with it? And I was asking some young man today. We were having this discussion, and he says, "Well, material, you know, money is good." I'm like, "Why? What's good about it?" He's like, "Get stuff." I'm like, "Okay, so you got the stuff. What do you do then?" He goes, "What kind of stuff did I get?" I said, "Whatever stuff you want. It's free. It's on me. I'm paying for it." What kind of stuff do you want? You want a big house? I said, okay, sold. What about a big house? 10 rooms, 20 rooms? He goes, 20. I said, okay, it's all in our imagination; it's free. 20 rooms, you got a house. Okay, now what? What are you going to do with a house with 20 rooms? I said, I'll live in it. I said, what's the difference after three days between the house of 20 rooms versus the house of two rooms that you have right now? In the beginning, it's nice, wow, look at this room, look at that room, look at the pool we have inside, look at the shower with the golden fixtures and the golden accents. After three weeks, guess what? Yeah, it's my house. Let's get out of here. Let's go to...

39:36go work so we can pay for this house. They don't care about the house anymore. Why? It's just walls, just walls. It's nothing. Same thing with a car, same thing with all of the materialism. Why? The Torah teaches us this. The Torah says that when the Beit HaMikdash is built, the Third Beit HaMikdash B'ezrat Hashem will be built. The Sefer Yechezkel says there are going to be certain rules that we cannot follow today because we don't have a Beit HaMikdash. One of the rules is that if you enter the Beit HaMikdash from the northern gate, you're not allowed to exit the Beit HaMikdash from the northern gate. You have to exit from the southern gate. Yeah, but what about, I mean, the Beit HaMikdash is big. Huge. I parked already by the northern gate. You want me to go all the way around? You know how long it's going to take me? I have an appointment. I have a doctor's appointment. I have a disappointment. I have a lot of appointments. I'm a busy guy. You cannot leave. Why? Because there's a rule. If you enter the northern, you have to leave from the southern. You enter from the eastern, you have to leave from the western. Why? For what? The Chassid Yaavetz, a couple of hundred years ago, gives a fantastic shiur about this.

40:48says the following: he says, who is already trying to teach us something, that if we learn from it and we just take this and apply it to our day-to-day life, our life changes. He says the following: he says, who knows his creation? The Creator knows His creation. He knows what He created. He knows that if His creation enters the room... For the first time, he sees the Beit HaMikdash. Wow, wow, what a beautiful Beit HaMikdash. Look at the gold, look at the chandeliers. Look, look, wow, ooh, ah, excited, right? But now he finished, excited, he has to go back home. If he leaves from the same door he entered, he'll see the same thing again. He'll see the same thing that he saw 20 minutes ago. By the time he sees the same thing again, he's less excited. He's less excited. He already lost his excitement. And the Yavneh says he will start looking at the walls of the Beit HaMikdash like he looks at the walls of his house. And chas v'shalom for Am Yisrael on such a day. When we look at the Beit HaMikdash like we look at our house.

42:07What do we learn from here? We learn that naturally, our, the creation, us, has no ability to appreciate materialism for an extended period of time. Meaning every material possession that you have, it's only a matter of time before you, that spent your hard-earned money on it, lose interest in it. That's why Rav Yagen, a lover of shalom, used to say, instead of saying, I bought this for 2,000, I bought this for 3,000, I bought this for 500, all the prices that people say, oh yeah, you see this suit? Wait, this suit is cheap. I got this for 2,000. Oh, you got a discount. I got mine for 5,000. You know, people compete. Who paid more? Who paid more? But you shouldn't do that. You should say, I got this for three months. I got this for six months. I got this for one month. Why? Because you spent three months making the money to pay for the suit. So that's really what you spent. You didn't spend 3,000. You didn't spend 5,000. How much do you make a month? You make 2,000 a month. Okay, so $6,000, that's three months of your life. You spent three months of your life to buy a suit. You're a genius. You and Einstein, the same book we're going to put you in.

43:18Your letter is what happens. One time we had a friend who had a sister, and he told me something. I never, even when I was, I mean, I couldn't, I couldn't believe it. I had to see this for myself. He said his sister married some poor guy that all he did was work, and he saved a little bit of money. He saved $50,000; that was their life savings, and And now they're having shalom bayit problems. They had shalom bayit problems. They had shalom bayit problems. Why? Because she wanted to use the life savings. So I said, oh, to buy a house. Because that's what all you guys are thinking. To buy a house, right? That's why she wants to use the life savings. He said, no. That was the problem. I said, what was the problem? He said, no, you don't want to know. No, no. I said, tell me, what? He says she wanted to take the $50,000 to go buy a handbag. There's a handbag that apparently cost $50,000, and she was willing to divorce him and leave him with the two kids if he didn't give her the $50,000 to go buy the bag. Now all of you are saying, oh, hopefully, so he's single, right? Unfortunately, he's still married to this morah. Why? He gave her the $50,000 to buy a bag.

44:38The poor guy works day and night and gave his wife the $50,000 to go buy a handbag. A handbag. No, it would be, I mean, even as a joke, it's not funny. But this is what happened. How could this be? When people are so empty inside because all they're trying to do is acquire material in order to satisfy this hole that they have inside, little by little, they realize that it's impossible to fill this hole, this void that we have. And that's why, when you want to admire somebody, you should never admire a rich person as far as materialism. If you want to admire somebody, admire the poor guy. Admire the poor people, not the rich people. The reason why is because the poor person has something that the rich guy can't buy. It's called hope. You see, the rich person, the reason why the U.S. government, when they did research on suicide, they discovered that suicide is a rich person's problem. Unfortunately, a large part of the suicides are actually committed by very wealthy people. Over 72% of suicides are by people that are wealthy. 72%, it's a statistical anomaly.

46:02meaning that suicide, losing all hope, is by the people that have the most to show. The most stuff. Why? When a rich person gets everything he wants, fulfills every one of his desires, every day he has a new wife, every day he has a new girlfriend, every day he has a new hobby, every day he has a new car and a new house and a new stock and a new bond and a new something. Every day he fills this void by acquiring something new. People have attained a new addiction in our generation called online shopping. They go on the internet and they just press "shop," even for stuff they don't need. It's a very easy addiction. Why? It's easy. All you gotta do is press a button, and stuff arrives at your house. Sometimes I'm guilty of it also. Don't think that I'm talking just about you. I'm talking about myself. The reality is sometimes you just have to press a button, even though you don't really know if you need these batteries. You figure, in case I need this set of batteries, it's only $3. It's only $3 for 87 batteries. Let me just buy these batteries.

47:08you don't need them. When are you going to use 87 batteries? Even if you were building a spaceship, you would still need fewer batteries than 87. But you figure, it's only three dollars. Let me get the 87 batteries—it's only three dollars. Next thing you know, three dollars and another three dollars add up. Next thing, you don't have food to eat because you bought a lot of batteries. Are you going to eat batteries maybe one day? Online shopping... So, unfortunately, what happens is that we acquire stuff because we have a void. We have an empty spot inside we have to fill. We're miserable. We're depressed. We have anxiety about all the things that are happening in our life. And instead of looking at Torah Kedoshah to fill the void, we look to acquire stuff. So the rich guy, eventually when he starts looking at his glory... He sees that, okay, the house he wants, he has. The house he doesn't want, he also has that. The house his neighbor wants, he has that also. He has a house in every corner. He has a car in every place. He doesn't even drive anymore. He has all types of stuff, and he's still miserable. Hence, he has all the reasons in the world to commit suicide. Why? He has no reason to live. Why? He has no hope. If he already has everything he wants and he's still not happy, what's the purpose of life?

48:22Now, if you were to say, "Listen, the purpose of life is to get all the stuff you want," he's going to tell you, "I already got that. I got the stuff that I want." Robin Williams had a net worth of over $100 million when he hung himself by a belt. Anthony Bourdain, also unfortunately a Jew, when he killed himself, also was worth tens of millions of dollars. All of these people that have been killing themselves almost on a monthly basis over these last few years, they're all multi-millionaires, filthy rich. They have so much money that even if they spent a million dollars a month, they wouldn't run out of it. So why do they kill themselves? Because they lose hope. The void has been filled and filled and filled, and still nothing changes. Nothing changes. The poor guy doesn't commit suicide usually. Why? He doesn't have the house that he wants. He doesn't have the house that his friends want. He doesn't even have a house. He rents. sometimes he gets kicked out because he can't pay the rent. He doesn't have a car; he borrows a bicycle from his friend. He doesn't have a very fancy lunch. He gets two pieces of bread three or four days old, puts some cheese on it, puts it in the microwave, and it tastes delicious. He has all simple stuff, but he still has hope. He doesn't kill himself. You know why? He says, "Listen, all my problems, all my things, once I win the lottery, I'll be happy."

49:48he still has hope that one day he's going to get money and he's going to be happy. He still has hope. The truth is that both of them are wrong. Both of them are trying to acquire happiness through money. Now, having had a lot of experience with money, being in the business with money, dealt with a lot of multi-millionaires and some billionaires in my life, I can tell you with an enormous amount of experience that it's impossible to attain happiness with money. And the reason why is because the Torah tells us that it's only a matter of time before you will lose your desire for it. The more you have of it, the more you will care less about it. You'll become desensitized. the pleasure that I got from the first thousand dollars that I ever made in my life when I was in the brokerage business was the best thousand dollars. It actually felt better than when I made two or three million. Why at that moment it was still brand new. The thousand dollars was crispy, was clean, was beautiful. It was the first thing I acquired through hard work. By the time I made a million or two, it’s like, "Ah, I did this so many times already. Who cares already? What else is going to change? I'm not going to get another house—I have a house. How many houses can you live in? I'm not going to get another car—I have a car. How many cars can you drive? I'm not going to go spend thirty or forty thousand dollars on a watch; I can just use my phone for free."

51:15You know, some people are in the jewelry business, Baruch Hashem, and good for you that you have customers who want to spend all that money on that jewelry. I'm just not one of those, even though my own family's in the jewelry business. I was always a terrible customer. Always a terrible customer. I never saw the value of it, but some people do. Good for you. My wife, Baruch Hashem, likes it once in a while, and some people like it, some people don't. I never understood it. But that's fine. It doesn't make you wrong. It's just that people have different tastes. So I looked at material possessions as futile. So what I would do, I would take my money and I would either give it to people that need it, or I would invest it into the business. But eventually, even that lost its meaning. So HaKadosh Baruch Hu was talking to me indirectly. He was trying to tell me that, son, you didn't come into the world to make money. You didn't come into the world to have a life just about money, that from morning to night all you do and talk about is money. There is a time that you have to separate yourself from the mundane. Once a week, there's a day called Shabbat. And that day is a day that you are supposed to do the opposite of what you do the rest of the week. If you do the opposite of what you do during the week on that day, then the rest of your week is blessed.

52:40If you don't, the rest of your week is cursed. Now, Torah doesn't repeat things very often. Usually, you'll see that the hand of Hashem did not waste even a single letter, did not even insert a single letter if it wasn't meant to be there. Every single thing that's there was there for a reason. Sometimes you'll see the same exact word spelled in two different ways; it both makes sense, but here it needed to have an extra yud or extra vav or an aleph and... Usually, you'll see that the hand of Hashem did not waste even a single letter, did not even insert a single letter if it wasn't meant to be there. Every single thing that's there was there for a reason. Sometimes you'll see the same exact word spelled in two different ways; it both makes sense, but here it needed to have an extra yud or extra vav or an aleph and But in another place, it didn't. Why? Because there's something that we can learn from there. For example, the Torah codes professionals, people who know how to discover and identify Torah codes, recently discovered something very interesting. The Torah tells us that in the beginning, Hashem created the heaven and the earth.

53:47then later on, only on the second day, He created the angels. Later on, He created animals, and later on, He created human beings. And that's why when He said, "Let's create man," He said "Let's," meaning as if He has a partner. As if He has a partner. That's when people ask, what does it mean? How come it says "Let's," as if there's more than one God? No, there isn't more than one God. It's just that Hashem, in essence, asked His other creation, the angels, what do they think about it? Now Rashi says, we know for sure that Hashem created the angels on the second day. On the second day. But there's no pasuk in the Torah that says Hashem created the angels on the second day. Where did Rashi get this from 900 years ago? How does he know? Yaakov knows. Yaakov doesn't know. how does he know? How does Rashi from 900 years ago know where the angels were created? Maybe Yaakov knows. He'll call back, but how come? How does he know? So, Professor Rips, the foremost expert on Torah codes, found an extraordinary code. He says if you look using Torah codes on the pasuk of the second day of creation...

55:06you will see an equal mathematical skip, the word "malachim," meaning angels, inside the verse that talks about Hashem creating these angels on the second day. The only place in the Torah you'll find it is here. You'll find the word "malachim" in different places, but not as a Torah code like this. Why could we find it? Because there were certain words that were spelled here slightly differently than they were spelled somewhere else. Needless to say, Hakadosh Baruch Hu did it for a specific reason. "So our Torah HaKedoshah has all the instructions for everything and anything that you could possibly imagine. Whether it's secrets about history, secrets about creation, secrets about your personal life, secrets about everything and anything that you want. But the best part about it is that most of it is not even a secret. Most of it is just plainly out there in front of you. All you got to do is learn parashat shavua. You want to find out what's going on in your life and how to deal with your current problem?" Watch Parashat Shavua, read Parashat Shavua with commentary by Rashi. You'll see that your current problem is inside it. Your current problem that you're dealing with and the solution are inside the weekly parasha. It's one of the greatest signs that the Torah is not only something that was written by HaKadosh Baruch Hu, but even more so, that the creation is being recreated on a day-to-day basis. Now,

56:36Once I discovered that the mundane is not going to fulfill my personal void, I started looking at other things. I started looking at other wisdoms. I started reading all types of philosophy. I started reading Nietzsche, Aristotle, The Art of War from the Chinese, all types of different intellectual books. I started learning again psychiatry, psychology. I started looking into the wisdoms of the world. My wife, God bless her, saw that I was spending a lot of time reading about, aside from financial stuff—because I was in the financial business—I was also reading about stuff to get answers to life. So she, God bless her, said, you know what, why don't you try this old book? I said, oh, old book is good. What kind of book? What did she give me? A Tanach. She gives me a Tanach. I said, this? I'm going to get answers from this, what? From Moshe Rabbeinu who's going to tell me how to live my life? She said, yes.

57:36I said, really? How do you know? She said, you know, it's in there. Hashem wrote this book. God wrote this book. I looked into the book, and I didn't know so much. But all I knew is I didn't understand anything. It didn't have any commentary; all I had was just the basic words and the English translation. I understood a little bit of Hebrew because I was born in Israel, and I understood a little bit of the English, and I knew that the English translation wasn't really a good translation of the Hebrew. It was, you know, a JPS Tanakh, and unfortunately, the JPS Tanakh is not the greatest translation and It's an unreliable translation, and I saw there were a lot of issues here. It doesn't make any sense. But either way, okay, so how is this story going to help my life? I never really understood that you're supposed to delve into the words, to find out what the giants of previous generations found by looking at each one of the verses. I never knew you could do such a thing. So, little by little, I looked at it whenever I had time, but I lost interest because I didn't know what I was doing. Hashem had mercy on me.

58:47One day he sends me a very serious talmid chacham by the name of Rabbi Ephraim Kahlon, who happens to be my cousin, that showed me a world that I never knew existed. He told me that anything and everything that you want to find, you can find it in the Torah. Now, I didn't really believe him, so I started asking him questions. I'm one of those annoying people that will put you to the test. You say something, I'm going to ask you, how did you do it? You tell me you can do something, I want to see it. I'm one of those people. I don't like people just saying things. I want to see how, who, what, when. People say, "Oh yeah, my rabbi said such and such." I say, okay, what's the source? He goes, no, he just said it. I said, okay, he says a lot of things. I say a lot of things. But which one of us has a source for what we say? If he has a source, okay, I want to learn from him. If he doesn't have a source, then what he said doesn't mean anything. Why? Torah says we have rules. You want to say something? It has to have a source in the Torah. Why? Because once it has a source in the Torah, it's no longer you. It's God. God I want to listen to. You, not so much. You, not so much. Why? It's like a guy went to a restaurant and he says to the guy, "Is it kosher here?"

59:58He says, "You're asking if it's kosher? You know who I am? I don't know who you are. Is it kosher here?" He goes, "Look at the pictures: Baba Sali, Ben Ish Chai, Rav Ovadia, Chazon Ish, Rav Elyashiv." He says, "But is it kosher?" He goes, "Look, the Rishonim, the Rambam, the Ramban, the..." This is fine. I see if they were here, and you were in a picture, I would know that it's kosher, but since it's you here, and they're in a picture, I have to ask you if it's kosher. I need a certificate. I need proof that it's kosher. So you have to ask. People say a lot of things; you have to ask, do you have a source? Why? If it's from you, there's a 50-50 chance. I don't want to gamble. I want to know if it's from God. So as we started learning, one day, after nine months of me asking him questions and questions and questions about all types of things, about science and about math and about business and about marriage and all types of wonderful things, I never knew I had so many questions until I started asking them and getting answers. And every time he would give me an answer, he would tell me, oh, this is a great question. Rabbi so-and-so asked the same question 890 years ago in this book, on this page, at this number. And I said, how come you have all these books in front of you?

1:01:18You happen to have all these books of all the questions that I have. How do you know what I asked? He goes, no, I don't have the books. It didn't make any sense to me. I said, so how do you know it? How do you know what this Rabbi said 890 years ago? By heart. He says, well, that's what you do when you learn Torah. I said, what, you read all those books and you learn them by heart? He goes, something like that. He said, how many books do you have? Yeah, he says, we're closing in on 3,000 in this room. 3,000 books you have? I said, if I know one book by heart, I'd already consider myself a genius. I never knew that Talmidei Chachamim know so many things and they know pages and this and that. I said, this guy's smart. I thought I was smart; this guy is in a different world. I want to learn more from him. So we continue learning, learning, learning. One day, he tells me, he says, listen, you ever hear of this thing called Shabbat? I said, yeah, I heard it's a Saturday, right? He goes, yeah, whatever Saturday that you said, I don't speak English. What he said, says this Shabbat day that you have over there, it's called Shabbat for Jews. I said, okay, no. He says, you know, on Shabbat, you're not allowed to work on Shabbat. I said, no, chas v'shalom, I don't work on Shabbat. I only go to the casino. I don't go. You think I work on Shabbat? What am I doing? I only go play poker on Shabbat. He says, yeah, that's the problem. You're not allowed to go play poker on Shabbat.

1:02:43I said, "What? Why not? What does Hashem care about me playing poker?" He says, "The rest, right? I'm resting. I'm resting in a poker room with $50,000 in front of me. What's the problem?" He says, "No, no, that's not what you're supposed to do." And he starts explaining to me there are 39 melachot, and he starts confusing me. I said, "Oh, what? When?" I said, "You know what? Do me a favor. All the answers, all the questions, everything I ever said, you always showed me somewhere in a book." He showed me somewhere in a book. Show me this in a book. He says, "Which one of the 12 times do you want me to show you this in the Chumash? Or the seven times in the Shulchan Aruch? Or the countless times in the Gemara? Which one do you want?" I said, "Okay, I only have all the stuff you just mentioned. I only have a Chumash. Show me one time." He shows me Parashat Ki Tisa. What a scary day it was for me. He says, "You keep Shabbat, good for you. You don't keep Shabbat. What's going to happen to you? What's going to happen to you?" I said, "Excuse me, what did you say to me?" He said, "No, no, listen. Hold on a second. He says, if you don't keep Shabbat, you keep going to the casino." I said, "Yeah, that's good, no?" He goes, "No, no, it's not good." I said, "Why not?" He says, "If you keep going to the casino, you keep playing poker, it's technically work."

1:04:01You keep driving on Shabbat, it's fire. You keep cooking on Shabbat, not allowed. You keep performing one of these 39 melachot, you have a serious problem. I said, what's the problem? He says, well, let's see what this verse says. It says, I said, what does it mean? I said, I understand death. He says, exactly. I said, what, He's going to kill me? He says, exactly. I said, when? He says, not yet. He's giving you more time. I said, oh. Oh, okay. So what's the why, how could I die twice though? He says, "What do you mean? I can't die twice. What, I'm going to have a near-death experience? I'm going to die, come back to life so you can kill me again? What kind of God is this?" He says, "No, no, relax, relax. It's not that you're going to die again." I said, "Oh, okay, good." But I said, "No, no, it's not because I'm yet." He said, "Why?" He says, "The 'you might' means something else. It doesn't mean you die again." He says, "The first death means that every time you violate Shabbat, you lose..." You lose time in your life. You were supposed to live 120 years. Now you just lost another year. Now you just lost another 5 years. Now you just lost another 10 years. Now you just lost all types of years from this 120 years that HaKadosh Baruch Hu wanted to give you. Or perhaps, or perhaps your kid lost those years. You have three little beautiful kids. You like them, right? Okay, well, how would you feel if one of them goes missing one day? I say, hey! I don't say such a thing.

1:05:26...said, "No, well, that's what happens when you violate Shabbat. You're killing your kids." I have kids at that time, but if he would have said that to me, I would have lost my mind. This says to us, "You violate Shabbat, you're putting your kids in a concentration camp." That's what you're doing. Why? Because each time you violate Shabbat, Hashem takes away years from some account. Until the age of 13, your boy is considered a part of your body. Until the age of 12, your girl is considered a part of your body. Meaning if they get a punishment, it's not them being punished, they're tzaddikim, it's your fault. You, as the parent, have a little girl, six, seven, eight, nine years old, who has the machala, Hashem Yerachem, has a disease. Guess why? It's because Ima walks around half-naked. Little boy all of a sudden loses his ability to see. Yeah, it's because his father keeps looking at girls that are not his wife. All types of things happen to little kids. Oh, why me? Why me? Stop sinning, and you'll see. HaKadosh Baruch Hu is not joking. When He wrote the Torah, He wasn't kidding. Even though we think He's kidding, I promise you, He wasn't kidding. So he started telling me, he's like, okay, listen, the first one is cutting days of life. I said, okay, that's enough of a problem because now I have to explain the second one.

1:06:48It's much worse. I said, what is it? He said, you see, this world doesn't end here. This world is just a stage. It's a corridor as part of an eternal world that doesn't end. And now that other world has names. You call it all types of names. And I know, I know. I said, what? Hey, heaven and hell. He goes, yeah, that too. I said, so what happens? He says, well, if a person keeps Shabbat, they go to the heaven place. Gan Eden, we call it in Hebrew. Gan Eden. I said, okay, so what if he doesn't keep Shabbat? There's only one other option left. Guess which one? It's not heaven. That's the hint. I said, for how long? He says, forever. Forever. Forever. The Gemara Masechet Rosh Hashanah, page 17a, says there are certain sinners whose sin is so grave that even when the Mashiach comes and shuts down part of Gehenom, part of hell, their section will not be shut down. One of those people is a Mechalel Shabbat.

1:08:02The punishment for violating Shabbat and not doing Teshuva is so grave in the eyes of Hashem that He says that if you don't do Teshuva in this world, you will not have an opportunity to fix it. Because by violating Shabbat, the Gemara in Masechet Sanhedrin and also Masechet Shabbat both say when you violate Shabbat, it's as if you go out in the middle of the street and say to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, "I don't believe in You." So Hashem says, "We'll see." We'll see if you believe me in the end. We'll see, and once you see, it's too late. So, he says to me, "The second part says you don't keep Shabbat. This next world doesn't look good." I said, "Okay, so I died twice. I lost my next world. What's the new chiddush if it's me kareit ve'ne'ekar? What is this cutting the soul? Didn't you already cut me into 500 million pieces by now?" He says, "Yeah, that's the ugly part." This is all I said. This is pretty, because no, this is even uglier. He says you see sometimes there are weddings, and the weddings in Judaism have to have witnesses. You have to have two Jewish witnesses to a wedding to sign under the chuppah. In a Beit Din, you have to have witnesses. When you do Kiddush, the person that says the Kiddush has to be a kosher Jew, and…

1:09:26You have a shochet. You have a shochet. Somebody has slaughtered your food, slaughtered the cow. It can't be a Christian, but it also can't be a Mechalel Shabbat. Why? Because the person that's a Mechalel Shabbat is cut off from the nation, which means that until he does teshuva, He's considered 100% like a goy. He's considered 100% like an idol worshiper, according to halakha. Now, Hashem still considers him or her a son or daughter, but they have the status of an idol worshiper, meaning that you cannot rely on them when it comes to halakha. So if they do a kiddush on Shabbat, you're not allowed to say amen. If they say Kaddish, you're not allowed to say amen. if they slaughter your cow, you're not allowed to eat it; it's treif. Now, if you will probably have your Yalkut Yosef yourself, you probably have your Yalkut Yosef yourself somewhere in this beautiful Beit Knesset. In Yalkut Yosef, you're going to see a nice little book about Yom Tov. Somewhere in the middle of the book, it talks about halachot of Yom Tov, and it talks about what about...

1:10:44If you want to cook on Yom Tov, you're allowed to cook on Yom Tov if it's for Yom Tov. If it's for the holiday, you're allowed to cook from fire to fire. But there's a very, very interesting clause within it. What's the clause? You're only allowed to cook for Jews. You're only allowed to cook for Jewish people. You're not allowed to cook for a goy. Like if you have a friend that's not Jewish, and he wants to come over on Pesach, you're not allowed to cook for him. You're allowed to cook for the family. If there's extra you want to give him, no problem, but to cook specifically for him, you're not allowed. Why? Because the holiday is not for him. You're not allowed to violate the holiday for him. You're allowed to violate it for a Jew. The very next halacha, the very next halacha, the very next one, it says you're not allowed to cook for the goy, but you're also not allowed to cook for the mechalei Shabbat. But you can cook for the animal.

1:11:44Can you have a goy as a guest on Pesach? No. Other times, possibly. Depends. On Pesach, you're not supposed to. On a seder, you're not supposed to unless there's a leniency because he's an authority figure or he could create peace or perhaps war if he doesn't come. There are certain exceptions, or if he just shows up by himself. But in general, it's not an ideal time to invite goyim. Hilchot Yom Tov. Hilchot Yom Tov, Yalkut Yosef. Hilchot Yom Tov, Yalkut Yosef. So now he says that you cannot cook for the Mechalel Shabbat, you cannot cook for the goy, but the animal you can. Meaning sometimes an animal gets favorable treatment over a Jew. Why? Because the Jew doesn't want to be a Jew. This is not to insult the people that are violating Shabbat. I violated Shabbat most of my life until I realized how much is on the line here. The point is for us to realize what is God's opinion about Shabbat. If God feels so strongly about Shabbat, needless to say, we should take it seriously too.

1:12:51God says, "I hate zima. I hate immodesty." Needless to say, we as His creation should also take it seriously and say, "Okay, you know what? We want to be kedoshim." Why? Hashem says in Parashat Kedoshim two weeks ago, "Kedoshim tihyu ki kadosh ani." You be holy because I am holy. What's the number one way of being holy? When it comes to modesty, when it comes to intimacy. A woman that's immodest is considered a machtiat harabim. She causes other people to sin. When a woman or a man makes other people sin, she has a very, very serious problem with HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Why? Every one of those people has to be punished because of her. What is she going to get, a reward for that? No. So when we start doing the accounting, we start realizing maybe our logic is not such a reliable logic. Our logic is not such a good one to follow. Maybe we should look at this book and see what it says. Little by little, I started looking at the book. Now, along the way, I had a lot of health crises, a lot of financial crises, a lot of crises of all kinds. The money that came in was starting to run out faster than it came in. The body that was healthy became the sickest body that you can possibly imagine.

1:14:14I went to over 50 different doctors just to try to figure out a diagnosis. No one would have even a remote idea of what's wrong with me. But HaKadosh Baruch Hu, when He wants to get your attention, has a very, very interesting way of doing it. And I promise you, it's not always fun and games. One of the times, after one of my surgeries, it didn't really work out so well. I was in pain constantly, but I don't mean pain like "oh." I'm talking about screaming at the top of my lungs 24 hours a day, as long as I was awake. Now, you would think that if some rich guy is in pain, surely he could afford to pay for some painkillers and some good doctors. Well, who says? You can have all the money in the world, but HaKadosh Baruch Hu decides what happens with it. So after screaming and yelling and screaming and yelling and bleeding from my eyes and my ears and every other hole that I had and didn't have, all types of wonderful adventures, eventually they realized, well, you probably need to go to the emergency room because you look like you're dying. It's not a good look, this blood-from-your-eyes thing. So don't go for a modeling shoot if you're bleeding from your eyes, guys. So I went to the hospital. It's a very good hospital. It's called NYU.

1:15:36NYU, New York University Hospital, fantastic hospital. But that day that I went there, it wasn't so fantastic. Why? HaKadosh Baruch Hu blinded them and made them deaf and stupid at the same time. How? They decided that it's a good idea to investigate my surgery by putting their hand inside my body while I was completely awake without even an ounce of Novocaine or painkillers. Now, since I was annoying them with my screaming, they put five other doctors to hold me down, as if I were in a concentration camp being tested on by Mengele ימ"ש. So you have five doctors, each one with a better degree than the other, holding me down, and one doctor, the genius, takes their whole hand and puts it inside my body, as if I were a doll. Way. I remember the screams like it was yesterday. And that's why I smile. I smile because I know it was HaKadosh Baruch Hu showing me what it looks like when He closes His eyes and hides His face.

1:16:50A lot of people ask questions about where was God during the Holocaust? Where was God when certain tragedies happened to the nation? Where was God when certain bad things happened in my life? Where was God when certain horrible things were happening? The answer is always the same. God was there and God was doing it. Why is the real question. So the Gemara in Masechet Chullin, page 7b, says that before a person even gets pricked by a needle, generating a little bit of blood and a half a second of pain, before that happens, there's a Beit Din in heaven that argues, debates, judges, and concludes that this has to happen. Guilty, he deserves to be pricked by this needle. He deserves to have foot pain. He deserves to have some vicious doctor who forgot everything he learned in medical school put his hand inside his body and go like this just to see what happens. He deserves that. Why? Whoa, let's see what he did with his life. And in heaven, they do the accounting. They do the accounting.

1:18:06They start seeing all types of things that you didn't think were a big deal in your life. Like, for example, driving on Shabbat—you didn't think it was a big deal. Being with a non-Jewish woman—you didn't think it was a big deal. Doing all types of things, like using Hashem's money to gamble—it's not allowed, but you didn't think it was a big deal because you had a good time and... types of examples that you didn't think were a big deal. When you wanted to eat, you didn't ask whether it's kosher or not, you just asked whether it's meat or not. "What if it's not meat? I don't have to worry about whether it's kosher or not." So many Jews go to non-kosher restaurants, and they think they're eating kosher because they're only eating the salads. They're only eating the salads. But you should know, once you learn kosher laws, you're going to learn something very interesting. Eating the salads at the non-kosher restaurants is actually worse than eating pig there. You're better off eating pig. I'm not suggesting eating pig, but you're actually better off eating pig. Why? If you eat pig, you eat pig, which no normal Jew eats, but if you eat pig, it's one sin. You eat salad, it's six sins.

1:19:21Why? Because the salad is full of worms and all types of interesting bugs that you're not allowed to eat as a Jew, and goyim are allowed to eat. That's why they don't wash their vegetables like we wash. They wash their vegetables with water, which does absolutely nothing. They just swim. It just gives them a little swimming pool for a vacation. It doesn't actually remove the bugs. What removes the bugs? All types of salt and soap. Any Jewish woman knows that when it comes to washing vegetables, it's almost kaparat avonot. It's mamash, you go to Gan Eden just because of the vegetables that you washed. But why? Because after you finish washing them, you see there's yetziat mitzrayim on your desk over there, on your table, for all the bugs that were on this lettuce. You'll go to a non-kosher restaurant, you eat a nice juicy salad, you should probably do shehakol for all the meat that you're eating of the worms. So now, I didn't know this stuff. I didn't follow this stuff. And guess what? I violated this stuff. like many other people, HaKadosh Baruch Hu wasn't happy with me because He gave me one chance, two chances, three chances, four chances, and I kept ignoring the call. Little by little, the call gets more serious, and then little by little, HaKadosh Baruch Hu shows up banging down on your door. I realized before it was too late; I have to start changing my life. I started learning

1:20:45He said why he said it, and I started seeing that not only am I going on the wrong path, not only am I going in the wrong direction, but the right direction is much more fun. The right direction is actually going to be the one that's going to help me get the answers that I've always wanted, get the happiness that I've always tried to get, and it doesn't require money. So even though I was losing it faster than I could even imagine, it didn't matter anymore. Why? I have Torah now. In a couple of days, we have the Hilula of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai called Lag BaOmer. The Gemara Masechet Shabbat says that the story of Rabbi Shimon is something that you need to learn from. There are different aspects of the story of Rabbi Shimon, but one of the interesting aspects that I just wrote an article about, hopefully, b'ezrat Hashem, you'll read it on our website and our other pages. It's published, I think, today or tomorrow, but I'll give you a synopsis of it. The article says that at the end of the story, there's something very, very interesting to learn. Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, after he...

1:22:02spoke against the Romans, saying that the only reason they developed the country, they built the bridges, they built the bathhouses, they built the tolls. The only reason they did all this stuff is for their own good, for their own pocket, to make money, not because they care about people. So when the Romans found out about this, they weren't too happy with Rabbi Shimon. They put a bounty on his head: whoever catches Rabbi Shimon, kill him. So he hid in a cave for 13 years. And it says that even his wife did not know. Why? We learned from then, women are someone that you could influence much easier than men. Not that you could influence them because they're lesser than men, but rather because they're greater than men. Women naturally love much more than men. Men are much more selfish. more or less, women are willing to sacrifice their lives. But the problem is that once you torture

1:23:05Life of a woman, with her kids and things of that nature, she could easily give up the farm because of that. That's the reason why, one of the reasons why, a woman is not allowed to be a witness in a Jewish court. A woman is not allowed to be a soldier; if she gets, chas v'shalom, captured, she could disclose a lot of secrets as a result of torture if they torture her family and things of that nature, whereas a man can withhold himself to some extent because of his emotional disconnect. Anyway, Rabbi Shimon did not tell his wife where he was hiding. He went to a cave, and because he knew that he was going to be in this cave for a long time, he wanted to make sure that just like this kehillah in Queens that gives kavod for the Torah, he wanted to give kavod for the Torah. So what did he do? He says, my clothes, I only have one outfit. I only have one outfit, and I want to make sure that I can wear it whenever I pray, and whenever it's Shabbat. But if I continue wearing it every day in this cave, what's going to happen? It's going to get ripped. So what did he do? He and his son Rabbi Elazar dug holes in the ground, took off their clothes, went into the holes, and covered themselves with the sand. And that's how they learned Torah all day. Then they would come out of the holes when it was time to pray and for Shabbat. Why? So that way they weren't using the clothes too much, and they could last a much longer amount of time.

1:24:31After 13 years of being under sand for 95% of the day, it doesn't look so good. Why? Because sand, as everyone probably knows, is what you make glass out of, and sand against your skin for so many years doesn't look so good. So when he got home and he saw his father-in-law, his father-in-law was happy to see him and said, "We want you to relax. Let's go to the bathhouse. Sit and relax." And Rabbi Shimon took off his jacket, took off his robe, and Rabbi Pinchas Ben Yair, his father-in-law, saw that his whole body was full of wounds, full of scars, full of mamash engravements of the sand inside his skin and As if he was cut into 50 pieces. His whole body was full of this. And Rabbi Pinchas Ben Yair started crying, started crying. Thank you. Started crying. Same price. started crying hysterically, saying, "Oy to me, woe to me that I see you like this." And Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai says to him, "No, to the contrary. Ashrecha that you see me like this. You're praiseworthy that you see me like this. Because now I possess a lot of Torah." Now, this story, I never really thought much about it until the last few weeks. I started thinking, thinking, thinking. I said, it doesn't make any sense. Why? First of all,

1:25:58Why is Rabbi Pinchas ben Yair crying over seeing his son-in-law? Okay, it's natural. It's an emotional reaction. It's terrible. Okay. But why is he saying woe to him? Why is he saying oy vey to me? It should be oy vey to Rabbi Shimon that he has these scars, not oy vey to me. You have the scars. Why is it oy vey to me? Why is it, poor me, that you have scars? It's like saying, oh yeah, such and such friend just died. Oh, oy vey to me. What do you mean? He's the one that died, not oy vey to you. It's oy vey to him and his family, not you. It's not relevant to you. Second question is, why does Rabbi Shimon answer in such an unusual way? Saying, no, not only to you, you're praiseworthy, ashrecha. Ashrecha that you see me like this, because now I have Torah. Now if you're going to say, ashrecha, you know, that you see me like this because I have Torah, you're confusing me even more. Why? It should be ashre Rabbi Shimon. He's the one that has Torah. Not Rabbi Pinchas. Why is it ashre Rabbi Pinchas? Why is Rabbi Pinchas praiseworthy that Rabbi Shimon has Torah?

1:27:03Shabir Rabbi Shimon is praiseworthy. So I thought about Nishtabach Shimon, Besiyata Dishmaya, and the Chiddush. Chiddush that puts all of our shiur in a certain perspective. Rabbi Pinchas Ben Yair understood that the 13 principles of faith that the Rambam put together in his Mishneh Torah in Shemoneh Perakim... At the end, he gives you the details of the 13 principles of faith and elaborates even on free choice, but most importantly, reminds us that any Jew who does not follow or believe the 13 principles of faith puts his Judaism on suspension, no different than a Jew who violates Shabbat. One of those 13 principles of faith, which you're supposed to usually read at least once a day at the end of prayer, during Minchah, most people read it. One of those is the principle of reward and punishment, meaning that we are obligated to believe, we're obligated to know that HaKadosh Baruch Hu rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked. We're obligated to believe this. A Jew that does not believe this, a Jew that believes that everything is

1:28:21Fancy schmancy, and you're only gonna get cookies from Shamayim. You're only gonna get candy, and Hashem loves everybody no matter what you do. Even if you curse Him, even if you insult Him, even if you violate everything, He's still gonna give you cookies, He's still gonna give you everything. Then, well, I could give you two answers: number one, you're probably not reading the parashat ha'shavua, because last week it said somebody cursed Hashem, and Hashem killed him in front of everybody. So how come He killed him and He's not going to kill somebody else? What, is there favoritism? He just didn't like the guy? He didn't like the son of Shlomit at the end of the parasha, parashat Emor last week. He cursed Hashem because he didn't like the way his life was going. So Hashem said, "Oh, he cursed Me. Kill him in front of everybody with stones." The worst possible death penalty. So, we see here that HaKadosh Baruch Hu is not joking. There is reward and punishment. We have to believe this. said the following: I know that reward and punishment are not just given in an obvious way where you're righteous, you get a nine-story house

1:29:30You're wicked, you get a little hole in the wall to live with rats. No, it doesn't work that way. You're righteous, your wife is beautiful, smart, and she even knows how to cook. You're wicked, she looks like Pharaoh's wife—short, ugly, and everything in between. It's not that; it doesn't work that way. What happens? Sometimes it's confusing. Sometimes the righteous guy's wife is not exactly so great. Sometimes the wicked guy's wife looks like she's wonderful, but you have to look at the inner details. What's happening behind the scenes? What's happening in the long story? So, who says there is a reward and punishment? It does not work in an obvious way. Reward and punishment work in a precise way. Meaning it is delivered when it needs to be delivered, how it’s delivered. To such an extent that before I decide to reward or punish anyone, I have to review, first of all, every single thing that he's ever done in his life. Then I have to see what the punishment could possibly be. But then I have to see

1:30:45Not whether he deserves it. That I already concluded based on his own punishments. Then I have to see what does everybody else deserve that will also suffer from it. His mom, his dad, his brother, his kids, his wife, everybody else. He may deserve to get all such and such that he deserves because he did all this stuff. But do they deserve it also? If he's married to a tzaddeket, even if she's not the best-looking one in the world, but she's a tzaddeket, guess what? She could save him. Why? Why could she save him? Because she doesn't deserve for him to be punished. She doesn't deserve to be punished, so therefore he won't be punished. He has a son, even though the son is not exactly what he wanted the son to be. He wanted his son to be a Wall Street warrior. He wanted his son to be the best investment banker in the world. But his son became a simple avrech, making $1,000 a month. Guess what? That little thousand dollars a month is saving him. Why? Because he doesn't deserve to see his father suffering, and so on and so forth.

1:31:51So Rabbi Pinchas ben Yair understood that reward and punishment are not always given in an obvious way. Hashem evaluates everything and everyone. So when he saw all of the suffering of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, the Gadol HaDor, he said, "Woe unto me. Woe unto me that I see this. Why? Because it means that I deserve to suffer too." It's woe unto me because I don't know what I did to deserve it. That's what makes it woe. It makes sense, everybody, it makes sense, but at least if I think about it, I can figure out, "Oh, you know what? I messed up in the morning. I prayed late. You know what? I forgot to pray before I ate the apple." I could do calculations of what I did and what I need to do, but now it's woe unto me. It's terrible for me. Why? Because I'm thinking, thinking, thinking, and I can't figure out what I have to do teshuvah for, so my situation is even worse than I thought. Then Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, to finalize, gives us the Chidush of all Chidushim. He says, no, no, you're praiseworthy. You're praiseworthy, and I want you. Why? He says, gee, my Rebbe was Rabbi Akiva. Rabbi Akiva had 24,000 students. All of them died between Pesach all the way to Lag BaOmer.

1:33:08One of the other reasons why we celebrate Lag BaOmer is not just because of the Hillula of Rabbi Shimon, who revitalized the Torah, but also because that’s the day that the deaths ceased. The deaths of the 24,000 students ceased on that day. So now Rabbi Shimon says, "My Rebbe was Rabbi Akiva. Even though Rabbi Akiva lost 24,000 students, the lowest among them was able to revive the dead." He still said that everything that the Merciful One does, everything that Hashem does, is always the best. Not good, the best. Meaning, even though HaKadosh Baruch Hu has an infinite amount of ways to take each one of us from point A to point B, Whatever choice He has, whether it's a plane or a train or a car or a motorcycle or a bicycle or walking or crawling or flying, whatever it is, an infinite number of ways to take us from point A to point B, whatever He chooses is the best of all choices.

1:34:16And the only reason we have anxiety, the only reason we get depressed, the only reason why we get all like, you know, why? Because we're questioning His system. Because we think we have a better idea than HaKadosh Baruch Hu. We think we have a better idea than Him. Why? Because we see our own perspective, which is the wall in front of us. HaKadosh Baruch Hu sees behind the wall, on the side of the wall, after the wall, before the wall, at the end of the wall, even when there isn't a wall. He sees all aspects that we cannot see because we're still limited as human beings. So Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai says to Rabbi Pinchas ben Yair, he says, you see, I learned this from Rabbi Akiva, my rabbi. And Rabbi Akiva, my rabbi, also taught me something else. He also taught me the words of Reish Lakish, who says that if you want to learn Torah, you have to sacrifice your life to the extent of dying for the Torah. Gemara Masechet Berachot, end of the Gemara, page 63b.

1:35:24He says you have to be willing to die for the Torah. You have to be willing to die for it. So that's the good news, Rabbi Pinchas. You see, these scars are us fulfilling the words of our Rebbe, Rabbi Akiva. We almost died for the Torah. So now it's still, Rabbi Pinchas said, "Wait a minute, so why am I praiseworthy? Okay, you're praiseworthy. Chazak u'baruch, they have the Torah. Why are you saying ashrecha? Why are you saying ashrecha to me?" He says, "Ah, all you got to do is go look at Masechet Rosh Hashanah, page 25b. It says, 'Praiseworthy is the generation where the bigger sages teach the smaller sages, but even more praiseworthy is the generation when the smaller sages listen to the bigger sages.'" You see, you witnessed the whole story here. You witnessed the whole thing. That's what makes you praiseworthy. Because now, you can go teach it to the rest of Am Yisrael. You have the instruction set from HaKadosh Baruch Hu. All you gotta do is first listen to it. Watch it. Think about it. Delve over it. And next thing you know, you're gonna have all the answers that you could possibly want. After that,

1:36:36Please, please, teach your kids this stuff. Don't send them to public school. Don't send them to go play basketball. They're not going to become the next NBA king. They're not going to become athletes. Stop kidding yourself. Jews are not supposed to be athletes. We're not supposed to be gamblers. We're not supposed to be losers. We're supposed to be people that are connected to HaKadosh Baruch Hu and to the Torah. You already have the facility, you already have the place. All you got to do is continue living the Torah. continuing to give honor to the Torah, but honoring Torah is not just about honoring someone else. Honor yourself with some more Torah by following it, by listening to it, by reading about it. We brought many CDs with part one and part two of our Mussar series. It's 27 lectures out of almost 180. Each one of the lectures will change your life; each one is completely different from the other. The rest of the series, these 27 lectures, are on CDs. They're free. I believe they're available somewhere in the shul. There's also our other CDs, "From Wall Street to the Western Wall." Tomorrow, b'ezrat Hashem, we'll have a shiur about that. But most importantly, Rabotai, please follow us on the internet. Watch the shiurim. Every week we have three shiurim. Each one is different from the other. The only time I tell my personal story is when I meet new people like you.

1:37:58But generally, we try to have new Torah each time because the Torah is vast, it's huge, it's enormous. And every time you discover another part of it, it's such a beauty. It's so beautiful. And recently, we realized that there's a little bit of yetzer hara. There's a little bit of yetzer hara in this generation. It's called money. You guys ever hear of it? It's called yetzer hara, it's called money. So now in Florida, in Florida, these rabbis, before I finish, I just want to tell you what we have to do to get Jews to come back from where they are to Hashem. Florida, we have a lot of rabbis that work for the Eruv Rav. They're very good at that, they're fantastic. They tell people to drive on Shabbat, park right in front of the shul on Shabbat, all types of things that are against Hashem. So, there's a group of kids, maybe about 40 or 50 kids, that have been going to a so-called Torah program for two and a half years now. Torah program? When you go to it, what are you supposed to do in this Torah program? learn Torah well. I got to meet a few of them after they've been going to this Torah program for two and a half years, and we asked them, "What do you do in the Torah program?" He says, "We eat sushi." I said, "Okay, at least you get a nice appetite; you eat some sushi. What else?" He goes, "Oh, we talk about video games." I said, "Okay, video games, sushi—this sounds perfect. Torah?" I said, "When does the Torah come in?" He says, "What Torah? That's just on the door."

1:39:23We don't learn any Torah. I said, does anybody here keep Shabbat? He says, no, nobody keeps Shabbat. How do you go to a Torah course for two and a half years, and you still didn't learn how to keep Shabbat? So now one of my talmidot, a tzaddekes kedoshah, she says she started crying when she heard this. She said, "I can't take it. We're going to deal with this." I said, "How do they get these 40 kids to go to a Torah program? If they want sushi, I'll buy them sushi. If they want pizza, I'll buy them pizza. I don't have any money, but I'll go beg, borrow, and steal if I have to. Just get these kids over here." She says, "No, no, there's a problem." "Why?" "It says $20 or $15." I said, what do you mean $15? Each kid gets $15 or $20 to come to this Torah program to eat sushi? So they pay each 15, 16, 17, 18, 19-year-old $15 to come eat sushi in the Torah program, to eat sushi and talk about video games. So I said, this is Hashem yirachem,

1:40:26Why can't they teach them Torah though? She goes, nah, forget about it. So she says, listen, we're going to do, we have to do the same thing. But we're going to teach Torah. So, Baruch Hashem, we started the program. A month and a half ago, we started the program. Two kids showed up. They liked it. They liked the Torah that we learned. They learned some things like what you guys just learned tonight, which is called Emet. They stayed for a little over an hour. The rest of the students that come to me regularly stayed for a couple of hours. They, Baruch Hashem, I don't take things offensively. Somebody's here for an hour. Somebody's here for five minutes. Somebody's here for five hours. It doesn't make a difference to me. At least you're here. So next week, they surprised us. Each one of them brought a few friends, so two became five, then five became ten, then ten became twenty. And yesterday, at around 9:30 or 10:00 at night, we had maybe 25 kids aside from the regulars that come. Twenty-five kids, anywhere between 14 to 20 years old, all excited about Torah. They're all excited. Yes, they get 15 bucks, but that's just to deal with the yetzer hara.

1:41:33That's just to deal with the yetzer hara. Now just think about it. Okay, so now the week cost us a thousand dollars. A thousand dollars just to get these kids to go learn Torah. But what, do you think HaKadosh Baruch Hu is not going to give us the money back? What are we doing? We're taking the money we don't even have. To what? To go take His kids from the Gehenom they're putting themselves into and put them into Gan Eden. What, do you think Hashem's not going to pay for it? That's what I tell people all the time: If you ever want to invest, invest in Am Yisrael. Don't ask for stock quotes. Don't ask for what Bitcoin is doing. Don't ask for what real estate project you want to buy. We have plenty of real estate. We have plenty of buildings as a nation. We don't have enough Jews. Anyone that wants to invest in the next world, invest in bringing Jews closer to Torah and mitzvot. The next world where they can go up to Shamayim and say to Hashem, "I have something to show for it. Yeah, I lived 70 years in this world, 80 years in this world, 120 years in this world, and I did some good things. I did some bad things. I messed up here, I messed up there. I fixed here, I fixed there, but I wasn't perfect. But you know what? I have something to show for it: I brought 15,000 Jews with me. Why? I helped all of these Jews do teshuva."

1:42:46What do you think? Hashem is going to send a person that messed up a little to Gehinom, but all of his students are going to Gan Eden? Gemara says absolutely not. It's not possible for HaKadosh Baruch Hu to send a rabbi that helped people do teshuva to Gehinom when the students are in Gan Eden. The rabbi doesn't have to be a real rabbi. It simply could be somebody that invested in another person to go do teshuva. This is what I advise each one of you. After you take those CDs, you listen to those CDs, don't leave the CD on the shelf. Give it to somebody. It costs you nothing. You want to invest. You want to invest in B’ezrat Hashem. You want to help us help people do teshuva. Welcome. We need as much as possible. We only take teshuva of a million or more though. But the reality is, Rabotai, anything you want to do, do it. But you can even do it for free. So you don't have an excuse. take one of the CDs, give it to a relative, give it to a friend, give it to an enemy, as long as they're Jewish. Give it to somebody, go on our website, take a link, go to YouTube, type my name, take any one of the shiurim, don't even think about it. Just take any shiur, pick a shiur, send it to a bunch of people without thinking. Why? You start thinking, the Yetzer Hara starts getting involved. Because that way, you become a partner with HaKadosh Baruch Hu. And HaKadosh Baruch Hu says to His children, to the prophet Jeremiah,

1:44:08if you bring someone precious, someone who used to be a luggard, used to be a sinner, used to be a rasha, but you bring him back as good, you're going to be like my mouth. What does it mean you're going to be like my mouth? Rashi says on this pasuk, he says Hashem says and therefore it happens; you say and therefore it happens. Instead of going and buying segulot, like people buy, they go to all types of graves, they go to all types of mystical rabbis, you don't need to do any of this stuff. HaKadosh Baruch Hu has a pasuk just for you. You want your prayers to be accepted in heaven? Help His children come back home. Once you pray, Hashem says, oh, you're my partner, of course I have to do it. If I don't do it for my partner, who else am I going to do it for? What, for the Christians? Or maybe for the basketball players? So this, Abutai, is just a little bit of advice. If you don't listen to anything else that I say, at least listen to that. If you don't listen to that, listen to everything else, whichever one you want. Same price. Baruch Adonai le'olam. Amen ve'amen.

1:45:16To move from here to Monsey? No, I move from here to Monsey. Feel free to take as many as you like and pass it over to other people. Okay? Is there a nice place that I could pray? In Monsey? Yaron Reuven. Because I know he's a large Jew. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I want to be successful, and I want to get married. Yes, of course, of course. Yes, and also, by the way, I've had this in front of me the whole time, which is le'iluy nishmat of Shlomi ben Neila Rivka and Nerya HaLevi ben Sonia. These both were in front of me the whole time for the family, just so you know. Yes, yes. Yes, yes, yes.

1:46:29Can you afford to move out? Not really, no. Nowhere near that, but I'm working. You have a job, you're making a little bit of money. I also want to ask you, you said in a lecture about your life, the computer business, that it's not always an honest business. What did you mean by that? They sell a lot of times in those days, and they still do it today, they sell refurbished goods as new. You're talking about selling computers and stuff? Right, anything. TVs, cameras, and so on. They buy refurbished, and they rehash them, taking off the refurbished stickers and so on, and sell them as brand new. So it's not legal. Aside from being illegal, it's unethical. That's not what I do, though.

1:47:34I'm not saying you're doing it. I'm saying that's what they did. I'm trying to also make my business more kosher. Not that I wasn't kosher before, but I do want to make sure to look at it very strictly. No, no. I mean, first of all, it has to be ethical business, meaning that you're trying to do the best thing for people. You're trying to do the best, but also charge like... the right amount. Making money is not a sin. You can make money. You can be fair. There's no problem even being expensive as long as you're fair. I feel like when I make a price, sometimes if it's too much, I feel like, okay, that's kind of stupid. No, no. You're not forcing them to buy from you. They have an option to buy from wherever they want. For example, when I was in the brokerage business, I wasn't cheap. I was actually one of the most expensive guys. I was one of the most expensive guys. There's no sin in being expensive. There are certain doctors who are much more expensive than others. Why? Because they are specialists. Specialists deserve more than a regular practitioner. So, if you justify your price, there's no problem being expensive. It's just that some people sell toothpaste for $5,000 because the buyer is a fool, not because it's really worth it.

1:48:44You understand? So that's the thing. You have to be just fair and reasonable. As far as the type of business that you have, we would have to know more details about the business itself to say where it goes or not. But, I mean, it seems like if it's a traditional business, it should be fine. The best thing to do is to give them, not say things directly, but indirectly. Meaning instead of you saying to them, "They should keep," "They should do this," "They should do that." Instead of doing that, send them a video or give them a CD of either me saying it or Rav Mizrachi saying it. I do that. I still try. You tried with me or you tried with Rav Mizrachi? Both. And neither one of them worked? So far, no. Okay, so would you send them long lectures or short lectures? We watched one hour of the Torah and Science by Rav Mizrachi. And nothing? So far, no. I want to get to the last two parts. Okay, so there's also shorter ones that we made. Yeah, like 17-minute ones, 15-minute ones that are Torah and science. There are also shorter ones that are not Torah and science. There are different topics. They're like movie versions. A lot of people like the movie types. So that's also a good idea. Keep sending it and don't give up.

1:49:52Send one five-minute video a day. Don't send them the three-hour lecture because they're not going to press play. Instead, send them a five-minute video, a seven-minute video, or a ten-minute video, which works. Send them the five-minute clip or a ten-minute clip, and each day send them one. And don't give up ever. Just send it, whether they watch it or not. You'll eventually find out. and that way, pray for it. Also, pray for it and also send it to strangers, meaning, don't just send it to your family; send it to other people too. Why? If Hashem sees that you help other people too and it's not just your family, He will say, "Oh, you want to help my other children? Then I'll help the people that you care about also." What I do when I watch your shiurim, I record them with my phone from the computer and I send them on WhatsApp. If you go to YouTube, there's a whole playlist of short clips—there are maybe five or six hundred clips there. So you can see that. And there's also another playlist of movies. There are maybe like 80 or so movies there. So you just pick and choose. Every day you have something. And something, you know, something will help other people. Make a little WhatsApp group. Share with as many people as possible. Little by little, we'll get there. We'll get there. Let's get mitzvot. Let's get mitzvot. Yes. What's up? Yes. We worked together. We didn't work together. How do I know you? We worked together.

1:51:11Oh, the next one will be with Larry Krauss. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. Wow, wow, wow, wow. 9-1-7-4-6-8-1-8-3-2-4. It hasn't changed in years. Where's my CD? Do you have the CDs? Do you have my CDs somewhere? Oh, here. Business card. There you go. The CDs are in front. Here, you see, but you don't call. You see, it's your fault. I called you once. I called you once. I didn't ask you to... Here, this is also here. I live in Florida. So, I came to visit a little bit and give lessons. But you'll be in touch. Send a text, send something. That's it. All right. Great. What a great teacher. I didn't learn. I know. What? Who? Who? I know. With my wife, Kira, Tzadeket, Ishtabach Shemo. Three kids. Look, kids. Look at this.

1:52:24What, you didn't hear the personal story? I don't know, you told me, but I don't know. The personal story is one of the stories that I tell you, if it was a story that you wouldn't believe, it's something, something. Hashem bless you. Hashem bless you. Hashem bless you. Hashem bless you. Hashem bless you. Hashem bless you. I miss her, but I can't see her. Last week, you saw my children. You asked me, what are the children called? I said, you saw them for a quarter of an hour. In that quarter of an hour, all week, you saw my children. I said, but you work at home. I said, yes, but they're my father's children, Hashem's children. There's no time. So I said, thank God there's Shabbat. Shabbat, Baruch Hashem. But, thank God, thank God, thank God. Are the discs finished, or do we need more discs? Thank you for all you do. I just want to get the plug thing. I did it already with you guys earlier, before the shiur. Oh, okay. We'll go on the other side. Let me just take a picture for the followers. Okay.

1:53:43And I would like to get some blessings from you if possible. Thank you. This year, I don't know what happened. Thank you so much. Thank you. we'll be right back.