Surviving The Jewish Life (MONTREAL)

0:24In the freezing weather that you guys have here. In Florida, I complain about the Gehenom that they have over there with the heat. As I said, Gehinnom is borrowing some of the heat from them. It's so hot over there all the time. You don't have to go outside. But then I come over here, and you don't have to go outside either. I think HaKadosh Baruch Hu is forcing us to be modest by staying home. Don't leave—either cold or too hot. So... So, Baruch Hashem, I mean, I think the... We should start. I mean, there's a few things I could talk to you about, but... there's usually common questions people have where perhaps they've had this one question on their mind and I promise you if you had this question, other people had those questions. So what we do in Florida in one of my weekly shiurim,

1:37is we have Wednesday night questions and answers. Any question you come up with that affects you, most likely it affects somebody else that's watching it online, that's perhaps in the crowd also. So if you have any specific questions, whether it's in regards to the weekly parasha, or hashkafah, whatever it is, you ask a question, B'ezrat Hashem HaKadosh Baruch Hu will give me the answer. I think the biggest question today that people usually ask in just different ways is how do you survive the Yetzer Hara as a Jew in today's world? That's usually a very common question. We'll talk a little bit about that after your questions. Because the Yetzer Hara comes in all forms and sizes. He comes in a way where there's immodesty. He comes in a way of different types of fashions. He comes in a way of parnassah. He comes in a way of shidduchim. He comes in a way of marriage. He comes in a way of the family. The Yetzer Hara works full time. I wish we could work as hard as the Yetzer Hara. I wish. That's what I admire about the Yetzer Hara. It doesn't stop working. But the truth is that he doesn't let us have a break even for a minute. And the only way to really truly survive him, in one sentence, is by thinking about Hashem all the time. If you think about Hashem 24 hours a day, you're going to survive the Yetzer Hara. If you don't think about Hashem, you're already losing the battle.

3:05Now, how do you think about Hashem all the time? You think about Him by doing His mitzvot, by learning His Torah. That's how you think about Hashem all the time. So that's why HaKadosh Baruch Hu gave us many, many mitzvot in order to help us think about Him at all times. And the sages even added more mitzvot for us to think about Hashem. For example, everybody who wakes up in the morning washes their hands and their face, usually. If they live in a house, usually that's what they do. Now, And some people also take showers in the morning. Some people. Now, you can do it whether you're religious or not religious. The difference is, if you're not religious, you just do it like you do it. You take a shower, you wash your face. It means nothing in reality. All you're really doing it for is for hygienic reasons, maybe so people don't make fun of you. That's really what you're doing it for. If you're religious, though, you could actually get... another piece of Olam HaBa for that. Why? When you wake up, you tell Hashem thank you. Then you wash your hands and you do a bracha of netilat yadayim. Then you go into the shower and you wash your right arm and then your left arm, your right leg and then your left leg. And each one of those is a mitzvah. Each one of those is a mitzvah. Meaning, you can go to the shower just like the secular guy did, but you could leave with a billion dollars saved for you in Olam HaBa, or you could leave with nothing.

4:29meaning that HaKadosh Baruch Hu gave us a million and a half different ways that we can connect to Him through minor things in our day-to-day life. Whether it's eating a sandwich like this or eating a sandwich like that, whether it's eating a cake like this or eating a cake like that, whether it's taking a shower or putting on your shoes, whether it's reading this sefer or that sefer, and so on and so forth. The point is, Rabotai, that HaKadosh Baruch Hu gave us many, many opportunities to think about Him, not chas v'shalom, because He's needy, but because we need it in order to survive the Yetzer Hara. So, with that being said, if you have specific questions, please ask. If not, I'll just continue with some other things. Do you have any specific problem? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I'm always faced with a dilemma. What do I do when people constantly want to come for tzedakah? And I know a few of the laws in terms of certain things, but I just want to clarify something. People come to your house for tzedakah? Let's say during prayer. Okay, so the Torah says that when someone comes to you and asks for something, you should always give them something. But there are also rules to this, meaning the Gemara Masechet Berachot says that if a snake starts crawling on your leg in the middle of Amidah, you're not allowed to move.

5:52Not allowed to move. But if a scorpion does, you have to move. Why? It's a life risk. A snake is not always a life risk. Meaning that you can't just stop your Amidah just because someone is collecting tzedakah. So it depends on when it's during your prayer. The second thing is also you have to look at Gemara Masechet Shabbat. Gemara Masechet Shabbat says that even the letters in Judaism are drawn in a certain way to teach us mitzvot. So, for example, the letter Gimel, the third letter of the Hebrew alphabet, if you look at it, it actually looks like a human being walking. That's what it looks like. The letter Dalet looks like someone looking, and really the back of the Dalet is looking at the Gimel. Meaning the Gimel is looking at its back. So the Gemara in Masechet Shabbat asks: Why is the letter this way? Why is the letter that way? And why is it in that order? It says because the Gimel stands for gomel chassadim, someone that chases chesed. He looks for opportunities to give tzedakah. The dalet stands for someone that's dal, someone that's poor. And someone that's poor is very, very embarrassed by the fact that he's poor. So who does he go to? He goes to the people that are looking to give tzedakah. So that's why if you see someone that's in need, you should go to them and give it to them.

7:12So what I do, I can tell you myself, whatever I do. I can't teach you stuff I don't do. I try to do some things. And I teach my kids this. I take envelopes, white envelopes. I put some money in them. I close them. I put them next to my front door. Anytime somebody comes to my house, I don't even want to hear what they say. I don't want them to waste any more time with me because they're getting the money anyway. Why waste my time? Hopefully, they get some more money from somebody else. I give them an envelope. That's it. Trust me, that's what they want. They have an envelope. They don't have to spend a half hour with you convincing you for what? For your $5, for your $50, for your $100, whatever you want to give, give. Put it in an envelope. Thank you very much. Goodbye. And that way, your chesed is not only... a something that is going to help you give but also you know that you already have a preset amount that you want to give. No one's going to convince you otherwise, but you're also saving these people time. If they came because they see your house is a certain size and think that because your house is this big, you should give a certain amount, they may want to stay in your house for five hours. The reality is that if you have the ability, you should give, but you shouldn't necessarily give to just anyone, you know, when it's small money.

8:25You should give to anyone pretty much. When it starts getting to the point where it's hundreds of dollars or thousands of dollars—everything is relative to the person—then you should really do an investigation. And the reason why is because you want to make sure that you have results that are coming out of this money and it's not just being given to people that are not straight. So you should have a set amount. When you have a set envelope and a certain amount, you're already eliminating a lot of these issues. Because... let's say, for example, you give the guy an envelope, and you have X amount of money in it. The guy says, "Yeah, he already knows because the last guy told him that you only put $10 in the envelopes," and he wants to push and... If you want to, you feel like it, you give it two envelopes, but that's it. You don't go above and beyond and start going into your bank account, start logging in, what's your wire account? You don't have to do that. You have something already preset, and you try to end this encounter as much as possible if it's uncomfortable to you. If perhaps you are the gvir of the neighborhood, you're the guy that pretty much the community relies on, you have a lot of money, Hashem blessed you with a lot of money, then you have to give people more than the average person.

9:34But that also means that you have to designate a certain time to give people so they don't waste too much of your time. And you also have to designate a place where you want them to come meet you. And you also have to designate a certain amount. And you have to do an investigation of who you're going to give to. So really, the mitzvah of giving tzedakah and chesed is not one-size-fits-all. If you're an average Joe that makes $500 or $1,000 a week, how much can you possibly give anyway? You're barely surviving yourself. If you're rich, Baruch Hashem, you've got a few million dollars in the bank, you're obligated to give. Why? Why do you think that Hashem gave you the money? What, so you can buy a third house? It's publicized Torah. That's the point. You cannot take the third and the fourth and the fifth house to Olam HaBa. But the mitzvot that you made, that you can take to Olam HaBa. It's the tzedakah that you gave, you have to get to Olam HaBa. But again, if you're going to give, you have to do some calculations of where should I give? Should I give it to some stranger? that just showed up for the first time ever today? Or should I give it to an organization that I know is successful in helping Am Yisrael learn Torah? Like someone that has a track record. Of course, any person that does some thinking will say, okay, I'm going to give it to someone I know. Now, what happens if you give it to someone that's a criminal? He looks like a tzaddik. He acts like a tzaddik. He looks religious. Everything is good, but in reality, he's a thief. Like this one time,

11:02Someone that I know, a relative of mine, said that he used to have a poker room. Poker room, not a kosher business, but in those days before he did Teshuvah, he used to have a poker room. Guys would play cards. And he says, I got really disgusted with the religion because I used to see a lot of religious guys come to my poker room. One guy came to the poker room one time, and after he lost his money, he took out some envelopes of people's donations. that they were giving, and he started, he said, "Cash me in on this one." He started buying chips with other people's donations. And I said, "If that's Judaism, I don't want to be a Jew." I told him, "That's not Judaism, that's a criminal. Criminals come in all walks and sizes. Sometimes they have a jacket on, sometimes they don't have a jacket on. Sometimes they're religious, sometimes they're not religious. So, why does HaKadosh Baruch Hu let such criminals succeed? Because many times when you have, for example, people come into your house, they themselves are good people. But the people that brought them sometimes are criminals because they take 40, 50, 60% of the money. Meaning, don't blame the guy. The guy is coming from Eretz Yisrael, trying to collect money for some cause.

12:13His mom is sick, his father is sick, the kids are homeless, all types of different issues. Now, he doesn't know where in Canada rich people live. He doesn't know in Florida where rich people live. He just came here. So he needs somebody to drive him. The guy that's driving many times is a criminal according to the Torah. Why? He says, listen, I'll take you. I'll be your Uber for the week. But 50% of everything that you collect goes to my pocket. According to the Torah, it's 100% gezel. It's a crime. But they still do it anyway. The guys that collect the money still do it anyway. They don't have a choice. They don't know their way around. Until you build a relationship with people and so on, which could take many years. So they're left with an issue. So what do you do? If somebody comes to your house, ... and you like him and you want to help him, give him a little bit of money, $5, $10, whatever you want to give him now. But if you really like him, after you do some research, like take his information, do some research, and then send it to him directly while he's home. Don't give it to him on the spot over there. Why? Because if you give it to him on the spot over there, the driver is going to take half, many times. Sometimes it's even more. Also, there are many scams that have to do with the internet. People have these campaigns...

13:33Today it's very popular for people to have campaigns to raise money for different causes. Unfortunately, you cannot trust something just because they say that some rabbi says it's good, because sometimes that rabbi doesn't even know who these people are. But they said his name. Like every day you're going to see some Rav Kanievsky tzedakah campaign. Do you really think that Rav Kanievsky is involved in all of these? Does anybody actually think that he's involved in every day there's a new campaign in his name? You have to understand that sometimes people just throw a big rabbi's name into it. If you're going to give small money, give. Don't worry about it. But if you're going to give bigger money, it's going to affect you. That means it's an investment. Don't be a blind fool. I can tell you a real example. It happened not too long ago. A girl got sick. A little girl got sick. The doctor says they need over two million dollars to heal this kid. If you know the names and this rings a bell for you, don't say the name. If I want to go public with it, I'll say the name. Don't worry, you don't have to help me. I'm not saying the name for a reason. I'm still hoping the rabbis do teshuva. Two million dollars? Oh, we're not going to get the medicine for this girl. Why? Insurance is not covering it.

14:53Little girl, they went up to Amcha. They went to the world. They made videos. They started crying on the screen. "Please help us or our daughter is going to die." Hashem Yerachem. Everybody and their mother donated. Over 20,000 people donated in 24 hours. They raised over $2 million, which is enormous. You're amazing, right? What's the bad part? Why am I telling you this story? Shortly later, the insurance company decided, "We're gonna pay for the claim. We're gonna pay the two million dollars." Now, did the rabbis behind it that raised the money give the money back to all the donors? Let's think for a moment. Someone that donated money donated the money for what? To help this little girl, and... But now that you don't need the money because the insurance company is paying for it, you don't need the money. So you don't have to ask me anything. Just give me my money back. That's what the halacha is. What did they do? It's hard to give back $2 million. It's very hard to give back. You try it. So what did they do? They sent everybody an email.

16:06Or they said, they said that everybody had email. Some people got it. Some people didn't get it. They said, listen, the insurance company is going to pay, but this is so much money. We can help somebody else with the money. So, if you want the money, contact us. If you want the money, contact us. We'll worry about it. Well, one person contacted them and didn't get the money. They contacted them again, they didn't get the money. Third time, fourth time, fifth time. I think by the fourth time, maybe they got part of the money, all the money back, which is a few hundred dollars. Meaning, even if you contacted them, if you even got this email... you maybe got the money back. Which means that already you see that the campaigns are not what they always seem to be. Now, I'm not trying to tell you this so you don't donate. I'm trying to tell you these things so if you're going to donate more than a small amount of money, more than a perutah, more than something that's insignificant, then you have to double-check. You have to double-check. If you were going to buy a house, you're going to double-check the neighborhood. Well, every time you give a certain amount of tzedakah, that's like buying a house in Olam Haba. Check the neighborhood. But how come HaKadosh Baruch Hu allows these criminals to do what they do? Because if every guy that was looking for tzedakah was a kosher person, and we did not give to every single person, we would get punished on the spot.

17:28So HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, I'm going to make some people criminals. I'm going to make some people tzaddikim. Why? Because in case you don't give, the Yetzer Hara can't come saying, "Oh, look, he didn't give to a tzaddik." He can say, "Listen, it could be he didn't give because he didn't really believe this guy is a tzaddik. He didn't believe this guy is straight. That's why he didn't give." So when it comes to tzedakah, again, step number one, have some type of a system for yourself. Step number two, investigate a little further before you give larger amounts. Step number three, just in general, generally speaking, be careful. Be careful because you have to look at your tzedakah as an investment. I'll try to make the next answer shorter. how should the internet be used on a regular basis? It's a good question. When they first came out with cars, the public was against it.

18:47And the reason why was because, in those days, the streets were mainly used for people walking. People walked in the streets. So when they came out with cars, people were not used to it. So they said, "What do you have these machines for? These big steel machines are going to kill people. This is dangerous. Have different roads for these machines. It's not here." Eventually, they made it illegal for people to walk in the streets because they needed to make room for the cars. And they made a rule called "jaywalking," which was, in essence, an insult to people who were walking in the middle of the street. But nonetheless, they knew that there is a benefit to these cars. There is a benefit in having them. And, of course, people today cannot manage their lives without having a car. either one that they own, lease, borrow, or rent. Public transportation is something that people rely on a day-to-day basis. Our metro is faster than the subway. I mean, our buses are faster than the subway. Sometimes, yes. Now, the key to understand is that everything you have can be used for good or bad. When cars first came out, they killed a few people.

20:01They killed a few people who didn't want to move to the sidewalk. They killed a few people. Today, they kill a lot more than a few people. Tens of thousands of people. Does that mean that cars are bad? No. It means that if you use them inappropriately, they'll be bad. If you use them appropriately, it's supposed to be good. The same thing with the internet. The internet is no different than electricity in today's world. It's no different than anything else. It's a utility that you need in order to function in the world today. If you're in business, you cannot function in business without the internet. You cannot function, even if you're in a business of horses. If you want to get customers, you need the internet. If you want to have banking, you need the internet. If you want to have employees' payroll, you need the internet. Meaning the internet is needed for this particular business or any other business. Whether it's for shiurei Torah, to publicize to the world, or it's to publicize things that are against Hashem. So that means that it's not a matter of whether the internet should or should not be used. Anyone that says that is silly. It's a ridiculous thing. It's like saying, should you or should you not use electricity? Should you or should you not use water? You need them to survive in the world. If electricity would be shut off for a single day, you would have an economic collapse that may last for a year and a half to two years.

21:22To fix one day of no electricity in the world may take a year and a half to fix. Why? Because the world relies on electricity. The internet is not much less. So it's not a matter of whether you should or shouldn't use it. It's a matter of what I know for sure I need to do on the internet and what I know for sure that I need to avoid. Because that's really what it comes down to. Which roads I forbid myself completely. I'm not allowed to go there because I know I'll get in trouble. And which roads I'm allowed to go on. And which roads have an exception that only when I need to, I go there. And that's in essence what you do. So, for example, when you talk about social media. Social media is responsible for hurting more homes than probably any other tool out there. But at the same token, social media has helped people do teshuvah as well. Social media has helped a lot of people do teshuvah because a lot of people were looking for bad things on the internet, but at the same time, HaKadosh Baruch Hu sent the Torah into the social media world, and many rabbis became much, much bigger and much more popular due to the internet than they would have ever gotten if it wasn't for the internet.

22:38And the reality is, is that they've helped a lot more people change their lives for the better due to the internet. Now, of course, that person was doing bad things on the internet and may continue doing bad things on the internet. But it wasn't because of the rabbi, it was because of himself. Meaning that HaKadosh Baruch Hu, Zeh l'umat zeh bara Elokim, HaKadosh Baruch Hu created bad. created good. You could use the internet for good. You could use the internet for bad. You go to social media. If you're going to go to social media, there are only two things you should really do aside from, obviously, doing business. If you do business on the internet, then that's obvious; we already spoke about it. If you're going to use social media, it's either to learn Torah or to publicize Torah. That's it. Don't look for your friends. Don't make friends. Don't start chatting in chat rooms. That's a complete waste of time. That's a complete waste of time. I think it's the word "comments," if you spell it out in Hebrew letters. is the same numerical value, same gematria as lashon hara. So somebody showed me some drawing that demonstrated it. The point is that all the comments, all of the message boards, all of these groups or whatever, it's all a complete waste of time. People go into battles and debates on the internet for no reason whatsoever because no one wins in the end.

23:54No one wins. It's a complete waste of time. If you're going to use the internet, if you're going to use social media in general, it's either to publicize Torah, which Hashem wants, or to learn Torah. You're watching a shiur right now live. Other than that, you have no business on social media. No, there's nothing for you to do there. Oh no, but you have friends there? Get friends in real life. If you don't like friends in real life, get a dog then. I don't want to tell you. The reality is, your friends should not be on the internet. Get real friends. Get real friends. Why? You need to socialize with real people once in a while. It's very important for people to know that the people on the internet are not your friends. They're just little boxes with a name next to them. You have to understand, you want friends? Go meet friends in real life. The internet is there to learn, to conduct business, and to teach in order to publicize Torah. That's it. There's really not much else that you can do. Everything else is going to lead you to trouble. Everything else is going to lead you to trouble. So a person needs to be very careful. Even if a person is teaching Torah, before they teach on the internet, they should have somebody that they know, who knows what they know, to tell them whether they're ready to do it. Many times people go on the internet to teach Torah,

25:05And in reality, they teach heresy. They teach things that are against the Torah. So a person needs to also have somebody that's his rabbi, who is double-checking who he is, what he is, and what he's saying. If he's sticking to the book, if he's not sticking to the book. Unfortunately, today, everybody can go on the internet and say whatever they want, and there's no police force for the internet. Anyone can say whatever they want. So that means that if you're going to be the viewer, you have to be, in essence, your own police force. You have to double-check everything that everybody is saying. Don't just consume everything that's said on the internet and assume it's real. Double-check what people are saying. Also, you know, use books. Books, Baruch Hashem, they still exist. I know people don't like to use them and they're heavy, but double-check with books. It's very important for people to treat the internet as a utility, as a tool. Because to say that you shouldn't use the internet is ridiculous. It's just completely ridiculous. I know that some big rabbis said, "Oh, the internet destroyed the generation." That's because they have no concept of what the internet does for them too. Many of these rabbis, the world wouldn't even know they existed if it wasn't for the internet. You know, the internet is a tool. Electricity is a tool. Cars are a tool. Refrigeration is a tool. Gas is a tool. These are all tools that HaKadosh Baruch Hu allows us to have in order to function in the world.

26:29And we need to function in an appropriate way. It's up to us to monitor ourselves and say what's good and what's bad. How do we know what's good and what's bad? You learn from a shiur Torah. A shiur Torah is going to tell you, if it's a good quality shiur Torah, what's bad and what's good. And then you compare it to your life, and you say, where am I good, and where am I bad? And you do some self-accounting and fix whatever you have to fix. But to simply assume that a person should not go to a certain place is simply a mistake, because again, your Yetzer Hara is not the same as his Yetzer Hara. His Yetzer Hara is not the same as her Yetzer Hara. So you can't just issue a blanket statement and say, anyone that has a smartphone is going to Gehinom. That's completely ridiculous. And the best part is that people say it in big rabbis' names. Why? Because those big rabbis, they don't check Facebook. They don't check what people say in their names. They're not there to defend themselves. 99% of the stuff that you see that has big rabbis' names in it is fake. How do you know it's real? If it's in a book. Not if it's on the internet. If it's written in a book, then it's real. If the rabbi wrote it in his book, then it's real. But even sometimes you'll find something in a book and it's wrong. Meaning, somebody else wrote it in his book in the name of the rabbi.

27:45But it's wrong. Why? Because you double-check the rabbi's book himself, and he actually wrote the opposite. I found one mistake, for example, somebody wrote, in the name of Rabbi Ovadia, about the issue of whether you're allowed to, in France, they didn't have any rav over there at some point, whether they're allowed to have a key inside the belt. One said yes, another book said no. The point being is, two different books had two different opinions. The one that's in the name of Rabbi Ovadia was the correct one. The one that was about Rabbi Ovadia was incorrect. Meaning, you don't learn halacha from Bayezid. You don't learn halacha from Beit Din. You learn halacha from the halacha books. The point being, Rabotai, is that you have to double-check everything because the onus is on you to know the truth. Hashem wants you to toil for Torah. Don't complain about, "Oh, how could I know? There are so many bad people there, and there are so many mistakes there, and there is so much confusion there." That's on purpose. Hashem wants it to be a confused world. Hashem wants it to be difficult. That's on purpose. He's intentionally making it confused. Why? To make you toil. To make you fight for the emet. Why does He want you to fight for the emet? If I spoon-feed you all of the emet, little by little, one bite at a time, like a little baby, then guess what? It's never going to be your truth. It'll be truth you were fed.

29:09The second somebody else gives you a different truth, you'll fall like nothing. But if you toiled for it, if you fought for that truth, you checked one book and another book, and you called one Rav and another Rav, and eventually you got, okay, this is it. This is the truth. Now it's your truth. Now it's engraved in your neshama, and that's it. No one can move you. That's toiling. That's the difference between being spoon-fed the truth and toiling for the truth. Hashem is intentionally making this a confused world. One of the reasons, and He has infinite reasons, but one of them is in order for us to make the truth our own by toiling for it. Another reason is also to give us a little bit more time to do teshuva because the Satan can't say they know for sure and they're still going against You, Hashem. That's another reason. So, mercy from Hashem. Shalom. not to bug you, yeah, like not to, like, really, you know

30:15Well, you want the yetzer hara to go on vacation. In a sense, yeah. Like, because that's what it says, Torah tavlin, right? Right. Barati yetzer hara, barati Torah tavlin. Okay. So from a perspective that you're always occupied in a way, right? Like, sometimes you might be studying something, but then you need, let's say, you're studying mussar, but you need to study halacha, in a sense, and then you need to sort of go back to it. I'm just saying... As far as avoiding the yetzer hara, there's no metziut like that. There's no reality where you could be alive and you would not have a yetzer hara. Unless you're David HaMelech, who destroyed his yetzer hara. But unless you've become a tzaddik gamur, which I don't believe really exists, or at least not in great numbers in this generation. You have to have a yetzer hara. Now, the yetzer hara that each person has is different. Some people have the yetzer hara for arayot, morality, immorality in essence. Some people have the yetzer hara for money, they're addicted to money. Some people have a yetzer hara for other things, for avodah zarah, different kinds.

31:23Different people have different yetzer hara. Some people have a yetzer hara that likes to go shopping, a little bit of everything. Everybody has a different yetzer hara. To say that you're not going to have a yetzer hara or even get to a level of having no yetzer hara is not a reality. There's no system that would eliminate the yetzer hara. But there is a system, like he was saying, that can help you fight it, meaning give you a defense system. The Gemara says in Masechet Berachot that "Barati yetzer hara, barati Torah tavlin." I created a yetzer hara, I created a Torah that's the potion to beat it. Meaning that the more a person learns Torah and applies that Torah to his life, the more he is suited, the more equipped he becomes. In order to deal with this yetzer hara, now Torah has different parts. There is the Torah that's the Chumash. Knowing where you came from. If you're a Jew, you need to know where you came from. Whether you're a convert or natural-born Jew is irrelevant. Once you became a Jew, whether it's the day of your birth or the day of your conversion, you have a Jewish neshama. That neshama was at Mount Sinai. You need to know what's going on. Why do we believe this Torah at all?

32:33Why do we believe this Torah at all? Is it a fairy tale or is it real? You have to learn the Chumash a couple of times every week. The weekly parasha. Why? You can never be... You can never be a talmid chacham. You can never be anything in the world of Judaism that's of strength and value spiritually if you don't learn the basic Chumash. You have to learn the Chumash. You have to. It doesn't matter if you're a big rabbi or a small rabbi. Rav Kanievsky, who finishes the entire Talmud, Yerushalmi, the Zohar, Midrashim, Chumash, and many, many other things, he also reads the Chumash like everybody else. Every Jew has to do it. So that's one part of limud. The second part of limud is halacha. Learning a few things, a few new rules every day so you know how to be a Jew in day-to-day life. Learn the halachot that pertain to your day-to-day life. If you're a woman, Learn the halachot of Shabbat, learn the halachot of tzniut, learn the halachot of the chagim, of the holidays. These are the halachot that apply to your life. If you're a guy, learn the halachot of Shabbat, holidays, same thing as the woman, plus tefillin, tzitzit, and other things that are relevant to you and not necessarily to her, but also learn the halachot of Talmud Torah. Why? If you don't understand the halachot of Talmud Torah, you're not going to know what's allowed, what's not allowed while you're learning.

33:58And you're going to treat learning Torah the same way that you treated learning in a university. And that's a problem. So a person needs to learn some halacha. Third, you have to beat the Yetzer Hara by learning Mussar. Why? Because Mussar is going to teach you that you actually have a lot more time than you think. You have a lot more strength than you think. You have a lot more ability than you think. Your Yetzer Hara is going to tell you that you don't have time, you don't have strength, and you don't have the ability. Mussar is going to remind you that you do. And one of the ways that Mussar is going to do it is by telling you the consequences if you don't. That's what Mussar is supposed to teach you. It's supposed to teach you the consequences of what happens if you don't learn. And this is very important because human nature functions best when it's scared. That's how it functions in humans. When you drive on the highway, every time there's a sign, you look. Naturally, you look. Why? You don't want to miss it. Why don't you want to miss it? What could it be? It could be a life changer if I'm driving 60, 70, 80, 90 miles per hour, but the highway sign just said maximum speed is 30.

35:18That's a life changer. Why? That's the difference between me killing somebody or not killing somebody, me losing my license or not losing my license, me getting a fine or not getting a fine. Now, if I get a letter, usually you get a letter, immediately you open it. You're not going to throw it somewhere. You're going to open it. Why? You want to know who sent you a letter. If the letter is from some marketing company trying to sell you a new phone... Then you throw it in the garbage, but you verify it's from them. But if it's from your phone company, it says, "Listen, we haven't received payment. Your credit card is not going through. Unless we get payment within the next 24 hours, we're canceling your line, you're losing your phone number." That's the message I don't want to lose. That's the message I need to know. If the message is from the Internal Revenue Service, or the FBI, or the CIA, or some type of form of government, they're telling you, "Show up to this court on this date at this time." You need to know that. That's a scary message. The point being is that humans function best based on fear. HaKadosh Baruch Hu knows that. And that's why Yirat Shamayim, fear of the Almighty, fear of Hashem, is a mitzvah from the Torah that you're obligated to do. It's not a suggestion. And as a matter of fact, I was reading before this, Rabbeinu Yonah has a lot to say about this. In the third gate, the third gate of Shaarei Teshuva, in section 11, he says...

36:39Now we will discuss the punishments due to neglecting a positive commandment. As our sages said in the Gemara Masechet Ketubot, page 86a, if the beit din exhorts a person to fulfill a mitzvah of sukkah or lulav, The beit din tells the guy, you have to build a sukkah. Stop with the excuses. You have to have a lulav this year. Stop with the excuses. I can't afford it. I can't afford it enough. Get a lulav. Get yourself a sukkah already. The beit din tells him. Meaning, he didn't listen to the rabbi. He didn't listen to his wife. He didn't listen to anybody. But the beit din itself shows up at this guy's house and says, you have to build a sukkah. And he refuses to comply. What's the halacha? He doesn't want to do it. No, rabbi. Go fly a kite. At the time of the Sanhedrin, the administrator lashes until he dies. This is one of the worst forms of death. For what? For not building a sukkah.

37:44Now, what does that mean to you? Right now, no one's going to get lashed. It's not even Sukkot. And I think you guys are patur from Sukkot if you had this freezing cold. Who knows? But the reality is, what does that really mean to us? What did we learn from Rabbeinu Yonah from 800-plus years ago about this? Why did he even mention this to us? This shows us how critical a few things are. Number one, how important the mitzvah of Sukkah is. Because HaKadosh Baruch Hu doesn't tell us to kill people for no reason. We're not murderers. We're not Nazis. He doesn't give a death penalty for nothing. So that already shows that if we're allowed a death penalty for not building a sukkah, not having a lulav, already this is on the up and up. This is like Shabbat. This is like chelev. This is like niddah. This is a big deal. Second of all, it also tells us how horrible it is to ignore the rabbis. to ignore people that are Talmidei Chachamim, who are trying to teach people the truth. Because in essence, they're doing your job. By ignoring them, in essence, you're ignoring Hashem. Hashem sent you a lifeboat, Hashem sent you a helicopter, Hashem sent you all types of things to save you, and you're ignoring them. He says you're giving up your life.

38:59This is a small, little, tiny paragraph of Musar that teaches us the value of listening to the rabbi, the value of a mitzvah that we didn't really think was so important. Many people don't build a sukkah because they don't think it's such a big deal. "I'll be at my friend's sukkah. I'll be in my friend's sukkah. I'll borrow my friend's lulav." People make all types of excuses for why they're not able to fulfill the mitzvot because they don't know the consequences of them. So Mussar is one of the places where a person needs to learn the consequence of simply ignoring the message from Heaven. The other thing is that Mussar will teach a person why they need to improve themselves, not even necessarily because of the punishment, but rather because of the benefits that it will have for their relationship with their spouse, with their children, and with the world in general. No one likes an angry person. No one likes an arrogant person. So much so that the Gemara says, an arrogant person, even his own family hates him. Now, the reality is when a person sees that HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, "I hate arrogant people." HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, "Anyone that's arrogant, I hate him. He's disgusting to me."

40:24automatically, the arrogant person is going to be touched by this. Why? I don't want to be disgusting to Hashem. I don't want to be hated by Hashem. Meaning, automatically, even though I don't know how to change that yet, because it will take me some learning, some teaching, a lot of effort to change arrogance since it's already instilled in a person, but now that I know there's a consequence for it, I have a desire to change. That's in essence what Mussar is supposed to give us: the desire to change. So, you need to learn the Chumash, where you came from, why you're here, where's the source for everything. You need to learn Halacha, you need to learn Mussar, but also at some point, you have to start learning Gemara for men. Why do you have to learn Gemara? You have to learn how to think like a Jew. Thinking like a Jew is not like thinking like a non-Jew. They're two different things. When a non-Jew looks at something, he's looking for a solution. When a Jew thinks of something, he thinks about all the problems. That's how we think. Why? If I'm looking for a solution, that narrows my focus to just, how do I solve this problem? There's a hole in the wall, there's water coming out, how do I shut it off?

41:45When you're thinking like a Jew, you're thinking about all the problems. Meaning, there's a hole in the wall, there's water coming out. I not only have to fix the issue that there's a hole in the wall, but I also have to uncover how to make sure this doesn't happen again. How do I make sure that the actual seal that I put doesn't break itself? How do I make sure that no one gets hurt? You think about things from five different angles to make sure that you're not only creating a solution, but you're also creating some type of environment for other people not to repeat the same mistake. You're learning how to think. That's how a Jew is supposed to think. The Gemara teaches you how to think. It's not going to teach you Halacha. You don't get Halacha from the Gemara; you get it from the Shulchan Aruch. You get it from different Poskim that tell you, bottom line, what's what, what's yes, what's no. But the Gemara teaches you how they get to that, how they arrive at that final law. creating some type of environment for other people not to repeat the same mistake. You're learning how to think. That's how a Jew is supposed to think. The Gemara teaches you how to think. It's not going to teach you Halacha. You don't get Halacha from the Gemara; you get it from the Shulchan Aruch. You get it from different Poskim that tell you, bottom line, what's what, what's yes, what's no. But the Gemara teaches you how they get to that, how they arrive at that final law. That you need to learn, especially when you are developing yourself into something beyond just the basic level. When you just started, you want to start getting more advanced; you want to develop your brain; you want to be really special. You have to learn more, but again, this too comes in time. It's not day one usually for most people because, on day one, most people are not even sure why they believe in God and...

43:08So you first have to establish a good foundation that you understand for sure that there is no reality without God. That's rule number one. Two, that Judaism for sure is divine. Once you've established these basics, then you start working on some of the other things. But again, as far as the Yetzer Hara, there is no way to eliminate it. It's just a way to have proper tools to defend yourself. Anything else? Yes, Chaviv. How would you deal if a family member brings home a non-Jew in a relationship? Do you ignore the person? Do you accept them? Do you fight, try to persuade the person to leave them? What's the position? I'm assuming the example is, let's say for example there's a parent and their son or daughter brings home a non-Jew.

44:10girlfriend or boyfriend or something that they say, "I love this person." That's what you're asking me. How does the parent deal with this person? That's in essence what the question is. So this is a very difficult issue. And usually, this issue did not start with this relationship. And the reason why is because this issue started already when the kid was growing up. When the kid was growing up, that kid was, in essence, taught or led to believe that there's not much of a difference between them and the goyim. Whether they learned that from their parents, or they learned that in school, or they learned it from both, the reality is they learned it. Or else they would have never gotten themselves in this situation, at least in the vast majority of cases. It doesn't usually. Usually, the only time a Jew entertains a relationship with a non-Jew is because they don't really see much of a difference between each other. They didn't arrive at this idea by themselves. They learned that somewhere. So that means that automatically the parent needs to know you have no right to be critical to the extent of judging this person as if he's the worst person in the world on day one. It's partly your fault. It's partly your fault that he's this way. So don't be so judgmental on him and not judgmental on yourself. He made that decision to bring a non-Jew to the house because you put him in a certain school. So help him and don't criticize him. Don't criticize him. Those statements of "if you do it, we're going to ban you, we're not going to talk to you anymore" are not going to help anybody. He'll do it dafka to make you upset, even if he doesn't like her anymore. So the threats don't usually work.

45:29So don't be so judgmental of him and not judgmental of yourself. He made that decision to bring a non-Jew to the house because you put him in a certain school. So help him and don't criticize him. Don't criticize him. Those statements of "if you do it, we're going to ban you, we're not going to talk to you anymore" are not going to help anybody. He'll do it dafka to make you upset, even if he doesn't like her anymore. So the threats don't usually work. On the other hand, you have to uncover the problem. What's the root of the problem? It's not just the relationship. It's the core belief of the person. You have to find out what this son or daughter believes. Do they believe in God or not? Is this God Jewish or not? Is there anything else? What's the confusion? What's the foundation of it? And then you have to give it to the appropriate rabbi to deal with. Because not every rabbi has the same tools. But in essence, the main thing is to know that you can never be accepting of it. You can't say, "Oh no, you know what, bring her over for Shabbat, we'll make her Jewish." That you can never do. That doesn't help. Making it seem as if everything is okay is also wrong.

46:45But to say, listen, as long as you have her, don't ever talk to us again, that's not going to help you. You're going to end up losing a son or a daughter. So you have to let people know, this is wrong. This is wrong. But I know you're not going to leave her anyway. I know you're not going to leave him. But let's find out why it's wrong. Let's find out why it's wrong. You try to find out where the real, real, real problem is. Where's the real problem? Where's the source of the problem? Is it in his belief? Because if he's like I used to be, people told me, "Listen, it's not right for you to marry a non-Jew." I said, "Why not? Find me a Jewish girl that's as good to me as her. Go find me one. You're not gonna find one." So, what do you say? How come you say, "No, don't you want Jewish kids?" I'm not religious. I'm not keeping anything. So you think, why would I care if somebody else keeps it? I'm not religious. Meaning, the problem wasn't with the girl. The problem was with me. I can't tell somebody to keep something I'm not keeping. Don't try to make me religious after I made a non-religious step. Meaning, the problem already existed from before.

47:57Once I've discovered the truth myself, I knew that I couldn't continue with my reality, my current situation. So I had to do something about it. It wasn't because people told me, "Oh, you shouldn't marry a non-Jew." No, it had to do with the fact that now I know that Judaism is real, the Torah is real. And the Torah forbids Jews and non-Jews to marry each other. Okay, so I have to figure out a solution to this. Even though it hurts emotionally, it hurts this way, it hurts that way, it doesn't make a difference. Once you know something is true, once you know there are consequences for violating that truth, then you have to address the issue. So the key is to not be judgmental but, at the same time, not be accepting to the point where this non-Jew feels like your family, because that's in essence enabling them to continue. So what do you do? You try to have, whether it's a son or a daughter, continue coming over, but without this friend, without this person. Don't try to make them part of the family. Don't try to convert them yourself. Try to have a professional help them.

49:05Try to have a professional who knows what they're doing, knows how to deal with these people, to uncover what's the root of the problem. First, with your own son or daughter. And second, with the non-Jewish friend. After that, to see if this non-Jew is really not Jewish to the extent where they're the opposite of us, they're anti, or they're simply ignorant just like your son was. Which really means that they have a lot more in common than you can imagine. If the non-Jew is ignorant, and the Jew is ignorant, there's not much difference between them. They're both keves (sheep). There's not much difference. There's really not much difference. They eat. He eats. It's the same thing. They believe in whatever they want. He believes in whatever he wants. It's the same thing. You cannot say that they're actually different. They're the same. And according to the Torah, they're really not different. Why? A Jew that violates Shabbat, according to the Torah, is considered an idol worshiper. So, in essence, technically, the non-Jew is actually in a better condition than the Jew that violates Shabbat. So... You have to find out what the non-Jew believes. If the non-Jew believes, like one of these girls that came to one of our shiurim, actually from Canada one time, and she told me that she is with a non-Jewish person for many years, but she realized that this is not the greatest relationship in the world because it's not going to end well because of the two differences of religion and so on. Now...

50:31The reality is that until she started looking at the consequences, it was never even part of her mind to end this relationship. We generally don't change unless we calculate the consequences. So we have to find out where this other person stands. She understood that this person, not only is he not Jewish, but he is a very, very strong believer in Muhammad. Which means that there is a 0.000% chance of you ever converting this person. In fact, he hates the fact that she's Jewish. He hates it. Meaning, there's a 0% chance of the kids being Jewish in any way, shape, or form. Once she understood that this is bad and getting worse, it became easier to run away. Doesn't mean that it wasn't hard for her emotionally. Doesn't mean that it wasn't hard for her in general. But nonetheless, it became easier. Why? Because she started calculating the outcome of her actions. If she would have found out something different, like this person is simply ignorant about everything, he doesn't care, he believes in God and that's it.

51:47Then that means he's like putty. You can make whatever you want to make out of him. This guy believes in God, but nothing else? Okay. Bring him on. Let's try to teach him some Judaism. Let's see if he adapts to it. Let's see if he likes it. If he likes it, we have 613 mitzvot in the Torah. We have 36 places in the Torah that mention converts. But that also means you have to be knowledgeable yourself on how to deal with these people. If you don't know, you have to send them to a professional. But again, It's usually not a problem that started with that relationship. It's usually something that started well, well before. And that's, I'm only mentioning it a few times because that automatically removes the judgmental part of ourselves from looking at people that are intermarried as criminals. They have crimes, we have crimes. Everybody's a criminal in some form or another. The key is to try to help each other become more righteous and not necessarily judge each other for our crimes, but try to find a way that I can help other people. Even when you're trying to rebuke people, rebuke them for the sense of helping them, not rebuking them for the sense of telling them, "I told you so." "I told you so" doesn't help anybody. Rebuke them to help them, you will. They'll be more accepting of it when you help them that way. Next, is it ever too late to start keeping Shabbat or become religious in your life?

53:06Is it ever too late to start keeping Shabbat or become religious? Yes, once a person dies. Once a person dies, for sure it's too late. Before that, Baruch Hashem, how do I know? Rabbi Yisrael Salanter was one of the people that was unique in his generation and every other generation before or after him. He was a special human being who would constantly do accounting of himself—what he was good at, what he was bad at, what he failed at, and what he succeeded at. One time he saw, he noticed that despite the fact that he checked for chametz when he was supposed to, after Pesach started, he noticed that he forgot to check for chametz inside a box that he usually keeps salt in. And he made a mistake. He didn't check this tiny little box. He did teshuva for 15 years for that mistake that none of us would even think it's a mistake. even think it's a mistake. That's how precise he was about protecting his own neshama. So one time, it was night, and he was walking in the market on the way to his house, and he sees there's a light on. Why is it light? Everybody else left, the market's empty, but there's a light on. So he goes inside and he sees it's the watchmaker. He says, "No, Mr. Watchmaker, enough's enough. You don't have to be a slave to your job."

54:35Enough. Everybody else left. And the watchmaker says, "Rabbi, as long as the candle is still on, there's more work to be done." Rabbi Yisrael Salanter took what this watchmaker said to heart and he started crying. And he started repeating this to himself over and over again for the rest of his life. He ran to the Beit Midrash. People were learning Torah. Repeating it, he said, "Rabbi, what are you talking about?" He said, "I learned big Mussar today. As long as the light is still on, there's still work to do. As long as your neshama is still alive, there's still work to do. There's a reason why you're still alive in this world." Because HaKadosh Baruch Hu is telling you, you still have more teshuva to do. You still have more Torah to learn. You still have more correcting to do. You still have more good to do. That's why you're alive. The second there's no more good that you can produce in the world, you're not going to be in the world. So, if a person is alive, that is a clear message from HaKadosh Baruch Hu, you still have more work to do. Don't look for retirement.

55:49When Yaakov Avinu asked HaKadosh Baruch Hu, "When am I going to have easy times?" HaKadosh Baruch Hu gave him what punishment? His favorite son was taken from him for over 20 years. Yaakov, what do you want? Heaven in this world and the next world? He said to him, Don't look for retirement. A person came to this world to toil, to work. You're alive? Do teshuva. Fix yourself. Keep Shabbat. Keep this, keep this. Learn. Learn more things. The more you learn, the more you'll learn about things you're not doing yet. Or you're not doing correctly. And the reality is, an average person that hasn't gone over Hilchot Shabbat at least three times for sure is violating Shabbat even if it's a mitzvah that he thinks he's perfected. He says, "Rabbi, I don't violate it. I sleep all day." Okay, you may not be violating, but it's not exactly like you're actually keeping Shabbat like you're supposed to. You're not supposed to be sleeping all day; you're supposed to be learning all day, not sleeping all day. So the point is that there's so much that we need to do that HaKadosh Baruch Hu gave us an endless Torah, an endless amount of lessons on how we can perfect ourselves, and in essence, also a constant message that we have more to do by simply keeping us alive. So as long as a person is alive, he can start keeping Torah and mitzvot now. I actually met an anomaly in this generation. In the old generation, it used to exist that

57:15But many times people ask me about the concept of tinok shenishba, which is a "captured baby" in the Torah language. In the old days, the goyim used to steal or kidnap Jewish babies and raise them as their own. So this kid, this Jewish kid, would think that he's Christian, not knowing that he's a Jew. So the Chachamim ask in the Gemara, is this Jew that thinks he's a Christian judged the same way? And they debate back and forth, no, yes, no, no, and so on. So a few Chachamim, like the Chazon Ish and the Lubavitcher Rebbe, said maybe the secular people of today are also like these captured babies, and the vast majority, overwhelming majority, The Chachamim disagree with him, saying no, no, someone who knows that he's a Jew and knows that there are holidays and knows that there is Shabbat and chooses otherwise is not a captured baby, not a captured baby. So I talk about this issue constantly because even if you want to see that captured baby, once you know that they don't know, tell them. So that's not being captured, meaning if you saw a baby that's captured, it's in a cage and...

58:25that some goy has him in a cage, and you have an opportunity to free this baby, take the baby. Why are you keeping him captured? Say, haha, you're captured. What's the matter with you? Take the key, open the thing, take him home with you. Save the kid. So, even if he is, whether he's captured or not, is irrelevant. Save him. Now, I speak about this often because this is an excuse that some organizations use in order to keep the generation ignorant on purpose. This is a tool from the Satan himself to keep Jewish people ignorant. And the reason why is because if you are ignorant and you don't know the rules of Shabbat, you don't know the rules of Taharat HaMishpacha, you don't know the rules of Gemara, you don't know the rules of pretty much anything. Now, if you want a connection to G-d, you do realize, because you have a brain, that you have to do something for that. So what do these criminals, who look religious, tell you? They tell you, listen, all you have to do is give tzedakah.

59:36Give tzedakah, and that's your connection to God. As long as you give tzedakah, God loves you. Why? Because we're going to use your tzedakah to build yeshivot and to make people religious. We're going to do good things. They never ever tell you that you need to be religious also, by the way. They say, no, you give this tzedakah, and we're going to use this money to build the house of God. We are starting a campaign. There's a campaign that started in Eretz Yisrael, a new scam. We're starting a campaign. What? To build the third Bet HaMikdash. There's at least three campaigns right now to build a third Beit HaMikdash. Show me one pasuk in the Torah that says we're supposed to raise money to build a third Beit HaMikdash. This is a complete scandal. But people are so ignorant, they donate in the millions. They donate in the millions for this. Wow, Beit HaMikdash, I'm going to bring Mashiach with my own money. Who doesn't want to do it? So, these criminals will keep people ignorant on purpose and keep them tinokot she'nishbu on purpose because as long as you don't know what you're talking about, they can continue convincing you to give money easily. Why? They're your connection to God.

1:00:48You don't have any other way. You don't learn Torah. They learn Torah for you. You don't do mitzvot. They do mitzvot for you. You don't keep Shabbat. They keep Shabbat. In essence, they became your representative for God, which is, by the way, a form of idolatry. So now, they do this because this is a business, even though they look more religious than me. The criminals look more religious than me. But I promise you, if a religious person who's trying to help you only focuses on money, You have to already have a warning sign in your mind. I'm not saying he's automatically criminal, but there's already a warning sign. Why? Because the responsibility of every Jew, especially if he's religious, is to make other Jewish people religious. All Jews are responsible for each other. If I know that you are violating the Torah, I am responsible to help you at least know that what you're doing is not good.

1:01:48But sometimes people simply don't know, and they really are captured babies. And I ended up meeting one recently. She was 79 years old. She still is 79 years old. She only found out she's Jewish four months ago, three months ago. Now, how could such a thing be? Maybe she's not Jewish. No, it's that she was so ignorant of the law, she didn't know it applied to her. Why? She grew up in a house that was completely Reform. Her mom and dad didn't practice anything. Nothing, to the extent that she didn't know much about it. But 20 years ago, her mom told her, "Yeah, you know, by the way, you know that I come from Judea, I'm a Jew." She goes, "Oh, okay, so you're a Jew, fine." She didn't know that because her mom is a Jew, she's a Jew. She didn't connect the dots. She figured her mom was a Jew, maybe when she was younger because she practiced it. But then she stopped practicing, so therefore she stopped being a Jew, and therefore, "I'm not a Jew," she says. That's the calculation that the person made. She didn't know that Judaism is something that you inherit from your parents, your mom specifically.

1:03:00or you can convert into. No, no, she figured that if you don't practice, like in Christianity, you don't practice, you don't play. So now, for 20 years, she heard that her mom was Jewish, but she had no idea this applied to her. How did she find this out? She was one time watching a shiur, and she heard Rabbi Tovia Singer say that Judaism is something that you could convert into, or if your mom is a Jew, you are by default a Jew. And This was the shock of her life. Why? She's 79 years old. She's not 17 years old. She has to rewire her entire brain. Because until now she believed in God. She just didn't think He wanted anything from her other than to be a nice person. Now she calls me, crying hysterically, the poor woman. She goes, what do I do? What does God want from me? I said, pray. She goes, how do you pray? I said, "Read." She goes, "What do you read? What do I read? Do I read the same books that I've been reading? What do I read? What do I pray?" She doesn't know anything. That's a real tinok shenishba. But how many of those really exist in the world? Very few. Most Jews know that they're Jews. Sometimes there are non-Jews that think they're Jews and they find out otherwise. Point being, most people know where they stand. It's very rare for a person not to know at all. Not even have a clue.

1:04:22Most people, at the very least, have some type of doubt. Maybe yes, maybe no. People are not walking 50, 60, 70 years blind, generally speaking. But that also shows how kind Hashem is. Hashem is never going to let a person live an entire life not knowing the truth and arrive at the gates of Shamayim clueless about what he was or wasn't. He'll give you the opportunity to know time and time again. So by the time you arrive at the Beit Din of Shamayim, you've already made the choice of which side you want to be on. So if He made this 79-year-old woman realize that she's a Jew at 79 years old, needless to say, He did the same thing for us many times. And each time, it's a strike against us if we don't listen to it. Each time, it's a strike against us if we ignore it. So the next message becomes stronger. But Baruch Hashem, He keeps giving us the message so we don't go off too far. So the key is to know that a person that is brought into a situation where conversion is an interest of theirs, there's even a reason for that. There's something happening in Heaven that Hashem is specifically choosing this person to know that Judaism is an option.

1:05:46Meaning they've done something or their grandparents did something at some point that they deserve to find out that Judaism is another option and it's not just their religions because there are two billion Christians in the world. Not all of them get the opportunity to learn about Judaism. Many of them stay robots for their whole life. Same thing with the Muslims. So, if someone was introduced to Judaism for one reason or another, don't just ignore it. There's a reason for it also. But needless to say, it's important for us to know that Hashem wants us to do teshuva, Hashem wants us to get closer to Him. But that also means that we have to stop fooling ourselves and thinking that it's too late, it's too hard, it's too this, it's too that. You're alive, you can do it. Next question. Yes, in the back. For 20 years,

1:06:59Is the neighbor Jewish or not Jewish? Very Jewish. Externally, yes. And is he doing things that are hurting the public or just talking about his own issues that he has? Like, is this something that is essentially publicizing other people's problems or only his own problems? like, is he damaging other people, or is he only damaging himself by acting this way? Other people, okay. So, generally speaking... Okay, so generally speaking... Okay. So people like that, according to the Torah, are completely wicked. As far as the rules of the Torah, really such a person needs to be brought to a beit din, where they could at least warn him that if he continues behaving this way, he will be put in cherem, where it would be forbidden for him to attend the local lectures, the local synagogues,

1:08:21forbidden to do business with him, forbidden for anyone to associate with him, as if he's completely banned. That's in essence what the beit din would do by trying to talk to him. If he rejects the beit din's invitation, then by default he loses. That's generally what a strong community would do. Is this going to actually happen in reality? A very small chance. And the reason why is because, like you said, most people don't want problems, don't want to be bothered. They themselves are vulnerable. They themselves are weak. And no one wants to be the front-line person that's going to actually go to the Beit Din and say, I want to bring such and such to the Beit Din. No one wants to be that person because everybody wants their own convenient life. So if you do, you should go to the Beit Din and say, I want to invite this person to the Beit Din. He is doing... XYZ crimes, publicizing all of these different things. You could list a bunch of different examples of different damages that he's either caused you or other people. And you bring this to the Beit Din and you ask them, I want to bring this person to the Beit Din to be forced to stop it or put in cherem.

1:09:37even to compensate the people that he's hurt, and at least try to make your own effort to force the Beit Din to do something about it. Where even if they don't necessarily invite him to the Beit Din, surely they're going to send someone to speak to him and to tell him to quiet down a little bit. People are complaining. So, a person needs to do something like that. Will it happen? Will they do it? It all depends on a Beit Din. It all depends on who's running it. Sometimes you have Batei Din that are full of really good people who are looking to help the community, looking to publicize Torah, looking to help the community. Stay strict according to the Torah. But sometimes you have a Beit Din where the head of the Beit Din is like the guy they have in London who was very interested in people's wives. So he was caught with one of them. This was the head of the Beit Din in London. I report this stuff to people because the reality is you have to know. Just because a certain person has a certain appearance doesn't mean anything. Doesn't mean anything. You have to do your role. Double-check everything.

1:10:47because these types of people that are criminals in the name of God are not in the name of God. They're in the name of themselves. But they're the ones that cause people to run away from Judaism. When you hear that a big dayan from London that was the keynote speaker for some major event, for Sinai Diba, or I saw you at Mount Sinai, some big event, yearly event. He was the keynote speaker two years ago. He had an affair with one of the wives of one of the heads of the kehillah. I mean, how could such a thing happen? It wasn't a one-time thing. It was over a period of time. How could this be? How could it be a dayan? How could this? How could that? The point is you have to understand, something rotten happened a long time ago. People ignored it and ignored more and ignored more and ignored more. This guy eventually got to the point where he felt like he's the king and can do whatever he wants. Why? Because no one was bringing anything real to him. So, in essence, this freedom that he gave himself was also the doing of the kehillah itself.

1:11:54Because no one was questioning anything. No one was pushing anything. So it's our job to not necessarily give problems for the Dayanim, chas v'shalom, but it's our job to make sure that everything is where it's supposed to be. If we make sure that we are where we're supposed to be, We're supportive both spiritually, financially, and socially, of the community, of the Beit Knesset, of the Beit Midrash, of the Yeshivot. We don't go to the Rabbanim and start complaining to them because they yelled at our kids. We go to the Rabbanim and say, thank you for yelling at my kid. Why? If I would have yelled at him enough, you wouldn't have to yell at him. Parents go to rabbis and yell at the rabbis, "Oh, how come you told my son about Gehinom?" Well, the reality is, if you had taught him, if you as a parent would have taught the kid about Gehinom, the rabbi wouldn't have to teach him. Since you didn't, the rabbi has to do it. "Oh, how come you yelled at my kid?" If you would have yelled at your kid and given him good chinuch, the rabbi wouldn't have to do it. But what happens? People go to the rabbis, they complain to the rabbis, they threaten to go to the board and fire the rabbis. So the rabbis have become little pussycats. They're all scared of their own shadow. They're scared to teach the kids any emet. So all of the rabbis are little, you know, little things right now. And they tell the kids, "Oh, you get a lollipop." For what? "I don't know, for coming to school."

1:13:15They started giving participation awards. Why do I get this trophy? I don't know, you participated. Yeah, but I was in last place. Yeah, but you participated. That's enough of an award. This is a loser mentality that's being instilled into society. But it's our fault. Why? We're not involved enough. We're not supportive enough. And worse, we fight it. We fight it anytime somebody tries to make a change. Just look at how many problems I or Rav Mizrachi deal with. Instead of every single rabbi in the world praising our name like they should in reality, what do they do? Many of them fight us. Why? Oh, you're scaring people away. Scare people away. You know how many ba'alei teshuva that we make in one week? The amount of people that you make teshuva in your 20 years, I do in a week. Not because I'm something special. You could do the same thing. You choose not to. Okay, you don't want to say the truth to people? Okay, don't get in the way though. So the point is that when we're not supportive socially, financially, mentally, spiritually, then, in essence, we are creating an environment where we're not even able to use the rules of the Torah. So now, when you have a Beit Din, you're supposed to use that Beit Din more than just chas v'shalom, get.

1:14:35You're supposed to also use it for a time when there's an issue between two people in business, two people as neighbors. Go to the Beit Din. Tell them, "I have a problem with such and such neighbor. He's creating, she's creating major issues. Please bring us a Torah solution. Help us bring the Torah to life." When we do that, we're, in essence, giving the Dayanim more significance, showing that they can actually do something with their role and not just sit there. collecting fees monthly from different kehillot for being oversight. So again, it's our responsibility, though. We can't just rely only on the rabbis. We have to be supportive of all this. This is how all of business and the world works. So it's very important to go to the rabbis, try to ask them, and you'll see that the rabbis will do certain things. Sometimes the rabbis fail. Sometimes the rabbis fail because they're like this guy from London. They're not really interested in helping people; they're interested in helping themselves. But you cannot fail. Meaning, don't give up. Go to a different Dayan. Go to a different Beit Din. Go to a different rabbi. Go and get to the bottom of the issue. Don't just give up because you didn't get the ideal solution right away. Just like you would try searching more and more for treasure.

1:16:02Search more and more for the truth. Search more and more for Torah to be instituted into the world. And the more you do it, I believe the more you'll succeed. Because Hashem loves those that fear Him. Meaning, those that follow the Torah, those that believe the Torah is very much real and relevant today as it was 3,000 years ago. Hashem will make it real in their life. But that means we'll require effort. Anything? Yes? Yes? To make unity? Yeah. We spoke about it last night. There are a couple of ways to make unity. One way is for all of us to do teshuva and understand the truth, and therefore we're all going to read from the same Torah, which means that it doesn't matter whether your custom is to eat gefilte fish and my custom is to eat chrayim.

1:17:20or your custom is to eat spicy food, and my custom is to eat food that you may not consider edible, that's not going to matter to me. Whether you eat milk and fish together, and I don't, that's not going to matter to me. What's going to matter to me is who is living the Torah. Who is following the Torah. That's solution number one. If all of us do teshuva, then we will unite just like Am Yisrael united at the time of Har Sinai. That is the best solution. We all do teshuva; we're all chasing the truth together. Other option, Holocaust number two. Those are the options. Right. Those are the two options that are available. If Am Yisrael does not do teshuva, the Gemara, Masechet Sanhedrin, says another Holocaust is coming, but much worse than the first one. Much worse than anything we've ever seen. And the reality is that we're seeing a lot of things happen today because of the fundamental flaws within our system. I'll give you a few examples. Today you have a systematic failure in the limud, both in the religious and the non-religious. It's not just the religious; it's not just the non-religious. If you go to the non-religious world, they tell you that you came from a monkey. But if you're dying, pray to God.

1:18:48You came from a monkey, but if you're dying, pray to God. You already have a confusion here. Maybe I should pray to my grandfather monkey. Why God? Where does God come from? People don't understand why and who and what. A very, very confusing situation. But yet, parents that know this, because they went to public school, still insist on sending their kids to public school. Knowing that the education is flawed. Knowing that the education is full of lies. They still send their kids to public school. Why? They don't want to pay for yeshiva. They don't want to pay for yeshiva. It's too expensive. It's too this, it's too that. Listen, do you understand that your kid is going to grow up thinking he came from a monkey? Like, is that not bad enough? Do you realize that there is a very high chance that the school he goes to may get shot up because, in America, one school per week is getting shot up? Like, do you understand the risks associated with sending your kid just for the sake of saving a few hundred dollars? Oh, I can't afford it. Well, plenty of other people can afford it. Ask them for help. Why? Because your kid's life is on the line. So people don't understand the consequence of sending their kids to inappropriate schools. So sometimes they say, no, no, I'm not sending him to a completely public school. I'm going to send him to a Jewish school.

1:20:07What's a Jewish school? It's Jewish kids that attend public school. That's really what it is. Because one or two of the classes teach them a little bit about Judaism. What does that actually create? Heretics. Generally speaking, no tzaddikim come out of schools like this. Very rarely do they actually come out tzaddikim. They may become tzaddikim later on in their life, but they don't graduate tzaddikim. Why? All you did is confuse them for eight years straight. Wait, am I allowed to be with a girl? Not allowed to be with a girl without marriage. Wait, am I allowed to eat this? Not allowed. They're not even sure what's allowed, and what's not. Why? Because, in essence, on one end, you're saying nothing's allowed. On the other end, you're allowing everything in front of them. So, in essence, all you're doing is confusing the kid. You're saying no, but you're doing yes. The kid comes out. He's 15, 16, 17 years old. He has no idea what's real Judaism because, to him, it used to be not allowed, but now it's allowed. it used to be not good. At the time of Moshe Rabbeinu, you weren't allowed to drive on Shabbat. But why? They didn't have cars. That's his logic of a 15-year-old. He says it used to be not allowed, but now it's allowed. Why? Because no one said anything when I did it. So they send him to these fake Jewish schools and create atheists, create confused Jewish people. Next, you have the yeshiva system.

1:21:28Unfortunately, not all yeshivas are built the same, but nonetheless, many of them, and every one of them that I know of, has a common element. They do not teach people the basic fundamentals of Judaism, which means the 13 ikarim, the 13 principles of faith. Predominantly, reward and punishment. Many talmidei yeshiva come to me, telling me they've never heard the consequences of their actions. even though they've gone to yeshiva for 15, 20 years, they've never heard that there's punishment. They heard it exists but don't really know the details, don't think it's relevant to them. Further, there are certain sins in the Torah, like g'mar brit, the Shulchan Aruch says this is the biggest sin in the Torah. The Zohar HaKadosh says this is the tikkun of the generation before Mashiach. And my wife, my wife, she's a talmida chachama, my wife says that's why Corona came. The coronavirus, she says, that's waking. Why? Because we have 200,000 CDs in China right now waiting to come out because these CDs are going to bleed. How to fix the bleed? Corona is the medical term for the bleed. That's my wife. Point being, aside from making you smile, is also to teach you that this is a big deal. Not knowing about something that's considered the biggest sin in the Torah is a big deal.

1:22:54Why? You're 18, 19, 20, 25 years old. You thought you were religious. You wake up. I'm making the biggest sin in the Torah every single day. Hashem yerachem. The guy's praying to Hashem. Hashem rejects his prayer. He doesn't know why. Because he never learned this. So now you have yourself a situation where even if you send your kid to yeshiva, you cannot guarantee, unless you check yourself what is in the curriculum, you cannot guarantee your kid is going to graduate with adequate knowledge as a Jew. Worse yet, many schools do not check who the teachers are carefully enough. Because when it comes to secular studies, they simply allow anyone who knows the material and is willing to work for the lowest amount of income. That's how it works. So you could teach history. How much are you going to charge us? $50,000 a year. Expensive. How much are you going to charge for history? $40,000. Oh, good. Hired. Hired. The fact whether he knows or doesn't know is irrelevant. $40,000, we'll hire him. $30,000, we'll hire him. We're hiring based on salary. What's the problem? What if he's a missionary?

1:24:03What if he's a Muslim missionary? What if he's a Christian missionary? Now, once he becomes a missionary, it doesn't matter how much he charges. It doesn't matter even if he pays you. You're not allowed to stand next to him, let alone hire him. Unfortunately, almost every single school that I know of that's Jewish has either Christian or Muslim missionaries working at some point on the staff. Many times, teachers. Many times, teachers. Wow, I asked the teachers, "How come you let, the principal, how come you hire this guy?" "No, no, he's only teaching history. He's only teaching science. He's only the gym teacher. He's only this. He's not really Christian. He was just born Christian, but really he's atheist." I said, "Atheism is a religion." atheism is a religion. In fact, they're a very, very zealous religion. Atheists do not stay atheist by themselves. They love company because they're miserable. They want to make everybody else atheist. I wish we were as zealous as the atheists. If the Jews were as zealous as the atheists, the whole world would be Jewish.

1:25:15There's no atheist that stays by himself. He has to have a bunch of atheist friends, and he has to let everybody know why they're stupid for believing in God. He has to make videos about it. He has websites about it. He makes fun of people who talk about God, and atheists cannot stay quiet for their life. Atheism is a religion, one hundred percent. If your teacher in your Jewish school is an atheist, you are hiring a missionary, and If he is a Christian, he's a missionary. Why? It's part of their religion in Christianity to missionize. If you're not a missionary, then you're not a religious Christian. But you still can't hire him. Why? It's only a matter of time before he does teshuva in his own religion. Muslim, if you don't do da'wah, which is their form of missionizing, you're almost considered a kafir, a heretic, in the Muslim world. meaning, it's ingrained into them that you have to bring more people. You have to bring more people. That's why they're investing hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars into the Jewish world to make Jewish people go to their religion. So if you, as a parent, you as a member of the community, you as a part of a board, you as a part of simply Am Yisrael,

1:26:35Want to help? You have to make sure that the community knows that they're not allowed to hire non-Jewish teachers. Simply not allowed. Why? Because in some way or another, they're going to get to the kids. And I can tell you countless stories that I dealt with personally. Not hearsay, not invented stories. I didn't even read them in a book. Stories I deal with on a daily basis because of these teachers. Of kids... going to Christianity, kids going to atheism, kids going to all types of things, inside from yeshivot. Just this morning, a mother started crying to me from Florida, saying to me, everything you said was right four months ago, I wish I would have listened to you. I said, why? She said, I sent my little kid, my seven, eight-year-old kid, to yeshiva, we borrow money just to pay for the school. He comes home to me yesterday, Ima, I learned about Yoshke. In yeshiva, I learned about Yoshke. He said, where did you learn about him? How do you know his name? Oh no, my history teacher told us. That's what's the difference between him and me, he said. I like his Yoshke, he says. Now go take that out of the seven-year-old's mind. Good luck with that one. Good luck with that one. Do you know how much teaching you have to undo for that one moment? That one moment is going to impact this kid maybe for the rest of his life.

1:28:02Now, whose fault is that? Needless to say, the teachers over there. Needless to say, the principals over there. But also needed to say, the community. Who didn't act as a supportive watchdog and, at the same time, caring enough about who our teachers are. Because the system is failing. So we have the secular schools that are teaching us that we came from monkeys. We have the so-called Jewish schools creating atheists. And then we have many of the religious schools that are not teaching us enough. Or better yet, they're teaching us the opposite because they're not careful with their teachers. So we have a systemic failure altogether. How can we fix it? What's the solution? The solution starts with whoever we see in the mirror first. When you look in the mirror, you fix that person. Start with that person. Start fixing yourself. Start working on yourself. Start becoming more religious yourself. The more religious you become, the more merit you will have in order to impact the world around you.

1:29:10now if you come as a person who doesn't keep much, and you go to the yeshiva and start yelling at them, they're going to tell you, "Listen, go. You know, you're the last one to yell at anybody. You're not even keeping anything." But if you start impacting yourself, you start changing yourself, and you start supporting financially, socially, and so on, you'll have more to say. You'll have more influence. You'll send your kids to this school. You'll become more involved. You do it. You get your friend to do it. Your friend gets his friend to do it and her friend to do it. Before you know it, you have a nice group. Everybody comes to the school together and says, "Listen, we do not want a Christian teacher in the school." Okay, ma'am, thank you very much for not wanting Christian people in the school, but this is what we have. No, no, principal, we have a solution. Each one of us is going to come up with $5,000, $3,000, $2,000 to hire a Jewish teacher. Meaning, we're not asking you to do something that you can't do, that you're saying you can't afford. No problem. We're going to pay for it.

1:30:11We're going to pay for the teacher. Once you tell people that you're putting your money where your mouth is, tell them, "Listen, we want a Jewish teacher and we're going to pay for it." Guess what they're going to say? "No problem. Why didn't you come sooner? Why didn't you come sooner?" But the problem is that many times people come with screaming, yelling, and criticizing and no solution. It's like, "You fix the problem. You do it. You do it. You, you. What are you going to do? I'm just going to complain here." Nobody likes a complainer. You have to help. You have to help. Do something. And that's the key. This is very, very important. If a community gets more involved with a common interest to help Klal Yisrael get closer to Hashem, then we will indeed create unity. Real unity. Or, there's a second option that I always have to remind myself of, which is the Holocaust. That's the only other unity we know that exists. That's it. That's what... Yaakov Avinu says to his sons in the Torah, at the end of the book of Genesis, Sefer Bereishit, Yaakov Avinu tells his sons, "Let me come and tell you what is in chapter 49 of Genesis, verse number 1 and 2." Yaakov Avinu tells his sons,

1:31:32Yaakov calls for his sons and says, "Assemble yourselves, and I will tell you what will befall you in the end of days. Gather yourselves and listen, O sons of Yaakov, and listen to Yisrael, your father." So here we see that Yaakov was planning on telling his sons, the 12 tribes, what's going to happen before Mashiach comes. But then Rashi says he forgot, meaning Hashem took it away. He didn't want to give the details of what's going to happen, the exact time of when it's going to be, because that would mess with our free choice. If we know exactly when Mashiach is going to come, it could alter our free choice, if you will. But he did leave us a very, very big hint. First, Yaakov Avinu says, "Assemble." Then he says, "Gather." Why is it that the first time he says "assemble," and then he says "gather"? In essence, in English, there's really not much of a difference. They're synonyms, really. It's the same word, just spelled differently. But in Hebrew, there's a world of difference. In Hebrew, when it says "assemble,"

1:32:56is get here into one room. Get here, sit here, everybody's got their own seat. Hikabtzu, put yourself in a situation where there is no other place in the world better than this. There is no other choice out there. You are together whether you like it or not. You're stuck together. You're stuck together. He says, this is what's going to happen at the end of days. HaKadosh Baruch Hu is going to want you guys to get together. Really, really close. But you are only going to assemble, meaning, get together, but we're only going to get together for the holidays. We're only going to get together for the parties, for the bar mitzvahs, for the weddings, and so on. HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, no, no, no, my friends. You, my children, have to ikab tzu, you have to get together. One way or another, you're going to get to a place where you're not going to know there's anything else in the world. But you have only two options. It's either going to be through the Torah, or it's going to be through a chas v'shalom holocaust. Why? In the time of the Holocaust, after the Holocaust happened, during the Holocaust, no one cared if you're religious or not.

1:34:12Once Hitler decided you're a Jew, that's it, you are a Jew. Religious, not religious, irrelevant. Once he decided you're a Jew, even if you're not really a Jew, he decided you're a Jew, that's it, you're on the list. You may make it, you may not make it. That was the reality of that day. You put a star on you, you're finished. After the Holocaust, after six million of our brothers and sisters were murdered in cold blood, the rest of them tried to go back home. Why? They were looking for Jews. They were looking for Jews. How do I know if somebody's Jewish? One common denominator: they only weigh about 50, 60 pounds. That's how you knew he was Jewish. So they went back to Poland. They went back to Kosno. They went back to all places all over Europe. They went back to their houses, but the goyim took over their houses. As soon as they opened the door, it's like, "Ah, Hitler didn't finish you?" Imagine you've just suffered several years of a Holocaust. You come back to your house, and they tell you, "Oh, you're alive still?" Some people didn't get back their houses, and some people, even after they got back to their houses, left anyway. Why? There weren't enough Jews that survived in the community, and they just couldn't tolerate being around goyim. So they left their town, they left their house, they left the little bit that they had left in the world, just to go find more Jews. And...

1:35:35Because at some point, HaKadosh Baruch Hu says you're going to have to realize you are different from everybody else. You're different from everybody else. You have to unite with the rest of Am Yisrael. And you should unite with them through good, through the Torah. If you do that, you will succeed. We'll finish up, Rabotai, with a couple of stories that I think will give you a little bit of chizuk at times like this because... Again, the questions can never end, but the reality is every one of us needs to have enough chizuk, enough strength to overcome some of the day-to-day battles that we deal with within our communities, within our schools, within our synagogues, and so on. Now, when it comes to prayer, most of us pray for HaKadosh Baruch Hu to help us with parnasa, HaKadosh Baruch Hu helps us with parnasa, with zivug, with things that are of material value. Now, the Gemara in Masechet Temurah, page 16a, says that there was a person named Otniel. He says, who is Otniel? Otniel was Yavetz. Otniel has a couple of names, Yavetz. Why is his name Yavetz? It says because in the book of Chronicles...

1:36:52end of the Tanakh, Chronicles 1, chapter 4, verse 10, it says that Yavetz called out to God, saying, "If You bless me and expand my borders, and Your hand is with me, and You keep me from harm so that I am not saddened," then God granted him everything that he requested. So the Torah says, what is this really saying? Why did Hashem answer his prayers right away? It says because Yavetz was asking for spiritual help from Hashem. He says, Hashem, if you help me learn Torah, and you help me get talmidim, that have Yirat Shamayim, that are actually going to learn from me. And you help me remember the Torah that I know, that I'm learning. And on top of it, you give me good friends. Meaning friends that are not only going to come over to my house to ask me for a loan, or to ask me for favors, but also friends that are going to tell me if I'm doing something wrong because they're trying to help me. And if you also help me defeat the Yetzer Hara,

1:38:04then good. But if not, Hashem, I'm just going to die from sadness. And on the spot, Hashem answered his prayer. So Chazal says, this is the secret to prayer. When a person prays for Hashem to help him spiritually, Hashem immediately answers his prayer. But the problem is that most of the time we pray for physical stuff. we pray for money, we pray for houses, we pray for a lot of physical stuff. Which, again, there's nothing necessarily wrong with praying for stuff, even if it's material. But don't make all of your prayers that. Don't make all of your prayers just about money, just about a house, just about a zivug. You should add a little bit of spiritual growth. And the reason why is because that's really what's going to give you the merit to get the other stuff that you really want. Now... At times of problems, whether it be a virus or the Holocaust or confusion in general, a person that didn't pray for spiritual help is not going to know what to do. Now, after the Holocaust, many people were lost. They didn't know where to go, and many people continued suffering.

1:39:21Because despite the Holocaust being over, the persecution of Jews was not over. So Rav Galinsky, alav ha-shalom, was living in communist Russia. And he had one mission in his life: teach Torah, no matter what the cost. The Russians also had one mission in life: destroy the Torah, destroy all religion. So when they found out that Rav Galinsky was teaching Torah, they arrested him and sent him to Siberia. Now, in Siberia, if you knew you were getting a ticket to Siberia, in essence, you were not coming back. No one was coming back from Siberia. The enslavement, the cold, the sickness, the abuse, and so on—you're not coming back. Rav Galinsky came back. How did he come back? What was his secret? there were a few people who were also Shomrei Torah u'Mitzvot, also watching their mouths, also watching their minds, also keeping Torah, also learning Torah, and so on. And he was in this group with them. And they had a rule: every day,

1:40:31Each person will say a Dvar Torah, a Dvar Mussar, to give everybody else some chizuk, some fire to continue. Two minutes. Every day, so everybody gets two minutes. The entire day you're working, you're a slave, but two minutes out of the day you give everybody else a chiddush, your own chiddush. So Rav Galinsky, they say to him one day, okay, it's your turn. So Rav Galinsky says, page 13, says that a person, when he says the Shema Yisrael, should make sure that he elongates, extends the letter Dalet of Echad. Shema Yisrael, Hashem Elokeinu, Hashem Echad. When he says Echad, he should say Echad and extend the Dalet. So Rav Galinsky says, why? Why extend the Dalet? Why even, why? Hashem needs something from us?

1:41:33He says, in order for a person to really be in good terms with HaKadosh Baruch Hu, first and foremost, they have to believe in Hashem. But the proper belief is not just believing that Hashem is there for you when you're making money and you have a nice warm blanket, and you have your wife or your husband and your kids, and everything is cozy. The belief in Hashem is to know that HaKadosh Baruch Hu is also here with you in Siberia, where you haven't eaten in two days. You haven't bathed in who knows how many months. Every two seconds, you're on the border of possibly being killed for absolutely no reason. And God is with you here. And you're supposed to learn that from Shema Yisrael, he says. How so? He says HaKadosh Baruch Hu wants you to say Shema Yisrael, Hashem Elokeinu, Hashem Echad. To remember that there's only one God. The sages, his sergeants, his generals, and the representatives of Hashem say, not only say this verse, but make sure to extend the Echad, the Dalet, and the Echad. Why? Because the Dalet also has a numerical value of four.

1:42:44Okay, what is four also in Judaism? The four different corners of the world that HaKadosh Baruch Hu sent Am Yisrael. Meaning that HaKadosh Baruch Hu is one, but He's also in the four corners of the world with you wherever you are. In your troubles, in your difficulties, in your good, in your bad, in your ugly, in your beautiful. He's everywhere with you. Don't ever think for a second that He left you for a second. You're suffering, He's suffering. You're crying, He's crying. That is going to give you at least one more purpose to live. Why? Because HaKadosh Baruch Hu is with you. So why is He doing it to me if He's suffering also? Because He determined that out of all of the possible choices that were available to you based on your actions, this was the best choice. Wait, how come He can't give me just a house in Tahiti and just let me relax for the next 30 years? He can. It's just not available to you. Why? Because every time you take certain actions... That's like putting the code into a safety box.

1:43:47You put a special code, and it has, let's say, ten digits. Every time you do something, you keep Shabbat, you press one number. You don't keep Shabbat, you press a different number. You learn Torah, you press one number. You don't learn Torah, you press a different number. So each number represents a certain destination. After you've completed the code, whenever the total comes up, HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, okay, after we've put a total of all of your actions over the past week, the past month, the past year, the past whatever time, you have now opened yourself, through your actions, to the following choices. And out of the following choices, living in Tahiti for 20 years, with no one to worry about, is not one of those options. Siberia is one of the options. For Gavriel Galinsky, that was his option. That was his option, even though he was a tzaddik. But something happened along the way with the generation in general, that Siberia even became an option for tzaddikim. Why? Because when there's a heavy decree from Shamayim, the tzaddikim and the resha'im, unfortunately, they get judged the same. There's a decree on everyone. So the point is, but who did he end up saving? He ended up saving the tzaddikim.

1:45:02So the point is, Rabotai, to know that what we've had until now for the last 70 or so years is a period of time of comfort like no other, really. You can only compare the comfort that we've had as a people for the last 70 years to the times of maybe Shlomo HaMelech and the Beit HaMikdash. But that time is slowly but surely coming to an end. You're seeing that there is a war heating up. You're seeing there's an economic failure and collapse in the works. You're seeing there are diseases and problems in the world that we have no solutions to. And all of it is HaKadosh Baruch Hu sending us signs, clear signs, that He is now getting to the final number to open that door. That door that's going to give us the available choices before Mashiach comes.

1:46:05...those choices, another thousand choices. There's two choices... He says, this door has a sign on it called unity, called achdut. How am I going to achieve achdut before Mashiach comes? If you follow the pattern, you could open the door of achdut by everyone doing teshuva together, publicizing Hashem's name, and you open the door where we'll all become united through the Torah. On the other hand, if we continue pressing the bad number, the wrong number, the number that's constantly lashon hara, constantly going against the Torah, constantly going against Hashem, then in essence we're opening the door that only gives us the option of Hashem's wrath, chas v'shalom. The coronavirus that's happening right now is another warning. The earthquakes happening all over the world are a warning. What's happening in Venezuela is a warning. What's happening in South Africa is a warning. What's happening in the UK is a warning. What's happening in Israel, there are warning signs everywhere for anyone that's paying attention. Now, what should all of this do? This should give us hope and scare us at the same time. That's, in essence, the message. It should give us hope that no matter what, HaKadosh Baruch Hu is with us on the four corners of the world. But it should scare us in order for us to do more than what we're doing.

1:47:30It doesn't matter how much you've been doing until today. Today you came to a shiur because HaKadosh Baruch Hu wanted you to hear a message that you need to do more. You're watching the shiur. Hashem wants you to learn. You need to do more. What about everybody else? Everybody else is not your problem. Your problem is the person you see in the mirror. Whatever you're doing, you need to do more. Whatever it is, whether it's being more religious, being more studious, being more generous, being more supportive, whatever it is, you know yourself better than anybody else. But the key is to know that in order to improve our chances to have the good Gezeira, to avoid the Holocaust, to avoid it, we have to start with the person that we see in the mirror first. We have to start by doing teshuva ourselves, improving ourselves, and then starting to improve our community. These shiurim, where I come, or where Rabbi Mizrachi comes, to give a little boost to the community, should be happening on a monthly basis, if any community is smart enough to do it.

1:48:33Why? Every time we leave, there's a line of Ba'alei Teshuva that follow, Baruch Hashem. Any smart rabbi, any smart community, would literally beg for change just to get us to come. Why? You're getting results much better than the local rabbi could ever do. You're doing a rabbi's job that he was supposed to do for 20 years in one day. But instead, what do they do? They ask the rabbi, "Rabbi, should we bring him?" "No, no, no. He says this, he says that." Hey, listen, rabbi, he gets results. He gets results. So instead of waiting for the rabbis to say yes or no, you have to take the initiative, just like Rabbi Gadifa, just like some of the other tzaddikim that arranged this whole event, and take the initiative. We're going to get a place one way or another. We're going to get the people one way or another. We're going to get teshuva done one way or another. We're going to bring Hashem to Montreal one way or another. That's it. Everybody has to take the initiative. Just make it happen. Not wait for the whole world to agree or disagree in the meetings. Forget about all that stuff. You're not going to get everybody to agree today. You have to get as many people that are like-minded to agree as soon as possible. Then you add more people. But the reality is, Rabotai, it starts with you. We're already doing as much as we can. Everyone knows. They send me a question at 3 o'clock in the morning or 3 o'clock in the afternoon; they're getting an answer. There is no schedule.

1:49:54There is no schedule. I see my kids on Shabbat. That's when I see my kids. Even though I live in the same house as them, Baruch Hashem, and always will. They're in my house. I see them on Shabbat. Why? There's simply no time. Either there are shiurim, or there are people that need help. So, the public needs to be more supportive. There are many, many CDs and videos and things that we do and we can do if we simply had more support. But again, it starts with you, it starts with the people that are watching, and If everybody else starts taking the initiative themselves and starts doing things themselves, you're going to see a major change in your life. You're going to see a major beracha in your life, in your community. And at the end of it, you're going to make the door that's good available to you and your loved ones, to you and your community. Because, again, it doesn't mean that just because a bunch of people are choosing the wrong door, that's going to come to you also. They're choosing the wrong choice; they'll have whatever they're making themselves. They're writing their own check.

1:50:58You have to do whatever you can to help yourself and your community. You start helping your community, and that community as a whole will start having a domino effect on other communities as people move, as people change, as people communicate with others. But the whole Teshuva movement can go to the next level simply by a decision that you make today. It doesn't have to start with a huge community of 500,000 Jews. No. Quite frankly, most likely it won't. There are almost a million Jews that live in Florida. You know how many of them come to my shiurim? Maybe 50 to 100. You know why? Because the rest of them are busy with the Yetzer Hara. That's the reality. That's the reality. Every shiur, you come to my shiurim, 50 to 100 people in every shiur, which is plenty, by the way. It's not necessarily a bad thing. But how many should come? A million. Why? Because they'll learn the truth. So the key for us to understand is that the big communities, the big rabbis, the big everything is not where we're supposed to wait for the change to come from.

1:52:09The change is supposed to come from us. In a place where there is no leader, you be the leader. Who is "you"? You are the one that you see in the mirror. You that don't know as much as you should know. You're the one that thinks you know more than you know. You're the one that's just religious for a few months. You're the one that's been religious your whole life. You're the one with a beard. You're the one without a beard. You're the one with a hat. You're the one that wants a hat. You. You be the leader. You do something. How do you be a leader? Be a leader by bringing Kedusha to Am Yisrael. That's 100% foolproof. 100% verifiable. 100% emet, and most importantly, 100% impacts people to do something. I mean, we should all be tired of the teachings that are simply so boring, you can't wait for them to be over. We should all be just tired of the teachings where you're there the whole time, and you're there for an hour and a half, but you have no idea what you just learned.

1:53:19You listen to the guy, and you're listening, and you're not really sure what he's teaching. Is he teaching Christianity? Is he teaching Judaism? Is it about Sukkot? Is it about Havdalah? I don't know. So you start talking to your friend because you can't wait for the whole thing to be over, but you're only here because your friend brought you. The reality is the whole point of a shiur is to get you to a point of action. Take action. Do something. I'm hoping that I achieved it. If I didn't, I'm sorry I failed you. But the key is for each and every single one of us to take some type of action, to do something about Klal Yisrael. You know of a school in your community that's employing non-Jews? Go do something about it. You know a bunch of people in your community that are not keeping Shabbat? Go do something about it. You know a bunch of people that are torturing the community with all types of things that are illegal? Go do something about it. Do something. Make sure you have da'at Torah. Make sure you have a rabbi that's addressing you. Baruch Hashem, you have Rabbi Ifrah in the back. He's more than happy to help anyone who wants help.

1:54:23All you got to do is ask him. He's not going to go ask people if they want help, but he's not begging for change. The reality is if you want help, you call him, he's going to help you. The reality is you have people that want to help you. You need to want to help yourself also. Be'ezrat Hashem, this gives us the chizuk to take some actions to make this community become a domino effect of good, a domino effect of Kedusha, not just in Montreal, not just in Toronto, which we'll visit very soon, Be'ezrat Hashem. but also on the rest of Klal Yisrael. Because HaKadosh Baruch Hu told the prophet, before I bring Mashiach, the same things that happened in Egypt are going to happen in the days of Mashiach, but not like they were in Egypt, but to a much higher magnitude. Much higher magnitude. Just like there were three days of darkness in Egypt, there will be fifteen days of darkness in the days of Mashiach. But even more so, HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, "I'm not going to be remembered as the God of Israel that took them out of Egypt, but rather the God of Israel that took them out of the land of the north and the rest of the world." What's the land of the north? There's only one place in the world that has north as part of its name.

1:55:37North America. North America has the largest amount of Jews outside of Israel. It's Canada and it's the United States. If it was just any other place, like some people say, no, maybe it's Russia. How many Jews are in Russia today? Who is He taking out of Russia today? Who is He taking out of Russia? Maybe if you said a long time ago, yeah, but today, how many Jews are really in Russia? There's not many. Where are the vast majority of the Jews in the world outside of Israel? It's in North America. We have to help HaKadosh Baruch Hu bring a good gezeirah, a good decree on us. How do we do it? We start with ourselves. If we do this, we will succeed. We help our Father in Heaven bring us blessings and nothing else. Baruch Adonai le'olam. Amen ve'amen.