Synagogue Talkers, Dangerous Speakers, Effort vs. Success, Abandoning Past - STUMP THE RABBI (34)

0:23Thank you for coming. We have our She'elot U'Teshuvot, our Stump the Rabbi series, Baruch Hashem, today. Hopefully, you guys have some questions. I know you guys are giving me the silent treatment right now, but hopefully, you change your mind at some point. Today's shiur will be for Refuah Shlema, for Rav Ephraim Ben Shulamit, Rav Nitzara, So, a little bit of updates, I guess, with some things that are going on for everyone. In the last couple of weeks, I think we've gone, it seems like, maybe I'm just imagining it, but it seems we've gone a little bit stronger with speaking out against the Chilul Hashem that certain well-known speakers and rabbis a little bit of updates, I guess, with some things that are going on for everyone. In the last couple of weeks, I think we've gone, it seems like, maybe I'm just imagining it, but it seems we've gone a little bit stronger with speaking out against the Chilul Hashem that certain well-known speakers and rabbis

1:50are making by distorting the Torah, and some kehilot, like the one in Los Angeles, are doing. And to be honest with you, for some reason people send me different rabbis, like, "Oh, check this one out, he's bad, he's bad." For some reason, I guess because I'm one of the few that actually talks out loud about these issues, people think I like doing this. I don't think there's something I hate more than this. But the Mishnah in Pirkei Avot says, "In a place where there is no leader, be the leader." If you see that there's something wrong going on in your shul... and your rabbi is not doing anything about it, the first step is to bring it to his attention. Tell your rabbi, "Listen, I come here to pray, but the place is like a bar. Everyone's horsing around all day. If you don't mind telling them to stop talking during the tefillah, if you don't mind giving them maybe a shiur about it, do something."

3:04If the rabbi does something, Baruch Hashem, he's a rabbi that, you know, it's worth having. If he doesn't do something, you now have two choices. One choice is to stop going to this place and go to a different place. Most likely, the next place is probably going to have similar problems, because most places have issues. and you probably will not be as comfortable talking to the rabbi over there. But the point is that you could try going to another place. The second option that you have is that you do something about it. Now, Rav Ephraim, earlier today... he had is, he looked at you and said, "You know, you guys could sit in front of me, so I don't have to break my neck looking left and looking right." So it's not going to happen if it was in front. Looking right, looking left, people think I have some type of problem with my neck. Don't worry, I don't kill you with my eyes, just with my mouth. So, he has a shiur where he does questions and answers usually once a week online.

4:21And he came up with a really good idea that's very good, especially for the issue of shuls where everyone's talking. I'm not talking about shuls where the rabbi is a heretic and he teaches avodah zarah, prays to some rabbi, or there's no judgment and things of that nature. Places like that, avoid at all costs. I'm talking about a place where it has the typical issues, the typical issues of... You know that we all have, uh, places where people are talking, people horsing around, and things like that, and it's tough to pray somewhere like that. So, uh, there is an organization, I'm assuming there are several organizations like this. I know there's one in English and there's one in Hebrew that has made different posters has made different posters about telling people to be quiet in shul while you pray. And they write different things. There's one really serious organization that he mentioned in Eretz Yisrael where they literally take different scary things that are mentioned in the Zohar or the Shulchan Aruch or different places in the Torah for people that talk in shul and horse around in shul like it's a bar.

5:43they make it into a poster; you print it out and you put it on the wall. It says that someone who talks in shul while people are praying has no share in the God of Israel. This is 100% accepted; this is the rule. So now, most people who talk in shul don't know this. Why? Because they're talking. If they knew this, they would either not go to shul, or they would stop talking. Shulchan Aruch says, someone that speaks in shul, his sin is too big. There's no other sin in the entire Torah that the Shulchan Aruch writes is "too big." Even Chilul Shabbat doesn't say that. And the reason why is because when you violate Shabbat, the sin is on you. It's your problem. You want to do teshuva? You do teshuva, you're welcome. You don't want to do teshuva? You just go to Gehinnom forever. That's it. Not a big deal. Not a big deal. Just go burned and, you know, ripped apart for infinity years. Good luck. You want to do that? Good luck. But it's just you, though. Just you. Talking in shul, Rabotai Yekarim, the Shulchan Aruch says this is a big sin. Too big. Why is it too big?

6:57Why is it too big? Because people, they don't go to shul, usually, at least they're not supposed to. They don't go to shul to horse around. Usually, people go to shul to pray to HaKadosh Baruch Hu because they have a lot of problems. Baruch Hashem, Yehoshua doesn't have any problems. So he comes to shul to help us. He prays for us, Yehoshua. He prays for us because Yehoshua is a tzaddik, like you people. He's a tzaddik, Yehoshua. He comes, prays for us. He prays for us. He's never going to have problems. But we need people like him to pray for us. The rest of us, we have problems. So we go to shul to pray for our problems. HaKadosh Baruch Hu, help me, I don't have a job. HaKadosh Baruch Hu, help me, I have many enemies. HaKadosh Baruch Hu, help me, I'm alone. HaKadosh Baruch Hu, help me, I'm married but I feel alone. HaKadosh Baruch Hu, I don't have any money. HaKadosh Baruch Hu, I have too much money and everybody wants to kill me because of it. And so on and so forth. Everybody has their own set of problems. So we go to HaKadosh Baruch Hu every single day. Pray to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, please, please Hashem, help me. Now, HaKadosh Baruch Hu has many, many helpers. Not that He needs help, but the way of the king is to have servants. If the king doesn't have servants, it's not kavod for the king.

8:16It's not that the king can't go get his own milk. It's not that the king can't go, you know, get his own car. It's not that the king can't drive. But the king is going to have someone drive him, someone make him dinner, someone make him lunch. Why? Because it's the way of the king. Needless to say, the King of Kings. So He has an infinite, an infinite amount of servants. Not just the flesh that's us that are trying to be servants, but He has mal'achim. And He creates an infinite number. An infinite amount of new ones, every single day. Every single day, new ones are being created. Different jobs, different roles, different tasks. Now, these malachim, rabotai, these malachim, they're not like me. They're not like me, I promise you. You guys think I'm a little bit critical? No, no, no. I'm a puppy. Next to these malachim? Well, how do I know? Because when we were at Mount Sinai, anybody remember the story about what happened at Mount Sinai? We messed up a little bit. Just a little bit, just a little bit. We almost got destroyed, a little bit. Almost got destroyed. HaKadosh Baruch Hu says to Moshe Rabbeinu, Moshe, okay, I'll forgive them, but from now on, I'm going to go back to My place. I'm going to give you guys a malach; he's going to handle the show.

9:27But just make sure, don't mess with them. Don't commit a single sin, because they'll kill you on the spot. Meaning, you have one more chance. One guy violates Shabbat, you're all dead. One guy talks in shul, everyone's dead. That's it. Moshe Rabbeinu starts crying hysterically to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. He says, no, HaKadosh Baruch Hu, we're not moving, we're not leaving, we're not doing anything, unless it's You. Why? Because there's no way we're going to survive with this malach. There's no way we're going to survive with this malach. Someone's going to mess up. Maybe me, Moshe Rabbeinu says. Who knows? No way I'm going to survive with this malach. So what is HaKadosh Baruch Hu trying to tell us? He says, listen, these malachim, they love Me so much, they cannot understand, they have no ability to understand how you people sin. Why? Because they have a comprehension in their ability, in their level, of who and what Hashem is. No one understands completely Hashem. You have to be Hashem to be it. But in essence, they have a full comprehension of what HaKadosh Baruch Hu is. Now they have no idea how we have the audacity to sin, how we have the audacity to speak in shul, how we have the audacity to pray to anyone other than Him. They have no comprehension of that. So for them to see our sin, they want to kill us on the spot. No second chances, no teshuva, no nothing. Midat HaDin.

10:50So HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, you deal with them. Moshe Rabbeinu says, we're not going to survive. He starts crying hysterically. He says, Hashem, just kill me. Why? It's going to be embarrassing for me. It's going to be embarrassing for me to go up to Shamayim. Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov are going to see me. And they're going to say, what? Oh, here's Moshe. Here's Moshe that killed all of our kids. Here's the leader that killed all of our kids. So Hashem, it's going to be embarrassing for me. Hashem says, you know what? You're right. It will be embarrassing for you. Okay, fine. I'll do it. Okay, fine, I'll do it. For that, He did it. Why? Moshe Rabbeinu didn't deserve the embarrassment. Now, these malachim, rabotai yakarim, they come to shul and they take the prayers and bring them to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. If you pray with a kosher minyan, they take the best of everyone. You have, let's say, you prayed for 15-20 minutes. Out of the 15-20 minutes, 5 minutes were good, 15 minutes you were thinking about baseball. Okay, 15 minutes go in the garbage. 5 minutes they keep. Another guy, 1 minute was good. Okay, the other 19 minutes in the garbage. One guy, 10 seconds. They take the 10 seconds, the rest of it's garbage. One guy, 10 minutes. This guy's the best. Okay, we take it. They take everything and make a nice, beautiful package. Hashem, perfect prayer. Minyan, kosher minyan, amazing.

12:13Hashem says, okay, let me see what they're praying. Oh, this guy, he's skinny, sick. Okay, let's make him healthy. This guy is poor. Okay, let's give him a new customer tomorrow. Oh, this woman is lonely. Okay, let's send her a shidduch, next door neighbor, never knew she existed. This one is this, this one. HaKadosh Baruch Hu starts writing checks. He starts writing checks. Why? It's a kosher prayer. But what happens when someone starts talking in the middle of Kaddish? What happens when someone is talking b'chazarat ha'shatz, when the shaliach tzibur, the chazan, goes over the Amidah again? People think this is a socializing event. Why? Because they already did it. They figure, I already read the Amidah, so this is a time for me to catch up with Steve. This is a time for me to catch up with Reuven. I'll tell him about my job, I'll tell him about my wife, I'll tell him about this, I'll tell him about that. It's a time to catch up. The malachim don't have any type of sense of mercy. They take everyone's prayer and they put it in a hold box. It does not go to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. HaKadosh Baruch Hu asks, okay, I came, I had a synagogue, but there's no one here. Malachim say to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, no, HaKadosh Baruch Hu, there's no prayer here. There's nothing here. Why? No, they're just hanging out at the bar.

13:34What do you mean it's a bar? Big building for me a bar, HaKadosh Baruch Hu says. What? It's a nice building to have a Sefer Torah in this bar? Because, yeah, HaKadosh Baruch Hu, this bar has a Sefer Torah in it. It's not a Beit Knesset though. Why? In a Beit Knesset, you don't talk in the middle of Kaddish. In a Beit Knesset, you don't talk in the middle of Chazarat HaShatz. Needless to say, you don't talk in the middle of Amidah. Okay, Hashem says, I'll come back tomorrow and see what happens. So the Shulchan Aruch says the sin is too big. Why? You are the only one that talked. You and Reuven are the only ones that talked. You and Shimon, you're the only ones that talked. A hundred people in the minyan, their prayers are not getting accepted. Now what happens? The guy stays sick. The guy stays poor. The girl stays lonely. The kid, everybody's problems stay the same. And the Shulchan Aruch says all of that is on his head. On that one guy's head, or the two people's heads. Those who were talking, everybody's problems are on their heads. Everybody is going to blame; they're going to see in the next world, they get to Shamayim, and say, "Ah, HaKadosh Baruch Hu, how come you didn't cure me? I was so sick, how come? I prayed for it." Hashem says, "Let me see your account. Ah, yeah, yeah, you prayed at that bartending minyan. Ah, you prayed at the pub minyan. Yeah, yeah, we don't accept prayers from pubs."

14:56We don't accept prayers in places like this. Yeah, but Hashem, it was the rabbi that was the biggest talker. Okay, you should have picked a different rabbi. You should have picked a different shul. You should have picked one or something. There's a certain type of ingredient list that I need in order for it to work. In order for the medicine to work, when you have a talker in your shul, it doesn't work. It ruins the whole thing. It's like putting a little bit of poison in your soup. So, Shulchan Aruch says this is too big. This is too big of a crime, and everyone's prayer does not get an answer. And now, who wants this kind of bill? To know that this guy's kids stayed sick because of you. Because you had to tell Steve that you just closed the deal. Who wants this kind of bill? To know that this woman stayed lonely because you decided to tell her that you're baking a cake for Shabbos. Who wants all these things? Who wants all this stuff? No one. How come we do it? Because we don't know. We don't know that we're doing this. We don't know that we're performing such a big crime against humanity, against our brothers, against the people that we love. So now, getting some of these signs, and you can find them on the internet, and

16:24or you could simply just type something up yourself. But there are certain things that are already typed up. You take this, you start putting it all over the walls of your synagogue in a nice, amicable way, in a nice fashion. Don't start turning this stuff into your wallpaper; it's not nice. But you gotta put a few of them in every corner, a few so everyone knows as soon as they come in, "Okay, this is there." Now, if you put a piece of paper in black and white, people are not going to pay attention to it. They're going to think it's like the shiur time or something. Make it nice. Make it a different color. Put it in a subtype of frame. Make it big. Make it stand out. Make sure you ask the rabbi, "Can you please do me a favor? Mention this to people." You mention it to people. Have a few on you. You see somebody talking, you don't have to say a single thing. You tell them, "By the way, here." He sees, "You just lost Olam HaBa." What? Who are you to tell me that? And he says, "Signed Rabbi Yosef Karo." It wasn't me. Anyone that believes that HaKadosh Baruch Hu is real, anyone that believes that he's praying to Hashem and goes to shul, he's going to stop talking. If he doesn't stop talking, then this is an ox. Then the Rambam writes, a person that you warned several times to stop talking in shul, and he doesn't stop, you are allowed to publicly embarrass him.

17:45Now, for anyone who doesn't know, publicly embarrassing another Jew is a very dangerous thing because if you wrongly publicly embarrass another Jew, you lose olam haba. So for the Rambam to say that you're allowed now to publicly embarrass another Jew, it's a big deal. Why? Because the Rambam is saying this guy is hurting the public. He's hurting everybody else. It's a kehillah of 50, 100, 200 people full of problems. And no one's going to get their problems answered because this guy can't shut up. You have to do something about it. Now, like I said, sometimes the kehillah just needs a little bit of information. You give them some information, b'ezrat Hashem, you'll succeed. Tell them, listen, do me a favor. You can talk as much as you want outside or after the prayer. I'll talk with you. Let us pray. 15, 20 minutes, we're finished. In the morning, an hour, 45 minutes, whatever it is, we're finished. Even if you have to tell the guy, you know what, do me a favor. I'll give you $20 just to be quiet. $20. Quiet. Do it a couple of times. The guy's going to have to, a few times, he's like, oh, he's not going to come for $20. I'll say, okay, after a while, okay, I have to be an adult here. Either go home or go to work or go pray.

19:02People have to do something about their prayers in these synagogues. It's very difficult. It's very difficult to see people pray so much and nothing happens. I know this is part of the reason. The other reason why we have a lot of problems, especially on Shabbat in synagogues, is because of lack of modesty. There are many, many... issues in every kehillah, but there are certain things that we could do something about. The Gaon of Vilna in Igeret HaGra wrote to his wife when he was leaving and going to Eretz Yisrael to go see, and you know in those days it wasn't like you go on a plane, you come back and almost guarantee you're going and you're coming back within a short period of time. In those days, you make a journey, there's a very good chance you're not coming back. So he gave her a very famous letter, it's called Igeret HaGra, and he gave her certain instructions about her and the house, but almost in essence like a farewell, I may never see you again. So one of the most, he's only writing important things here. He's not writing, you know, listen, make sure you don't forget me. No, he's writing stuff to remember regardless.

20:18One of the ideas, one of the pieces of advice that he gives to his wife and his mother is don't go to shul. He tells his wife and his mom, don't go to shul. Just try not to leave the house at all. He says, I left you enough money that you could get somebody to go do the shopping for you. But for shul at all, do not go to shul. Why? He says, they chit-chat over there. Nothing is going to do good for you over there. your prayer is not going to be answered. This is 200 years ago. Now, in his days, that was the main issue. You know, sometimes there's a little bit of lashon hara, a little bit of rechilut, certain things that are happening, you know, people are chit-chatting in the shul. Today, it's not just that. Today, sometimes you, not sometimes, I'm trying to be nice, but... certain places that women love to go to, certain synagogues where there are usually more women than men. The women come there and socialize the whole time, but that's not enough. They also like to stand at the entrance of the shul to say goodbye to every single male member of the shul, and

21:34they also like to forget half their clothes at home. They also like to wear wigs that no one in the world in the history of mankind ever said is kosher. Forget about the India stuff. I'm talking about simply, even if you want to rely on the poskim that said that some wigs are allowed, without the Avodah Zarah issue. No one ever said that these long ponytails or horsetail wigs are allowed, except our dear friend Manis Friedman. Other than him, there's nobody else that's a normal human being who says these things are kosher. Now, why is this a problem? Because when a woman is not modest, and she's to the extent where she decides to walk into the men's section, because sometimes that happens. Women decide to just, you know, go to the men's section, sit there for a little while, say hello to a few people. At that moment, you're not allowed to pray. You're not allowed to say a bracha next to an immodest woman. You're not even allowed to say birkat ha-mazon.

22:46You're not to take Hashem's name, you're not to talk to Hashem. Why? There's an immodest woman next to you. So, you have to understand the magnitude of this. If you have a Beit Knesset full of immodest women, go somewhere else. Go somewhere else. Why? It's very hard, very hard to believe that the Shechinah would ever allow itself to go to such a place. Now, this is across the board: Sephardi, Ashkenazi, whatever you want, it doesn't make a difference. There's a certain shul here in Florida. I went to it only one time, Baruch Hashem, and I saw that apparently the rabbi pretends to be Orthodox. Why? Because he doesn't even know the halachot of a Beit Knesset. They're supposed to have a mechitzah, you know, the separating section between the men and the women. The whole point of it is that the two cannot see each other. That's the point. So the guy doesn't look at the girl and think about the girl instead of HaKadosh Baruch Hu. But this Beit Knesset, what do they do? They have like holes. The whole thing is full. It's like a fence. Pretty much, there is no mechitzah.

24:05And not only that, they put the women on a stage so you could definitely see everything, not just her face. So if she forgot to wear like half of her skirt, you could see that too. Because she's on a stage now. And it's a fence, and it has holes everywhere. And the place has, on Shabbat, no less than four or five hundred people. It's a big Beit Knesset. It's not like a hole in the wall. Maybe more. A big Beit Knesset like that, you're not allowed to pray in it. Why does it have no mechitza? That's a Reform place where people pray. So it's important for us to know these little things because that's the difference between you praying to HaKadosh Baruch Hu and getting your answer, getting your salvation, or you just simply talking to a wall. Many times people cry to me and tell me, "I pray, I pray, I pray, but my prayers don't get answered." Where do you pray? That's question number one. Where do you pray? You pray at a Beit Knesset that's not kosher, you have a serious problem. You have to find a new one. So try to help your community. Try to help your synagogue. Try to help people without causing a big fight. Some people like to cause fights. They like to tell people what to do. Don't tell anybody anything. Like I tell people all the time. What I do, I've been doing for 20 years.

25:27I've been a speaker for 20 years. I've only been teaching Torah for, I don't know, six, seven years, whatever it's been, but I've been a professional speaker for 20 years. So I can read people. I can tell you what you're pretty much going to ask me before you ask me. There's a certain skill set that goes with it. So that's not something you can buy in a 7-Eleven. It takes a lot of experience. It's not for everyone. You want to go do it, try your luck at it, go try your luck at it. But the reality is most people can't do it. It takes a lot of training. So it's better you don't necessarily speak to people. Let me do it. How? You take a CD, you say, "Hey, listen, it's Thursday, and you were still a Mechalel Shabbat last week, so here's a CD. Hopefully by Friday, by tomorrow, you'll be a Shomer Shabbat if you get the CD." You let me do it; you give him a CD, you give him a link to a shiur, the guy's going to be a Shomer Shabbat. That's one way. The second way to do it is to invite them to a shiur, like Baruch Hashem a few people did today. You invite them to a shiur, they hear a few things of emet, You never know. The guy may actually start keeping Shabbat. The guy may stop speaking in shul. The guy may leave his Goya girlfriend. The guy may stop wasting seed because he realizes that there is a consequence for your actions. Anyone that tells you that no matter what you do, you're going to heaven is considered 100% a kofer, an apikores. Which means you cannot even count them as part of a minyan.

26:55Judaism is on suspension. Hard Judaism is on suspension. Why? One of our 13 principles of faith is that there's reward and punishment. Anyone that tells you that there's no punishment is simply a person that has removed himself from Klal Yisrael. Once he does teshuva, he says, "No, I was wrong. I'm sorry. You're right. There is punishment. I just don't like talking about it. I'm a little bit soft. I'm a little bit weak. I'm a little bit this, and I'm a little bit that." No problem. But there is. I just don't want to hear it. I don't want to talk about it. Okay, no problem. Just don't deny it. Don't deny it. You don't want to hear it, that's one thing. You should. But nonetheless, don't deny it. Once you deny it, you are removing yourself from Klal Yisrael. so you have to tell people different things and sometimes you can't do it. So what do you do? You have me do it. You give them one of my CDs. You give them one of my shiurim on the internet for free. You give them one of the business cards that on the back of it has the thing for the app. They download the app. Within a few months, they're rabbanim.

28:07Don't try to be a superhero and do what takes many, many years to accomplish. Because if you do it wrong, you get one chance at this guy. You get one chance at this girl. She's going to give you a chance to tell her what you think about her. He's going to give you a chance to tell him what you think about his non-Jewish girlfriend. One chance you get. If you come off like you're from Hamas, guess what? Not only does he not like you anymore, not only is he not going to talk to you anymore or listen to you anymore, but guess what? Now he hates Hashem too for creating you. That's why it says, "You must rebuke your brother, but don't get to sin." Meaning, you have to know how to rebuke. Sometimes, I have to talk about Gehinom and give you guys specifics. Why? I need you guys to be scared. I need you guys to be scared so you don't go away and start sinning. HaKadosh Baruch Hu needs you to be scared. Why? So you don't sin. That's what it says in Sefer Shemot.

29:15In Sefer Shemot, in Matan Torah, Parashat Yitro, Moshe Rabbeinu tells Am Yisrael, no, no, don't be scared. He's just scaring you so you don't sin. But He loves you though. This means that HaKadosh Baruch Hu wants us to be scared. The Gemara in Masechet Shabbat says the only reason HaKadosh Baruch Hu created the world is so you fear Him. Why? If you fear Him, you'll serve Him. If you don't fear Him, for sure you're not going to serve Him. For sure you're going to go against Him. So fear is necessary, but you need to know how to deliver it. Don't think that just because you know how to talk to yourself... You could talk to people that way. You have to know how to read them. You have to know what to say to whom and when. So it's better you don't do it than you have me do it. You have Rav Mizrachi do it. Unfortunately, in English, the list is not very big of people that do it. If you know how to do it, you want to trust yourself to do it, go b'chavod, go do it, try it. But if you see that it's not working with 10, 20 people already, stop. Stop doing it. You're ruining everything. give him the lecture and don't say a single word. Why? Because everyone has an ego. Everyone has an ego. No one likes to be told what to do. But if you do it in a certain way where you just give the guy a CD, you just give the guy a link to a shiur, and he watches it, he listens to it, she listens to it,

30:33And she gets the shock of her life, but she doesn't feel like it's a personal attack. Because she knows I'm not talking to her. I'm in a video. I don't even know who she is. I don't know who he is. But she knows it's true. And she accepts it. Her ego will allow her to accept it. Why? Because she feels like she discovered the truth by herself. It wasn't from you. She's not connecting the dots that you're the one who sent it to her. So she'll accept it much more likely from me on a video than from you. As her friend, as her son, as her father, as whoever you are. So, more times than not, it's not going to work. Now, if you want to do kiruv with people by talking, do it with strangers. Do it with strangers. I know I used to tell you guys to try to help people that are around you and so on, but I'm seeing more damage than good happening with people talking. So let's try to re-strategize a little bit. Stop talking. And if you have to talk, talk to strangers. Meaning, you tell the guy, "Listen, by the way, I don't know if you know, you just parked right next to the shul on Shabbat. I don't know if the rabbi ever told you, but Jews are not allowed to drive on Shabbat." "Oh, really? Oh, no, you're not allowed to drive." "Okay, fine. Why? Everybody else drives." "Okay, everybody else jumps off a bridge. You're going to jump off a bridge? If you want to know about Shabbat, I'll show you sources." "Okay, you know what? No problem."

31:57Stranger. A stranger is more likely to accept it from you. Your brother, your sister, your best friend, all those people—they're not going to accept it from you. Why? Because there's an ego involved. There's an ego involved. Another thing is you could sponsor these CDs and we could do it for you. We send these CDs all over the world. And right now, we're working on, for some time we've been working on, the next double CD package I told you guys about about a week ago. This is it. It's not made yet. But this is the first of its kind. No one has ever made a CD like this before. Not because I'm unique, but simply because no one wants the burden and the headache that comes with it. This CD, there are two of them. One of them is not unique. It's just my personal story in a bunch of short movies we made about Torah. The movie, Baruch Hashem, has already hit, I don't know, maybe close to 100,000 people who have watched this movie through the different channels. And it had a lot of really good feedback. So that movie is good. But more importantly, in my opinion, is the second CD, which is Tikkun HaBrit.

33:09It's somewhere in the neighborhood of, I think it's 60, 57, 57 different tracks, 57 different shiurim about wasting seed, about the issues of immodesty, about the issues of immorality. specifically for this generation. Why do I say that this is the first of its kind? It exists, but only in Hebrew. You'll find there's a few rabbis that made similar CDs in Hebrew for years. In English, no one has ever dared to make such a CD. And the reason why is because it comes with a big headache. When I tell you guys I get 300, 400 messages a day, what I don't usually tell you is that 90% of them have to do with this issue. Because a lot of people, unfortunately, are addicted to women, addicted to themselves, addicted to immorality, addicted to a lot of these things, and they never knew it's as bad as it is until they watch one of my shiurim. Until they realize that if they continue wasting seed, they are going to go to Gehenom and never come out. That's what the Torah says. That's what the Shulchan Aruch says. A person that wastes seed without doing teshuva, ein lo chelek la'olam haba.

34:24The Gemara says in several places, several places, a person that even touches his member, touches his member and he's not married and he causes himself an erection, he's like bringing the Mabul. So the Chachamim say, what does it have to do with the Mabul, the flood, Noah's Ark? They say the biggest crime that the generation of Noah committed was immorality, was wasting seed. That was the biggest reason why HaKadosh Baruch Hu decided to kill all of them. So now you have an entire generation of somewhere between six to eight, nine million English-speaking Jews in the world, where the overwhelming majority of them do not know the magnitude of the crime of wasting seed. And part of the reason is because no one ever told them. eight, nine million English-speaking Jews in the world, where the overwhelming majority of them do not know the magnitude of the crime of wasting seed. And part of the reason is because no one ever told them. In Hebrew, you can find a Ben Ish Chai. But in English, it doesn't exist. So right now, we're trying to raise some money so we can print out as many CDs as possible. And anyone that wants to be a partner in this huge, gigantic project, please let me know. There's a link on the internet. I'm sure Ramesh is going to put it on the... In Hebrew, you can find a Ben Ish Chai. But in English, it doesn't exist. So right now, we're trying to raise some money so we can print out as many CDs as possible. And anyone that wants to be a partner in this huge, gigantic project, please let me know. There's a link on the internet. I'm sure Ramesh is going to put it on the...

35:39on the message board now, it's on our website. It's not only something that you need for the community, you need it for yourself. Because every single time that you have made this crime, which if you're a teenager or you've gone through teenagehood, you know during 14-15 years old when you discover yourself, maybe a little sooner now in this generation, 10-11-12, whatever it is. By the time you watch my shiur, you're 20 years old. You've been wasting seed for 10 years. You probably did it five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten times a week. By the time you've arrived at 20 years old, you've killed several civilizations; you've killed the world over a thousand times. What are you going to do? How are you going to fix it? Even if you stop right now, okay, what about all the murder you made before? What are you going to do about all that? Now, there are several things you need to do. Number one, you have to stop, obviously. Number two, you have to learn everything that's on this CD plus the book that's on our website for free. There's a book on our website. It's called "Watching Your Bleed in Your Eyes," something like that. It's about 200 pages. You can download it for free. Learn that book. Become an expert in it. It's full of sources from the entire Torah: Shulchan Aruch, Zohar, Chachamim, Mussar.

36:55Chumash, Tanach, anything you have, all over the world, all over the Torah, different sources of the magnitude of the sin. It's good for women and for men to read. Why? Because it also has issues about modesty and so on. If you're a woman that walks around immodest, you're a partner to the crime. There's no way that your victims are gonna go to Gehenom and you're going to Gan Eden. You walk around with a miniskirt, tank top, you think you look cute, you're gonna look very cute in Gehenom being burned up to pieces. Why? Because all the people that watch are going there. What do you think? They're going to go there? You're going to stay there? You're going to go to Gan Eden? It doesn't work like that. HaKadosh Baruch Hu is very serious. He's very serious. Rabotai, He's not our friend. He's our God. So now, a person hears stuff like this, gets a shock of his life. What does he do? He has to decide. Do I believe in God or not? Okay, I believe in God. Okay, do I believe that God made the Torah? No. Yeah, okay, so if I believe in God, I believe in the Torah, this is what He says. I got to do something about it. I got to do something about it. Well, now it's hard to stop right away. You're not a robot. It's not an on-off button, but you have to do something. So, a person has to stop. Two, a person has to learn about it. The more you learn about it, the easier it becomes to stop because you realize the magnitude of the crime. Three,

38:13You have to help other people. You have to help other people stop by giving them the CD, by sharing the shiur and other shiurim that we have. Why? Because if you help other people stop, it's making up for the things you've done. Four, you have to do something called a tikkun. Now, tikkun is very expensive. Why? Because we are a weak generation that's not able to fast. And the Arizal writes, he brings it from the Zohar, he says that every time a person makes a certain sin, he has to fast a certain amount of times. He has to suffer a little bit in this world so he doesn't have to suffer in the next world. So, for example, if you ate something without doing a berachah, you have to fast three times. Now, most of us have committed this transgression a few times and we don't think it's a big deal. HaKadosh Baruch Hu disagrees. He thinks it's a big deal. You ate, you were satiated, then you have to praise Hashem your God. Now, you forgot to do it. The Arizal writes, he brings it from the Zohar, you have to fast three times. Now, most people don't want to fast.

39:27Why? Fasting is hard. Yesterday, people were looking for every excuse under the sun not to fast. Oh, I'm sick. What do you mean you're sick? You played basketball yesterday. Yeah, yeah, my leg, my leg hurts. How does your leg have anything to do with fasting? No, but it's also my hand. What does it have to do with anything? No, I'm in pain. I was taking antibiotics. People don't want to fast. So the Chachamim knew that people are weak and said, okay, no problem. So what are you going to do? You've got to fast a certain amount of times. Instead of fasting, you replace it with money. For each fast, you replace the value of eating for a day. So now, even if you eat steak, 20-ounce steak every day for $30, And even though you drink champagne with it, that's not normal. You could survive on food for probably five bucks a day, ten bucks a day. So if you're conservative, let's say you drink the water from the water fountain and you eat a piece of bread, and five bucks will cost you to eat for the day.

40:38if you replace your real meal that you spend, you know, $15 for breakfast, $25 for lunch, and $60 for dinner, by the time you finish, you've got yourself a couple hundred dollars a day. So what happens here? You have to replace every meal, every day's food, with money. So let's say it's five dollars a day, you have to now... fifteen dollars. Five times three; you forgot to bless HaShem for the food. So, you have to give five dollars times three. value of the meal is $5. For the tikkun, for forgetting a blessing, it is 3 times, so $5 times 3. You give this $15 for the sake of publicizing Torah, publicizing kiruv, especially when it has to do with this issue. Someone that teaches about brachot, someone that teaches about prayers, and so on, you give this $15 to him, to his organization. That's your tikkun, making up for that crime one time.

41:38Now, if you forgot praying, I don't know, a hundred times, you got to do it a hundred times. You don't have the money for a hundred times, then you do it over time, every month a little bit, every week a little bit. Now, the problem is that the tikkun that I just gave you is the smallest tikkun that there is. Forgetting a prayer is only three fasts. It's the smallest one, it's the cheapest one. If you were intimate with a woman, that's a Jewish woman, ...and you weren't married. That means that she was niddah because an unmarried woman is not allowed to go to the mikveh. So you had a girlfriend, and you and your girlfriend acted like husband and wife for a little while. Well, the Zohar HaKadosh says that you have to fast 82 times each time you're with her. 82 times. So now, what does that mean? $5 times 82, $410 for each time you're with this girl. You guys dated for, let's say, a year. You were together a hundred times. A hundred times in a year. A hundred times times $410. You got yourself a nice bill. You don't have that kind of money. You're not Rockefeller. You're not Rockefeller's son either. No worries. You don't have to pay all of it in one day. Whatever you can, you do. You got, let's say, $400 a month. Okay, so you do one tikkun a month.

43:01You got $800 a month, you do two tikkunim a month, and you do it as long as you have. Now, when HaKadosh Baruch Hu sees that you're doing His mitzvot, you care about it, you're putting your money where your mouth is, guess what? HaKadosh Baruch Hu likes that. Why? Because He sees that you're taking it seriously, so He gives you more money. You end up winning anyway. You don't lose. Now, Rabotai Yekarim, the tikkun for wasting seed is 84 times. 84 fasts. For every single time a guy wasted seed, he has to fast 84 times. That means $420 with the estimate of food being only $5. Some people estimate food to be $10. Some people estimate food to be $20. It depends where you live. But let's say we're conservative, $5. Okay, it's $420 per time. That means, Rabotai, that the average guy that's 25 years old and has been wasting seed already for at least 10 years, You're talking about how he has to be Rockefeller and his father to pay for what he did. No worries. HaKadosh Baruch Hu knows that. He's not expecting you to be Rockefeller. He's expecting you to do something. Can you handle something? Can you handle something? What can you handle? You can do 400 bucks a month, do 400 bucks a month. 400 bucks a week, you do 400 bucks a week. $400 a day, you do $400 a day. $400 a year, $400 a year. Whatever you can handle. Guess what? HaKadosh Baruch Hu has access to your bank account. He knows what you can handle.

44:27He even knows your boss. He knows what he pays you. He knows your parents. He knows what your allowance is. He knows how much money you have. Don't pretend like you don't have. People always say, "No, no, I'm broke. I'm broke." And then they buy a new car, they buy a new house, they buy a new this, they buy a new that. Okay, broke. Good luck. Now, here we have an opportunity, Rabotai. And again, remember, this is not for me. Not a single dollar of this goes to me. This is all for you. Here we have a double whammy. We have a double win here because we're coming out with a CD that's the first of its kind. So this means someone that donates to these CDs does their tikkun through these CDs where they give their $400, or $1,400, or $14,000, or whatever you can end up giving for us to help publish these CDs. Now you're winning in a million different ways. Not only are you doing a tikkun... Because you're helping publicize Torah, but you're also doing kiruv with this money. Because these CDs are going to be given away all over the world. Each person listens to this CD, this person starts doing teshuva. You're the biggest winner in the world. One guy that used to waste seed,

45:37twice a day on a regular basis. He thought it was healthy. A psychiatrist says it was healthy. Wasted twice a day for 10 years. Almost killed himself. That guy stops because he got a $2 CD. Guess what? Every single time he would have done it ongoing, twice a day, for the rest of his life, another 60-70 years, guess what? It goes to your account that you are making up twice a day from the past. You did it once a day. You did it once every other day. He does it twice a day. You're erasing the debt day by day, day by day. So that means you don't have to pay a million, trillion dollars for all the things you do. You just got to use your money wisely and you got to publicize this stuff. You don't want to do it? Be my guest. Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do anything. B'chavod. People think that they're doing me a favor. It's like, oh, how much exactly is this and how much exactly is that? No questions. This is what it is. You want any questions? You go to the website. It has the information. That's it. You don't want to do it, b'chavod, do what you want. What if I do it myself and if I just, you know, take the links and I send them to people? Go send the links to people.

46:50This is an option. You want to use it? B'chavod, do it. What if this and what if that? Listen, this is an opportunity. Someone wants to be a partner. Someone wants to take a few dollars, help themselves. B'chavod, you do it. You don't want to do it, don't do it. Trust me, if I wanted to sell it, it would be a different pitch. But people need to understand, doing teshuva is not an easy thing. It's not cheap either. It's a lot of effort. But that's why the people that do serious teshuva, listen to our shiurim and follow what we say, which is really just repeating what the sages say, these people don't go off the derech. Baruch Hashem. Why? Because it was so hard for them to get to where they got to, and they're enjoying it so much, they don't for a second want to risk it. For a second, they don't want to risk it. Going for what? For five minutes of pleasure? For what? so you have to be strong about that. It's the only way. I know there are certain people in certain organizations that teach differently. They teach a softer approach. They tell you that you're okay. They tell you you're a tzaddik. They tell you everything is fine. Well, I'm sorry to tell you, but I don't believe that strategy works. And you don't have to take my word for it; you can just look at society today. These organizations have been around for 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years.

48:14The number of religious people in the Jewish world today has decreased repeatedly, consistently. It's not like we've gotten better with this approach. This approach hasn't worked. If it works, then more people will be religious. If it works, then all of their students will be tzaddikim. But what do you see? You see that the students are getting worse and worse, and the teachers too. And that's part of the reason we're going to finalize with this one thing, and then you guys can ask some questions. And again, to repeat... Part of the reason why these organizations succeed is because people, instead of publicizing real Torah, donate and attend the lectures of these wicked people like this Manis Friedman, this Dweck, and this Mirvis, and all these people that we talk about. And it's sad that this Manis Friedman apparently is very popular here in Florida. So he's coming to visit, I think, in the next week or two. He's coming to visit to help ruin more lives. So, he has a couple of speeches and gigs in North Miami Beach, in Miami, and in different places. If you know anybody that is going to these speeches, you should show them the shiurim that we spoke about, so at least they know what they're dealing with.

49:42Because most people can't even tell what's right and wrong anymore. They hear a guy tell them they're going to heaven no matter what, and everything's okay, just be nice to your wife, be nice to your husband. They like it. It's stress-free Torah. The truth is, it's the opposite of Torah. So, sadly, sometimes people make mistakes. We have good people who don't know who the bad people are, so they mix and match. So now there is a... very controversial series called the "Justice Series," and it's about a guy named Derrick Hamilton who was imprisoned for murder. He ended up proving his innocence after studying law in prison. So they want the opinion of a couple of rabbis about the attitude towards justice, the prison system, the whole thing. Now, grand scheme of things, this is very interesting, very mentally stimulating. What's the problem? You have a good and bad in here. What's the good and bad? On one hand, you have a good rabbi named Rabbi Akiva Tatz. He's a good rabbi from what I know. I read one of his books. Very smart guy, very nice person, helps a lot of people. And...

51:06But then he doesn't know that he's partnering up with one of the biggest reshaim in the history of Am Yisrael named Joseph Dweck. Joseph Dweck is the guy from London who gave a lecture about a year ago where he said that homosexuality is like the biggest blessing that's happened in recent history. This is a rabbi of a kehillah. So now I'm assuming that Rabbi Akiva Tatz doesn't know that Dweck is such a rasha, doesn't listen to lectures on YouTube, doesn't deal with this stuff, and he doesn't know that he's being put on the same stage as this guy. Now, what happens in a situation like this? Why do I mention this? I mention this because if anybody here has contact, has access to Rabbi Akiva Tatz, you should tell him this. And the reason why is because when someone has a good reputation as a kosher person, as a good person, and they're put on a stage with anyone else, by default, that kosher person becomes the kosher stamp on anyone that's next to them.

52:14Where do we learn this from? We learn it from the Gemara. The Gemara has a person by the name of Reish Lakish. Reish Lakish was the chavruta of Rabbi Yochanan, one of the most important sages in history. Now, before Reish Lakish became the Reish Lakish of the Gemara, he was the head of the mafia. He was the biggest gangster in the world. One day he did teshuva. Rabbi Yochanan helped him do teshuva. The guy became a big tzaddik, big chacham, kodesh kodeshim. But because he knew the ways of the street, because he knew crime, because he knew all the things, he was very, very critical of it. Because he knew now how bad it was. He knew how filthy he was. So he would never even talk to, just even a hello, to anyone that he knew was not 100% a kosher person. To such an extent that it became well known among the community that anyone that Reish Lakish talks to, that's a good person to do business with. You could actually lend him money, do business with him without witnesses. Why? Reish Lakish shook his hand. That's enough.

53:15Reish Lakish is such a Kodesh Kodashim. He's so strict when it comes to dealing with people. He doesn't talk to anybody unless he knows for sure you're like mamash Badatz. You are the biggest kashrut in the world. You're the biggest tzaddik in the world. He's never going to talk to you. So Reish Lakish says hello to this guy. He says, how are you? How's everything? Oh, we could do business with this guy without even having witnesses. Why? Reish Lakish is the witness. Reish Lakish is the judge. Reish Lakish is the testimony. Reish Lakish is the kosher stamp. And that's what happens. Sometimes you have tzaddikim, you have good people, you have righteous people, and there, you know, somebody books them into some event. They don't know who, what, when, and how. They're just going to do their job. The problem is, they bring some resha'im, some Manis Friedmans of the world, some Joseph Dwecks, some drochkasutos, some of these filthy people that distort the Torah. they put him on the same stage as this guy, and the people say, "Oh, I know Rabbi Akiva, I know this one, I know these good people. I don't know this Dweck, I don't know this drochkasutos, I don't know this Friedman. But if he's on the same stage, he must agree that this guy's a good guy." Next thing you know, they start listening to this guy's

54:25This actually happened recently. Recently, there was someone, a big Talmid Chacham Tzaddik, that was hosted on his show, on his thing. He hosted one of these Reshaim, Friedman. And he didn't know who he was. He didn't know. He knew he's popular on the internet. He goes to different places every day. But you know this guy says there's no Gehinnom. You know this guy's promoting promiscuity. He didn't know this guy made a lecture today or yesterday, whatever it was, and the background of the lecture, he's actually in a wig company. The whole background is wigs, each one six, eight feet long. The whole background, he's promoting this. He's promoting immodest wigs against halacha, against everybody's halacha, including the Lubavitcher Rebbe. And that's what he's promoting. He gives shiurim just to women on a regular basis, against halacha. He does all types of things, and everybody keeps listening. Why? Because people don't know much. People don't know much, and a few people gave him the "Okay" stamp because he was on the same stage as a couple of decent people. And that's what happens.

55:41So anyone who doesn't know, you have to understand. Sometimes you're going to have a mix. You're going to have a good guy sitting right next to a bad guy, not because the good guy is saying the bad guy is a good guy, but he doesn't know. He doesn't have time to know. But if anyone knows any, you know, you see one of these things happening, your rabbi invited one of these reshaim to the shul, and he doesn't know that he's a rasha, let him know. Tell him, listen, you have to see, there are a few clips here. This guy says that there's no reward and punishment. This guy says that a woman should be, you know, or pretty much the streets and all types of things. This guy says that Hashem wanted Adam to start creating new things from the Torah. Your rabbi is obviously going to ask, "Can you show me proof?" You show proof, the guy says, "Okay, thank you, canceled." You're doing the community a service by doing such a thing.

56:42So you don't want to do it, don't do it. But the point is that anyone who wants to do it, this is something to do. So with that being said, please, if anybody has some questions, b'chavod, who wants to start? So the sages were very strict about not delaying the mitzvah of getting married. Because they say it's virtually impossible for a man not to have a seminal emission throughout his life. What if a man never meets his wife or his soulmate and never gets married for whatever reason? What if Hashem doesn't want him to get married? What does such a person do? It's a very good question. In the world that we live in, the more a person understands... himself and his responsibility. The more he understands his own limitations now, the more a person understands his own limitations, the better his clarity is going to be about what his responsibility is in the world. Meaning, that you know that you can try to make money, but there's no guarantee that you'll succeed.

58:02You could try to have kids, but there's no guarantee you'll succeed. You could try to get married, but there's no guarantee you'll succeed. So of course, HaKadosh Baruch Hu, your Father in Heaven who loves you, is not going to judge you and punish you based on something that you could not do, because He is the one who decides whether you succeed or not. He's the one who decides whether your business will prosper or fail. He's the one who decides whether your seed is going to work and you're going to have a child or not. He's the one who decides whether your wife is going to be able to carry the child. He's the one who decides whether you're going to find a wife at all. He's the one who decides everything. The only decision that's in your hands is how much you try. That's what you're judged on. Your whole judgment is based on effort, not success. So if a person tries to do everything possible, he learns Torah, he does mitzvot, he calls the shadchanim, and he asks them, "Please help me, here's my resume," this one, that one, he does whatever he needs, he does his hishtadlut, he continues praying to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. As long as he does his hishtadlut, if it doesn't succeed, there's no punishment to be made. That's what it is.

59:20HaKadosh Baruch Hu decided not to give. But that means that he's also not allowed to give up. Because maybe HaKadosh Baruch Hu doesn't want you to get married at 25. He wants you to get married at 35. I have a cousin that is a huge Talmid Chacham. He did teshuvah almost 30 years ago. And he has become a very, very serious Rav in Israel. So much so that he literally practically sleeps in the yeshiva. Now, I've never learned with him, but I can tell you from what I've heard from others, he's an enormous Talmid Chacham. And he is now approaching almost 50 years old. And he's a person that's so holy that when we went to visit, last time we went to visit, he wasn't willing to meet me unless I was by myself. He wasn't willing to see my mom. He wasn't willing to see other women. He wasn't willing to see my wife. My wife, Baruch Hashem, is very modest. Everybody's modest, but he's not even willing to look at women. Not willing to look. Look, forget about the look, even at a modest one. Not willing to look at nothing. Here's a person that's Kodesh Kodashim. He's almost 50 years old and he's single. Never been married. Still looking. He wasn't willing to meet me unless I was by myself. He wasn't willing to see my mom. He wasn't willing to see other women. He wasn't willing to see my wife. My wife, Baruch Hashem, is very modest. Everybody's modest, but he's not even willing to look at women. Not willing to look. Look, forget about the look, even at a modest one. Not willing to look at anything. Here's a person that's Kodesh Kodashim. He's almost 50 years old and he's single. Never been married. Still looking.

1:00:38Now, I wanted to bring him a few shidduchim, but unfortunately, he doesn't speak English. He speaks, and most of the people I know are English speakers. Also, one of the issues that he's had is that he has no interest whatsoever in doing anything other than learning Torah. Meaning, he needs a very special woman who wants him to learn Torah and doesn't want him to work even for one minute. He's bad. He's a very good-looking guy. Nothing's wrong with him. Handsome, tall, very smart. Everything is good, but he wants to learn Torah. That's what he wants in his life. Most women today say, "Okay, learn Torah, no problem, but we need some money." It's a money issue. "No problem, continue being, you know, that's it." So, this, rabotai, is not an easy shidduch. It's not an easy shidduch to find someone that speaks the same language. On top of it, someone that's willing to finance him, and on top of it, live in Israel. Because, you know, even if you found somebody here in America, okay, she wants him to come here. Why? Because she has a job here. She makes, I don't know, $100,000 a year here, $50,000 a year here. She's okay to... No, no, he's not moving here. He's staying exactly where he is. He's not moving anywhere. He has his thing. Now, this is a big tzaddik, a big chacham.

1:01:53But he's almost 50 years old, no shidduch. What do you mean? You think that Hashem is going to punish him for not getting married? No, he wants to learn Torah. He wants to learn Torah. He wants to learn Torah, and Hashem is going to give him a shidduch whenever it comes. Now, if he never gets married, he never gets married, but if he gets married, then Hashem wills it. But there are other people like him. The point is, he's supposed to try his best. He's supposed to try his best, and he tries his best. So if you try your best also, you do mitzvot, you learn Torah, you give tzedakah, you do all the things that you need to do. Be'ezrat Hashem, you're going to succeed. And that's what HaKadosh Baruch Hu is going to judge us on. He's going to judge us based on our effort. Our effort. If you've tried your best, there's nothing that you have to worry about. To add to it, since we talked about wasting seed, there's also a very common question that people ask. What about a couple that's married and they've already gone to their middle age and the woman is no longer able to bring children to the world?

1:02:57they are allowed to be together. The same exact answers I just gave you. Of course they're allowed to be together. Yeah, but what do you mean? How are they allowed to be together if every time the guy has his seed, for sure it's not going to bring a baby? She's old already; she can't do it. So how come it's still allowed? Isn't that wasting seed? No, it's not. Why? Because technically, you're still doing your effort. It's not in your hands whether you're going to bring a baby or not. Just because, you know, the doctor says you can't, or your whole, you know, physical shape, he says you can't, doesn't mean that God wouldn't decide, like Sarah Imeinu, who's 90 years old, one day she gives a baby. As long as you do your effort, HaKadosh Baruch Hu decides whether that seed is going to work, whether the egg is going to work, whether a uterus is going to reappear—who knows? The point being, Rabotai, is that when a person understands that his responsibility is connected to his limitations, your limitation is that the best you can do is try.

1:04:03That's the most a person can do in this world. He can try to make money. He can try to get married. He can try to have kids. He can try to do a lot of things. That's really all you can do. Success is not in your hands. And that's how HaKadosh Baruch Hu judges us. He judges us based on our effort. Based on our effort. So, a man and a woman, they're already in their middle ages. They cannot have kids. HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, every time you're together, it's a mitzvah also. Why? Because you're trying anyway. You try anyway, that's it. Also, HaKadosh Baruch Hu made it pleasurable for a reason as well. You're also allowed to enjoy. But again, the whole issue of seed, don't ever think for a second that it's wasting seed. Why? Because again, HaKadosh Baruch Hu is the one that decides whether this is going to actually consummate and become a baby or not, regardless of what the age is. So it's the same answer, just different context as far as the marriage, as far as that. Next question. Son, you usually have some questions. Yeah. Okay. Like, always in my class, I hear, like, 500 F-words, like, maybe 490 on a good day. And, like, I want to tell them to stop cursing. But, like, every time I tell them to stop cursing, they respond, "Who are you? Who do you think you are?" Right. So...

1:05:23What do you do in a situation like that? Now, so like I said in the beginning, in regards to rebuking people directly, especially when they're your friends, people that are close to you, it's very difficult because that's exactly everybody's response, but in different words depending on the age. When they're 16, 17 years old, it's like, "Who do you think you are?" You know, when they're 25 years old, it's like, "When did you become a rabbi?" And you know, when they're 45 years old, it's "Don't tell me what to do." You know, it's the same exact answer, though. So what happens? So what do you do? The first thing you could do is you could ask the rabbi of the shul to give a shiur about it. To give a shiur about Nivul Peh, which is cursing. using derogatory language. If the Rabbi does it, and the people still don't change, then you can go to some of the clips that we have about it on my website, on the YouTube channel. And there are a few clips that we have about Nivul Peh, about when a person curses

1:06:26What's the magnitude of it? There are also a few books that mention what it means to use derogatory words and curse words, and so on. How much a person will get punished for it, and so on. This is something you can send to people via text message without having that direct interaction that, for them, feels like you're attacking them. Not because you're attacking them. You're not attacking them. You're actually just trying to help them. But because their ego is so big, they feel like anything that you're doing that's not complimenting them is an attack. So that's why they say, "Who do you think you are? When did you become a rabbi? Don't tell me what to do." What does that mean? That means that they feel like you're attacking them. you don't agree with them. So, Rabotai, you have to do it smart; you have to do indirect rebuke. Send a shiur, start a group on WhatsApp, start an email list, start a group wherever you are, and try to give people the information that way. At that point, you have fulfilled your obligation of rebuking them. You gave them a shiur, you gave them a CD; they chose not to listen to it anyway.

1:07:37What can you do? You could try again another time and so on. But the reality is, Rabotai, without Yirat Shamayim, without real fear of HaKadosh Baruch Hu, it is impossible for a person to live a kosher life. Impossible. A person that does not have fear of Hashem is going to curse. A person that doesn't fear Hashem is going to steal. He's going to cheat. He's going to lie. He's going to do the worst crimes in the world. So much so, The Gemara says if you know that a person does not have fear of Heaven, does not have fear of Hashem, you're not allowed to be in a room alone with him or alone with her. So the Gemara says, why? It says, maybe they'll kill you. Maybe they'll kill you. Where do we learn it from? We learn it from Avraham Avinu. Avraham Avinu gets his wife Sarah kidnapped by the people of Avimelech. Then Avimelech gets rebuked by Hashem. Apparently, he had a major merit for Hashem to speak to him. And Hashem says, "You know, you are about to be with the wife of one of my prophets." But Avimelech says, "I didn't know. I didn't know. He told me she's his sister." Hashem says, "I know you didn't know. That's why I didn't kill you."

1:08:56But if you touch her, I'm going to kill you. So the next day, Avimelech comes to Avraham Avinu and he says to him, "How come you didn't tell me that she's your wife? Why did you lie to me? Why did you tell me that she's your sister?" So Avraham Avinu gives us a lesson of all lessons. He says, "I saw that the people here have no fear of Hashem, and they would kill me over my wife." Meaning that someone who does not have fear of the Almighty is always in Shamayim, always suspect of possibly being a murderer. Why? Because when you don't fear Heaven, that means you think you are Heaven. You don't fear God, that means you think you are God. Somebody has to be God. If you're not afraid of God, then you think you are the ruler, you're the creator, you're everything. So if you think you're the ruler, you're the creator, you're in charge of everything, the second somebody is going to cross you, the second somebody is going to do something that you don't like, you're going to take things into your own hands. Because you have no fear that Hashem is going to punish you. So that's why, Rabotai, fear of Heaven is the ultimate, ultimate connection to Hashem at the beginning of everything. You could obviously get to loving Hashem and so on, but there's no such thing as loving Hashem without fearing Him also. Now, when a person understands this, he'll also understand why the people in his life act a certain way.

1:10:15you'll always see that the people who cheat, lie, curse, act like animals, and make fun of the Torah, you're always going to see that these people don't have an ounce, not even 1%, fear of Hashem. A person like that, You cannot help him without first telling him he has a reason to be afraid. He has to learn how to be afraid of Hashem. If he's not afraid of Hashem, there's nothing. If he doesn't want to hear scary stuff, doesn't want to hear about what happens if you sin, a person like that, you can't help. It's like a corpse. So that's why you have to try to get them to learn more and more about that and send them to shiurim little by little. Hopefully, some of them are going to change. You're never going to get everybody, but hopefully, over time, you're going to get some of them. Next one. I tell them the magnitude of the sin and then they just giggle at me and say, "I'm going to Chamber 7." Right, so that's it. So, a person needs to know that even though the information that you say is correct, there are many times where HaKadosh Baruch Hu does not want you to be the vessel. Meaning,

1:11:32You can give that information to two different people. One person you know, one person you don't know. Same exact information. The person that you know giggles at you and says, "I'm going to Chamber 7." The other guy starts crying hysterically, says, "I can't believe it. Can you help me? Can you help me do teshuva? Can you do something for me? How do I get out? What do I do? I never knew. How come?" You gave him the same information, same tone, same everything. Why? Because one guy, he knows you. He's comfortable with you. And he's going to take everything like a joke with you because he doesn't want to show you, because of his ego. He doesn't want to show you that he's scared. He doesn't want to show you that he cares. He doesn't want to show you that he's weak. You know, because he wants to be a macho. was a much as a lot of other people you know many of them full of much of people. Now, that guy hopefully has to pray every single day. He has to pray that someone is going to get them and he's actually do teshuva one day. But now, the guy that you don't know, he's not much of what could he says. What benefit is that I have yet, even though we will benefit, and tell me all this scary stuff? I'm not giving them any money, he's not charging me for it. Why do you tell me all this stuff? So he's going to take it seriously, perhaps double-check what you're saying.

1:12:44Now, the third option is, there's a very, very good chance that he simply doesn't believe. Meaning, you said what it says. You're saying that someone that's mechalel Shabbat goes to chamber seven and he's not getting out, and all the scary stuff that you heard from my lectures, and the guy starts laughing. And the reason why is because he doesn't believe you. Why? Because his rabbi, Friedman and company, told him there's no such thing. No such thing. He doesn't believe in it. He doesn't say, this rabbi has a much longer beard than me, says there's no such thing as the eternal Gehenom. He just said it on Motzei Shabbat in the lecture. So when you hear somebody like that say there's no such thing, and then you hear a little chupchik like me say that there is such a thing, you have yourself a machloket. So now what people think, ah, see, there's 70 faces to the Torah. There are no 70 faces, Rabotai. Every Jew who is a kosher Jew must believe that there's Gehenom. Must believe that there's an eternal Gehenom. Why? Because it's part of our Torah. So how do you know who's right and who's wrong? Who provided a source? Now you'll see that Friedman and company and all of his friends that say there's no Gehenom, they'll never mention a source. Baruch Hashem, I try very hard to provide you guys with many, many sources.

1:14:07You have Gemara Masechet Rosh Hashanah, page 16b. Gemara Rosh Hashanah 17a. You have Reishit Chochmah. You have Masechet Shabbat. You have many, many sources, Baruch Hashem. Countless sources that talk about Gehenom being eternal, being horrible, and so on and so forth. Friedman, on the other hand, never provides a single source. Now, what happens if you ask him? I'm going to save you the time. Somebody asked him. Somebody asked him and told me about the whole thing, the whole dialogue. He wanted to meet him. He says, can I meet you? Because I wanted to go over something in your shiur. You said about, you know, reward and punishment. So Friedman said, yeah, I can meet you. $400. $400 for the meeting. I'll sit with you for 15 minutes. I'll have $400. So the kid said, okay, fine. I'll pay you the $400. But then something changed. He couldn't do the meeting. Okay, you know what? Can I just send you the questions? You said in this shiur, or in this minute, that there's no Gehinnom that's eternal. You said here that there's this, you said this. Can you please provide me the sources for these five questions? He didn't send 500 questions where it's overwhelming. To answer, can I meet you, he said yes, $400. But to answer the questions should be just as easy. He sent him five questions, simple questions. Any normal Jew can answer these questions in two minutes.

1:15:34Yes, no, page number, book, something. What does Friedman and Company respond? No, I don't disclose my secrets. That's what he says. He says, can I have sources for the shtuyot that you said? He said it in a much nicer way. He said, can I have a source for where he said that there's no eternal Gehinnom, that there's no real punishment in Gehinnom, there's no suffering, all this stuff. Five questions. Can you give me a source, a book, a page, something? Friedman says, I do not disclose my secrets. Now, just so you know, aside from this being funny, it's also a Chilul Hashem. Aside from it being a Chilul Hashem, it's also a sin. Why? Mishnah in Avot, Mishnah in Pirkei Avot says, any time you say something, Divrei Torah, you must provide a source. Why? Because when you provide a source, you're bringing the Mashiach closer. When you don't provide a source, you're delaying the Mashiach. All of us now have to wait a little longer for Mashiach to come because Friedman doesn't want to give sources. You know why he doesn't want to give sources though? They don't exist. The sources for what he says don't exist, and that's what he's testifying. But people continue to invite him, pay him five, ten thousand dollars to come speak for an hour and make himself laugh on stage, and people have no idea why he's laughing, so they start laughing.

1:17:02You see this old man, the whole time. You have no idea why he's laughing, so you start laughing. Next thing you know, you think he's funny, but you have no idea why you're laughing, though. And they keep paying him $5,000, $10,000, $20,000, $30,000. That's why he's laughing. He said, these idiots are paying me for no reason. He's funny, though. It's funny that he keeps getting people to pay him for no reason. Not a single source is mentioned in any of his lectures. Not one. Not even Chassidut I'm talking about. Forget about Reshit Chochmah and Mesilat Yesharim and the Gemara. No, forget about that. Even the books of Chassidut he doesn't mention. You're not going to see a page number. You're not going to see a book name. Nothing. Go ahead, you want to waste a little bit, a few brain cells, take a risk, go ahead. Watch a few minutes of a shiur, you're never going to hear a single source. But the things you're going to hear him say are going to be like mind-blowing. Why? Because you never heard it before. Rashi completely disagrees with it. The Arizal disagrees. Rambam disagrees. The Rishonim, the Acharonim, the Gemara, everybody disagrees, but Friedman has a chidush. No one's ever heard, but there's no source for it. In the Torah, it's called shtuyot.

1:18:19Nonsense. But people keep paying for it. Top dollar. Top dollar they pay for it. And right now in Florida, he's coming to visit. What do you think, he's walking out of Florida without at least $30,000, $40,000, $50,000? He's coming here for a $300 ticket. He's gonna make thirty, forty, fifty thousand dollars to make himself laugh. And it's very funny. It's very funny that people are so stupid, they're gonna pay this clown, this Santa Claus, fifty thousand dollars. To what? To make you guys even bigger sinners than people already are. Whose fault is it? Is it him or them? It's their fault. They're enabling him. They're paying him. They're paying him. So it's funny, but it's not funny. Why? Because a lot of people watch him. people like him, and they end up living a life full of falsehood. It's a tragedy. So, Hashem will take care of him, but at least for the few that listen and take things seriously, hopefully, they will wake up. They'll wake up. Next question, Netanel.

1:19:39Earlier, you mentioned the importance of bringing in a kosher minyan. And some of us, some people go to work at a certain time, and some minyanim start later. Some of them start later. And I wanted to be specific in my case, for instance, and have to go to a... The shul I go to, the minyan... It's okay, but by the time they start, it’s a little later. So, by the time they finish, it’s already time for me to be at work, already past. Therefore, I have to go to Netz. Okay. And it's not that easy. It's not easy. It's not... The next minyan is... Just to be clear, the next minyan is not good, but the later minyan is better? One of the minyanim that you can go to is not good? The next minyan is not really good. There's a lot of talking and walking around. But the later minyan is already too late? Yes, it's already too late. Is it too late because they finish too late, or is it too late already by the time they get to Amidah, it's too late? By the time they get to Amidah, it's pretty much already too late. It's already like 8 o'clock plus, and

1:20:54I have to get to work by 8 o'clock. Ah, okay. Yes. I mean, it all depends on how bad the Netz Minyan is. It all depends on how bad it is. If the place... Well, first off, if you have another choice. There are other places. There are several Netz Minyanim by where I live. I know it's a little trip for you. Maybe another 15, 20 minutes out of your way. But if that's on your way to work, you could try that. There's one close by. So, there are a few other places that have netz minyanim that are decent by us. So that's one option, to go to a different place, a different netz minyan. And there are others. It doesn't have to be literally right outside your door. It could just be on your way to work, but just a different location. That's one option you have. Second option you have is if, let's say, there aren't any options, then what you would do in such a situation is that you still go to that netz minyan. You pretty much hide in the corner.

1:21:57...hide in a corner, even if usually there are no women. Usually, there are no women. So you go to the side where there's the women's section. You pray in the women's section. People don't even see you. You pray pretty much, just try to, you have to have the Shema Yisrael and the Amidah at the same time. The rest of it you can leave. Leave, and pray on your own. That's the two main things you have to pray with the minyan. But that's, again, only in extreme conditions. Don't make this like this is what you do all the time. If they're joking throughout the whole time, pray Shema Yisrael and Amidah at the same time as them, and the rest of it you can pray on your own. But that's, again, in extreme cases. You most likely have many other opportunities that don't need to be that. which means that you could find another place. But if there is no choice on a particular day, then try to do that. Hide in the women's section somewhere. No one sees you. No one's going to socialize with you. No one's going to know that you're even there. And do it that way. It's a sad reality that happens, unfortunately. But hopefully, you do have other shuls that will be a better option than praying in hiding, like you're under attack or something. Next question.

1:23:08...this parasha, we learn that when Yaakov gets to Mitzrayim and when he's blessing Yosef's children, and we know, well, before we even get there, we know that the Torah does not say things just for saying. And we learn that the Torah rules, that sometimes the Torah does certain things, and it skips them if they don't mean anything. you know, certain stories. We heard that Yaakov told, you know, Yosef that, you know, these two sons he has now, these are his. Those are going to be his, yes. But, you know, other sons from the future, they will be his. Did he ever have any other sons? I know the Torah does not speak about it, but why would he say that, knowing that he's, you know, he's a great tzaddik? Wow. Is there any... Fantastic Siyata Dishmaya, because it's actually one of the things I wanted to talk about, I just forgot. So, HaKadosh Baruch Hu put the words in your mouth. What's so special about Ephraim and Menashe? Why does Yaakov Avinu say in this week's parasha, Parashat Vayechi, that Ephraim and Menashe are so special that they're going to be part of the tribes?

1:24:34I mean, listen, they are nice kids, but how come he didn't make Reuven's kids part of the tribes? How come he didn't make Yehuda's kids part of the tribes? There are many other grandchildren. Many other grandchildren. Why do Yosef's kids become part of the tribes? What's so special about them? Why? Because he likes the name Ephraim? He likes the name Menashe? What's the deal? So, if you guys remember, Before Yaakov Avinu came to Egypt, the brothers told him that Yosef was alive and he was the viceroy of Egypt, meaning he was second to the king. And it says that initially Yaakov didn't believe them. He didn't believe the brothers. He didn't believe Yehuda, he didn't believe Reuven, he didn't believe them. Now let me ask you a question.

1:25:34You think that Yaakov thought that his sons are sadistic? He's already suffering for 20-plus years that his son is not there. Now they're making up some lie that he's alive and he's really not alive just to give it to the old man, give him a nice heart attack. What do you mean, "I don't believe him?" He's a Kodesh Kodashim. He knows how holy his sons are. Why would they make up a story? "Your son's alive and he's the viceroy," nonetheless. Why are you telling me this? What's the whole deal with Yaakov not believing them? Do you guys ask this question? Who has this? Who has the answer? The Satan has an answer. The Satan has an answer. i mean he wanted to get the mitzvah of seeing his son and therefore appreciating it much more, like he wanted to be able to think. No, nobody says he doesn't even believe them. He didn't believe them. Didn't believe them when they said, "Your son Yosef is alive and he's the king." It says Yaakov didn't believe them at first. Didn't believe them. Then he believed them. Why? The first question is, why don't you believe? He's a tzaddik; you know your son's a tzaddik.

1:26:46Yehudah, Am Yisrael comes from Yehudah. We're called Yehudim because of Yehudah. We know, it's tzaddikim, we talk about the Steipler Gaon, Rav Ovadia, Rav Elyashiv, all the biggest, Chofetz Chaim, are coming to you and saying, Hi, Abba, your son that you thought is dead, he's really alive, and you're going to watch him on the news. He's the king. You know, it's not like he's some guy. No, he's the king. You're going to see him on the news. He's the president. He doesn't believe them. What do you believe? Why do you think he would make up stories? No, Yossi was going to give me something. That's one of the punishments for them lying to you. But you know they lied. Good answer, but you know they lied. It’s nice to think that way, but you know they lied. I think it's because it has to do with Serach Bat Asher. Serach Bat Asher was singing in the background. Because then, when she was singing to him, she... Yes.

1:27:57Yeah, but he only got to walk in Kodesh after he believed. Not when he didn't believe. The reason why Serach Bat Asher, Serach, the daughter of Asher, was asked to sing in the background, Yosef is alive, and he's the Viceroy. Why? Because they knew that if they give this news to Yaakov Avinu all at once, the old man may get a heart attack. Why? You give somebody such big news, good news like this, they get a heart attack, you kill them. and what ended up happening was that they were scared. So what did they do? They had Serach sing a song that was like background music in hopes that it would soften him up. So when they actually told him, "Yeah, Yosef is alive and he's the Viceroy, he's the king," And he won't get a heart attack from it. And that's why, after all is said and done, after he finally believed them and so on, he understood what Serach, the daughter of Asher, did, and he blessed her to live forever. She lived hundreds and hundreds of years. She never died. She's one of the women that went to Gan Eden with her clothes on. Never died. Now, but that's still, again, after the fact. This is when he believed. I'm asking why he didn't believe.

1:29:13i don't know if I think. Good answer, but you're on chapter two. We're still stuck on chapter one. Still stuck on chapter one. I think I've read from the Sages who exactly said he did not believe that he did not believe. he was alive, but rather he was the same Yosef that he was, the one, the Chacham that he was when he left, and that he didn't believe in all this Tumah, he was the same person. So what Netanel is trying to tell us here is that Yaakov says, wait, you're telling me that Yosef is alive, and he's the king of Egypt? It's not possible. It's not possible. How could it be that Yosef is alive and he's the king? Why? Because the Torah says, HaKadosh Baruch Hu says to the Prophet, says to the Prophet Yechezkel, Ki lo echpotz b'mot ha'met ne'um Adonai Elohim v'shavu v'chayu. HaKadosh Baruch Hu says to the Prophet, for I do not desire the death of the one who's dead. The word of Hashem, Elohim,

1:30:29Turn yourselves back and live. So here we see that HaKadosh Baruch Hu calls sinners dead. The Gemara says someone that's a sinner, someone that's a Rasha, he's considered dead while he's still alive in the eyes of Hashem. Hashem says, I'm not interested in the death of the dead. What do you mean death of the dead? If he's already dead, what do you mean death of the dead? He says, no, the guy that's a sinner, that's a Rasha, I already consider him dead. I already consider him dead. He's already dead while he's alive. He's walking dead, this guy. I'm not interested in him continuing. I'm interested in him doing teshuva and becoming alive. So when Yosef left, he was a big tzaddik. He learned with his Abba every day. He was a Kodesh Kodashim. So Yaakov says, wait, you're saying Yosef is alive, meaning he's still a tzaddik, he's alive, but he's also the king of Egypt? That's an oxymoron. That doesn't work. It doesn't work. How are you going to be with all this money, with all this tumah, with all of this stuff, and still be chai, still be alive, meaning still a tzaddik? Not alive flesh and bones. Who cares about alive flesh and bones?

1:31:40Who cares about flesh and bones? What, you think he's crying because flesh and bones left this world? He's going to Gan Eden. What does he care? He says, no, how could it be? He's alive. He's a tzaddik. But he's also the king. How could it be? So what did they say? They said, look, he brought us these carriages. He brought us the agalot. The agalot had the symbols of the cow. Why? To show you, Abba, to show you Yaakov, that he still remembers the shiur. The shiur, the last shiur that you and he learned together about the red heifer. He sent us the specific agalah, the specific things, a caravan or so, to carry the stuff with the symbol on it. Why? Because it has to show you that he still remembers the shiur. You guys learned together, chavruta, 22 years ago about the red heifer. If he's really a rasha, how is he going to remember the shiur from 20 years ago? That shiur was so complicated, you had to repeat it over and over for 20 years to remember it. So that's when Yaakov says, ah, he's alive, okay. Now you're alive. So now we go back to Ephraim and Menashe. Ephraim and Menashe, why are Ephraim and Menashe so special over all of the other grandkids? In the parasha, chapter 48.

1:32:55Sefer Bereishit, we're almost done with Sefer Bereishit. And he says, he says, he says, now your two sons who were born to you in the land of Egypt, before my coming to you in Egypt, shall be mine. Like Reuven and Shimon. What's so special? Why are they like mine? He says, you see, you had sons. My other kids had sons. Everybody had sons. But they are like my sons. They're special. Why are they special? Because they were able to be tzaddikim. Tzaddikim, even though they're surrounded by Miami Beach. They're surrounded by Las Vegas. They're surrounded by all this tum'a in the world, but they're still your sons, meaning they are tzaddikim like you, like their Abba. They learn Torah every day. They do mitzvot. They didn't fall into the trap, the tum'a of everything else. They lived in a secular neighborhood, but still stayed kosher, Shomrei Shabbat.

1:34:00Such a person, such a grandkid, they are, they deserve to be part of the tribes. They're like Reuven and Shimon. Why? Because all of the other grandkids, they were around me all day. So I can't tell you they would survive the test. I can't tell you if I send Reuven's son to Egypt, he would come back the same grandson. I can't tell you if I send Yehuda's kid to Las Vegas, he's going to come back the same grandson. But your sons, they proved themselves. Why? Look at them, tzaddikim, they have the kippah, they have the tzitzit on, they're tzaddikim and everything. They're gonna be part of the tribes. Why? They withstood a test of living in Sodom and Gomorrah and they're still like this? They're part of the tribes. That's what makes it, that's the reason, Rabotai. That's what HaKadosh Baruch Hu tries to teach us in this parasha. A person should never ever be sad, upset, or even question The fact that they didn't grow up religious or they didn't grow up in the right neighborhood, it's the opposite. The fact that you grew up in a neighborhood that's not surrounded by yeshivot, the fact that you grew up in a place that's the opposite of Judaism, that's what HaKadosh Baruch Hu wanted for you. And He still expects you to be like Ephraim and Menashe.

1:35:18He still expects you to be like Ephraim and Menashe, tzadikim. Why? That was your test in this gilgul. That was your test in this life—to overcome the desires of the projects, to overcome the desires of Las Vegas, to overcome the desires of all of the nonsense of Miami Beach, of New York, of Los Angeles, of all of this tum'a, overcome it and still be a tzadik. Why? Because He says to us, someone like that, that's part of My tribe. Someone that overcomes such a test, that's a person, that's part of My tribe. If I sent you to Bnei Brak, and you're in a room all day, four walls all day, you have your rabbi, you have your ima, abba, you have food, that's it, all day, all day you're learning. But you're not that special. What? You never saw a half-naked woman just going on an average date, going to the store. You never saw. You were surrounded by certain surroundings that you never saw any of that stuff. Okay, so you're good. But you're not one of the tribes that's like so, so special because you didn't have the test. You didn't have the test. But you grew up in Staten Island, where it pretty much has the highest addiction to painkillers in the world.

1:36:29highest addiction to painkillers in the world. Little place that nobody even knows what it is. Highest place. Drug addiction like it's nobody's business. You come out of this place, you become a tzaddik? You're special. You're special. You're like a tribe. You're a tzaddik. Why? You came from the worst place on earth. Why? You grew up in Los Angeles, your rabbi was a Reform woman, but she said she was a man. Ha! You're going to be Reuven HaShimon, you tzaddik, ashrecha, ashrecha. You withstood the test, you withstood the test, you're special. That doesn't mean you should go start moving, leave the good neighborhood, and go move to the bad neighborhoods. But never ever think for a moment that just because you had a different set of cards than the people that live in Bnei Brak, the people that live in all these different places full of tzaddikim, that you are given the short end of the stick. The opposite. The opposite. The Gemara Masechet Berachot says, people that are real ba'alei teshuva, tzaddikim gemurim cannot even reach them.

1:37:33cannot even reach them. Why? Someone who overcomes all the desires of this world and still remains a righteous woman or a righteous man, no matter what, that's what HaKadosh Baruch Hu wants more than anything else. There are no excuses. Obviously, you should always live in a better neighborhood and try your best, but if you don't have an option, if your parents decided to live right next to the beach where pretty much no one walks around with any clothes, Now you're, what, 12, 13 years old? You can't tell your parents, "I'm moving out." Well, you move into the basement. Where are you going to move to? You have no option. You have no option. You have to live in this place because your parents decided to live on the beach. They, you know, they forgot their brain at work. So what happens? We have no option. If you could still manage to be a tzaddik or tzaddeket despite this, you are Hashem's greatest, greatest prize. Greatest prize. That's why Yaakov says that out of all the grandkids, there were 70 nefashot that came. A lot of grandkids. A lot of grandkids. And this is even years later. There's many, many more. There's hundreds of thousands already at this point. Out of all the grandkids, only Menashe and Ephraim become part of the tribe. Why? Because they withstood the test. They withstood the test. Next question.

1:39:02Joshua. Oh, no, you have the mic. You want to ask a question? I came late, but I shouldn't punish you. So earlier in the shiur, you said that at the beginning of everything, God created everything so you can fear Him. Is that the reason? Okay, so why the creation in general? Why the creation? Why did He create the world in general? In general, I mean, everything was peaceful. There was no sin. There were no idols. There was no Chilul Hashem. There was only God. Also, no mitzvot. No people. There were no people. There was no nothing. There was just God. It's a two-part question. Oh, two parts. Also... Ari's question is always special. So then you have the creation, which is, I don't know if the Torah agrees with this, but it started with a small point. Okay. Is it similar to the egg of a woman and the birth of man? And also is it related to the brit on the eighth day? The creation was seven days, six days, Shabbat.

1:40:18eighth day, the brit. There's something to do with that. Okay, so two-part question. It's a little bit mixed question, but... You can write a few books on your question. But here it goes. Answer the first question first. The Gra MiVilna wrote that in the word Bereshit, the word Bereshit, the first word in the Torah, He says that you can find every single mitzvah, every single halakha, everything in creation just from that word alone. Meaning that in a Torah world you could literally connect everything to each other because it's all part of the same Creator. So you can connect the egg, which is part of the creation, to brit milah, to the creation of being in six days and resting on the seventh. So the answer to the second question is yes, it's all connected. How to connect all of it depends on the chacham, the level of chochmah and da'at that they have, but nonetheless, everything is connected. As far as the first question, why did Hashem create the world? The real reason, we do not know.

1:41:34And we will never know because you have to be God in order to understand God completely. But we have a few understandings, if you will, a few teachings that we have. And that is that in order for someone to say that they are a good person, they cannot simply say, "I'm a good person" just because. Good is something that you have to express. You can't say, "I'm a good person," but every time somebody asks you for something, you say no. They ask you for a favor, no. They ask you to say hello to them, you say no. Nothing, never yes. You cannot be a good person if you don't help anybody other than yourself. Meaning good is something that you have to express. So how do you prove that you're good? By doing good. In order to be good, you can't just say I'm good. You have to do good. You have to produce good. So HaKadosh Baruch Hu is the ultimate good. But in order for Him to show that He's good, He had to produce good. He had to produce good. In essence, He created the creation.

1:42:53in order to give us good, give the creation good, give all the different things that He created good, because He was by Himself, there was nobody else, nothing else but Him. But in order for Him to really fulfill His goodness, He had to produce something—not necessarily that He had a need, chas v'shalom—but that in essence, an expression of His good is by producing good. Like some people think, oh, Hashem had a desire or Hashem needed something. Chas v'shalom, you can never say such a thing because that means that Hashem is needy or Hashem is limited in some way to feelings and so on. When we say good, all the different words that we use, it's just to soften it for our ear to understand it. Just like when it says Hashem took out Am Yisrael with a yad chazakah, with a strong arm. Hashem doesn't have an arm. He has no body, no likeness of a body. But we use certain words as a way for us to understand certain things. So because He's good, He produced good, and He gave us the opportunity to get good. So He gave us this world, and He said, if you do good, you will get good. If you emulate Me,

1:44:13By producing good, which means following My instruction set, you will also get good. And that's, in essence, how the chain is. So that's one of the understandings that we have of why Hashem created the world. The real ultimate reason, we will never know simply because we're not God. If I understood Him, I would be Him, is what the Sages say all the time. It's not possible for a human being to understand that. Needless to say, it's not possible for us to understand many other things, like the concept of time, the concept of a... Past, present, and future are all the same to Hashem. He has no past, no present, and no future; it's all the same to Him. Different concepts like that are hard for us to grasp because we are living within the limitations of a body. The body is subject to certain things that Hashem is not subject to; He is above time and space. He is not restricted by those things.

1:45:19No, we understand a base of what He said in the Torah. He said certain things, and He did this in order to do good. But the ultimate, ultimate reason, a deeper, deeper reason, we're never going to understand. For example, I'll give you an analogy or a way to understand it now. you see me right now, I look like I'm, you know, pretty much complete—a little heavy, but complete, right? Okay, the truth is the chair looks complete, you look complete, the room, the building, everything looks complete. Now if you look at everything through a microscope, you're gonna see that not only are we not complete, but in fact we're 99.9% empty. Why? Because everything is made from atoms. Now, these atoms are really, really small—you can't see them with the naked eye. But if you take a microscope, a really, really fantastic and expensive microscope, you can see the atom. Now, you're going to look into the atom itself. What is this atom? It's a couple of little dots—a lot of a couple of dots—proton, electron, neutron, all these different things, scientific terms, all these things. And in essence, they're spinning, spinning, spinning really fast.

1:46:40spinning really fast in order to, and they connect to each other in order to make up what it is. But if you look, inside the actual atom itself, you're going to see that 99.9% of the atom is actually empty space. The only reason it looks solid—this phone looks solid, this CD looks solid, I look solid, everything looks solid—is because the atom is spinning so fast that you cannot tell, you cannot see its emptiness. what is it like? It's like a fan. Have you ever seen a fan when it's working at full speed? It looks like a single blade, but once you stop it, you suddenly discover it had five blades. Now, when it spun, it looked like a single blade. So, what happened? Did it change to five blades? No, it was always five blades. Because of the speed, it looked like a single blade. The same thing with us. Because of the speed of the atom spinning, it looks like we're really solid, when in reality, all of creation is 99% completely empty nothing.

1:47:42To such an extent that scientists have theorized that if you actually take the real mass that actually exists in the entire universe, you could put it all into a box of matches. That's what actually exists. Most of it is completely empty space. Now, even now, when they discovered this, they discovered the atom, it was a breakthrough, it was extraordinary, wow, empty space, great. Now they figured they found one of the secrets of creation. But then you fast forward to recent times, and better microscopes and technology came out and discovered, guess what? Those few dots, that electron, that neutron, that proton, all that stuff that you thought was spinning, if you look inside them, meaning you need even a better, better, better microscope, you look inside those pieces, you will see that those pieces themselves have little spinning things, and that whole thing repeats again, and they themselves are 99% empty space. and better microscopes and technology came out and discovered, guess what? Those few dots, that electron, that neutron, that proton, all that stuff that you thought was spinning, if you look inside them, meaning you need an even better, better, better microscope, you look inside those pieces, you will see that those pieces themselves have little spinning things, and that whole thing repeats again, and they themselves are 99% empty space. Meaning we even have less. Less than what we thought. Much less. Why does it all still look the same? Because HaKadosh Baruch Hu calls this world Alma Deshikra.

1:48:52The world of lies, everything is an illusion. Everything is an illusion. You think that you're in love, and the next thing you know, you hate her. You think that you're rich, and the next thing you know, you're broke. You think that you're smart, and the next thing you know, everything you believe is a lie. Everything is false. Everything is upside down. The people that are the most wicked sometimes are leading the show. The people that are the most righteous look like they're homeless. Everything is upside down in this world. For a moment of pleasure, a person is willing to give everything up for it, but when he realizes that it was a mistake, it's already too late. It's already too late. It's a world of lies. This, rabotai, is one of the most important lessons to understand that everything in this life is an illusion. Meaning that you shouldn't fall for it. Don't fall for these desires where in your mind it seems like it's worth it to be with that person without marriage, to take that stuff that doesn't belong to you, to say that stuff that shouldn't be said. All of that stuff looks... like it's delicious, looks like it's pleasurable. But Hashem says it's all an illusion. It's all an illusion. When you're going to find out, the second you do it, you're going to realize it's not worth it. Every single time a man or a woman acts immorally,

1:50:07the second they start, okay, they're in their crazy place. But the second they stop, all of a sudden, all the questions come. All the doubts come. Ah, should I have done that? Should I have let him touch me? This pasul of his without being my husband? Should I have let him? Should I have eaten that? Should I have gone there? Why do you have all those doubts? Why do you have all those doubts? How come you didn't have those doubts beforehand? Because beforehand, Your mind was clouded by all of the illusion. Ah, but it's really good. It's really delicious. Animal instinct. Once you got it out of your system, all of a sudden, that illusion is gone because you saw what it is for real. So now you've got clarity. Now you can finally think, I'm not going to let this person touch me. No, I'm not going to do this. No, I'm not going to take that. It's not mine. Now you have clarity. So, HaKadosh Baruch Hu created this world in a certain way where you have the opportunity to see the creation itself and appreciate the Creator, but also learn about the Creator. He tells you this world is full of lies, meaning that it's full of things that are going to tempt you to go against Me. Why? That's where free choice comes in. I'm going to give you all of the opportunities to go against Me.

1:51:33just as many opportunities to go with Me. You'll have just as much chance if you go against Me. You think you'll enjoy this life if you go with Me, you're definitely going to enjoy this life and the next. And that's why it's a very, very important question that is in the minds of everybody that has done teshuva or is doing teshuva, and they always, if they haven't done it completely, they always look at their past. "Before I started keeping Shabbat, I used to go here, I used to go there," and They start sometimes doubting their life, their religious life, because their Yetzer Hara only gives them a memory of the good parts of their secular life. They remember when they had money. They don't remember the part when they lost all of it.

1:52:37They remember when they went on vacation. They don't remember when they went on vacation, they got sick, and they were vomiting six out of the seven days they were away. They remember that they worked for this company. They don't remember when they got fired and embarrassed in front of 500 people. So the Yetzer Hara gives you the illusion about your past, making you think that maybe your past is better. than your present. Maybe your past, when you were secular, going against Hashem every day, seemed better because you didn't care and you enjoyed the world. But in reality, you had just as many, if not more, problems than you have today. Judaism did not increase your problems; in fact, it did the opposite. But many people give themselves the illusion or think that before they did teshuva, their life was better. This is the opposite of true. opposite of true. Why do you have this? You have this because you still have not committed. You still have not committed to abandon your past. As long as you have not committed to abandon your past, you're always going to have regrets. You're always going to have this shtuyot, this dust in your mind of the past, but only the good parts. You know, it's like people put in their Facebook profiles and different online profiles only the good parts of their life. They're never going to tell you about, you know, they're never going to give you a picture of when, you know, somebody, you know, smashed their car and ran away. They're never going to give you a picture of when somebody embarrassed them.

1:54:05or they got into a fight with their spouse, or their kids cursed them out. They're never going to give you a picture of that or a video of that. What are they going to give you? Oh, they went on vacation. Oh, it's a family picture. Everybody looks so happy. Everybody's dressed up. They're not going to show you the picture of five minutes later when the kids spilled ketchup all over their clothes and ruined everything. They're not going to show you a picture of that. They're going to show you a picture of the nice stuff, the moments. That's the Yetzer Hara. Yetzer Hara only gives you the memory of the moments. The moments of good. Now you are, in essence, enabling the Yetzer Hara by not committing one hundred percent, by not getting to a point where you realize, "Listen, in the past, all of it was bad. Even the good was bad because even the good was against Hashem. There's no good without HaKadosh Baruch Hu. The good you had was against Hashem. How could it be good?" They say, oh yeah, no, but I was, you know, I was eating. I was eating. Okay, what about if you find out that you were eating your kid like they did in the Holocaust? Still good? Delicious? You got satiated? It's good? No, right? No, but I was, you know, I was making money. What if you find out that all the money you were making was actually because people were selling bodies from Planned Parenthood?

1:55:23They were selling aborted babies. And you realize all the money you made came from that. Still good, that money you're making? Still delicious? You still like it? No, right? What about the rest of the things? Oh, she was so good. We had such a good time. What if you find out that she was somebody else's mother, somebody else's wife, and she was ruining her marriage with you? Still good? Still like it? You still have a better relationship? Oh, I love him so much. We had such a good time. What if you find out you ruined his marriage that he had while he was with you, and you ruined his kids, and one of his kids committed suicide because his father cheated on his wife? He jumped off a bridge because he couldn't handle the divorce, and you're the one, you cute little girlfriend, you caused this. You still happy about this relationship? No. How come? Because once you find out that it was all an illusion, and the only memory that you have was of the small little tiny good moment, but in reality, even that good is bad. Even that good was bad. There is no good without Hashem. There is no good without HaKadosh Baruch Hu. There is no good without God. So once a person understands that their entire past was a complete lie, nothing good...

1:56:35Everything was against Hashem. Now I can start living. Why? Because every day I wake up, I say, I have Hashem. Hashem is with me. Hashem loves me. Hashem gave me life. Another word. Okay, so there are a few things that are a problem. A few things, this doesn't work, that doesn't work, this is annoying, that's annoying. Okay, but this is good too. What? I'm with Hashem. People always say, "Oh, you still have any money?" I tell them, "You didn't watch the end of this show, I lost everything." "Ah, wow, that's too bad." I say, "No, the best thing that ever happened to me is losing every single penny." She goes, "What do you mean? How does that make any sense?" I say, "I didn't have Hashem, don't you understand? Don't you understand? Don't you understand? All the money in the world, you tell me right now, I'll give you a hundred million dollars, go back to Wall Street." I say, "Thank you. Give it to somebody else. A billion dollars, I wouldn't go back to my life." A billion. Give me a billion cash, put it, tons, tons, tables. On top of the table, go back, violate one Shabbat. A billion dollars. I tell you, give it to your mother. Why are you insulting me like this? You think I'm going to go against Hashem for a billion dollars? Go back to being Mechalel Shabbat. Are you insane?

1:57:40Until you get to a point where you're disgusted with your past, you're always going to have these doubts in your mind. Ah, but I used to have this boyfriend. Ah, I used to have this girlfriend. Ah, I used to have money. Ah, I used to have this. You still never left. You're like, you know, you're like a half, you know, you're like a fish that's half-cooked. You're not sure if you're going to get sick or not. You're not sure. And that's what happens. Until you get to a point where you have a clear understanding, a life without Hashem is not a life. Hashem says it's called death. It's death. If you are jealous of secular people, you haven't completed your teshuva, you haven't even begun your teshuva. You're impressed by these rich people, these rich Jewish people who are famous celebrities, and they're going against Hashem? You're jealous of them? You haven't begun to do teshuva yet. Because you still think a life without Hashem is an option for you. Which means you have no idea what you have. You have no idea what you have.

1:58:58Being in the most lonely little environment in the world, you by yourself in a room with a little bit of bread to eat every day and a Sefer Torah, is infinitely better than being the richest man on the planet. The richest man on the planet doesn't have Hashem. You're in your little room. Every day, all you eat is one little, you know, three-day-old piece of bread. That's what you eat. But you have a Sefer Torah with you. You keep Shabbat; you keep mitzvot. You have a little room, a little shack, nothing. Bottom of a barrel. You live in like a half a sewer, half a house. You have a much better life than the guy that has a hundred billion dollars a month. You don't realize it? You're poorer than dirt. Even with the money, without the money, you have no idea. You have no concept. Why? Because you still think that the illusion is true. You think that this is really solid. I just told you, it's not solid. It's all 99.9% nothing. You want to verify? Go on Google; they'll tell you too. Rabbi Google is good. Knows science, knows everything. But Rabotai, you have to stop. You have to stop believing the illusion. Now, this takes work.

2:00:15This takes time. This takes a lot of hitbonenut, a lot of reflection. Analyze yourself. You have to know yourself. Most importantly, you've got to stop. Stop looking everywhere. Stop looking at everybody's pocket. Stop looking at everybody's face. Stop looking at what everybody else has. Stop. Stop looking at everything. The grass always looks greener. It always looks greener, but it's an illusion. It's an illusion. Everything is an illusion. You look at yourself. You look at your Sefer Torah. You look at HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Nobody in the world is happier than you. But that's why you're going to see people that have trillions of dollars, billions of dollars, all types of things that people think are good. And they're the most miserable people on the planet. They commit suicide. They are addicted to drugs. They're addicted to alcohol. They're addicted to all types of things. Why are they addicted? Why are they absolutely addicted? Because all of these addictions are forms of escape from their reality. Because their reality... is not like the illusion. Their reality is horrible. You're going to see them laugh in a picture, but not in life. You're going to see them celebrate in a moment, but not in life. In life, they're addicted to a bunch of different things. They're constantly looking for new hobbies and new things to do to occupy time. I know this. I used to be one of them.

2:01:36You do stuff just to keep yourself busy. Oh, I'm going to go to the mall. Why? Oh, no, just go shop around. What do you mean shop? You have nothing to do in your life? Go shop around? That's it? No, I'm going to go to my friend's house. For what? Oh, have some coffee, chit-chat. That's it? Chit-chat? Talk to your friends? What are you going to talk about? Oh, I'm going to talk about another friend that didn't show up. I'll talk about politics. Why do you care about politics? What, you think your opinion matters? That if you guys have a really good conversation, a really good debate about who should be president, they're going to give you a call? Ah, we choose him. We're going to pick the next president because he won the argument. People have all these discussions about politics, about this, about that, for what? Wasting their life. There's nothing smart coming out of their minds. i was on the way back from shul on Shabbat and i heard these two teenagers who were walking in front of me. they're having a conversation between them. i didn't know what to do myself, but you know their father was behind me, so i didn't have necessarily an opportunity to talk to these two kids. but two kids are walking back from shul. now what are you gonna talk about? you just finished shul and Shabbat. you're in shul for three, four hours

2:02:44At the least, what are you going to talk about? Talk about parashah, talk about, you know, talk about food. I don't know, talk about something, you know, connected to Shabbat. You were in shul for three, four hours. Or parashah, gemara, something. What are you going to talk about? One kid tells the other, he goes, you know, when you sleep a little too much, the more you sleep, the worse your breath becomes. This is the conversation of two kids from yeshiva. They're going to talk about Shabbat. And I couldn't help myself. I'm reading a little book, but I hear this. You know, they're next to me. So I'm reading a little thing. I walk around. I read a little book. And I'm thinking, what? Did he just say that? And that's the conversation between two kids. The more you sleep, the worse your breath becomes. I said, I think I just became stupider. I have to use this in a lecture, so at least maybe Hashem will, like, unpunish me. Because now it became, you know, for the purpose of shiur Torah. Give these two boys something. Their stupidity was used for Torah. But this is what people talk about. Oh, you want to come over for coffee? Sure. What do you want to talk about? Oh, we'll talk about a next-door neighbor. We'll talk about the economy. We'll talk about all types of stuff. For what? Nothing. No purpose. No form of wisdom whatsoever comes out of people's minds.

2:04:05No form of wisdom. It's just doing nothing, acting about it. It's sad. It's sad. That's why, rabotai, when you have HaKadosh Baruch Hu for real, you know how you know? You know how you know that you have HaKadosh Baruch Hu? You become like David HaMelech, a small version. David HaMelech says, Hashem, I love your Torah so much, all day it's my conversation. All day it's my conversation. All I talk about is You. I talk about Hashem all day. I talk about Torah all day. Now, of course, once in a while you've got to take care of the bills. Oh, honey, we've got to take care of this bill. And there are little mundane things you have to do to live, to survive in this world. Okay, did you buy some salt? Did you buy some milk? You have to do that just to live in life. But the majority of your life is not this. What do you do with the rest of the time? What do you do with the rest of the time? You talk about baseball. You talk about the stock market. You talk about the money you don't have. You talk about the... What do you talk about? Shtuyot. Okay, so you don't have Hashem mamash. How do you have Hashem? You have Hashem when all you talk about is Him. That's when you know you have HaKadosh Baruch Hu. All you want to talk about is HaKadosh Baruch Hu. All you want to learn about is HaKadosh Baruch Hu. You don't care about all the shtuyot in the world. All you care about is HaKadosh Baruch Hu. And that's why...

2:05:25The closer you are to Hashem, the further you become from the people that are not. And that's one of the growing signs of your teshuva. When you see that the closer you become to Hashem, the less you have in common with the people from your past, even if you grew up with them for 20, 30, 40 years. Your best friend, your brother and sister, even your mother and daughter, whatever it is. But, until that point, before you started doing teshuvah, you guys were on the same point. But then, you started progressing. All you want to talk about is more shiurim, another shiur Torah, another chidush, another parasha, another Gemara, another story about tzaddikim, more about Hashem, more about emunah, more about bitachon. All you want is this. The more you get, the more you want. Because you see how beautiful it is. It gives your life meaning. You're developing your mind. You're developing your life. You start feeling there's a purpose to your creation. Everything starts making sense. Everything starts having value. And then your friend still wants to talk about the weather. Ah, so, you know, it took me 15 minutes to get here today. Not 14 minutes like yesterday. Why? Because I took I-95 last time, but this time I took the turnpike.

2:06:42One of the lowest forms of conversation is talking about your traffic, of how you went from one place to the other. This is like the number one conversation that starts off, you know, when you get to somebody. Oh, so how long did it take you to get here? Ah, 45 minutes. Ah, 45 minutes? Crazy. It took me 30 minutes last time. 30 minutes? How'd you go? Turnpike. Ah, no, I took I-95. Ah, sheesh. You know, you should listen to me. You should listen to me. I took the turnpike. No, so next time. Oh, this time I took the turnpike, and it took me an hour. Oh, yeah, because on Thursdays there's traffic. You should have asked me. And that's what they talk about. They talk about traffic. They talk about traffic. You should go to my guy. He knows the road. You should use this app. Use this app. What, use Google? No, I use Maps. And they talk about nothing. Nothing. Empty like the atom. Nothing. Why? They have no HaKadosh Baruch Hu. How could you have anything? How could you have anything if you don't have HaKadosh Baruch Hu? It's like a little mouse running around. Even the mouse is like, you know what? I'm going to sleep. Heck with you. You won't even talk about traffic. You don't need me for traffic. Do it yourself. The app you downloaded this week, you're running out of space on your phone that you're talking about.

2:08:04Talking about running out of space on the phone? David HaMelech says, "I love Your Torah so much. All day I talk about it. All day. All day I love Your Torah. All day." Okay, so I have to take care of the bills, I have the kids, you have the wife, you have the husband, and you have basic stuff you have to do. But at every single free moment that you're not dealing with the mundane... All day, HaKadosh Baruch Hu. All day. All day. Sometimes you're talking to help somebody, give them chizuk. Sometimes you're talking about it for yourself. Sometimes you're learning something new. Sometimes you're repeating something again that you've learned already. Sometimes you're telling something to somebody else. Whatever it is, but all the year involved in it. That's a life. That is priceless. Priceless. If you know what it feels like. People that live in the world of lies think that if you have money, or you have a house, or you have a certain woman, or a certain man, or certain possessions, that's better. Well, once you get to that point and you have all that stuff, you realize it's not only not better, it's actually worse. Because the poor guy has the hopes that one day when he's rich, he'll be happier. The rich guy knows that the money means nothing and...

2:09:30And he has nothing to look up to, nothing to look forward to. That's why rich people are the only ones that have a problem with suicide. Poor people usually don't commit suicide because they still have hope. HaKadosh Baruch Hu is telling us, you don't have to commit suicide. Whether you're poor or you're rich, you don't have to become addicted to drugs. Whether you're poor or you're rich, you don't have to become addicted to immorality. Whether you're poor or you're rich, the only addiction, the only addiction that you should have that's highly recommended is HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Become addicted to Hashem. Learn as much as possible about Hashem and you will see a life that everyone is going to become jealous of, because you're going to be the only one that's going to walk around like you know what's going on. Everyone is in a panic. "30 missiles! Ah! Ah!" You're walking around like, "What? What are you guys scared of? What's happening? What? You didn't hear? Iran declared..." "So why are you so scared? Why come to your house? No, but maybe it's gonna come. Oh, why are you not scared?" "It's my Father who did it." "What do you mean, why I'm not scared? Why won't we be scared? I tell my Father what to do. My Father is the one that shot the missiles."

2:10:55What do you mean your father's Iranian? No! HaKadosh Baruch Hu, you moron! HaKadosh Baruch Hu! HaKadosh Baruch Hu shot the missiles. HaKadosh Baruch Hu shot the missiles. What do you mean? Why am I going to tell HaKadosh Baruch Hu what to do? When you're with HaKadosh Baruch Hu all the time, none of this stuff, none of this anxiety exists. There’s no such thing as anxiety. You may get annoyed here and there, but anxiety doesn't exist. You're annoyed because you're not 100%. You're less. You have issues. But the point is, Rabotai, I'm telling you, I'm telling you, I'm telling you. The only thing in the world you need is HaKadosh Baruch Hu. The more HaKadosh Baruch Hu you have, the richer you are. Everything else becomes meaningless. Whether you have money or you don't have money, it doesn't make a difference. You have money, you start looking at it like it's a hammer. Okay, so we have money now. Let's make more mitzvot, more HaKadosh Baruch Hu with this money. Let's buy more HaKadosh Baruch Hu with this money. Let's bring more HaKadosh Baruch Hu with this money. You have a car? Okay, how can we use this car to get close to HaKadosh Baruch Hu? Can we drive to heaven? No, we can't, but we can drive to the shul to get other people to come to heaven. Okay, we'll use this car for HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Oh, this house. Okay, how can we use this house for HaKadosh Baruch Hu? Oh, put Torah pictures all over and get the kids to start repeating, start singing in the house, Adon Olam. You know, that's what you do in the house. What do you mean? That's what you do in the house, for the house, for HaKadosh Baruch Hu. You start looking at things, thinking, "How can I connect to HaKadosh Baruch Hu?"

2:12:24That's what you do. Why? Because you realize it's the best thing in the world. But when you don't have HaKadosh Baruch Hu, you start, you look for emptiness. You're looking for a car. You get the car. Okay. Now I have the car. What do I do? Oh, drive the car. Yeah, but I was really a lot more excited about this car before I bought it. Now I want to return it. Why? I don't know. I want a new car because I already have this car for a month. That's what happens with rich people. You buy a car. You get the car. You're excited. You're excited before you get the car. You finally get the car. You waited a year for this car because it's like one of those fancy-schmancy cars. You're on a waiting list for a year. You tell all your friends you're on a waiting list. Oh, you're not on a waiting list? Oh, you should be on a waiting list. Wait, wait, wait. Finally, you get the car. Ten minutes after you get the car, you're bored already. Why? It still drives. nothing, nothing changed. Okay, the house took you three years to build. A house in the kitchen, you got the marble from Italy, and the floor from Jamaica, and the ceilings from... and all these different parts. Finally built the house, and next, you know, okay, you still sleep in a bed, you still go to the bathroom in the toilet, and you're still using a little stool to eat. That's it. Same thing. House finished. Yeah, what about all that fancy stuff you have? You have a...

2:13:39fountain that comes out and the lights and the beams and the movie theater. You go, yeah, I don't use that stuff. I don't use that stuff. Why don't you use that stuff? Who has time? Who has time to use the fountain and the bowling alley? Who has time for that stuff? I go to sleep in the bed. I go to the bathroom in the toilet. And you eat on a little stool with a little plate, a plastic plate because you don't feel like washing your dishes. The whole house, a million-dollar house, a five-million-dollar house, a ten-million-dollar house becomes meaningless a week after you're in it. A week after you're in it. I know, I had it. I had a $4 million apartment on the 35th floor, with a 400 square foot balcony. My apartment was bigger than most people's houses. It meant nothing. So little it meant to me. Even at that time, I never really cared for that stuff. I didn't even care to buy window shades. Who has time to buy window shades? People came to the house and said, "Oh, you just moved here?" I'm like, "No, I've lived here five years already." They asked, "Where's the furniture?" I said, "Well, it's time to buy furniture." Nice house, though. Yeah, nice house. Nice house. Meaningless. Meaningless. It's all meaningless. People chase their whole life. They chase. They chase money. They chase girls. They chase guys. They chase cars. They chase... And they chase the emptiness of the etzem. They chase nothing. That's the worst part of life without HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Your whole life, you're chasing nothing.

2:15:04Your whole life, you're chasing nothing, nothing. You chase money, you have it, so what? You have money. What do you think? If you have money, you have 10 million, 20 million dollars, what do you think? You count the money all day like Uncle Scrooge in the cartoons? One, two... What do you think, you swim in it? You have a little cave and you go and jump inside it with a gold coin? No, it's in a bank. It's digital. You have an account on a computer. Look on your phone. Okay, whether you have three thousand dollars like me or you have 400 million dollars, you still have the same account on the phone. It still means nothing. It's still digital. You don't even have the cash anymore. Who walks around with a million dollars? nobody's nothing. Okay, I need to buy stuff. Okay, so use PayPal, use the credit card, use some application to go buy something. Or you buy something, big deal. But what did you give up for that money? You give up your wife, you give up your kids, you give up your life, you give up everything. You're 80 years old by the time you want to spend the money, you die. Meaningless. That's the worst part of the alma de'shikra. That's the worst part of the world of lies. Your whole life, you're chasing nothing. And you only realize it's nothing when it's too late. On the other hand, you could be like Yehoshua here. He already started doing teshuva three, four years ago. Four years ago when I met him. Baruch Hashem, he has Torah already right now. He already knows what the emet is right now. He already knows what he wants right now. That's what we gotta be. We gotta be like Yehoshua.

2:16:28We gotta keep learning Torah all day, all night. Why? Because the more you learn, the more HaKadosh Baruch Hu you have. The more HaKadosh Baruch Hu you have, that's the point, that's life, that's everything. Money, no money, okay, it's another adam. It's another adam, that's it, that's all it is. That, I think, is the most important question and important answer that you have to understand. Without HaKadosh Baruch Hu, HaKadosh Baruch Hu says you're simply walking dead. There's no life. Why? Whatever you're chasing, you're going to find out that once you get it, it was a trap. It was nothing. You chased it, you got it, you're bored. You need something else. Rabbi Yochanan says, there's an evar katan, In the body, there's a small member in the male body. Someone that feeds it is always hungry. Someone that starves it is full. He says, what is that? It's the male sex member. It's the male member. Why? He says, the more you satiate it, the more you use your male member, you're always going to need more and more and more and more girls, more you, more this, more and more. It's never going to be enough until you kill yourself.

2:17:54if you starve it, you only do it at a time with your wife, and she's kosher, she went to the mikveh, and so on. Guess what? You're always going to be happy. You're always going to be content. You're never going to complain about that part of your life. Every time you're together, it's going to be like you're the happiest person in the world. But how come this superstar in Hollywood is replacing wives every other day? What happened? Because he's constantly satiating, he never has enough. And that's what the Gemara says, and that's what Nachman Breslov says. A person who is promiscuous, a person who is immoral—what happens? First, he starts with himself, then he is promiscuous with the opposite sex. Then it's not enough, it's not taboo enough, so he starts going with the same sex. When that's not enough, he starts going to these protests over here, these gay pride parades. And after he realizes that's not enough, he starts going with animals. There are over 3 million people, 1% of the U.S. population, who admit that they're with animals. They're intimate with animals, like Bilam HaRasha, like Nebuchadnezzar. In the Torah, in the Tanach, it's nothing new. Homosexuality is nothing new. Bestiality is nothing new. It's in the Tanach. All these reshaim—Nebuchadnezzar would go with a homosexual constantly and, on top of it, with animals. Belshatzar—his wife was a dog. Bilam—his wife was a donkey.

2:19:16Why would a king, so powerful, multi-billionaire, go with a donkey? Why would he go with a dog? Why? Because, Rabotai, the Torah says, you don't have emet, you're going to constantly look for more, more, more, more of nothing. More of nothing. When in reality, all you need is HaKadosh Baruch Hu. You have HaKadosh Baruch Hu, you listen to His rules, you're going to know how to treat every part of your body, every part of your mind, every part of your life, and you're always going to be happy. Always. Stress is only something that people who do not have the God of Israel have. You have stress, that means you have a little bit less Hashem. Doesn't mean you don't have anything at all, but the more stress you have, the less God you have. The more God you have, the less stress you have. Doesn't mean you don't have any problems. No, you have problems. But you know God is the one that gave it to you. So it's a little more God today. You have extra God today. You have extra Hashem today. Why? I gave you more problems today. Stop asking Me for more. That's what you gotta get to. You got pain? I got more pain, I got more Hashem. Hashem wants my attention. I'm suffering in pain. Baruch Hashem. You care enough about me to remind me that I have an arm, that I have a leg, that I have a back, that I have a stomach. Because it all hurts. I forgot. I forgot I had a stomach until it hurt. I forgot I had a back until it hurt. Who thinks about their back? Did any of you guys think about your back today? You thought about it. You know why? Because it hurts you.

2:20:43That's why. That's why he thought about your back. But the average guy didn't think about his back. Why? Because it didn't hurt. You have pain, say, I have an arm. That's why. I know I have an arm. Why? It hurts. Sometimes HaKadosh Baruch Hu gives me such a present, it makes my entire body hurt. I say, I have a body. I have a body. It hurts. How many people wake up in a day and say, Baruch Hashem, I have a body. Most people are like, I need to lose some weight. We need to lose some weight. Lose some weight. You have a body. You have a nose and it works. You have ears. You have eyes. They work. More HaKadosh Baruch Hu. More HaKadosh Baruch Hu. All of this, Rabotai, starts with recognizing that HaKadosh Baruch Hu is everything. As soon as you realize He's everything, you start fearing. You fear HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Why? Because He's in charge of everything. But the more you have, the more Yirat Shamayim you have, you start getting to know Hashem more. Hashem is involved in every part of your life. You start falling in love with HaKadosh Baruch Hu. You can't skip steps.

2:21:50You can't skip steps. It starts with the basics, and then you little by little go up and up. As long as you have Hashem, one day you'll go up. As long as you have Hashem, one day you're going to graduate. You're going to do something good in your life. But the reality is you have to start little by little. Little by little. You start with fear of HaKadosh Baruch Hu. The more you have of HaKadosh Baruch Hu, the less you're going to need from this world. That's why you see the biggest tzaddikim in the world. You see Rav Kanievsky, you see Rav Kaduri, you see his father, the Steipler Gaon, you see Baba Sali, all these big tzaddikim. You see their houses? You'd say maybe a homeless shelter looks better than this house. But you look at them, you look at their face, happiest people on earth. One time I saw a picture, my friend sent me a picture of Rav Kanievsky learning Torah. of Rav Kanievsky learning Torah. And now Rav Kanievsky, you could get a lot of pictures of him learning Torah. But once in a while you see Rav Kanievsky, he gets a chiddush, and you see how his face lights up. You see his face, and it's like, that's happiness. You're not seeing any parties, any bells, any funny hats. No, no. You see happiness. I said, that's what happiness looks like. Why?

2:23:07He has HaKadosh Baruch Hu. He has. That's his whole life. It's HaKadosh Baruch Hu. That's it. Now, what do you think he got there by not being afraid of Hashem? You think he got there by breakdancing in the middle of the streets with his truck? Dun, dun, dun. Rabbi this, Rabbi that. No. He got it by learning Torah, doing mitzvot, adding more and more of Hashem into his life. The more you have HaKadosh Baruch Hu, the less you care about the house and the jingle bells over here and all the lights and what light and what shade and what this. Who cares about that stuff? Because you realize it's all nothing. It's all nothing. Can you enjoy stuff? Sure, go enjoy it. No problem. But remember, the more you enjoy this world, the less room you're giving for HaKadosh Baruch Hu. This will give us a little needed lesson. Perhaps I needed it, you needed it, somebody needed it because I said it and Hashem gives me the words to say. Just give us a needed issue of really what's important in life. Because all of us have had these questions either today, yesterday, or tomorrow. All of us have these questions. What's the point? What's the purpose? Why am I here? Why is it so tough? Why is it not tough? Why is it tougher for him? Why is it easier for him? Everybody looks at all types of things. It's reality. This is the answer of all answers. It's the purpose of life. Now you can try it the hard way.

2:24:31and keep chasing nothing. Or you can listen to somebody who has had a few things in his life. I tell you, whether you get it or not, nothing is going to change. Money does not change your problems. All it does is allow you to arrive at your problems in a limo. That's it. The only thing that's going to change your life in a positive way is HaKadosh Baruch Hu. The only thing that's going to make you happy is HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Only thing that's going to give you a purpose is HaKadosh Baruch Hu. That's it. Everything else is a trap. Everything else is emptiness, like the atom. But it looks full. It looks complete. You can keep trying to chase it, but you're wasting time. Why? Why waste time? Learn as much as you possibly can, add HaKadosh Baruch Hu to as many parts of your life as you possibly can imagine. And I promise you, you will be not only the person that's happier, but you'll be the person that everyone admires and everyone wants to be like. Because everyone is looking for what you already have. And that way you could be the biggest...

2:25:35kiruv personality just by your existence. They see you and they want to be like you. They're going to ask you, "How are you so happy? How do you manage? You don't have money for rent; how are you so happy? How come you don't have any anxiety?" So, I have HaKadosh Baruch Hu. When He wants to give me the money for rent, I'll have the money for rent. Until then, I have Him in different ways. What's the question? Be'ezrat Hashem, give us enough chizuk. By the way, there is no shiur on Sunday. No shiur on Sunday, meaning I'm not going to be here, but we're going to have a movie night. A movie night, we'll have a screening. We'll have a screening, we'll bring the whole projector, and we'll screen a movie, Be'ezrat Hashem, on Sunday. So definitely come, bring your friends, we'll show a cool movie. that I think everyone's going to enjoy. I will see you again next Tuesday in Aventura. Enjoy the rest of the week. Hopefully, you guys enjoyed it as much as I did.