Talking Business with Rabbi Yaron Reuven in Montreal

0:31Thank you for having me. It's wonderful to be here. I see the snow outside. It just reminds me of New York. I can tell you there's a little bit of a difference. When we saw snow like this in New York, everything shut down. Everything shut down. Everything shut down, you stayed home. You guys, Baruch Hashem, you're operating like it's sunny outside. So, I was told maybe you want to talk a little bit about business, you know, different places in the Torah. I'm going to say a couple of words, but really, I really want it to be mostly your questions. More questions, interesting things that you have to say, Baruch Hashem. We'll try to find some place to... Everything shuts down. Everything shuts down. Everything shuts down, you stay home. You guys, Baruch Hashem, you're operating like it's sunny outside. So, I was told maybe you want to talk a little bit about business, you know, different places in the Torah. I'm going to say a couple of words, but really, I really want it to be mostly your questions. More questions, interesting things that you have to say, Baruch Hashem. We'll try to find some place to... see what we can find in the Torah, see how the Torah can help us. Business has a very, very big place in the Torah. You know, the Chachamim say if you want to be a chacham, if you want to be a tzaddik, you have to go learn business rules. Why? Go learn business rules. Why? Why shouldn't you learn something else? Why do the business rules, the dinim of business, make you a tzaddik?

1:42Because you go to Beit Knesset, you have a notice. Everybody looks the same. Everybody looks like they just came out of Mount Sinai. Everybody has a Tallit, there's Moshe Rabbeinu, there's Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov. Everybody is there. It's very easy to pretend you're a Tzaddik in the Beit Knesset. Because everybody looks the same. You have Tefillin, you have a Tallit. Everybody looks the same. When are you really the real you? In business. There's no pretending in business. You can't pretend to be a Tzaddik. Why? Because if... If you pretend to be a tzaddik in business, that means you really are a tzaddik. But in reality, unfortunately today there are a lot of people that wear the hat, have the beard, and are all uniformed, but they operate sometimes like Bernie Madoff. A person that gave a lot of tzedakah money, that everyone thought was a really big tzaddik for many, many years, until they eventually found out it was stolen money that he was giving. So Torah has a lot to say about business. Somebody asked me a question today. He said, "I don't understand. Do you really think that this report that came out on Fox News yesterday, that scientists have come up with a, I guess they call it a confirmation. For us, it just means not very much. But nonetheless, a confirmation of the Torah, which is that all human beings originally came from two people."

3:06Scientists just came out yesterday. It was reported on Fox News. Scientists reported that they confirmed that all human beings came from two people. To us, what's the news? What's the chiddush here? We know. What's the chiddush? But for the rest of the world that's not exactly learning Torah and doesn't believe and has different questions, for them, it's the biggest chiddush in the world. It's like, oh, now I'm going to be religious. So one guy asked me a question. He said, wait a minute, but does it really make sense that the whole Torah is real? That it's not some type of parable or some type of story that's trying to teach us some Mussar? Like, he has a difficulty believing in parts of the Torah, like Noach. He has a problem believing in how all the animals fit in one boat the size of a football field. Because even though it's very big, still you can't fit all the animals there. Better yet, he had a bigger question. He said, wait a minute, how is it that, let's say all of the animals went miraculously, obviously it's a miracle, into the Teva. They went into the Teva. And eventually they landed on Mount Ararat, which is in Turkey. Still to this day, you can see it.

4:15Now, somebody actually found it almost 20 years ago already, but it's not exactly the easiest tourist site in the world, because number one, they don't actually like people, and number two, it's at the top of a mountain. But anyway, there are pictures, there are videos of the Teva that has actually been found. But still, there's a question. What's the question? If everybody landed in this one place, how did the kangaroo end up in Australia? How did the kangaroo end up in different places that you can't get there from the ship, like from that area? It can't swim; the kangaroos don't swim. So maybe the scientists are right with evolution. This seems like a very, very difficult question, but in fact, the only answer that is 100% legitimate and very, very easy to explain can only be understood by business people. It cannot be understood by people that don't know business. The reason why is because we have something called commerce. If you have a product, let's say you have a phone. Today, everybody sells phones.

5:22You have a phone. It's a new phone. It's the greatest phone. If it's the best phone, the cheapest phone, all the best things. But if you're only going to sell it to your neighborhood, it's a waste of time. Why? What are you going to make? The most money you're going to make is from your neighborhood. A few dollars. You want to make real money? You have to send it to a different country. How do you do it? You put it on a ship. They send it there. Today, they also use planes, but for the most part, ships have been used. Commerce has been used for many, many years. Today, it's phones. Many years ago, it used to be kangaroos, horses, silk, spices, and so on and so forth. So, somebody decided to sell an Arabian horse from Saudi Arabia, and it arrived in America, it arrived in Brazil, it arrived in different places. That's it. It's a very simple explanation. People make such a big deal. How did the kangaroo arrive in Australia? Not a big deal. Somebody wanted to sell a kangaroo because they knew that a different country didn't have it and they would want to pay more money for it. If you're going to give a guy that has a million horses another horse, he doesn't care. What are you going to give him? You give him a kangaroo because he doesn't have a kangaroo. He thinks it's an alien. He's willing to give you whatever you want. So business has a very, very big and important place in the Torah.

6:31It's a ma'amar that we're about to publish, Be'ezrat Hashem, in our newsletter from Rav Ovadia Yosef, that has never been published before, Be'ezrat Hashem, and I read it last night. It was the first time I actually saw it, and he tells a story. It's a relatively well-known story, but the way he puts it makes it, how I mean, explain these stories. He says that even the tzaddikim, even the tzaddikim need to know business, but not just business per se, as far as the rules and regulations, but also the Torah. The Torah perspective of business. The Tzemach Tzedek of Lubavitch, when he was young, he had just gotten married and received a little bit of money. He came to his Rebbe, the Baal HaTanya, and told him, "I'm thinking about investing this money that I got from my parents-in-law with this very well-known businessman. What do you think?" He says, "I think that..."

7:31You should instead give it to my gemach. Let us do zikui harabim with it. Let us do good things with it to help people that need it. But whenever you need it, come to me and I'll give it back to you. Like helping people do teshuva, helping people get close to Torah. Let us use it for mitzvot. Because you don't need it right now. It's a lot of money. You don't need it right now. Take whatever you need. Whatever you don't need, give it to me. Like I'm the bank. I'm going to use it for Torah. But eventually, one day you need it, come to me and I'll give it back to you. So the young tzaddik was not comfortable. It's really my money, I really want to make more money, and I don't know. So he didn't answer. He didn't give him an answer, and he left the meeting, and he decided to go invest it with the businessman. Despite the fact that his Rebbe, Baal HaTanya, one of the biggest rabbis in history—this is what Chabad is based on today—told him that he should do something else. And as you would have it, some time passed, the businessman that he invested with went bankrupt, lost all the money, had nothing to show for it, all the investments went to zero, and the tzaddik comes back to the Baal HaTanya, to his Rebbe, and he says, tail between his legs, what can I do, what should I do, I lost everything.

8:34told him that he should do something else. And as you would have it, some time passed, the businessman that he invested with went bankrupt, lost all the money, had nothing to show for it, all the investments went to zero, and the tzaddik comes back to the Baal HaTanya, to his Rebbe, and he says, tail between his legs, what can I do, what should I do, I lost everything. He says, "Listen, I'm sorry that you lost everything, but I'm even more sorry that you don't have emunat chachamim. Losing money, that means it's from Hashem. Emunat chachamim is from you." It's up to you to have Emunat Chachamim. Meaning you have to have some faith in the Rabbis and the ways of the Torah. If a Chacham tells you and gives you advice, don't worry about whether it makes sense or not. Because Hashem gave him those words specifically for you. I told you to invest that money in Torah. Because I know there's always a possibility for Mitzvot, there's always a possibility for him to lose the money.

9:41you didn't take it, you didn't take it that way; you took it a different way and unfortunately, we had a very expensive lesson. Meaning that for us today, it's not just as easy as the goyim, where they just decide to invest in something and hope for the best. They just decide to start a business and hope for the best. Am Yisrael is not supposed to operate that way. Am Yisrael is always supposed to consult with a Chacham. What do you think? Even though he's not a partner in the business, especially if he's not a partner in the business, because you don't want him to have a bias. you want him to be unbiased. If he is biased, then even he can be steered the wrong way. You have to go to someone who has no share, no stake whatsoever in the business and ask him, what do you think of this deal? Big or small? You will see that some of the biggest business deals in the world always have something behind them. It's very, very important. Why? Because first and foremost, The Chachamim have a different perspective that the typical business person simply cannot see. Why? They're steeped in Torah. They're looking at things from the perspective of Hashem all day. Business people are looking from the perspective of business people all day. So that means you can't compare the two. You need a different perspective. The second thing is, when someone truly has...

11:06emunah in the Torah, and therefore has emunah in some type of chacham that they chose to get some guidance from, then that means that Hashem is going to give that chacham a specific message specifically for you, catered for you. We even know sometimes a person would never even imagine that this rabbi should know anything about business, you'd be very surprised. Even the goyim sometimes rely on rabbis. There's a very well-known story that happened almost, I guess, maybe 15 years ago or so, that there was a famous basketball player, LeBron James, that he was considering moving teams. I think he was in Cleveland, and he was considering going somewhere else. Miami. Miami? And this was a big decision for him, because one team was willing to give him Earth, the other one was willing to give him Mars. So it wasn't really about money. It was about money, but it wasn't about money. So he didn't know what to do, and the goyim don't have anything, so what did he do? He went to Rabbi Pinto. Rabbi Yeshayahu Pinto in New York, and he asked him for advice. And he gave the advice, and he took it, and he went to the other team.

12:13Meaning a goy, even a goy can appreciate what it means to consult a chacham. So if a goy can appreciate it, needless to say for us, we should do it. So it's very, very important to know that before you make any deal, especially the bigger deals, if it's $100, you should be able to manage yourself. But for things that are meaningful, that are significant, to buy a company, to sell a company, to expand a company, to do things that are significant for you, to buy a house even, sell a house, move, Things like that, always consult with a talmid chacham, someone who is focused on Torah, simply because they'll give you a different perspective, and they'll also give you a bracha from Shamayim. Because this is one of the things that we need in business in order for us to have bracha. When I was in the business world, Baruch Hashem, in the beginning I made nothing, but along the way, it started being successful. I got to a point where I was making over $3,000 an hour. So, after a while, you realize that You're pretty good at this business, but you're not that good. How are you making so much money? There's a lot of people that work in the stock market. There's a lot of people that work in investments. A lot of people work in a lot of businesses, but not everybody makes money. There's also a lot of people that make money, but not everybody has bracha. So these are things that a Jew has to take into consideration and realize, yes, there's money to be made, but there's a kosher way to make it, and there's a non-kosher way to make it.

13:39There's a right way, there's a wrong way. Are you willing to make a lot of money right now but risk your eternity? If you are, then the person is a fool for doing such a thing. You have to realize that, yes, Hashem wants you to succeed, but He wants you to succeed in a kosher way. So even though sometimes the Yetzer Hara is going to send you millions and millions of dollars on the table, always remember this is a test. After I made my first million dollars in 2003, I decided that it was time for me to leave the company and start either working for another company or working for myself. Now, when you're successful, people want to hire you. So big companies like Smith Barney, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, all these different companies that are famous in the investment business were giving me offers. But then one day, my friend from the office told me, "Listen, maybe you should talk to my other friend. He has a small firm, but he pays well." I said, "No problem, have him call me." So the guy calls me, and we start chit-chatting. He's like, "Listen, what kind of business do you have? How much money are you managing?" and so on and so forth.

14:58He's like, "Listen, I can give you an offer on the table right now." I said, "What kind of offer?" He said, "I'll give you $3.6 million cash, like literally cash, like actual money, just to sign the deal, and another $3.6 million as soon as you transfer your clients over. $7.2 million for a 23-year-old kid is pretty good, no?" I said, okay, what are the conditions? What's the deal? Okay, it's nice money. I like the money, but what does it come with? What's the catch? He goes, no, no catch. Just that you have to follow our strategy. I said, okay, what kind of strategy is this? He says, you have to invest in only firm-recommended stocks. Only if the firm recommends these stocks are you allowed to invest in them. I said, okay, this is not exactly the ideal situation, because I like doing my own research, but tell me, give me an example of what kind of stocks you recommend. And he starts giving me recommendations, and I see, Shem and Achem, Sodom and Gomorrah, this is a Ponzi scheme, this is another scam, this is another scam. The average person wouldn't know it's a scam, but if you're in the business, you realize the whole thing is a scam. Every single penny that you're investing into it is going to their pocket, and you're never going to see it again.

16:14It was a big scam. Unfortunately, it still exists to this day. Not to the same magnitude, but it still exists to this day. I say, no, thank you. Goodbye. He goes, what do you mean? I'll give you money. I said, you give me money, but I'm not a thief. He goes, no, we're not stealing. These are real companies. I said, for you, it's a real company. But for other people, it's not real companies. Click. Now, this was one of the biggest tests in my life, especially when I was 23. I wasn't religious. But it was a very, very big test of a character trait. Are you a thief or not? Are you willing to sell your soul to the Yetzer Hara or not? Now, yes, you made a million dollars, but a million dollars is nothing in comparison to seven, especially cash. But the reality is, are you willing to sell your soul for it? Are you willing to break the rules? Are you willing to go to the other side and just take food off of people's tables, take it from their kids just to feed yourself? This is a question each and every single businessman has to ask themselves. Because eventually, the Yetzer Hara will come with a very, very generous offer. He's going to ask you, are you willing to sell your soul? I'll give you anything you want, just violate Shabbat. I'll give you anything you want, just marry the Goyah. I'll give you anything you want, just cheat here, lie here, do here, do this. And I can tell you from experience, if you pass that test,

17:36the amount of blessings you're going to end up getting in your life will supersede any amount of money you would have ever gotten otherwise. And the reason why is because once Hashem sees you have good character traits, you have honesty in you, and you're not willing to break the rules just for a little bit of paper, then there's a reason for Him to give you more. Because that means that you understand that there's Someone watching. There's Someone watching everything that we're doing. This is the very basic foundation of Judaism. If we have no concept that there's a Creator in the world, we are no different than Hitler. No different than Hitler. Why? He decided that he's going to run the world. He decided that he's going to kill a bunch of people, happened to be Jews and anyone that resembled them, because he figured, you know what? I don't like them so much. They're not like me. I'm going to change things. This is no different than a person who decides to take something that doesn't belong to him, knowingly. Why? You're deciding to change nature.

18:40So it's very important that when a person does a deal to double check with a different set of eyes. Why? Because sometimes we're so excited about building something big that we're willing to bend certain rules to such an extent that we really didn't bend them, we just changed them. So the chacham will tell you, no, no, no, this is bending, this is changing. He's going to remind you, bending is okay, changing is not okay. You always need somebody to give you that kosher set of eyes. Because I can tell you that even though we made a lot of money at one point, aside from Hashem taking it all and so on, before that, we never had bracha. We never had bracha. It didn't matter how much money we made, whether we made $200,000 for the month or $1.6 million, which was the best month I had in my career. Either way, by the following month, there was no money left. Meaning, it didn't matter how much money he made—$500,000, $200,000, $50,000—it didn't make a difference. By the next month, it was all spent on something: expanding the office, another investment, a lawsuit, something. Something happened where it was never left. He was always struggling for another month.

19:53So, it didn't make a difference. There was just simply no bracha. There was no blessing. You were constantly chasing your tail, trying to catch up. Oh, I need this much. What do you mean you need this much? You had $500,000 two weeks ago. Yeah, yeah, but it's gone already. I invested it. I did this. I did that. And you're constantly chasing your tail. But once a person has bracha, it doesn't make a difference how much money they make. They have everything they need. And that I'm telling you. I promise you. It's the biggest bracha in life. Once you have everything you need, the rest of it is just keeping score. It doesn't make a difference what your bank account says. You're just keeping score. Oh, okay, this month, oh, I did good, I did bad, I did this, but either way, my kids are eating, my wife is happy, the car is running, the house is paid, whatever I need is there. The rest of it is keeping score. Whenever Hashem is ready to give me more, He'll give me more. And ultimately, when a person does good things with their money, Hashem will even, He's giving Hashem more of a reason to give him more. So it's always important to remember Hashem when you're doing business, because He is the one—this is one of our ikarim, one of our foundations of Judaism—to always remember, He's the one that's giving it to you. It's not you. You're just being a vessel, you're just, you know, trying to do your hishtadlut, your effort. But in reality, it's Hashem giving you the money. So give me some questions that you have, and we'll go from there. Chava.

21:13I have a quick question. What about curving a bit the reality of your books to get a big loan from the bank? Is that considered stealing or not stealing? It's very, very difficult in the sense that the perspective of what's curving and what's not curving—my perspective and your perspective—may be different. So you have to look at the actual situation specifically. The second thing is you have to look at the significance of the deal because sometimes banks have foolish rules that are not based on logic; they're just based on certain principles. For example, when I was trying to expand my business, at some point it was worth a lot of money, and I wanted to get a loan in order to expand it further. And I went to the bank. I had a bunch of money with the bank. So I figured, ideally, HSBC, the bank I was banking with, should lend me a bunch of money. And they told me, no, no, you have money with us. You're a good customer. Thank you very much. We lend you money all day. But there's a problem.

22:21To lend you money, there's only one condition. I said, what's that condition? He says, dollar for dollar. I said, what does it mean, dollar for dollar? He says, if you want $10 million, you have to give us $10 million. And then you're not allowed to use that $10 million. It's like being in jail until you give back the other $10 million. So you're telling me I'm borrowing my own money? She goes, well, you can kind of call it that way. I said, what kind of stupidity is this? This doesn't make any sense. Why would I do such a thing? I'm paying interest on my own money. She goes, well, you're in the securities business. You're in the investment business, and we have a rule that this is what we do with the securities business. So, in a situation like that, This is different than, let's say, for example, if it's a different business, a different industry. So it all depends on where curving, what curving is. I would have to look specifically at the issue per se, the rules per se, to give you more of a direct answer. It cannot be a general question. Similar to the question we were talking about yesterday with regards to taxes, you know, certain governments have certain rules.

23:24Are you allowed to skim a little? Are you not allowed to skim a little? Do you have to make sure that you pay in every single transaction where, for example, you go to a guy and he tells you, listen, if you pay $100 cash, I won't charge you taxes? Are you allowed to do it? Are you not allowed to do it? This is not an answer that you can just simply give a general statement to everybody. Hey, do whatever you want. Everything has to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. I would assume in such a scenario, somebody who, you said, differentiates between bending and changing. Okay, so a scenario where your business is making $250,000 a year. Okay, and you want to show to a bank that you're making half a million. That's changing your reality. That's changing. Yes, that's changing. Whereas saying that... I'll show you my EBITDA of my business, my earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, versus showing you my net net profit after everything. That's not changing anything, it's just showing you a different figure that's more attractive than the one that's not. That's exactly it. If you're telling them, for example, that your revenues are a million dollars, but in reality, it's ten dollars,

24:29It's very, very different than telling them, listen, my bottom line, what I take home, is 50,000 versus 500,000 because, on the books that you showed them, 50,000, it's really you wrote off every single thing under the sun. And the other one is like as if you're the biggest taxpayer in the world. So, again, it's bending, it's changing. It's a better explanation. What do you do right now? Me? This. i do shiurim, i study, i learn, and i teach. That's all I do today, Baruch Hashem. After, I mean, it's a whole story that will take time, but if you want, I brought some CDs, it gives you my personal story. At one point in 2006, I got sick. Financially, it was the best year of my life. But physically, it was the beginning of the end. And I had a surgery that went wrong. I went into a struggle to save my life for the next seven years.

25:32And throughout those seven years, when you can't really work, and you can't continue building, and the market crashes along the way, and everything that could go wrong goes wrong, and every deal that used to turn to gold turns to ashes instead. Pretty much, Hashem literally destroyed every single sign of any resemblance of any success that I ever had. I realized that Hashem runs the world. And along the way, I started becoming more and more religious simply because I realized there was something wrong with my life. I needed some answers. I couldn't find them in any other place other than the Torah. And the more I found the answers in the Torah, the less interested I became in business. It's not that business is not interesting to me; it's that it's not as interesting to me as helping people who are in a similar situation to what I used to be in. I'm glad you touched on that, but a follow-up would be: wouldn't you be helping people more financially if you were donating the money you would be making to various causes? Yeah, well, if there were many rabbis that tell the truth like I do, then yes, you're 100% right. Unfortunately, in the entire world, according to some big chachamim that I know, there are less than 10 in the world. I'm one of them, unfortunately. Meaning there are a lot of rabbis in the world.

26:47But there are not a lot of people that are willing to tell the truth to people, which means they're going to tell them the consequences of going against Hashem. A lot of rabbis will tell you stories. A lot of rabbis will tell you nice things that maybe make you feel good about yourself. But not everyone is going to tell you the real truth of what Parashat Bechukotai says or Ki Tavo says that get to the gruesome details of messing with Hashem. And the reason why is because in today's world, there's something called political correctness. And people are trying to be popular. They're trying to be famous. And sometimes this changes the truth to such an extent that a person who violates Shabbat by driving to Beit Knesset feels good about himself because he says, no, the rabbi never told me anything. So I've been driving to Beit Knesset for 20 years. If there was something wrong, he must have, he should have told me since he never told me. So that means there's nothing wrong with it. Why did the rabbi never tell him anything? Because the guy donates $10,000, $20,000, $30,000, $50,000 a year, and the rabbi is scared that if I tell him to stop driving on Shabbat, he's not going to like me as much. Then I'm not going to get his donation, and then I'm not going to be able to use the $50,000 to expand my house, or to expand the Beit Knesset, or to give more shiurim. And they start doing accounting with his neshama on the line.

28:04So he's sacrificing, he's taking his neshama, throwing it in Gehinnom, maybe to hopefully use that money for something else. This is 100% forbidden in the Torah. So yes, ideally, if we had many, many Rabbanim that were saying the truth, then yes, you would need another businessman or all to fund those Rabbanim. What we have today is we have a lot of businessmen. We have plenty of Jewish businessmen and plenty of donations and plenty of money. We just don't have enough emet. So, this is one of the problems that we have before Mashiach arrives. A lot of people have gone to such a high level of success in this generation that it's very easy for them to forget G-d. very easy, they can tell you, they can tell you, they can tell you all the different things that everybody says. They'll tell you all that stuff. But in reality, so what's going on with your business? And oh no, no, I did good. What do you mean you did good? Did good? No, no, what do you mean it was my idea? I came up with the phone, I came up with the product, I came up with the marketing. Truth be told, you came up with nothing. You came up with zero, nothing, not even one percent.

29:17A person is not allowed to take even 1% credit. Even for his effort, he's not allowed. Why? Because even your effort depended on Hashem. depending on Hashem allowing your brain to work, depending on Hashem giving you the idea, depending on Hashem in every aspect of it. Again, this is the type of truth that not everyone is willing to say, and it gets much, much more significant. So, when it comes to business, I realized that there were a lot of people that were confused, just like me, and they simply created a new truth. because I had two to three rabbis come to my office every week, and every single one of them got money. Every week, like clockwork. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but every single time they got money. I had my office for 15 years, 16 years. So if you do the math, let's just make it simple. Once a week for 10 years, how many times is that?

30:18520. That means that they had 520 opportunities to tell me to stop driving on Shabbat and become a Jew. That means they had 520 opportunities to tell me that I have to marry a Jew and not a non-Jew. They had 520 opportunities to tell me that there are rules to the game, there are rules to being a Jew. You can't just do whatever you want. 520 opportunities, but no, they didn't take even a single opportunity. Why? They were too focused on the green, too focused on the money. This hurt me personally because since they didn't tell me, Hashem had to tell me. And when Hashem tells you something, it hurts. It's not a nice lecture. It's not a smile. He tells you with life things, things that happen: sickness, money loss, We call it the things that we lose because of the avonot, because of the sins that you made. So it's better off that a person listens to somebody like me than Hashem getting involved. Because to me, it may be annoying, it may be not something that you want to hear, but it's relatively painless. Hashem, I promise you, it's not painless. It's not painless. And I had to learn it through mamash. I had to fight for my life.

31:33This happens every single day. So I decided that it's much more important to go make more Jews than to go make more money. It's much more important to make more Jews, real Jews, than to go make more businessmen. And we help businessmen, and we help families, and we help goyim who want to become Jews. We help all types of people. But the key is to focus on the emet. And Baruch Hashem, Hashem provides. Hashem provides. It's definitely not the millions or even a fraction of it. But I can tell you one thing for sure. The best thing that ever happened to me was losing every single penny that I ever had. And even better is the fact that I see miracles every single month because now we have more bracha than we had when we were making $5 million a year. Why? Right now, Baruch Hashem, nothing is missing. Nothing is missing. I'm not. I don't own a house. I don't own anything. You look at my bank, you start laughing. But I probably have more comfort now than most people in the world. than most people in the world. Why? I don't have to worry about money ever again. Why? I know Hashem runs the world. I arrived at the conclusion that Hashem runs the world. I'm going to go do what He wants me to do. The rest of it is His problem. My wife tells me one time, "Honey, we have $6,000 in bills coming up in two days." I said, "Okay." She goes,

32:53What do you want me to do? I don't look at the bank. She goes, well, I looked at the bank. I said, okay, nu, nu, what happened? She goes, well, it's empty. It said, there's nothing, zero in the bank. I said, okay. She goes, well, what do we do? Nothing. We continue doing what we're supposed to do. Continue working, continue learning, continue doing what we're supposed to do. Yeah, but the bills are due in two days. I said, yeah, it's plenty of time for Hashem. It's His problem, it's not my problem. It's not my problem. As soon as we finished this conversation, we're both laughing, we're both smiling, went back to learning, went back to doing, I get a phone call from a number I don't know, and I usually don't pick up, I decide to pick this one up. I pick up. Hey, Yaron, how are you? I'm really sorry. I'm sorry, what did you do? Who is this? No, it's Dudu, it's Dudu. I'm like, Dudu, Dudu, I'm thinking it was Dudu. I know Dudu, Dudu. He's like, no, Dudu, remember David from this? I'm like, oh, Ma Nishma, David, how are you? Dudu, okay, whatever. Ma Nishma, I haven't talked to this guy in six years. I'm like, how are you doing? He goes, listen, I'm really sorry. I said, sorry for what? He goes, listen, I'm really, really sorry. Don't, you don't have to be. I'm like, wow, what did you do? I haven't talked to you in five, six, seven years. He goes, no, five years ago, you lent me $5,000, and I told you I was going to pay you back as soon as I came back from Eretz Yisrael. And I never paid you back.

34:08and I've been eating myself up for months, thinking, how do I get there? With the embarrassment that I haven't paid him in so long, I can't take it anymore. Please, text me your bank account. Text me your bank account. I'm going to deposit the money right now. It's exciting to get my money back that I forgot about. Who has ever called you out of nowhere and said he's excited to pay you back? So I text him the phone number. A few minutes, maybe a half-hour later, I check my bank. I see, dude, deposit 6,000. I call back, dude, I'm like, no, dude, thank you very much, but I'm sorry, not allowed. 5,000. He goes, no, no, no. 6,000. I said, no, it's not allowed. It's interest. It's Hashem. I go, no, it's not worth it. He goes, no, no, no. Listen to me. The 5,000 is the loan. The 1,000 is for the Torah that you're doing. Because I've been watching you on the internet. I've been watching you on the internet, and you're helping me do teshuvah. Meaning, how much did I need? 6,000. How much arrived? 6,000. What do you think is better? You working for it from 8 o'clock in the morning until 8 o'clock at night and getting 6,000? Or me doing absolutely nothing?

35:22You understand? Next question, same price. Next price. As a business person. We're still in business; it's just a different business. 100%, 100%. I'm running an organization now. It has money and so on; it's just that we operate a different thing. Exactly. Now, the question is, is there something wrong for a business to say, "I want a million," because you know that the next thing is, "I want two," and the next thing is, "I want four," and it's never-ending. Is there a point that you say, as a Jew, that... There has to be an end here. There has to be a stop. You make enough money that you need.

36:24And again, each one will define need differently, yeah. Exactly. My daughter always tells me she needs all the candy in the world, but she doesn't really need it. Right. So, is there a point where you say, that's all I need? And is there anything wrong with saying, no, I want more, I want more, I want more, I want more, and I want more? And maybe that's going against the Yetzer Hara. So, to say I don't need more would be against human nature. so maybe you have to get over that. It's similar to what you're saying, but slightly different. The Gemara says that you give a person 100, he wants 200. You give him 200, he wants 400. You give him 400, he wants 800. Meaning human nature, the way Hashem created us, will always want more. Why did Hashem create us with a constant desire for more? Because we're supposed to use that desire to want more Torah, more mitzvot. We're supposed to be ambitious, but ambitious to do His will, not necessarily our will only. The Gemara says that you give a person 100, he wants 200. You give him 200, he wants 400. You give him 400, he wants 800. Meaning human nature, the way Hashem created us, will always want more. Why did Hashem create us with a constant desire for more? Because we're supposed to use that desire to want more Torah, more mitzvot. We're supposed to be ambitious, but ambitious to do His will, not necessarily our will only.

37:27The second thing the Gemara says in Masechet Sukkah is that there is no person in the history of mankind who ever died with even half of what he wanted. Meaning that it doesn't matter how much you get, it's still never going to be enough. And by the time a person leaves this world, it's not even going to be half of what he wants. Meaning, originally, he always wanted double what he had, which means that he always had half of what he wanted. By the time he leaves this world, it's not even that, because his desire has grown so much. Now, to want more makes you a human being. It's perfectly fine to want more. What's not fine is if you want more for the wrong reason. You want more because you want a bigger house that you don't need. You want a third car even though you can only drive one. You want an eighth watch even though you can only tell time on one of them. You want more because of stuff. If you want more so you can do more mitzvot with it, then Baruch Hashem, Hashem has more of a reason to give you more. So there are certain things that a person needs to do with the money in order for Hashem to have a reason, not only to give him more, like he wants anyway, but in order to justify keeping it. So, we have rules of tzedakah, and we have rules of ma'aser. These are two different things. As long as a person gives at least 10% of his money for the sake of Torah, to publicize Torah, to get people to do teshuva, and so on, you're giving Hashem more than enough reason to give you the other 90%.

38:53What if that 10% is given to, like, say, families in need, or in tzedakah, or... Like I said, if it's tzedakah, it depends who the families in need are. If the families in need are in the middle of Africa because you saw a TV commercial, that's not as important as families in need that are learning Torah, that are Jews, and so on. So again, we have to have the right definition of things, but nonetheless, we want to make sure that we want more because we want to do more mitzvot. In essence, our payment... Our payment, our return payment from Hashem for using that 10% to do more mitzvot, is the other 90%. But there was a person by the name of Nakdimon ben Gurion in the Torah. He was one of the richest people of the land and to such an extent that the entire nation was living off of him and two other rich people. One day, Rabbi Yochanan sees his daughter collecting seeds from the waste of the horses and the donkeys. He says, "Who are you? What are you doing here? Why are you looking through the waste of the horses? What's the matter with you?" She goes, "I'm looking for food. There are certain grains that the donkeys and the horses didn't digest, and I'm taking it out so we can eat those. We've reached such a level of poverty that we are starving." He asks, "Who are you?" She responds, "I'm Nakdimon ben Gurion's daughter." He exclaims, "How could it be? He was the richest man in the land, and he was a tzaddik. Not only was he rich, he was a tzaddik." She says, "He used to be rich."

40:21but we lost everything. So Ma'as asked, how could this be? He gave a lot of tzedakah. He says, yes, he gave a lot of tzedakah, but according to his status, it was not enough. Meaning that giving tzedakah, it's not necessarily a specific number, a million dollars, a billion dollars. No, no. It's based on specific numbers that the Torah has, but also based on need. So a person, let's say, for example, that makes $100,000 should give ma'aser. But a person that makes $10, $20, $30 million should give much more than that. Because there's no reason in the world for you to... What are you going to do with $20 million a year? How many houses can you buy? You can only live in one. So a person needs to make sure that he wants Hashem to give him more so he can do more with it. Help Jewish people that are struggling. Help people that are learning Torah. Help people doing Teshuva. Meaning... different things for the nation. And not you want to save some elephant, you know, to make sure that they have a nice cage. Like this family in Israel, they had nothing to do with their money. They donated half a million dollars so they could build a new cage for an elephant in the zoo in Israel. They felt that this is important. Another family invested almost two million dollars to save some butterflies. Now they think it's a mitzvah. In reality, they get punished for things like this.

41:40Because Hashem gave you a tool and you misused it. So it's perfectly fine to want more, but always remember there has to be a valid Torah reason, a kosher reason of why you want more. You're allowed to enjoy yourself, you're allowed to be rich. There's plenty of tzaddikim in history that have been very, very rich. One of the biggest in history that the entire generation thought he was Mashiach is Rabbeinu HaKadosh, Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi. Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi was tremendously rich. hundreds of horses and everything you can possibly imagine. He had tons and tons of money. He himself never enjoyed the money because he did so much tzedakah and so on, but he had plenty of money. There are plenty of rich people. But again, always remember, you have to use the money for the purpose of mitzvot. If you do that, you're allowed to have a nice car, you're allowed to have nice clothes. Again, it depends. If the Lamborghini is relevant to your income, meaning if you're making $500,000 a year and you're driving a Lamborghini, you're not only stupid, but you're also not a tzaddik. Why? Because you're spending half your net worth on a car. But if you're making $10 million, then a Lamborghini is fine. Why? Because it's nothing. It's 2% of your income.

42:52The problem is that most people that drive Lamborghinis, that's their entire net, that's everything. Their entire paycheck goes to the car because they want to show off to the guys. So yes, as a matter of fact, if you're rich, you're not allowed to wear clothes that make you look like a regular person. You have to wear nice clothes. You have to wear nice clothes. You have to look rich. You can't dress like some of these Hollywood stars who have $200 million in the bank and look like bums. You're not allowed to look like that. You have to actually... because you have to... Hashem gave you a gift. You have to be a representative of that gift. Meaning, you have to tell people, yes, I have it. I'm representative of it, which means that anyone who needs my help... You could easily identify me why I look a certain way, I act a certain way. I'm the son of the King. I look like the son of the King; I'm not looking like the homeless guy down the street, him and I wearing the same outfit. Instead, you have to look the part. So, it's perfectly fine to be rich, but always remember you have a job to do. Hashem gave you a tool; He gave you 10 million dollars not so you just buy Lamborghinis, but so you can use a few dollars to go publicize the story in the world.

44:00That's the only reason. If we do it, He'll continue giving us more. Because once Hashem sees that you're a good partner, you're giving Him a reason to give you more. He gave you 10, you gave 1. He gave you 20, you gave 2. He gave you 30, you gave 3. And sometimes even 6. Because you decided to be, you realize you don't need the whole 20, you're going to give 20%. Because there's more need for them than for me. You start doing business like that, meaning you're doing business with Hashem. You're doing business with Hashem, you're never going to lose. You'll have bracha, and you'll realize that you'll always end up succeeding in the end. Even though logically it doesn't make sense. Logically, it's like, what do you mean? You're telling me to give more money out of the pocket and out of the money and out of the effort that I'm doing, and somehow I'm going to have more money? Yes. It doesn't make logical sense. But that's the life of a Jew. It's not supposed to make sense. If you're looking for it to make sense, you're looking for a different religion. So this is the only explanation that's emet, that's valid with the Torah, that I found out only after the fact. And I can tell you, Baruch Hashem, that today, part of what we do is we help many families every month, specifically in Israel, of people that are learning Torah, people that are mamash, dedicating their lives, and they only make $500 a month, $600 a month from the kollel, which is not enough money in any place to give food for six, seven, eight kids. So part of what we do is every month we send $5,000, $10,000, $15,000 every single month like clockwork, whatever we can to help them. That's part of what we do. The other part of what we do is we give shiurim for free. The other thing we do, we give CDs and lectures and posters. Everything we do is free. Obviously, it's free, but somebody has to pay for it.

45:15mamash, dedicating their lives, and they only make $500 a month, $600 a month from the kollel, which is not enough money in any place to provide food for six, seven, eight kids. So part of what we do is every month we send $5,000, $10,000, $15,000 every single month like clockwork, whatever we can to help them. That's part of what we do. The other part of what we do is we give shiurim for free. The other thing we do, we give CDs and lectures and posters. Everything we do is free. Obviously, it's free, but somebody has to pay for it. So the more we do, the more Hashem sends. How? It's His business. I don't ask any questions. But when you're a good partner with Hashem, Hashem sends you exactly what you need. You just have to give Him a reason. Next question. You're quiet. I need a question from you. You have to have some. Okay. It touches a little on his question. Tell him. True that if you look at the Haredi public today, also in Israel, or mostly in Israel, the vast majority are below the poverty line, but they're the happiest. Like if you saw one side, right? However, where in Torah does it tell you to...

46:34Live your maximum spiritually in poverty. Why do we have a system that creates frum Jews with poverty? Why can't we have a system that promotes Torah first? The best of the class will become the next Gadol. The bottom third, let them go into business. And I'm not saying the opposite because I know you'll interject. No, I agree with you. So the Lakewood system today, the American Lakewood system today, that's what I call it, does not promote a secular education. Right. And this produces families that make $500 serving Hashem. Okay. Of course, it gives the opportunity for the less frum rich people to do mitzvot and support them. I know that rationale too. However, where in Torah do we see this system? Gemara, Rabbi Akiva, has a debate with a kofer, with a heretic, famous heretic. He tells him, listen, Rabbi Akiva, there's something wrong with your belief. He says, if you say your God...

47:57loves you people. Why does He make poor people? If He loves you so much, how come He makes poor people? Rabbi Akiva says, "So you can save the rest of us from Gehenom." That's the p'shat. He says, "To save the rest of us from Gehenom." Why? The rest of us are so focused on business and money and girls and this and watches and all that stuff that we forget about God. So what's going to save us? Hopefully one day we're going to do teshuva. That's the koach that we gave to the guy that dedicated his life to Torah. So that's one layer. That's the easy answer. Easy answer. The more difficult answer is more a reality of the times. In the old times, the amount of distractions that we had was much more limited. We had fewer screens, fewer phones, fewer TVs, less pritzut in the world, and so on. So the average person was able to focus and also had a mental capacity that's much more significant than today. So a giant like the Rambam writes in his Mishneh Torah that you're not allowed to depend on the public. Not only shouldn't you, you're not allowed to depend on the public. He considers it Chillul Hashem.

49:05He considers that if you are only learning Torah and you're going to go ask for tzedakah from people, you're not representing the Torah. Torah never told you to go ask for tzedakah. You want to learn? Learn, but go work too. So his perspective is similar to what we're saying here. But what's changed, especially over the last few hundred years, is that our mental capacity and just simply our yetzer hara and our love of Hashem have changed to such an extent that if you tell a person, "Go work and go become a Talmid Chacham," yes, he may be a decent Jew, but becoming the Nesi Yisrael HaTzion, becoming the next Gadol HaDor, becoming his full potential, it's not going to happen. Why? We simply don't have it. We don't have that level of discipline among the masses. Maybe you're going to find one or two here and there, but the reality is, for every thousand Avreichim that are making $500 a month, only one of them only one of them will become a big, huge Talmid Chacham. The other 999, we need them for the survival of the entire people. We need them to learn. They're not going to become the biggest Chacham in the world. They're not going to become the Gaon of Vilna. They're not going to become Rambam. They're not going to become that. But we need them. Why? Because 99% of the rest of the public are not even close to learning Torah on a regular basis. To such an extent that today, almost 80% of Am Yisrael do not even keep Shabbat.

50:33Meaning, at this stage, if we didn’t have those 999 learning Torah, the other 80% wouldn’t have any permission whatsoever to live. To live, I’m not talking about to have money. To live, to exist in the world, it’s worth the nachat. So, we need them to go learn Torah. The other aspect of looking at this Teshuvah is that we always have to remember that the Gemara in Masechet Rosh Hashanah, page 16a, and Beitzah 16b, says that on Rosh Hashanah Hashem decides what parnassah you're going to get. Because of what you do, regardless of what kind of profession you have, regardless of how many hours you work, and how many ideas you have, Hashem decides how much parnassah you're gonna make. Which means that if a person truly believed in Hashem with emunah shleimah, He would learn Torah full-time, like Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai says in the Gemara, where he says, you learn Torah full-time. You learn Torah full-time, don't ever work a single day, a single minute. Why? You have emunah shleimah. But, there's another chacham that goes again and says, no, no, no, but not everybody's at your level. Not everybody has emunah shleimah that they can just work and the parnassah is just going to arrive at home. They have to do something. So, some people...

51:51They need to do it. And Hashem will decide how much money they can survive with, to give them a test that they can survive with. You view them as poor. I view them as poor. Hashem doesn't view them as poor. Hashem is giving them the perfect test that they can handle. Just like He's giving you the test that you can handle, He's giving me a test that I can handle. To say that there's a mistake in how much and who and what is, in essence, saying that Hashem is kind of making a mistake. There's no mistake. But the reality is that we are supposed to also look at it as an opportunity for us. Number one, how can we help them learn Torah? How can we help him? What can we do to benefit out of this? Okay, he's learning. I'm alive because of him. What can I do to help this so he's not struggling? Because even if he spends five minutes thinking about money, that's already five minutes too much. How can I help him? What can I do to help him not even have the five minutes of issues? How can I make sure that he has a refrigerator? How can I make sure that he has a washing machine? And so on and so forth. So, I'm working. Okay, so I'm going to help. I'm going to use my money to go help this person that's learning Torah. Why? Because there's a deal. There's a person that works and learns, and there's a person that learns, learns. Meaning, everybody has to learn. But there's one person that literally sacrifices everything. So, it's a good business deal for the guy that works because he needs him. Now,

53:17Some people in the world are of the mindset of still of the Rambam that you have to work. You have to work. And there is a truth to it. It's not 100% false. There are some people that should not go to kolel. There are certain people that shouldn't be allowed inside a kolel. And the reason why is because they go to kolel to smoke cigarettes. They go to kolel to hang out outside with the guys. They're not really learning. And they create a lot of Chilul Hashem, because a lot of the secular people, they look at them outside of the kollelim, they're smoking cigarettes, they're not learning. It's like, oh, why don't you go to the army? Why don't you go to work? Why don't you go do something with your life? So such people, they should not. From that perspective, they shouldn't even be allowed in the kollelim. The other people that are learning, you have to understand that they have a place in the world. They have a place in the world. If a person can do both, he should. But most people in this generation can barely do one of them. Okay, you said a lot. Yes. I'm not talking about those exceptions. Everything I said is... No, that's not an example to look at. We're not looking at that. I'm talking about if you were to mold the system. If you had to choose the system, right? The system today, this touches on the second act you gave me. Okay. The system we have today...

54:35would be great if we could apply it to all the chilonim, right? Because, like you said, there are so many distractions, there's the internet, there's money, there's women, there's everything. However, it's not being applied to the chilonim, it's being applied to the cream of the crop, it's being applied to the, you know, the observant, the frum, whatever. so we are, I mean, it's not like, based on your answer, how are we creating a system for the chilonim or for the religious or the observant or the traditional that is—I’m not using the word dooming them to poverty—but will eventually force other people to support them Personally, I support a lot of cousins in this system, and I'm happy to support them. That's my mission, right? I'm okay with that. But it's a system, I mean, there's no way out. There's no way out, and even though they're happy, there's a lot of stress. Let's not... Let's not sugarcoat it. Right. The biggest, the most religious families with seven kids, when your kid doesn't eat in the morning and the only meal he has is at school, it's stress. It's stress. But the millionaires have stress. What? Everybody has stress. However, no, we're not talking about the exceptions. We're talking about molding a system.

55:54Right. Well, I mean, every system, you're going to find a red flag in every system. You're going to find an error in every system. There's nothing. There's no perfect solution. Because I'm looking for a source from Gemara, from Gra, about how the educational system should be. Well, Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai says that you're supposed to learn full-time. Oh, wow. Yeah. But that's a famous machloket. Right. He believes, Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai says, you have to learn full-time. Rabbi Yehuda says, no, you should work and learn. That's the machloket. It's a very famous machloket. And what's the conclusion? The conclusion is that the talmidim of Rabbi Shimon, you learn full-time because you're at that level. Talmidim of Rabbi Yehuda, only some of them succeeded this way and that way. So if you can handle the test, you should learn full-time. If you can't, then don't. Is that the system we have today? Some people apply it, some people apply their own system. We have an entire Torah. Some people follow it, some people don't follow it. The key is for everybody to know themselves, get to know themselves, and understand how much they can handle. Hashem is never going to give you a test that you can't handle.

57:04And it's unfortunate that people don't realize that the stress and the struggle, that's going to come to them anyway, even if they had a job. There's one Avrech that was a really serious Talmid Chacham. He was learning with Rav Efraim, my Rav, for several years. And eventually, he got to a point where the stress broke him, and he decided to leave the Kollel. In the kollel, he was making, like everybody else, $500 a month with the kids, with the wife, with all the problems. But for years, he was surviving. They offered him a job to make good money in technology and so on and so forth. And after he left the kollel, he says, "I'm struggling much, much worse." Meaning, the more money did not change anything. In fact, the situation deteriorated. Why? Because the bracha was at the kollel and not at work. Meaning, his job was not to go to work. His job was to stay at the kollel and struggle that struggle because that struggle was coming to him anyway. But that's what my question was based on, individuals based on the... The overall system. If you were to rule the system, how do you rule the system?

58:10My personal opinion is that every father is supposed to teach his son some type of trade. They need to do something with their Torah. They can't just go into a room, close themselves off, and I'll see you in 90 years. That is not something that you're supposed to do. You're supposed to do something with your Torah, because the Gemara in Masechet Avodah Zarah says that if you learn Torah for your own sake only, it's like you are a person who doesn't have a God. So, President, you're not supposed to just keep your Torah to yourself. You're supposed to do something with it. Write a book, sell the book. Go teach Shiurim. Go to Sikul Rabim. Give lectures. Do something. You're not just supposed to learn and be a bookworm and do nothing else. You're supposed to do something with it. And unfortunately, some people are either self-conscious and they don't want to speak to the public, or they don't have enough confidence and they don't want to write something, or maybe they're just used to their own, you know, four walls, different reasons for different people. And I know that we started, we did a program about two and a half years ago, where I had to convince 10 avrechim to each give shiurim on the internet, record themselves, we sent them cameras, we sent the money to entice them, go give shiurim. And you would think, giving an avrech that makes $500 a month, $2,500, to go give some shiurim, go give five shiurim, he'd run at it. I wish everybody gave me $500 for a shiur.

59:12where I had to convince 10 avrechim to each give shiurim on the internet, record themselves, we sent them cameras, we sent the money to entice them, go give shiurim. And you would think, giving an avrech that makes $500 a month, $2,500, to go give some shiurim, go give five shiurim, he'd run at it. I wish everybody gave me $500 for a shiur. So I told him, give him his shiurim. Originally, we had 20 people. By the time we did the recordings, only 10 people agreed. Why? The other 10 were so nervous. They're like, I don't know what to say. I don't know anything. What do you mean? You're learning in Kollel 15 years. What do you mean you don't know anything? What did you learn? I'm nervous. I'm this. I'm that. They just didn't have this yet. They smiled. So, it's not necessarily that they were brought up a certain way. It's also the individual person's test. They're not ready to get out of their own way sometimes. Just like sometimes we have a certain dilemma in our own life where a person, for example, is not ready to get married. Even though he has the perfect girl and she's wonderful and she's a tzadeket, but he's just not sure yet. Why? He doesn't really know. He's pretty much his own biggest enemy.

1:00:19Or sometimes somebody has a business deal, and he knows it's a good thing. He's going to expand his company, add more employees, and more this and more that. But still, he can't sign the dotted line. Why? Because, I don't know, it bothers him that now he's going to have a partner. It bothers him. He doesn't really know why it bothers him, but it bothers him. So sometimes, we are our own worst enemy. We get all, you know, in our own way. So the true answer is that, yes, the system definitely could be better if people did what the Chachamim and the Gemara did for the most part, which is work part of the day and learn part of the day. But the reality is quite different today. Most people are struggling, doing one or the other. Most people who are working have a very easy time forgetting about G-d. Most people who are learning have a very easy time forgetting about the rest of the people. the rest of the Jews in the world. So ideally, you have to always understand that there are two sides to the world. You can't do one, you can't do the other. You have to do something with it. And this has to do with teachings, how you bring up your kids. They're not going to learn this stuff in yeshiva. They're not going to learn this stuff in most places. They're going to learn this from their parents.

1:01:27you know, their parents are going to teach them. And sure, different people have different shittot, different perspectives. Like, for example, I'm hoping that my kid will become a big talmid chacham, but I'm not going to restrict him from certain necessary secular knowledge like math and language and so on. You need to know these things because you need to know how to communicate, you need to know how to function. And unfortunately, in some places in the world, they've restricted them to just specific parts of the Torah that they come out of yeshiva complete idiots. They don't know anything of the regular world. They don't know how to function. And it breaks them. The first time they saw a telephone is at 19 years old. Well, why is it such a big surprise that the guy broke the first time he saw a telephone? So you have to use your own chochmah, in so many words. You have to use your own chochmah to change the entire system. Not in my power or yours, but in general, I agree with you 100% that it definitely could be better, it should be better, and it should be a balance. It should be a balance of the two. But if you see that you really have the talent and the ability to go sit there and learn from Chumash, 15 hours straight, with not Bamba and Bisli, Chumash, you're one of those that can eventually write some books, 100% you should do it, because we need you.

1:02:44We need you in the world. But if you see that you're really more interested in smoking cigarettes, then... Rabbi, what's your view on today, business and social media, and exposing yourself, building a personal brand, exposing your successes? I mean, if you go on social media, I'm active on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a professional platform. Me too. Okay. So a lot of frum Jews, a lot are exposing everything. From A to Z, from the charity that they give, to the successes that they achieve, to the money that they earn, to whatever it is, just because they feel this necessity to have to show people that they are successful, so people should trust them and want to give them business. Hence, building a personal brand. That's a big, big thing right now that's happening in the world. People feel that they can't build themselves up in business or as an entrepreneur, or as a self-employed professional, unless they build that personal brand. And because of the pressure of even full needs on social media, on LinkedIn, doing all of that, it makes people feel like this is what they need to be doing.

1:03:45It became rampant. Hashem sees ga'ava as something that's despicable in His eyes, and He uses that ga'ava, that pride that a person exposes, in order to break them, eventually to punish them, because He's disgusted by it. Because in reality, you're never allowed to show your g'vainim, in so many words. Of all the successes that you made, you're supposed to be humble. And if you think that showing all of your successes is going to help you, the Torah says the opposite. In reality, a person should keep all of his successes only between him and God, and his failures he can publicize. Why? It's good for all those people with Ayin Hara. The Chachamim say in Gemara that anytime they got sick, they would publicize it to all their haters. Go tell my hater over there that I'm sick. Why? He'll start feeling bad for me. He's not going to hate me as much anymore. Demei. But the failures go publicized. Successes keep to yourself, humble. It's also a secret in business. I can tell you, in the business world, we literally made tens of millions of dollars. I mean, it was an enormous amount of money. And it wasn't getting lucky. It was hard work. I started work at 5:30 in the morning. I finished at midnight, sometimes 2 o'clock in the morning. Sleep a couple of hours, go back to work. It was no life, no nothing. So it wasn't like I got lucky and I picked the right stock and everything worked out. It was a lot of hard work.

1:05:09But in general, the one thing that I try to do really, really hard is keep all the success within four walls. People knew it was successful, but no one really knew how much until it all collapsed. Once in a while, they would hear, "Oh, your event just made a million-dollar deal. Your event just bought a five-million-dollar house. Your event did something because it would become public somehow, in some way or another." But in general, it's bad news to publicize your success. It's bad news. It's bad. It's not good for your profile in any way because also all of the people... are going to look at you, and they're not going to say, wow, Chazak U'Baruch, what a brand he has. What are they going to look at you? It's like, how did he cheat? How did he steal? Who did he rob? There's no way that he could afford that house with his job. There's no way that he could afford a third car with this money. He's doing something wrong. They're always going to look at you with the wrong perspective. Why? Because that's the nature of people. And in general, when people are showing off their tzedakah, And they, for example, Sephardim have this horrible minhag, but unfortunately it's a necessary minhag of donating in public. Meaning you go to Beit Knesset, "Who wants the Aliyah? 10,000, 20,000, 50 million," whatever it is, and everybody says, "Chazak U'Baruch, what a tzaddik." Even though he drove to Beit Knesset, what a tzaddik.

1:06:24The reality is when a person gets to Shamayim, he's going to cry, cry blood, he's going to cry. Why? He's going to see that all that kavod that he got from the kehillah for donating money took 98% of all of the merits of the tzedakah that he gave. meaning all he has left is 2%, and he'll see how much he's getting in Shamayim for the 2%, he's gonna cry for not having the other 98%. So the reality is if you want real bracha, anonymous donations. Don't even tell anybody. Nothing, nothing, nothing. If you can, don't even tell the person you're donating to. If you could donate anonymously with a check with no name on it, that's how you donate. That's the best way. Why? Because that means you're getting 100% of the zechuyot in Shamayim. If you're looking for zechuyot from people, I can tell you from personal experience, no one really cares. No one really cares about how great you are. They're all trying to take you down anyway. They feel like every dollar you make is coming out of their pocket, even if you're in a different business. No one wants to see you successful. Even your best friend that says, "Wow, good job," he doesn't really care. He doesn't really care. He feels you made a dollar, somehow that affected his pocket. So don't publicize it. Very, very bad thing. That's part of the problem, because that person who's doing it, those people who are doing it, who have...

1:07:3630, 20, and 30, and 40, and 50,000 followers behind them, praising them constantly every day for what they're doing, then it's sending a certain message, right? So the person who doesn't have the courage to do it, it's sending them a message saying, hey, maybe I should get on board. Right? To the person who's doing it, it's telling him, it's validating that, hey, you know, I have a good life because I'm being mezakeh. I'm telling the olam, you should donate money. Right? Look how much success I'm getting. There are certain things, certain times you should publicize a mitzvah. Most of the time you should not. Most of the time you should keep it to yourself. But if you know that, for example, there's a really legitimate cause. A cause for Torah. Not to save a monkey. And you know that if people know that you donated $100, they're also going to donate $100. Then it's better to lose that merit for donating $100 because you'll gain much more because you caused 100 other people to donate $100. So again, that's where the chacham comes in. That's why you have to ask the chacham. Okay.

1:08:40what do you think of that, Rav? I want to publicize on my LinkedIn, on my Facebook, on Twitter, on all these things, that I donate $100 to this Torah, Sefer Torah, to whatever, to something that's going to get Jews to become more Jewish. What do you think about that? Well, who cares about what you do? Well, actually, I have 100,000 followers that if I do something, each one of them will at least donate another $100. They'll tell you it's the biggest mitzvah in the world to publicize. Why? Because that way, that yeshiva or that kollel would have never gotten most of those people on their own. So now, you became mezakeh harabbim for that. But the reality is that most people are not doing it. They're not publicizing their tzedakah to get other people to donate. They're showing off their tzedakah to show off. To show off that they're successful. So you have to tell, you have to see yourself. You have to be emet with yourself. You have to ask, why am I doing it? Why am I publicizing it? Am I publicizing it to show off my gains? To tell people that I just made 50,000 last month? Or am I doing it because I actually really care about Hashem?

1:09:41And you have to be honest with yourself, because if you lie to yourself, no chacham can help you anyway. Moshe Rabbeinu can come down and he can't help you. Why? If you lie to yourself, only Hashem knows. That's it. So, you have to test yourself. You have to say, really, what... Have to? Airport time. Oh, really? So, these are different, these are important things, really. You have to stick to a Talmid Chacham, because sometimes he is going to tell you a perspective that because you're so busy in business, it's not that you can't think about it, you're simply not thinking about it, because you're busy with business, you're busy with your own thing. So, double-check, what do you think, Chacham? What do you think? What is the Torah perspective on this? Just like he asked, what does the Torah say about this? And it says a few things. There are a few things that it says, okay. And then you play the puzzle, you put the right pieces in the right place, and you have a clear answer. Last question. If you have Chachamim, one is experienced in business, one is not. You better go see the one who has the experience. Thank you. One is experienced in business, one is not. Which one do you go to?

1:10:48Obviously, because she's the one who has the... Yeah, if you have a problem with your heart, you go to the cardiologist or you go to the heart specialist. Yeah, you have to go to the one who's an expert in business. You go to the expert. You can't just have one chacham for everything. You have to have somebody who's an expert in certain things. I'll help you. You go where the answer is good for you. That's Rav Noach, that's a lenient rabbi. You have to go to a place where if you have a serious issue, you go to the expert. A person has a leg issue, he wants to replace his knee, he's not going to go to the dentist. He's going to go to somebody that's an expert in that field. Same thing with anything else. You want advice on marriage, you go to a Chacham that's an expert in marriage advice, in Shalom Bayit. You have issues with business, you go to an expert in business. And so on and so forth. Most Chachamim have relatively vast knowledge, and they have an understanding of many fields, but not everything. And you have to double-check with them. And if he's an honest Chacham, he'll tell you,

1:11:53i don't know, but i have somebody that does. If he's honest. If he's not honest, why are you going to him anyway? Because you don't know. You'll see. You'll see over time if the advice that's being given to you makes sense. It has to make sense. If the guy tells you, listen, you're asking him, should I buy the house, should I sell the house? He tells you, you know what, I think you should go get groceries. That's advice that doesn't make any sense. It's not relevant to your question. So if you see that the advice is constantly not relevant to what you're asking, then obviously you're going to the wrong address. So you'll see, I mean, yeah, he's right. Sometimes you don't know what you don't know. But you'll see through experience. Sometimes you don't know that a certain doctor really has two left hands. Because he has a degree. It says MD on it, and it looks wonderful. But in reality, he's horrible. You're only going to find out after the fact. That's why we have to pray to Hashem every single day to please protect us. Protect us before we do a mitzvah. Protect us after we do a mitzvah. Protect us before we go to a rabbi. Protect us after we go to a rabbi. Protect us before everything. Why? Because only Hashem can dictate the outcome of anything.

1:13:07And as long as you know that Hashem runs the world, b'ezrat Hashem, you'll have help from Hashem. Thank you very much for having me. I have to catch a flight, b'ezrat Hashem. But please be in touch. We have some business cards somewhere in there. They have my app on the back of it. You can scan it with your phone and get all the shiurim and so on. We have to be technologically advanced these days. Shalom. Hashem le'olam. Amen.