Teshuva Questions From New York at BJX (Brooklyn Jewish Xperience Center)

0:12I just want to take this opportunity, first of all, to thank Rabbi Rubin for coming all the way from Florida. I'm very, very grateful. I'm looking forward to hearing his words of wisdom. And of course, I also want to thank Leora for displaying such leadership. She was here for a class and said, "It's a beautiful venue. Let me bring in a fantastic speaker who will inspire the students." So Leora had the idea and she actually executed it, which is fabulous. Thank you so much, and thank you, of course, for the delicious pizza as well, Leora. So without further ado, it's a great pleasure and honor to welcome Rabbi Rubin. He'll share with us his life story and tell us how he went from Wall Street to becoming a rabbi and what the transition was, and why he changed his life. He was featured on CNBC, he was featured on Bloomberg News, and other famous news outlets. It's a great pleasure to have you. Baruch Hashem, thank you for the Rav. We are always excited to come back home, come back to New York. It's truly amazing.

1:17to see the transition. In the old days, this was home. This was where I had a business, had employees, a house, family, and so on. now it's all so far away, even though it really wasn't that long ago when I was still on Wall Street. So, uh, we don't have that much time, so I'm going to try to answer some questions. I'm going to try to cover some parts of the story because there are many more details about the personal story on our website, Bezrat Hashem.org. There was a recent video we made with my personal story with a lot of details that also had some footage. from my old days, the interviews on CNBC, and a few other things that you'll see from my past. But today I wanted to go over a slightly different part of the old story for anyone that hasn't heard it, but really more about the part that I haven't talked about, which is really more of the teshuva process. Most of what I've talked about over the last few years is what got me to do teshuva. Today I'd like to talk a little bit more about what you do once you decide to do teshuva.

2:27So, to give you a little bit of a brief background, I came to the United States when I was 10 years old. I didn't really know much English, but when you're 10 years old, learning a new language is pretty quick, and it's truly amazing. So, the Yetzer Hara always likes to interfere with my lectures, Baruch Hashem. But that tells us that we're doing something good, Baruch Hashem. So I, um, brief part of my personal story. Born in Israel, came here when I was 10 years old. Didn't really know much more than the first three letters of the alphabet, uh, but when you're 10 years old, you go to a new country, you advance pretty quickly as far as language is concerned. And especially since I was a studious person, I advanced pretty quickly, uh, went to school, played football, became an American, um, even though we were brought up traditionally in Israel, and we went to the Tichon Leumi school, which is half religious, half secular. As soon as you walk into America, unless you go 100% religious, you become part of the American system. And the American system is absolutely not religious.

3:31brought up traditionally in Israel, and we went to the Tichon Leumi school, which is half religious, half secular. As soon as you walk into America, unless you go 100% religious, you become part of the American system. And the American system is absolutely not religious. So, religion became a distant memory with the exception of a couple of holidays a year. Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, you go to the synagogue just for old time's sake. You know, you keep Pesach, you eat some matzah with chocolate, and you call yourself a Jew. ...and the thing is, though, is that throughout all of this time, the reason why most people do it, my family included, is because all of this time we are led to believe that our Judaism is optional. Whether you follow the law or not is optional. You can do it, great; if you don't do it, so what?

4:32And that's one of the things that I found out later on in my life — that it's not exactly so optional. The choice that we think we have, most people have a tough time when it comes to free choice. They ask the question; we had a whole shiur about it a couple of weeks ago: the whole concept of free choice. If you have free choice, how is it possible that you actually have true free choice if God knows what you're going to do? If He knows what you're gonna do, then it's technically not free choice. Is He causing you to do something else? Now, the easy way to explain it to our human mind is that even though God knows what you're going to do, it doesn't necessarily change your choice. So, for example, if, let's say, I wrote down in an envelope a bunch of things, gave it to you, and told you not to open the envelope until tomorrow, you went through your whole day. At the end of the day, you opened the envelope and saw that I wrote down everything you did for that day, meaning that I knew everything you did for the day before you did it. Did my knowledge

5:35of your action or inaction, change your decision? No. The same goes for if I know that someone has instincts; at some point, they're going to have to eat. But I'm going to give them two choices. I'm going to give them a pizza, and I'm going to give them a plastic cup. Which one are they going to pick up? The pizza, because they're hungry. They're not going to eat the plastic cup if they're a civilized human being. so the fact that I knew that you're going to pick up the pizza did not change your choice. That's, in essence, a very simple version of explaining free choice. The true understanding of free choice is beyond us. According to the Rambam, it's not possible for a human being to understand free choice simply because you have to be God in order to know that. But... What I just explained, everyone can understand, and that's, I think, more than enough to explain free choice. But in Judaism, I was brought up to believe, again, this is from my own mind, it's not necessarily that somebody told me this, but I was led to believe that being religious, keeping mitzvot, learning Torah, keeping Shabbat, kosher, all of those things were optional. If I did it, I have a better place in Gan Eden. If I don't do it, I'm still in Gan Eden, just a lower level.

6:57You know, like in that movie Titanic, where they had, you know, lower levels for the homeless people and higher levels for the rich people. So I thought, okay, so the guy, the tzaddik, who learns Torah all day and has a nice hat and beard and everything, he gets the higher level. Of course, he works harder than me. But everybody goes to Gan Eden. That was my belief. And I think that's the belief that most people either have or want to have. And I'm here to tell you it's false. Doesn't exist. There's no place in the Torah that says that that exists. As much as sometimes you hear, even rabbis sometimes tell people that everyone goes to Gan Eden, it's not true. It's not true. The choice that we have, that I discovered after learning a lot of Torah, or at least as much as I possibly could at the time that I had, was that the choice we have is that if we do good, we get good. If we do bad, we definitely don't get good.

7:58Another example: If you go to work, you get paid lots of money. If you don't go to work, they send people to your house, and they beat you up. That's the free choice we have. The free choice I thought we had was that if I don't go to work, nothing happens. If I go to work, I get paid. If I don't go to work, nothing happens. That's what I thought we had. So, you know, either way I break even. But later on, I discovered that no, it's not quite that. There is some type of punishment. There are some consequences for it. And this is a very, very important principle of faith in Judaism. It's one of the 13 principles of faith. For anyone that wants to consider themselves a Jew, anyone that wants to convert to Judaism, they must believe in the 13 principles of faith that the Rambam put together. One of them is the principle of Sachar and Onesh. Reward and punishment. Anyone that says there's no such thing as punishment, they believe in a different religion. It's not Judaism. And the reason why is because in order for Hashem to be emet, emet, meaning truth, there has to be reward and punishment. Or else, why make anybody do anything? Why should I have the same Gan Eden as Moshe Rabbeinu when he was extremely religious and I don't want to be religious?

9:24Why should Hitler be in the same place as some of the most righteous people that ever lived? Why? And we know that the whole concept of everyone going to the same place, everything being wonderful, is intellectually dishonest. Everyone here looks educated. and everyone here looks like you've spent some time reading some books, whether they were secular or religious books, and you know you read books to be stimulated intellectually. As soon as you read a book and on the cover it says it's about science, about, I don't know, some type of really stimulating topic, but as soon as you open the book and it talks about Care Bears, what do you do? You close the book. This is nonsense, shtuyot, and you throw it in the garbage. Give me my money back! When we come to the world, we go to the business world, we want to get a promotion. We go to the boss and say, I want a promotion. Well, the boss says, yeah, but it's your first day. You can't have a promotion on your first day. You come back the second day, can I have a promotion now? He says, no. If you keep doing it, he's going to fire you. Why? Because you're acting like a Care Bear. It's not realistic. You can't get a promotion after your second day or even after your second week. Even if you're a wonderful human being, for you to have the same position as the guy after a promotion, you have to earn it. To say otherwise is being intellectually dishonest. So we have to stop lying to ourselves.

10:40you keep doing it, he's going to fire you. Why? Because you're acting like a Care Bear. It's not realistic. You can't get a promotion after your second day or even after your second week. Even if you're a wonderful human being, for you to have the same position as the guy after a promotion, you have to earn it. To say otherwise is being intellectually dishonest. So we have to stop lying to ourselves. So I was put in a position where I had to be forced to stop lying to myself. After going to school and working really hard, I realized I didn't want to be in school anymore. I wanted to go make money. I went to Wall Street, and after paying my dues for the first three years—meaning working for other people, making them rich and me poor—eventually, I got my break. And in 2001, I was finally allowed to be an independent contractor within a big firm, an independent broker where I could start getting my own clients and also have my own bills that I had to pay. Every month I had to pay about $5,000 worth of bills to the office manager for the office rent, for the secretary that I didn't use, for the papers I didn't want, and all the things that he charged me just to get his $5,000 a month. And whether I had it or not was irrelevant to him.

12:04he needed his money regardless. On top of the fact that he would get a percentage of everything that I make. And if I told him, "Listen, but I'm a really nice guy. Can I just get by without paying you?" What do you think he would say? "No, stop acting like a Care Bear. It's not realistic. In the real world, there's no such thing. Everything has a cost. Everything has a cost." So needless to say, the first six months of being independent, He took all the money. I took nothing. And I had to borrow a dollar every day from this guy named Dimitri so I could buy coffee and a donut, 50 cents for each. That was my food for the day. I'd sneak on the bus every single day in order to get to work, leave the house at around 5:30, 6 o'clock in the morning, get to the office at 7 or 7:30, leave the office somewhere around midnight, 12:30, 1 o'clock in the morning, get home by 2, sleep for a couple of hours, and do it all over again every day. Eventually, Hashem blessed me with some success, where after about six months, I didn't need to borrow a dollar a day. I actually got my first thousand-dollar check that I actually kept, which to me was like all the money in the world. But the following month, I got five thousand dollars, which at that point I thought I won the lottery. The following month was another five thousand dollars. A month later, it was ten thousand dollars.

13:28In November of 2002, which was only about a year after I started being independent, I made $117,000 in one month. So, I broke a company office record, and all of a sudden, I became the guy that everyone wanted to be, even though just a few months ago I was the guy they were making fun of because I worked so much and made no money. So then, I continued building a business, Within the next six months, I got to a point where I was the third-largest producing broker in the country for the company out of 5,000 people. I made my first million dollars. I was 23 years old. Now, a million dollars, I mean, I actually took home a million dollars. Not a million dollars like there's a million dollars somewhere in the air, but I get like $3. after taxes and fees and paper and cops and secretaries. No, a million dollars like I actually had a million bucks, which was something amazing when just a year before, I had to borrow a dollar. But at that point, I had to make a choice. In the business world,

14:39People don't necessarily like to see you grow because they feel like it's taking food off their table. Even though there are seven and a half billion people, sometimes you'll have competitors act as if there's only one customer in the world. Have you ever seen a guy after his competitor opened a store next door to him, how upset he gets? Oh, he's going to steal all my customers. What do you mean? There are seven and a half billion people. He says, take all of them. If he's taking all of them, then you should probably work for him. You'd probably be a millionaire anyway. Why are you so worried? There are a lot of people in the world. You don't have to worry about competition, ever. You never have to worry about competition. There is an enormous amount of clients. People who worry about competition are small-minded people. Small-minded people never succeed. So then I realized that my competitors were my peers. So I had to leave. I had to decide that it was time for me to leave and go to a different place. But what’s the next place? Is it going to be a different firm, or is it going to be my own firm? And obviously, the natural entrepreneurial mentality was to start my own company. I started my own company and began hiring some people, educated from all different types of fancy schools.

15:51And all were very excited to work for this young guy that made a few bucks. But things got better. I started making more money. It got to a point that by 2006, a bad month would be a couple hundred thousand dollars. A good month, the best month of that year, was 1.6 million. So, if we were making money the first few years, by 2006 we got to a point where we were printing money. Looking at the price tag was no longer optional. It was just nonsense. You buy whatever you want, you do whatever you want. But interestingly enough, it wasn't materialistic. I liked making money for competitive reasons. But as far as buying toys, I never bought toys. Never bought boats or planes or any of that stuff. It never really interested me. Most of the money I had, I either gave to people to help them or I invested into the business, into the stock market, and so on. At one point, I made a smart decision where I actually invested some money in Torah, and even though I wasn't religious, I bought a Sefer Torah. I had a Sefer Torah made in Israel, and we had a whole party; it was amazing. But again, this was because I had the money, I heard it was a big mitzvah, and it wasn't because I was planning on becoming religious anytime soon. And the reason why I wasn't planning on becoming religious anytime soon is because my wife wasn't Jewish.

17:21My wife and business partner wasn't Jewish, so for me to tell her, "Hey, listen, I'm going to become religious," would mean I have to get a divorce. That wasn't happening. Thank you. That wasn't happening. I liked my life. I liked my partner. Everything was wonderful. Why change? Especially since, up to now, I believed that Judaism was optional. You want to be religious? Good for you. Be religious. I don't. I believe in God in my heart. I do Shema Yisrael before I go to sleep. I eat kosher when I can or whatever I understand as kosher. I don't eat pig. I don't eat milk and meat. I don't work on Shabbat. I go to the casino instead. That's rest for me. Rationalize the Torah. What's wrong with it? A lot. Once you actually delve into it...

18:21The truth, you realize just how much is wrong with it. You realize that the kosher pizza is not really kosher because you bought it from Domino's or from Pizza Hut or some non-Jewish place. And according to me, if it was dairy, it was kosher. What I didn't realize was that dairy that's made by goyim also uses meat. from the stomachs of animals. Most of the time it's pigs, sometimes it's different animals, and the reason why is because it makes the cheese better, along with a few other different additions to it. But this has been happening for over 2,000 years. It's actually mentioned in the Gemara, where they used different parts of the stomach of pigs for cheese. This is not a new invention or anything. So when you eat pizza from a non-kosher place, you're actually eating not only non-kosher, but you're eating milk and meat, which is one thing I thought I was keeping. On top of that, when I realized that on Shabbat, I didn't work. I went to the casino, I watched movies, I slept, did nothing, whatever—I did whatever I wanted. Went away to different vacations.

19:40And I thought if I'm not working, that's fine. But the whole concept of observing Shabbat has nothing to do with work. Nothing to do with work. What you're not allowed to do on Shabbat is you're not allowed to do melachot. But you are allowed to work, which means avodah. Avodah means you're working for Hashem. Melachah means you're doing certain actions that are forbidden on Shabbat. ...part of the mundane world, part of the day-to-day life, has nothing to do with Shabbat. But it's specifically things that are creating. So, for example, if you want to move a table on Shabbat, it's perfectly fine, perfectly fine. There's nothing wrong with it. If you want to talk to somebody, it's perfectly fine, nothing wrong with it. But if the table that you're moving is... ...is going to be used not because you want to move from place to place, but because you want to dig into the ground. You're using the table to dig into the ground, to make a hole in the ground. That becomes a different action. If the conversation you're having is not just a conversation about what Rashi said this week, but it's a conversation about some real estate you want to buy, that's no longer allowed. So it's not necessarily the action, it's the consequence of your action.

21:02So, as far as not working, I thought if I'm not working, it's fine, but it's not about not working. It's about what you're actually doing with your time. So, in 2006, everything is fine. I try to keep whatever I can, whatever makes sense to me. I donate a bunch of money to whoever needed, would come to me, and I would give the money. So that, in my mind, made me a tzaddik. I was very generous. So why should I go to synagogue if I already am better than most of these people in my mind? So eventually, God gets your attention. There was one time a bunch of kids playing on the beach, and one of the kids decided he doesn't want to play on the beach and he wants to wave to the boat. It's far away. So one of the adults said, "No, stop. Stop waving to the boat. He's not going to see you." And the kid is waving to the boat. He's waving to the boat. He's excited about waving to the boat. And the adult, who doesn't know the kid, just finds this ridiculous. He's trying to convince him to stop. "Go play with the rest of the kids. Build some sandcastles or something." But the kid's like, "I don't want to play with sand. I want to wave to the boat until he waves back to me."

22:30The adult says, "What makes you think that the captain is going to wave back to you?" The little boy says, "Because he's my father." The adult says, "Okay, so maybe he's going to look for you. Maybe he is looking for you. Maybe he is waving back to you. Maybe." What is this like? This is us. God is constantly looking for us. He'll give you 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 120 years, however many years each one of us is gifted before we come to this world. But throughout the entire time, He's looking for you. He's looking for you. And you can be one of two types of people. You can be one of those who are constantly focused on the sandcastle: you build it, you build it, you build it, the water comes, and it blows up. You build it, you build it, you build it. The wind comes and it blows up. You're playing with things and you're just wasting your time, really. You're focusing on material. You're focusing on this world so much. You build, you build, you build. Eventually, it's worthless. Why? Because you can't take it with you to the next world. Even though Steve Jobs, who probably had a part in everyone's life in this room because you had an iPhone at some point. Amazing inventions, amazing brain, amazing bank account. None of it matters.

23:53He's dead. He can't take any of that with him. As a matter of fact, before he died, it was known that he had at least seven billion dollars. Seven billion dollars. Writing seven billion dollars should make you tired, let alone having it. Seven billion dollars, but with all of that money, he couldn't buy one liver to save his life for one day. All of that money, seven billion dollars. 7 billion iPhones, 7 billion iPads. However much you could possibly imagine, you would have much more now. Couldn't buy one liver. And all of you have it for free. So in reality, you're richer than him. When you're playing with the sand, the material world, you focus so much on this world, eventually you realize it's all for nothing.

24:53Yes, it's nice to have a limo take you to wherever you want to go. It's nice to have a big house. It's nice to have a bank account that gives you comfort that everything is going to be fine. But you'd give all of it away, all of it, for another minute to live. One minute. If the richest guy in the world was told, listen, you're either going to die right now or you'll live another minute, but you'll be poor that one minute, he'll still take it. He'll still take it. So if we focus so much on chasing careers, chasing houses, chasing all of this stuff, eventually we realize it's all for nothing. Depends when you realize it, is the question. Sometimes Hashem will give you more than one chance to get your attention. He'll give you tests, see if you can get your attention. If you continue playing with the sand, he'll give you more time and more time and more time. This is based on your own accounting between you and Him. But eventually, time runs out. Eventually, He says, you can't continue playing with the sand. You have to be the guy that's waving to Me. You have to be the guy that's waving to Me. If not, I'm going to come off. I'm going to park the boat. I'm going to come in and get you. More than once, Hashem tried to get your attention. He'll give you tests to see if He can get your attention. If you continue playing with the sand, He'll give you more time and more time and more time. This is based on your own accounting between you and Him. But eventually, time runs out. Eventually, He says, you can't continue playing with the sand. You have to be the guy that's waving to Me. You have to be the guy that's waving to Me. If not, I'm going to come off. I'm going to park the boat. I'm going to come in and get you.

26:17And that's exactly what happened to me. So in May of 2006, I made my $1.6 million for that one month. It was wonderful. I went on vacation for a month to Las Vegas, played in the World Series of Poker and a bunch of other tournaments. And I thought I was on top of the world. Little did I know that I was only months away from having everything turn upside down. In November 18th of 2006, that very same year, just a few months later, I decided to have elective surgery. Elective surgery means it's not something that you have to have, but it was just something that annoyed me. It's something that annoys two out of three people in the world. It's called hemorrhoids. And I went to the doctor and he told me, "Listen, this is a very simple surgery. I perform two to three a day for the last 16 years," he says. I perform two to three surgeries a day. It's very simple. You feel uncomfortable for a couple of days. You go back to work. Everything is fine. By the way, "uncomfortable" means pain. Or "pressure" also means pain. But for him, it's "uncomfortable," so he says "uncomfortable." So anyway, I said, okay, this uncomfortable, annoying thing that's annoying me twice a year. So I'll be uncomfortable for a couple of days and have an excuse for another couple of days of vacation. No problem. Well, it wasn't so uncomfortable.

27:39...fact when I woke up out of the surgery, it was beyond uncomfortable. I was screaming and yelling from pain because what I felt was that someone took a big knife, like in the commando movies, connected it to an electric outlet, and just continued cutting me over and over again without stopping everywhere, not just that area of the body, and it wouldn't stop... And I'm screaming and I'm yelling and they're giving me painkillers, and for the first time in my life, I realized that none of this stuff actually works for me. I never took drugs because I liked my brain. So this was the first time they put drugs in my system, and it didn't work. Eventually, they gave me the most amount of morphine legally allowed to calm my body down. And I calmed down. They said, "Listen, I don't know, we don't know exactly what happened, but you seem fine now. Go home." I was excited to go home. This was a very exciting day for me, having all this pain and finding out what this gehinnom that some people told me about actually looks like in real life. So I went home, we had a shawarma sandwich on the way home, got home, ate the sandwich, went to sleep, told everyone, "Thank you for coming, and I'm going to sleep," and I thought that it was all over.

29:04It was just beginning. Forty-five minutes later, I woke up with even worse pain than I did after the surgery. The only difference is that this time it didn't stop for sixty-two days. For sixty-two days, this pain continued but it continued getting worse. My body started failing because I wasn't able to sleep. And I was also taking a lot of different types of medicine, which was ruining my body. Eventually, I started urinating blood. Blood started coming out of my eyes, my ears, and all types of wonderful things. And eventually, the doctor said, "Yeah, he's probably dying. From what? We have no idea. No idea what happened. The pain he has has nothing to do with the surgery. Nothing to do with it." something went wrong, something went awfully wrong. It could have had something to do with the guy on the boat, though. So after two months of this horrifying pain, things started calming down. Instead of taking 50 painkillers a day, I came down to about 20. For me, that was manageable, and I started going back to work, started going back to my life, and

30:17thought that, okay, I got a second chance at life, let me start, you know, going back to things. Nine months later, I feel a pain in the back of my leg. I thought maybe I pulled a muscle, but later that night I can't really move. The next morning I'm in an emergency room. They tell me I have something called an abscess, which is an infection, but this one is in between two muscles, and it's so big that if I would have waited Another hour or two would have caused it to rupture, entering my bloodstream, and I would have probably died instantly. So I said, okay, this is not good. He's like, yeah, we have to do an emergency surgery. This surgery is much worse than the first one, because this time I actually have to stay in the intensive care unit next to people who are dying for the next 10 days. This was the first surgery. After a few weeks in the hospital, and these surgeries are definitely not fun, because with this type of surgery, they have to keep the area open.

31:18and have to keep reopening it every day. If that wasn't bad enough, they reopen it every day to make sure that the infection comes out, so it gives you a really good taste of how many sensors you have in your body. So, after a few weeks of this wonderful experience, I go back home. I think this is over. Six months later, another abscess, another surgery. Three months later, another abscess, another surgery. Eventually, it becomes every month. Every single month, and this continues for seven years. Seven years of 24 hours a day of pain. But the pain is no longer in one area. The pain is now everywhere, from the bottom of my neck all the way to the bottom of my feet. Eventually, my legs double in size, and I can't really walk. I... Everything that could go wrong went wrong. I also started losing money faster than I made it. If it was a miracle to make it in the first place, it was a bigger miracle how we lost it. Everything that went from sand to gold in the past turned from gold back to sand. Everything went wrong.

32:33because I had money and, you know, I had the ability to pay for medicine and all types of doctors and so on. So, we went to over 50 different doctors, not even looking for a cure. I mean, if initially we thought we were looking for a cure, after a few years of this, we realized there is no cure. We just wanted a diagnosis. What happened? What happened? Most people ask me, "Did you sue the doctor?" And the answer is no, simply because I had more money than him. What do I need his money for? I didn't want to be healthy. I didn't realize I was going to be broke just a few years later. But I continued looking for a diagnosis. After a while, I realized that there's no diagnosis. There's no cure. This is it. This is it. Now, when you're in pain 24 hours a day... both emotionally and physically, you tend to not want to live. Life kind of loses its meaning. So I started looking at my life and said, okay, you know what? I got to put an end to this nightmare. The only problem is these two wonderful women who are investing so much into me—my mother and my wife—and they're constantly crying. And I kind of feel bad that if I killed myself, they're going to cry more. You think about these things.

34:01But after a while, you stop thinking about it. After a while, it's like, you know what? Don't manage. So I started thinking, legitimately, about how to commit suicide. Now, by the way, people who think about suicide are usually very rational. People who commit suicide are irrational. It's two different things. Thinking about it is a natural thing. And the reason why is because we tend to think that everything that's in our life is permanent. When someone is upset, they think they will be upset forever. When someone is happy, they think they'll be happy forever. People forget that things are temporary. Most things in life are temporary. So when you get upset, start crying, and you lose yourself. You start saying stupid things and doing stupid things. Why? Because you think that you're going to have this horrible feeling forever. You don't realize that, like a week from now, you're going to forget you had this feeling. You're not going to think about this feeling—who's this guy? Who is he? This woman, who is she? This boss, this job—none of it matters anymore; you forgot about it. But at the moment that you feel it, you think it's permanent.

35:21same thing with happiness. People get to an elated state of mind when they make a lot of money, when they have intimate relations, when they, uh, you know, get a job, when their team wins, or something like that. They start celebrating. I saw these two guys in the airport this morning. And they were talking about, I don't know, some team. I don't really know what they were talking about. They were talking about some team. And one of the guys was so excited about if his team wins. Oh, man, you don't know what's going to happen, man, if they win. And he was so excited. It was like his whole body was moving. Like, wow, I could bring this guy to the lecture. His whole body was like, "Yo, you don't understand what's going to happen if this team wins. What's going to happen? Nothing. Nothing's going to happen. You still have to pay rent every month. You still have to pay taxes. You still have to eat. Nothing's going to happen. Maybe the guys on the team are going to, something's going to change for them. They're going to get a bonus. You get nothing. What are you so excited for?" But he was so excited about, "Oh, if this team's going to win." I thought I got to bring this guy to the lecture. He didn't want to come though. He wasn't Jewish. So, so...

36:28We think that everything is permanent. I thought that my state of mind was going to be permanent. I thought my body was going to be permanent. I thought nothing was going to change. I thought God hated me. So I figured, okay, what do I do? Now, one of the things that the Sages teach us in the Torah is that God is not going to give you a test you can't pass. Now, the reason why is because if He brought you to the world purely to suffer, He wouldn't bring you here. There's a different place for that. It's not this world. It's called Gehinnom. We're not going to go into what it means and what happens there, but in so many words, it's very hot. It's not a fun place. If He wanted you to purely suffer, you'd go there. He didn't bring you here to suffer. He brought you here to overcome an obstacle. He brought you here to fulfill a mission. He brought you here to work—not work for a stock market company or building company or some company, but work for Him, do something for Him, fulfill a purpose. Do something. But part of that purpose is overcoming obstacles. Part of that purpose is building character. And building character requires experience.

37:46The CEO that earned his position is a much better CEO than a CEO that got the job from his daddy. Usually, the one that got the job from Abba is not such a good CEO. The one that earned it, going from the mailroom to being a CEO, is usually the guy that takes the company to the next level. And the reason why is because he has experience. That experience, if you ask them, can you tell them about your experience? When you read the bios of the most successful people in the world, you tend to see that they don't talk about the vacations to Cancun, or to Australia, or to the jungle. They don't talk about that. What do they talk about? I was homeless, I was poor, I was divorced, I lost a kid, chas v'shalom. All the hardships of their life, they talk to you about their nightmares. want to read a bio, a real bio, of a successful person, that means you want to read about their nightmares because that's what made them. Their experience is what made them—the hardships, not the vacations, not the fancy cars and the planes. That's what sells books; what actually makes the book is the tough experience. So you want to have experience; you want to be something special.

39:13then you're in line. Hashem wants you to have it also. So I had a lot of different experiences, except the experience of sickness. At least not to that extent. I was sick when I was 16 years old for a little while, but not to that extent. So Hashem said, listen, I gave you a bunch of chances. You didn't listen. But now, I'm calling you and you have to listen. But He also said that He's not going to give me a test that I can't pass. So that means that any test that I have, any test that you have, He knows you can pass it, for sure. Just like any father is not going to tell his son, "Honey, can you go pick up the car for me?" But not pick up the car from the store, but pick it up over your head and bring it into the kitchen. A mom is not going to tell her four-year-old daughter to pick up the oven over her head. Why? Because she knows she can't do it. Why should I give her a test she can't pass? Why should I have her do something that I know she's going to fail? Because if I give her a test that I know for a fact she's going to fail, then what is she going to think? Oh, I hate her. But I don't hate her, I love her. If Hashem would give us tests that He knew for sure that we would fail, that means He hates us. If He hated us, He would put us in a different place, not here.

40:40Anything you have in the world, you can pass. As hard and as big as it seems, you can pass. It's the only reason you have it. You can pass it; maybe he can't. He can pass it; maybe you can't. I can pass it; maybe somebody else can't. But whatever test you are given, you can for sure pass it. Because He loves you. I didn't think I was going to be able to pass. So Hashem says, "Oh, you got to that point. You got to the point where you don't think you can pass." I got to send the rescue team. On the day that I started planning what I'm going to do, how I'm going to do it, all of that stuff, my mom, God bless her, decided that she's going to start calling a bunch of rabbis and ask for blessings. And she, like every Jewish mom, somehow they all have a black book full of rabbis' names. And she starts calling all these rabbis from different places around the world. And she... doesn't get any answers. Almost two hours of dialing the phone, no answers. Eventually, somebody answers, a woman answers in Israel, and she asks for a certain rabbi, and the woman says, I'm sorry, it's the wrong number. So imagine, you're dialing a phone number, two hours, eventually somebody picks up, there's life on the other side of the phone, but it's the wrong phone number. So, naturally, what you would do, start crying. So my mom starts crying hysterically, and HaShem

42:09shows the people who's the owner of the house by making the woman be the only woman that we need to reach. Who is this woman? The woman then asks my mom, Doris, why are you crying? She calls my mom by her name. My mom is shocked. She says, how do you know my name? She says, I know your name because I'm your niece. because how did I get to you? I don't have your phone number, and we've never spoken on the phone ever. They don't have each other's phone numbers. But somehow, she reached the wrong phone number that reached her, which we later find out is the only person that could actually help us. And on top of it, she recognized her voice, which is strange in its own right. But that's Hashem for you. When Hashem peeks and tells you, hey, I'm the one that's running the house, I'm the one that's pulling the strings, sometimes He wants you to see it. She says, why are you crying? She tells her the whole story: my son is dying, my son is this, my son is that. She says, well, if you're looking for a blessing, why don't you call Rabbi Ephraim, my brother? He's a Talmid Chacham, and he lives very close to Rabbi Ovadia, Zecher Tzaddik Livracha, before he passed.

43:24close to him, maybe a connection to him, and so on. He would talk to me. "Yeah, of course I'll talk to you. Why not? You're the famous Aunt from America." So, my mom calls Rabbi Ephraim. He's in the kollel. He calls her back, and they start talking. I didn't know that Rabbi Ephraim existed. When I left Israel, when I was 10 years old, he was an infant. He's much younger than I am. He's about 10 years younger than I am. And I didn't even realize that he existed. So it's not like we kept in touch or anything. So when I called my mom and she told me about this Rabbi Ephraim person, I had no idea what she was talking about. The interesting part is when I called her. Now she's talking to Rabbi Ephraim. And Rabbi Ephraim gets to the point. And he says, "Does he speak Hebrew?" She says, "Yes, he speaks Hebrew." "Ah, so can I just call him myself and just talk to him?" Because no, he'll never talk to you. And at that very moment is when I called her on the other line. When she says he won't talk to you, I decided to call my mom for the first time in a long time. And my mom is hysterical, crying, and she says, talk to him. And I have no idea what she's talking about because I'm going into the middle of the conversation. She says, talk to him, talk to him. And I said, who? Ephraim. Like, who is this Ephraim behind? Why did he make you cry? She goes, it's your cousin. He can help you. I said, okay, just stop crying. Have whoever you want call me.

44:52Rabbi Fein calls me, and we talk for an hour and 40 minutes. What do we talk about? He tells me, the first story he tells me is about the biblical story of Yehuda and Tamar. It took me about four years to realize why he told me that story. For another day, I'll explain. But it was an amazing story. I loved it. It's from Sefer Bereishit. Genesis and amazing, especially when you realize that the Messiah comes from there and there are a lot of deep secrets to it. So, we talked about that. I start to see this guy's a smart guy, so I start asking him questions, and he answers in a very different way than what I'm used to. When I ask people questions, they usually give me their opinion. If I ask you, what do you think of the market? You tell me what you think of the market based on your opinion and somewhat experience. What do you think of the economy? Tell me your opinion and your experience. If you tell me, what do you think of this building? You tell me about your opinion and experience. The way he answered questions was very unusual to me.

46:02First of all, I ask him the question. He goes, he made me feel great. How? He tells me, "Oh, that's the same question that Rabbi so-and-so asked 812 years ago in this book, on this page, on this line," and he recites the whole thing by heart. In the beginning, I didn't realize it was by heart. I'm like, did he have the book in front of him? How did he know I was going to ask the question? So then, just for that, just to see what happens, I asked another question. It's like, oh, what a great question, which made me feel smart. I'm asking these great questions that these big rabbis asked 300 years ago, 800 years ago. I'm like, yeah, of course they ask the same questions. Come on. I asked the same question. I'm thinking of who I am. Little do I know these people are giants of giants. If I could eventually be the dust under their feet, it's already an accomplishment. Like, yeah, of course the Rambam. Yeah, me and the Rambam are like this. he has the same question as me, so I ask another question. He's like, "Yeah, of course, Rabbi So-and-so asked in this book on this page 350 years ago, 450 years ago," and he gives me these references. How do you know the pages? How do you know the line? How do you know this stuff? Do you have all these books in front of you? Because, no, and I don't understand. What do you mean, no? No, you should ask the question. I knew the answer when you asked the question. It took me a while to understand what this means, like you actually know all these books by heart.

47:23and little by little, I started realizing this is not an opinion. This is a source. This is somebody else's information that has a source that comes from Har Sinai. And it was unusual. So we spoke for an hour and 40 minutes. It was very, very invigorating. It's different. I was surrounded by yes-men. I was surrounded by people that were constantly telling me, yes, yes, yes. Applaud everything I did. All of a sudden, have somebody who actually knows what he's talking about. So I was looking forward to another phone call. But after that phone call, I went to my wife and I told her, "He knows it." And she goes, "Who and what?" I said, "Ephraim." She asked, "What does he know?" I replied, "He knows the secret." She asked, "What secret to what?" I said, "The secret to the world. That's honestly what I told her. He knows how the world is made up." She responded, "Keep talking to him." I said, "I don't know his phone number. He said, 'I'll call you again.'" So, the following week, As silly as all this sounds, it all happened. Can't even make this stuff up. Thursday, 4 o'clock, he calls me. We have a three-hour conversation. Questions and answers. I ask questions. He gives me page numbers, rabbis' names, lines. He recites it by heart. I ask every single question I can imagine. And I didn't realize how many questions I had.

48:44The following week, we have a conversation on Thursday at 4 o'clock for 5 hours. The following week, Thursday at 4 o'clock for 7 hours. And from that moment on, every single Thursday, for an average of 6 to 7 hours, we have questions and answers. If you had a question, I probably asked it. I didn't even know I had that many questions. I started making up questions just to see how much he knows. But also because I knew he knew. Dinosaurs, no problem. Aliens, meat, purpose of life, money, women, anything. I just started asking questions, but he didn't just tell me his opinion. Not once in all the years that I know him did he ever give me his opinion without me asking him specifically for his opinion. All of it was, "What's God's opinion?" Because that's the only opinion that counts. Your opinion may change next week. This week you like ice cream; next week you like beef jerky. Your opinion changes; God's doesn't. It's permanent. So I started learning God's opinion. And I found out that God's opinion hasn't changed, ever. But more than that, God's opinion is very, very strong. It's not politically correct.

50:06quite frankly, it cares less about whether you like it or not. Even when Moshe sort of tried to have a conversation with Hashem about maybe you should do this or maybe you should do that, Hashem said, "I'll do whatever I please. I'll give to whoever I want to give and I'll take from whoever I want to take without having to give anyone an explanation for it." good news is that while this very strict Creator, King of Kings, is also our Father and loves us. So He tries to give us explanations, but the explanation is here. It's in this book; it's called the Torah. You want the explanations to everything in your life? It's here. These are the instructions. Torah also means instructions. Instructions on how to live, instructions on how to be successful in marriage, in business, in friendship, in anything. But one of the most important parts of the Torah is to be a decent human being. This is one of the things that we forget in the world we live in.

51:26Being a decent human being, people try to do it, but superficially. They try to say, "Listen, you shouldn't say certain things because it may offend someone. It may offend someone who's homosexual. It may offend someone who's black. It may offend someone who's Jewish. It may offend someone who's whatever, something else." In reality, everything else they do is offensive. So when you use people's opinions, opinions are warped and tainted and usually not so good. Use God's opinion; it has some foundation to it. So I started learning, and it became extraordinary. I became addicted to it. Little by little, I started realizing that the situation that I'm in is Not easy, but also not good. The fact that my wife is not Jewish was not a good thing, but I'm not planning on leaving her, especially since she was the only one that was there for me for the last seven years when I was dying. So then I decided that, okay, maybe I should learn a little bit about her religion and see, maybe there's a match, maybe it's good, maybe it's bad, maybe there's something.

52:43Now, I've always thought that Christianity was like second best. I never necessarily thought it was fake; I just thought it was second best. I thought it was like, you know, it was like Torah was real and, you know, Christianity was like the remix. I started learning about it, and I realized it's not the remix. I realized it's fake. It's a 100% man-made, fake religion. All you need to do is look at their own book, and you see that there are man-made mistakes on every single page. Our Torah has 304,805 letters. Their New Testament has approximately 100,000. Our Torah only has one version. Their New Testament has over 200,000 versions. There are no two Christians on the entire planet that believe the same thing. I met many of them, and I helped many of them convert too. No two Christians believe the same thing. Each one of them takes something else from the book and makes it their own. Someone says J.C. Penny is God, another guy says he's a Mashiach, another guy says he's a rabbi, another guy says he's a tzaddik, another guy says he's just somebody. Everybody has some other explanation for something else. No two believe the same thing. No two ever read the entire Bible.

54:09the entire Bible according to them includes the Torah, which means that there's 75% Torah and 25% New Testament. This means that 75% is true. We all agree the Torah is true; even the Christians believe the Torah is true. The only thing is they don't teach it and they actually tell you not to learn it. According to them, you shouldn't learn it because it's not relevant anymore. The reality is, it's not because it's not relevant, it's because it contradicts the other 25%. There are several places in the Torah where Hashem says that Yaakov Avinu came down to Egypt with 70 souls, 70 people. The New Testament says 75. This is a simple human error. God did not forget five people. That means God didn't write the New Testament. The New Testament says there is a wrong address for the Ma'arat HaMachpelah, the Cave of Machpelah, which still exists. You can go see it, even though there are a bunch of terrorists there, it still exists. The New Testament put it in the wrong city. This is the problem. God didn't forget the address, especially for such an important cave.

55:26And so on and so forth. There are countless mistakes in this New Testament. But the reason why there are over 2 billion people that believe it is because most people are told not to read the Old Testament. So Jews that have the prize in their hand, have the gold in their hand, take it for granted sometimes, like I did. Sometimes God's going to tell you, "Listen, it's time for you to start reading it." So I fell in love with it, and then eventually, I realized that I have to save this woman. Even if it's not for marriage, I have to save her. So I started learning, learning, learning, learning. And everything I learned, I taught her. We continued learning together. Eventually, through a different set of miracles, she realized that on her own. that Christianity is the worst thing on earth. It's complete falsehood, and over two billion people have fallen for it, including her. On that day, she said, "Okay, I'm ready to convert," and she took on everything. That day, even though the Beit Din didn't obviously take her overnight, the first day she realized everything is true, she took on every single mitzvah we knew of. Modesty, kashrut, everything. If we knew it, we did it. And this leads me to the next point. There's not that much time left, but I'll cover it.

56:43Once we decided to do teshuva, the one advantage we had that I think most people don't realize how significant it is, is that we actually had a rabbi. And I think that's one of the things that's the most important part of your teshuva, is to make yourself a rabbi. In the Pirkei Avot book that I have in front of me, this is a series of Pirkei Avot that we did, and we're still doing, we're up to, I think, lecture number 52 or 53. The sixth lecture, or the sixth Mishnah, says make yourself a rabbi. Now the Mishnayot are in order, from Mount Sinai all the way to the Talmudic times, so a span of many, many years. and we're still doing, we're up to, I think, lecture number 52 or 53. The sixth lecture, or the sixth Mishnah, says to make yourself a rabbi. Now the Mishnayot are in order, from Mount Sinai all the way to the Talmudic times, spanning many, many years. Which means that the sixth Mishnah is very close to Mount Sinai. And this sixth Mishnah tells you it's important for you to make yourself a rabbi. Meaning that it's so significant to make yourself a rabbi whom you can connect to, whom you can talk to, whom you can ask questions, whom you can cry to, whom you can reason with, that without it, you'll be lost.

58:06It's very, very easy to lose yourself. And that's why sometimes you see some people start doing teshuvah and take on more than what they really can. All of a sudden, the guy didn't keep Shabbat, didn't keep kosher, didn't keep anything. Next week, he has a beard. A week later, he has payot. Three weeks later, he's already wearing a $10,000 hat, but he still doesn't know hilchot Shabbat. He still doesn't know hilchot Shabbat, but he looks like he just came from Breslov. What are you doing? Why? And the reason why a lot of people do this is because many people think that Judaism has to do with the exterior. The exterior is important, but it's not as important as here. Teshuvah is inside. Teshuvah is what's in your heart, but what leads you to action. Not, "Hey, I believe in God in my heart." That's nonsense. That's like saying, "I believe I'm rich in my heart." No, your bank account says if you're rich or not. I believe my wife loves me. Well, you can believe what you want, but if she left you and she filed for a divorce, she doesn't love you, my friend. So you have to be real. So what I mean in your heart means what leads you to action.

59:20So how do you get to a point? What do you do? First and foremost, you have to make yourself connect to a rabbi, wherever the rabbi is, whoever you connect to, whoever you ask. You can have, probably most of the time, multiple rabbis in your life. You can have a certain rabbi that's a local rabbi. The local rabbi is going to be the day-to-day person that you ask day-to-day questions. Sometimes the rabbi that motivates you more is going to be a rabbi that you watch on TV or on YouTube or on different lectures from different places in the world. He may be located in Australia, he may be located in Florida, he may be located in New York, wherever he's located. The point is that he can be your lecturer every week that motivates you. And then you have your halacha, your halacha rabbi. That could potentially be your local rabbi. that knows his stuff, or it could be a rabbi that's specialized in a certain type of halacha. For example, not every rabbi knows everything. If you need a rabbi who's a specialist in business, that may or may not be your local rabbi. You have to go to a rabbi who's an expert in business, who not only knows the laws of business but knows business.

1:00:25Same thing, you know, it could be a rabbi that helps you with finding a zivug, finding a spouse, and so on and so forth. You're probably going to have multiple rabbis, but you always have to have one main guy who directs you to the others. One main one who's going to direct you to the others, that's the one. You have to have a rabbi. And the reason why is because he's the one who's going to call you out. He's the one that's going to tell you, "Hey, you're taking on too much. You're doing too much. Relax. Don't be overly righteous. You just did teshuvah three months ago. You don't need to grow a beard that reaches the floor. You just did teshuvah three months ago. You don't need to do ta'anit dibur and not talk for the whole day. Relax. You can study in a normal way. You don't have to not talk." Take things one at a time. Now, how do you decide what to do? First and foremost, you have to start with the foundation. You have to start with the stuff that's most important. So, Shabbat is foundational. Kosher is part of the foundation. Modesty is part of the foundation. There are certain foundational mitzvot where if you don't do them, you have a problem.

1:01:45Learning Torah on a daily basis is foundational. If you don't learn, you won't know. There's no such thing as a righteous person who doesn't learn Torah. No such thing. There's no such thing. There's no way you can be righteous with Hashem, according to His definition, without learning His Torah. Because you need to know His instructions. So first and foremost, you have to do the foundational stuff. You have to learn Torah every day. You have to take on certain things. The second thing is that you have to learn about what you're doing. So if you want to do something, for example, you want to learn about Shabbat. You want to be modest. You want to keep kosher. Learn about it. Take a book. Okay, I want to learn about kosher. What's the significance of kosher? Take a book. Watch a few videos online. Whatever it is, take a few things. Why should I keep kosher? The more you learn about a mitzvah, the more connected to it you become. If you become connected to the mitzvah, it will give you cheshek; it will give you the inclination and the desire to do it. But if just somebody tells you, "Listen, you should keep Shabbat." Why? "Because if you don't, God hates you." I don't want to. So? That's his problem. If you don't really know the significance of Shabbat, it's like, I don't care. Once you realize what Shabbat is, you realize all the significant things of Shabbat.

1:03:11It's amazing, it's an endless amount of reward you get for it. It's literally the make or break of a teshuva. Then, okay, this makes more sense. Learning Torah, if you ever want to never be bored, learn Torah. Many people get depressed because they're bored. They get bored, people get bored, especially the younger generation. like to go on vacation so they can run away from reality. They like to do drugs because they want to run from reality. They like to change relationships because they want to run away from reality. Everyone wants to run away from reality, and the reason why is because their version of reality is terrible. It's boring; the brain doesn't work because their brain depends on something material, something that's here, something they can touch, something they can see. When you learn Torah You will never be bored. Once you get into it, not day one. You have to get into it. Why? And the reason why is because the Torah leads you to constantly think about different things. How do I implement this? What does this mean? What did the rabbi say? What did he say? Just constantly moving parts. It's like the machine got turned on. It's been off for 25, 30 years. And all of a sudden, in the beginning, the cobwebs are off. After a while, it's not rusty anymore. Eventually, it's running constantly.

1:04:40Eventually, he gets to the point, he's like, wow, I can't wait for the next shiur. I can't wait for the next lecture. I can't wait for the next book. You start swallowing books because it gives you life. And that's why the Torah says that the Torah is sam chayim. It's the drug of life. So, a few things to do: whatever teshuva you're going to do, make sure you're serious. Don't spend your whole life playing with the sand. Be the guy that's waving to Hashem, saying, "Okay, God, I got You. You're over there. I see You. I'm not going to wait for You to come off the boat like You did with Yonah. I see You. Let me start doing something. Something." The next thing is, start with the foundation. Don't be one of these people who say, "No, no, I'm just going to give tzedakah, and that's going to make me righteous." It's not going to make you righteous if you give tzedakah. No one in the history of mankind has ever gone to Gan Eden purely because of tzedakah. If you don't keep Shabbat, you don't keep kosher, you don't keep modesty, you don't keep the foundational principles of faith, tzedakah is not going to help you. It's just going to buy you more time in this world. I gave a lot of it. It didn't help me; it only bought me more time.

1:05:52Be a decent human being. Learn Mussar. Mussar is character development. This will help you in all parts of life: business, relationships, Torah, connection with God, everything. Do as much as you can to learn about God. But get to a point where Torah becomes an important part of your everyday life—not like once a week, once on Shabbat, or once in a while when you have time. If you're going to breathe today, learn Torah today. If you're not going to breathe, don't learn. But if you're going to breathe, learn. Any day you plan on breathing, also learn. One woman asked, "What about covering your hair?" A married woman in Judaism has to cover her hair with a mitpachat, a scarf, or a hat. She says, "You know, a woman that's single doesn't have to cover her hair. What about a married woman? Is there any leniency? Any leniency that if she's married, she doesn't have to cover her hair?" He says, "Yes, there is one." All the women got excited. They were already ready to take off the kisui rosh. "There's one leniency. And what's the leniency? This is one of the giants of giants. Give us a leniency of kisui rosh. Because if she doesn't have a head, she doesn't have to cover her head."

1:07:16So certain things that we have to do. Certain things we have to do. So start with foundational stuff in Judaism. Learn Torah every day. If you had to pick what to do first, start with learning. And the reason why is because learning is going to get you to everything else, whereas doing without knowing why, eventually you're going to stop. Learn, learn as much as possible. Watch lectures, read books, only learn stuff you're interested in. That's also very important in the beginning. If you're not interested in it, put the book down, pick a different book. In the beginning, it's critical to learn only what you're interested in. If my lectures bore you, do not watch me. Please, do me a favor, don't watch my lectures if I'm boring you. I'm serious. Why? Because I could hurt your teshuvah. Only if I get your heart shaking a little bit and you're doing something about it, watch. If it doesn't, go somewhere else. Watch a different rabbi, different rebbetzin, whatever it is, do something else. Read a book. Don't watch someone just because, oh, no, I know him or I did nothing. It's all nonsense. Here, we're here to save our souls. Don't read a book because it's a famous book. Read it if you're interested.

1:08:39The only book you're obligated to read, whether you like it or not, is the Torah. But this can't be boring. Just read some commentary; you'll see it's the most amazing stories in the world. But there are different things. Ask for guidance. Stay in touch with the rabbis. You know, what book should I read? What mitzvah should I do? Always ask for guidance on what's going to happen. There's no such thing as a stupid question. There's no such thing. I used to think that some of the questions I asked were the silliest questions in the world. And I'll give you an example of one woman that we helped convert to Judaism. This woman had already been going through the conversion process for four years before she met us. Four years! When she sat with my wife to learn about Taharat HaMishpacha, she asked my wife, isn't it uncomfortable to go to the mikveh? And she said, no, it's actually a wonderful experience. You go to the mikveh once a month, and it's wonderful. She gets separated from everything. It's very spiritual, it's very holy, and so on and so forth. But the woman said, no, no, but isn't it uncomfortable that somebody's touching you?

1:09:54My wife looked at me and said, "What do you mean somebody's touching you?" She thought that the woman who monitors the beit din at the mikveh actually checks her and touches her. My wife told me, "Chas v'shalom, nobody touches you. This is the worst. Who told you this?" She goes, "No, I just thought. I never asked. I thought it was a stupid question. I thought it was a stupid question, so I never asked." She thought that someone actually does this thing. There's no such thing as a stupid question. Everything you want to ask, everything you've asked, everything you're going to ask is important. And to finish it off, to understand, one of the important rabbinical jobs that we have in Judaism is for a rabbi to check whether a woman is pure or not if there's a safek, if there's a doubt. And there's something called a bedika. And this is something that some people are like, "Oh, this is a strange job that somebody's going to have." Well, just so you know, without going into too many details, because there's not enough time, not because it's not important, one of the most important rabbis, if not the most important rabbi in history, also did it. And his name was David HaMelech. King David, from whom the Mashiach will descend, also had this job. To check the bedika for women to make sure if they're pure or not pure for their husbands.

1:11:21Point being here is that there's no such thing as a stupid question. There's no such thing as a question that's, say, not relevant. There's no such thing. You have to, the person that you pick as your rabbi, you have to feel comfortable with him, to ask him everything. This is probably the most important part of your teshuvah. And the reason why is because this rabbi is going to be the one that's going to navigate you. Where to go, how to do, what to do, when to do. Are you ready for this? Are you not ready for this? What you need to learn? What you don't need to learn? What's for a later time? What's for now? And so on. The more you do this, the better your teshuvah is going to be. And last but not least, take it seriously. Because eternity is on the line. Any questions? A few minutes? We didn't cover the whole Torah, so you have a few questions, but we have a little bit of time. I answered some of your questions, I think. Some of them. No? Nothing? Yeah. The hardest thing for me to accept is that the pain was for a purpose, that losing my health at such a young age...

1:12:41losing money didn't really matter to me as much as losing my health. But just having my whole life go upside down, getting to a point where I was literally in pain for 24 hours a day, surgeries and so on, getting to a point where I realized that it was actually all for my benefit. It was for my own good, and eventually, b'ezrat Hashem, only because of this Torah, I realized that it was actually the best thing that ever happened. The greatest thing that ever happened to me was going through that nightmare. Oh, yeah, so I mean, after I started learning, the pain continued. It actually got worse for a little while. But psychologically, once I realized that it has a purpose, a higher purpose, I started dealing with it better. Even though I still had just as much pain, I was able to tolerate it. And mental is the biggest battle. It's even more than the physical.

1:13:42Physical is a nightmare, don't get me wrong. I mean, you never quite get used to physical pain. But once you are looking at it in a positive perspective, life becomes tolerable. The pain becomes temporary. Everything just has a time and place, if you will. So that was the first stage. The second stage was that after my wife converted... we started getting some major miracles. And in so many words, the closer we got to Hashem, the more mitzvot we did, the healthier I got. And eventually it got to a point where, Baruch Hashem, I'm 99% healthy. I mean, once in a while I have something, but it's very, very minute. Obviously, I wouldn't even be able to walk or stand to give you guys a lecture today. Baruch Hashem, I'm flying everywhere and giving lectures and working 20-something hours a day. So, Baruch Hashem, I'm perfectly healthy. And that's not due to any medicine. It's not due to any doctors. Despite going to over 50 different doctors, we still to this day never got a diagnosis.

1:14:51Still to this day, no one knows what happened. No one knows what happened. People speculated with a million and a half different things. We tried a lot of things. We tried traditional medicine, different types of medicine. We even became part of an experiment, a science experiment where they started injecting me with ozone to purify my blood, which, according to what people told me chemotherapy feels like, this feels like it also. ...nightmare, and to me, it felt like death. But I became part of an experiment for several months, and it didn't help. Pretty much nothing helped—steroids, all types of medicine—nothing helped. The only thing that helped was Torah. The more I did it, the more things started just working. My body stopped hurting, and infections became more infrequent... Instead of getting something every month, it became every three months, then every five months, then every six months. Then it just became once in a blue moon. And even when it came, it was superficial. It would just go away with either a couple of antibiotics, or it would just pop on its own a few days later. Things changed. My body changed again. I'm not back to where I was, let's say, at 25 years old, but it's drastically better. Yeah. No? Yeah.

1:16:13Everyone, with the exception of my mom, who was very, very supportive of me becoming religious, was against it. And they weren't necessarily against it because they didn't like God or they were anti-religious. They were against it because they didn't think that was my problem. They didn't think that me being religious or not religious is going to change anything. I'm sick. How is religion going to change it? Because the vision or the visual perspective that people have of God when you're not connected to Him is very limited. It's human. People think that God is a man. Even though they don't say God is a man like the Christians do, they believe God is a man. And the reason why I say that is because they limit God. For some reason or another, God's always broke. People always think that God's broke. He doesn't have any money. He built the whole world. He spent all of His money creating the world twice because the generation of Noach destroyed it. And somehow, when it comes to parnasa, everyone wants to work on Shabbat because "I have to work on Shabbat. I have to make money." What, you don't believe that God's going to give you the money for not working on Shabbat? Oh, I don't know. Maybe I need to help Him.

1:17:39Like, oh, people have this warped vision where God needs help. So everyone believes that God needs help to heal them. So they need to go to doctors. They need to work extra hard. They need to go make their money back. They need to go do this. They need to go do that. And that was the flaw. That is the continuous flaw in the system. People don't have enough emunah in Hashem. People have no understanding that Hashem is everything and He is able to do anything He wants. If He wants you to be healed, you'll be healed. If He wants you to be sick, you'll be sick. All the doctors in the world could all stand in one room and say, "This guy is going to live one more minute." If Hashem decides, that person will live for another 120 years. Doctor's opinions mean nothing. Bank accounts mean nothing. If you watch some of my lectures, I share plenty of personal stories of personal miracles I've experienced, whether they be financial or health miracles. I see miracles every day. And you just can't make up these stories. You can make up one story, two stories, three stories. How many stories are you going to make up? I mean, you would have to become, I don't know, Harry Potter by this point. I see miracles every single day. And it's not just my miracles, but my students'

1:18:59My students see miracles every day. It's amazing. And the reason why is because once we decide, okay, the God of the Torah is the only God. And if He's God, He's God all the time. Not just sometimes. That means we're going all in. All in. Everything I know I'm doing. No sometimes, no maybe, no if, no buts. I'm all in. Whatever I can do, I'm doing. And that's, in my opinion, the only way to do it. Going 50-50, you're going to lose. Being half religious, you're going to lose. Eventually, you're going to break. People that are half religious, who want to dip into the secular world, you know, go to the ball game, go to the clubs, go have a couple of drinks once in a while, and be religious on the weekends, eventually it breaks. You have to pick a side. You have to pick a side. You can't do both. Especially in this generation. The generation of Mashiach is going to have more tests than all the generations put together. Eventually, you're going to have to make a choice. You can't be 50-50. It's either you want to be successful or you want to be a failure. There's no middle ground, nothing. All in or nothing. That's the most important thing that I think, as my rabbi taught me. It's either you're all in or nothing. Not necessarily saying you have to do all of it today.

1:20:24That's because you don't even know what to do to do all of it today. But you intend to learn everything and take on everything over time and do it. Don't play games with Hashem. He's not your friend. He's not your brother. He's not your buddy. He's Hakadosh Baruch Hu, the King of Kings. We get scared when we see a cop chasing us on the highway. It's just human beings. We get scared because the IRS is knocking on the door. Maybe they want to audit us. It's just humans. We get scared when some president passes a law that may affect our neighborhood. It's just a human being. But we're talking about the King of Kings. It's the One who is responsible for the cells in your body. He's not your friend. So if you don't play games with God, you're already on the right step. You start playing games. No, you know what? I'm going to keep Shabbat, but I'm going to stay not modest for a little longer. But you know it's wrong though, right? Yeah, but I'm not ready. But you know it's wrong. If you know it's wrong, you have to stop. Do whatever you can. Stay in the house. Don't play games with God. Because I played games. I didn't win. It doesn't work.

1:21:33doesn't work, and that's the thing. There are too many tests out there, especially for young people. Honestly, I don't envy anyone younger than me because I don't know if I would be able to do too well. When I was 20 years old, I tried. When I was 17 years old, I did teshuvah for a year and a half, and then I failed. The reason why is because I stopped learning. So I think the few things that you have to work on are: get yourself a rabbi Learn some Torah, take it seriously, and work on the foundation first. Every mitzvah you're going to do, learn about it. Don't just do stuff because it's nice. Don't become a chassid because it's cool to be a chassid. You know? Be at your own level, but be serious. And I think, b'ezrat Hashem, you'll have a lot of siyata d'Shmaya. B'ezrat Hashem, we have another lecture that's completely different. Right now, we're going to have it in Queens. It's about drug addiction—completely different. Completely different perspective about drugs and drug addiction. I think anyone that comes will enjoy it. But if you can't come, you can still watch it on Facebook and YouTube and all these other things. B'ezrat Hashem, I'll see you all soon.