The Secret Door To Happiness - MUSSAR Iggeret HaRAMBAN (13)

0:12You see how Torah Chachamim say something, that's what happens. That's the way it is. And that's it. There's nothing more valuable in the world than that, when you see the Torah come to life. Now, b'ezrat Hashem, today's shiur will be for refuah shlema, for David ben Esria, Doris bat Jorah, Levana bat Sarah, Elisha b'Chaya bat Sarah, Yocheved bat Batya, there we are,

1:12And all of Am Yisrael, b'ezrat Hashem, will have refuah shlema, refuat hanefesh, refuat haguf. So we have now our Iggeret HaRamban, the letter that the Ramban wrote to his son and really to us almost over 800 years ago. And as we've seen already in the last few months of studying this letter, we're really not even, we haven't even approached half the letter yet. And because of the Ramban's chochmah and the chochmah of Chazal, which is so extraordinary, whether it's in philosophy, medicine, character traits, or business. I mean, they literally had every chochmah. It's unbelievable. That's why the Gemara says that there are seven wisdoms in the world and all of those seven are found in the Torah. which is why I always tell people that don't ever get impressed by some clever speaker or clever writer, because you'll see that whatever he said that's so clever and so wise, you could find it in the Torah hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago. The Chachamim are so extraordinary that anyone who knows Torah is simply unimpressed.

2:32by anyone that you would see today, or yesterday, or the day before, as far as their wisdom, because they know, this is the Netziv, this is the Rambam, this is this, they can pinpoint you exactly where everything is. And it's truly amazing. Rav Wolbe, a lover of Shalom, was an extraordinary Baal Mussar, huge rabbi, really, Kodesh Kodeshim. He wrote that Freud and the heads of the movement in regards to when psychology really developed in the late 1800s and early 1900s—if they would have studied the work of Rabbi Yisrael Salanter—they would have simply never written anything. Because anything that had any validity in what they wrote, Rabbi Yisrael Salanter already wrote. And Like, there was no chiddush whatsoever. Other than his crazy obsession with the male member and the guy's obsession with his mother and all that stuff. The stuff that actually had validity and had wisdom in it, Rabbi Yisrael Salanter already wrote 100 years before him. Or 60 years before him. And before that, the Rambam wrote about it, and before that, the Gemara wrote about it. Meaning, there was no chiddush. There was nothing new. Nothing new.

3:56You see that this letter, if you study it carefully, doesn't matter how many times you study it. It's because he uses so many sources from the Torah, so many Pesukim. It's like studying the Nevi'im. It's like studying the Ketuvim. It's like studying any other part of the Torah. You can study it a hundred times and you still get something new. A small little secret is that I read this letter a few times already, and the funny thing is is that the stuff that we're learning, it's as new to me as it is to you. Meaning I'm learning it with you. I've read the letter already and I learned other stuff from it. But the stuff that we're learning, that we'll prepare for this shiur, is new. And I said this to my Rav, I said, you know what, we're learning the Iggeret HaRamban. I said, you know what, the last few times, I read the letter a few times, I said the last few times, it's not such a big letter, so I don't think it's such a big deal, it's a short letter. But I said the last few times I studied this letter, it wasn't so scary. And my Rav says, I studied this letter hundreds of times probably. Because you know what the truth is? The last time I studied it and all of those times that I studied it, it also wasn't so scary. Why? Because that's the chiddush right now. That's what HaKadosh Baruch Hu wants to put into your mind now.

5:15And that's why every time somebody learns a sefer, especially when you learn that it's a minhag to put a few verses on the cover of the Gemarot, a few pesukim. But one of the main things that I always found very interesting is that they mention the Mishlei, chapter two, verse number six, What is it? What are you supposed to say? Before you start learning Gemara, before you start learning your Torah for the day, in essence, what do the Chachamim say you should say? Remember this verse: "Unveil my eyes that I may perceive wonders." No, I'm sorry. This is a different one. "For Hashem grants wisdom; from His mouth comes knowledge and understanding." meaning what the Chachamim already instilled to try to give us a right place to put ourselves already, no matter how much you study, whether you're the brand new, you're going to study a quarter of a daf every three hours

6:32Or you're going to be Rav Kanievsky that studies seven dapim of Gemara Bavli and seven of Yerushalmi every single day. And he finishes both Shas, the Shulchan Aruch, the Zohar, at least a dozen Midrashim, and many, many other sefarim that I can't even name, let alone read. Every single year, he finishes all of it. Whether you're him, whether you're them, you still read this verse. Why? He says, no matter how much you study, never ever think that anything that you attain as far as the ideas that you get from it and the understandings that you get from it has anything to do with your own intellect. Any wisdom that you get from the Torah is literally a gift from HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Your only contribution is your effort. If HaKadosh Baruch Hu wants to make you a Chacham, He can do it just like that. If He wants to make you a fool, same thing.

7:32What's one of our sources? Yehoshua bin Nun. Yehoshua bin Nun. Many times you read Tehillim during Tefillot, and in one of the Tehillim it says that there's a k'sil, there's a fool that doesn't understand. And the fool will not understand. Who are they talking about? Who is this k'sil? Who is this fool that we talk about in Tehillim? Yehoshua bin Nun. Yehoshua bin Nun. was called a k'sil, was called a fool. Before he became the leader though. What's the difference? What happened? When he was the servant of Moshe Rabbeinu for 40 years, following him wherever he went, was at Har Sinai waiting for him, was not with the rest of the nation, was one of the 12 meraglim, went to spy on the land, as he was one of the twelve spies, and only two were righteous—him and Kalev. But throughout all this time, he wasn't a big chacham. He wasn't some wise person. So, when it comes to the Book of Deuteronomy, Sefer Devarim, Moshe Rabbeinu asked Hashem, "Who's gonna be the leader?" and

8:52after I go, maybe it's gonna be one of my sons. Hashem says no, I don't think like you. I'm gonna choose Yehoshua ben Nun. Now this was a, even though Moshe Rabbeinu, Moshe Rabbeinu knew that his sons, his sons were good, but Hashem's decision was Hashem's decision. Hashem chose Yehoshua ben Nun. But there was a little bit of an issue here. Why? Because Yehoshua ben Nun was a fool. He didn't know Torah. So why did Hashem pick him, first of all? And second of all, how do you pick him? Meaning, okay, so you picked him, but how do you pick the guy that's going to head Am Yisrael in Torah, and he has no Torah? Chazal explained that HaKadosh Baruch Hu chose Yehoshua Ben-Nun because Yehoshua Ben-Nun had kavod for the Torah. He would always be the one that would clean the shul. He would always be the one that would fix the chairs. He would always be the one that gave kavod for the Torah. Anywhere Moshe Rabbeinu came, he was there. If someone tried to go against Moshe Rabbeinu, he wanted to kill them. He defended the Torah. He defended the honor of the Torah. Not because of knowledge, but because he thought, "This is holy, you defend holy." A small shul with 50, 60 chairs is a small Beit HaMikdash. It has to be holy, it has to be clean, and so on and so forth.

10:08And when HaKadosh Baruch Hu saw that he was so humble, his humility was literally right next to Moshe Rabbeinu. Moshe Rabbeinu is the humblest of all men. Yehoshua Rabbeinu was after him. So he's so humble, and he has such kavod for the Torah, you are fit to be the leader of Am Yisrael. You are fit to be the leader of Am Yisrael. He says, yeah, but he's still a seer, he's a fool. He goes, oh, what, he needs knowledge? He has knowledge now. Now he became Gadol HaDor. In a second. Not even overnight. Overnight would be too long. In a split second, he became the Gadol HaDor. Knew more Torah than everybody else in the world. One second. Why? Because HaKadosh Baruch Hu is the one that gifts you the Torah. What do you do? You have to do the Mesirut Nefesh, the sacrifice. Studying in the middle of the night when you're tired. Studying when all your friends are going on a vacation. Studying when it looks like a lot more fun to do something else. Studying when there's money on the line, but you'd rather study than make money. Doing Mesirut Nefesh. That's why the Gemara in Masechet Berachot

11:17Rish Lakish says anyone that wants to have Torah, wants to be a Talmid Chacham, wants to have any merit whatsoever, has to be willing to die for the Torah. But not die theoretically, literally. Literally die for the Torah. Now Baruch Hashem, none of us have to die for the Torah, it's very easy, you can just go online, you put in a few digits for your credit card, and you have Torah right by your house. If you don't have any money, you come to any Beit Knesset, there's plenty of books that nobody's using anyway. Come, you study Torah, open your mouth and I will fill it. I'll fill it, Hashem says. So anyone that wants to study Torah, you can. The question is, how much mesirut nefesh, how much sacrifice, are you willing to make for the sake of the Torah? So no matter how much you've attained, in the Torah, you still have to always be reminded regularly, right before you learn, and again after you finish learning. It's a minhag. It's not halacha, but it's a minhag to constantly be reminded that no matter what you know and how you know it, it has nothing to do with you. The knowledge was simply gifted to you by HaKadosh Baruch Hu. What you contributed is your effort, your mesirut nefesh. That's what you contributed. This is also why sometimes wicked people

12:41Hate Baalei Teshuva. Hate them with a passion. Now, if you look at the Rambam, the Rambam writes in Hilchot Teshuva that a place where Baalei Teshuva stand, and he quotes the Gemara, the Masechet Berachot, and a few other places, a place where a Baal Teshuva stands, Tzaddikim Gemurim, people that have been righteous since their birth, from birth, can never get to. Meaning the Baal Teshuva gets to a higher level. than someone that's been frum from birth. So much so that the Ramchal in Mesilat Yesharim writes, you want to learn Torah, learn from a Baal Teshuva. What about the guy who's been a Haredi his whole life? What's wrong with him? No, there's nothing wrong with him. But you want to learn Torah, go learn from a Baal Teshuva. Why do you learn Torah from a Baal Teshuva? He says, because the one that's frum from birth, he had a certain amount of tests, and if you want to do Teshuva, some of the stuff he's going to teach you is not going to help you. Why? He doesn't know your side of the street. He knows his side of the street. He knows the frum life. He doesn't know what it's like to be with a bunch of criminals, with girls, with casinos, with all that stuff. He doesn't know what that stuff is.

13:50If he's really, if he's a real tzaddik, not some of these resha'im that have a beard, but in reality, they're bigger criminals than the criminals. Talk about real tzaddikim, real people. But the guy that's a Baal Teshuva, a real Baal Teshuva, you go learn from him. Why? Because he knows what the other side looks like, he knows all the desires of the other side, and he still chose HaKadosh Baruch Hu, which means he also knows how to overcome them. He knows how to overcome them, you go learn from him. That's the Ramchal. 300 years ago, he wrote this. it's considered one of the most critical books written in the last literally 500 years, not just the last 300. So much so that the Gaon of Vilna said that if he knew him, if he was alive at the same time, he would crawl on all fours just to go meet him. That's how holy the Ramchal was. So the Rambam writes that someone that's a Baal Teshuva... Kaddosh Baruch Hu loves him. He's on a high level, and there's even a machloket. What do you mean? How come the guy that's been righteous his whole life can't get to the same level? They say, well, it all depends on the level of teshuva. If the teshuva that the person did is from ahava, it's the highest level of teshuva, he's the best of the best. But if his teshuva is only because of yirah, then someone that's righteous from birth can get to a higher level.

15:13But either way, the point being is that a Baal Teshuva is considered very high. But then the Rambam continues in Hilchot Teshuva, and he says it's 100% a sin from the Torah to remind a Baal Teshuva that he's a Baal Teshuva. Like you're never allowed to remind a Baal Teshuva, "Hey, remember when you used to go to the casino?" Remember when you used to go out with non-Jewish girls? Remember when you used to be a thief? It is 100% a sin from the Torah to remind a Baal Teshuva of his past. Not from a Rabbi, from the Torah. Why? You could destroy him by reminding him of his past. But, unfortunately, a lot of Resha'im that call themselves rabbis hate Baalei Teshuva, especially if the Baal Teshuva knows his stuff. Why? Because they can't figure out, how does he know so much in such little time? I've been in the Kollel and Yeshiva for 15, 20, 30, 40 years, and this little rookie, five years into it, he already knows more than the entire Kollel. How does it happen? What happened? If he's a real Baal Teshuva, how does it happen? I'm saying that the Rosh Kollel is still working on the first half of the Shas. The Baal Teshuva finished it a few times. What happened? How did it go?

16:32They hate it. Why? Because Rabotai Yekarim, if a Baal Teshuva is really sincere, he's really good, he can get to very high levels. Also, a Tzaddik Gamur, of course, someone that's righteous their whole life, can easily become the Gadol HaDor, be a Kodesh Kodashim. This is not to Chas V'Shalom look down upon anyone that's been righteous their whole life. I wish I was. The point I'm trying to tell you is that sometimes the Sinat Chinam that everybody talked about a few days ago in every lecture... actually coming from a place you would never think. You would never think there would be Sinat Chinam between people. You would think Sinat Chinam is maybe because of tradition or maybe because of other reasons. You'd never think it's coming from that. Why? Because, unfortunately, Rabotai Yekarim, when it comes to the Torah, sometimes people are mistaken. they think that the knowledge that they have came from their own effort, meaning they're so smart, their IQ is so high; therefore, they know all this stuff. So when the new ba'al teshuva that's only 5, 6, 10, 15 years into it comes in, and he knows more than the Rosh Yeshiva and all of the students put together, it throws their whole argument into the garbage.

17:49like when you hear anyone, anyone that's ever heard, for example, somebody that knows how to learn, somebody like Rabbi Meir Eliyahu. Somebody like Rabbi Meir Eliyahu, I mean, he's a bachur in Baal Teshuva for many years already, but no one can dispute his encyclopedic knowledge of, across the Torah. Now, he didn't grow up religious or even close to religious, but you see him And you would think this guy for sure came from Mount Sinai. Forget about Baal Teshuva. For sure, him and Moshe Rabbeinu are probably first cousins. The amount of knowledge that he has, he spits it out like a computer. It's unbelievable. One of the Chachamim of the Dor. Anyone that's actually listened to a large amount of the series Series is not just the general lectures. The series is the Rabbi, for example, has had over the years. You see, this is enormous; it’s a huge body of knowledge. How did you get this? What did you, like, I don’t know, have some type of disc inserted into your head? How do you know all this stuff? And this makes the Satan hate the Baalei Teshuva. Why? Because they thought all this time that it was really because they're smart that they knew all this Torah. But now, this newfound...

19:11All of a sudden, he knows more than them, or at least as much as them, but he's not coming from the same background. So that's why the Chachamim always want us to remember, first and foremost, none of the knowledge that you have is because of your IQ. only because of who decided you have toiled enough and therefore you showed that you love My Torah. That's why I'm going to give you a present, and you're going to have some knowledge. You could have 500 people read the same book, but only one of them would understand. 500 people read the same exact book. Everybody understands English. Everybody understands Hebrew. Everybody has the first language, whatever it is. Everybody knows how to read. Everybody got the same education. They went to the same schools. Had the same teachers. 500 people read the same book. Only one person understands. Really understands. Other people, they understood. Yeah, it's like a story. Like a Harry Potter book for them. But this one guy understood the real secret in the secret. Why? HaKadosh Baruch Hu decided, "No, no. He toiled for it. They read it. They read it. They enjoyed it. It was fun for them. But he toiled for it. He sacrificed for it." So He gives him the knowledge.

20:24Or vice versa. You can give it to 499, and one guy doesn't understand it. One guy sits there alone like he's half-retarded. Everybody else understands, but he's the only one who doesn't know what's going on. Why? Everybody else tried really hard. You were lazy. You were lazy. You read it well, you know, like in between cigarette breaks. You were smoking a cigarette. That's the only time you learned Torah, when you were smoking cigarettes. You had nothing else to do. The game wasn't working. The friends were busy. You didn't have any work and you weren't tired anymore because you just got up after a 12-hour session of sleeping. You had nothing else to do. You had five minutes to burn. So you decided to learn Torah. So you are not going to understand anything. And 499 other people, they will. Why? Because they toiled. The point is, Rabotai, that Chachamim remind us time and time again and use sources from the Tanakh, from David HaMelech, from Shlomo HaMelech... And so on and so forth. To remind us that any Torah that you get is simply a gift from HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Your responsibility is to work hard for it. Come to the lecture in rain. Come to the lecture when it's far away from your house. Take the lecture seriously. Write notes. Watch it again. And so on and so forth. Read the book. Write notes. Have a few notebooks handy. And so on and so forth. Why? Take it seriously. Because then you'll actually have your brain rewired.

21:54But if a person treats the Torah like he treats any other subject, not only will he not understand very much, but he won't even enjoy it either. It will be bitter to him. So it's very, very important to be reminded of this. But sometimes we forget. So the Chachamim put it in the beginning of our books, and that's why they also say you have to learn Mussar every day. And that's why they also say that you have to choose your teacher wisely. Why? If the guy teaches in yeshiva, that's a wise choice, no? If the guy has a kollel, it's a wise choice, no? If the guy is head of the Beit Din, it's a wise choice automatically, by default. If his beard reaches the floor, for sure it's wise, right? Well, the Gemara in Moed Katan says, if you're going to learn Torah from somebody, he has to behave an angel, he has to have character traits of an angel, meaning he has to sacrifice himself. He doesn't have to be a perfect human being; everybody has flaws, but he has to be one of these people that's constantly trying to get better, constantly trying to emulate the angels, constantly trying to serve with mesirut nefesh. If he's like that, the Gemara says learn from him. But if he doesn't act like an angel...

23:18Not only shouldn't you learn from him, it's forbidden to learn from him. If he acts like one of these avaryanim, these criminals, in the street, he speaks street language. He speaks, you're forbidden from learning from him. Forbidden from learning from him. If he curses Hashem, you don't have to talk to him. Even hearing a curse, you should know, the Torah says, even hearing a curse is a sin. It's not just speaking one. Like if you know somebody who speaks like a truck driver, Don't waste your time talking to him. Why? When you hear the curse, it affects your neshama. It hurts your neshama. Your neshama is pure. It's holy. It's a piece of HaKadosh Baruch Hu, if you will. It doesn't want to be subjected to this filthy language. So the Gemara says, if he has good behavior, he's good, learn from him. If not, you're not allowed to learn from him. Not allowed to learn from him. What about if he knows a lot of Torah though? What about if he finished the entire Shas and Shulchan Aruch and the Baal HaTurim and this and that, and he can quote a few things off the top of his head, or maybe he can't but pretends like he does. What about all that? We had much bigger people than him. That, not only do you not have to learn Torah from them, but the Torah specifically talks about them and says these are the biggest resha'im. One of the examples is Yerovam.

24:45Another example is these people I mentioned. They knew more Torah. If you brought them to this generation, they knew more Torah than the entire generation combined. Combined. I'm not talking about more than this rabbi or more than that rabbi. Forget about that. Combine everybody's knowledge together, put it in a little box, take one of them, split their knowledge in half, it's still more. But the Gemara in Sanhedrin says they have no share in the World to Come. Why? Their Torah did not affect their behavior. The Torah did not affect their behavior. So we see that HaKadosh Baruch Hu is very, very critical of people's behavior. So much so that one of the talmidim of the Gaon of Vilna asked him, "I don't understand." If having good behavior and good ethics is so critical in the Torah, how come it's not one of the 613 laws? Why isn't there a mitzvah: learn mussar? Why isn't there a mitzvah: be nice to people? Why isn't there a mitzvah: be ethical? There's no clear commandment that says that. If it's so important, so much so that HaKadosh Baruch Hu literally destroyed the Beit HaMikdash because of it.

26:11The story I told you guys on Sunday. Unethical behavior. HaKadosh Baruch Hu destroyed the Beit HaMikdash because of unethical behavior. If it's so critical that HaKadosh Baruch Hu literally almost destroyed the entire world because of it, at the very least you would think, listen, 613, add another one, 614. Nice even number. The Gra (Vilna Gaon) literally learned Torah 20 hours per day, 20 hours per day, his whole life. He says there's no need for there to be a commandment in the Torah to change your behavior because if you understand and you learn the Torah, the whole point of all of the mitzvot is to simply to change your behavior. Which means that if you're fulfilling the mitzvot, you've learned the mitzvot, and it doesn't affect your behavior, then you have turned the Torah into something else. You've turned it into some philosophy, into some other wisdom, intellectual pursuit of some kind. You like the intellectual stimulation of the difficult debate between the Chachamim.

27:27But you're not applying it to your life. It's not affecting your neshama. And that type of Torah, the Gra says, that's the Torah of Doeg HaEdomi. Doeg HaEdomi knew 300 halachot about the most difficult things in the Torah. Nobody else knew even close. But the Gemara says he has no share in the World to Come. Because his flawed behavior led him to make some very big sins, which led him to lose his share in the World to Come. Now, So we see here that behavior and ethics are a critical ingredient for our teshuva, so much so that without them, you are simply just wasting your life. The Gaon of Vilna says if a person does not fix their character traits during their life, they've lived a purposeless life. There's no point to their life. Now, this is, in essence, what the Ramban... Trying to tell us here over and over again with every single verse. But after scaring us to death for the last few months, telling us about all different types of things that we need to know about how much we have to fear Hashem, how much we have to fear, again, fear the punishment, constantly fear, fear, fear, he goes into the next direction and he says...

28:53Once you've possessed this character trait of humility, and you've possessed Yirat Shamayim, fear of HaKadosh Baruch Hu, you've worked on it. You're no longer losing your mind, angry because you're afraid of Hashem. You're no longer angry because you're humble. You're no longer this. Now he says, ובמידות האלה תהיה שמח בחלקך. Once you've acquired these fine qualities, you will indeed be happy with your lot. You've acquired humility, you've acquired Yirat Shamayim (fear of HaKadosh Baruch Hu), now you're going to be happy. I think there's a market between this generation and you. A bunch of people are going to say, "No, no, no, give me a hundred million dollars, I'll be happy." Some people are going to say, "Give me a new wife every week, I'll be happy." Another guy's going to tell you, "Give me this plane, I'll be happy." Another guy says, "Give me this car, I'll be happy." Another kid, six, seven, eight, nine years old, is going to tell you, "Give me this toy, I'll be happy." A lot of other people are going to tell you different reasons why they're going to be happy, but they don't know anything, and the Ramban knows Torah. The Ramban says, "No, it has nothing to do with any of that stuff. It has nothing to do with the wife, it has nothing to do with the kids, it has nothing to do with the job, it has nothing to do with money, it has nothing to do with a toy, or a car, or whatever it is."

30:13It only has to do with acquiring these two traits, these two things. You acquire them, you will now be happy. Show me one self-help guru in the world today that's telling you this. They're all going to tell you, no, no, read "The Secret," you'll be happy. Think good and you'll be good. A lot of people think good and then they die from cancer. Nothing changed. A lot of people think, oh no, this deal is going to work out. And they realize, not only did it not work out, they just declared bankruptcy because of what happened. Listen, if you work hard, you'll succeed. I can show you a bunch of people that work really, really hard and they still barely pay the bills. But there's always some moron that somehow made millions and millions of dollars without working hard. Yeah, HaKadosh Baruch Hu decided to give him some idea, some clever idea, and he decided to make the world like this idea. Voila! Recently, I heard Rabbi Yaakov Mizrahi say it's an issue. I found this very interesting example. It's a perfect example. Just think about what happened the last few years. Some average Joe decided to make a

31:36some ridiculous toy that you put in between your fingers and you spin it like a moron for hours. Even the rats stopped playing with toys like this. The rats, you know, they go into the thing, they stop running after a while. But people, doot-doot-doot, you see people on the buses, on the train, doot-doot-doot. I have no idea. The rats are looking at it. Maybe I should put you guys in a cage and I can go to work. Doot-doot-doot, they're playing with it. Now the guy that invented this thing, multi-millionaire now. Why? Because people are so stupid. But Hakadosh Baruch Hu wanted it to be. Now we can say, no, he worked really hard. What hard? What hard? This is just as good of an invention as just taking a piece of stick and throwing it against the wall and it sticks to the wall. There's no difference. Hashem decided this is going to be good and that's not going to be good.

32:36So hard work doesn't necessarily mean success. And that's our failure. We fail to realize this constantly. If we want to acquire happiness, the Rambam is telling us, and we're going to go over some interesting sources from the Torah, that it begins with us acquiring these two character traits of humility and something that really most of us have a hard time understanding why it's even such a big deal, but also removing our anger. Now, the Mishnah in Avot says a few things. In chapter 4, the first Mishnah, there's a question: Eizehu ashir? Who's rich? Who's rich? If you look at the Gemara, Masechet Tamid, page 31b, it says that there were ten questions that Alexander the Great asked the Chachamim. In Hebrew, they call him Alexander Mokdon. But it's Alexander the Great in English. And he met the Chachamim, and he asked them ten big questions. One of the questions is,

34:03Who's rich? How do you define rich? Alexander the Great was very, very smart. His teacher, by the way, was Aristotle. And interestingly enough, there's a letter that's not so popular, but you'll find in a Midrash Me'am Lo'ez, a letter that Aristotle wrote to his dear student, his favorite student, his best student, Alexander the Great. Before He left the world, meaning during his last few years, Aristotle wrote a letter, and you can find this online. You can find this in the Midrash Me'am Lo'ez, where Aristotle writes a letter to Alexander the Great, saying to him, "Don't learn my books anymore. All of my books and everything that I taught should be burned. Anyone that learns my work..." punished. Why? Because he discovered the truth. What's the truth? He says it's called Torah. Aristotle now—the little mini-Aristotles of today don't know this. Why? Because they have a target. They have a target to stay that way. They have a target to justify their sins, so they don't want to find out what Aristotle actually did say. Same thing with a lot of people, for example, that say they're Darwinians and...

35:32They follow Darwin. But in reality, if you look at Darwinians of today and what Darwin actually said, there's nothing similar about them. But you actually see that Aristotle wrote, "Alexander the Great said, 'No, I discovered the Torah, burned my books. I hope that no one ever reads my books. Anyone that's going to read them is going to get punished for it because I discovered the Torah. The Torah is real and so on and so forth.'" Very interesting. This was shocking to me when I first heard it. So this Alexander the Great was very, very smart. And he asked the Chachamim, what is the definition of someone that's rich? Now, if you ask it today to the average person, you have a survey on Facebook or on the internet, somewhere you say, what's the definition of rich? You're going to have 99% of the time people give a dollar amount. Some are going to say 10 million. Some are going to say, ah, 10 million is not rich. Ah, he's doing okay. 100 million minimum. Others are going to say, ah, 100 million dollars. Yeah, that's maybe in your neighborhood. Over here, a billion dollars, then you're rich. No, come on, you can still lose a billion dollars. Look at the guy from Germany. He lost nine. You want to be rich, you got to have 30. No, but come on, look at Eike Batista. Eike Batista from Brazil lost 35 billion dollars in one year. 35 billion, he had 35 billion dollars. He actually publicly announced that...

36:49Bill Gates had something to worry about. Why? Because within the next couple of months, he was going to be the richest person in the world. Fifteen months later, he was broke. They were taking cars. The government was taking cars from his house. I mean, he still had a lot more than anybody else here in hundreds of millions, but the point is he literally lost 99% of his wealth. So he saw that with 30 billion dollars, you can still lose. So maybe 50, maybe 70, maybe a hundred. Maybe this, maybe that. So as Rav Hameem says, it has nothing to do with money and Rav Hamnuna says, "Who is rich? Someone that's happy with his lot, someone who's happy with whatever he has." Meaning that it doesn't depend on something material. Now, this will contradict pretty much Western society's lifestyle and mindset because most people you ask them, "What do you want to do when you grow up?" Usually, it's, "I want to be rich." I want to be rich. I want to do business. I want to do this. I met some young guy yesterday, 24 years old. And we were talking, and I said to him, "Oh, you're young. You probably want to do this. You want to do this." He goes, "Yeah, how do you know?" I'm like, "Every 24-year-old wants this. You want to buy your parents a house. You want to have a business. You want to make a bunch of money. You want to go on vacation, see the world." He's like, "How did you know?" I'm like, "Yeah, I used to be 24 also. Every 24-year-old wants the same thing."

38:19Now, the Ramban here is systematically outlining the process of achieving the state of being content, meaning simply being happy with whatever you have. First, he says that this is what you should aspire to: to get to a state of being content, simply being happy with whatever you have. Where do we have a source from the Torah that says that being content is the ideal? Maybe I should be excited, maybe I should be, you know, dancing around and jumping for joy, and so on. No, I mean, so there's a...

39:22book by Rabbi Avraham Ashkenazi, I think it's called Maasei Hashem, and he says on Parashat Chayei Sarah there's a verse that says that HaKadosh Baruch Hu blessed Avraham Avinu Bakol. He blessed Avraham Avinu with everything. So there's a few commentaries, a few secrets about what does it mean Bakol. One of the commentaries says that actually Bakol means that he blessed him with a daughter named Bakol. Then there's the literal commentary, the literal translation says, yeah, he blessed him with everything. What does everything actually mean? So Rabbi Avraham Ashkenazi says, he blessed him with a state of being content. Whatever Avraham Avinu had, he was perfectly happy with. And from there we learn that the ultimate blessing of all blessings is to be content with whatever you have. You have a lot, you’re happy with it. You have a little, you’re happy with it. You have a car, you’re happy with it. You have two cars, you’re happy with it. You have a wife, you’re happy with it. You don’t have a wife, you’re happy with that too. Whatever HaKadosh Baruch Hu gives you, you’re happy with it. That’s the ultimate blessing. The insight to understand that this is it. If you’re going to continue to talk, please leave because only one of us is allowed to talk here.

40:49It's not school. You don't have to be here. So the Ramban writes, if you want to reach this level of contentment, the first step is to remove your anger from your heart. Stop getting angry about everything not going your way. Every day, each one of us gets upset about certain things not going our way. We turn on the phone, and it's not turning on fast enough. We want to get to an appointment, and there's traffic on the way. We said something to somebody, and he wasn't really paying attention. He's like, "What? What did you say? I just spoke for five minutes. You didn't hear me? Oh no, I was busy with my phone." Yeah, but it's a lecture. Are you coming to play with your phone in a lecture, or are you coming to hear the lecture? If you're coming to play with the phone at the lecture, go outside and play with the phone for free. But if you come to a lecture, come to the lecture. So it's very upsetting. Why? You just spoke for five minutes; the guy didn't understand one thing. Who are you speaking to? Yourself? The truth is, yes. First, you are speaking to yourself. But nonetheless, it's still upsetting when somebody you talk to is not paying attention. Imagine your wife is crying her heart out to you.

42:13And after she finishes crying 15 minutes later, she asks you a question finally. So what do you think, honey? Uh, yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. I agree with you 100%. What do you mean you agree with me? Wait, what, agree with what? What are you talking about? You weren't listening this whole time? Most likely she'll divorce me. At the very least, I'm sleeping on the couch for two weeks. Why? She's talking to you. She wants you to hear. You want to stay happy? You have to hear, you have to listen. But things don't always go our way. You do a deal, and the guy reneges at the last minute. One time, I had a guy call me, and he said, "Listen, I want to do a trade." And usually, it's the opposite. You call the clients, and you try to convince them to invest more money with you. But this happened, one of those things where HaKadosh Baruch Hu wanted to send me a nice, special test. I'm in the office, and the guy calls me. This guy, Stubbs, and he's like, "What do you recommend?" I said, "This investment." "Okay, no problem." "Okay, hi, so what do you want to invest?" He said, "I want to invest, I don't know, a few hundred thousand dollars, whatever it was." I said, "Okay, fine. Should I buy it now, or should I wait for you to send the money?" "No, no, no, go buy it, no problem."

43:40Buy it, and I'll send you the money. You have five days to pay it. So what does that mean? I have to front the money. Now, this was common business practice. If you want somebody to invest with you, it was common that you would buy the stock. They just had five days to pay for the trade. But if something goes wrong, and they don't pay, you have to pay. Now, you can't keep it. You have to sell it. That means that whatever happens after five days, if there is a loss, you have to eat the loss. Now, this was dangerous, but it was normal. So that's why usually, when you would start off business with somebody, you would usually start off with a small trade—something you wouldn't do with such a big thing. But since this guy called me, I figured, okay, he's calling me. You know, fine. He wants, and he has an account with me already. Not that much money, but whatever, he has an account. No problem, do it. So I said, "Okay, no problem. I'll front the money. I buy the stock, and a week comes, a week passes—no check. So my assistant calls. 'Oh no, no, I sent it in the mail.' You sent it in the mail? For sure? Sent it in the mail? 'No problem, okay. We'll get you an extension.' Another week. Legally, you'd get another extension, but after that, finished. Okay, another week comes..."

45:03Now the week passes. No check. Come on. You're the one that called me. So now here's the problem. I can't hold the stock. I have to sell it. The only problem is the market collapsed in the last couple of weeks and the investment is down something like $37,000. Now it's not a lot of money in comparison to how much money was invested, but still, it's $37,000. Now, if he doesn't pay, I have to pay. So we're calling this guy, and all of a sudden, he's missing in action. For months. For months. Finally, I call him, I get him, yeah, yeah, no, something happened. Okay, you're going to send the money? He never ended up sending the money. Long story short, Rabotai, this is something that's very, very annoying. Happens. It's part of business. Sometimes you think, "Oh wow, great. I just made a trade. I just made a bunch of money. I just made a commission. I just made a deal. This guy even called me. This was a gift from Heaven." Next thing you know, you see it's a punishment from Heaven. Instead of you making money, you ended up losing money. It was better off if he never called; at least you wouldn't have lost the money. But that's how it goes. Hashem works. He wants to see what you're gonna do, so things like that are very, very...

46:19common among everybody's life. It happens every day in our life. It happens in everybody's life. Each one of us has our own test, and the Ramban writes that if you want to achieve a state of being content with life and being happy with your share, first and foremost, you have to remove this anger. Now, how can you not be angry when some guy just called you and, in essence, forced you to lose money? He didn't have to lose money and It's not like you convinced him to do something he didn't want to do, and then he decided, you know what, I don't want to do it, so therefore I'm not going to do it. He wanted to do it. You're saying, fine. You're confirming. Listen, you want me to fund you the money? No problem. You've asked 500 times, and he still, how could you not get angry? Now, in those days, I didn’t know anything. Not that I know that much now, but I know a little bit more today. In those days, I got very angry. Why? I just lost $40,000. But the Ramban says it's a mistake. It's a mistake to get angry. Why? If you've actually attained the Yirat Shamayim that you were supposed to, that means you would have known that this came from Heaven. This came from Hashem. This loss came from Hashem. It didn't come from the guy. The guy was just used as a little soldier to create the loss. It could have been any other way.

47:43Hashem wanted you to lose money. He chose him. Why? Because that guy wanted to do something bad. He wanted to do something bad. He wanted to do something evil. Hashem says, oh, you want to do something evil? He deserves something bad. Okay, let's make a match. Shidduch. So if you've attained the Yirat Shamayim we've talked about over the last couple of months, you would have never ever been angry about it. Needless to say, you've been humble and realized that everything and anything that happens in the world is from Hashem and that He's overseeing everything and nothing is a happenstance. Nothing is a coincidence. Nothing is luck. To say, "Oh, if I would have done this, this would have happened. If I would have done that, that would have happened. If I would have gone early, it wouldn't have happened. If I would have sold early, if I would have sold late, if this, if that," that's, by the way, the Yetzer Hara. It's 100% heresy to say, "If I would have done this, then such-and-such would have happened." That's actually clear. It's not, it's forbidden at all to say, "If I would have done something, what happened is exactly what was supposed to happen." Could you have done things differently? Yes, but you didn't and...

49:01Therefore, analyzing what could have been the circumstances—that you think that you would have made more money had you gone early or had you gone there late, or had you called him or had you called her—all of those calculations that people have in their heads actually lead them away from Hashem, not closer to Hashem. Because, in essence, what they're saying is that they believe that the power is in their hands, the power to profit is in their hands, and... which is kefirah because HaKadosh Baruch Hu already decided how much parnassah you're going to make at the beginning of the year So whether you would have called this customer or not, whether you would have been in this business or not, whether you would have started a different business or not, all of those things are simply irrelevant. HaKadosh Baruch Hu simply decided you're going to get X amount of money with or without this job. You're going to get X amount of money with or without this tool, with or without this news. You're going to make, you're going to lose, whatever it is, Hashem already decided what it is. And that's why the Baalei Mussar,

50:09say that hishtadlut, effort, is an obligation that all of us have. But it doesn't change the circumstance. It doesn't help. You're obligated to try to do something about something, but it's not actually going to change anything. Like, you're obligated to go to work, but even if you didn't go to work, and you learned Torah all day, you still would have made exactly the same amount of money. Meaning that the guy that you see that's a billionaire, Multi-billionaire, he runs Amazon, let's say. The guy was worth 100 billion dollars before his divorce. 100 billion dollars, right? Now, even if Jeff Bezos decided that instead of selling books on the internet in the 1990s, which eventually culminated and became what it is today, Amazon, he would still be worth 100 billion dollars. Even if he would have decided to go sit in a kollel and learn Torah all day, today he would still have 100 billion dollars.

51:09How? It's not our business. Now, this is not an idea. This is Torah. This is what the Torah says. The problem is that we don't really have such a high level of emunah to actually apply what I just said to our lives. Why? Because people still go to work. Even if they believe in the Torah, there's nothing wrong with going to work. Go, we'll make you work. That's your hishtadlut. So how much hishtadlut should you have? You should have the amount of effort based on how much emunah you have. If you have a high level of emunah, you have 100% emunah, the parnasah will come from shamayim, you should be learning Torah 100% of the time. So much so that you shouldn't even make a phone call to ask for help. Nothing. If you have 100% emunah. If you don't have, if you have, let's say, 70% emunah, then you work 30% and you learn 70%. But if you're closer to the norm... It's more like 30% emunah and 70% lack of emunah. That means you have to work more. Why? Because you don't really believe it's going to work. So, how do you know how much emunah you have? When do you start getting worried? Everybody can say, "No, no, I believe. I believe, Rabbi. I believe in Hashem 100%. Hashem and me..."

52:32I believe in Hashem 100%. No, everything. I know everything. I don't even want any money. Rabbi, I just want to eat. I just want to drink. My wife, kids, everybody's good. I don't care about money, Rabbi. No problem. Oh yeah, no problem? Okay, no problem. A week later, Rabbi, listen, can I borrow 500 bucks? What? You're supposed to give me tzedakah. What borrow 500 dollars? What are you talking about? I thought you believed in Hashem. No, yeah, yeah, I believe, I believe, it's just that the belief didn't come through yet. So can I borrow some money until the belief comes through? No, if you believe 100%, you don't ask. Why? You're supposed to wait for it to show up at your door. Now, of course, to attain such a high level of emunah takes a lot of Torah, a lot of toil, an enormous amount of tests. It's not something you acquire in a 7-Eleven. It takes a lot of tests, a lot of hardship. But the point is, Rabotai, that it's easier said than done. Meaning that it's easy to say, I believe, I believe, but when push comes to shove, we realize how little we really believe. But either way, whether you believe a lot or you believe a little, you should always know that regardless of what you do, the parnassah is coming to you from Hashem. Just like the knowledge of the Torah is coming from Hashem, the parnassah is also coming from Hashem. Everything comes from Hashem. Now, so the Ramban continues and he says to us that first, if you remove this anger, you won't...

53:56get agitated so quickly. But even more so, conquering the anger is not going to solve the problem of you being an arrogant person. Because sometimes you see that, you know, a guy is trying to do good. He's trying to do good, and he is trying to share some Torah, he gives a little bit of tzedakah, and, you know, he worked on himself. He's not losing his mind. He used to fist fight in the streets, he used to, you know, do a lot of bad things, and he's controlling himself. But you still can't stand him. Why? Because every time he does something, he reports it to the whole world. "Oh yeah, you know what I did today? I learned five pages of the Gemara today." Okay, chazak u'baruch. "You know what else I did today? I gave tzedakah." Okay, great, chazak u'baruch. "You know, I also prayed three times today." Okay, chazak u'baruch. "Oh, you know, my wife, she..." Okay, buddy, fine. What, my report card? What do you want from my life? Why do you tell me everything about your life? Sometimes you see people doing mitzvot not because of the mitzvah itself, but because they want to look like they're righteous. So they blast their name and their efforts and their mitzvot everywhere. They want to make sure everybody knows they're the one that donated the money to build this Beit Knesset. So they have a Beit Knesset, but the name is right on the front door. If it's not going to be on the front door, Rabbi, I'm not donating.

55:20There's plenty of other cases where people won't put their name on the front door. If it's not going to be on the front door, no problem. Just make sure that there's a little plaque under the chandelier that says that it was donated. A loony schmuck, my cousin's aunt's dog's sister's cousin put it there. Over there, loony schmuck, the chandelier, forevermore. Forevermore, I want everybody to know that the chandelier came from this cousin's aunt's dog's cousin. Why? Where did you do it? For what? The plaque costs more than a chandelier sometimes. Because he doesn't care about the mitzvah. He cares about the notoriety of looking righteous. So that's why the Rambam says it's not just about working on anger. It's also working on our pride. Because as long as we're proud, we're simply never ever going to be happy. A proud person is constantly looking For respect. He's constantly looking for acknowledgment. She's constantly looking for attention. Did you see what I did? Yeah, yeah. No, but did you see what I did? What did I do? What did I do? Yeah, I saw what you did. You just gave this woman some tzedakah. Oh, you saw it, right? You see how much I gave her? No, I didn't see. I gave her $150. Okay, chazak u'baruch. Fine, okay, great. Good for you. Did you see what else I did? I told her thank you. I told her thank you. That's what I said.

56:46I told her, thank you. You almost want to tell the lady, hey, do me a favor. Go tell somebody else the story. Leave me alone with your boasting. A proud person is detested by everyone, the Gemara says, including his or her family. Why? Even the good things they do, it's disgusting. They tell everybody about it all day. You see what I did? You see what I did? You see what I did? You see what I did? Now, there is a time that it's good to publicize that you're doing something. If you're viewed as some type of leader, some type of influencer, and by you doing it, you influence other people to do it, then it's good to publicize it. Meaning, if you're, let's say, for example, considered the rich person in the neighborhood, and everybody knows you are not only rich, but you're wise, you're a businessman, and so on and so forth. They know that you're not going to touch something unless you've researched it. You have a whole team of people, you double-check, you're a clever person, you're not one of those fools that just donates and pays attention to nothing. You know what you're doing. You check, you double-check, you triple-check, you meet the people, and so on and so forth. then it's good to publicize it. Meaning, if you're, let's say, for example, considered the rich person in the neighborhood, and everybody knows you are not only rich, but you're wise, you're a businessman, and so on and so forth, they know that you're not going to touch something unless you've researched it. You have a whole team of people, you double-check, you're a clever person, you're not one of those fools that just donates and pays attention to nothing. You know what you're doing. You check, you double-check, you triple-check, you meet the people, and so on and so forth.

57:58Now, you're deciding, oh, this organization, ah, I'm going to donate $10,000 to them. Now, you can do it secretly. There's no problem with that. It's a big mitzvah. But for you, it actually would be a bigger mitzvah to tell the others, guys, I just donated $10,000 to B'ezrat Hashem. Why? Well, first of all, I like how Yaron Reuven speaks. First of all, because it does really good things, all the good things. And that's going to influence them to also donate. And the mitzvot that you will inherit from their donations are much more significant than the mitzvah that you're going to get from being anonymous. But if you're just an average Joe and no one's going to do anything because of you, then stay quiet. It's better to be anonymous. Even the recipient shouldn't even know who you are. That's how anonymous you should be. That's actually the highest level of tzedakah, that you shouldn't know who you're giving to, and the recipient shouldn't know who you are. That's the highest level of tzedakah. But anyway, if a person is proud, he's never going to do that. Because he wants everybody to know what they're doing. This happens sometimes unintentionally, but intentionally. Where our yetzer hara works on us, and we're not even knowing that he's the one that's driving. Or sometimes, you did something, or you said something, and it was good, it was a mitzvah or something, and you want to ask somebody. Or somebody tells you,

59:27Good job. Chazak u'Baruch. And you pretend like you don't know what they're talking about. Wow, wow, good job. And why? What did I do? What? What did I do? No, no, good job. I saw what you did. No, no. You know what you did. You just gave the guy money. Everybody knows what you just did. There's not like three things you did. No, no. What did I do? What? What? What did I say? What? What did I say? No, you said that chiddush. You know, you said that good thing. What? What chiddush? What? What chiddush? You want him to repeat it to you. Why? You like to hear yourself talk. What did I say? What did I say? Oh, oh, oh, you like that? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I worked three hours on that. Oh, yeah. You like it? Oh, thanks. Thanks. I'm glad you like it. Which part did you like exactly? Which part? Which part did you like exactly? Tell me about myself. Tell me about myself. Tell me. Which part? What, when I gave him the money you like, or when I said, thank you? Which one did you like? That's arrogance. In Shamayim, they say, disgusting. Why? Don't even do it. That's why we do mitzvot for recognition. So, if we analyze every single one of our actions carefully, we'll see that by improving these small little things, not only are we becoming better quality people, but it actually becomes more fulfilling. We become happier. Now,

1:00:55The problem with our logic, our Yetzer Hara, is that we're constantly trying to give ourselves the credit for our own actions. And what ends up happening is that when you think that you're the one that's doing it, you're thinking that you're the one that's making the money, you think that you're the one that's in control of your own success. The Chachamim explain here that a person like that going to live his life feeling like he's been cheated, feeling like he's been had, feeling like he never got enough. Why? Because no one ever thinks that the world is viewing them the way they should. Everybody thinks of themselves as better than what they really are. Everybody thinks they're smarter than what they really are. Everybody thinks that they're nicer than what they really are. Everybody thinks that they're more good than they really are. That's just a reality. Everything's better than, so unless they have a lot of Torah and... unless they're humble. But the average person thinks much more highly of themselves than they really are. So if that person is proud, they're never going to receive the amount of respect they think they deserve. Yeah, he said chazak u'baruch, but he didn't really look at me. That's not respect, to look at me like that.

1:02:08Or like the other day, some person sent me a message, and she asked me a question. Now, if your question requires an explanation, I'll give you an explanation. But if it's a yes or no, I'll say yes or no. So she asked a question, and I said no, meaning the answer is no. She replied, "So disrespectful I thought maybe it was wrong, like maybe she made mistakes, she sent me the message instead of somebody else. So I wrote back, 'I'm not really sure what kind of response you were expecting. You asked a yes or no question, I said yes or I said no.'" So disrespectful. I thought maybe it was wrong, like maybe she made a mistake and sent me the message instead of somebody else. So, I wrote back, "I'm not really sure what kind of response you were expecting. You asked a yes or no question, and I said yes or I said no." She responds, "Anything but something as disrespectful as this." I'll show you this after the shiur. I'm telling you, I'm still baffled by this. I have no idea what happened. But apparently, she's really upset at me for saying no. There were only two choices. I said no; it's disrespectful. Some people, she watches the shiur, she'll be happy about it.

1:03:22But anyway, the funny thing is that some people are feigning for so much kavod, so much pride, so much recognition, that they're bound to be disrespected constantly. They're bound to be just living this life. They're always going to think that no one looked at them the right way or treated them the right way, and it's never enough. And it's like one of these really poor, miserable people collecting change all day. please, more kavod, more kavod, please, more honor, more respect, like a homeless person. Please, please, more. That's a proud person. They're never gonna get enough, and they're always gonna beg for more. And the Ramban says that if you want to attain happiness, you have to literally scrutinize every single one of your words before you say them and test it like they test gold to see if there's any pride coming out. If you test it, you'll see that more times than not, we're a lot more proud than what we think we are. Now, what ends up happening to such a person, like I said, is a person that's constantly going to feel like people are not giving him enough. But even more than that, someone that has a lack of emunah that HaKadosh Baruch Hu is running his life and is the only one that's responsible for the outcome of everything is going to lead to a very bitter life.

1:04:52Person that simply thinks that they're in control of things. What ends up happening is they'll see that things don't turn out like they expected more times than not. Most of the time you have a plan; everybody has plans. Today, I plan to wake up at 8 o'clock in the morning, and next thing you know, he wakes up at 9:30. It happens, it happens to the best of us. Not tomorrow. I'm going to learn five pages. He doesn't learn anything, and Next week, I'm going to close this deal with this customer finally. The customer not only didn't close the deal with him, he closed the account. Not only did he close the account, he didn't want to do business with you at all. Next week, I'm going to finally go on a shidduch. Not only is there no shidduch, the shadchan said, "Listen, do me a favor and don't call me anymore. I don't know, everybody keeps saying that they're not really sure you're human. I don't know, don't call me anymore. Please, do me a favor." Next week I'm going to do this, it doesn't work out. Plenty of times it happens. Stop, we plan. And Hashem says, this is not My plan. So because the vast majority of our plans will simply fall on their face, if you think that the outcome is in your hands, then that's going to lead you to have a very, very bitter life. Because you're constantly failing. Your plan constantly fails.

1:06:13Even the success that you have is momentary. Why? Okay, so you work, you work, you work, you work; 18 plans failed. Finally, the 19th one worked. What happened with the 19th one, right, and But now you have more plans. You continue. You're not staying in the 19th like this: "Okay, I finished my life. Please, Hashem, take me. I'm finished." No. What? You have more plans. The next day, you want to wake up at 6 o'clock. And the next day, you want to learn this and that. And the next day, you want to do this. And the next day, you want to do that. And you want to go on a diet. And you want to exercise. And you want to do all these wonderful, grandiose things. So that means that, okay, the pleasure that you had from that plan is gone because you're now focusing on the next plan. And that fails. And the next one fails. And the next one fails. And it may take another ten times of failure until you reach success again. Which means that if you think that the outcome of all of your actions is literally in your hands and not HaKadosh Baruch Hu deciding, then the vast majority of your life is simply going to be bitter. Because the vast majority of everybody's life is a failure. But if you think

1:07:24that the only one who's responsible for outcomes is HaKadosh Baruch Hu, and all I have to do is show up. All I have to do is exert effort. That's it. I gotta wake up. I gotta pray. I gotta cry to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. I gotta try to learn, do some mitzvot. I make a living. I gotta do my best. Every day, you're as happy as can possibly be. Why? You lost money? i didn't lose money. Hashem took the money. You made money? I didn't make the money. Hashem gave me the money. Meaning, Hashem gave the money. It's not me. I didn't do anything. I just showed up. I woke up because HaKadosh Baruch Hu gave me the neshamah. I went to work because HaKadosh Baruch Hu gave me the strength to walk. Hashem gave me a car. Hashem gave me this. I went to the job. I sat there in a cubicle and waited for a phone call. At some point at 2:30, somebody called me. I decided to answer the phone because Hashem gave me strength in my hand and He gave me hearing. And I said yes when the customer said yes. And he said yes, yes, yes. Oh, we did a deal. I made $3,000.

1:08:26I didn't make anything. Why? HaKadosh Baruch Hu did all of it. Meaning that the success and the failure literally have the same reaction. Why? It's not my problem whether I succeed or fail. That's not up to me. Which means that your life is fulfilled at all times because you simply know, I tried my best. When you get upset, when you know you didn't try your best. When you know that you should have woken up at eight and you did wake up at eight, but you wanted to get another 45 minutes. You wanted to be, you know, with the teddy bear, another 45 minutes. Noomy, noomy. Wanted to go cuddle with the little bed. Yeah, no, come on, give me another half hour. No, honey, come on, no, come on. It's so comfy in this bed. It's so cold in the house. You missed Kriyat Shema, it's 10:30, buddy, get up. What do you think this is? You got to this shiur, but you fell asleep. You get home, you finish the shiur, two-hour shiur. Oh, rabbi, oh, you finished already? Wow, that was a quick shiur. That wasn't, that was actually two and a half hours. You were just sleeping the whole time. Now, okay, so now you're going home.

1:09:49like i already went to the place, i already sat there for two hours. i didn't learn a single thing. why? i fell asleep. you know how many times that happened to me? when i first started doing teshuvah, i used to go to shiurim. about five minutes in, i'd fall asleep. five minutes into the shiur, i'd fall asleep. it was a nightmare. why? because i already went, i got out of my work, i rescheduled my schedule just to go to the shiur. finally, i get there. it's at 9:30, 10 o'clock at night. by the time the rabbi showed up, it was almost 11. I'm wired because I'm usually up late anyway, so I'm excited. The rabbi starts talking, and literally five minutes into it, I'm out like I'm in a coma and nothing is waking me up. An hour and a half later, everybody's getting up. There's noise now. Oh, what happened? Oh, it's over. That was quick. I see that an hour and a half passed. You know how depressing that is? Why? Because I was already here. Meaning, if I only came for five minutes and I left, okay, fine, no problem, I got five minutes. But I was already here for two hours and I didn't learn anything. That's depressing. Meaning, because I know here it's my fault. It's not Hashem's fault. I failed. I failed. I didn't try hard enough to stay awake. I didn't try hard enough to get up early. I didn't try hard enough to do whatever I was supposed to do. I didn't try. I failed.

1:11:11So that's the difference. If you're trying your best, you'll always be happy as long as you know that it's Hashem that's responsible for the outcome. But if you think it's you that's responsible for the outcome, whether you try hard or you don't, you're still going to be miserable. If you try hard and it doesn't work out, you're miserable as can be. Why? I worked so hard. Okay, you worked so hard. So what happened? We went bankrupt. Okay, so Try again. What do you mean I can't do it? Why not? Because I spent all my energy. Okay, but you have to do something. No, I can't do it. Why? Because you're miserable now. You tried so hard and you failed, and you think that you're responsible for the failure. If you think you're responsible for the outcome, you'll always be bitter about it. That's one of the things that emunah gives a person. But at the same token, what a person can lose by not having it...

1:12:12Now, the Chafetz Chaim asks a question. He says, wait a minute. How could somebody be happy with a bad lot? Bad circumstance. This is a very, very common question. I get it at least three or four times a day. They don't actually ask me this question, but in essence, that's what the question is. People tell me about their problems every day. People are lonely, people are broke, people are having all types of problems, marriage problems, financial problems, and so on and so forth. And they say, how can I be happy if Hashem didn't give me a wife, Hashem didn't give me a husband, Hashem didn't give me money, Hashem didn't give me this, Hashem didn't give me that? How can I be happy with such terrible circumstances? And that's actually the question that the Chafetz Chaim asks in Al HaTorah Parashat Va'etchanan. Chapter 6, verse number 3. And the Chafetz Chaim gives an analogy. He says, there are two types of cutters that are available. One is a cutter for diamonds. To cut diamonds, you need very special tools. And this tool is extremely expensive.

1:13:38But it can cut a diamond, which is, in essence, the hardest material we have on earth. But if the guy who cuts wood wants to cut wood, he should use a regular saw. You can buy it from Home Depot for $5, and you're finished. But what if he wants to use the $3,000, $4,000, $5,000, $6,000 diamond cutter? It's not going to be good. Not only is it not going to cut the wood, but it'll destroy the $6,000 cutter. Why? It's not the right one. It's not the right saw. It's not the right tool. That's the part we don't understand. The Chafetz Chaim is saying that you're thinking that you're supposed to be something else. You're supposed to be rich when you're not. You're supposed to be married when you're not. You're supposed to have this amount of kids when you don't. You're supposed to be in this town when you're not. We're constantly thinking that we're supposed to be somewhere else because we're thinking that we would be better off if we had a different circumstance and...

1:14:52But what the Chafetz Chaim is trying to teach us, he says, no, you have to understand, you are simply a servant of HaKadosh Baruch Hu. And HaKadosh Baruch Hu created you with certain types of tools. He gave you a heart that can deal with this amount of pressure, which means that when you have a certain amount of problems, Hashem gave you the heart to deal with those problems. You have the right tools to deal with your problems. You don't have the right tools to deal with his problems. If you were given his problems, even though it looks easier—he only has money problems—you may have health problems. So you're thinking, ah, this guy's a big complainer. Why? He's just complaining about money. Guess what? If you were given his test, you'd fail miserably. yeah, but how? My test is much more difficult. I'm sick all the time. Yes, but that's because you are given a heart that can deal with this. You're given a tool that can deal with this health problem. You may not have been given the heart to deal with this money problem. So, the first thing we have to know is that the circumstances that we have...

1:15:58Whatever they are, whether it's loneliness, a financial crisis, health issues, or whatever it is, never ever say, "Oh, I can't believe Hashem did this to me." "Oh, I don't know if I can pass this test." "Oh, this is too hard." All of those thoughts are simply the wrong decision and actually kefirah in Hashem. Why? Because, in essence, what we're saying is that Hashem made a mistake with me. And what the Chafetz Chaim is trying to say is, no, if you have this problem, that means you also possess the tools to overcome this problem. If you think otherwise, it's a mistake. The second thing is what Rabbeinu Bachya said. Rabbeinu Bachya said something extremely interesting. How is it that this happiness is connected to humility and Yirat Shamayim? He says, first and foremost, if a person is humble, that means that they would have had to have Yirat Shamayim first. Because the Pasuk says in Mishlei, Ekev anavah Yirat Hashem, the healed.

1:17:28Humility is fear of Hashem, meaning if a person fears Hashem, they will eventually become humble. So if a person has Yirat Shamayim, he's naturally going to become humble. He's going to know where he stands. Now, one of the greatest things about humility is that you know where you stand and therefore you're happy with whatever you have and Naturally, you'll become happy with your share. And Rabbeinu Bechaye says that's what's going to make you rich. It's not that you're necessarily going to suddenly inherit billions of dollars; it's that whatever you have will be sufficient. You'll be content with it, and that's the definition of being rich. It's not a certain amount of money; it's just being happy with whatever you have. so if you have your mind set, you're going to eventually become humble. If you're humble, you'll be happy with whatever you have. If you're happy with whatever you have, you're rich. And if you're rich, you'll live much longer—not just in terms of years, but actually in this life, psychologically. The reason why is because when it's the opposite

1:18:55it's the opposite. When a person is not humble, when a person is constantly looking for more, then they'll never be happy with whatever they have. As the Midrash says, someone that has a hundred wants two hundred; someone that has two hundred wants four hundred; someone that has four hundred wants eight hundred. Meaning that the more a person has, the more they feel like they're missing. Meaning that the richest guy is also the poorest guy, in his mind. He has the most. He has a billion dollars, but in his mind, he should have two billion. Whereas us, we have 50 bucks. So what do we want? We want another 50 dollars. We want 100. So who's really, psychologically, poor? He feels like he's lacking much more. Now, in his mind, he's never going to have enough because there's no such thing as a person dying with even half of what they wanted. Meaning he not only currently feels like he should have double what he actually has, but he'll continuously go down in level to the point where even after he dies, he's going to get to a point that even that half of what he wanted is no longer going to be enough either.

1:20:23Unless the person humbles himself, the damage will continue. Now, when a person is prideful about things, he ends up wanting more and more than what he actually has, which literally makes his entire life just one sad story. And He's sad about everything. But what is he sad about? This is the chiddush. If you actually think about it, it's pure genius. We would have never arrived at this thought, but after you hear it, you're going to say, "Yeah, of course we would have arrived at it." What's the genius here? Think about this. Someone that's proud. Someone that wants more than what they have. Why? Because they feel entitled. He feels like whatever he has is not enough. Why? Because he thinks he's better than what he really is. Right? He is driving a little Toyota.

1:21:27But he's like, nah, come on, Toyota for somebody like me? Minimum Mercedes. Minimum. Once he has a Mercedes, he goes, yeah, Mercedes was yesterday. Ferrari, maybe. Once he has a Ferrari, he wants a plane. He wants this. It's never enough. Why? Because he's proud, because he thinks of himself much, much more. Which means he's always going to be lacking. It's never going to be enough. He's always going to think that he should have more. He needs to get more. It'll never be enough, which will make his life one long, sad story. But what is he sad about? When it comes down to it, Rabbeinu Bachya says he's sad about a life that does not belong to him. He's sad about something else. He's sad about all the stuff that doesn't belong to him. He's sad about his friend having that car and not him having the car. But it's not your car. Why are you sad about his car? He's sad that his friend got married to her, and he didn't get married to her. He's sad that he has this house, and he doesn't have this house. He's constantly sad and agitated and miserable and depressed about a bunch of stuff that's not his. It's one big optical illusion. And that's why...

1:22:42I always tell people the lowest form of conversation, meaning a clear indication that someone doesn't have anything in their mind, is when your topic of conversation is other people's money. People that talk about sports stars and celebrities making an X amount of money, and he made this deal, and he just signed a contract for 20 million dollars, and he just signed this deal for two dollars. Talking about other people's money is literally the lowest form of conversation. It simply shows that there may not even be a mouse in there. Why? Why do you care what he has? Is he going to pay your bills? Like if this baseball player hits an extra five home runs and makes an extra zillion dollars, whatever he's going to make, how's that going to affect you? Why do you care? Oh yeah, but he signed a deal with the Mets. So? Yeah, but he should have been with the Yankees. Why? Because he would have made more money. What do you care how much money he has? What are you, his accountant? Are you a hedge fund manager managing his stuff? Like, why? For what? What do you care? But this, Rabotai, is literally the topic of discussion for the entire generation.

1:23:57I remember on Wall Street, non-stop, you go downstairs for a cigarette break or for lunch, everybody's talking about other people's money. "Oh, you see him? He's just in this trade. Yeah, he made a million dollars. Yeah, he made $200. Yeah, but it's not as much as that guy. It's not as much as this guy. Oh, that baseball player. That rapper. That celebrity. That movie star." Constantly, constantly talking about other people's money. Constantly. Young kids, teenagers, they don't know anything in the Torah or anything about life, but they know the salary cap of every single team in the NFL. They know exactly how much every single basketball player that plays for their team made last year, including signing bonus, including contracts with Coca-Cola and Adidas and Nike, and how much he made on the side with some investments, and how much he gambles, and whether he's getting a divorce or not, and whether he has a prenup. They know the bank accounts of every single celebrity. But how to add, they don't really know so much. They know exactly how much every single basketball player that plays for their team made last year, including signing bonuses, including contracts with Coca-Cola, Adidas, and Nike, and how much he made on the side with some investments, and how much he gambles, and whether he's getting a divorce or not, and whether he has a prenup. They know the bank accounts of every single celebrity. But how to add, they don't really know so much. how to wake up early in the morning, go pray, or even do something useful, not so much. But salary caps, other people's money, how much this movie made, how much this movie cost, they know. This is literally a disaster, an epidemic that's causing people to become more and more depressed without a cure in sight. Because they don't think that they're sick.

1:25:23The average person doesn't think there's anything wrong with talking about other people's money. Why not? Unless you learn what Rabbeinu Bechaye says, you're never gonna arrive at this conclusion. Why? What's wrong with talking about other people's money? They do it on the news all the time. What's wrong with it is that when you talk about other people's money, you're picturing not what he has, not what she has, but what you don't have. You're not happy for him that he just bought a plane. You're thinking, "Ah, he bought a plane; hopefully, he crashes. Oh, no, I mean, hopefully, it's good, yeah, yeah. Oh, he bought a nice car; yeah, hopefully, he has a flat tire. Every curse under the sun." You're not happy for him. "Oh, he just got married; yeah, yeah, probably get divorced soon. What? What? No, no, mazal tov, mazal tov, mazal tov." You're not happy for them. Under your breath, you're cursing them; you hate them. Why? Because you don't have it. But what you don't have, you're not happy for him that he just bought a plane. You're thinking, "Ah, he bought a plane; hopefully, he crashes. Oh, no, I mean, hopefully it's good, yeah, yeah." Oh, he bought a nice car, "Yeah, hopefully he has a flat tire. Every curse under the sun." You're not happy for him. "Oh, he just got married; yeah, yeah, probably get divorced soon. What? What? No, no, mazal tov, mazal tov, mazal tov." You're not happy for them. Under your breath, you're cursing them; you hate them. Why? Because you don't have it.

1:26:25Because you don't have it. That's why the Gemara says something that, if you, the first time I learned it, I didn't get it. The second time I learned it, I didn't get it. The third time I learned it, I didn't get it. You know when I got it? Right now. The Gemara says, everybody knows what the chatan and kallah are going to do after the wedding. But anyone that thinks about it... Anyone that talks about it, discusses it with each other, or even thinks about it himself—it's better off if he didn't come to the world. Think of it: "Oh, relax. Oh, nice. Okay, we know what's gonna happen." So what's so bad? It's better off the guy was never born. I mean, that bad? Yes, that bad. Why? Because that simply means that you are living an illusion. You're constantly going to be upset at other people's happiness.

1:27:26Because you're going to look at their life and be jealous. Because you think that it all belongs to you. So, such a life, it was better off not to be born. Such a life is a miserable existence. That's why, Rabotai, when we see the Chachamim tell us that you need to have certain tools in order to survive this life, it's not really a suggestion. it's more like a survival guide. You see people left and right taking drugs, all types of mental drugs to numb their pain, to numb their depression, to get them out of reality. In reality, you don't need any of this stuff. All you need is to follow the instructions of the Chachamim. But that requires toil. Now, to finalize,

1:28:27How do we get now that we know that no matter what, no matter what we do technically, the actual outcome of whatever happens in the world is not our problem? It's not up to us. Hashem decides whether we succeed. Hashem decides whether we fail. We simply decide whether we're going to try or not. We decide whether to show up or not. That's what we decide. We decide whether we're going to open the Gemara and learn it. We decide whether we're going to open the Siddur and pray. We decide whether we're going to follow the Halacha or not follow the Halacha. Everything is from Heaven except the fear of Heaven. Meaning the outcome of everything is from Heaven. But whether you follow what Heaven dictated for you or not, that's in your hands. So now that we know that no matter what we do, we're going to make a certain amount of money. We're going to find somebody that we're going to find. We're going to marry who we're going to marry. We're going to have kids. All that stuff is going to happen regardless. So does that mean we should just not try at all? Just sit there and just wait for stuff to happen? No. You're still obligated to try. But how much should you try? What should you really try? It's a fantastic question that the Ramban

1:29:46The same Ramban asks at the beginning of the book of Exodus during the time when there's a conversation between HaKadosh Baruch Hu and Moshe Rabbeinu in Sefer Shemot, chapter 4, verse 14. Moshe Rabbeinu had a discussion with Hashem. Hashem tells him, "Go and be the great..." Be the Mashiach for my people. Take them out of Egypt. And Moshe Rabbeinu says, no, no, Hashem, I'm not a good speaker. I'm a stammerer. I have a stutter. I wasn't a good speaker. I'm not a good speaker today, and I wasn't yesterday. The Arizal, by the way, as a side note, says what do you mean he wasn't today or not yesterday? Obviously, Hashem knows if he's not today, he's not yesterday. What's today? Because this is a little secret, a Torah secret, that says that Moshe Rabbeinu is, in essence, saying to us that in his previous Gilgul, in his previous incarnation, he also wasn't a good speaker either. When was that? When he was Noach. Moshe Rabbeinu was Noach. And before that, he was Hevel. Why wasn't he a good speaker as Noach?

1:31:02He had the ability to speak, but he didn't speak to the people to rebuke them to do teshuvah. He spoke too late, after the Mabul already. After the Mabul happened, Hashem destroyed the world. Eventually, after a year, Noach left the ark and started crying because he saw that the world was destroyed. Hashem says, "You are a drunk shepherd." Why a drunk shepherd? If you would have cried before I destroyed the world, I wouldn't have destroyed it. If you would have cried for the people, for the potential destruction before it happened, I would have actually done something about it. I wouldn't have done it. Why? Because there's at least one person that cares enough to cry about the generation. Hopefully, now there's enough merit that you can actually get them to do teshuvah. But you cried too late. So now, that's where Noach failed. Even though he was the most righteous in his generation, That was his failure, if you will. So Moshe Rabbeinu says, I wasn't a good speaker in the previous generation, I'm not a good speaker literally now, even though I have the desire and I understand what my job is to do, but I don't have the physical ability to do it. Not only a stammer, but also a stutter. One he was born with, one was an accident that happened when he was tested when he was three years old in the house of Paroh. He was an infant.

1:32:32Bilaam saw that he was going to be a leader and he wanted to kill him, but he couldn't since he was the son of Batya. She really adopted him, so he told Pharaoh, "Listen, I think he wants to be king. He wants to be king because he's just a baby. Let's test him." Let's see if this baby's a smart baby or he's a regular baby. How? On one side, we'll put gold and your crown, shiny. On the other side, we'll put coal. Coal is also, you know, coal. So Moshe Rabbeinu really was a smart baby. And he was planning on going to the gold. In the last second, Hashem sent a malach ...who moved his hand immediately to the coal, the burning coal. And as soon as his hand touched it, the reflex, what happens as soon as you touch something that's burning? You pull back. Now when it's burning, what's the first thing that you do? Not just pull back, you put it in your mouth. So a little piece of coal was on his finger, on his little baby finger, which burned his tongue. So from that moment on, that's where the stutter came from. So from the pull back, he didn't put the...

1:33:57No, he put a little piece of coal in his own mouth. He had a little piece of coal in his own mouth, and it burned. No, he's a baby. No, not intentional. But that saved his life, though. That saved his life. So now, Moshe Rabbeinu says to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, 80 years later, "Hashem, I'm not a good speaker. Not yesterday, not today." Hashem says, don't worry, I'll be with you, Aaron will be with you, he'll be this for you, he'll speak for you, and so on and so forth. Right? All of us have probably wondered this, but none of us have the courage to ask. The same question that the Ramban is asking here. Instead of Hashem saying, I'm glorious, is anything above me? That's what Hashem responds to him first. Before He tells him, Aaron is going to help you, Hashem says, what? Is there anything above Me? Is there anything that's beyond Me? I can do anything I want. I'm God. And anyway, Aaron is going to help you. He'll speak for you. There was like a debate for a week. Moshe Rabbeinu, Chas V'Shalom, did not want to be the leader. It was a debate between him and Hashem for a week. He didn't want to do it. And Hashem

1:35:04tells him, I can do it, I can help you with this, that. So the Ramban asks the question, why didn't He just heal him? Why does—I mean, He's telling him, what? Everything is, I can do anything I want, I'm God. I control everything. Don't worry. No one's this, no one's that. He gives him all the excuses. Go into those verses. You see, Hashem is giving him a résumé of how glorious He is. The Ramban asked a simple question: Just heal the guy. Fix his tongue. Nothing is above You. Nothing is beyond You. You healed the entire nation of Israel, millions of people, at Mount Sinai. People with missing legs, missing arms, missing eyes, completely paraplegic— all of them became healthy like 18-year-olds. Everyone became complete because the Shekhinah cannot come to a place of incompletion. So, everybody got healed.

1:36:06So obviously, this is not beyond Hashem. So why don't You just heal him? The answer, Rabotai, is the key to not only hishtadlut but also to happiness. The Ramban answers this question. The reason why HaKadosh Baruch Hu didn't do what seems to us from an outside perspective as the easiest thing in the world to do, the easiest solution. Forget having a debate for a week. Forget telling him to go to Aharon and he's going to speak for you. Forget all this. Just save the time. People are suffering, for heaven's sake. Just heal the guy. Why didn't You heal the guy? Why didn't You heal Moshe Rabbeinu? Because Moshe Rabbeinu never prayed for him. He never asked. He never asked, "Hashem, can you please heal me?" And HaKadosh Baruch Hu gets nachat when we pray to Him. Now, only a parent will understand this next part. If you're not a parent, you're not going to understand this. You'll understand it logically, but you're not going to understand what I'm about to say emotionally. I didn't understand this when I wasn't a parent. But if you're a parent, you'll understand this.

1:37:29Unless you're a big brother and you have a lot of younger kids in your family, what does it mean that HaKadosh Baruch Hu gets nachat? Gets joy, if you will. He doesn't have feelings, but that's the description here to give us something that makes sense in our mind. Out of us praying. Why don't we just do it? He knows we need it. He knows we need the speech. Why don't we just fix it? If you just decide to go on Amazon and just buy every toy under the sun for your kids. Okay, so they'll be happy for a few minutes. Oh, thank you, Abba. Thank you, Ima. If they're appreciative, good kids, they'll say thank you, thank you, thank you. And a few moments later, it's gone. A day later, two days later, but it eventually evaporates. The older the kid, the more mind they have, the more of a relationship you have with the kids. The kid starts communicating. Now, if you buy your child a present and he says thank you, it's fantastic. But if your little 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, or 8-year-old comes to you and says, "Abba, can I have a little candy with sprinkles on it?"

1:38:51and a wrapper too, and with a stick that has a smiley face on it from that store. And he has this whole description. He knows exactly what he wants. He thought about it. He analyzed it. He dreams about it. And then you say, "Sure, son." go buy him that, and you see the smile on his face. It's a much, much greater level of joy to give him what he wants after he asked for it, rather than just giving it to him because he needs it. A parent loves to hear their kid ask for something, especially when they know they can give it to them. HaKadosh Baruch Hu desires our prayers, especially when we're praying for something specific. Don't pray for everything in the world. "Hashem, I want this, this, this." Give Hashem a whole shopping list. Don't give it. Hashem is not a deli. "HaKadosh Baruch Hu, please, I need this, this, this."

1:40:04He wants it; He wants you to pray to Him because that will give Him joy and that will develop the relationship between Him and you much more than Him simply giving it to you. Why? Technically, everything we have, He gives us anyway. Are we appreciative? Well, we forget to say thank you for someone even opening the door for us sometimes, and... Sometimes you wake up in the morning and forget to say, "I thank you" to Hashem for even giving your neshama. Oh, did I say "Modeh Ani"? Ah, wow. You idiot. You just died for the last five hours, and you got your neshama back and you forgot to say thank you? You don't remember if you said thank you to Hashem? You just died for five, six, seven, eight hours. You were dead. You weren't alive. No, no, I was sleeping. Yeah, okay, you're dead. If somebody came next to you with a knife, would you do anything? No, you're sleeping. Somebody with a gun, would you do something? No, nothing. What? You're dead. And magically, the neshama went back to life. Went back in the body, and now you're here. And you forgot whether you said thank you to Hashem for resurrecting the dead. You forgot to say whether you said Modeh Ani or not. Yeah, what a grateful person you are. Surely it's worth it to give you more stuff.

1:41:27Oh, did I say Asher Yatzar? I just went to the bathroom. Wait. You went to the bathroom. The food you ate. You ate steak. You ate shish kebab. You ate ice cream. You ate an apple. You ate Bamba and Bisli. You ate some cookies over here that looked delicious. You ate all that stuff. All the good stuff turned to blood. The bad stuff is leaving your body in a natural way without you doing anything about it. You don't have to press any buttons. You don't have to take any pills. You just simply operate. You enjoy. Not only that, you enjoy the process. enjoy coming in; you actually enjoy coming out. If you're not sick, it's painless. It works automatically. The good stuff stayed in; the bad stuff left. It all worked naturally and beautifully, and you don't remember if you said thank you for that. You're a living blender and you forgot. There's no batteries, there's no electric... You don't know if you said thank you for all the stuff that just happens. This was a piece of steak; now it's blood that's giving you life and energy and vision and hearing and seeing and everything else. And you think that's just supposed to be the way? You might as well be an atheist.

1:42:45You forgot to say thank you. You don't know if you should thank. It's not that you forgot. You're not even sure you said it. Meaning you could have said thank you, but you had such little meaning for the thank you, you might as well not say it. It's definitely not worth it to give you more stuff. If I was God, for sure, I'd double your inui (suffering). Wait, did I just eat this apple? Did I say a bracha? You start with Asher Yatzar. You ate something. I'm not sure if I did a blessing. Oh, can I do the short version of Birkat Hamazon? Why? Why the short version? What are you, a pregnant woman with six kids running in the house? You're an average guy. You have a three-hour lunch. You don't have three minutes to say Birkat Hamazon? 18-course meal. Can I do the short version of Birkat Hamazon? Three hours he's eating with the guys, but Birkat Hamazon is always short. Did we say Birkat Hamazon? Did we say it? So not only do you not know if you said it, if you did say it, you know by default it had such little meaning that you might as well not have even said it. Because you don't remember it. It was such an unmemorable thank you. And yet we complain to Hashem for not giving us what we want. That's the secret.

1:44:01When you ask HaKadosh Baruch Hu for something specific, and He gives it to you, it'll be impossible for you to forget. He's giving you everything anyway, but as we just saw, we're unappreciative. We don't really say thank you like we're supposed to nine out of ten times. And if you're a tzaddik, five out of ten times, it's still not good enough. Meaning, we don't thank Him for even 10% of the things that He's doing for us. Little do we even know of the things that He's doing for us. And even when we say thank you, sometimes we forget if we said thank you. Such a memorable thank you. But now, HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, look, when I just give you things, it doesn't really connect us that much, or as it should. Hence the reason why sometimes I don't give you things. Because if I don't give it to you, you'll notice that it's missing. You'll notice that there's no money in the bank. And then you'll start crying, "Abba, please, money." "Oh, okay, money? Here, son. Here you go." "Oh, that's what you want, son? Here's money." "Oh, you start dancing in the street. What happened, buddy?" "I just got a hundred bucks." "That's it? That's what you're dancing for?" "No, but I asked for it."

1:45:24You're celebrating more than the guy that won the lotto. He goes, no, you don't understand, man. I was just thinking about it. I was praying to Hashem. And the hundred dollars came in right in time. The check was going to bounce. It's not the amount. It's that I asked for it and Hashem gave it to me. Hashem says, that's the prayer I wanted. That's why you got it. This, Rabotai HaYekarim, is not only what Hashem desires, but what your neshama is desiring. Your neshama needs to ask for things that are specific. HaKadosh Baruch Hu wants our prayers. That's supposed to be our effort. That's supposed to be our effort. That's supposed to be our hishtadlut. That's supposed to be the key to all of the things that are going to make this entire equation work. Because if we work on Yirat Shamayim, understand that Who is above us. He's the One that's responsible for everything. Then we know that everything is from Him anyway, and that's gonna humble us to accept everything that we're getting anyway. So what about when there are certain things that are missing? What should we do? Pray. Pray a lot. That's what I want. He wants you to pray. He wants you to pray for things that are specific. Now, I

1:46:49when I say specific, don't be one of these people who says, "No, I want to marry her." Don't do that. It's a very big mistake to pray to marry specific people. And the reason why is because maybe Hashem knows—no, not maybe—Hashem knows who is good for you and who is not good for you. And He's not going to allow this bad thing to happen to you unless you pray for it. Meaning, if you pray to marry such and such, even if she's bad for you, or he's bad for you, He may allow it to happen because of your prayer. And you'll end up suffering because of it. That's self-inflicted suffering. And that actually happened in the Gemara. Rava saw one of the people in the Beit Midrash praying and crying. He said to him, "What's wrong? Everything okay?" He goes, "No, I want to marry this woman." He goes, "No, no, it's a mistake. Don't pray to marry this woman." He goes, "Why? I want her." Don't pray. Pray for Hashem to give you somebody. Don't pray for her. He didn't listen. Some time passed. Rava came back to that same Beit Midrash and he saw the same guy crying. He says, "Why are you crying? Still looking for a wife?" He goes, "No, no, Rabbi, you don't understand." He goes, "No, what happened?" "I should have listened to you." "Why?" "I prayed for her and I got married to her." "Okay, so what's wrong with that?" He goes, "Well, now I'm praying for Hashem to take her away from me. She's torturing me."

1:48:15She's killing me, Rabbi. She's the worst wife in the world. From there we learn, don't pray for specific people. Pray for Hashem to bring you salvation. But the Chachamim say that the ultimate prayer, the best prayer, the ultimate blessing that a person can bring upon himself is to have contentment, to be happy, to have enlightenment, to be happy with whatever they have. Whatever I have, HaKadosh Baruch Hu, give me the insight that this is the best thing for me. Whatever it is. Sick, show me HaKadosh Baruch Hu how I can serve You under my limited physical condition. Poor, show me HaKadosh Baruch Hu how I can serve You with my limited financial condition. Lots of other problems, show me HaKadosh Baruch Hu how I can serve You the best with these problems that You gave me. Show me how to be happy with these problems. When we pray for HaKadosh Baruch Hu to give us contentment, Rabbi Avraham Ashkenazi says that's the ultimate blessing in life. That's what Avraham Avinu got. That's what Avraham Avinu got. Now, the last thing that I can tell you in regards to prayer is that when the Chatam Sofer says that when you ask for a specific prayer,

1:49:46You want to be really specific, so much so that the Chatam Sofer says that the special treatment and divine intervention will be much more significant if you know what you're praying for, and what you're praying for is the right thing. So when people would ask him for a blessing, he would say, I wish for you to have Nachat Yehudit, for you to have the contentment of a Jew. So people say, "Rav, why Nachat Yehudit? Why the contentment of a Jew? Why shouldn't you just say Nachat?" Because if I just say Nachat, if I just say contentment, it may be the contentment of an idol worshiper—that he'll want money, and he'll want houses, and he'll want this, and he'll want all that type of stuff. That's not what I want for him. I want him to have a real blessing, which is to have the contentment of a Jew, understanding why he's in this world. When a person prays with all of their heart, They could literally change nature. So much so that the Zohar HaKadosh tells a story, a fantastic story, that will give us an understanding of how much a prayer is worth in HaKadosh Baruch Hu's eyes. If a person understood it, they would simply spend their time fulfilling every mitzvah they possibly can, and whenever they have a problem, just simply cry to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Tehillim, pray to Hashem with your own words, whatever it is, but don't miss a prayer.

1:51:07At the time of the Gemara, one of the Gedolei HaDor was Rabbi Yossi. Rabbi Yossi, one day, news came out that he died. And his wife had died the year before, leaving two little kids alone. Rabbi Elazar ben Rabbi Shimon, the son of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, was one of the other Torah giants of the generation. And he found out that Rabbi Yossi died, and he said to his colleagues, "Okay, let's go bury the body. Go clean the body, purify it, put the tachrichim on it, and it's time to go bury it." So they all come, they get to the house, and they see a little girl at the front door. And she's blocking the door like a bouncer. Can we go inside? No one inside. No, we're coming to, your father has died, we have to bury him. He goes, no, no one inside. Why not, little girl? Why not? My brother says, no one's allowed inside. Your little brother said, no one's allowed inside? He goes, no, no one's allowed inside. So Rabbi Eliezer ben Rabbi Shimon peeks through the window.

1:52:33to see where this brother is, and he sees this little boy sitting on top of his father's body and crying to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. His father is laying down and the kid's on top of him, he's like on his belly. He's sitting and he's praying to Hashem and crying hysterically to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, saying, Avinu Shebashamayim. You already took my mother. Last year, now You take my father? What are we going to do, we are two little kids and we don't have an Abba or Ima? And the kid's crying and crying to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. What are we going to do, Abba? What are we going to do? Rabbi Elazar ben Rabbi Shimon says to his colleagues, "You see that? We're about to see a miracle." I say, "Why, Kavod HaRav?" He says, "A prayer like that, something has to happen. A prayer like that, something has to happen."

1:53:46That's a genuine prayer. He's not praying for a PlayStation. He's not praying for a car. He's not praying for money. He's praying to HaKadosh Baruch Hu with tears. And even though the Chachamim say that after the Beit HaMikdash was destroyed, the gates of prayer were closed, there's only one gate that's constantly open: that's the gate of tears. Tears like that are for sure going to change something. and they literally witnessed Rabbi Yossi being resurrected from the dead. HaKadosh Baruch Hu answered that little boy's prayer, and Rabbi Yossi came back to life. That's how significant prayer is in the eyes of HaKadosh Baruch Hu. That's how significant it is if you really pray to Hashem with meaning. If you don't pray to Hashem with meaning, You're missing an opportunity of a lifetime. Unfortunately, it's hard sometimes to pray with meaning because we're so busy with the yetzer hara, taking us to work, thinking about this and thinking about that, thinking about the bills, thinking about that, the contract and the deal and the girl and the guy and the boy and this and all these different shtuyot that we have in our head. Sometimes it's hard to have kavanah when we pray. But I can tell you this: if you have kavanah, you can not only resurrect the dead, you can actually rebuild the Beit HaMikdash simply with tears.

1:55:12So, I mean to say that the only reason why the Beit HaMikdash is still destroyed is because we haven't cried for it. We haven't cried for it every year on Tisha B'Av. We cried just a couple of days ago. Anybody that has a little bit of Yirat Shamayim cried. No, no, nobody cries. Why doesn't anybody cry? People cry every year, we cry. We cry on Tisha B'Av. People cry all the time. Nah, they're not crying. How can we cry? Because you have to cry like Esav. Cry like Esav. Because, yes, Esav, when he found out that the blessing of the firstborn was stolen from him, he cried two tears. Now, even though Esav was a rasha, and he went against Hashem in many ways, he believed in the power of blessings so much so that he actually cried about it—two tears. And for those two tears, he got the power to destroy the First and the Second Beit Hamikdash.

1:56:23First and Second Beit Hamikdash were because of those two tears. So many say, wait a minute, isn't there something like bitul b'shishim, the cancellation of these two tears, if you're with 60? For example, if you take, let's say, you have a big meat stew, and a tiny little drop of milk goes into it. Why, does it ruin the whole stew? No. Why? Because there's a lot more than 60 times this little dairy. The point is, Rabotai, there's a cancellation if it's 60 times more, and so on and so forth. They say, wait, what? So you're telling me that for 2,000 years we haven't been able to cancel out these two tears? Chachamim say something scary. They say, you see, Esav, when he cried, he cried just for the blessing and the blessing alone. He wanted that blessing. He lost that blessing. He cried for that blessing. Two tears. When we cry,

1:57:23Even though we're at Tisha B'Av, and really we're supposed to be crying for the Beit HaMikdash, and we cry for the Mashiach, tachlis. Don't tell anybody. What are you really crying for? What do you think is going to happen when the Beit HaMikdash is built? What do you think is going to happen when Mashiach is going to come? First thing is, "Oh, my debt's gone. My debt is gone. The mortgage is going to be paid off. He's going to heal me. He's going to fix me." Wait, so are you crying because of your personal salvation? So He's going to pay your bills, like the Social Security office of some kind, financial affairs, legal affairs, bankruptcy affairs. He's going to solve your legal problems, your financial problems, your health problems, your loneliness problems. That's why you're crying. So you're not crying for the Mashiach. You're not crying for the Shechinah to come. You're not crying for the Beit HaMikdash. You're crying for yourself. That's why it doesn't count. It's two tears for yourself.

1:58:26When we cry for the Beit HaMikdash itself, mamash, like we just want Hashem to send the Beit HaMikdash, so much so that you love Hashem, and you want Him to come here so much, you say, you know what, even if I don't have a piece of it, I still want it to come. Because Esav wasn't exactly the most righteous, but he was genuine about his prayer. This gives us a little bit of an inclination. On one hand, how far we are. being genuine sometimes when we think we are genuine. On the other hand, how easy it is to be genuine—all you have to do is stop for a second, turn off the phone, and focus on what's important. When you focus on that, you'll not only attain a good level of a good mind to pray, but that mind is going to help you get what you want, and ultimately, you'll have that contentment. will get you to the ultimate level of happiness in this world. This will help us get closer, bring the Mashiach closer, and bring ourselves closer to where we're supposed to be. Any questions? Yes?

1:59:45As I said before, the Chafetz Chaim asked the same question. When somebody is lacking, he used an example of somebody, for example, that's in financial affairs that are miserable and health affairs that are miserable. And he says it's to simply understand that if HaKadosh Baruch Hu wanted you to be married right now, you would be. So it doesn't necessarily mean that Hashem is happy with the person being single, but that's what He's willing at this point. So a person needs to, number one, first ask, "How can I serve at my best potential now under the current circumstances?" So a person, let's say, for example, deals with pain a lot, his pain is chronic pain. So he can cry about it all day, but that's not going to help him. Crying about his pain is not going to help him, but he can say, "Listen, how can I serve You through the pain? How, obviously, this pain is good for me somehow." first ask, "How can I serve at my best potential now under the current circumstances?" So a person, let's say, for example, deals with pain a lot; his pain is chronic pain. So he can cry about it all day, but that's not going to help him. Crying about his pain is not going to help him, but he can say, "Listen, how can I serve You through the pain? How, obviously, this pain is good for me somehow." So how can I serve You through this? Somebody's pain, emotional pain. How can I serve You with this emotional pain? How can I redirect this? What can I learn from it? And so on and so forth. So they have to look at it in a way where they ask, "How can I be the best tool for HaKadosh Baruch Hu under the current difficult condition to the point of realizing that this difficulty is to my interest?" That's one. The second thing is, see,

2:01:07What else can I do to merit the circumstances changing? Like sometimes people think that many of their problems will be solved by marriage. Quite frankly, I think many people's problems will increase with marriage because they're not ready to get married. Somebody asks me, at least once a day, for a shidduch, help with shidduchim, and I try sometimes to help people. Most of the time, it's not my cup of tea, but sometimes I tell people that they shouldn't even look for a zivug. Why? Because I think that if they got a zivug, it would simply destroy the other person. Because they're not, they're not where they're supposed to be. Somebody asked me the other day, "Oh, you know, maybe I'll be happier if I have a wife." I said, "Honestly, I feel bad for anybody that will marry you." Why? Because the person is not a nice person. Not a nice person. They don't know how to communicate. They don't know how to listen. They want people to work for them. They want a slave. Slave? Go to Egypt. Maybe get one of the Egyptians over there to be a slave, not a Bat Yisrael.

2:02:10So, the first thing we need to do is to work on ourselves. Work on ourselves. See what we're missing. If, Baruch Hashem, we're doing good with that, if we're constantly doing teshuva, then there's another possibility. Did we pray for it enough? Not did we pray for it. Surely you've prayed for it, he prayed for it, everybody prayed for it. But did we pray for it enough? What's enough? Enough is when it gets accepted. Moshe Rabbeinu prayed 515 times to be allowed into Eretz Yisrael until Hashem said, "Rav lach," enough. Meaning that he prayed enough times where if he would have prayed one more time, Hashem would have had to let him in. Meaning that there has to be a point where Hashem pretty much says either no or yes. So if we, obviously Hashem wants a person to fulfill the mitzvah of pru u'rvu and so on, so He wants a person to get married. The question is, did we pray for it yet? Did we pray for it enough? So those are a couple of things to consider, but also always remember, your responsibility is the effort, Hashem's responsibility is the outcome. So if you pray every day...

2:03:13...on it, and you do whatever you can to prove yourself every day and still find a way to serve HaKadosh Baruch Hu to your ultimate potential under the current conditions, even if they don't change. Meaning, you're happy with the circumstance, with or without anything changing. Then that is more than enough, and you're doing your part. The rest is in the hands of Hashem, and you know that when it happens, Hashem did it. If it didn't happen, Hashem did it. Either way, you're perfectly fine. Why? Because you at least know for sure, I did my best. A lot of people think that things are supposed to just happen naturally. Or if they call enough shadchanim, then one of them is going to find somebody. Or if they meet enough women or enough men, somebody is going to be enough. It doesn't work that way. Yes, technically you can meet different people, and you can find pretty much somebody in the streets. But if you want the shidduch that's going to be the right one, the good one, and so on, it requires a lot more effort. And it's not just the dates. It's the character traits, the teshuva, it's the ma'asim tovim, it's the rest of the stuff that we sometimes ignore. But it's a, once you do that...

2:04:25You'll be happy with whatever you're doing anyway simply because you know that you're doing your best. So you can't, there's nothing that you can't be upset about. I did my best. It didn't work out, which means Hashem didn't want it. I did my best and it didn't work out, but Hashem listened to my prayers. At least once I know I did my best, there's nothing for me to be sad about. Yes? You said before that if a person suffers severely, that it's better off that they were never born. I didn't say that. What did you say? Never heard that. Ken, he's supposed to be thanking Hashem for the suffering. Supposed to be thanking Hashem for the suffering. No, he's born to suffer. That's also useful for Hashem.

2:05:27How it's useful for Hashem? I don't know. I'm not Hashem. I don't know how Hashem runs His world. But everything that happens in the world is part of Hashem's larger equation. If somebody's suffering, whether it's emotional suffering, physical suffering, or any form of suffering, that is useful for Hashem in some way or another. Something is happening as a result of that suffering. It could be that he's erasing part of that person's sins. It could be that he could be erasing his family's sins. It could be that he's fixing a previous tikkun. It could be that he's doing countless different things. It could be that he's going to lead him to a certain circumstance later on in his life that he wouldn't have gotten to otherwise. There are just countless different things that can happen as a result of that suffering. I mean, I can tell you simply from my own experience. Had it not been for my years and years of suffering, thousands upon thousands of people would have never learned Torah. Why? Because I would have still been on Wall Street today, trading, making, and doing everything that has to do with money, and nothing to do with teaching Torah. So, my suffering is the greatest thing that happened not only to me personally, but to countless people's lives.

2:06:41So, it's not that they should celebrate, "Oh, you should suffer again." No, that's not going to be useful for them anymore. I need to teach. But the point is that Hashem had a use for it. It took a while to realize it, and it took a lot of decision-making—wrong decision-making and right decision-making by me—to finally get the point. But the point is that we see that, Baruch Hashem, we had the merit to see at least part of the outcome of what happened as a result of it, and we see that there was good in it. And everything, if you see it play out, you're always going to see how Hashem is good, Hashem is merciful, Hashem is the ultimate. Kindness comes from Him. The problem with us is that we only see part of the equation, but we pretend like we know the whole thing. That's our problem. Yes?

2:07:45Uh... that's right, put it this way. DeVita Miller, on one hand, was an extremely powerful figure. One of the most powerful men that ever lived was a king, not just of, you know, a few thousand people. This was someone that was extremely powerful, extremely rich, extremely wise, extremely righteous, and... But yet, he suffered tremendously every single year of the seventy years on earth. And through that suffering, he connected to HaKadosh Baruch Hu in the ultimate way, where he wrote Tehillim number 100.

2:08:58which is Mizmor LeTodah. It's a psalm of thank you, a song of thank you to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. For what? For all of the suffering, for all of the things You gave me, thank You, HaKadosh Baruch Hu. He has a special psalm just about thanking HaKadosh Baruch Hu. What is he thanking Him for? Chazal said that he never slept more than 15 minutes straight his whole life because of so many problems that he had, so many people trying to kill him. Four different children had problems; they tried to kill him. One was raped, one was killed. It was a nightmare of a life. Nightmare. Shaul, Shaul was the other righteous person in the generation, tried to kill him his whole life until Hashem took him. It was just a nightmare. But yet, he sings to Hashem, "Thank you, Hashem. Thank you, Hashem. Thank you, Hashem." And then later on, we see in a different Tehillim that... David says to Hashem, it says to us, the reason why he thanks Hashem is because he had a clear understanding of the point: that Your stick and Your staff, that's what brings me comfort. Meaning that I know that whether it's the stick that's hitting me, or it's the staff that's directing me,

2:10:21It gives me comfort. Why? Because I know it's coming from You. So even though one of them hurts me physically, emotionally, mentally, and so on, and the other one directs me and pleases me, they're both the same. Why? Because they're both from You. They're both from You. That means I'm still connected to You. That gives me comfort. That means that You haven't forgotten about me. That means I'm still important to You. That means that You're still my Father in Heaven. That's the greatest thing in the world. And we'll finish off with this. That's 3,000 years ago. I'll give you a more recent example. One of the holiest people that lived in the last century or more... Build an enormous amount of Torah after the Holocaust, but you asked what happened to him during the Holocaust. He was in the Holocaust and the camps, being tortured day and night, suffering that no person should endure. One day, one of the people comes to him and tells him, "Rebbe, they killed your wife and ten kids. Ten kids."

2:11:35Slaughtered in cold blood. And wife. Meaning, everything he knew, his entire family, slaughtered. They saw the Rebbe shocked for a moment, and a moment later, he went back to being happy. Baruch Hashem, Baruch Hashem, Baruch Hashem, Baruch Hashem. He said, "Rebbe, lamdeni, teach us. Anytime we see our Rabbis do something like this. Hey, Rabbi, I need to learn." Why? Whatever you just did, that's not normal. I wouldn't do it. I would lose my mind, jump off a bridge, something else. Definitely not that. So please, Rebbe, teach me something here. Why, number one, did you get shocked? And two, why are you happy now? The Admo"r's son says to him, "When you said to me that someone killed my wife and ten kids, I thought it's like somebody..."

2:12:35lost in the woods, little boys lost, and you know in the afternoon you're okay, but once it starts getting dark and you're a little kid, it's scary at night; it's dangerous. So imagine you're lost in the woods and it's getting darker and darker, and it's getting to the point where you can't see anything. The news that you gave me was as dark as can be. Couldn't see anything. And then all of a sudden, you get hit on your back. Some hand hits you. I said, who did this to me? And I said, oh, Abba. When I knew that the hand that hit me was Abba, I said, oh, that's what it is. He found me. You get it? When you told me someone killed my kid, I said, who did this to me? Who brought this darkness to my life? But when I realized that it's Abba BaShamayim, that gives me comfort. Why? HaKadosh Baruch Hu did it. It must be good. Must be. Just like that hand that hurt, that hit me in the back in the middle of the woods, but when I saw it's my father getting my attention because he just found me, ah, that's good. It must be good.

2:13:53That, rabotai, is somebody that sanctified themselves and made themselves so holy that they understood how the greatest disaster that could literally happen to a human being while still alive can be turned into something holy. Something holy. Who gave him the tools to deal with that test may never be something that he gives any of us, any of you, anybody. But nonetheless, you see, he made a tikkun of a major, major tragedy, but he also gave him the tools to deal with them. Needless to say, our little problems, whatever they are, are nothing in comparison to such a thing. whatever they are, are nothing in comparison to such a thing. Of course, Hashem gave us also the tools. B'ezrat Hashem, tomorrow night we'll have our shiur about questions and answers. Plenty of questions, plenty of answers. Please write them down so you're ready for tomorrow. Baruch Adonai le'olam. Amen ve'amen.