The Value of Learning Torah at Yeshivat Doresh

0:14Great to be here at Yeshiva Dorish in Aventura. Thank you for the invite. It's my first time here, but a couple of familiar faces set it up. We learn together every Tuesday night. so the uh it's very interesting you guys set up this shiur, you know usually it's the rabbis that set up the shiur, but here it's the students setting up the shiur. We see that we have some zealous people here, so that's very good. Now, um, recent news, everyone's very excited about what happened with how the President of the United States recognized that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. Not that we necessarily needed... Approval, but many people are very excited about this. Now, we talked about it in this shiur earlier this week that this is actually more of a prophecy coming true, that at the end of days, before the Mashiach comes, Esav is going to make Yishmael very upset. Esav is Edom.

1:26which is really all of the Western world, whether it's the United States, Europe, and so on. And Yishmael is all of the Arab countries. And we've always wondered how it is going to be that Yishmael and Esav are ever going to get into a fight, but it seems like what's happening right now in the world looks like it, looks like it. Now, so while everyone is very excited about What's happening with Yerushalayim? What's happening with modern Israel? At the end of the day, we're forgetting that we're still fighting the same war that we've been fighting for almost 2,000 years, which is the war that we're going to have a memorial of in just a few days on Chanukah. You know, on Chanukah, many people are very excited about it, whether they're secular or they're religious, Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, real Jews, fake Jews; everyone's excited about it. Everybody likes Chanukah. Even the goyim like Chanukah. But very few people actually know the real reason behind Chanukah. Very few people actually understand the significance behind Chanukah. They think it's because of a miracle of some oil. Now, we've had much bigger miracles. We've had much bigger miracles in history. Many people are very excited about it, whether they're secular or they're religious, Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, real Jews, fake Jews; everyone's excited about it. Everybody likes Chanukah. Even the goyim like Chanukah. But very few people actually know the real reason behind Chanukah. Very few people actually understand the significance behind Chanukah. They think it's because of a miracle of some oil. Now, we've had much bigger miracles. We've had much bigger miracles in history.

2:41One of the miracles we had was a bunch of frogs showing up and terrorizing the Egyptians, not the Jews. We had a bunch of lions and bears and bats and all types of strange, vicious animals terrorizing the Egyptians, not the Jews. But we don't celebrate Pesach just one day; we celebrate Pesach for the whole thing. So, we've had much bigger miracles than just oil. One of the miracles we had was a bunch of frogs showing up and terrorizing the Egyptians, not the Jews. We had a bunch of lions and bears and bats and all types of strange, vicious animals terrorizing the Egyptians, not the Jews. But we don't celebrate Pesach just one day; we celebrate Pesach for the whole thing. So, we've had much bigger miracles than just oil. we're not celebrating those bigger miracles. Why? Because the truth is that Chanukah is not about the miracle of the oil. The truth is that Chanukah is the miracle of Hashem getting involved in our world, the opposite of what the Yevanim (the Greeks) thought. The Greeks' mythology—they were very smart people but stupid at the same time, meaning

3:57They had a lot of intellect when it came to archaeology, when it came to different fields like math and secular knowledge. They believed that there was a God, that there was a Creator to the world. You don't necessarily need to be a genius to realize that everything had to come from somewhere, but they decided that God created the world and then He left. He went somewhere else, He went on vacation. And as Jews, we say no, God is very much here. He's running the world, and He cares about everything. He cares about the shiur that we're having right now. He cares about it today. He cares about Shabbat. He cares about, you know, all types of things relating to kashrut. He cares if you do a beracha, if you don't do a beracha. He cares about everything. The Greeks disagreed. The Greeks said, "No, God created the world, but then He left." So the nes of Chanukah starts with a miracle of how five religious guys Never fought a war in their life, beat an army of millions and millions of Greeks. You have the Maccabees take over. Realize that

5:11Even though the Greeks are destroying us from within, they're not just destroying us with, you know, telling us, "Listen, you should convert to Christianity," like the Romans did later on. The Greeks tried to destroy the Torah. Instead, they said, "Listen, why don't you come work for our government? Why don't you come work for our legal department? You can make a lot of money, and... And that's it. Just don't keep Shabbat anymore. Don't do Brit Milah anymore. Don't count any Rosh Chodesh anymore. Don't keep all of these covenants you have with your God. Don't keep them anymore. And we'll give you a lot of money. We'll give you anything that you want. Just don't keep these mitzvot. Unfortunately, many Jews fell for it. Unfortunately, many Jews decided that, you know what, maybe it's an easier way of life to leave the Torah alone. Let's go make some money, go into government, go into Hollywood, do whatever we want to do, and live freely. Maybe they're right. Maybe God doesn't care.

6:11He's a big God. He has a whole universe to deal with. Why does He care if I work for the Greeks or I work for the Jews? What difference is it to Him? He's a big God. He has plenty of people to deal with. Why does He care about me? And unfortunately, many Jews were called Mityavnim, meaning they became Greeks. So when the five religious guys, the Chashmonaim, decided that this had to be put to an end, Their father started by saying, whoever is with God is with me. Unfortunately, only five guys stood up and said, okay, us. Who? His sons. No one else stood up. No one else said, okay, let's go fight. In the beginning, later on, a few people joined. But right away, in the beginning, it was him and his five sons. That's it. So now if you think about this logically, it doesn't matter if they had war experience or not. It doesn't matter if they were strong or not. It doesn't matter if they were smart or not. How are you going to go, you and five guys, and fight an army that is the strongest army in the world, with much bigger weapons, with a more structured, bigger army—bigger everything? How are you going to fight them? So, obviously, here we see that they realized something that many of us to this day don't realize, which is that wars are not won by presidents.

7:34Wars are not won by airplanes. Wars are not won with tanks. Wars are not won with swords. Wars are won by Yad Hashem. Hashem decides who's going to win the war and who's not. There was a very famous story of Alexander Mokdon, Alexander the Great. And he was a leader and pretty much took over the entire world after Nebuchadnezzar. He was the number one leader of all time until Mashiach comes before Hashem. And one day, some Jewish haters, who were also Jews themselves, came to Alexander Mokdon, Alexander the Great, and they told him, "Listen, there are these Jews, they're not following your laws. We should destroy them." They convinced him to come to Yerushalayim and destroy the Beit Hamikdash. So Alexander comes with a huge army, millions and millions of people. The people go tell Rabban Gamliel, "Rebbi, Alexander the Great is coming here, and he's coming to destroy the Beit HaMikdash." What did Rabban Gamliel do? Did he start reading Tehillim, get worried? Did he start being concerned? No. He said, "Oh, let's go meet him." He took a few of his helpers, and they went to go meet Alexander the Great, but not with weapons, with nothing.

9:03No fight. So, as the story goes, they both rested on, you know, they both got to the top of different mountains, rested for the night, and the next morning, the side of Rabban Gamliel and the side of Alexander the Great met at the bottom. And as soon as they saw each other face to face, Rabban Gamliel is on his horse, Alexander is on his horse, and Alexander gets off his horse. comes to Rabban Gamliel, bows to him, bows to him as if he's his king. No one understood how could it be? This Alexander is the leader of the world; he's the king. Why is he bowing to this Rabbi? He says to them, "Every night that I go to sleep, they tell me in my dreams what my next battle is and where I'm going to win." Every single time, I see his face telling me where to go and where I'm gonna win and that all of my battles are gonna be won because of him, because of some Torah that he is learning. So, we see this is one historical lesson that Am Yisrael believes in as part of the Oral Torah. We see that wars are not won

10:28Spears or weapons or guns or planes or anything like that? Meaning that the whole hug of Hanukkah has nothing to do with the wars that Yehuda Maccabee won. If you read the Midrashim of all the wars that the Chashmonaim fought, they're extraordinary, very similar to the battles that the twelve tribes fought and... Bnei Yaakov, the 12 tribes, if you read the Midrashim about the wars that they won in the Midrash Me'am Lo'ez, Midrash Rabbah, and several others, you see extraordinary stories. I mean, it's superheroes. Yehuda would get angry and kill 30,000 of them by himself. Today, even with guns, you can't do that. Yehuda would get upset. These people are trying to attack. He'd kill all of them by himself. It seemed unreal. And Sefer HaGilgulim says that Yehuda, from the 12 tribes, Ben Yaakov, Yehuda ben Yaakov, actually reincarnated as the gilgul of Yehuda HaMakabi. And that's why the Midrash that talks about Yehuda HaMakabi also describes similar battles, where he also killed tens of thousands of people by himself. He had the strength of Yehuda ben Yaakov. And so did the others.

11:51all of these battles with tens of thousands of goyim being killed by these few Jews. It's not really discussed on Hanukkah. The main story that everyone knows, except if they learn in yeshiva like you guys, and The main story that everybody knows is that there was some oil. They found one can of oil that wasn't ruined by the goyim. We used it and miraculously, until we got replacements, it stayed lit for the next eight days. So really, the miracle is seven days because it was good enough for one day, and it was a miracle for another seven days. That's what we talk about. We don't really talk about the stories, the intricate battles of Yehudah, killing 8,000 people on the first day, another 2,000 on the second day. 20,000 on the third day. All these great miraculous stories—we don't talk about them much. Sometimes, even people who are very religious and learned don't actually know this stuff. Why? Because that's not the big deal. That's not the big deal of Chanukah. The big deal of Chanukah is that spirituality—that the Torah actually won the war. Now, I'm going to ask you guys a question, and answer honestly.

13:04How many of you want to be Talmidei Chachamim one day? For a living? Forever? Like, no, don't go to Wall Street. Don't be a lawyer. Don't be a doctor. Don't be anything else. You want to learn Torah for the rest of your life. How many of you? Interesting question. Maybe there's one, maybe two. Right? You want to learn Torah. You want to earn money—money and Torah—but just Torah by itself, no. Right? Now the question is, why? Why is it that so few people aspire to become Talmidei Chachamim? You got a question? You need to do your part. You can learn Torah, but you also need to be able to make money. Money won't just randomly come if you're just learning Torah. It's a great thing, but it won't just randomly come to you. Who says? Because you're not doing anything that will give you income. Okay. Not everyone has the same sweetness. Okay. Not everyone. Sure. Everyone has some, but not everyone always knows. More people have more sweetness than other people. Sure. That's why they do it all day. Sure. Okay. Right. Okay.

14:34so now if you know the value of something, it's much easier to appreciate it. And if I told you, if I held a little rock in my hand and I told you guys I found this on the way here, it's a little rock, none of you would be impressed. But if I told you, "Oh, this rock happens to be a hundred-million-dollar diamond," that extra fact that I added at the end changes everything. It doesn't matter if I found it, it doesn't matter if I have it, it doesn't make a difference. The fact that it's worth a hundred million dollars changes the whole story. Meaning that once you understand the value of something, everything changes. In the Mishnah in Avot, there's a very famous Mishnah that we're not gonna go over in its entirety, obviously, but Ben Zoma says, "Eizehu chacham? Halomed mikol adam," and so on and so forth. who is wise? Someone that learns from everyone. But one of the things that he says is, Eizehu ashir? Hasameach b'chelko, a very, very famous Mishnah: who is rich? Someone who is happy with his lot. And it gives you a source from Psalms 128:2, and it says, Yegia kapecha ki tochel, ashrecha v'tov lach.

15:50It says, when you eat of the labor of your hands, you're praiseworthy and all is well with you. You're praiseworthy in this world and all is well with you in the world to come. Now we're back to our question. How could someone be happy with his share when he doesn't have much of a share? How can someone like Rav Shteinman, Israel, I mean, if you guys ever see any of the videos, it's one of the Gedolei HaDor. He has a bed that's made out of cartons. They put a little mattress on a few milk cartons. He's a hundred and five years old. People would give him millions if he only said yes; they would give him millions, but he gives it to the yeshivot. But he himself, you know, sleeps on milk cartons with a mattress on it, and they call it a bed. And... Many of the Gedolei HaDor that you read about have lived very, very poor lives. If you read some of the stories about Rav Ovadia, before he became the famous Rav Ovadia, when he was a young man,

17:05he had a house that was just one room for him, his wife, and his kids. But I don't mean one room like one bedroom and then there's a bathroom, and then there's a kitchen, and then there is a—no, no, one room literally. That's it, just one room. No bathroom. To go to the bathroom, you have to leave the house, go outside to somewhere else. You have to go to a public bathroom. For the kitchen, you cook somewhere else. One room, that's what he had. The sisters of his wife made fun of her, saying, "What are you going to eat, the books? How's he going to make any money? He just learns Torah all day. How is he going to survive, like you were saying? How's he going to survive? He's going to eat the books?" They fast-forward the story. You know how they survived. Baruch Hashem, he became a very well-known Talmid Chacham, a Dayan, a Sofer, and so on and so forth. But during that time before he became Rav Ovadia, the famous Rav Ovadia... The question was the same question he was asking. How are you going to survive? What kept him going? What kept Rav Ovadia going? What kept Rav Kanievsky going? What kept the Steipler going? What kept all of these Gedolei HaDor, what kept them going? Before they became famous, after they became famous and people are donating money like it's going out of style, fine. Talk about before when they were just like you. No one knew them, except their own family. No one knew them.

18:35What kept them going? Yeah? Faith in Hashem. It's great. A lot of people have been telling me that no one here has any emunah in Hashem. Everybody has emunah in Hashem. Okay, well, you don't think Hashem has a plan for you also? He has a plan. But what's the difference? You have emunah. I know you have emunah. You're not a yeshiva asking for someone to come speak to you and teach you Torah at 9 o'clock on a Saturday night for no reason. Obviously, you have some level of emunah. Obviously, you have some level of Yirat Shamayim. Obviously, you understand this; you know something. It's not like you're not boor and am ha'aretz. You know something. So what's the difference? What's the difference between Rav Ovadia, Rav Kanievsky, all the G'dolei HaDor? You have Rabbi Akiva. You read about him in the Gemara. His wife for 24 years. She was sleeping on straw for all those years. And you never heard a story of Rabbi Akiva complaining to Hashem, "Hashem, do You have a plan for me? Do You have a plan for this?" There's no story like that. What kept him going? It's not important. Maybe they don't want to be Donald Trump rich, but they still need to eat and...

19:52So the question is, what kept them going? The follow-up question is, how could they fulfill the Torah by following this law? Because if you're going to be Gadol HaDor, you can't be Gadol HaDor A big tzaddik, a big chacham, after you're rich. You have to do it already when you're poor. How can you fulfill this Mishnah in it which says, "Who is rich? One who's happy with his share." How can you be happy with your share when all you have is a little room? And when anyone wanted to meet Rabbi Ovadia, the wife and the kids would hide under the table. They would hide under the table. They would put a cover like this. The wife and the kids would be under the table. They would have a meeting. And stay quiet. And Rav Ovadia would meet whoever it is. Half an hour, an hour, whatever it is. How could you be happy about such a thing? It's very hard to be happy just thinking about it. The difference is, my dear friends, there was a significant difference. The significant difference is not in simple emunah.

21:07Significant difference started with understanding. What is the Torah? What is the Torah? Is the Torah just a bunch of books that we learn to lean out to hear stories about Yaakov Avinu? You know, the twelve tribes, Moshe Rabbeinu. It's nice stories. It's just a storybook? The Zohar HaKadosh says anyone that thinks that the Torah is a history book is... Doesn't have a right to live. So, obviously, it's not a history book. It tells us history, but it's not a history book per se. It's not the purpose. So, is it just a book, a simple book of laws that tells us, "Do this, don't do this, do this, don't do this"? If Hashem just wanted to do that, He could have just given us a Shulchan Aruch, finished, ready, we're done. If it's just a book of laws, if its only purpose is for laws, then just give us the laws: allowed, not allowed, allowed, not allowed, allowed, not allowed, and we're finished. Is that going to keep somebody like Rabbi Ovadia under a table? Maybe not. So what is it, be'emet? The Navi, Yirmiyahu, says that Hashem told him a very big secret. A secret that if anyone here actually understands it, if anyone in the world

22:24Truly understands it. It changes their perspective about life altogether. Not just about Torah, but about life altogether. And he says in chapter 33, verse 25, "Im lo beriti yomam valaila chukot shamayim va'aretz lo samti." Translation: Thus said Hashem, "If not for my covenant day and night, the rules of the heavens and the earth would not exist." The rules of the world will cease to exist. Meaning, Hashem told Yirmiyahu there's a very big secret in creation. 974 generations before I created the world, I created the Torah. It says that Hashem took black fire on white fire and He wrote the Torah Himself. And that's why, to this day, we take a scroll that has a parchment that's white, and we put black ink on it. It's not pink, green, blue, or any other color. In essence, it's trying to replicate what Hashem started already 974 generations before the creation of the world.

23:41Yeah, but you could put it in blue also, and you wouldn't tell the difference. You could put it in red; it's also visible in many other colors. That's not the reason. The real reason is because it's supposed to, in essence, be similar to how Hashem wrote the Torah originally. But nonetheless, 974 generations mean that the Gemara actually says that these 974 generations were supposed to be a generation of people that existed and But since they were all wicked, Hashem, in essence, instead of putting them all in one generation, He split them up into small little bits and pieces throughout all of time until the Mashiach comes. No, no, not different planets. All on this planet. It's just different times. That's why there are Reshaim in every generation. But the point being is that Hashem Yitbarach decided that He is going to write this Torah, and this Torah is really the reason for the world. This Torah, if the world is going to exist, they must comply with this Torah. So that's why in Gemara Masechet Shabbat, it says that on Yom HaShishi, if you see in Parashat Bereishit, it says that at the beginning, at the end of every single day, Hashem said it was evening, it was morning, Yom Rishon. It was evening, it was morning, Yom Sheni. It was evening, it was morning, Yom Shlishi.

25:03first day, and the first day, end of the second day, end of the third day, and the fourth day. But then when it gets to Shishi, when it gets to Friday, it says Yom HaShishi. There's an extra letter. So the Gemara in Shabbat says Reish Lakish asks, what's this extra hey? What's this extra letter? It says this extra hey is symbolic of the deal that Hashem made with the angel that's responsible for the earth, for the planet earth. Why? made a deal. He says, "Dear Earth, if Am Yisrael accepts the Torah when I give it to them at Mount Sinai in the future, they'll get to see Shabbat the next day. If not, they're never going to see Shabbat. I'm bringing back the world to what it was before, which is Tohu Vavohu. Why? Because the entire purpose of the world is for the Torah to be fulfilled." So now this again is repeated, and... Mount Sinai and Mount Sinai. The Midrash says that Mount Sinai actually went over them. It says that Am Yisrael stood under the mountain. What does it mean "under"? How do you stand under a mountain? Stand next to a mountain? No, it was under the mountain. Why under the mountain? Hashem miraculously bent the mountain like a chuppah, like a chuppah over Am Yisrael, and He said to them, "If you accept the Torah, this is like our wedding."

26:32It's like a wedding. It's like a chuppah. It covers you. If not, this is going to be your grave. Hashem will make the mountain fall on top of you. Meaning you have no real choice here; you have to accept the Torah. So now we're back to Jeremiah. Jeremiah here says, a verse from Hashem. Hashem says, "If it's not for my original covenant, my original deal that I made in creation..." ...being fulfilled day and night. The rules of the world will cease to exist, meaning if there is not someone who is fulfilling the learning of Torah day and night. Someone in the world has to be learning Torah. It could be in America, it could be in Israel, it could be in Afghanistan, it could be all over Europe, it could be anywhere—it doesn't make a difference. But someone must be learning Torah at all times in order for the world to exist. And... That's the brit. If not for the brit between Hashem and the world and Am Yisrael, meaning I'll end the rules of the world. So now, until recent science, we didn't really understand what this means. So, have you ever heard of something called an atom? The atom is energy. Everyone says everything is made of energy. Well, this is what it really looks like. This is what an atom looks like.

28:01I mean, this is obviously a digital image, but the point is this is what they try to make it look like. So, an atom has, in essence, three core parts. There's the ball inside that's comprised of two parts: one is called a neutron and one is called a proton. And then there's a small ball that's rotating around it really, really fast called an electron. And everything and anything that you have in the world, whether it's you, me, the tables, the building, food, phones, everything—everything and anything is made out of these atoms. The tiny, little, microscopic pieces of energy are pretty much, in essence, one ball that's attached to another one, and then there's a small ball rotating around it. And that's what makes up everything in matter, everything in the world, and so now scientists looked into this ball, looked into this atom, and they discovered something very interesting. They discovered that 99% of the atom is free space; it’s nothing. It’s nothing, meaning that, let’s say, if we compare it to something we can see right now, let’s just imagine a grain of sand

29:26Inside this big room, and that's it, nothing else. That's an atom. But like I said, everything here is solid. How could it be sound? How can you knock on this? How can I be here? How can the books be here if most of it is nothing? The way it works is very similar to the fans that are on top of you. If you see the fans that are on top of you, they're rotating pretty fast. It looks like maybe there's one or two blades and... Looks like there's one or two blades that are making this rotation in this really cold air. But if you slow it down, or perhaps if you turn it off, you'll see that there are most likely four blades, maybe five blades. Why are there five blades? So how come I can't see the five blades right now? Because it's going really fast. When it goes really fast, if it goes even faster than this, it'll actually look like there's a single blade. Same concept with the atoms because the electron is rotating around the proton and the neutron so fast. It looks like it's solid. It looks like it's a single blade. It looks like this is actually solid, but this is really what they call an optical illusion. In reality, most of what we see, or all of what's here, all of what's in the entire world, is nothing. Most of the universe is empty space. So why do we see?

30:53... cameras, cars, houses, buildings, giant things. How can we see? Because the electrons are working really, really fast. So, scientists said, how could this be? How could this ever be stopped? Let's say if they ever wanted to stop, what happens if the electron stops spinning? What if it stops spinning? What if you turn this thing off? You know that you'd see a single blade. It would uncover... illusion right now. The illusion is that it's like maybe one or two blades. If you stop it, the illusion is uncovered; you see that there are five blades, like he said. So the illusion is no longer there. The same goes with the atom. If the atom stops spinning, if the electron stops spinning, the empty space is now exposed. The scientists say that if the empty space is ever exposed and it won't be exposed. While you will see it from a distance or you'll see that it's something different, it will just simply disappear. Simply because most, 99.9%, of everything in the world is nothing. Which means that we are all depending on this atom continuing to spin faster and faster in order for us to exist, and

32:16Now this helps us understand what Hashem means when He says that if not for somebody learning Torah somewhere in the world, the rules of the world will cease to exist. What He is saying is that the world will simply cease to exist. It's not going to be like Noach ...where a bunch of resha'im caused a lot of trouble and Hashem destroyed the world after trying to get them to do teshuva for a hundred years. No, no, He says if there's not somebody in the world learning Torah, that's it, it's finished. There's no warnings, there's no "I'm gonna send them an email," or "I'm gonna send them a prophet," or "I'm gonna try to convince them to do..." No, no, no. It'll just simply cease to exist. No text, no WhatsApp, no Facebook, no nothing. warnings this way says in a pasuk, if someone's not fulfilling this covenant, this brit, he's not fulfilling it, the world ceases to exist. So now if you understand what I'm saying to you, the value of Torah just changed drastically. It doesn't matter if you're Rav Kanievsky, zt"l, or you, just you.

33:40Just me. Makes no difference. It doesn't say if you're not coming to learn at the highest level, the Gemara with the people in, and we stop. It doesn't say that. It just says "Covenant." It just says "learning Torah." If there's not someone in the world learning Torah, the world ceases to exist. Forget about presidents, forget about all of the things in the world, forget about money, forget about everything. If there's not someone in the world learning Torah... there is no world. First, we have to understand the part of the Torah. If we think the Torah is just a thing we should do on the side, as part of our life, you're not telling me haram. You're not the highest that you want to be, but that's exactly the point. Here, this covenant that Hashem told us has nothing to do with your level. It has nothing to do with whether you're an average student, below average, or the giant of the generation. It makes no difference if someone is learning Torah in the world. In essence, they're the superhero. The superheroes that we actually heard about in last week's parasha, the Shevatim, the

34:59tribes, the sons of Yaakov. You read the Midrashim, you see how they beat all of these resha'im, all these people that went against them. They killed all of them—that physical strength, not just spiritual strength, that physical strength. The same story you're gonna hear in a couple of days—the Maccabees beat this giant army. That physical strength. They were strong, but that's not what we're celebrating in either place. You're not really hearing much about either one of them. What are we hearing about? We're hearing about the spiritual aspect of it. I We're hearing about that Yehuda admitted he was wrong. We're not hearing about how Yehuda was really strong. We're hearing Yehuda this week, he admitted he was wrong with Tamar. He thought that something happened, and it didn't, and he admitted, oh, tzadkah mimeni. Why? Because that's what Hashem said. Essence with the Maccabees. Same thing. Okay, great that they fought wars, but what kept them going? What gave them the power? Hashem. So first and foremost, when you truly understand that when you're learning Torah, it doesn't matter what level you're at. You're literally keeping the world together. It changes its significance. You are now a superhero. That's why it says

36:14That's why it says, why would you be happy with your lot? Why is that considered ashir? Because once you understand what you have, when you're learning one pasuk a day, one mishnah a day, one daf a day, one gemara a day—whatever you're learning—it doesn't matter your level. Once you understand that you're actually the one learning Torah, you're the ashir. Doesn't matter what level—who, why, if you're the rabbi, you're the student, you understand, you don't understand. It's hard. It's easy. It's enjoyable. It's not enjoyable. Once you understand that for that moment that you sat there and you learned Torah, you kept the world alive. Everything changes. Everything changes. Why? It doesn't feel meaningless—quite the opposite. It feels like it's the most significant thing in the world because no money in the world can buy you that. Now, I'm going to segue a little bit to give you an understanding that perhaps maybe you think I don't understand much about money if you don't know my story. So, most people that will come to you and tell you, "Listen, you should focus more on Torah. Don't necessarily focus so much on money and material," usually it's because they never had any.

37:36There's a famous saying, "you know, money is the root of all evil," but usually the people that say that never really had any money. Well, the interesting news is that I did. I had many millions, many, many millions before I started teaching Torah. I had a very successful career on Wall Street, investing my money as well as other people's money into different companies, the stock market, and so on and so forth. Started at a young age, around 18 years old, and continued for about a 16-year career. I built a business that included an insurance company, an investment company, a brokerage firm, and all types of different companies that you may or may not know what they are. But the point is, my job was to invest in the market, invest in the stock market in public companies, and sometimes private. Now Hashem... decided to give me a lot of material success, and it got to a point where, on a bad month, meaning a month that I didn't really work so hard, I would make over $200,000. On a bad month, not a bad year, a month, a bad one. If it was a good month, like the best month of my career, which was May 2006, I made 1.6 million dollars. That's one month. It was really one day, and

39:00And then I stopped working for the rest of the month. So as far as money, plenty of it. I had an apartment on the 35th floor on Wall Street in New York. It was bigger than this house over here. It was a 2,000 square foot apartment, all on one level, with a 400 square foot balcony, worth $4 million. I had all the money that people usually want, or at least that’s still relevant. Had it. I was on television. I had some decent publicity. And usually, when you have a lot of money, you have a lot of friends, even though they're all fake. But the point being is that material success I had. But one day, on November 18th of 2006, just a few months after the best month of my career, I had a surgery that went wrong. Something went wrong with the surgery. It was supposed to be a simple surgery, and it went wrong. They cut some type of nerve, which to this day they don't know what they actually did. But that nerve, that surgery changed my body forever to such an extent that when I woke up out of the surgery, I woke up in pain. But not the type of pain like you'd say, oh, maybe you broke your nail, or you broke your finger, or even you broke your arm. No, not that kind of pain.

40:25The pain that's equivalent to if you took, let's say, for example, one of these giant cobra knives and you connected it to an electric outlet and you started cutting up your body—that's the type of pain. It was the most horrendous possible pain you could imagine. And it wouldn't stop. They kept giving me more and more painkillers, all types of different drugs. My body rejected them, and they just wouldn't work. And the pain just wouldn't stop. Eventually, after a few hours of this, they told my wife that... They gave me the most amount of morphine legally allowed, which would kill most people, and they said if it doesn't work, there's nothing else we can do for him. Baruch Hashem, it worked. It calmed my body down. We went home thinking that this was a hiccup. We thought, "It's gone now. It's finished." Little did we know that 45 minutes after I fell asleep, I would wake up with much worse pain.

41:26But this time, it wouldn't stop for 62 days. And when you have that kind of pain for such an extraordinarily long amount of time, obviously, you're not able to sleep. You're not able to function. You're not able to eat. You're not able to live. All you really want to do is die. You just want the pain to end. My body started failing, my eyes started bleeding, and my ear started becoming infected. Everything was dying, pretty much, but just really, really slow and vicious, like some of the things you may read in the Gemara about slow and vicious death. That was pretty much happening to me. It was like my own version of Gehinnom in this world after those 62 days. The pain started subsiding to some extent, started slowing down a little bit. It was pain for three-quarters of the day instead of the entire day. I had to take fewer painkillers, but little by little I was going back to myself, thinking, oh, Baruch Hashem, I have a second chance at life. I was excited that the pain was over, at least what it was. It was level 100, now it's level 75, and then 60, and then 50, and then, you know, so little by little it was getting back to normal.

42:41Excited to go back to my life, I didn't really care about money because, obviously, the money that I had—millions and millions of dollars—became worthless when I had all the pain because the money couldn't solve any of the problems. I thought I was going back to life, but nine months later, I had a pain in the back of my leg that was getting worse and worse by the minute. I had to go to the emergency room, and the emergency room told me that I have an infection called an abscess and... is on the verge of exploding between a muscle, the leg muscle, and the rectal muscle, and if it does, it will most likely go into my bloodstream, and I would die. So, I have to have an emergency surgery, which is not going to be an easy surgery. Long story short, this surgery is worse than the first one, and this time I have to stay in the intensive care unit next to a bunch of people that are half-dead or dying for the next two weeks. We have the surgery, a lot of pain. Very, very difficult recovery. Long story short, after a month of this, I'm back in my house. I'm back to work. I'm thinking I'm back to life. Is the maneh valuable yet? Still not. Six months later, I thought I would get back to life. Six months later, I have another pain on a different leg and...

44:06Only have two legs. One on the right, one on the left. The first one hurt. I had the surgery. Now it's the left one. I have to have another surgery. Another recovery. Another nightmare. Another pain. Finished. Go home. Recover. Thinking it's over. Okay, now it's already been a year and a half of this nightmare. I'm thinking it's over now. Go back to my life. I'm losing money also in the market because I can't work as much and so on and so forth. But I'm thinking, who cares? Let me just get back to normal life, stop having pain. I'm living on painkillers. I'm in a lot of pain all the time. I have to go to doctors left and right. So after the second surgery or third surgery, I think it's okay. Three months later, as you noticed, the time span between surgeries keeps getting shorter and shorter. Three months later, another surgery, another recovery, and... month later, and then again after another month, and then it continues every single month. And then it gets to a point where I have to literally go to doctors every week, sometimes three, four, or five times a week. I got to a point where I became part of an experiment. They wanted to experiment on my body to see what was wrong with it because none of the doctors could diagnose it and...

45:25Over 50 different doctors, different types of doctors, traditional medicine, holistic medicine, medicine we've heard of, medicine we hadn't heard of. It didn't make a difference. I had plenty of money, so I figured I could buy the best medicine that could cure this. The problem is that in order to cure something, you have to have a diagnosis. There was no diagnosis. And the reason why is because the sickness continued deteriorating. Started with just a simple surgery to an abscess. Now I have pain in my body from my neck all the way to the bottom of my feet for absolutely no reason whatsoever, 24 hours a day. Is the money valuable at this point? Still no. So you live in pain 24 hours a day. The only thing that keeps you somewhat sane is the few moments of no pain here and there, and... But every month you have to have surgery. Every month you have to see plenty of doctors who themselves have no hope. Now, I start losing my money—the money I thought I had that was valuable. The market starts going down. The investments that I had start going in the opposite direction. The business that was once worth 40 million dollars is cut in half as far as value overnight, and then eventually becomes worthless.

46:46Friends that I thought I had become enemies. They start stealing whatever is left because all they cared about was also money. And little by little, HaKadosh Baruch Hu showed me another version of this pasuk: "Yomam va’lailah lo tishbotu" (day and night shall not cease). Since I was not following the brit, not yom and not lailah, I was not following the Torah and... not morning and not night. I wasn't born like you guys. I didn't go to yeshivot. I kept whatever I felt was rational, whatever made sense to me. And Hashem has mercy on us. Initially, He gives us small tests to see if He can get our attention. If we don't do teshuva, He gives us bigger tests. If we still don't do teshuva, He gives us even bigger tests. Depending on the purpose of that person's goal in life, Hashem will decide what to do with it. Some people He takes away from the world; some people He gives bigger tests until they break. But this pain, this test, this nightmare continued for seven years. It wasn't a month; it wasn't two months; it wasn't a year. It wasn't a bad two years.

48:05It wasn't a year. It wasn't a bad two years. And it literally got to a point where every single penny that I had was gone. My health was gone. All the friends were gone. Everything was gone. The only thing that was left was my wife. That's it. But along the way, I started realizing that all of these doctors, these 50-plus doctors that I went through, all had the same answer. They didn't know what was wrong. So I knew there's only one Doctor left that can fix it. And that's the only doctor I believed in: God. I was limited. I didn't know much, but I knew that there is a God. I knew that He's the God of Israel. I knew the Torah existed. I just didn't follow it. I said, okay, so let's see, maybe this God is not like the Greeks said, where He doesn't care. Maybe He does care. So I started looking into it here and there, but still nothing serious. One day, my mom calls Israel to try to see if she can get a blessing from rabbis in Israel for our dying son.

49:10After two hours of calling, nobody answers the phone. She eventually reaches a phone number, and a woman answers. The woman says, "How can I help you?" She says, "I'm looking for Rabbi so-and-so," whatever the rabbi's name was. The woman says in Hebrew, "I'm sorry. It's the wrong phone number." So, after two hours of calling desperately, she finally gets to a person, and the person that answers says she dialed the wrong phone number. It's very discouraging, to say the least. My mom starts crying, and Hashem performs a miracle, and the one person she called actually ends up being a person that knows her. Not only does she know her, but she is the only person that could help. The woman on the other side of the phone recognizes my mom's voice and says, "Doris, what's her name?" She says, "Who are you? How do you know my name?" She says, "Well, I'm your niece, Penina. Why are you crying?" She goes, "How did I reach you? How did I reach you? I don't have your phone number. We've never spoken on the phone." the one person she called actually ends up being a person who knows her, and not only knows her but is the only person who could help. The woman on the other side of the phone recognizes my mom's voice and says, "Doris, what's wrong?" My mom responds, "Who are you? How do you know my name?" She answers, "Well, I'm your niece, Penina. Why are you crying?" My mom then asks, "How did I reach you? How did I reach you? I don't have your phone number. We've never spoken on the phone."

50:08They weren't close. How did you know, first of all? How did you recognize her voice? I mean, usually, if your friends call you every day, or you know, often you recognize their voice when they call. You don't have to say who they are. But if you've never spoken to somebody on the phone, and now the first time they're talking to you, you recognize their voice—that already by itself is a miracle. On top of it, she cares, says, "Why are you crying?" Now, says, "What's wrong? My son is dying," and so on and so forth, meaning me. He says, "Well, if you're looking for a rabbi, why don't you call my brother, Rabbi Ephraim? He's connected to Rabbi Ovadia, zt"l, at the time he was alive, Baruch Hashem, and maybe he can connect you to him. Maybe he can help you himself. He's a big talmid chacham." So she calls Rabbi Ephraim, and Rabbi Ephraim was very, very smart and got straight to the point. He says to my mom, "Well, he and I have never met. I didn't actually even know he existed." so she asked to speak to Ephraim. He asked my mom, "What can I speak to him about? Does he speak Hebrew?" She said, "Yes, he speaks Hebrew, but I don't think he wants to talk to you because he doesn't want to talk to anybody. He's in a lot of pain; he's suffering." And at that very moment, true siyata dishmaya happened, and I decided to call my mom on the other line.

51:27My mom is crying hysterically on the line. I don't know about this conversation, this whole story. I just told you I don't know this happened. I don't know that she's been calling people for the last two hours. I don't know that she's been talking to her friend for the last 20 minutes. I don't know any of this. All I know is I'm calling my mom to say hello for the first time in a long time, and my mom is crying and says, "Talk to him, talk to him," and I have no idea who she's talking about. I said, "Who am I talking to and why are you crying?" She said, "Talk to Ephraim." I said, "Who's Ephraim and why is he making you cry?" No, no, he's your cousin. He's a rabbi. I said, okay, if you stop crying, I'll talk to him. Just stop crying. So, Rabbi Ephraim calls me, and, you know, we start talking, and I tell him I have pain about this, I have pain about that. He asks, do you like stories? I said, yeah, I like stories. He says, have you ever heard the story of Judah and Tamar? The story from this parsha of Vayeishev? I said, no, I never heard the story of Judah and Tamar. What's the story of Judah and Tamar? He tells me the story of Judah and Tamar. And I asked him, how come Hashem did this? Why did Hashem make this whole balagan between Judah and Tamar to make him think that he's with one woman, but really he's with another, and it ends up being Tamar, tzadeket, and from there comes the Mashiach. Why did Hashem do all of this? He says, because sometimes if people knew

52:48significant. If Hashem would have told Yehuda what's about to happen, it would be different, would have been different. Tamar knew, but Yehuda did not know. If Yehuda would have known, it would have been different. In fact, if Yehuda would have known, it would have opened up the door for the Yetzer Hara, the Satan, the Malach HaMavet to interfere. And if you notice throughout all of the generations, the story of the Mashiach, whether it's the story of Lot or... significant. If Hashem would have told Yehuda what's about to happen, it would be different, would have been different. Tamar knew, but Yehuda did not know. If Yehuda would have known, it would have been different. In fact, if Yehuda would have known, it would have opened up the door for the Yetzer Hara, the Satan, the Malach HaMavet to interfere. And if you notice, throughout all of the generations, the story of the Mashiach, whether it's the story of Lot or

53:49With his own daughters, or it's Yehuda and Tamar, or it's David HaMelech and Batsheva, all of the stories that are connected to the Mashiach are always weird, always strange, always not really normal. Why? Because if we knew the significance of what's about to take place, it would be too much for us to handle. Now, chavraya, I'm sure you have some questions, but the point I'm trying to tell you is to finish it off with this: I... I discovered the Torah and I started learning with love. At first, we learned for an hour and a half, then two hours, then three hours, then seven hours, and so on and so forth. Little by little, I became addicted to the Torah. It wasn't because the Torah was paying my bills. No, it wasn't. It wasn't because somebody showed up at my house and said, "Hello, sir. Yeah, you're learning Torah today? Okay, here's a check for $10,000. Good luck." Wasn't it was actually quite the opposite. Whatever I had left, whatever few million dollars I had left after losing so many millions, that also went away. I lost the rest of it, too. I lost the rest of whatever I had, the millions and millions and millions of dollars, and whatever I had after I started learning Torah. I figured, oh, I

55:07I'm keeping all these different things now. It's gonna go a little better. I'm gonna get more. I'm gonna get all the money back. Absolutely not, absolutely not. Quite the opposite. I lost everything else. I After the day that I lost the last few hundred thousand at 9:30 in the morning, I had a few hundred thousand in the account, and by 9:35 it was gone. The investment went bad; it disappeared literally. a matter of moments, but already at that point, a few years into it, I was already starting to teach Torah, and I already understood the value of Torah. So I shut off the computer and went back to studying Torah because I had to teach a shiur later that night, and I cared less about the money. Why? Because Hashem gave, Hashem took, may His name be blessed. At that moment, I understood what the Torah actually meant.

56:09Torah wasn't just a book to tell you stories. The Torah wasn't just a book to tell you laws. The Torah was literally the living being of this world; it kept this world alive. As long as you are part of it, you're part of the energy that's keeping the world alive. It's much more significant than any money you could ever make. It's much more significant than any job you could ever attain. And... And I'm not telling you this because I don't know the value of money. I'm not telling you this because I don't know the value of anything else. I'm telling you because I do. I had it. The only reason I'm sitting here with you, and Baruch Hashem, several times a week I give lectures, and as you noticed, I'm perfectly healthy, Baruch Hashem. It wasn't because of doctors. No doctor still knows what happened. If you look at my medical file, it's about five feet thick. So it's taller than this. It's about five feet thick. You can't even carry it anymore. I have to have cabinets to put all the medical files. But now, today, you don't use that stuff. You just send it to people via email. So anytime I would go to a doctor, I would send him this huge drive of all these medical files, and then I would show up to the doctor. And the doctor would look at the file, and look at me, and look at the file, and look at me. He's like, "No, no, I'm sorry, wrong patient. One second, I'll be right back." He'd think I'm the wrong guy.

57:35There's no way it matches the guy that's on this file. The guy that's in front of him is perfectly healthy. It doesn't make sense. That's the point. It's not supposed to make sense. Hashem makes sense. If you understood that when you learn Torah, you're keeping the world alive, it's easy to become sameach bechelko. Become happy with your share because your share is being a partner and keeping the world alive. That's what kept Rav Ovadia through all the struggles. That's what kept Rav Chaim Kanievsky, Rabbi Akiva, and all of the stories. I'm sure you guys heard the story about Rabbi Akiva when they were very, very poor before he became Rabbi Akiva and... And Rachel, one day, out of all the 24 years, complained a little bit. She was upset. Why? The only thing they owned was straw. The only thing they owned was a little straw. That's it. So Hashem had mercy on them and sent Eliyahu HaNavi, who pretended to be even more homeless than them. He pretended to be a poor person and knocked on their door, "Hello," and...

58:54Yes, how can I help you? All they have is straw. They don't have any money. They don't have any food. They don't have anything. All they have is straw. A little poor man knocks on their door. "Hello, hello. Please, how can I help you? Please, please, I need your help. We just had a baby, and we don't have anything. Can we have some straw? We need some straw so we can put the baby in the straw to protect the baby." "Yes, of course, we have some straw. Baruch Hashem, we can give you some straw." They give him the straw. Now, they feel rich, having given the straw. They give them all the straw. "Good, good luck to you." And then they feel happy with themselves. But let me ask you a question. Couldn't Hashem just send a check for a million bucks and that's it, solve the problem? Why does He send a homeless guy asking for straw? What's the pshat? Why can't He just give him a check for a million bucks? Why, is it hard for Hashem to send a million dollars? It's because of this Mishnah.

59:56He would have sent a million dollars or two million or five million or ten million. Eventually, it wouldn't have been enough. It wouldn't have solved the problem. It wouldn't have made him happy with his share. Why? Because there's always someone that has more and... there's always gonna be someone that has more. The Gemara says you give someone 100, he wants 200. You give him 200, he wants 400. You give him 400, he wants 800. Your natural evil inclination will always want more than what you have. And the reason why Hashem gave it to you is so you use that same inclination to want more Torah. But, if He gave him the ability to see that he's not so bad because there's someone worse than him, There's someone that doesn't even have straw. He says, "Ah, Baruch Hashem, whatever we have, this is for the good too." There's someone that's always worse off than us; that solved the problem permanently. A million dollars would have solved the problem for a little while, and eventually it wouldn't have solved the problem. Eventually, you would have wanted more. But to know that someone actually has less than you makes you appreciate what you have today. So this is, my friends, what all of us need to understand.

1:01:12To be a talmid chacham, some will achieve it, some may not. Hashem decides who to give chochmah to. But how does He decide? He wrote it in Mishlei, in Mishlei Shlomo HaMelech, chapter 2, the first six verses. It says, My child, if you accept my words and treasure my commandments with yourself, to make your ears attentive to wisdom, incline your heart to understanding, for only if you call out to understanding and give forth your voice to discernment, if you seek it as if it were silver, if you search for it as if it were hidden treasures, then you'll understand the fear of Hashem and discover the knowledge of God. In so many words, Shlomo HaMelech, the wisest man of all time, is giving us through Ruach HaKodesh, or through prophecy, what Hashem's message is to us. You want to be a Talmid Chacham? You want to be a true partner to creation? Seek Torah like you would seek silver, meaning kesef, money. Seek Torah like it's the greatest treasure in the world, because it is. It doesn't matter what you understand right now.

1:02:31You don't get paid from Hashem based on your understanding. You get paid from Hashem based on your effort, based on your toil. There's a very famous story, and then I'll ask you, and then you guys can ask whatever questions you have. It's a very famous story. There was a regular, average young guy like you guys. He was learning. One day, there was a guy that hated him in the yeshiva, mamash. And he decided to set him up. Set him up and he told the Arab cleaning lady who worked in the yeshiva, "Listen, I'll give you $10,000." He was very rich. "I'll give you $10,000 to tell everyone that he did something inappropriate with you." $10,000, why not? She doesn't care about a Jew. So that's what she said. The next day, big balagan, breaking news in the yeshiva. "This guy did this, this guy did that." Shame and a chilul Hashem. Big balagan, big chilul Hashem. The Rosh Yeshiva comes to the student and says, "Listen, I know you didn't do it. I know you, I know you for years. You're not the biggest talmid chacham here."

1:03:43You're not a shoteh, one thing for sure. I know you didn't do what they say you did, but everyone thinks you did. So, I think it's best for you to just go. Go to a different yeshiva in a different city. I'll tell you where to go. You go over there. Once things calm down over here, in a year, two years, three years, whenever they forget this story, I'll send you a letter and you'll come back. So, don't kick and just leave quietly. He goes to another city. A year passes by. One day, this Arab lady, she gets a bad feeling. You know, she feels bad. What happened? The guy was kicked out of yeshiva. So she starts asking about, where did he go? Where did this guy go? Like, oh, he went to yeshiva so-and-so, a different city, different place. She decided, I'm going to go find him. She goes and she finds him. And she says, "Listen, I'm really sorry."

1:04:43What I did to you, I know it's not true. The guy paid me $10,000, and I was struggling. I didn't have any money. I had to do something, and he offered it at the right time, at the right place. But I feel bad now. It ruined your whole life. It ruined this, it ruined that. Listen, if you're willing to tell, at least say a nice word for me to the rabbi. I'm willing to admit that the whole thing I said is completely fake. Just tell him not to fire me. It's a good enough deal. Get back his reputation, get back his life. It's a good deal. He gets up out of the chair, and then he sits down again because no, I'm not interested. Thank you very much for your offer, but you can just go back to your life. Don't worry about it. It's fine. Why? Why not? He goes, no, it's okay. It's fine. It's fine. Why? Why not? Why not? Why don't you want me to clear up your name? He says, listen, when you did what you did, obviously it's wrong. didn't do it, and you ruined my reputation. Everyone thinks I did all these nasty things. I mean, I understand it's wrong, and I didn't do it, but because I'm a Yid, because I'm a Jew, it became the name of Hashem. So now if I go back, it's going to uncover the story again. But now, not only did I not do it—which is good for me—

1:06:09But then they're going to say, "Wow, another Jew is the one that paid her off to lie and to sabotage another Jew." What happens? Another Chilul Hashem. And for me to clear up my name and violate Hashem's name, desecrate Hashem's name for another second, it's not worth it. Why? The only reason I'm studying, the only reason I'm learning Torah is Because it's pretty sweet, Hashem. It's the deal between me and Hashem. So how could I go protect my own name, care about my own name at all, and go violate His name? Not interested. And years later, when he told the story to students, he said, "Before that day, I was a very average student, even below average, and..." But after I decided that Hashem's name is more important to me than my own name, Hashem opened up my mind and all of a sudden I understood everything. And some call him Sha'agat Aryeh, which is one of the Gedolei HaDor in previous generations. So the Chokhmah that you have right now, Baruch Hashem, it's good. What you can get to is based on Mesirut Nefesh.

1:07:30How do you get there? Understand the value of what you're doing. It's not just reading some books, some Gemara, some pilpulim, some halachot. It's not that, my friends. What's happening in the world today depends on you. Depends on you. What's happening in Yerushalayim, whether it's good or it's bad, Gog u'Magog, prophecies, good ones, bad ones, all of that stuff depends on Bnei Torah. All of it depends. The existence of the world depends upon it. Twice, not dependent on another millionaire in the world. If there's another millionaire in the world, nothing changes. You're not going to impact the world by having more money. Right now, you have nothing. Let's say tomorrow you wake up and you have ten billion dollars in the bank. Nothing changes in the world. Nothing. So, are you going to buy more buildings? Big deal. Somebody else would have bought it if you weren't there. Keeps the world running is the very simple, very innocent, and very pure Torah that you learn day and night. Any questions? That's the way of a king. It's not a matter of need; it's a matter of this is the way of a king. So, for example, a king—if a king had a single enemy, or better yet, if a king needed to clean his room...

1:08:55The room gets dirty. Now, is it appropriate for a king to clean his own room? No. He's the king. It's not the way of a king. So what does he do? He has servants that clean the room. It's not that he can't clean the room. He can clean the room, no problem. It's not that he can't cook and clean. It's not that he can't do anything. It's that it's not the way of a king. A king has servants, by definition. That's one of the things about being a king. If you're a king, but you have no servants, no people, no nothing, then you're not really a king. You're just a crazy person. Understand, so the way of a king is to have servants, and that's one of the things that we also learn from Parashat Bereishit when Hashem says, "Let us create man in our image." When it says, "our image," that's when Moshe Rabbeinu asked Hashem, "Why are you saying 'our image'? It makes people think there's more than one God." No, we write it there because I want Am Yisrael to know that I consider my servants, whether they're people or they're my angels, which I control—all of them. I still consider their opinion. I still consider their worth. Why? I created them. They're my creation. So, He doesn't need any of us. He doesn't need the angels, He doesn't need the people, He doesn't need anything. But still, it is not the way of a king to be alone.

1:10:15kid 24 hours a day, 24 hours a day, 24 hours a day in pain. I mean, sometimes the pain would subside and it would be painful but not to the point of screaming. Then I would get something called like shooting pains, so it's like the shooting pains would be in different parts of my body and it would be the equivalent of getting electrocuted, so you would start seeing me shake uncontrollably. It was very, very uncomfortable for other people to see me. I became a little anti-social, not because I didn't like people, but because I didn't like the looks on their faces when they saw me. It's already uncomfortable to be in pain, but to see other people react to you being in pain is very, very uncomfortable. It makes you very uncomfortable, so I started seeing fewer and fewer people. and really only went to the places that I had to go to. For example, we used to go, even though we didn't really keep Shabbat, to my parents' house for a Friday night meal, and I stopped going. The reason why is because this episode would happen all the time. I would be in a lot of pain, I’d start shaking uncontrollably, I’d start screaming sometimes from pain, and it would be uncomfortable to see their, you know, their faces and sometimes their tears.

1:11:35You know, seeing me suffer. So it was a very, very long and difficult journey, but the best things that happened to me. As far as the pain from originally or the pain after the fact, after the fact, they don't know. After the fact, over 50 different doctors of the best doctors in the least in the United States and... could not figure it out because it would come in different parts of the body. Sometimes it would be the bottom of my feet, sometimes it would be my legs, sometimes it would be my arm, sometimes it would be my chest, different parts of the body, sometimes even my rectum. Different parts of the body that are completely not connected, not to the original surgery or any other surgery, but something would happen and would create a shooting pain. different parts and also my body started changing. For about a year and a half, I wasn't able to walk. My feet swelled up and my legs swelled up and doubled in size. Again, no one knew why, no one understood why, no one could explain it. It was a very, very strange episode because no one could diagnose it, and even until this day, no one can diagnose it.

1:12:56No, not cancer. Cancer is very, very different. Cancer you can identify because there's a cell that grows drastically, and you can see it. Here it is just pure pain with no source or reason. Whereas with cancer, you see the source of everything. And cancer doesn't necessarily hurt. How many years ago? It started in 2006, so 11 years ago, and it continued for a little over seven years, until 2013. So we're in 2017 now. Well, I mean, it stopped gradually. It didn't stop all at once. It stopped gradually, little by little, you know, just like it went from no surgeries to surgeries every month. after I, the more I got glued to the Torah and learning, the pain continued, the money loss continued, but I had happiness, I had pleasure, and the pain subsided. Along with that, it didn't matter to me as much. I was getting enough pleasure from learning that even when I did have pain, it didn't affect me psychologically to the same extent, and

1:14:16The biggest difficulty with pain or with sickness in general, more so than the physical aspect of it, is the mental aspect of it. It's much more difficult to survive mentally than physically. And the reason why is because we're programmed in a way where our Yetzer Hara tells us that whatever we're at right now is permanent. So if you're having a good time, you're thinking that the good time is going to last forever. If you're rich, you're thinking you're going to be rich forever. If you're depressed, you think you're going to be depressed forever. If you're sick, you feel like you're going to be sick forever. And so on and so forth. Our Yetzer Hara programs us to think that whatever feeling we have is permanent. That's why people get depressed after, let's say, a bad breakup or a divorce or a... They lost money or all types of things, and they get so depressed they kill themselves. The reason why is because they feel like the negative feeling they have at that moment is never going to go away. But that couldn't be further from the truth. Whatever you have right now is temporary. Everything is temporary. Everything. Everything is temporary. Nothing is not temporary. So the yetzer hara tells you it's not temporary. So once I realized that it is temporary, on top of the fact that I knew that the Torah actually discusses it and there is a value to it, it calmed me down. And I was able to deal with the mental battle better.

1:15:41Physical is still difficult, but little by little, the physical aspect of it started improving. Now, instead of surgeries every month, it would be every six months, and then it started being a little longer, and then it just stopped. I still have some pain here and there, but if you compare the pain that I have today versus a few years ago, I mean it's 1% of what it used to be. But the 1% that I have is still a lot sometimes. But again, that's because you don't understand what I actually had several years ago. Like sometimes I'll get pain where I'm not able to really do much. I have to, like, sit down and wait for the pain to go away for a few hours. But that's still absolutely nothing. Really nothing, nothing in comparison to what it was then. Back then, it was literally screaming and yelling 24 hours a day. It's not something that's comparable. I can't compare it to anything else. Baruch Hashem, none of you understand what I really mean, and none of you will ever understand what I mean. Only a few understand it who saw it, but even they can't understand it because the only way you can understand it is by feeling it. So it's what I needed.

1:16:52And Hashem obviously knows best. And it's the best thing that ever happened to me. Losing the money, getting sick, all the pain, all of that is the best thing that ever happened to me. And the reason why is because all of what I thought was good that I had—the material good that I had, whether it was money, friends, company, recognition, fame—all of that was worthless. At the time of need, it was worthless, and even at the time I didn't need it, it was worthless. And the reason why? I didn't have the good, happy feeling I have now. Happiness is not something you can write a check for. Fulfillment is something you can't write a check for. There's no price for it. You can't feel like you're really part of anything significant. It's beyond you without being connected to Hashem. And that's what people don't understand. People think that they need money in order to serve Hashem. They think they need money in order to do good in life. In reality, you don't need anything. Hashem will pay your bills one way or another. And you don't need to work if you don't want to. If you want to learn Torah, Hashem will pay your bills without working. But again, that also depends on your emunah. My point today is to tell you guys that what you're doing right now, what you're doing tomorrow morning, what you're doing the next day, the learning Torah that you think is meaningless, that you think is okay, and even if you think it's meaningful, you definitely didn't think it's keeping the world going—that's what it's doing.

1:18:12That's my point. My point is that most people who learn Torah, even though they learn Torah, still don't understand how significant it is. They just think it's tradition, it's because their parents sent them there, or it's because it's good to do, or maybe it'll give you a good feeling inside. No, no, it's much, much more significant than that. Yeah? Yeah, but it also kills you at the same time. chemotherapy is not necessarily a cure. It, in essence, kills all the good and the bad in your body with the hope that there's going to be enough good that survives to rebuild. But that's only for cancer patients, not just for nothing. You don't just do it for no reason. But I don't need it, so it's not something that's applicable. Yeah? How do you build a mentality to think that God is like a jewel and everything, uh, the way to do it is that you have to learn mussar. Most people learn about halachot, and they know what to do. Sometimes they'll learn about the story of Israel, and they learn about what happened and what other people did. But very few understand the purpose behind all of it.

1:19:39The purpose behind all of it—all of the halachot, all of the stories, all of the sipurim of tzadikim—all of these things, the purpose of all of it is to perfect you, to make you the best version of yourself possible. And the way you become a perfect you, the way that each one of you becomes a perfect version of yourself, is by getting closer to Hashem. How do you get closer to Hashem? By fixing your middot. In the Shemoneh Perakim by the Rambam in... It's, I believe, chapter 7. He says, what's the difference between all of the prophets and Moshe Rabbeinu? Now, the very simple pshat, the very simple thing that everyone knows, is that Moshe Rabbeinu is the only one that spoke to Hashem face to face, meaning he was awake. While all the other prophets were either sleeping, meditating, or in some altered state, but they weren't awake. They weren't like you and I, standing up and talking.

1:20:39Moshe spoke to Hashem like you and I are talking, at any moment. That's why he had to leave his wife. He had to be pure at all times. The point being, Hashem could talk to Moshe whenever He wanted. Moshe could talk to Hashem whenever he wanted. Free conversation, as if they were next to each other all the time. Everyone else, including Avot HaKedoshim, Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, and all the other prophets, whether it's Iyov, Yechezkel, Yeshayahu, anyone else, had to go through a process. to go to sleep, to meditate, to do different things to talk to Hashem. So the Rambam asks, why? Why is there a difference? The answer is that the level of prophecy that Moshe Rabbeinu had was much more significant. If you look at the five books of Moses, the Chumash, Pretty clear there's obviously a lot of secrets behind it, but the language itself when you read the five books of Moses, the Chumash, is relatively simple to understand. It's not rocket science like some of the other books that are very difficult to understand. For example, you read the prophet Ezekiel and how he describes the Maaseh Merkavah, all these Malachim and what they do in Shamayim. It's very, very difficult to understand.

1:21:57Very different language. The description that he gives is hard to understand. Same thing with Isaiah. Same thing with everyone else. But Moshe Rabbeinu, the Five Books of Moses, you could pretty much not have to be a talmid chacham to understand the basics. Right, no, all of it is prophecy. Every word is prophecy, just different levels of prophecy. But the point is that what Moshe Rabbeinu prophesied or said is relevant. It's much clearer language. The way he spoke to Hashem was a much clearer type of prophecy. So the Rambam asked, why? Why is Moshe so different from everyone else? The answer is, Moshe perfected his middot. Each time you have a bad character trait, it's like putting a wall between you and Hashem. If someone is angry, they have a wall of anger between them and Hashem. If someone is angry and stingy, they're cheap, there's two walls between them and Hashem. If someone is angry, stingy, and also egotistical, it's another wall between them and Hashem. And every bad character trait is another wall between them and Hashem.

1:23:16So all of the prophets were all kedoshim and they perfected themselves to a very high level, but not perfect. Moshe, according to the Rambam, perfected his middot, his character traits, to such an extent that the only thing separating him and Hashem was the equivalent of a glass wall, meaning you could see through it. Nothing. That's why he felt confident to say to Hashem, "Hashem, show me, show me." Show me everything. Why? There's nothing between us. Hashem says, "You can't see My face and live." Why? Because you're still a human being. If I show you everything, I can't show it to you in this body. But you can see as much as anyone else is ever going to see. Why? Because you've perfected your middot. So, Moshe was very anav, very humble. So how could he dare ask Hashem to show him His kavod, to show him everything? Because he knew he deserved it. He knew he perfected his middot.

1:24:18He got to the highest level. Hashem says, "You're gonna get this. What you're seeing right now is the highest anyone is ever gonna see. No one's ever gonna see as much prophecy with that level of clarity like you." So, each time the other prophets spoke to Hashem, it was lower. Why? They didn't perfect their middot like Moshe. Lehavdil to us, we're very far from that point. The point is that when you perfect your middot, you're breaking these walls. Every time you perfect your middot, each time you work on your middot, whether you have anger issues, stinginess issues, laziness, or whatever bad traits you may have (and everyone has at least one or two), every time you work on it and get better, you are actually eliminating a separation between you and Hashem. The less separation, the more you can feel Him both spiritually and physically and... spiritually and physically you can get to such an extent where, when you learn Torah—and this is true, I'm not just telling you a story, I'm telling you 100%—you can get to a point where you learn Torah and actually get a physical reaction from it. Not just learn Torah and it feels good, or it's nice, or you know a lot, no, I don't mean that.

1:25:39I mean, you learn Torah on a high level and you can feel a physical reaction where your whole body becomes numb and all types of wonderful things that I can't even explain to you. You can get a physical reaction from Torah study. That's Torah. You can't get that from math, science, history, or any of the other secular subjects. So when you start learning Mussar, each time you learn Mussar, Remind you of different middot you have to work on. Remind you of a different character trait you have to work on. You start thinking about how to fix it. You start fixing this character trait. You're breaking the wall that's separating you and Hashem. You break the wall between you and Hashem. There's a reaction. There's a connection. Something happens. Something happens, and that's what I would recommend to every single person if you're not learning Mussar already now. Learn at least, at least a half hour of Mussar a day, if not an hour or two. Learn as much as you can, but at the very least, you should learn a half hour of Mussar a day. But learning Mussar is not like learning Halakhot where you read it passively.

1:26:52You just read it just to see what it says. Learning Mussar, you can learn just one little tiny paragraph for five hours. Why? Because you're meditating on what it says. What does it mean to be angry? How am I angry today? You start asking yourself, why am I angry? Oh, why did I get angry? You start thinking about what it actually says. It's not like Halakha, just to know what to do. Don't be angry. Okay, finished. No, it's not that. Learning Mussar is trying to think about how it's applicable to you and how you could use it. Because each time you use it, just imagine there's a wall that was broken that's separating you and Hashem. Another wall, another wall, another wall, another wall. And little by little, you're going to see that the Torah that you have changes drastically. You'll have a much bigger understanding. You'll have much bigger enjoyment. And ultimately, you'll serve Hashem on a much higher level, where you'll realize that you really are a partner in this whole world moving. Realizing there's much more significance to you being 15, 16, 17, 18 years old—whatever it is—just learning in a kollel and no one sees, no one knows you exist. You didn't write any books. You didn't write anything. Sheim. What's the difference? There's a big difference. It's a big difference. You learning right now, you're keeping the world alive, and I'm not saying this to toot your own horn. I'm telling you 100%. That's why I left Wall Street. That's why instead of going back now that I'm healthy, I don’t go back to make millions. I don’t go back to make all the money.

1:28:20Only, I don't go back. I run away from it. I don't listen to the news; I don't care about it. I care less about all of it. All I do is what I'm doing right now. I learn; I teach; that's it. Why? It's much more significant. And how do I pay the bills? Hashem sends these miracles every month. Every month, somehow, money shows up. Different people donate, different people send, different people help. Hashem sends the money. So yes, it does work. It does work. You learn Torah, you do the will of Hashem, and money does show up. You have to do it as much as possible. Not just sometimes. Again, it depends on what you're doing. If you're learning all day and all night, that is your job. If you're learning two hours a day, not necessarily a Rebbe. If you're learning all day and all night, you should obviously learn to teach. Masechet Avodah Zarah and Says that page 17 says if someone learns without an intention to teach, it's like someone who doesn't have a God, meaning that your purpose of learning should be to ultimately teach. It may not necessarily be to teach right now, but at a future date, you need to teach. As a rabbi in a kollel or a yeshiva, or to give lectures or divrei Torah to different people, the point is you're supposed to teach at some point. Teach your kids, teach your wife, teach yourself, and...

1:29:44You have to teach. Now, to be a full-time Torah scholar at all times is not necessarily for everyone, but everyone can do it. It's not for everyone, but everyone can do it. All of you can do it. But not everyone is going to do it, and the reason why is because some people have a connection to material and they must work somewhat, and that's fine. The most important thing is to understand that the Torah part of your life, however much it is, that's what's keeping the world going, not the money you're making. It doesn't matter if you give in tzedakah, it doesn't matter if you're rich, it doesn't matter if you are just surviving. It doesn't make a difference. The part that's keeping the world alive is the Torah part. It's not anything else and... Anything else? Okay.

1:30:48So the thing is to understand, we actually learned this a couple of weeks ago. I mean, as far as the Avodah, it's not referring to Avodah like going to work in a supermarket or to work on Wall Street. The Avodah it's talking about is prayer, praying to Hashem. It's not Avodah like work; Avodah, it's Avodat Hashem. It's praying to Hashem. So the Torah is fulfilling, it's learning the Torah, toiling in Torah, finding the Chidushim in Torah. Avodah is to pray to Hashem to connect to Hashem, and gemilut chasadim is to share it with the world. So, to just learn by itself, just for your own sake, is selfish. So, that's not what you're supposed to do. To just pray and not do anything about it is also not good because you have to learn what to do and how to do it. To just be kind to everybody else and not know how to be kind, not know the rules of kindness, also doesn't work. So, all of them come together. You have to know all of them; you have to know the Torah. The Torah is the part that gives you the instruction of how to do everything else and...

1:31:52Now again, it doesn't necessarily mean that working and making money is a bad thing. It just means that we need more people that are actually going to be partners with Hashem, giving Him an excuse to keep this world going. We need many more talmidei yeshiva than we need millionaires. You know, and everyone claims, "Oh listen, once I'm a millionaire, I'm going to pay for the yeshiva." Reality of it is that, yes, today you mean it, but once you have the millions, you don't always mean it. It doesn't always work out that way. Why? Because the answer of today is not the same yet. So that's gonna have, it's gonna be there when you have the million. But again, right now the most significant thing that all of you should take from this is that what you're doing is extraordinary. Learning doesn't seem like it's extraordinary; it seems like it's routine, like every day. We're a big deal. I pass a test, I fail a test. I learn, I don't learn. I read a page, I don't read a page. I finish the Shas, I don't finish the Shas. I finish another page, I don't finish another page. Who cares? In love with Hashem, Malka Shel Olam, who cares for us. Know something...

1:33:05Anything else? B'ezrat Hashem, this should be a little bit of encouragement for all of you to continue, not only the week, but overall this Hanukkah, to share it with your families, your friends, and in general, carry this forward. Because sometimes Torah gets difficult. The life of Torah is not easy. So a lot of people, you know, the Yetzer Hara is going to send you different messages. They're going to tell you to go the opposite. go in a different direction. So when you understand how significant, how significant what you're doing is, you realize that a lot of relying on it is much more valuable than anything else that you can possibly do or anything else that anybody else can do. Baruch Adonai le'olam. Amen ve'amen.