UNDERSTANDING GOD - MUSSAR Iggeret HaRAMBAN (12)

0:15some new faces, some old faces, and it's very good to see you guys. We can continue our Igeret HaRamban. I also have a present for you guys, which you will get at the end of the shiur. There's something that you should have in your wallet or in your pocket and carry with you. It's going to remind you of the six mitzvot in the Torah that you have to fulfill at all times, which is one of the things that we're going to discuss. And all of Am Yisrael, b'ezrat Hashem, will have refuah shlema, refuat hanefesh, refuat haguf.

1:15So, Baruch Hashem, we are only a few days away from Tisha B'Av. It's a very holy day that a lot of people take advantage of not only to fast, but to complain about fasting. But also, sometimes they actually watch Shiurim Torah. Sometimes they watch Shiurim Torah. But what I've noticed is that, at least in the last five, six years we've been doing zikui harabim, I've paid a lot more attention to lectures that other people do, and overall Orthodoxy in Judaism in general, much more than I did in my entire life. And I can tell you that the tone has changed. The tone of Tisha B'Av has changed, interestingly enough. where throughout all of the generations, for the last couple of thousand years, it's been a main day that technically you're supposed to cry hysterically. And if you did not cry on Tisha B'Av, you did not fulfill the mitzvah. You didn't fulfill the mitzvah. Why? If you didn't cry, what kind of teshuva did you really do? Do you understand what we lost? Do you understand what we had?

2:30What do you understand about Tisha B'Av other than the fact that you can't eat? What else do you understand? Oh, when's the fast going to be over? Okay, fine. But what else other than that? Oh, the shoes? What else other than that? The problem is, Rabbi Tal HaKelim, is that people have forgotten why we're fasting. And the tone has changed. What's changed? Over the last couple of thousand years, it's a... It was a minhag kavua to... read Megillat Eicha, Lamentations, and anyone that understands the words simply doesn't need to be a big chacham but will begin crying no later than by the third chapter once they start talking about how HaKadosh Baruch Hu punished His own children with such horrible, awful punishments that even on your enemies you wouldn't want to wish such a thing. But unfortunately, HaKadosh Baruch Hu, He doesn't have feelings like we do. He has reward, He has punishment, but it's not in the same measure as ours. So, when we violate the Torah, Hashem Yerachem Aleinu, Hashem Yerachem, when Hashem pretty much runs out of patience, if you will, and the Din is passed on the people,

3:47it's a very, very horrible thing. And for those that have read a few books about what happened during the Holocaust, you understand what I'm talking about. For those who did not, then you should. You should read about it because it will give you at least an inclination of what happened during Tisha B'Av a few times. And in fact, what happened on Tisha B'Av in the Beit HaMikdash, the first one, the second one, was actually worse than the Holocaust. Believe it or not. Now, when you read about it, you cry. You cry simply because, even if you don't know these people who lived a few thousand years ago, just the fact that they endured so much pain is hard to bear. It's hard for a human heart to bear such things. It's also hard to understand that we're also part of that equation because the Gemara says that any generation where the Beit HaMikdash was not built, it's as if it was destroyed. meaning that we today are responsible for the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash today. Now, for the last couple of thousand years, the tradition has been that you cry during this day and you do serious teshuva during this day. As the Gemara in Masechet Ta'anit, page 15a, says in the Mishnah there, that HaKadosh Baruch Hu is not interested in you ripping your clothes and wearing sacks.

5:14He says to the Prophet Yoel, tell them to stop ripping their clothes and wearing sacks. I'm not interested in their sacks and their ripping their clothes and their fasting. I'm interested in teshuva, I'm interested in them ripping their hearts. That's what He's interested in. What, do you think Hashem cares what your diet is? If you eat, you don't eat. Why does Hashem care about that? The point is to lower the materialism in order to connect to spirituality. So Tisha B'Av has been a notorious day for Am Yisrael to do teshuva, but what I've noticed over the last several years is that the tone has changed drastically. Instead of rebuking the people and trying to break their hearts a little bit and convince them to do teshuva, to return to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, our Father in Heaven, by fixing our rotten middot, by fixing all of the things that we took for granted by taking advantage of the free choice, if you will, that we have to such an extent that we actually start believing we can do whatever we want with no consequence. The tone has changed so much that today you'll notice, and I'm not a prophet or a son of a prophet.

6:27But I bet you anything, that on Sunday, you're going to turn on a few lectures. We're going to have our own lecture over here in the other location in the afternoon. The times I'll report later on. But you'll tune in, you'll tune in with a few lectures and a lot of speakers. And you'll hear a different type of tone. A tone that's relatively motivational. everyone's going to say, "Oh, we need to love each other. Klal Yisrael unity, you know? Just like the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash was due to baseless hatred, then it should be baseless love. You should just love any Jew you see. Love him, give him a hug. That's what you should do. Be motivated. You know, maybe start break dancing around the truck in the middle of the highway or something if you want." And you'll see how the lecture quickly turns into a motivational speech of how we're great and we're fantastic and we're this, and by the time the lecture is finished, there's not a single human being watching it that's thinking about an idea, maybe I need to fix something. Maybe I'm responsible, me, me, me, me, maybe I am responsible for destroying the Beit HaMikdash. The rest of you are tzaddikim. I'm the one responsible for the Beit HaMikdash.

7:29of how we're great and we're fantastic and we're this, and by the time the lecture is finished, there's not a single human being watching it that's thinking about an idea, maybe I need to fix something. Maybe I'm responsible, me, me, me, me, maybe I am responsible for destroying the Beit HaMikdash. The rest of you are tzaddikim. I'm the one responsible for the Beit HaMikdash. Not a single person is going to do that. Why? He's so motivated by the end of the lecture. He's like, I'm a tzaddik. You know what? Maybe I'm Mashiach. Maybe I'm supposed to bring everything. Like somebody sent me a mail yesterday. I told you guys, the quota is two Mashiachs per week. We went down for a little while. We were only at one per week. Now we're at two. We're at two again. The all-time high was three Mashiachs per week. We're sending emails. But for some reason, they're all broke. They all need money. of broke Mashiach. They really take this donkey thing seriously, so I need to, anyway, Rabotai. So Mashiach sends me a, uh, sends me a Facebook message and says, "Listen, I saw the Beit HaMikdash today, I saw the Beit HaMikdash today, but when I wanted to take a picture, it disappeared." A person really thinking that a Mashiach...

8:47does that really mean aside from people being crazy that's that's that's a that's a pshat what does it mean it means that our pride is so high that every one of us actually thinks we're Mashiach every one of us takes a little bit maybe even if you're a girl even if you're not Jewish even if you're like uh you're not even sure if you're human yet. You're a species, something. You're alive. I'm Mashiach. Why? We think so highly of ourselves that we don't think, what? Me, Mashiach, what? I kept Shabbat last week. Rabbi, I kept the whole Shabbat. I kept the whole Shabbat. I'm not Mashiach already. Anytime something wrong happens, we think, why did Hashem do this to me? Why did Hashem do this to me? And part of the reason is because Instead of doing teshuva on days like Tisha B'Av, we're being motivated. Motivated into a state of numbness, where we simply don't even think about teshuva, think that we need to fix anything, think that there's anything wrong. The most that the average Jew thinks there's something wrong is maybe the anti-Semitism that's happening in the neighborhood.

10:04maybe because they don't like the current political leaders or perhaps they don't like the tax rates in their town. That's what they think are the problems of Israel, and unfortunately, that's not the problem. The reality is, Rabotai, that when we learn about what our sages did during Tisha B'Av, we see that it's quite different from us. The sages would literally bring themselves to a state of mind where they lived during the destruction, during the mourning, as if they just found out that their children were killed, that their parents were killed. And they understood that their own insignificance Their own insignificance is contributing to the fact that the Mashiach has not come yet, to the fact that HaKadosh Baruch Hu has not brought the salvation. But the problem is today, Rabotai, is that unfortunately many of us have so much ga'avah, so much pride, that insignificance and ourselves are never in the same sentence. In fact, 9 out of 10 people that are going to hear this, you, are already offended.

11:31Rabbi, you call me insignificant? You call me insignificant? You know what I did last week? You know how much chassadim I did last week? You know how much tzedakah I gave? You know how much I did? Everybody has a report of everything they ever did in their life. Ready. It's like a to-do list on an iPhone or some phone that you have. There's all the things I did. Rabbi, what do you mean insignificant? You know how much of a tzaddik I am? I prayed three times yesterday. I even did Kriyat Shema al Hamitah. Al Hamitah, Rabbi. Al Hamitah. I did. Al Hamitah I did. You know what kind of kavannah I have when I do Amidah? I can already feel Malachei Hasharet say, Chazak. Chazak. Rabotai, the more you learn, the more you understand how insignificant you are. What is it like? I'm not good with jokes, so pretend like you're going to laugh at this one. There was one time, an elephant. Elephants are big. They're even bigger than me. Elephants are big. One time, an elephant didn't notice, but there was an ant farm—millions and millions of ants—right under his foot. He didn't pay attention and he stepped on it.

12:41All the ants say, "Hey, hey, what are you doing? Hey, you see, we're here. What are you doing? You just killed George and Steve and Jose. What's the matter with you?" The elephant only speaks elephant. He doesn't know. What do you want? He just keeps walking. So one of the ants says, "What? You're not even looking at me." He starts climbing. "I'm going to get him." He starts climbing. He starts climbing the elephant. He starts climbing the elephant. He goes to his neck. The rest of the guys, the rest of the ants see him. "What? He's there. Get him. Get him. Get him. Choke him out." Two guys laughing. That's us. We think HaKadosh Baruch Hu is on our level. But the reality is, Rabotai Yekarim, the difference between the ant and the elephant is much smaller than the difference between us and HaKadosh Baruch Hu. The Rambam, almost 900 years ago, wrote a letter

13:44to give us a little bit of an understanding of where we stand and why we need to do teshuva on a day-to-day basis for some things that we don't even realize that we're commanded to do. Until now, the Rambam has told us that we should listen to mussar, that we should constantly focus on own neshama, but at the same time, focus on other people's neshama. When you are speaking to people, make sure that you know who you're dealing with and how to deal with them. Make sure that you realize that if your rebuke is going to come out of anger, then it's not rebuke; rather, it's ga'ava, it's pride. You know, people love to tell others what to do. But the reality is that when you rebuke people in order to help them do teshuva, it's not about telling them what to do. It's about warning them. And there's a very big difference between the two. What is it like? A kid asks his mom if he can go out with his friends. The mom says, no. No, come on, Ima. No, I want to go. No. Why not? I don't want you to go. What am I going to do? Nothing. I just don't feel like going. That's just telling you what to do.

14:58That's telling you what to do. It's not warning you about anything. There's nothing to be... He wants to go play in a yard or something. There's no warning here. She's just telling you what to do. Warning is, she grabs you, she pulls you out because the car is coming. And after, she slaps you in the face so you're careful next time. That's warning. That's warning. Mussar is supposed to be like that. Mussar is not supposed to necessarily be... telling you what to do. Quite the opposite. It's supposed to be that slap that wakes you up and warns you from continuing this behavior because this behavior is damaging. It's damaging to everybody around you, but it also includes yourself. But if that mussar is coming out of anger, then it's not mussar. It's just simply you liking to tell people what to do. And the Ramban already writes in the beginning of the letter that if you're going to get yourself to anger, You should know that Gehinom is the one that's controlling you. All of the demons, all of the bad things in the world, that's what's controlling you. It's not Hashem. It's not something good. It's something bad that's controlling this rebuke. The key is to humble yourself and realize your own insignificance. Your own insignificance because of how afraid you are of HaKadosh Baruch Hu.

16:23because of how much you want to serve HaKadosh Baruch Hu, but most importantly, because of how much you care about your brother and sister and their neshama, even though today may be the first time you ever talk to them. Now, the Ramban goes to the next part and gives us an elaborate explanation of understanding Hashem. Rabbi Nachman Breslover, alav hashalom, said, it's a very normal thing for you to have questions about Hashem. It's very normal for you to have questions about Hashem. In fact, it's abnormal for you not to have questions about Hashem. Why? Because if you don't have questions, that presumes that you feel like you understand. If you feel like you understand Hashem, That's a very serious problem because the biggest sages we ever had said, "If I understood Him, I would be Him." So the Rambam starts off by telling us, meaning he's talking about the Melech HaKavod, he's talking about Hashem. After you realize that you are going to be called for judgment in front of the King of Glory...

17:57you're going to think about it. What are you going to think about? And he uses three different pesukim in the Tanakh. First, he uses Melachim Aleph, chapter 8, verse 27. He says, and then he uses Yirmiyahu 23:24. It's this sense of humility, once you actually start thinking of your insignificance in comparison to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, that will remind you of the One before whom you will be called for judgment, the King of Glory. Of Him, it is written, "Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain You; surely not the hearts of men."

19:07Furthermore, it's written, "Do I not fill heaven and earth?" says Hashem. After you give this serious thought, you will stand in awe of your Creator, and you will be guarded against sin. In so many words, the Ramban says that if you simply take a little bit of time every day, just like the message says that you should do, you take a little bit of time every single day and realize... the significance of HaKadosh Baruch Hu, immediately you will arrive at a conclusion of your own insignificance. Now, you also have to tread carefully, because if you only think about your own insignificance, this could lead you to kefirah. This could lead you to heresy. Why? Say something like, listen, I'm such a nothing, why does Hashem even want my mitzvot? I'm such a nothing, why would Hashem even want to listen to my prayers? I'm such a nothing, why would Hashem even accept my teshuva? I made so many sins. That's a kofer. That's a kofer. The key is to think.

20:19of the significance of Hashem too, but that can also lead you to kefirah. Why? See, Hashem is so big. He's so extraordinary. You really think He cares if I waste a little seed? You really think He cares if I look at this girl? You really think He cares if I walk around half-naked? Why? Hashem runs the whole universe, but He cares about my little outfit that I bought at the dollar store? Why? Hashem cares about my outfit; He cares about me, little old me. Five foot nothing, He cares about me. He has eight billion people in the world. That's also a kofer. So what do the chachamim say? Don't think of one or the other; think of both. His significance along with your own insignificance. His significance that, yes, He's so big and so extraordinary, that, of course, He notices and pays attention to every single little thing that little old nothing me is doing. That's how big He is. He's so big that out of all the things in the world, He's also paying attention to me. Now, this, Rabotai, is a very, very critical thing to try to meditate on and think about because

21:48This is one of the maps, one of the key ingredients to arrive at Yirat Shamayim, at the awe of HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Now, in our generation, something happened along the way where money became a god for people. People take things too seriously when they read it. In the old days, There was a radio show, and one guy was reading a book. They used to read books on the radio. I don't even know if anybody listens to the radio anymore, but in the old days, they used to actually listen to this thing called the radio. And they used to read books on the radio. And one time, this guy read a book about UFOs. UFOs coming, they came to this place. It was a new book. Now, the people that tuned in a few minutes into it didn't know it was a book. So, they thought it was the news. They started going crazy, getting scared all over America. Why? They thought there was a UFO attack. Somewhere along the way,

23:06The radio stopped becoming the news, and we started taking books seriously, even if the books themselves weren't serious, even if they were written by heretics. it's in a book, it must be valuable. You see some guy, on his bio it says, "Oh, he wrote 30 books." Wow, he must be a chacham. Yeah, but what kind of books did he write? What's in the books? Oh, I don't know, it's 30 books, and that takes a lot of time. Why, just press 'Y' a thousand times, that's one book. What did he write in the book? What's in the book? That they never thought about. You should see the number: 30 books, 40 books, 10 books—makes you a chacham? Oh, best seller. Best seller, by the way, is determined, just so you know. I spoke to a publisher. It's determined before the book even hits the shelf. It is. It's determined before the book. They decide before they actually sell it if it's going to be a best seller because they already put it on the cover. Now, sometimes people read things in a book and they take it seriously. And along the way, the United States of America decided...

24:17they're going to write on a dollar bill "In God We Trust" so people misinterpreted it even till this day, where they think that, "oh, it says on a dollar bill 'In God We Trust,' they must mean that the dollar is God." Now, everybody here says, "No, come on, Rabbi, I don't think the dollar is God." But how do you behave if somebody gave you right now a thousand dollars to leave? Would you leave? Any amount of money. That means the dollar is your god. Any amount of money. A thousand, a hundred, a million, a billion. Any amount of money. If you prefer to go get money instead of listening to the words of the living God—the words of the Torah—money to you is god, bottom line.

25:17Unfortunately, sometimes we simply don't take things seriously enough. We think, "No, no, I'll just watch it tomorrow." Who says you're going to live till tomorrow? "No, I'll just do it when I get a chance." You know, right now, Rabbi, I've got a thousand dollars in my pocket. I give tzedakah. We justify our sins as if they're mitzvot. Now, let's return to the words of the Torah and reflect on our priorities. The problem is that we still have not understood that in the Torah, Torah is also a book. There are also things written in a book. In this week's parasha, Parashat Devarim, we start a new book, the fifth book of the Torah. This fifth book was actually the journal, if you will, of Moshe Rabbeinu. Out of the five books, the first four books were narrated by G-d.

26:18The fifth book was actually written by Moshe Rabbeinu with Ruach HaKodesh. HaKadosh Baruch Hu told Moshe Rabbeinu to include this book with the rest of them. Why? You think like me. Moshe Rabbeinu was Ish HaElokim, the man of G-d. Hashem calls him that. Moshe Rabbeinu had no desires like us. He didn't want anything. He wanted what Hashem wants. Now, this book is the last month and a half of Moshe Rabbeinu's life. So you would think somebody that just spent 40 years with his people, he would give them, "Guys, we had a good time, right? Hey, we had some parties, we had some barbecues, we got the Ten Commandments. You know, a few guys got in trouble. Remember Korach? Yeah, okay, he died. Don't do what he did. But listen, let's have a good time. I love you, a little kumbaya, little hugs, little kisses, right?" Anybody who reads the book of Devarim and actually understands what is written here does teshuva. If you read it and you didn't do teshuva, that means you didn't understand it. Why? The entire book, from the first aleph, from the first letter until the end, is rebuke. The walls, the walls do teshuva by listening to what Moshe Rabbeinu said here. How much rebuke, how much mussar Moshe Rabbeinu gives us!

27:40Stuff that's really scary to death if you understand it. But he starts it, "These are the words that Moshe spoke to all of Israel." On the other side of the Jordan, concerning the wilderness, concerning the Arabah, opposite the Sea of Reeds, between Paran, and Tofel, and Lavan, and Chatzerot, and Di-Zahav. So the Chachamim say, these are the words. What words? What words? Look at the rest of the book. The rest of the book is full of rebuke. It's full of scary stuff, that if you understand it, you simply just start crying the whole time. ... Why? Because these are the words of the Living God. These are the words He gave to tell us. This is your goodbye message. Instead of saying "I love you, I'll miss you" and all that stuff, He says, "Listen carefully. If you sin, Hashem is going to rip you apart into 50 million pieces, and then He's going to do it over and over again, and over and over again, and over and over again until you say 'Stop,' and then He'll do it again." That's the message for five weeks straight.

28:58Now, we think that some of this stuff is scary, and we're right about it, but it's supposed to be. Why? Because this same book of Deuteronomy, the same Sefer Devarim, also gives us a few commandments that we have in the Torah that we're actually not only obligated to do; they're not only part of the 613 mitzvot, they're also part of the six mitzvot that every Jew has to fulfill 24 hours a day, seven days a week, all the time, as long as they have breath in their lungs. In fact, some of these mitzvot even the non-Jews are obligated to do. Now, I'll give you an example of some of these, and like I said, I brought a bunch of extras; you can have them is a good reminder. I'm just going to go over the surface; you guys can read the details later on. Now, there are six mitzvot that HaKadosh Baruch Hu said you have to fulfill at all times. These are the mitzvot

30:14that you're obligated to do, that in essence it is connecting you to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, connecting your neshamah to HaKadosh Baruch Hu at all times. If you do not fulfill such a mitzvah, it is a problem, a very serious problem. These are not suggestions. The first mitzvah is to believe that there is one God who created everything in the world. This seems like a simple belief for anyone that thought about creation, but today there are a lot of people who proudly self-proclaim that they're atheists, that they believe we all came from nothing. Eventually, they'll find out that they were nothing, but they didn't come from nothing. The point is that a person needs to constantly realize that there's only one God. The second mitzvah is not to believe in any other gods. As it says, "You shall not have any other gods beside Me." This, again,

31:19This is a constant belief. It's not only a belief that you should have generally speaking. Oh, I believe in God. No, no, no. You have to constantly, actively think about how HaKadosh Baruch Hu connects to everything in your life. You see a light? Oh, Hashem created this light. You see a dog? Oh, Hashem created this dog. You see something beautiful? Wow, look at the beauty. Hashem could have created everything gray, but He created colors, and He created smells, and He created tastes. you start seeing the beauty of the creation, you'll understand the beauty of the Creator Himself. But needless to say, if you think something else made it, that defies the original mitzvah. The third mitzvah is to believe that He is one, as it says, Shema Yisrael Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echad. That not only that there are no other gods, there were never other gods. He is the only God, and He is the God of Israel. He's never going to replace the nation, He's never going to be the God of the Christians, the God of the Arabs, the God of some other new tribe. He's the God of the world, but as far as His chosen people, it's us.

32:35Which means that you have to know that HaKadosh Baruch Hu brought everything into being by His own will, and He watches everything in the world by Himself. He has no helpers. All of the angels that He has, it's not because He needs their help, chas v'shalom. To think that HaKadosh Baruch Hu needs help from angels is kefirah. So why does Hashem have these angels? Countless, countless angels, many more angels than there are humans. because it's not the way of a king to serve himself. The fourth mitzvah is to love Hashem, blessed is He. As it says, you have to love Hashem. How can you love Hashem if you never saw Him, you can't see Him, you can't smell Him, you can't taste Him, you can't use your five senses? To connect Him. How can you love Him? Through His Torah. By fulfilling His Torah, by fulfilling the words of the Torah, you are actively practicing your love. The fifth mitzvah is to have fear of HaKadosh Baruch Hu at all times.

33:54to be afraid of HaKadosh Baruch Hu, to be in awe of HaKadosh Baruch Hu, as it says in Deuteronomy chapter 10 verse 20, You shall fear Hashem your God. Now, if there's a train coming your way, it's very easy to think about God because that's your only help. You're desperate. The key is to remember God when there's no train, but rather there's some type of desire. There's someone attractive coming your way. There's a bunch of illegal money coming your way. There's a bunch of delicious non-kosher food on your plate. There's a bunch of opportunities for you to sin, and it looks really delicious. That's why the sixth mitzvah says, v'lo taturu acharei levavchem. No train, but rather there's some type of desire. There's someone attractive coming your way. There's a bunch of illegal money coming your way. There's a bunch of delicious non-kosher food on your plate. There's a bunch of opportunities for you to sin, and it looks really delicious. That's why the sixth mitzvah says, v'lo taturu acharei levavchem. The sixth mitzvah that you have to fulfill 24 hours a day is to not stray after your thoughts or your eyes. Meaning that watching your eyes and not looking at immodest things is not a suggestion from the sages or Hashem. It's a commandment. It's a commandment from HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Because if you look at things, you'll eventually desire them. If you desire them, you'll chase after them. You'll do something about it.

35:17Now, these are the six constant mitzvot. There are many other mitzvot, but these other mitzvot that we have in the Torah, you have to fulfill at other times. For example, Shabbat, you cannot fulfill twice a week. Maximum is once a week. Yom Kippur, maximum once a year. Kosher only applies when there's food in front of you. Taharat HaMishpacha, Only half the month and so on and so forth. But these six mitzvot are things that you have to fulfill 24 hours a day. Now, the tough part that we have is that we like to compare HaKadosh Baruch Hu to something that we know, so many times mistakenly. We misunderstand some of the Chassidim or even some of the Tzaddikim, and we think that they are actually portraying Hashem as if He's a being, as if He's something physical, tangible, similar to the Christians. By making Hashem into some type of physicality, humanizing G-d, if you will, not only is this heresy, but it's also minimizing G-d.

36:43So that's why the Ramban used three different verses from the Torah that will give us an understanding of what you're supposed to think of G-d. First, he says, behold, the heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain you. What does it mean, the heaven and the heaven of heavens? Heaven, we understand, is the sky, not just the place. The sky, heaven of heavens, is the atmosphere. Outside, there's a rakia, and above the rakia is outer space. So, the biggest thing that any one of us can think of is outer space. Outer space, anything you think about outer space, you start thinking about planets, how much bigger they are than Earth. You think about the sun, you read somewhere on Google that it says it's 93 million miles away, and it's 1.3 million times the size of Earth, and all these fancy schmancy numbers, and you think, wow, it's really big.

37:48you think of outer space, that's the biggest thing you can think of. Even though when you go to the ocean and you feel like you're nothing, you realize that this ocean is nothing in comparison to outer space. So we think of outer space, we think that's the biggest thing there is. That's the mistake we think logically. by saying HaKadosh Baruch Hu is among us in the world, in essence, in our own mind, without thinking about it enough and reading and understanding what it's supposed to mean, we think that HaKadosh Baruch Hu is inside the world with us. Like He's among us inside the world, like He's in outer space somewhere. He's also here, He's also there, but in general He's inside the world, He's inside the universe. That's the mistake. verse here says the heavens and the heavens of heavens cannot contain You, meaning that all of Earth, all of outer space, the entire universe, all of the Milky Ways, all of the different things, everything and anything that we've seen and can imagine is zero

39:04literally zero in comparison to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. It cannot contain Him, meaning that the world is inside G-d, not G-d is inside the world. G-d is the Creator of everything; G-d is the Creator, but everything is within Him, not that He is within His own creation. That's something you can only arrive at if you think about it. Why? Because we humanize G-d often. we put a picture, sometimes we'll draw something, sometimes we'll think of letters, sometimes we'll do different things in order to humanize G-d so we think we can relate to Him easier. But it's quite the contrary. So the prophet says the world is too big to contain HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Is the rabbi saying the world is physically within G-d? Physically within God. God is not a physical being, if you will, but in essence, what it would be, to explain it, is: if there was a physical being, if you will, the world would be similar to how this cup is, and in essence, the Creator would be the world around this cup.

40:26The world is an insignificant creation in comparison to Hashem, and Hashem is bigger than the world. It's not that the world contains Hashem inside it. So now, Hashem doesn't have an image or a likeness of an image, but as far as the essence of God is, again, the world is among Hashem and not inside Hashem. So, the... Hashem is not restricted to a certain capacity, so that's why we can't say that He is a certain size bigger than the world, or in comparison to the world. But in essence, what the prophet is telling us is that the world is within Hashem, not that Hashem is within the world. Now, the prophet continues and he says, since the heavens and the heaven of heavens cannot contain You, surely not the hearts of men.

41:27meaning that the hearts of men, people simply try to humanize God, try to minimize God, and then they try to figure out a way of how to rationalize God. And the problem with that is that it will always lead you to kefirah. Because by minimizing God, you are going to simply act towards Him as if He's a human. This is what the Christians have done. This is unfortunately what many Jews are still doing to this day, by praying to people. And that's why the prophet says, "Surely not the hearts of men," meaning that even the hearts of men cannot really have the capacity to understand the true significance of God. But then, in order to understand that our obligation is to realize our insignificance, but at the same time, Hashem's significance. So then the Rambam writes, the Ramban writes another verse from the Torah, where he says, "Do I not fill the heaven and the earth?" says Hashem. Meaning, don't think that just because you're insignificant, that means that I'm too big to care about what you're doing.

42:50"Am I not the God that's in heaven and earth? Meaning, just because I'm so big and I have so much going on, and I know every single thought that you have ever had, and every single incarnation that you've ever been in since Adam HaRishon, you probably can't remember what you thought about 20 minutes ago." You don't remember what you thought about 20 minutes ago. Normal human beings do not remember what they thought about 20 minutes ago. They remember some things they thought about, the things that were usually significant, but not all the junk. You remember a thought like, "Oh, that was a good idea. I thought about it for like 30, 40 seconds." "Oh, that's a good one. I thought about it for five minutes." "Oh, that's a good one. I thought about it for five hours." You think about and remember the significant ones, but all the other stuff, you don't remember it. HaKadosh Baruch Hu is telling us, I remember and know every single thought, not just every action, every single thought that you have ever had—not just today, not just yesterday, not just last week or last month or last year or 10 years ago, but every single thought that each and every one of us, and every human being that ever existed since the beginning of mankind and until the end, has ever had.

44:16Now, this is so unimaginable for a human being that even someone who is righteous had a hard time understanding it. The Torah tells us a story about the prophet Iyov. And the prophet Iyov was righteous, but he made a mistake because he was dealing with a lot of pain. where literally, in a matter of hours, he lost everything and anything that was of any value to him. By the time he realized the magnitude of one damage, another, even bigger disaster happened to him. First, somebody came to him and told him, "Listen, all the farms, all their merchandise, all the things that were worth millions and billions and made you the richest guy in town—everything burned down to the ground." By the time he was digesting this message, somebody else came to him and said, "Oh, by the way, your kids, you know, all ten of them, they all got together, they were having a lunch, and the building collapsed and killed all of them." And one message after another, literally his whole life collapsed in a matter of hours. As if that wasn't enough, HaKadosh Baruch Hu continued testing him, and He destroyed his health, so much so that the worms and maggots started coming out of his body.

45:38not going into his body, you know. Dead people, their bodies—the maggots eat them. It's not fun; it's not fun, but it's going to happen to everybody at some point. That's just the way it is; it's a reality. We talked about the Yetzer Hara last week. Now, that's what happens to dead bodies. If you want to see what's going to happen, go buy a piece of steak. Don't waste your money on something kosher. Go buy something non-kosher. Put it outside in the hot sun. After three hours, you're going to see all kinds of wonderful new creatures. That's what's going to happen to every single body in the world, animals, men, everybody. That's what happens to the body. You want to see what's going to happen? That's what's going to happen. So that should at least give us an idea of how insignificant we really are in comparison to B'nei Brak. Now, Iyov was so sick that the maggots started coming out of his body, not going in. He was in so much agony and pain that he thought maybe there's something wrong. Maybe one of these angels that Hashem uses, you know, each one of these angels, like a Rolls Royce, it's got six wings, the Gemara says. It's got six wings. He goes here, he goes there, they're big, they're strong. He says, you know, Hashem's world, it's all like letters, the Aleph-Bet. You know, it's like, you know, people saw the movie The Matrix. They thought The Matrix gave a chidush to the world. It's not a chidush, it's in the Torah.

46:59whole world is made of the Aleph-Bet so he said, you know, Hashem has one of these angels. Maybe one of these angels slipped up and like ran into my name Iyov and he messed up the spelling of my name. Instead of Iyov, the yud and the vav, you know, they switch spots. So, what does it mean? Instead of Iyov, which means Job in English, it now spells Oyev. Oyev is enemy. So instead of Iyov, my tzaddik, Hashem said, oh, this is, this is, Oyev is my enemy. That's why all this stuff is happening to me. HaKadosh Baruch Hu, Himself, came to Job and told him, you think I made a mistake with your name? You think I can make a mistake and misspell your name and miss, miss, misshoot everything, everything that's happened. This is like a misfire. You think I can make a mistake? He says, all of the stars in the world, I created for you. Page 32b.

48:16says that the universe has 1,064,340,000,000,000 stars, a precise number. And HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, I created all of these stars just for you. And each one of these stars has a name. Even more so, each one of your hairs Each one of your hairs has to get its own parnasah, its own sustenance. It's called sweat. Without sweat, it's not going to survive. But you'll notice that no two hairs can ever grow out of the same exact pore. They can be close, and something that you can only notice from a microscope. But it's never the same exact pore. Why? Because if there are two hairs coming out of the same pore, immediately the person goes blind. Meaning that HaKadosh Baruch Hu makes sure that each one of our hairs, that apparently have names in heaven, each one of your hairs on your head—you don't even know how many hairs you have on your head. You don't even know how many hairs you have on the back of your hand. But Hashem says, all the hairs on your head, they have names. And they have numbers, and they have everything, and I give them their own individual parnasah. Why? If one of them stole a little bit of parnasah from the hair next door, immediately the person loses his vision.

49:45With all of that knowledge about every one of your hairs, every one of the stars, every one of the creations, every one of the thoughts that you've ever had, you still think that Hashem can make a mistake with your name? So Yoav, we learn from here that he still remained a tzaddik, a ba'al teshuvah, but we also learn that we don't judge a person. a time of his pain, meaning that Hashem did not punish him for what he said at this time because this was during a time of pain and agony. Now, the Chachamim explained to us that if we simply take advantage of our limited understanding of HaKadosh Baruch Hu, life becomes much easier. Simply because you understand what your role is in the world, and you develop Yirat Shamayim relatively quickly. Why? Because you realize that the mitzvot in the Torah are not suggestions. Somebody that I say, listen, you know, you should keep Shabbat, says, yeah, it's hard for me.

50:57It's hard for me to keep Shabbat. You know, you really shouldn't touch a woman if she's niddah. If you're not married, then she has to be niddah. And if you touch her when she's niddah, even if you're just holding hands, that's an issur karet. It's the worst punishment in the Torah. Yeah, but I really care about her. Oh, you know, on Tisha B'Av you're supposed to fast. Yeah, it's hard for me. You know, people that have these types of excuses simply never thought about it. They think that Hashem suggested you follow the Torah, not commanded. That's the problem. We think that the Torah is a bunch of suggestions, like recommendations, like a to-do list, like something you should do before you die. But Shlomo HaMelech says, that if you really thought about it, if you really thought about the Creator, you'd simply understand that this is not really a suggestion. The only thing that you should chase after throughout your entire life is to fulfill the mitzvah of fearing Hashem because that's the mitzvah that's going to save you from your own stupidity.

52:14Because your stupidity will tell you, no, no, no, come on, no, I don't feel like fasting. No, come on, I don't feel like keeping the entire Shabbat. Like somebody told me one time, you know, maybe I could keep half a Shabbat. Maybe I could keep half a Shabbat. I told the s'tira of the friar, he says, you should tell him, maybe Hashem is only going to make half their body work. You know, just the right side. Go like this. Maybe only half the brain is going to work. What do you mean half of a Shabbat? What does that mean, half Shabbat? I have a few people that I see sometimes, oh, I dare you to keep an hour of Shabbat. For what? What's the point? Wait, tell him the guy that he's permitted to go against Hashem for the rest of Shabbat? No, but it's getting him started. In what? What is he getting started in? Allowing himself to sin? Either it's real or it's fake. Either we eat pork on Yom Kippur or we keep the entire Torah. There's no half of Shabbat. There's no half of a mitzvah. There's no, no, no. Listen, we don't go out all the time, but, you know, just on weekends. I don't eat non-kosher all the time. Just, you know, whenever I go away. Once you start allowing yourself to sin at different random times of your choice, you simply justify sinning all the time.

53:36you're minimizing God to be just like you. If you could please tell everybody to stop going in and out, it's not a bus stop. If they want to stay out, they could stay out. If they want to come in, come in. It's not a bus stop. And anyone that's not paying attention, please leave. You're distracting everybody else. The phones, all that other stuff, shut it off. If you can't shut it off, then leave. Shlomo HaMelech says, this is the only thing that's going to save you in the world. Why? Your stupidity is at such a high level that you think you have free choice without consequences. What are you supposed to do then? Shlomo HaMelech says in Proverbs, chapter 2, verse 4: If you seek it out as you seek silver and search for it as you search for buried treasures, then you will comprehend the fear of Hashem. Meaning that even after working on developing Yirat Shamayim and fear of Hashem, at best, we're only going to comprehend the need

54:54for truly fearing Hashem and not necessarily arriving at a true fear of Hashem like we're supposed to have. Now, Rabbi Yisrael Salanter had some wonderful students. One of them was Rabbi Yitzchak Blazer. I love Hashem. And he wrote a book I have in front of me here. This is a book, this is probably one of the best, not probably, it's one of the best Mussar books that ever existed. But it's also very, very difficult. You have to read it at least a hundred times just to understand part of it. Not that the language is difficult, it's that it's very deep. And Rabbi Yitzchak Blazer says, You know, it's very interesting that human beings naturally are scared of everything. You see a bug, oh, oh, oh, what happened? Oh, it's a spider, oh, it's a beetle, oh, it's a cockroach, everybody jumps. You see a rat, everybody, oh, rat, what is he gonna do? Steal your money? What is he gonna do, this rat? Ah, ah, ah, snake, ah, snake, snake. Everybody starts jumping, dancing. Everybody's scared of stuff, naturally, naturally. If I saw a rat, I'd also be scared, but that's us.

56:15we all jump. We're all scared of stuff. Whether it moves or doesn't move, people are scared. Naturally, we're scared of stuff. We're scared of being alone. We're not just scared of being alone; we're scared of living alone. We're even scared of having independent thoughts. We're scared that we're the only ones who are going to think one way or another. We're scared of being poor, we're scared of being sick, we're scared of failing, we're scared of pain, we're scared of death, we're scared of the future, we're scared that we can't fix the past, we're scared of everything that we don't know. Meaning that naturally, a normal human being is constantly scared. You work overtime because you're scared that you're either not going to be able to pay the bills or you're scared that you're not going to be able to compete with the Joneses on the block who are building a third floor, or you're scared that maybe you're not going to have enough money to go to the best school or have the best car, and so on and so forth. That's why we justify and rationalize why we should work so many hours and learn so little. We're constantly, constantly scared, and that's what motivates us in life.

57:37But yet Rabbi Yitzchak Blazer asks the million-dollar question: Why are we scared of HaKadosh Baruch Hu? Naturally, if you believe in Hashem, you believe in a God, you believe in a Creator, you believe that He's the Master of all, the Creator of all, the Knower of all, how come you're not naturally scared of Him? And he says, I'm not talking about the secular people or the people who are not really so religious. No, no, he says, I'm talking about religious people. Your average religious guy doesn't really care about Hashem to such an extent that he's constantly thinking about, "Oh, no, no, I'm scared. Hashem is going to think about..." He doesn't think that. He just does what he does. She does what she does. She wears what she wears. She doesn't think twice if it's tzniut or it's not tzniut. It looks good. I'm wearing it. He doesn't think, "Is this honest business or not honest business?" It's money, it's profit, I'm doing it. Nine out of ten times, there's money in front of you, you forget God. This is a very serious problem. Why? This is exactly the only thing we're supposed to be scared of. You're not supposed to be scared of the cockroach. Why? If Hashem wants to kill you, He doesn't need a cockroach.

58:59You're not supposed to be scared of the snake. If Hashem wants to kill you, He doesn't need a snake. You're not supposed to be scared of some explosion in a volcano. Hashem doesn't need a volcano. He simply decides, "Off." What's this? Heart, brain, little blood cell, stops traveling. Decides, you know what, I'm going to stay here. Why? And the rest of the blood says, why are you staying here? I don't know, I want to clot. I want to hang out with a bunch of guys, do a barbecue. Yeah, but you realize the guy's going to die. Okay, fine. I like it here. Look here, there are veins. Nice. I like the view. Looks good. The veins, and the blood just decides to stop traveling. Huh? It clots. A few friends come join him. They're like, oh, you know what? Look, you're on vacation. I'm coming. All of them come. They all clot. The guy's dead. We're not talking about he's dead in like a week. Seconds. Seconds. Hashem doesn't need a gun to shoot someone. He doesn't need it. He can use an infinite number of tools that He has to do His will. So the question is, Rabotai Yekarim, if the snake is not really the thing that's going to kill us,

1:00:24And the market crashing is not going to kill us. And the cars crashing is not going to kill us. It's only Hashem. How come we're not naturally scared of Hashem? We're scared of everything else, but not Hashem. The secret is, Rabotai Yekarim, is that Rabbi Yitzchak Blazer writes in his holy book, Ohr Yisrael, that this is the real free will. this is what free will is really about. You have asked me at least a handful of times over the last few months to describe how free will works. This is the deepest of deep answers: everything around you that's in your world you're scared of, even though you shouldn't be. The Gemara says there was one time a very big snake that was killing people. They came to Rabbi Hanina and they said, "Rabbi, there's a big snake, he's killing people, we have no way to catch him, no way to defend against him, he's too big, he's too dangerous." Rabbi Hanina got up and said, "Okay, show me where he is." They came and showed him a big hole in the ground. Rabbi Hanina, without being scared for a moment, stuck his leg inside the hole.

1:01:52Everyone's watching in suspense. Moments later, Rabbi Ḥanina starts pulling his leg out, and the snake that bit it died. Meaning the snake that's full of venom that killed countless people, he was supposed to kill Rabbi Ḥanina. But he died. Why? Rabbi Ḥanina says, it's the sins that kill, not the snakes. Meaning that Rabbi Ḥanina was at such a high level of holiness that he literally understood that he had no sins, and there was no right for this snake—there was no permission for this snake to kill him. No, it's not considered suicide. Not when you're Rabbi Ḥanina. If you did, you would commit suicide because you would die. If you were Rabbi Ḥanina, it would be a different story, but then your name would be in the Gemara, and every time I'd mention your name, I'd have to say, Zichrono Livracha.

1:02:57But the point is, is that Rabbi Ḥanina understood something that's hard for us to understand, which is it's not the snakes that kill, it's not the bullets that kill, it's not the terrorists that kill, it's not the anti-Semites that kill, it's not the economy that kills, it's not disease that kills, it's not cancer that kills, it's not anything that kills. It's the sin that kills. So now Rabbi Yitzḥak Blazer explains to us that If a person understands that it's only their actions that lead HaKadosh Baruch Hu to a reaction, that would easily allow you to arrive at a conclusion that not only you shouldn't, but you're not allowed to be afraid of anything but Him. Anytime you're afraid of anything, it's a certain amount of distance from the emet, from the truth. Doesn't make you a bad person. It's just that there's a limited amount, there's a certain amount of distance between you and where you're supposed to be. Now, with that being said, where does free choice come in? The Chachamim explain, hakol bidei shamayim chutz miyirat shamayim. Everything is from heaven except the fear of heaven.

1:04:17Meaning that whether it's a bug, or it's a car, or it's a train, or a disease, or whatever it is that's out there, all of that is decided by Heaven. Everything that's happening in the world, the market up, the market down, everything and anything, you have a job, you have a marriage, you have kids, you're tall, you're short, you're whatever you are, all of that is from Heaven. All of that is from Hashem. The only thing that you have in your hands is whether you choose to fear Hashem or not. That's free choice. Free choice doesn't mean you can do whatever you want and nothing's going to happen. It's just that you can do whatever you want, but something will happen. That "whatever you want" is dictated based on your level of fear of Hashem. If you fear Hashem, then what you want to do will reflect that. You fear Hashem, you're going to want to pray a few times a day. You fear Hashem, you're going to want to learn the Torah every day. You fear Hashem, you're going to want to eat kosher food every day. You fear Hashem, you're only going to leave the house if you are modest. You fear Hashem, you're only going to leave the house if you know for sure that you can protect your eyes and not look at anything that's immodest. If you fear Hashem, you're simply going to constantly think about Hashem.

1:05:39And your actions will be decreed, will be determined based on your level of fear. Why? Because you know that anything that you do will have a consequence. You look at an immodest girl, there's a consequence for that. There's a Malach named Patot, that Malach will have a cheshbon with you. Comes from the word pitui. Pitui means to entice you. His job is to entice you to look at things that are not modest. You look—oh, you failed? Okay. Now you and I are going to have a date. It starts at the grave. That's where it starts. It's not a fun time. He doesn't have barbecues. Now, Rabotai, a person that has Yirat Shamayim is going to think, wait a minute... I want to look at this billboard that I know, in the corner of my eye, in my peripheral vision, has some girl that doesn't have any clothes. I want to look at it, but what can I do when my Father in Heaven says no? And when He says no, He's not suggesting—He's commanding. When He's commanding in His glory, and He's watching and He's recording, that means that if I do it, there is no way in the world that I could get out of it without having a punishment. There's no way in the world.

1:06:57Yes? Wouldn't you rather do things out of love for Hashem than fear of punishment? If you could arrive at love without being afraid of it, you would be a new species. Simply because it's not possible to love something that you don't understand what it is. And as soon as you understand what Hashem is, immediately you become scared. Because you realize that HaKadosh Baruch Hu runs the world. He is the one who decides whether all of your blood cells will work. He's the one who decides whether you're going to have money in your pocket. He's the one who decides whether you're going to get married or remain single. He's the one who decides whether you're going to have children or not. He's the one who decides whether you're going to breathe or not. He's the one who decides whether your eyes will work or not. That would make any normal human being afraid. Why? Because I'm depending on Him. Now, love by itself for Hashem is not possible. Why is it not possible? Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai writes in the Zohar that people who think that they only need to love Hashem, but don’t need fear, are simply called shotim. They’re called drunks. Why? Why drunk? Because the drunk, if you ever notice, people who are drunks, they like to talk a lot. Usually, they like to talk and they think they make sense. And they're going to start telling you all their theories. He doesn’t talk when he’s not drunk, but he wants to talk when he’s drunk.

1:08:26Because he thinks he's normal. He thinks that his ideas are best after he's drunk. Just like some people think that once they're high, their ideas are much better. Their ideas are much more elaborate. "No, my mind expands when I'm high." Yeah. "Oh yeah, it's not killing brain cells. You're the only human on earth that marijuana doesn't kill brain cells. You're a chiddush. You're a new thing." "No, my mind, I connect to Hashem much better when I'm high." Yeah, you're going to connect to Him in Gehinnom perfectly. Why? That's what happens. HaKadosh Baruch Hu said to the two sons of Aharon HaKohen, you could be Kohanim, but you have to serve Me a certain way. They decided to take matters into their own hands. They wanted to serve Hashem, but a little bit their way. So what? They had a little shot. They had a little shot right before they went to Kodesh HaKodeshim. You know what happened? Hashem killed both of them. Why did He kill them? Because HaKadosh Baruch Hu is not our friend. You can't serve Him the way you want. So the Chachamim explain to us that if you think you can only love God without fearing Him, simply, you're a drunk. And the reason why is because any normal human being that understands the significance of HaKadosh Baruch Hu simply arrives at the conclusion that he must be scared. How so? Anybody here ever feel like somebody's watching you? Like you're on their camera?

1:09:49feel like you're on a camera, right? But this camera is not really recording you; it's recording me mostly. Once in a while, it shows your face, but nothing's going to happen because of the camera. But let's say, for example, you walk into a store, and there was something really, really delicious that you wanted. You know, it was like a bar or something, and you're really, really hungry. Have you ever had that? Am I the only one that ever had that? shows on my way, doesn't she? So now you, you are really hungry, and you went into your pocket, and you came out with nothing, like I just have right now—nothing. But you're so hungry, you want to eat the table too, right? So it happens once in a while, right? You want the bar, and it's even kosher glatt, but you don't have the money, and the guy is some Arab; he's not going to give you anything for free. But you're so hungry, you almost want to eat your own fingers, so you think... gonna take it, I'll come back, I'll come back later on today, and I'll give him a dollar, two dollars, whatever, I'll give him five dollars, right? You want to take, you want to steal something, especially when you're a kid, you don't think it's a big deal. But then the second you took it and you're about to put it in your pocket, your eyes look directly, and you saw across the room is a camera staring right at you. How happy are you about that camera?

1:11:11Not so much, right? Why? Someone's watching you steal. Someone's watching you steal. Now, sometimes you mess around, joke around, especially when you're kids. You start laughing around, breaking stuff. All of a sudden, you see there's a security camera on the side of the building. All of a sudden, there are cops coming down the road. You think it's for you. It's not so happy. You're not so excited anymore. You're not laughing anymore, right? Why? Because somebody's watching. one time he was getting a ride from one city to another, and the driver wasn't exactly somebody that had great middot. At some point, he pulled over next to one of these farms and he started making himself at home, taking some fruits from the trees. So, Rabbi Zundu Misadan says, no, they're watching, they're watching. The guy says, what, what? He dropped all the fruits, ran into this, started to go, went 90 miles an hour down the road, go, go, go, go, go, past the bridge. He's like, wow, how many were there? He goes, there. He goes, what do you mean? He goes, they're watching. They're watching in Shamayim.

1:12:28watch, it goes, no, I thought it's people because it's much bigger than that. They're watching in Shamayim. Everything is being watched in Shamayim. What does this mean? It means that if you actually understand that HaKadosh Baruch Hu Himself is watching every single thing that you're doing every single time you send a text message with a curse word in it, every single time you do something inappropriate, every single time you think something inappropriate, Hashem writes it in a book. Every single time. Never fails. There's never a time that He takes off. He doesn't have a break. He doesn't have a time where He takes a vacation. Every single time. Any normal human being that actually understands this, brings themselves to a level of comprehension that someone is watching them, immediately will become scared, immediately will become uncomfortable, and immediately will start checking their own actions.

1:13:33to a point where they'll think twice before doing anything. Anyone that's leaving can leave quietly. We spent a lot of time talking about fear of God and that there are cause and effect and consequences to our actions. All of us in our real daily lives, God kind of puts a curtain over that, and we don't really see that because we see a lot of wicked, evil people doing a lot of bad things. And then we have a lot of things that the Torah tells us are wrong, and maybe we feel it, we don't feel it, we know we don't, but we do a lot of these things, and we see people doing these things, and we don't see a consequence, we don't see an effect happening right away. We see a lot of people who are righteous and wonderful and living everything according to the Torah, and we see them suffering in horrible ways. So, it's a very difficult thing. It's not that people don't have fear of God, maybe. It's a difficult thing to reconcile what we're seeing in our lives with what we're being taught and learning. ...the Torah tells us are wrong, and maybe we feel it, we don't feel it, we know we don't, but we do a lot of these things, and we see people doing these things, and we don't see a consequence, we don't see an effect happening right away. We see a lot of people who are righteous and wonderful and living everything according to the Torah, and we see them suffering in horrible ways. So, it's a very difficult thing. It's not that people don't have yirat Shamayim, maybe. It's a difficult thing to reconcile what we're seeing in our lives with what we're being taught and learning...

1:14:33and therefore it's hard to put it into play. So, the fear of HaKadosh Baruch Hu, when we understand that it's a commandment, and we realize it's not a suggestion, then we realize that all of the things that are happening in our life are happening by the same hand that we're supposed to be scared of, meaning, that any time that a test is being brought to you and you have an evil person crossing your path, taking advantage of you, making fun of you, doing something to get you off your way, that is being sent and permitted by HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Hashem tests those He loves. Now, the problem is that as Rabbi Yitzchak Blazer says the reason why we do not have fear of Hashem naturally is because, in order to acquire fear of Hashem, we have to think about it. Meaning, it's the only fear that you have to acquire. You cannot get it by itself.

1:15:40Just like Shlomo HaMelech says, you have to think about it, delve over it, meditate over it, understand the creation, understand how significant the creation is, how insignificant you are, and how Hashem is bigger than both. The greater you make Hashem, and the smaller you make yourself, the easier it is to start fearing Hashem. But this is something that you have to acquire, meaning you have to work on it. Now, one of the reasons, like you said, that people have a tough time fearing Hashem is because of different tests that they have, different struggles they have in their life. Now, the key ingredient to acquiring fear of Hashem, aside from delving over it, is also to understand that Hashem is the One that's the hand, He's the One that's constantly doing everything. He is the stick, He's the staff, He's also the stick, meaning He's the One that's leading things. He's leading the herd to where it needs to go, but He's also the stick that hits it sometimes when it goes the wrong way. is also to understand that Hashem is the One that's the hand. He's the One that's constantly doing everything. He is the stick, He's the staff, He's also the stick, meaning He's the One that's leading things. He's leading the herd to where it needs to go, but He's also the stick that hits it sometimes when it goes the wrong way

1:16:49But sometimes we see bad things happen in our life, and we immediately arrive at a conclusion that something went wrong, maybe Hashem made a mistake, maybe this is being missed up there, and so on and so forth. We don't give Hashem kaf zechut. What is this like? There was a certain Baal Emunah person from Yerushalayim, That Ba'al Emunah learned, Baruch Hashem, was a Talmid Chacham, but one day he got sick. And there's a very famous rabbi in Eretz Yisrael who is an expert in not only diagnosing the problem but also telling you exactly who is the best doctor in the world to help you. He's an expert. There was actually a TV interview done about him a few years ago. A very humble tzaddik. and for years he has been known in the community, but now he's already known worldwide. He's helped many, many people. All the top doctors, the biggest experts in the world, know who he is and he knows who they are. So one time, this guy gets sick and the doctors tell him, "Listen, you have a really rare situation. We can't help you. We don't have the expertise."

1:18:08We have expertise, but not the expertise to do what you need. So he goes to this rabbi. He sits with him. He says, "Oh, I know exactly what you need. You need to go to this doctor. He's in London. He's the best doctor in the world for this specific thing." So the guy makes a call, makes an arrangement, goes to London. They meet with the expert. The expert says, "Yes, it's a very serious problem, but I could do this, but it's going to be $100,000." The guy is not exactly rich. So he and his family have to start selling stuff, getting money together, to get this poor guy his life back. They go, they raise money, they sell stuff. Long story short, they get the money. On the day of the surgery, the family is scared, but at the same time, they're excited. Their Abba is finally going to get the cure he needs. He's finally going to have the surgery, this very difficult surgery. But he's going to live. So they're all waiting outside patiently. And they see, I don't know if any of you have ever been to a hospital, the doors of the surgery room, these little windows. And sometimes you get to see a little bit of what's going on inside.

1:19:24So he sees that the doctor, the expert, the one that he wrote a check for $100,000 in advance, is wearing a t-shirt and shorts, like he's going on vacation. He doesn't even have the thing on top of his face. He's not even ready for surgery, he's not, nothing. But then some other young little doctor comes in. The expert doctor says, "Oh, here you go," like he shows up. This is the patient. And he leaves. The family wants to break down the door. Like, this ramai shakran, this person is a thief. This person is a liar. Paid him $100,000. He's not even doing the surgery. At least you got to do this. An intern is doing the surgery? Charge $10,000, not $100,000. He's not the expert. You are. They want to break in, but they're scared. Maybe they're going to kick us out. What are we going to do? They stay quietly, but they know they have to do something. Long story short, the surgery is performed successfully after the father gets back to himself. They tell the father, "Listen, Abba, we got to do something. They took advantage of us. He took the $100,000, but it wasn't him. It was just some intern, some 20-year-old somebody did the whole thing. We shouldn't pay. We should do..." The father says, "No, no, no. It was okay. The surgery worked. Don't say a single word."

1:20:51He stole a hundred thousand; he didn't steal anything. Hashem runs the world, don't say a word. So, Baruch Hashem, they had kavod for their Abba, and they didn't say a word. Ten years pass. As Hashem would have it, the disease came back. He goes back to the same medical expert in Eretz Yisrael, and the expert says, "Yeah, you have to go back to the same doctor." He's still the only expert in this field. He goes back to London. He goes to the office and they say, "Oh no, sorry. He retired. He's old already. He retired." does anybody go, "Oh yeah, yeah, we have Dr. So-and-so. Oh, he's good, yeah, he's the best." So he calls the rabbi from here. Let's say he goes, "Do you know this other doctor?" He goes, "Oh yeah, he's amazing, that guy. If it's not this one, I told you, this guy's the best. Go to him."

1:21:52So, okay, we're going to meet him. They wait in the office and all of a sudden, this young guy walks in but looks familiar. He starts talking to them. He goes, you know, your family looks familiar. What's your name? And they tell him the name. He takes their file out. He goes, you were here before. He looks at the file and goes, oh, I know you. You were my first surgery 10 years ago. You guys were my first surgery 10 years ago. came back, don't worry. When you made the hundred thousand dollar payment, that was a lifetime payment. I'll do the surgery for free. Surgery I'll do for free; you have nothing to worry about. You thought that the doctor being young was a bad thing. Why? Ah, we paid a hundred thousand dollars for the veteran, you thought. No, no, my friend. There is a gezera in Shamayim, there is a decree in Shamayim for you to have this disease twice. Now I can make you suffer with the money and the health twice, or money once and health twice. Which one do you want? You don't want either one. But this is what's written in Shamayim. Meaning that if we give Hashem the benefit of the doubt, the kaf zechut, we're always going to see that in the end, HaKadosh Baruch Hu's solution is much better than ours.

1:23:16There's an Avrech that we know in Yerushalayim, Mamash Ish Tzadik. His father just passed away a week ago, and I heard something from him that, honestly, I don't know anybody else who would say such a thing, who has such a view of the world. But this is just to show you why HaKadosh Baruch Hu continues to give Am Yisrael more and more time because He has Anashim Tzadikim like this. He has people like this. Now, his father died a week ago. Now, before he died, he was sick for a few months, and during the time that he was sick in the beginning, something went wrong with one of the treatments, and during that, they found out that he actually had cancer in his liver. Two weeks after they found out he had cancer in his liver, he died. So the avrech says, "Look how kind HaKadosh Baruch Hu is." Look how kind HaKadosh Baruch Hu is. Technically, there was already a decree in Shamayim for my father to go. But if he had shocked us—one day he's okay, next day he's diagnosed with cancer in the liver, two weeks later he's gone—we would all be in shock.

1:24:30My father got sick, and we already got used to going to the hospital and the doctors and back and forth. Already for a few months, we're back and forth to the doctors. We already got used to him being sick. We already got used to this new environment, this new reality that we have to think maybe he's not going to be here, maybe this, maybe not. HaKadosh Baruch Hu at least gave us this difficult decree, but with mercy too. He gave us more time to say goodbye. How many people get to say goodbye? He gave us more time to get used to the situation emotionally. How many people get that time? Quite a few people get that time. But not everybody looks at it that way. Not everybody looks at it that way. The thing is, though, is that again, if we give HaKadosh Baruch Hu kaf zechut, we give Him the benefit of the doubt, we'll see that His solutions, even though we don't necessarily understand them, are always better than ours. Now,

1:25:31there are two key ingredients that a person must have along with Yirat Shamayim. Along with fear of HaKadosh Baruch Hu, a person, as we said, has to believe in Hashem, believe that He is the only Creator, but also have to have, not just the emunah, but also have the bitachon. Have the confidence that HaKadosh Baruch Hu will deliver, that HaKadosh Baruch Hu will always deliver, has always delivered, will always do, has always done. If He says something will happen, it will happen. His signature is emet, meaning if He says something, He means it. If He says that there's a reward for something, that reward will come. If He says there's punishment for something, that punishment will come. That's why when we say a bracha, everybody else is supposed to say amen. Amen is really an acronym: El Melech Ne'eman — God, the King, that's trustworthy. Meaning, if He says something, you can take it to the bank. Now,

1:26:37The problem is sometimes we do not know how to decipher the difference between emunah and bitachon. Sometimes we think the two are the same. Emunah has become a key phrase that people like to talk about: have emunah, have emunah, have emunah. But as soon as there's a difficulty in life, all that emunah goes out the window. They have emunah when things are good. They have emunah when they have money in the bank. They have emunah when they just found somebody they're going to marry. They have emunah when they bought a few things that they like. They have emunah when things are going well. But as soon as all hell breaks loose, all of a sudden they want to drive on Shabbat, eat non-kosher, go out with goyot, and so on and so forth. All of a sudden, all the desires they had all along, they're like, ah, listen, if Hashem's not going to do what I want anyway, so I might as well not do what He wants. All of a sudden, it became like an elective. Like I'm doing the mitzvot as long as Hashem, you know, pays my bills. That means that they had emunah of an ant, a little tiny baby emunah that relied on HaKadosh Baruch Hu working for them. But the reality is that emunah without bitachon is no emunah at all. Now, what's the difference?

1:27:53Emunah is having faith; bitachon is having confidence. That's the literal translation. So then you have to say that with fear as well, because it's the same thing with fear. So now, I'll answer the question eventually, don't worry. So now, what's the difference between emunah and bitachon? Now you have, Baruch Hashem, two little kids next to you. They used to be even littler, right? When they were two. One of them probably climbed a table or something high. They wanted to jump into your hands. And you caught them, right? Your wife might have watched it. She had emunah that you're going to catch them. She had emunah. Why? Because you're their father. Hopefully you're not going to drop them. Hopefully you're not going to walk away. Got you. Oh, he dropped them. Okay, so she had emunah, but the emunah failed sometimes. But she had emunah you're going to catch them. He had bitachon that you're going to catch them. What's the difference? She believed that you're going to do it. He did something about it. He showed his belief. He showed his belief by jumping. He's not going to jump with just emunah. He's going to jump if he has bitachon, if he has confidence that you're going to actually do it.

1:29:06That's why the two have to go together. The emunah has to go with bitachon. If it's just emunah, if it's just, I have confidence that Hashem is going to do it, but I don't do anything about it, I don't practice my emunah, I don't do the mitzvot, despite the fact that things are not going well, then there's something missing. What's missing? Yirat Shamayim. In order for us to have emunah and bitachon, we must have yirat Hashem. Because that fear is the number one motivator for a human being to act. Sometimes it's the only motivator you have to act. Sometimes you don't feel like getting up and going to shul, but you know that if you don't daven, something usually bad happens. Sometimes fear is the only thing that motivates me. You know that if you don't go to work, you're not going to get your paycheck. You know that if you don't go to work, you're going to get fired. You know that if you drive too fast, you're going to get pulled over. You know if you do certain things, certain things are going to happen. So it's not just having faith in the system and confidence to show it, but sometimes you need that fear in order to motivate you and to put those two things into effect now.

1:30:21Many times, there are people that have an extraordinary amount of emunah, a huge amount of bitachon, and yirat shamayim, but from the outside perspective, it looks like their life is simply hell. This was one of the famous questions that Moshe Rabbeinu asked HaKadosh Baruch Hu: Why is there righteous people that suffer? They have emunah, they have bitachon... they have emunah, they have bitachon... But they still suffer. The guy still got cancer. The guy's still in pain 20 hours out of 24 hours a day. The guy doesn't have any money. The guy has all types of people making fun of him. The guy has people embarrassing him. This guy, his life is hell. But he has emunah. He has bitachon. He has this. She has emunah, but she still can't find a husband. And she's barely able to pay the bills. And her kids are going against her. And this and that. All the things in the world that are bad. Well, she has emunah. She has bitachon. Ha'akam Hashem. Ha'akam. But they still suffer. The guy still got cancer. The guy's still in pain 20 hours out of 24 hours a day. The guy doesn't have any money. The guy has all types of people making fun of him. The guy has people embarrassing him. This guy, his life is hell. But he has emunah. He has bitachon. He has this. She has emunah, but she still can't find a husband. And she's barely able to pay the bills. And her kids are going against her. And this and that. All the things in the world that are bad. Well, she has emunah. She has bitachon. Hakham Hashem. Hakham.

1:31:21He's a tzaddik, wow, what's the problem? Thank you. On the other hand, sometimes we see the opposite. We see some rasha, some guy who walks around with tattoos on his face proudly because he has a Magen David on his cheek. He thinks that makes him Jewish. Walks around like he owns the place. Rabbi says something, "Hey, hey, Rabbi, relax a second, I'm talking." In the last six months here in Florida, I don't know what's happening over here, there's some type of epidemic. Some type of epidemic; people are becoming spiritually stupid. Two kehillot in the last six months, just in this area, in the South Florida area, kicked out their own rabbis. Who kicked them out? People don't even keep Shabbat. People who don't keep Shabbat kicked out the rabbi and told him to keep Shabbat. I've never heard of such a thing. A rabbi tells you to keep Shabbat, and he says, "No, no, rabbi, we don't need you anymore." You need me more than ever; you're not keeping Shabbat. Sometimes people who don't know anything about Torah tell the rabbi, "Rabbi, I don't agree with you."

1:32:38You don't agree with me? Have you completed the Shas? Wait, do you know how to spell Shas? Have you completed a Masechet? Do you know what a Masechet is? Do you know what's in it? Do you know it by heart? You're going to tell me what to do? You're going to tell me you disagree with me? Or you're going to tell me you disagree with the Rambam? You disagree with the Rambam. You little, you nothing, don't even know how to spell ima and abba, you're going to disagree with the Rambam. Listen, it doesn't make any sense in today's age. People sometimes say funny things out of stupidity. And that's because there's no yirat shamayim, there's no fear of Hashem. They're too ignorant to even know they have to fear Hashem. But what's the confusing part for the rest of us that are trying to fulfill Torah and mitzvot? We see them driving Ferraris on Shabbat. We see them building mansions, bigger than Pharaoh's. We see their companies on CNBC. Wow, they just went public with a billion-dollar offering, the next best thing. What best thing? The guy's a rasha. Nebuchadnezzar is saying, this guy's worse than me. How could it be? So, this is confusing. It's only confusing...

1:34:05if we haven't learned enough. What's the answer? The Gemara in Masechet Berachot gives eight reasons why HaKadosh Baruch Hu brings suffering to a human being. Seven reasons we understand; the eighth one we don't. Seven reasons are as such. I'll give you a couple of examples without going into the details of all. One is a person has made a sin. Hashem likes the person, doesn't want that person to go to Gehinom, therefore He gives them the punishment in this world. So even though they're righteous, even though they have emunah, even though they have bitachon, everybody sins. Simply said, everybody sins. So you sinned when you were 13 and a half years old. You did this, this, and this. Okay, well, Hashem says, okay, now you're 40 years old. Good job for doing teshuva. Good job for learning. But there's still that sin you did when you were 13. You remember that one time? Yeah, I don't want to send you to Gehinnom for 500 years. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to amputate your foot. Why? You made a sin at 13 years old that killed 300 million souls.

1:35:11So what am I going to do? I don't want to send you to Gehinnom for 500 years. So what? I'll take off a foot. Now, if you understand a little bit about Gehinnom, you say, you know what? Take both feet. Take the arms too. Who wants to be in Gehinnom? But then Hashem is even more merciful. He says, you know what? I'm not going to take the foot. I like your foot. Your foot's cute. And it helps you go to Beit Knesset. You go to Beit Knesset every morning. So you know what? I'm not going to take your foot. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to take your money. How much does a foot cost? Oh, you want an amputation foot? 25,000? Okay, I'll take 25,000. Who takes 25,000 from your account? Some broker calls you, "Listen, buy this stock. It's the next great thing. How much to start an account? 25,000." Okay, great. You send the guy 25,000. A week later, you call the guy. "Sorry, sir, the number is disconnected." Where's my money? Where's my money? Go to the broker. He told me about the stocks. What happened? took the $25,000 and paid for that instead. Why? Because you made a sin 30 years ago. So that's one reason. Sometimes it's not a sin even from this life but from a previous life. Why? Every one of us has been here many, many times since Adam. It's called reincarnations.

1:36:27The Arizal in Sha'ar HaGilgulim talks in detail about how people reincarnate, sometimes again in different human beings, sometimes even in other things. It could be an animal, it could be a plant, it could even be a rock. Another reason is because Hakadosh Baruch Hu wants to elevate the neshama. He knows that right now you are able to reach, let's say, out of a level of one to ten of your spiritual potential. You have a little bit of pride that's getting in the way because you want Hashem to do what you want. So Hashem has to destroy a little bit of that pride. What's the best way to destroy somebody's pride? By showing them that they're nothing. So HaKadosh Baruch Hu gives you a little bit of a schlep. You're nothing. Why? He takes away a bunch of stuff from you. You had a million dollars, now you have nothing. You had a car, now they towed it away. You had all types of stuff. So now you feel like you're nothing. Now, if you're really religious and you have emunah and you have bitachon and you have yirat shamayim, this is perfect. Why? Because you're not going to lose it as a result of losing this stuff. You're not going to lose it. You're going to be a little confused maybe. You're going to be shocked. You're going to be in pain. But you're not going to lose your emunah in Hashem if it was real emunah to begin with.

1:37:41Tzadik after all, right? So now, HaKadosh Baruch Hu is giving you that, but now you realize, wait a minute, this stuff that I had is not really me, and you use that extra time that you have to connect to a higher level of HaKadosh Baruch Hu. The last reason—there are more reasons in the Gemara—but the last reason is simply because HaKadosh Baruch Hu has His own accounting. HaKadosh Baruch Hu has His own accounting. He does things for His own reasons that are beyond our scope of understanding. Now, what about the rasha? What about the heretic that publicizes nude films, publicizes kefirah, publicizes things that are against Hashem, causes people to leave HaKadosh Baruch Hu? How come he continues to go against Hashem, but Hashem continues to give him stuff? Every week he has a new car, every week he's buying a new piece of property, every week he has other things that make it look from the outside like, wow.

1:38:42This guy's blessed. A wife, four or five kids. Wow, this guy looks like he has it all. Remember, the show's not over yet. It's just today. HaKadosh Baruch Hu says in the book of Devarim, at the end of Parashat Va'etchanan, He pays His haters cash to their face in order to destroy them. Meaning, even though that wicked guy goes against Hashem constantly, at some point in his life, he did some mitzvot, even if they were not necessarily intentional. He had a bar mitzvah, he had a brit milah, he has a few things that he did that were okay. Even if it's not intentional, he still did it. Hashem says those few mitzvot that he did intentionally or unintentionally, I gotta pay him. Why? Because I want to pay him here in order to destroy him. I'm gonna give him the reward for all of his mitzvot in this world because as soon as he's done, he's done. had a bar mitzvah, he has a brit milah, he has a few things that he did that were okay. Even if it's not intentional, he still did it. Hashem says those few mitzvot that he did intentionally or unintentionally, I gotta pay him. Why? Because I want to pay him here in order to destroy him. I'm gonna give him the reward for all of his mitzvot in this world because as soon as he's done, he's done.

1:39:51He goes to a department that doesn't end, the suffering there doesn't end. It's called Gehenom. And there's a certain chamber in there, that's the seventh one. The Gemara in Masechet Rosh Hashanah, page 17, says anyone that enters the seventh chamber goes in and never comes out. So that's why you will see many times the biggest, most wicked people in the world typically are the most successful financially. This doesn't mean that everybody that's successful is wicked. There are many righteous people that are successful also. But you will see that the common denominator among the wicked people is that they're more successful than the average. This also gives us a relatively simple understanding of why The most successful Christian missionaries are Jews. Most successful Christian missionaries, meaning the biggest enemies of Am Yisrael, the ones that not only lead people away from Hashem, but they actually lead people to idolatry, are actually Jewish people by birth. Whether it's Michael Brown yimach shemo, or a bunch of the other followers that he has, or people that are along with him, some of them have churches with 50, 60, 70,000 members.

1:41:12Just the ma'aser of that kehillah is millions of dollars every month. They have so much money that they have a collection of planes. Many of them surround Donald Trump in his chamber, in his cabinet. Many of them. He says, "Oh yeah, I know a lot of Jews." Yeah, all the Jews he knows are Christian missionaries. That's the Jews he knows. That's why he likes Jews, because they all have the same belief as him. The point is, Rabotai, how come Hashem gives these people millions and millions of dollars and an endless amount of influence and power and so on? Because, again, this is one of the ways that He fulfills His will. He pays His haters cash to their face. He pays His haters a reward in this world in order to destroy them. If a person understands that everything and anything that happens in the world, whether it's the thought that's in your head right now, or the thought that was in your head five minutes ago that you forgot about already, or the thought that you had last week on Tuesday at 2 a.m. when you couldn't go to sleep, that thought, Hashem knows. Hashem wrote it down. It's in a book. He will show you that thought one day.

1:42:30If He knows all of this, how could you not be scared? All the junk that we have in our head. Nine out of ten things we think about is junk. Hashem, what kind of embarrassment we're going to have when it's the Yom HaDin, we go up to Shamayim and Hashem shows us all the garbage that's in our mind. Just you walk down the street, Hashem, what you thought about? Just to go to the deli to get a bagel. How many sins your mind made, who knows? To go back home, Hashem, you already deserve karet. Just for thoughts. You looked at a woman and said, oh, nice to meet you. And Hashem, what you thought about after "nice to meet you." She thought, oh, he seems like a nice guy, and Hashem, what she thought about after "the nice guy." And you say, oh, yeah, and when you could do business, and you're thinking about how you could take advantage, and oh, wow, what you could think about, you really could do business, and you could take advantage of him. Oh, he looks like a guy that I could take advantage of. And all the garbage that goes in our mind, not even stuff we do, forget about that stuff. That's obvious. I'm talking about the stuff we think about. All of that is going to be shown to us. Every single thought we have had. There's a special malach.

1:43:37that gives you a cheshbon of every single rega, every single moment that you lived in your life, and he tells you, why did you think this? Why did you think this? Yeah, but that was a minute ago. No, no, that was a second ago. You thought this one second ago. This is the next second. How come you thought about this the next second? How do you justify this? Yeah, but that was just a second later. Exactly. Every second of your life. When the Gaon told this to his students, one of the students passed out. The students came to the Gaon and said, "It was scary what you said." The Gaon looks at them and says, "You think what I said is scary? Oh, if I told you the real truth. I didn't tell you anything. What's scary? This is pshat," he says. "This is basics. If I told you the real truth, then you'd be scared." He goes, "Yeah, but he passed out." He goes, "Good. That means he's the only one out of you that's actually scared." Depends how you treat your body. If you preserve your body by watching your brit and watching your eyes, the number of sins that

1:44:59and improper thoughts that will enter your mind will decrease over time drastically to the point of almost non-existence. If you do not protect either your brit or your eyes, then not only are you going to have a constant stream of improper thoughts, but they're going to come to you at the most inappropriate times, especially during times when you're actually praying to Hashem, which is the worst thing in the world—to think about some woman when you're trying to pray to Hashem. Now, That is a problem. Why? Because that is a result of your actions. It's not something that just appeared. It's an outcome. So this is also why I tell people, as far as the Gemara in Masechet Avodah Zarah. It says, "Watch your eyes during the day so the ra, the evil, does not come to you at night." And it's talking about people that have dreams where they end up wasting seed in the dream. The Gemara specifies something very peculiar here. It says, "Watch your eyes during the day so the evil doesn't come to you at night." Now, throughout the Gemara in many places, Gemara Masechet Shabbat, Berachot, Sanhedrin, many, many places, it constantly talks about how

1:46:11the tzaddikim were constantly worried about seed leaving their body during their sleep. They would actually shorten their sleep because of their fear for this to happen. Now, of course, none of them ever looked at girls, so it wasn't a result of their actions. But still, there's a certain amount of complexity in the body that sometimes it happens. So that's why they were constantly married. And if they traveled, they would sometimes take their wives with them. Some even had wives in multiple places because in those days, you were allowed to marry more than one wife. As long as the first wife allowed, you were allowed to marry one wife in one town and another wife in a different place. Why? Because they didn't want to waste seed. So at least they would have somebody there. The point being is that the world was petrified, petrified of wasting seed accidentally. So much so that before Yom Kippur, they would take the Kohen Gadol away from his wife. They would take the Kohen Gadol away from his wife for a week and... a week they'll take him away from his wife to make sure that they see that he's pure, he's not wasting seed. And the night before Yom Kippur, they would keep him up all night; they wouldn't let him go to sleep. It talks about how they kept the Kohen Gadol, the biggest tzaddik in the world, up all night to make sure he doesn't go to sleep. Why? If he goes to sleep, who knows what's going to happen?

1:47:33Meaning that the Chachamim, it wasn't that they were making sins and therefore led to bad actions. There's a certain bodily reaction that you have. That's why they also say you have to get married, you have to have a wife, and so on and so forth. But the point being is that here the Gemara is saying, watch your eyes in the morning so evil doesn't come to you at night. So there's a contradiction. Here they're worried about it, but they're not seeing anything evil. This is saying, watch your eyes in the morning so you don't have evil come at night. How come this is not evil, this is evil? The Kohanim, the Tzadikim, they're worried about a certain bodily reaction that occurs if he's not with his wife. The Gemara over here that's talking about evil is saying, no, no. Yes, the body will react, but it's not just because the body is that way. It's because your eyes are leading to it. Your actions are leading to it. Meaning, your body reacted that way because of the actions that happened before. You looked at inappropriate things the whole day, the whole week, the whole year. Of course you're going to have that dream. Which means what? Which means that the one that wasted seed accidentally, even though he had pure eyes,

1:48:51He has no problem with Shamayim. There are certain tikkunim that he has to fix and so on and so forth, but he's not going to Gehenom. He's okay. You, on the other hand, that looked at all these magazines and movies and X-Men and Matrix and all this stuff, ooh, wow, what are they going to do to you in Shamayim if you don't do Teshuvah? Why? It is your fault. It is your fault. Why? You looked. What do you think is going to happen if you look? Something's going to happen. There's action, there's a reaction. So that means Rabotai HaYekarim is that A person that fears HaKadosh Baruch Hu is going to take every single look seriously, every thought seriously, and every single step seriously. And it's hard. It's very, very hard. Do you know how hard it is to look at your ugly faces the whole time? I'd much rather look at the women. But I have to look at your beards and non-beards. I have to look. Why? I'm a guy.

1:49:53That's the reality. That's how hard it is. I went to New York. There's, I don't know, 150 people in front of me in one of the lectures. And I know on the right side there's girls. On the left side there's the guys. The whole time looking to the left. Why? Why? The guys are enjoying looking at their ugly faces? No. But that's the point. That's the point, Rabotai. That's how you have to do it. You have to do it. Because you have to protect this neshama that you have. If you don't think it's a big deal, you're, oh, it's not a big deal, then we have to go aleph-bet of Yirat Shamayim. We start at the beginning of shiur, rewind, start at the beginning. Start at the beginning of shiur, we're going to go all over again. Why? If you're not afraid of Hashem, what are you going to be afraid of? What are you going to be afraid of? Now most people don't like to talk about being afraid of Hashem. They want Hashem to be a puppy. They want Hashem to be a Care Bear. They want to hug Hashem. Go to sleep with Him at night. You know, cuddle with them. That's what they want Hashem to be. They want Hashem to be a Care Bear. Hashem is not a Care Bear. He's Melech Malchei HaMelachim, HaKadosh Baruch Hu. He's the King of Kings. Blessed be He. He's the best of the best. The Creator of all creations. The Master of all.

1:51:08There's not enough words to describe His kedusha and His gedulah. The Mishnah in Avot went even a step further. David HaMelech went a step further. Every one of the tzaddikim went a step further to give Hashem more adjectives to describe Him, and everyone says it's still not enough. Don't think that after you do Shema Yisrael in the morning and then you finish the part of the Tzitzit and you say all types of wonderful things about Hashem—oh, He's nice and He's good and He's merciful and He's this and He's that—don't think for a moment that's enough. That's not even 1% of 1% of 1% of describing how beautiful and amazing HaKadosh Baruch Hu is. How awesome He is. The more awesome He is in your eyes, the more scared you're going to be. the less likely you are to sin. But the more you compare Him to your own ugly face, the more likely you're going to sin. Why? Because you're not scared of yourself. You're not scared of yourself. The more you're going to humanize Hashem, the more likely you're going to become the biggest kofer in town. Start websites against the Torah. That's what happened with a lot of these heretics. They wanted to humanize Hashem.

1:52:25Why? They need to justify their sins. We'll finalize with one story, and you guys can ask whatever questions you want. I'll give you a simple human understanding of what fearing Hashem means to someone that lived among us, walked among us, not too long ago. One of the Gedolei HaDor, his name was Rav Moshe Feinstein. It's well known that Rav Moshe Feinstein, when he prayed Amidah, unlike what you see in Batei Knesset today, where you sometimes see people break dancing when they're praying. They go like this, like that, they're moving. It's like, yeah, and they start dancing sometimes. One time I went to a Beit Knesset for Hoshana Rabbah. We had a nine-hour shiur, nine-hour shiur. After nine hours of speaking straight, you're kind of tired. ...kind of tired. Oh, but I went to the right kehilla. They wanted to have Shacharit for four hours, Shacharit for four hours. Why? Because they wanted to dance the whole time. Not a single one of them came to the shiur, but dancing for four hours they wanted for Shacharit. So, people think that if you dance in Shacharit, that makes you holy. No, it just makes you dance. It doesn't make you holy. You're a good dancer; maybe you'll get a job from Adama or something, but in Shamayim, they're not gonna hire you. Why? They don't need dancers...

1:53:41When he prayed, it was very well known that he literally stood like a pillar. Didn't move an inch, not right, not left, not front, not back, nothing. So much so that it was weird to everyone else. was just how do you not move at all? Like nothing, not even, like, you know, like sometimes you look around a little bit, you finish, or you just, you know, you move a little, like something, something, you know? Even if you don't want to move, you move almost like a little fire is in you, and you start, you know, when the fire is dancing a little bit, right? Nothing. Zero. Stands like a pillar, like he's made of cement. So one time, one of the people in the kehillah asked the Rav, please tell us, why don't you move? You should know, based on halacha, you're really not supposed to move during Amidah. You could see actually in the Sdei Chemed, also Tefillah LeMoshe, Rav Moshe Levi, both wrote it, that if you're going to move, if you're going to go back and forth, only do it during the other prayers. Don't move during Amidah.

1:55:09Don't move during Amidah. Why? You're in front of the Melech Malchei HaMelachim at the most serious time. It's not a time for dancing. So they asked Rav Moshe Feinstein, Kevod HaRav, how come you don't move? He says, when I was in Russia, one time these Cossacks, these Reshaim, wicked ones, put a gun to my head. And he said, if you move, I'm going to kill you. And I was young at the time. When he put that gun to my head, I was so scared that he was going to kill me for nothing. I didn't do anything, just for moving. Just twitch, right? Or if something itched. Not like I was walking or running away. If I simply scratched my forehead, he was going to kill me. He was dead serious about killing me. It wasn't a joke. He was just looking for an excuse to kill me. that fear that I had made me realize how insignificant I am, how much of a zero I am. And at that moment, I said, this insignificance, this zero-ness, I must dedicate this to Hashem. I must dedicate this to Hashem the rest of my life. And that's why every time I meet Hashem, every time I pray,

1:56:35He put a gun to my head. He's flesh and blood. Worst case scenario, I died. Big deal. But I was scared. I didn't move. I didn't move. How would I not be scared if I'm meeting HaKadosh Baruch Hu? Many of the tzaddikim prayed very differently than the way you see in shuls. Why? The more Torah you know, the more you understand you have to be a little bit different. And Different doesn't mean you make a scene. Different doesn't mean you are the loudest voice. Different means that you're the one who sees what HaKadosh Baruch Hu says and sticks to it. Today it's different, unfortunately. But I promise you that the more different you are from everybody else around you, as far as complying with the Torah, the more you'll influence everyone around you to be different just like you. The kedusha that you bring to the place will influence them much more than you trying to be just like them and fit in. That's what a lot of young rabbis make a mistake in doing. They try to appease the crowd by telling people what they want to hear. They soften the approach. They start telling you about Yirat Shamayim in such a nice way that you forget you're afraid. There's an article on the internet by Chabad about Gehenom. After I read it, I wrote them. I want to go there.

1:57:58How you portray Gehenom, I want to go there. This approach that has happened in our generation, unfortunately, is confusing a lot of people. It's very important to know that we have our Torah, we have our tzaddikim that tell us exactly what this means, what that means, what this means, what that means, and that's what we follow. We don't follow any local rabbi, we don't follow any famous speaker, we're not looking to be motivated into some type of state of numbness thinking that we're tzaddikim. If you're alive, that's because HaKadosh Baruch Hu is saying constantly, "My son, my daughter, you have work to do. That's why you're alive." My son, my daughter, you have work to do. That's why you're alive. It begins with Yirat Shamayim, you start having Emunah, you start having Bitachon, you combine all three different pieces, and little by little you get closer and closer to HaKadosh Baruch Hu and fulfilling your mission in the world. But if you think that you can just pick apart whichever pieces you like, you're gonna love Hashem sometimes, you're gonna believe sometimes, once in a blue moon when a car is approaching you, you're gonna be afraid, but if it's not approaching, then it's okay, your Yirat Shamayim will go on vacation,

1:59:11You know, you start picking and choosing which mitzvot to follow, it's not going to fare very well. And that's why I always tell people, it's written in the Torah, the fear of HaKadosh Baruch Hu. HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, that's my treasure. So the Gemara in Masechet Shabbat says, what does it mean that's his treasure? Chachamim say he created the entire world just for you to be afraid of Him. Not for you to love Him. For you to be afraid of Him. You should love Him; it's a mitzvah. But it's not possible if you don't fear Him first. Meaning that if you're only afraid of Him, it's perfectly fine. Why? It's still a connection to Him. But if you think you could only love Him, it's not a connection to Him. It's a connection to something else. It's not Him. Why? If you know Him, if you know HaKadosh Baruch Hu, you must be afraid. So it's either fear or fear and love. It can never be just love. And that's what Akiva, Rabbi Akiva, is a chidush. We thought, oh, maybe we could skip. Skip the fear part, go to the party. But that's the reason why, is because most of us don't even know what it means to love Hashem. We think that loving Hashem is something nice, like we love our wives, we love our husbands, you know, pucci, mucci, mucci. It's not that, that's not Hashem. Hashem is not a puppy. A small example of what loving Hashem is, is in this Tanach that I opened right at the beginning of the lecture.

2:00:33I said, "I can't believe I opened it here because the whole idea of the lecture is in this one verse. The whole idea, the whole verse, the whole lecture, what I just told you, is in this one verse. It doesn't need three hours; it needs just one verse. And even this one verse, you could elaborate on for 500 years. The prophet Job says in Chapter 13, verse 15, 'Were He to kill me...'" I would still yearn for Him. Job is saying, even if HaKadosh Baruch Hu kills me, destroys me, punishes me, hurts me, all that stuff, all the worst things you could possibly imagine, I'll still do everything He says. Why? He's HaKadosh Baruch Hu. And even for this high level, There's a debate in the Gemara of whether this is the highest level of fear or the beginning of love. But it's definitely not the highest level of love. We're thinking in our mind, wow, this guy loves Hashem. Even if He's going to kill you, you're going to still serve Him? You fell in love with Hashem. Wow. No, no. There's actually a machloket between two Tannaim.

2:01:50One says, yeah, he loves Him. That one says, ah, I'm in love with You. Crazy love. No. He got to the highest level of fear. That's what he got to. He's not loving Him yet. Meaning that the highest level of fear is the beginning of loving Hashem. Needless to say, most people in our generation simply do not even understand the basic definition of what it means to love Hashem. Loving Hashem simply means you have no interest in yourself anymore. You have Hashem's interest only. You only care about what Hashem wants. That's loving Hashem. You're not doing anything for a reward, meaning, even if Hashem says, listen, you keep Shabbat, I'm going to punish you. But you have to keep Shabbat. But I'm going to punish you for every single time you keep Shabbat. I'm going to punish you. And you still keep Shabbat. That's loving Hashem. How many people do you have there? Even Rabbi Nachman of Breslov. Rabbi Nachman of Breslov said it himself in Likutey Moharan. He says, he said it himself.

2:02:55So this is why we constantly talk about Yirat Shamayim. Because quite frankly, from experience and from the books, talking about Ahavat Hashem is really irrelevant for most people at this stage. If you have arrived at a point where you can fall in love with Hashem and have fear of Hashem, most likely you are teaching. You're not learning from me anymore. You're already, well Hashem, maybe I can learn from you. You're not learning from me. i can learn from you. That's where we are all the time. Any questions? Same price. After the camera is off, usually people ask 500 questions. So that's the way it works, usually. Good? Alright. Alright. We just saw how it's quite impossible, especially in our generation now, for anyone to even love Hashem. It's possible; it just takes a very, very, lot of effort, put it that way. And even the fact that we just learned that...

2:04:22You're obligated to love Him. How can you fulfill a mitzvah that you can't fulfill? Fantastic question. So, the actual practice of loving Hashem, the execution of loving Hashem, is something we have to aspire to, and it's something that we can only acquire after an excessive amount of learning and doing His will. So the actual execution takes time. But the practice of doing it, meaning trying to aspire, trying to get to that point, is something you can constantly do by simply recognizing the things that HaKadosh Baruch Hu constantly gives you. He gives you eyes. He gives you a head. They both function. That's already enough of a reason to say thank you a million and a half times. So it starts with being grateful. Be grateful constantly for all the things that HaKadosh Baruch Hu gave you. The second thing is to constantly work on learning His Torah because that is the only way that you can actually acquire that love that you are obligated to acquire. So the actual acquisition, the aspiring to get this love of Hashem, is really loving Hashem.

2:05:38executing it to the ultimate level takes a lot of time and effort, but that's not what the mitzvah is. The mitzvah is to constantly work on it on a day-to-day basis, constantly looking for things to thank Hashem for. Oh wow, the sky is blue, what a beautiful sky it could have been gray. could have been ugly. It's beautiful. Or you see that you have a car, and the car works. Or you see you have a few dollars in your pocket. Oh, you know, some people don't have a few dollars in their pocket. I know every day, every time I finish the lecture, I get to my house. Right before my house, there's this traffic light where you get off the highway. The same guy, every single time, is on the corner asking for a few dollars. Same guy, every single time. Sometimes I have, I give. Sometimes I don't have, I don't give. But I'm thinking about the guy. I mean, the guy doesn't have a few dollars in his pocket. Even if he does, he's still miserable enough to be in the corner waiting for me at two o'clock in the morning to get two dollars. If I have two dollars, I'm giving it to him. Why? If I have two dollars and he's in the corner and I'm in the car, he needs two dollars more than I do. So that's already enough of a reason to be extremely grateful. You understand? So if you think about all the amazing things that Hashem (God) gives you, it's very, very easy to fall in love with Him.

2:06:46as far as executing it to the highest level like we're supposed to, that takes time. That takes time. Anything else? Yes, the two big things that are, or a few things: Number one, learning Torah. You have to constantly learn Torah every day and fulfill mitzvot even if you don't understand them. Simply understand that anything that you don't understand is your own deficiency. There's not a deficiency in the Torah. If there's something that you don't understand, that's because you don't understand it, not because there isn't an answer. You just haven't worked enough to get that answer. So that's the first thing. The second thing is that aside from doing things whether you understand them or not, you have to learn Mussar every day. You have to learn about why you need to be afraid of Hashem. The Mesilat Yesharim, the Ramchal, writes that you have to have a relatively vivid imagination in order to understand why you need to fear Hashem. Meaning, you need to know the details of punishment. Not constantly; it doesn't necessarily mean you need to learn about Gehinnom every day, but you need to understand different reasons of why you need to be afraid. Just like I explained to you guys, like, you know, a little blood clot decides to go on vacation. That's enough of a thought that any normal human being should be afraid. Or think about, wait a minute,

2:08:10There is no money. What if I don't have money tomorrow? Then I won't be able to eat. Like that type of thing. Like try to understand and even meditate over the different mitzvot that are in the Torah that are related to Yirat Shamayim. So learning Mussar is the second thing. The third thing is to meditate over it in general. Meaning that you have to think about how significant HaKadosh Baruch Hu is how He's a master of all; He's overseeing everything, He's watching every single thing that you're doing. You have to aspire to have a feeling as if He is watching you all the time. That's what we have to aspire to do—not just know that He's watching us subconsciously, but actually aspire to get to a point where you constantly know that He's watching you right now. you're sitting here and you're thinking about building Legos at home and you can't wait to eat donuts on Chanukah, and you can't wait to make steak and maybe some shish kebabs, and you can't wait to get a more comfortable chair because this one is really hurting your tush, and you can't wait to get better shoes because this one has all that junk. All that junk that you have in your head—you wouldn't have it if you're thinking that Hashem is watching; He's recording all this junk.

2:09:25Instead, so if a person constantly thinks that Hashem is watching, He's recording and so on, it becomes easier and easier. Those few things will help you a tremendous amount, but the biggest thing is simply practice. Practice, you know, as far as overcoming major obstacles. You're gonna have obstacles in your life. There's going to be modesty, there's going to be promiscuity, there's going to be money issues, there's going to be dishonesty, there's going to be a million and a half different tests coming your way. Don't go to the test, but make sure that before you encounter them, you practice passing them. Meaning that you should already visualize yourself: What will I do if someone immodest comes? Before the immodesty comes. Once she appears, let's say you're finished. She's already there, you're not going to pass the test. You have to already start practicing in your head, wait, if somebody from the right side comes and she's immodest, I'm immediately looking left. If somebody from the left comes and she's immodest, I'm immediately looking right. I'm not gonna look to see whether she's modest or not. I simply see there's an image of a woman on this side, I'm looking that way. I see some type of shoulder or skin or a nose or something, I'm simply looking somewhere else. If they come from both sides, I'm simply gonna close my eyes. You have to practice this stuff in your head already.

2:10:46Because the day's gonna come, the hour's gonna come, the minute's gonna come, and the test's gonna come. So if you practice this, it becomes much easier once game time comes. But if you don't practice it, you're constantly going to fail. So the key is to try your best to practice as much as possible, but also not to beat yourself up too much when you fail. Because you will fail, and I will fail, and everybody fails at some point. But get up. Realize, I failed. We sinned. I'm sorry, Hashem. Try again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. Only be hard on yourself during the test and before you fail. After you fail, be easy on yourself. Move on. Don't be hard on yourself after you fail. It's not going to help you in life. People think that I'm always like this, strong, you know, regardless of what's going on. No, I'm only like this before you sin. After you sin, some people call me constantly because of the issues of wasting seed and things like that. They need a lot of help and so on. And they're always surprised at what the reaction is. So I try to give people chizuk. Chizuk, do, do, do, do. You can do it, you can do it, you can do it. Give them different guides on what to do, what to read, how to do all types of things to overcome this big desire that they're addicted to. Then they send me a text, "Oh, Rabbi, I'm sorry I failed." As if it's me. Okay, I'm sorry. Say sorry to Hashem, not me. I'm not God.

2:12:13I'm sorry I failed. I don't know what to do. And they're shocked. That, instead of like, they're expecting me to like, yell at them. Oh, I didn't know what to tell you. It's already been two days. I didn't want to tell you, but I figured I have to. I'm like, why are you scared of me? And they get a short, one or two-minute chizuk. No, you can do it. You're the best. You're this, you're that. Oh, wow. I didn't expect to get chizuk out of this. I didn't expect to get boosted up for this. I thought I was going to get yelled at. What's the point of yelling at you now? You already broke it. What am I going to do, yelling at you now? Keep you down? That's what Satan wants. Satan wants you to stay down. If you didn't break it, I'm going to tell you about all the details of Gehinom until you run away from it. Oh, what they're going to do to you in Gehinom. Man, they're going to cut you up, and they're going to do this, and they're going to put this over here and this over there. By the time I finish with you, you already can see Gehinom. But, if you failed, if that wasn't enough, and you failed, I'm the first one to hug you.

2:13:16Well, there's no point in punching you in the face anymore. That's before the sin. The rebuke is before. After, I have to get you back up. That's the point, rabotai. It's very, very important to know how to treat yourself also. Don't ever think it's not a big deal and say, ah, I sinned already. No, so come on, I'll just do it again, I'll do it again, I'll do it again, then I'll eventually do teshuvah. Because that's a problem. But the key is don't stay down after you fall. Get yourself back up, figure out a way of how to not get into the same hole again, not get into the same trouble again, put a fence around the fence. You know now that every time you go to the street, you see things that you're not supposed to see. Okay, so from now on, make a rule. This street, off limits. don't go on that street anymore. Even if I have to go around and it’s going to take me an extra 10 minutes, I have a new policy: I don't go down Collins Avenue. I don’t go down all these avenues that have all this immodesty. It's not like a safek; there are certain streets where it’s maybe, maybe yes, maybe not, depending on how much Hashem wants to give me a test.

2:14:26But there are certain streets where it's not a maybe. It's 100% certain. That's all there is. So you know that if you go there, you're simply going there to sin. So that's it. You have to train yourself and make sure that you don't fall for the same test over and over again. But even if you do, try again. Try again and again and again until it's no longer a test. How do you know you passed the test? Hashem stops giving it to you. That's how you know you passed the test. Meaning that as long as HaKadosh Baruch Hu is giving you the test, that means you haven't completed the test. Now, it doesn't mean that you haven't passed any part of it; it just means you haven't passed the test. Especially with arayot, with immorality and sex crimes, and things of that nature. That's one of the things that Chazal tell us. That's something for which the test never ends. Your whole life. Don't even trust yourself if you're 90 years old and half your body doesn't work; you're still not allowed to trust yourself.

2:15:27To that extent, there's even a story in the Gemara. One of the tzaddikim, one of the Tannaim, was old. Old. But they said, "Listen, Rabbi, there's a bunch of girls that came from a different town and we need to have them somewhere. Can they stay by you?" And his house was a couple of stories. But to move, to go from one story to the other, they had to have 15 men lift this huge ladder that they had. So the Rabbi says, just make sure they're on the second floor. All of them have to fit on the second floor. And no one is allowed to come downstairs. No one's allowed. No problem, Rabbi. They took it. They took the ladder. The ladder's out of the way. To get the ladder back, you need 15 men. Chazal says in the Gemara, the night came and so did the Malach HaMavet.

2:16:28Gave this kadosh, this ish kadosh, this tanna kadosh, the ability to revive the dead. Literally, the strength of 15 men. He took the ladder and started putting it in place. He started, old man, started climbing the ladder. Once he got halfway, he realized, what am I doing? And he says, I'm already on the ladder. If I got up here, there's most likely I'm gonna go up there. there's only one way to save myself. What did he do? He started screaming, "Fire, fire, fire," at three o'clock in the morning. What's fire? Everybody runs out. "What's fire? Ha, ha, ha. What's fire?" So now he is on the ladder. Everybody sees he's going to the second floor. Meaning, all of the talmidim, all the talmidim are gonna see their rabbi is on the ladder. He's going to see the girls. They said, "Rabbi, what are you doing?" He goes, "Fire, fire." He goes, "What fire?" He goes, "Yetzer Hara is here. Get me out of here. Save me." "Kvod Harav, you embarrassed us." He says, "I'd rather be an embarrassment to you than be called a Rasha in Shamayim. Fire. You understand? Old man. Power of 15 people. You understand? Yetzer Hara, Baruch Hashem, has tools. He has tools, but he also..."

2:17:49He has to give us, HaKadosh Baruch Hu has to give us the opportunity to pass those. He also has to give us a tool to pass it, and that tool is Torah. That tool is Torah. Anything else? Yes, in the back. There's a book that's called Ma'aram, the first man's book. I was going to ask, does it still exist? Sefer Yetzirah. There's a book called Sefer Yetzirah. Some say that parts of it still exist, but even the parts that exist, only the extremely high-level Kabbalists can even understand parts of it. But if a person was at a high level of kedusha, they were able to literally create things. For example, this is one of the tools that Avraham Avinu used, the Zohar says, in order to create a cow every Shabbat. Why would he create a cow every Shabbat? Because as a Noahide, Avraham wasn't a Jew. People would tell you Avraham was the first Jew. It's not true. Judaism began at Mount Sinai. But he's still our father. He's our forefather. He's Kodesh Kodashim and alvai we could simply be one of the grains of sand that he ever walked on. But Judaism began at Mount Sinai. But Avraham Avinu

2:19:09that according to the Torah, they knew Avraham, Mitzvot, and Yaakov knew the entire Torah, even though it wasn't given to mankind yet. It wasn't given to everybody as a commandment, but they still knew it and they still kept the mitzvot. That's why, for example, when Lavan was chasing down Yaakov and Rachel was hiding his two statues that she stole from her father, Lavan. And when, you know, when Lavan finally arrives, Rachel says to him, no, I cannot come and, you know, and embrace you because it's the time of the month for me. So, time of the month, what's the big deal? Go in all the time, do anything in the time of the month, what's the problem? Chazal says that the Avot, Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, and the Imahot, the matriarchs, Rachel, Leah, Rivka, they all knew the kedusha of all of the mitzvot, and they knew how much tumah came from that period. So they actually kept taharat hamishpacha. They kept taharat hamishpacha. The point being is that because they knew the Torah, they knew that non-Jews, meaning Noahides, are not allowed to keep Shabbat.

2:20:25They're not allowed to keep Shabbat because keeping Shabbat for a non-Jew would be stealing from the Jews. So what did they do? They kept Shabbat like a person during conversion does, which is you keep 99% of the Shabbat. If somebody's going through a conversion to Judaism, they're not allowed to keep Shabbat 100%. because they're still technically non-Jewish. But they still need to practice how to do it, because eventually they're going to become Jewish; they're going to finish the conversion. So what do you do? You instruct them to keep it 99%. Meaning you keep Shabbat, but you violate it intentionally once, by turning on the light or lighting a lighter one time; not driving or doing something big, just something small. So in essence, you're keeping 99%. So that's the way Avraham Avinu would break Shabbat, by creating a cow. you create a cow. So, Sefer Yetzirah had the secret to do that and many, many other things. Also, there are several stories of different tzaddikim who have used that book and different secrets from Kabbalah and so on in order to create golems, which is, in essence, taking a bunch of clay and creating a person without a neshama. There's the...

2:21:43the... uh... one of these actually still, uh... on his gravesite, there's a statue there of a golem, a being that he created in order to protect the Jews from the goyim. He lived there for, uh... he lived there for a few years to protect because the goyim used to kidnap Jewish girls. So he actually created a golem, a huge thing. It protected the Jewish people, but then eventually the goyim stopped doing it and there was no need to have it. So he took the holy name off its forehead, and it became dust again. But the whole town, the Jews and the non-Jews, knew of this. Until this day, there's actually a place where they tell the story, and they say that's where it is, and so on and so forth. There are a lot of interesting things in Prague. Anybody who wants to go to Prague, stop by over there. Anything else? it's a fantastic book, um, it's a, uh, it's just, it's very, very deep

2:22:52And the more you read, the more times you go over certain things, the more you realize the first time you understood nothing. The second time you read, okay, great. The third time you read, oh, the second time I understood nothing. And you read the sixth time, it's like, oh, the first five times I don't know what I was reading. You know, it's very, very deep. But it's like one of those books where every single page has an extraordinary amount of wisdom in it. And it's not like books that are written today where the entire book could be written in five pages, but they still give you 300 because that's the only way they convince you to pay 20 bucks for it. You know, the whole idea of the book is in five pages. Here, every single paragraph... has extraordinary things. I mean, you look at my book here. Every page, you know, you have little folding. Every page is folded, pretty much. The whole thing is folded. So it's just one of those books that's extraordinary. There's not many books like that that are written anymore. But, Baruch Hashem, this is one of the greatest things I've read in my life. Anything else? I have one last question. Yes. Okay, so my last question is, the Baba Sali is a descendant from Moshe, right?

2:24:01Moses? Uh, I don't know if he's descended from Moshe, but, uh, yeah, I guess I want to claim, yeah, I guess that, I mean, uh, it's possible. I'm not sure. Okay, I'm not sure if he is or he isn't. Um, it's not really their last name. The Abuhatzeira actually means the owner of the carpet. That's a name that was given to his great-great-great-grandfather, who was a big tzaddik, at a time when the town was in major poverty. The Jewish people at that time were suffering, and there was no money whatsoever, and they needed somebody to go collect money. So they asked him if he could do it, and he went. to go collect money, but he himself didn't have any money. So he took his sifrei kodesh, he took his blanket, you know, a place to pray, similar to how Arabs got their idea from Jews, not Jews who got their idea from Arabs. He had his carpet, and he went on his way. He went to the shore, and he tried to get on the boat, but the guy on the boat told him, listen, you have money? He says, no, but I need to go collect money because everybody here is poor.

2:25:24He goes, "Yeah, but without money, you're not getting on the boat." He goes, "Yeah, but people are going to suffer if I don't go." "Just let them suffer. I'm not letting you get on the boat without any money." He wasn't a tzaddik. The boat guy was a businessman who cared less about tzaddikim or anything like that. So, you know, everyone was embarrassed that the tzaddik was being treated this way, but since everyone else was also poor, it's not like somebody could just chip in, "Alright, here's 50 bucks, get on." You know, it's not one of those things. So, He let it go, he went to the shore, and he just simply sat on his carpet and started reading Torah. Now when a tzaddik learns Torah, it's not like we learn Torah. When they learn Torah, they literally leave this world. Their mind is not here. Like many times you hear stories about Rabbi Ovadia, alav hashalom, where it's extraordinary examples of their level of study. For example, Benjamin Netanyahu came to visit when Rabbi Ovadia was alive. Now, everybody—when you mention the name Benjamin Netanyahu—most Jews are like, "Oh wow," they're impressed by him because, I don't know, somebody says he has a high IQ and he's a prime minister or whatever. Oh, but Rabbi Ovadia was learning Torah when he came to visit him.

2:26:45Now, Benjamin Netanyahu sat over there. Everywhere that he goes, whether it's America or different countries, or in Eretz Yisrael, of course, people stand up, people shake, people do a lot of things. But when he came into the study hall of Rabbi Ovadia, his room, Rabbi Ovadia was learning with his chavruta. And they were learning, learning. And they figured, okay, maybe they'll finish something, and then they'll say hello. One minute, five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes. Twenty minutes passed, he didn't even recognize that he's there. He's just studying in his book. He's not even acknowledging that there's anybody else in the room. There are maybe 15 people in the room. He doesn't know there's anybody in the room. One of the people there that knows Rav Ovadia goes, listen, if you don't nudge him and tell him that you're here, it's going to be hours like this. He goes, don't bother him then. Somebody that has that kind of focus, don't bother him. He said, no, no, he doesn't know you're here. It's not that he's not acknowledging you. He doesn't know you're here. He's in the Torah. That's how tzadikim learn Torah. So now, when the original Abuhatzeira, Rabbi Abuhatzeira, when he was learning, he was in a different world. He was sitting on his carpet, on the beach, learning his Torah. People around him that told the story noticed something's happening. Why?

2:28:12the carpet started going up in the air, and then little by little, it started going into the ocean. Little by little, it started moving next to the boat that had left the shore, and it started going as fast as the boat. The guy from the boat realized, oh wow, this guy is a holy person, how did I let him not go on my boat? He starts yelling, hey, hey, hey, come on my boat, come, come. Rabbi Abu Hatzira didn't even know what was happening; he was learning this sefer. Eventually, he looked, you know, oh, okay, he went back to his sefer, he started seeing somebody's screaming, hey, hey, he starts looking at him, he goes, what? He goes, I'm sorry, come on my boat, he goes, no, Hashem obviously did something for, you know, he wants me to get there some other way, don't worry. And then I say that the carpet went much faster and disappeared into the... This is the reason why the Baba Sali's family is called Abuchatzira. It's not a real name. Abuchatzira means "the master of the carpet" or "the rug." That's how they got the name. But as far as if they are descendants of Moshe Rabbeinu or not, I don't know. That I don't know. You would have gotten 50 bucks if it was Wednesday. Anything else?

2:29:22Tomorrow night, we have the questions and answers. We'll be in Sunny Isles. Amen.

2:30:44Thanks for watching!