Unlocking Mystical Secrets In Your Daily Life (Beit Eliyahu Bukharian Synagogue NY)

0:12Fantastic to be here in New York at Beit Eliyahu. I think this is maybe the fourth or fifth time that I'm here. We did some really amazing shiurim here. One of the shiurim that we did here a couple of years ago was on Tisha B'Av. I came to New York. We did six lectures in 24 hours, and this was, I believe, the second lecture. It ended up being the most popular lecture that we have done in the last five or six years. Thank you in regards to that topic. We made many clips from that shiur. Baruch Hashem, it has helped many people. help many people. So, Baruch Hashem, when you see that there's a place that has bracha, you want to come as often as possible. And I always tell people, you know, the policy is to make shiurim. If you could bring people, we can come. That's simply how it works. The more people you can bring, the easier it is for us to come. We were here in New York a couple of weeks ago, Baruch Hashem. We had a couple of big shiurim. And then I had some good feedback. I got a phone call from a school here in Queens, the Jewish Institute of Queens. We had a shiur there this morning, with about 150 to 200 young girls, Baruch Hashem, learning Torah Hashem. And you would be amazed how

1:38Sometimes looks can be deceiving. You know, you see somebody who is religious, or at least looks religious, and you figure that at the very least, this person knows the minimum—knows the basic 13 principles of faith, knows that Hashem is one, knows that Hashem has no body or image of a body, knows that there is reward and punishment. You figure that people know the basics. But what I found out over the last six years of Hamash giving lectures everywhere and anywhere that we can, all over Florida and Yerushalayim and different places in Israel, Arizona, New York, California, anywhere we can, is that in this generation, we have a generation where even the basics, the basics are like the chiddush of the previous generation. Meaning that most people, it doesn't really make a difference what their background is—whether they are frum from birth and they went to yeshiva for 15-20 years, or they are newly religious or not religious at all. When you start telling them about the basic 13 Principles of Faith, that there's reward and punishment, people look at you funny, and it's not because of my good looks. I

2:55They look at you funny because, to them, it's the first time they ever heard it. So, because of the shem, all of us, we have a little bit of everything. But I always like to remind people that everything we teach, unless there's a special disclaimer, is basic level Judaism. You don't have to be a special level of holiness to learn it. You don't have to be the religious son of a rabbi, the son of a rabbi, the son of a rabbi. You don't need to be especially bright to understand it. You just need to listen, pay attention, and take it seriously. That's it. These are very simple requirements. That's why it's also very good. Anytime you come to a shiur, make it a policy to turn off your phones. Turn off your phones. Why? Because if I'm speaking to you, and the Yetzer Hara wants to talk to you, So, guess who's going to get your attention? The Yetzer Hara is going to get your attention. Why? Because he's going to call you 500 times. Davka, when you're supposed to listen to me, the Yetzer Hara is going to want to call you. It's the wife, the kids, all of a sudden somebody has a stomach ache, all of a sudden their hair is falling off, all of a sudden they have to tell you some big secret they've been waiting to tell you for 25 years. Something has to happen. When? In the middle of a shiur Torah.

4:13So, make it a policy. When you go to shiur Torah, whether it's me speaking, Rabbi Mizrahi speaking, or anybody that says the emet, make it a policy. Phone turns off. Not on vibrate. Vibrate is just a different strategy for the Yetzer Hara. Then it just vibrates non-stop. Phone off. Why? You want to learn Torah. You want to at least give the Torah the kavod it deserves. Because we're about to receive the Torah all over again in a few days. Matan Torah. Shavuot is a very big day. We had an Omer that we counted all these different days. And people ask, why do we count? Why? Hashem needs us to count? He doesn't know how to count by Himself? Really, the preparation for Shavuot is not that Hashem needs us to count. It's that we need to count. We need to count, oh, one day. That means that we are 49 days away from receiving the Torah. Two days. Oh, that means that we're 48 days away from receiving the Torah. We're 48 days away from Har Sinai all over again. What am I doing about it? Am I preparing? Did I take on a new mitzvah? Did I do something? Or am I just still the same as I was last year and the year before and the year before? Same thing. So then once you get to about the third week, fourth week, you only have two weeks to go. Now Hashem starts to ask you, what have you been doing? Are you ready for Matan Torah? Or are you going to be sleeping?

5:38That's, by the way, the reason why we have a minhag that on Shavuot, the guys learn all night without going to sleep. Reason? Am Yisrael did a little bit of what we call a fashla, a little bit of a mess up. Right before Matan Torah, they fell asleep. They had a lot of food, they fell asleep. And it didn't look so good. You're getting the number one most important thing in the world, and you're asleep. Imagine, it's your wedding day. your wedding day. Your wife is so excited. Oh, I've waited my whole life to finally find my husband. Oh, I love you. I love you. Okay, how come he's not here yet? The rabbi already wants to go home. What's going on? You ask the father, "I don't know." Ask the mom, "I don't know." Ask the brother, "I don't know." Nobody knows. The friends don't know. Nobody knows. Finally, you go to his house. You see the guy sleeping on the couch with his phone. He was watching a sports game and he fell asleep. You think that she still wants to marry this guy? What kind of behavior is this? You fell asleep on the wedding day? If you fell asleep on the wedding day, what's the marriage going to be like? If you fall asleep, the whole marriage too? That's what HaKadosh Baruch Hu wants to tell us. If you're going to be asleep during the Omer, during the preparation, what's going to happen to Matan Torah? What's going to happen to Matan Torah? Now we only have a few days. We don't have that much preparation.

7:05We're gonna try to cover a lot of ground, b'ezrat Hashem. This shiur will also be for a refuah sheleimah for my dear father, Avi Mori David Ben Esiah, who is right now in the hospital. He had a mini-stroke, baruch Hashem, about a week ago. But b'chasdei Hashem, the miracles do not stop. He actually had it and was continuing to operate for almost a week, walking around doing his thing, not even realizing what happened to him. But then, obviously, things started changing. He went to the hospital, and they said, "Sir, we have a serious condition here." And Baruch Hashem, he's okay, he's stable, he's in the hospital, and Baruch Hashem, he'll leave soon. But the point is that you see that HaKadosh Baruch Hu doesn't give anybody any time off. There's no breaks. Everybody has a busy schedule. And it's not a busy schedule because of your work. It's not a busy schedule because of your kids. It's not a busy schedule because of your marriage. No, it's a busy schedule because of your life. If you're alive, you have to have a busy schedule. If you don't have a busy schedule, that means you're going to make a lot of sins. Because that's what Shlomo HaMelech says, boredom leads to sin. So a person who tries to keep busy as a Jew, you go pray in the morning, you learn a little bit, you go work, you pray in the afternoon.

8:22You try to make sure that you remember to thank Hashem when He gives you food, when you get out of the bathroom. Every single time that something good happens, you have to make sure that you thank Hashem. Every time something bad happens, you have to say thank you to Hashem also, because both of them come from Hashem, and in the end, they're all going to turn out to be good. You keep yourself busy. But sometimes Hashem wants you to be busier, so He sends you an additional test. Maybe a health test, money test, marriage test, children test, and HaKadosh Baruch Hu... Today He's giving everybody a lot of tests. And the reason why is because the Gemara in Masechet Sanhedrin says that Mashiach is not going to come until it's a generation that everybody's righteous or everybody's wicked. And the Chachamim say, this is not possible. It's not possible. So they say, where do you have the proof that it's not possible? He said, look, there's a conversation between Malach Gavriel Malach Gavriel and HaKadosh Baruch Hu, what was the conversation like? Malach Gavriel says to Hashem, "When are You gonna bring Mashiach, Hashem? Am Yisrael is waiting. They want Mashiach, Mashiach, Mashiach. They even have banners everywhere. They want Mashiach. When are they gonna come?" Hashem says, "When everybody does teshuva." Malach Gavriel says, "Hashem, You and I both know it's not gonna happen."

9:47Not everybody's going to do teshuva. There's always going to be some rasha over here, some rasha over there, some guy that is a born Jew but turns into a Christian missionary, some guy that has a nice shtreimel and a long beard that can sweep the floor but is really stealing, or touching little boys, or doing this. Hashem, you're always going to have one of those crazy people. So we're going to wait for this guy to do teshuva? Mashiach's not ever going to come. He's never going to come. Yeah, yeah, okay, so you know what? When the religious people do teshuva, the religious community, they already keep mitzvot. When they do teshuva, when they get a little stronger, my doctor says to me, "You and I both know that's not gonna happen. Why? Because the religious people think they're perfectly fine. They don't think they need to do teshuva, even though sometimes they need more teshuva than the secular person." But what about the other side of the conversation? What about a generation where everybody is reshaim? He's like, oh, that's not possible either. Why? Because in the generation of Moshe Rabbeinu, Am Yisrael reached the 49th level of tum'ah, of impurity. And Hashem had to take out Am Yisrael from Egypt at that very moment. He could not let them make a single sin.

11:09One more sin would have brought them to level 50, and at level 50, Hashem would have had to destroy the world. But Chazal say that before Mashiach comes, we will get to level 50. So how could this be? The Or HaChaim HaKadosh says that at the time of Egypt, we did not have the Torah, so we had a... Ability to get to a very high level of Tumah, almost the highest level, but if we would have gone to the highest level, there was no recovery. Why? Because there was no Torah. There's no Torah. So if you got to level 50, there's no way for you to do Teshuvah because you don't even know what to do. You don't even know it's wrong. A lot of times you see people doing things that are wrong. You say, "How can you be doing that?" He goes, "Why, it's wrong?" Oh, yeah, you're stealing. Last I checked, stealing is not good. Never heard that before. Oh, I didn't really realize. I didn't look at it that way. What? You didn't look at it that way—that his money is in your pocket? You didn't look at it that way—that that's stealing? No, I don't know. He has a lot of money. Oh, so what? Oh, so that means that if he has a lot of something, that means that some of it somehow belongs to you too? How did you make that? So what if it's the opposite? What if you had a lot? Can he just go into your pocket and take it too?

12:31How did you rationalize it? Sometimes people do not analyze their own actions, and they don't even realize that what they're doing is wrong. Sometimes you see a marriage that's, you can't even call it a marriage. It's like roommates. It's like roommates, like a sad scenario. She wants to leave, he wants to leave, but they're still stuck together. So you try to figure out what's wrong. Why is she unhappy? Why is he unhappy? You don't even have to ask him. Just sit there and watch them talk to each other. Watch them talk to each other and you'll see all the problems in the marriage in five minutes. Immediately, he starts talking to her the way he talks to her. It's like he's talking to a shifchah, like a slave. And he's like, "You do this, you do this." He has to do this. "You did this?" "Yeah." "You did this?" "Yeah." "Oh, you didn't do this?" "No. No. No." He makes her feel bad. Why? She forgot to do the third pile of laundry. She did the first two. He didn't say thank you for that one. The third one, it makes her feel like she's not even a wife.

13:32Did you cook? No, we still have leftovers from yesterday. Why, I'm gonna eat leftovers? Why not? What's wrong with it? So he thinks that he has a restaurant slash laundromat slash this slash this, and if it's not a hundred percent pristine, oh, she's not a good wife. But then on the other hand, sometimes you see women that are not exactly so excited to see their husband. Why? The husband comes home and she's still on the phone. Like the husband comes home and, you know, she gives him a nod. You know what guys do to each other? Hey, what's up? The wife goes, hey, what's up? The guy came home, he worked the whole day, and she's on the phone with her girlfriend. What's up? A home like that, who wants to come home? Who wants to come home to a home like this? You come home and your wife gives you a nod? Or sometimes not even a nod. It's like she looks at you, like, you acknowledge that you're here and he's here. We acknowledged each other. Okay, that's it. Okay, we'll meet somewhere before we go to sleep. Before we go to sleep, we'll meet. And maximum, we'll just see each other in the morning because we're still in the same house. And if not, we'll see each other tomorrow. And if not, at some point, see you when I see you. I'll text you. I'll text you. This is roommates.

14:51This is roommates, but it's a very, very simple solution. Very simple solution. First and foremost, understand as men, your wife is like you. It's your own body. You would never abuse your own body if you're a normal person. If you're not normal, then we have to have a separate shiur for you. But if you're a normal person, you're never going to abuse your own body intentionally. For example, if, let's say, you know, you get upset because you wanted to write something, but you made a spelling error. You made a spelling error. You're not going to start hating your hand. Oh, stupid hand. I can't believe you did this to me. You're not going to do that. Why? Because you're normal. You're not going to start hating your hand. Why? Because it's your own body. If, let's say, for example, you walked up the stairs but you got tired, you're not going to start hitting yourself in your heart. Oh, heart, you failed me. You're a failure. You're not going to do that. Why? Because you're normal. You're not going to hit yourself. You're not going to hurt yourself. It's your body. Your wife is even more than your body. If you treat your wife like she's your body, automatically, respect becomes standard. You're not going to talk to her like she's a shifcha. You're not going to talk like she's your servant. You're not going to talk down to her.

16:12You're not gonna talk to her like she owes you something. You're gonna talk to her as if you want someone to talk to you, and no one likes to be disrespected. No one likes to be mistreated. No one likes to be talked to as if he's a slave. Most importantly, Rabotai, no one wants to be ignored and only paid attention to at specific times of need. The wife, women, who said I gave ten... Ten parts of talking to the world, nine of them to women, one to men. So, women like to talk, men, not always. Not always, unless you're talking about the stock market, business, sports, or some other trivial topic. But "how was your day?" is not really our top conversation. We don't really like it, but they do, so we have to entertain it for a few minutes and... We have to entertain it for a few minutes. "How was your day?" Not because you care about how the day was, but rather because you care about her. So you have to look at it like, okay, if I wanted my body to be treated right, then I would do X, Y, Z. If I want, that's the way I have to look at the wife. And the point is that if you start looking at it that way, you start treating the relationship that way, automatically 85-90% of your problems are gone because now you already have communication that's proper.

17:33You already have a marriage that's not just based on specific physical needs. And most importantly, you're not looking at each other as roommates. Same concept when it comes to women. A woman needs to understand that if she wants to be treated like a queen, she has to treat her husband like the king. If she treats her husband like a servant that all he's good for is to make money, all he's good for is maybe to take the kids to school, He's good for us to do some chores when I can't do it myself. If you're treating him like a slave, guess what? You're a shifcha. A queen can never marry a slave, so you treat him a certain way. He's gonna treat you a certain way because after a while, even if he's not the best guy in the world, when you start treating a guy a certain way, automatically he's gonna say, "Wait a minute..." she's constantly doing good, good, good, everything good for me. I can't continue mistreating her; I'd have to be crazy because I would lose this. And that's why a woman needs to understand, as soon as the husband walks into the house, you have to treat it as if Moshe Rabbeinu walked into the house, even if he doesn't even know how to spell Moshe.

18:48You have to hang up the phone. Not like, oh, listen, I only have a couple more minutes. My husband just came home. No, no, no couple more minutes. I have to go. My husband’s here. Click. Doesn’t matter who you’re talking to: your mom, your dad, your sister, your cousin, Social Security office. My husband’s home, the end. Welcome the husband. Be excited the husband's here. Forget the food and the laundry and all that other stuff. Be excited to see him. Why? If you're excited to see him, naturally he'll be excited to come home. Especially if you're not only excited when he bought you something. Did you buy me something? Why? Do I look like Santa Claus? That's the only time you're excited to see me if I bring a present? So you see, Rabotai, you get to see a lot of these things. And really, there are simple solutions to a lot of things. Simple solutions if we simply pay attention to the details. Now, HaKadosh Baruch Hu gave us instructions; it's called the Torah. He told us that He wants us to follow a certain set of instructions and to appreciate and value these instructions. Because at the end of it all, it's really all for us. He's already perfect with or without us. Now, if a person wants to succeed in business...

20:14First and foremost, he makes hard work normal. Working hard becomes normal to him. Why? Because everybody knows, logically, you cannot be successful, at least not over a long period of time, if you're lazy. Everybody knows this. It's not a chiddush from Yaron Reuven. I wish it was. I would get a copyright on every company in the world. Everybody knows, you want to succeed in business, you have to work hard. Sometimes people get lucky; Hashem gives them a blessing over a short period of time to become successful. But that's a short period of time. If you want to be successful over a long period of time and build something meaningful, you have to be a hard worker. If somebody wants the best, he has to work like the best. Needless to say, if somebody wants Heaven, he has to work for that Heaven. It's not going to come easy. It's not going to be a walk in the park. You're not going to have a life full of roses, and it's just not going to be easy for you to do everything. No matter what, it's not going to be such a life where money is always there on time, the kids always behave, supper is always tasty, the wife or the husband is always nice, and the boss gives you a raise every three months. Life doesn't work that way. Everybody knows this and...

21:32But somehow, every time a problem happens, we act surprised. All of us know problems exist, but every time a problem happens, we're surprised. Oh, I can't believe this happened. Why not? This is a problem, right? Yeah. Problems happen to living people. Dead people don't have problems. If you're alive, you have problems. So how can we be surprised that you have a problem? You got a flat tire on the way to some important meeting. Why are you surprised? Why are you surprised? It's a problem, right? So it happens to living people. Once we start understanding that these problems are not exactly what we think they are, then we can start living life a little bit differently. Once we start seeing that these problems are a way that HaKadosh Baruch Hu is communicating to us and trying to get our attention, in order for us to do something, in order for us to change something. If a person is perfect, he simply does not live in this world anymore; he just goes to Heaven and...

22:34There's no purpose for a person to live if he's perfect. Unless the generation needs him, but there are not many people like that. Thirty-six in every generation. Most of us are realistic with ourselves and we know that we're very, very far from perfect. So that means that we have problems. Now, if I start looking at this problem as something that's HaKadosh Baruch Hu paying attention to me, automatically, It has a different value. Automatically, it has a different value. Why? Now, if somebody you don't like calls you in the middle of the night, you can just press the red button that sends the call to voicemail or something; you don't have to answer. But if somebody you love calls you in the middle of the night, It doesn't matter if you're tired, not tired, you're excited to pick up the phone. What's going on? Everything okay? What are you doing? Why are you calling? Why do you care about this person? If you knew that the phone is ringing, it's 12 o'clock at night, and it's Eliyahu HaNavi. It says on your caller ID, Eliyahu HaNavi, zachur latov, calling you, 12 o'clock at night. Are you excited to pick up the phone? Are you excited to pick up the phone? Eliyahu HaNavi calls you. It's Tzaddik Shimon.

24:00Maybe, maybe, maybe you're gonna be the one he says Mashiach is coming in three days. That's what it says in Sefer Zecharia. Eliyahu HaNavi comes three days before Mashiach, tells the world that Mashiach is coming in three days. So maybe you're getting your phone call. You're gonna have to publish it on the internet, on Facebook: "Eliyahu HaNavi just called me. Mashiach is coming in three days, Rabotai." Yeah, I don't know why I got this zechut, but I guess I am a tzaddik nistar. I guess I am a tzaddik after all. Eliyahu HaNavi calls you, you pick up, you're excited. What if Moshe Rabbeinu calls you? Moshe Rabbeinu says on your phone, "Moshe Rabbeinu, for sure." It's not an imposter. Moshe Rabbeinu is calling you. You're excited. Mashiach, Mashiach calls you. It says Mashiach Tzidkeinu is calling you. He wants to have a personal one-on-one conversation with you. How excited are you? You're as excited as can be. Mashiach is calling me after all. I've been waiting. Oh, Baruch Hashem. Finally, he called. Why didn't he call yesterday? Okay, fine. I'll talk to him. When you have a problem, it's not Moshe Rabbeinu calling you.

25:03It's not Mashiach calling you. It's not even Eliyahu HaNavi calling you. It's HaKadosh Baruch Hu calling you. HaKadosh Baruch Hu Himself is calling you. And He says, my dear son, my dear daughter, we need to talk. Something, something's going on. I need to either elevate you or I need to fix you. Something has to happen here. Sometimes the Gemara Masechet Berachot says there's at least seven different reasons that we know of, why Hashem gives suffering to people. Marriage problems, life problems, this problem, that problem. Baruch Hashem, there's no end of problems. You can start listing the different problems that people have, the world will end and we still wouldn't finish the list. So the Gemara says there's a few reasons that stand out. One of them is that HaKadosh Baruch Hu simply loves you. He wants to make you a big tzaddik or tzaddeket. But since we're all born with a big yetzer hara, in order for us to become a big tzaddik or tzaddeket, we have to go through some stuff, go through some difficulty, go through some trials and tribulations to soften our character. Most of us are born naturally arrogant, most of us are born naturally corrupt in some way or another.

26:25We're cheap, arrogant, selfish, or whatever it is. Most of us have some type of character flaw, one, two, three, or a hundred different character traits that are corrupt. So Hashem says, "I want to make you the best you can be. I want to make you the Moshe Rabbeinu version of you, the Sarah Imeinu version of you. Now, in order to do that, I have to soften your character. I have to soften it." So, He gives us problems. Now, if you view that problem as HaKadosh Baruch Hu calling me and trying to elevate me, then what are you going to do? You’re going to answer the call and say, thank you for calling. I wish I would have known sooner. I never realized this was a problem. I’m going to start working on it. But if many of us continue to ignore the call or, better yet, deny that we even have a problem, guess what? He’s going to continue calling. and a person continues to have the same problem happen and recur again in a different way, in a different place, at a different time. And they live their whole life—50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 120 years—a life full of problems without even an idea of why they had them.

27:42So now, when a person purifies themselves and starts realizing that these problems are actually HaKadosh Baruch Hu calling me, talking to me, that means that He cares about me, that means that He wants to elevate me, that means that any little sin that I made, He wants me to pay for that sin here because it's much better to pay for it with a little bit of suffering for a few minutes or a few hours or even a few days or a few months. then Hashem yerachem, what a few months is in Shamayim. In Shamayim, there's no few months. A few months in Shamayim is like eternity for us. The Gaon MiVilna, alav hashalom, one time, as they were studying, he used to study very long sessions, 20 hours, 30 hours in a row. Halevai aleinu to study a few hours in a row. He would study 20, 30 hours straight, no breaks. it's normal that as long as you're a human being, a little bit of you as a human being will take a little nap in between. You fall asleep sometimes; you read a book, it's an interesting book, it's good, everything's fantastic, but you're tired. It's also tiredness. Anytime you're tired, that's yes, especially when you're learning, all of a sudden you are a bull

29:03Several Torah shiurim start, and all of a sudden, you have a tiredness like you haven't slept in six years. But if your girlfriend calls you and says, "Hey, listen, honey, we're going to get maybe a little bit of coffee, maybe a little dessert," you're in. All of a sudden, she jumps out like a bull out of bed. "Yeah, I've been waiting for your phone call for two weeks already. Why don't you call me more often?" Runs out of the bed. But you thought, yeah, I'm tired. I'll watch it on YouTube. I'll watch it on YouTube tomorrow. Oh, you think the guys are any different? I don't know. In New York, Baruch Hashem, you guys are still not attacked by the Yetzer Hara of driving. You know, Yetzer Hara, Baruch Hashem, in New York, people are used to driving. Like, I remember when I used to live here, I still, you know, for a period of time, I lived in Staten Island. And every day to go to work was an hour, hour and a half each way. And that was normal for us. Florida, you know, I have to convince people. I have to convince them to drive 15 minutes. 15 minutes! I come, "Oh, yeah, where's the shiur this week?" I said, "Oh, it's in Sunny Isles." "Oh, it's not in Aventura?" "Yeah, it's a four-minute difference." So this one's 15 minutes, this one's 19 minutes. "Oy vey, that's far out, Rabbi!"

30:23You know what? Yeah, I'm gonna come. By the way, it means I'm not coming, just in a nice, polite, religious way. A religious way of saying no. In Florida, they don't like to drive. So sometimes Hashem sends us these different signs, and He says, "I want to talk to you, I want to talk to you." If we ignore it, the message gets heavier and heavier. But if a person takes the message, acknowledges the message, and continues to work on themselves, continues to fix their life, their marriage could literally bring them miracles. There was a person by the, I was actually, go back to the story of the Gaon of Vilna, sorry. The Gaon of Vilna said that when it came to time, most people don't have a concept of it. So one time, when he was learning, he fell asleep. A little bit. He closed his eyes. And the talmidim, you know, they let the rabbi sleep for, you know, a minute. But then they figured the rabbi doesn't want to sleep. We're learning. So they said, to get the rabbi's attention. And he opened his eyes. He said, oh, why did you wake me up? They said, oh, I'm sorry, rabbi, go to sleep. He goes, no, you don't understand. Right now, I learned Torah with the malachim. It would take me

31:49800 years to teach you what I just learned in one minute of sleep. Why? Because when the neshama went up to Shamayim, over there, there's no time. There's no time. So, one minute I learned with the malachim was like 800 years. It would take me to teach you what I learned in one minute. What, do you think I'm taking a nap like a regular person because I'm tired? So, we don't have a concept of time. Now, a person that tries to sanctify themselves, tries to be kadosh, tries to work on themselves, puts a... kisuy rosh when she's married. If she's not married or she doesn't have a head, she doesn't have a kisuy rosh. But if she's married and she has a head, she has to cover her head. If he's married or not married, he still has to wear a kippah, though he still has to cover his head. It doesn't matter, even if he lives in Germany. One of the government members over there said that if you're a Jew, don't wear a kippah in Germany. Why? The Arabs may kill you and... Instead of saying we should increase the police force to protect the people from these terrorists, they say, no, listen, stop being a Jew. Stop being a Jew outside. You want to be a Jew, be a Jew on the inside. Don't cover your head with a kippah. That's our constant reminder to us that you have nothing to rely on. Not America, not Germany, not England, not nothing. Not even Eretz Yisrael. You only have Avinu Shebashamayim.

33:13When a person starts to realize that he has to work on himself, he has to work on his middot, he has to work on his marriage, he can bring miracles to his life. And I'm going to give you a few examples of how mysticism is not just something you read about in books. A lot of us have read different things in books, very mystical, very fantastical. You know, you read about Adam HaRishon in Sefer Bereishit. It's hard for people to understand that Adam HaRishon literally was as tall that he reached the clouds. And he was able to see from one end of the world to the other end of the world. It's hard for people to understand this because usually, as human beings today, we can only compare things—we can only understand things by comparing them to what we know. So we tell people, by the way, do you know that Moshe Rabbeinu was 20 feet tall, according to the Gemara? 20 feet tall. People say, "What? He's a giant." I said, "No, I didn't say he's a giant. I said he's 20 feet tall." So they said, "So everybody was a giant." No, I didn't say that either. I said Moshe Rabbeinu was 20 feet tall, and so was everybody in the Levi tribe. That's what the Gemara says. Everybody in the Levi tribe was at least 20 feet tall. Some were taller, but they had to be 20 feet tall. Why? Because they had to carry the Mishkan, and the Aron HaKodesh was also 20 feet.

34:36But the poles were in the middle. So in order for you to lift it and it didn't touch the ground, you had to be at least 20 feet tall. The Chachamim say that there were some big people, you know, in comparison to us. There were people that were relatively similar to us in size. There were people much smaller than us. Like, for example, Paro, Paro HaRasha, was two feet tall. Two feet tall. A rasha, but he was a wizard. He had all types of black magic and so on. He was very powerful. But then you have Og, Og Melech HaBashan, huge, enormous, so big that when Moshe Rabbeinu fought him, Moshe Rabbeinu was not only tall, he was a very strong person. At 120 years old, he was like a 20-year-old. He was able to jump, he was 20 feet tall, he was able to jump 20 feet in the air, and his staff that was 674 pounds of ruby was also 20 feet. So he jumped in the air 20 feet. He's 20 feet. And the top of the stick hit, what? The bottom bone of the foot of Og. That's how big Og was. But that was enough to kill Og. He made him fall, and Og died miraculously. The point being is that this, to people, sounds like, oh, what is this, the Zohar? No, it's not the Zohar. It's actually basic Gemara. It's basic Midrash. It's basic Judaism.

36:04Why is it so hard for you to believe? Oh, it's, you know, it's fantastical. I don't know. I mean, how come we can't find huge bones of people? There are a lot of things we can't find because the world is bigger. There are still animals being discovered today. There are animals and fish today that are being discovered, which means we don't even know anything about what we already have. So people think that if you didn't see it, it doesn't exist. But yet somehow we believe that if we make a phone call with this little piece of plastic with some metal in it, somebody in Japan will pick up in two seconds, and maybe if I want to, I could see them. That makes perfect sense. That makes perfect sense to people now. How come you don't question? How come this doesn't work? Well, how come this does work? How come you don't ask, "Where are the radio waves?" How come I can't see the radio waves? How come I can't see all the different things that make this phone work, that I could call somebody from Japan and in two seconds I could see them, not just hear them? I could see them now. How come that's perfectly normal to people? Because we ignore the details, and yet somehow only care about questioning the Torah. Everything else we don't question, and that's why I always tell people everybody loves the truth until it obligates them, and...

37:20People love to hear different things, different stories, different business stories, or different types of religious stories. But as soon as that story reminds them that they have to do something, that they have to change their life, all of a sudden their feelings change a little bit. If they're a person of truth and they want to change and they want to improve, they like it even more, and... they're not. They start walking out, they start leaving, they start playing with their phone, they start, you know, looking into the nothingness, hoping the story is going to be over. They stop paying attention. Why? They don't want to change. "Leave me alone, just give me entertainment, like a movie." So now, the Torah is full of mysticism. From Aleph to Taf, beginning of the Torah all the way to the end of the Torah, every single page has some type of miracle, some type of prophecy, some type of verse that talks about the future. The Torah is full of mystical tales, but these mystical stories, for the most part, if you don't know how to apply them to your own life, they're not going to mean very much to most people, aside from entertainment value.

38:39What we're trying to learn is how we can actually have mysticism in our life without turning Judaism into some type of voodoo or idol worship like some people have turned it into. They think that if they buy some stupid red string, everything is going to go well. By the way, the red string is obsolete. Now it's purple. So if you have a red string, throw it out. It doesn't work anymore. You have to get a purple one now. The red string is obsolete. That's last year's model. The new one is purple now. Why? They sold 50, 60 million red strings to Jews, to goyim, to anybody that has $20. After a while, they said, okay, we have no return customers. Why? Because by the time they bought it, they bought five for the whole family. They pretended to be a tzaddik. Oh yeah, I love you so much. When I was in Yerushalayim, when I was at Kever Tzaddikim, I bought you a string for mazal tov. So it's like you give them a Sefer Torah. Ah, I love you. They give each other kisses. I can't believe you thought about me when you were in Yerushalayim. It doesn't cost you five cents. He thinks that you just did him the biggest favor in the world. But then they see that after, you know, the guy calls him three, six months later. He goes, listen, ever since you gave me this red string, my whole life went upside down. It got worse. Can you call that guy that sold it to you? He goes, no, I don't have the phone number. So the next time he goes there, he says he sees the same guy still selling red strings. He goes, yeah, listen, it didn't work.

40:03Ah, you got the red one, right? Yeah, the red one stopped working. When did you buy it? Six months? That's exactly when it stopped working. That's exactly when... You have to get the purple one. Yeah, it expires. Of course it expires. You never heard of it? It expires like milk. If you don't use it within 24 hours, it's gone. You have to get the purple one. How much is the purple one? Double. Why can they do this? Why, how come these criminals can continue doing what they're doing? Everybody knows that's a crime, but they continue succeeding in selling these stupid things, this kameya or these strings or or you go to some Baba Rabbi that looks like Santa Claus or something, and he says he's going to heal you because he knows your name, and he's going to add a name to your life. Now you have 18 different names. I have people asking me, "Okay, please can you do a... uh... can you do it?" I said, "Okay, no problem. Give me your name." They give me 17 names. I said, "Not your whole family, just you." He goes, "No, that's just me." I said, "What do you mean, just you? 17 names?" He says, "Yeah, I went to a lot of rabbis. Whatever, every rabbi I met gave me a new name."

41:11doesn't know. The girl doesn't know. They just took a name every other day, by the way. This is against the Torah. You're not allowed to add names just like that, but people don't know. Why don't they know? Because we're constantly looking for shortcuts. In business, we don't look for shortcuts. In business, we know we have to work hard. Everybody knows you have to wake up early in the morning, you have to work hard, you have to hustle, you have to bustle. You do what you gotta do. You gotta make a living. When it comes to business, everybody understands that if you're going to do it right, you have to work hard. But when it comes to heaven, when it comes to Shamayim, when it comes to Avodat Hashem, everybody wants a shortcut. Everybody wants a quick fix to become a tzaddik overnight. A quick fix, she becomes Sarah Imeinu. Last week, she was not exactly Sarah Imeinu. This week, she wants to be Sarah Imeinu. It doesn't work that way. Now, you can bring mystical things to your life. You can't bring miracles to your life, and I could tell you of countless miracles that happen in my life every day. But it's not easy. There's no button, there's no push button that just makes it all work. It requires work. It requires mesirat nefesh, self-sacrifice. So, for example, somebody came to Rav Elya Lopian, a relatively new baal teshuva, and...

42:33A baal teshuva for maybe a few years decided to take a life of Torah, wants to learn all day and all night. They had their first kid, shem yirachem, lo aleinu, rachmana litzlan. The kid is born sick. But not sick like they have a cold—sick to the point where they have no idea what's wrong and don't even know if the child will survive the day. So it's ICU, everybody's crying. It's terrible and One day, two days, two months, three months, six months. Six months this kid hasn't left the hospital. Six months the kid hasn't left the hospital. They did a couple of surgeries. Hashem, poor kid. So one day after six months of this kid being in the hospital, he comes to Rav Efraim, my Rav. Aside from Rav Efraim, Rav Ezrachi of course. But Rav Efraim, Very simple, to the point. He doesn't like to waste time. First three words, he already understands your problem. He tells him what happened. He says, oh, my kid is in the hospital six months. Then he asks him an unusual question. How's your wife taking it? That's an unusual question. Why? Because you ask, what did the doctors say? Did you get a second opinion? You know, everybody pretends to be like a doctor.

44:00How much does she weigh? How much does he weigh? Was it a normal birth? Was it a normal delivery? Everybody pretends to know what they're talking about. Like if they told you, oh, she was born seven pounds, like that makes a difference. Or yeah, she carried him for eight months instead of nine months, like that makes a difference. And we don't know anything. Rav Efraim didn't ask any of those questions; he asked, how is your wife handling it? Because that could tell a lot. So the guy's response told the whole story. What did he say? Ah, my wife, she's lucky I'm even with her. That was the problem and that was the solution. So Rav Efraim let him talk for a little bit and then he says, okay, you want your kid to be healthy? He says, of course. Okay, he says, there's a special segulah. You know, if you don't tell people there's a segulah, they don't listen. It's a special, you know, opportunity to get a miracle. Oh, opportunity? Oh, sure. Everybody starts standing up. Sure, what can I do? Everybody, what can I do? How much? How much? How much? Start taking it out of their pockets. How much does it cost? Free. He says, HaKadosh Baruch Hu says that when He wanted to come to Mount Sinai, Matan Torah, next week...

45:20The Malachim said to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, "HaKadosh Baruch Hu, the Shekhinah cannot come down to Mount Sinai." Why? The Shekhinah has rules for itself. The Shekhinah of Hashem has rules for itself. It cannot go anywhere where there's imperfection, where there's something wrong. And unfortunately, because Am Yisrael were slaves for so many years, and they were tortured, and they were beaten, many of them were blind, or deaf or missing limbs, missing different body parts. People were slaves for a long time, beaten and beat up. You show up to Mount Sinai, half dead. So Hashem says, no problem. I'll just heal all of them. Hashem, it's easy. It's the same thing. I created them from nothing. I'll fix them from nothing. What's the big deal? So the guy that was blind, all of a sudden he can see. The guy that was missing an arm, all of a sudden became like a starfish, grew the arm back. The guy that was missing a leg, the leg came back, brand new, even better than the first one. The guy that had backaches for 25 years, all of a sudden his back is like an athlete. Everybody becomes like they're 20 years old. Rabbi Ephraim says, you want this to happen in your life with a kid? Yeah, but I'm not at Mount Sinai. He goes, you don't have to be at Mount Sinai. Hashem says, ish isha zachu, Shekhinah beneihem.

46:40There's a Mishnah that says, when a ish, husband, and a isha, wife, zachu, meaning there's shalom bayit, peace and harmony, in that home, the Shekhinah can come there. The Shekhinah comes between them. The Shekhinah joins them. Now, the Shekhinah cannot come to a place of imperfection. So, if it sees that there's a ish, there's a isha, and they're happy together, Then it'll create perfection. Sounds simple, right? Sounds unbelievable, right? But when Rabbi Ephraim says something, he's not saying something just to sell you some book. The avrech says, you sure? Do I get any benefit out of this? He goes, what do I do? He says, from now on, never ever yell at your wife, even if she deserves it. Yelling, not allowed policy. Second of all, start buying your wife flowers every Friday.

47:41I'm gonna play. I barely make five hundred dollars a month. He goes, okay, so spend one dollar every week and buy a flower. Not to buy a bouquet from 1-800-FLOWERS. You buy one flower for a dollar, don't pick it from some yard. Yeah, that's it. Ask the guy, listen, can I have one flower? Yeah? He doesn't care. It's five thousand. No, you can't take one flower. Give it. It's not the flower, you fool. It's the thought. It's the thought. You give her a plastic flower, the same plastic flower every week, she'll still be happy and... Because you thought about her, for heaven's sake. People don't know this; you have to give them instructions on how to be human beings. Buy her something, treat her nicely, and do everything and anything possible to avoid all arguments at all costs. Let her win the arguments. Let her be right, unless it's something that's... Gonna affect the kids in a negative way, affect the marriage in a negative way, the rest of the stuff is meaningless. What bed to buy, what sofa to buy, which dry cleaner to use, this tie or that tie, all that stuff is shtuyot. Stop arguing about it. What do you want for dinner? You know what the answer is, rabotai, what do you want for dinner? Whatever you're cooking, that's what I want for dinner. You know what the answer is, did you like the meal? You know what the answer for that is? Yes.

49:04That's the answer. Not, uh, no, that's not the answer. Oh, I liked yesterday's meal. No, that's not the answer either. It's, yes, it was delicious. It was actually the best meal ever. I think Hashem is saying, maybe I should make the manna just like your meal. Next time I bring the manna, when Mashiach comes, it's going to be manna again. I'm going to make the manna just like your meal. You're going to teach Hashem how to make the manna. Why? That's how good the meal is, even if you can't stand it. Why? That's how you make shalom bayit, rabotai. You could be right, or you could be happy. Right, you could be right, but you'll be miserable. You could be happy. Happy means, yes sir, whenever you possibly can. If she's a normal woman, she'll treat you good. Now this guy understood this, understood the message, and said, I'm taking this on. I'm going to do everything and anything I possibly can to make shalom bayit. But real shalom bayit. Not fake shalom bayit. I'll make her happy. It's that, the other thing. Well, HaKadosh Baruch Hu doesn't need us to pass the whole test in order to give us results. HaKadosh Baruch Hu just needs to see that we understand that there's a test. Once you know there's a test, there's no point for the rest of the game. If you're playing hide and seek,

50:21You don't have to go behind the wall to see, oh, I saw you. If you already tell him, listen, I know you're behind the wall, the game's over. Once you know that Hashem is hiding behind the wall, that's it, the game's over. So once the person says, you know what? I'm going to take this on. I agree. I have to work on myself. I have to bring Shalom Bayit. This is going to bring me the Shekhinah to my house. And the Shekhinah in my house is going to make miracles. That's it. Simple decision. But he took it seriously. And even though the baby was in the hospital for six months with no cure in sight, within a week she was released from the hospital, perfectly healthy, as if nothing ever happened. Why? A person has Shalom Bayit, real Shalom Bayit in their house, the Shekhinah is there. But Shalom Bayit cannot exist when one of the people is playing for a different team. Sometimes the husband is doing teshuva, but the wife wants to live a half-secular life, or the wife is doing teshuva, but the husband still wants to hang out with his friends in a casino on the weekends. This doesn't work. The Shekhinah cannot come to such a place, even if there is Shalom Bayit, if you will, in such a house. The Shekhinah cannot come to such a place. Why? It cannot go to a place where one of the people in this partnership is constantly...

51:46Constantly insulting Hashem, so obviously the Shekhinah requires also personalized teshuva. A person needs to learn a little bit every day, needs to pray every day, needs to work on their middot, and so on and so forth. Now, men are constantly struggling no matter how much money they have. They're constantly struggling to make more parnassah; the expenses continue being higher, the desires continue getting higher, and... We always want to have this next best idea. Everybody wants the next best idea, the next best business, the insight of whether the market's going to go up or down. Now, there is a secret. There is a secret of what's going to help you in business and in life in general. Specifically for men, but it also works for women as well, and it's called watching your eyes. If you watch your eyes, by default, you make yourself holy. Because 99% of the sins start with the eyes. Jealousy is not jealousy because you heard something. Jealousy is usually because you saw something. And even if you heard something, you visualized it. And in essence, you put yourself in a certain perspective where you could see it. You saw your neighbor's new car, created jealousy.

53:09You saw your neighbor's wife, jealousy. You saw somebody on the news that made a lot of money, jealousy. You heard some story about some former classmate who made it in life, and now he's some big rich person. People have all these different things, and each one leads to a different sin. And the Torah says, don't follow your heart, don't follow your eyes. Why? Because those things — following your feelings, following your desires, following the things that you look at — are going to lead you astray. It's going to lead you away from Hashem. On the other hand, if you watch your eyes, you preserve your eyes, you make sure that you don't look at any woman that's not your wife. If she's your wife, look at her as much as you want. That's why she's your wife. If she's not your wife, you're not allowed to look at her. Other than a first look to know that there's somebody there, that's it. Such an extent that a person even needs to be careful of looking at family members. Once the family member is already of adult age, you can't, you know, talk to them and hang out with them like when you were six years old. Once she's 25 years old, you can't, you know, do the hugs you used to do when you were six, and it didn't really make a difference.

54:31A person who wants to be a kosher Jew has to protect their eyes. Why? Because if he protects his eyes, he's protecting the windows to his neshama. Now, how great can protecting your eyes get to? One of the great sages in the last few hundred years was the Chozeh MiLublin. The Chozeh MiLublin was called the Chozeh MiLublin because he was literally able to see from one end of the world to the other end of the world. How did he get this? Realized that there's a lot of tumah in the world, a lot of impurity in the world, a lot of things that Hashem doesn't like. So he took it upon himself that anytime he was outside, anytime he was among people, he covered his eyes to such an extent that he did it for seven years straight. And Hashem rewarded him. In such a way that the only thing that from that point on that he could see is Torah that he's learning and anything that he wants to look at as far as Kedusha, literally at the end of the world. Now people say, yeah, that's nice, wonderful, it's really mystical, it's from hundreds of years ago. How could I, what does it have to do with me? Well, everybody knows who the Baba Sali is, right? The Baba Sali had a son. And his name was Baba Meir.

55:49Baba Meir was a Kodesh Kodashim, and one day a family from London came to Baba Meir and told him, "Kvoda Rav, we're losing hope. Somebody kidnapped our son, and we have no idea where he is. Please help us." Baba Meir took a piece of paper and started drawing the exact location of where this boy was in London. He had never been to London. He draws the address. He draws the house. He draws the store. He draws the whole thing like a painting. He says this is where he is. They take this. They bring it to the cops. The cops go. They find the kid. This was published in all the newspapers in Eretz Yisrael. I'm sure you can find the archives on the internet. This was 25, 30 years ago. We're not talking about 500 years ago. Meaning that the Kedusha is still available to you, to me, to everybody, if we simply follow what Torah says. Hashem says don't look at things that are inappropriate. If you do that to the same extent as Baba Meir, you could literally see the end of the world if you want. There's no limitations. There's absolutely no limitations. Anyone who thinks that there are limitations is living in the wrong religion. There are no limitations. The limitation is our Yetzer Hara.

57:14Sometimes people ask, "How can I get special merits as far as maybe to get bracha? You know, I make money, but there's no bracha in the money. There's no bracha in the money. You know, I know a lot of people make a lot of money, but they never have any money. They make a lot, but they never have a lot. They spend it on all different types of things they don't want to spend it on, whether it's hospital bills, taxes, or lawsuits— all types of things you don't want to spend your money on." One of the greatest things that a person can do in order to bring bracha in their life and see miracles in his life is by using part of that money for Torah. And I don't mean just buying yourself an aliyah on Yom Kippur and showing off your big guns because you were the biggest donor that won the competition. That's not what I mean. I mean showing HaKadosh Baruch Hu that you actually care about Torah. There are two main ways that a person can show he cares about Torah. One is to help Talmidei Chachamim specifically. People that learn Torah

58:20That's all they do. They don't have a regular nine-to-five job, if you will. All they do is learn Torah. They get $500 or so from the kollel, and pretty much the rest of their life is supported either by family, friends, donations, and so on and so forth. Obviously, a guy that's learning all day, has four, five, six, seven, eight kids, cannot live off of $500. It doesn't matter which part of the world you're living in. So now, if you take, let's say you make $5,000, $10,000 a month, and you do an Yissachar and Zevulun with this person, Means that according to halakha, you are going to take care of his finances and you guys split the learning. Every mitzvah that he gets from learning, you also get. Mitzvot are like fire. Now, some people make a mistake. They think that if they give someone a few hundred dollars, then they get all of his mitzvot. In your dreams. It's like somebody saying, if I put my pen inside your office, I get all the money. That doesn't work either. according to halakha, there are two opinions. One opinion is you literally have to split all of your income. It doesn't matter if you make a million dollars a year or you make ten thousand dollars. It makes no difference; you split half, fifty-fifty. That's one opinion; that's the original.

59:33The other opinion is you simply take care of all of their expenses, no matter how much they are. Regardless of what your income is—if your income is a million dollars, your income is a billion dollars, your income is a hundred thousand dollars—it doesn't make a difference. All that matters is how much their expenses are. You pay all of their expenses; that's Yissachar and Zevulun. That means that every time he learns something, he gets a mitzvah, you also get a mitzvah. But that also means that your work, your job, your business becomes like learning Torah. Because now that work, that business, is financing Torah. So that's the big way that you could show HaKadosh Baruch Hu, not only I like to learn your Torah with shiurim, I like to learn your Torah through reading a sefer here and there, but I also want to help somebody learn Torah and get to the next level. That's one way. A lot of people know it. Some people do it.

1:00:35But there's something that is even more important than that. Something that, especially in this generation, the Gedolei HaDor say they consider even more significant than financing someone learning Torah. And that's helping Am Yisrael come back to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. involved in getting Am Yisrael and the world at large to discover HaKadosh Baruch Hu for who He really is. Not to make pretend like we have a lot of people who understand that there's a God. A lot of people understand that there is a Creator in the world, but very few people, both religious and non-religious, actually know what Hashem says. Very few people actually know what Hashem's opinion is. They know what people's opinions are. They know what some rabbi's opinion is, like their local rabbi. But what does Hashem say? Very few people actually know. So anytime somebody reads last week's parasha, parashat Bechukotai, they're dumbfounded. Why? Because they never heard this. When Hashem says that if you don't do My rules, you don't follow My rules, I'm going to punish you in very, very severe ways to the point where there's starvation that it happened several times in Am Yisrael's history. Hashem, literally the parents were starving to death that they had to actually eat their own children. This happened. This happened in history. It happened in the Beit HaMikdash, the first one. It happened in the second one. It happened during the Inquisition, and it even happened during the Holocaust.

1:02:03These punishments are real. Most people don't learn this. I talk to yeshiva kids. I talk to avreichim. And he said, "I never heard this before." I said, "Yeah, but you learned Parashat HaShavua. I'm not talking about learning Zohar or learning deep Gemara, just Parashat HaShavua." He goes, "Yeah, we just never, we almost skim over it. Like you skip over it. It's there, you read it, but you don't really reflect. You don't really think it's relevant. Maybe this is something that happened, but to somebody else. You know, it's like everybody thinks that the problem will never arrive at their door." But that's what HaKadosh Baruch Hu tries to tell us. Every single week, you'll see that there's part of the parasha that's wonderful, that's beautiful, that's mitzvot, that's kedushah, that's some amazing story. But then there's a part of the parasha where somebody dies. Somebody gets punished. Somebody is rebuked. Practically every parasha has something like this.

1:03:03And Parashat Bechukotai and Parashat Ki Tavo are the two where almost the entire parasha is like this. And the reason why is because HaKadosh Baruch Hu wants us to know at least a couple of times a year that when He wrote the Torah, He means business. So, unfortunately today when we talk about doing kiruv, when we talk about helping Am Yisrael get closer to Hashem, we're not talking about only the people that went to public school like me. We're not talking about the people that go to Beit Knesset once or twice a year like I used to. We're not talking about those people. We're literally talking about everybody. This entire generation, from Aleph to Taf, everybody has to do teshuva for something. Because we are living in such a generation that even basic level Judaism is almost unfounded, uncommon, unheard of. Most people don't know a lot of this stuff. Now, I talked in the school today. It's maybe 150, 200 beautiful neshamot, listening to the shiur, asking questions, enjoying the shiur. Everything was great. After the shiur, they all came up, they took some CDs, some cards, and then they started asking some questions. And they asked basic level questions. And I said, okay, Baruch Hashem, they're young, 15, 16, 17 years old. They're asking some questions. That's good. That shows some interest. But then you start hearing the questions. I say, wait a minute.

1:04:26This question you probably should have already known in first grade. This question, second grade. This question, also second grade. Third grade, basic stuff. Okay, fine, no problem. But then the final question is the one that, it didn't shock me because I've heard this before, but it made me feel terrible. Why? Because now I know that sometimes even the religious institutions that we have today... cannot have blind faith in them anymore. Now, this one happens to be a good one, but unfortunately, just because an institution is good doesn't mean that every part of it is good. Just because the yeshiva is good doesn't mean that every teacher is good. Just because the shul is great doesn't mean that every member is great. We are only as strong as our weakest link, and So, a group of girls, at the end, there's the principal of the school and some other member of the staff sitting next to me. A group of four or five girls say the following: They say, "Listen, during the shiur, you said that if you do what Hashem says, you go to heaven." I said, "Yeah." "And if you don't, you go to a really bad place." They said, "Yeah, there's names for it. It's called Gehenom, hell, all types of names." I said, "Yes."

1:05:53And she started looking at me and she goes, "Yeah, but we asked the same question to the rabbi somewhere in the school and he didn't give us the same answer." I said, "What did he say?" And she says, "Well, he says that there's no such place as Gehenom because the soul does not feel anything." Not a body, so it doesn't feel pain. So it can't be burned. So it has to be that they cannot be Gehenom. Now, anyone that's learned Gemara for a week, a week. No, I don't mean the whole Shas. You learned Masechet Berachot. You're right, within a week. You're right, too. It talks about Gehenom. Almost every Gemara talks about Gehenom at some point. How about this? We're not going to Parashat Shavua. Perseverance. Ever better, sheet. Sefer Bereishit. You look at the commentary, Or HaChaim. He talks about Gehenom on the third day. On the third day of creation, it already talks about Gehenom. You look at Parashat Korach. Where do you think Korach went? To the Taj Mahal?

1:07:03The ground opens and he went to a hole and it says that until this day he's screaming, "Hashem is emet, Moshe is emet, Torah is emet." Where do you think he's screaming? In the Taj Mahal? On top of the casino? What do you think he's doing? Where do you think he is? On vacation? He's the only one there? Him and his 250 friends? So to me it's like, what do you mean? How can somebody say that it doesn't exist? Now unfortunately, I've heard this many times. I already had a response, and my response was this: I said, you know, sometimes people don't know anything or don't know the answer to a question that you asked them, but they're uncomfortable with the fact that they don't know. So, they make up an answer. They make up an answer. They simply make up. Why? Because they're not comfortable with themselves. They're not comfortable enough with themselves. They're not real enough to say, you know what? I don't know. I don't know, but I'll get back to you. I'll find out and I'll get back to you. They don't have enough midat ha-emet inside them to admit that they don't know. Because they don't know at all. So what do they do? They pretend like they know and they make up some answer. This, Rabotai Yekarim, Chachamim say, is what delays the Mashiach from coming.

1:08:18When somebody makes up an answer, makes up an answer out of nothing, it actually delays the Mashiach from coming. Why? Because the Mishnah in Pirkei Avot says that every single time somebody asks you a question, you're not supposed to say your opinion in Torah. If you talk about business, say your opinion. Talk about news, say your opinion. Talk about politics, say your opinion. If it's true, you can have five opinions. But Torah, there's no opinion. There's no your opinion. We care less about human opinion. We care about Da'at Torah. What's Da'at Torah? HaKadosh Baruch Hu. When we say Chachamim, we're not saying, "Oh, Rabbi Akiva, that's his opinion." No, no. Rabbi Akiva, through his research, arrived at what Hashem's opinion is. It's not Rabbi Akiva's individual opinion because he's Sephardi, or he's Ashkenazi, or he likes to eat rice, or he doesn't like to eat it on Pesach. No, no, no, that's nonsense. There were no Sephardim and Ashkenazim at Mount Sinai. There's no such thing as that stuff. It's Torah. It's Judaism. That's it. So when you start saying it's opinion, that opinion, no, no, I want God's opinion. What does God say? And when somebody says something from the Torah, the Mishnah in Pirkei Avot, chapter 6, says you have to say where you got this from and...

1:09:41Who is the source of this information? What book? You don't necessarily have to remember the page number, the author, and the line number. But you need to know somewhere where I can find this to verify what you're saying. Is it Shulchan Aruch? Is it Chacham? Is it Chassidut? Is it Zohar? Is it Gemara? Is it Chumash? Where can I find it? Many times, you could find these things in many places. There are very few things in the Torah that you could only find in one place. Most things you can find in multiple places. Why? Because it becomes an accepted knowledge and many people repeat it. when you say something, you're supposed to say where it came from. When you don't say it, and you just say something else, what are you doing? The opposite. So the Mishnah says that when you say something in somebody's name and you say the source, you are bringing the Mashiach to the generation; you're bringing the Mashiach closer. When you don't, you're doing the opposite.

1:10:46Somebody has so much ego that they're not even willing to admit that they don't know something. Literally, this actually distances the Mashiach from us. This puts the entire nation in danger. So now, I said, sometimes a person doesn't know and he's uncomfortable with it, but sometimes... thinks that you can't handle it. He knows, but he thinks you can't handle it, so he'll lie to you. I'm not really sure which one is worse. They never loved that Rav. I'm not really sure why people think that they can judge other people's character just based on their looks. Like, how do you know whether I can handle it or not? How can you know such a thing? I... How could you know whether I can handle it or not? Why? Because I wasn't born religious or because I'm this tall or this fat or this or this. How would you possibly assess this information? Now, if somebody was about to get hit by a train, would you also say, "I don't think he can handle the truth that he's about to get hit by a train, so I'm just going to leave him there"? That's actually what's happening. We live in a generation where the last train is coming, and instead of stopping...

1:12:12Standing at the stop with a Sefer Torah was standing on the tracks. That's the generation we're in. So, sometimes a person does not want to tell you the truth because they figure you can't handle it. And that's why you only have one solution. The solution is anytime somebody tells you something from the Torah and it's not something that you've heard of before It's something that's moving to you. It's something that's impressive to you. It's something that's causing you to react in some way or another. Do yourself a favor and ask this question: Where did you get this from? Where do you know this from? Can I see this in a book? Do you have a source for this? Now, if they don't remember, that's okay. Say, "Oh yeah, I remember I read it somewhere." Oh, do you remember where? No, I don't remember where. Maybe you could check if I call you in a couple of days. Maybe you could check in your books where you could find it. It's really important to me. Why? Because, listen, you just told me something that may require me to change my life. You just told me something that if I'm a violator of Shabbat, Hashem is going to kill me.

1:13:23And I don't keep Shabbat, that means I have to change my life. So, before I change my life, I actually want to see where I can see this, where I can see Hashem said this. Before I keep Shabbat, I want to see it. I'm not gonna take your word for it. If you told me, "Listen, if you invest in Bitcoin, you'll become a millionaire," before I invest a million dollars, if I'm smart, I'm gonna check to see what you're substantiating this on. Oh, you substantiate it because you saw some YouTube videos. That's not exactly good evidence. It's not good to have it. I want to see something else. I want to see something more specific, something more valuable. If somebody tells you something that requires you to change your life, requires you to rethink life, ask them, where can I see this? Which book? And usually, that book that's quoting it will tell you where they got it from. If it's a book from a Talmid Chacham, he'll tell you, oh, I got this from the Gemara. page such and such, daf such and such. And you could literally track this, what this guy said, rabbi or not, all the way to Mount Sinai.

1:14:25Once you know that this rabbi got it from this book that was written five or six years ago, but that book got it from a book that was written 500 years ago, and that book got it from a Gemara that was written 1500 years ago, and that Gemara got it from Mount Sinai, from a verse in the Torah in Parashat such-and-such, guess what? You have all the verification in the world. That's God's opinion. Why? It's in the Torah. But if you don't even know where to start and you don't know where to end... then it should literally go into one ear and out the other. Why? There's at least a 50% chance it's his opinion or her opinion. And if it's her opinion or his opinion, I have opinions too. I have more than one. I have more than one opinion. So maybe I'll throw my opinion into the box too. So, I always tell people, ask for a source. Now, Baruch Hashem, for anyone who is brave enough to want to learn about the details of Gehinom, we did a shiur. Talmidim asked me about it for a couple of years. I really didn't want to do it because even though I mention it superficially in many shiurim, I don't mention the details. And the reason why is the details are very gruesome. As bad as a person could possibly think, it's much worse.

1:15:42Doesn't matter what scary movie you watched in your life and wasted time watching, it's scarier than that. So I don't really want to spend a few hours scaring people's lives away, but unfortunately, we need to do it. So after a couple of years of people asking me to do it, finally, we studied the subject. Now, you could do one of two things. You can either simply believe me and know that it exists, it's not a good place, and you don't want to go there for five seconds. Or you can watch the shiur and see somewhere between 50 to 150 different sources from the Torah, all over the Torah, that talk about it in a very, very gruesome way—in a very detailed way. And I can tell you and promise you that the worst problem that you even know of or heard of is like kindergarten next to one second over there. When a person understands that this place exists, he or she will do everything and anything possible to avoid it. Because I can tell you personally, the first time I studied it, I didn't really like it so much. It's not so much fun to study. But as you learn more and more Torah, your neshama becomes a little bit more sensitive to understanding deeper Torah. So, the second time I learned it...

1:17:09My reaction was much worse. I simply started crying. So imagine somebody's learning and he's crying like a baby. That's what it was studying this subject. Why? Because you know that there's at least a thousand people you know that are probably going to this place if they don't do teshuva. Every one of us knows a hundred, two hundred, five hundred, a thousand, two thousand people that if they don't do teshuva, they're going there. This is why the number one obligation for every single Jew, I don't care whether you're from birth, I don't even care if you're religious. Every Jew wants to show that he loves his brother, he loves his sister, he loves his parents, he loves his cousin, he loves his nation, he loves HaKadosh Baruch Hu. You have to be involved in Kiruv. Why? If they don't do teshuva, there's only one option, and it's not the good one. Now I'll give you an easy analogy. A few, maybe about a month and a half ago, I did a shiur about different things that happened before the Holocaust. One of the things that many people don't know is that there was an opportunity for Am Yisrael to save a million Jews. But the Zionists didn't really like all Jews.

1:18:33So when they were offered to save a million of them, one million Jews, the Germans were running out of money, running out of fuel, running out of weapons, and running out of medicine. They had a deal. They offered to save one million Jews in return for trucks, medicine, and all types of other things. Because these Jews weren't the type of Jews that the Zionists wanted, they rejected the deal. They didn't do it, and another million people died. Now, this happened 70-80 years ago. We can't really do anything about it, but we can do something about today. Today, we have at least 14–15 million Jews that we know of. There are many, many more that we don't know of in Afghanistan, in Nigeria, different parts of Africa, and different parts of South America. There are many small and big Jewish communities all over the world that are simply not involved with the rest of the world. For example, in Afghanistan, there's a tribe, or really a people, called the Pashtuns. And these people...

1:19:50They look like old-fashioned Jews from Mount Sinai, the way they dress. They have tzitziyot. They do shechita. They keep taharat mishpacha. Muslims don't keep taharat mishpacha. Muslims don't wear tzitziyot. So even though they look like Muslims, they're not Muslims. Now, they keep all of the laws from the Torah that are written in the Torah. They don't have the Oral Torah. But they keep halacha as strictly as can be. Now people say, "Oh wow, so what, is there 50 of them? 100 of them?" No, there's 16 million of them. There's 16 million of them. In Africa, there are different tribes that literally are Jewish, but they're disconnected from the world. Recently, we made an announcement that we're giving out CDs for free, 100,000 CDs and Asher Yatzar posters for free.

1:20:50And Baruch Hashem, since people from all over the world watch our shiurim, we got a response from Nigeria. Somebody asked me from Nigeria, can you please send us some CDs? I said, are there Jews there? I never knew there are Jews in Nigeria. Last I checked, Eretz Yisrael is not exactly close by. So I didn't know there are Jews in Nigeria. He says, what do you mean, are there Jews? He says, there are over a hundred Batei Knesset just within our community. Disconnected from the world, like a third world country. We sent him a few thousand CDs. Made the investment, of course, didn't have the money to pay for it, but b'ezrat Hashem, Hashem provides, and we send. The key is, if somebody asks for Torah, our job is to give it. How we pay for it? That's Hashem's problem. We send the CDs, and literally in a very short period of time, all of the CDs are gone. He starts sending me pictures. You see these pictures, you start crying. Why? You're seeing people, literally from a third world country, with tzitziot, with a kippah, excited to have a CD, excited to have a shiur Torah poster. This is like, they just got, they're a malach. It's unbelievable how excited they are to have what we have for nothing here. And they're all over the world, there's people like this. The reason why is because here, we have Torah easy.

1:22:16could get the entire Torah on your phone, you can get the entire Torah in any Beit Midrash. Look at how many books you have behind you. I don't know if any of them are actually used or not. From far away, you don't know. Sometimes, they go to a Beit Knesset; they have four, five, six hundred books, two thousand books, three thousand books, all brand new. When it's brand new, it's not a good sign. Why? That means no one's learning from them. When you see they're ripped... You see there's a little wear and tear. That's a good sign. Why? That means somebody's using them. Everybody has books. Not everybody has somebody learning from them. So we have Jews. And Jews are building buildings. Every other day there's a new fundraiser. A new fundraiser. 36 hours to raise another million dollars. 36 hours to raise another three million dollars. 36 hours, 24 hours, triple your money. It's like a lotto. Your money, if you do this with money, do that, but walk, enjoy, have the money. But what are we doing with the money about time? We're building buildings. Another Beit Knesset, another yeshiva, another tower of some kind. What about the Jews? They're supposed to fill it. Baruch Hashem, Beit Knesset—we're not missing a...

1:23:32Yeshivot, we're not missing. Jewish schools, Baruch Hashem, we're not missing. Jews, we're missing. Why? Because you have a lot of Batei Knesset, beautiful, I love this Beit Knesset, it's so beautiful. But you know what would make it really beautiful? If there were 5,000 of you. That would make it really beautiful. Sitting on the floor, because there are not enough seats for 5,000 people. That would make it beautiful. When there are people, that's what makes a Beit Knesset beautiful. When people have a Beit Knesset, it's a huge tower. Next to me, there's one Beit Knesset. I think it's two, three times the size of this. Huge Beit Knesset. Beautiful place. But to get a minyan in the morning, they have to wait. Oh. Wow, it's 8:30. Call Shmuley. Call Moshe. Call this one. You have to convince people to come to shul. To get a minyan, the place could fit, I don't know how many hundreds of people. But to get a minyan, you can't. Why? Because we have a problem. We have the right amount of worry, but we're worried about the wrong problem. We're worried about building buildings. We need to build Am Yisrael.

1:24:39And the only way to do that is through Kiruv. The only way to do that is to teach basic level Judaism all over again. Get your average Jew, it doesn't matter if he's wearing a kippah or he's not wearing a kippah, to understand the 13 principles of faith, to understand the 10 commandments, to understand reward and punishment, to understand basics, to understand that he is responsible for his brother. So now, we missed an opportunity 70 years ago to save a million Jews because some reshaim decided that they don't want to save this type of Jew. But we have an opportunity to save many more today. Now each person has to do things within whatever his capability is. If you have emunah, you have all the capability in the world. If you don't have emunah, you don't have any capability. So about two months ago, we started a program. What's this program? One of my talmidot has a lot of care about Am Yisrael, and she said, "Listen, there's a Torah course down there in Florida where this group of 30-40 kids is going to it, and they pay them, I don't know, 20-25 dollars to go to this Torah course for two and a half years." I said, "Okay, so they all keep Shabbat?"

1:26:09He says, "No." I said, "They all keep kosher?" He says, "No." I said, "What do they do there then?" He says, "They eat." I said, "Okay, what about the Torah part of the course?" He goes, "Yeah, that's just in the name. It's just on the door. On the door it says Torah course, but as far as Torah, there's not much Torah. Like sometimes you go to a, you know, to a restaurant, and the only thing that's kosher is the sign. The food, not so much. The sign is kosher, but the food, not so much." So you have a lot of these courses, a lot of these programs for teenagers, for young people, for this, for that. But in reality, nothing's happening. The kids are going to a course for two years and still stay the same exact person. I said, how do we get them to come to us? He says, well, why don't we pay them? I said, oh, we don't have any money, but let's do it. Let's do it. We're going to pay $15 per kid. $15 per kid to come learn for at least an hour with us. We have three shiurim a week. If we can get him to at least one shiur, b'ezrat Hashem, he's gonna get at least one hour a week of Torah. We started with two kids two months ago. We have 70 kids three times a week. Out of the 70 kids, at least 40 show up to every shiur. How we're paying for it, I have no idea.

1:27:23Somehow, HaKadosh Baruch Hu sends $30 from here, $50 from there, $100 from there, $1,000 from there, Baruch Hashem. Hashem provides, just like He promised. He says, you bring children, I'll bring parnassah with the children. But then I had a little bit of a safek, I had a little bit of a doubt. I said, well, I have to pay people to learn Torah now. That's what we've come to. Should they pay me? You know, if you're a speaker, you usually get some money. Not charging any money, but ad kan you have to pay people? So my Rav says this. He goes, listen. He goes, you remember the story I told you about what happened in the Holocaust where, you know, they didn’t save those people, the million people? I said, yeah. He goes, Rav, think about it this way. Let’s say you had a million people. You had a million Jews, boys, girls, young, old—a million Jewish neshamot. And somebody said to you, listen, you could buy each neshama for $15. But if you don’t want, no problem. We’ll just put them in a gas chamber. How long does it take you to make the decision on that one? With or without the money? Two seconds. I'll buy all of them. Why? For $15 I can save his life? $15 I can save his life? Of course I'm going to do it. A million of them? To make 10 million of them. He says, well, you know what? This is much worse. See, the gas chamber just kills the body. Not doing teshuvah kills the soul. You have to look at every single time you give $15 to this kid, you're saving a neshama.

1:28:50Because if he doesn't come to the shiur, he's not going to do teshuvah. If he doesn't do teshuvah, it's much, much worse than that. And that's why, Rabotai Yekarim, we've decided over the last five or six years to make our entire life just focused on kiruv. We don't charge; we don't do anything. Obviously, people donate. But the point is, Rabotai, that this is not just for us to do by ourselves. Everybody has to take it on themselves because this is also part of your own teshuvah. Every person makes certain sins. Some of the sins you can do teshuvah for by simply stopping. Some people, they have to do teshuvah by getting other people to stop. Because you stopping by itself is not enough. Sometimes you want to help your family do teshuvah, but it doesn't work. It doesn't work. Why? They don't want to listen to you. So you need special assistance from Heaven. You need a special miracle. You need Hashem to send them a special sign. You want a special sign from Hashem? It's a foolproof system. I've seen it work time after time over the last five or six years. Do kiruv. Be involved in kiruv. Get people to learn Torah. Get people to be involved in doing teshuvah. Why? If you show HaKadosh Baruch Hu that you care about His children, not because they're related to you, but only because they're His children, which means whether they're related to you or not is irrelevant.

1:30:10Whether he's located in Florida or he's located in Afghanistan, or he's located in Texas, or he's located in New York is irrelevant to you. As soon as you know this kid belongs to Hashem, that's Hashem's kid, you care about him. You want to save him. You want to bring him up to Hashem. You want to make sure this kid is going to be as close to Hashem as possible. As soon as you show Hashem that you care, guess what? Hashem is going to start caring about the people that are in your life. I saw this in my own life. Family members that literally I had no idea how I could ever get to them. But as soon as I showed Hashem that I care about His kids, little by little the people I care about started doing teshuvah without me, on their own. They listen to somebody else, sometimes they even listen to me. But either way, they did the whole thing, the purpose of which is to get you back. So anyone that wants to have miracles in their life, they simply have to make sure that number one is... They do it by themselves. They have to work on themselves. There are, b'ezrat Hashem, a few hundred CDs in the back. They're all free. There's the well-known "Wall Street to Western Wall" double CD, but there's also the Musar series CD with the first 27 lectures, each one is two to three hours. By the time you finish these two CDs, just the Musar series, you will have about 60 to 80 hours of Torah. 60 to 80 hours of this type of Torah and you become a little rabbi and...

1:31:35You become the local rabbinate. Why? Every shiur is different. It has nothing to do with me. It's just telling you what the books say, but saving you the time from reading it. If you remember even 10% of what you heard, you're going to be able to help other people. You're going to be able to help yourself. Listen to those CDs. Listen to the shiurim. You don't want to listen to a CD. You don't have a CD player. Just look up. Take the CD. Look up the lecture. Go online on YouTube or on my website, bezratashem.org. You'll find the lecture. Watch it over there. Don't worry. You don't have to watch the whole two, three hours in one shot. You can watch it five minutes at a time also. Just watch it. Just listen to it. That's the point. There are a bunch of them free in the back. Want to do yourself a favor? Take a few extras. Give it to somebody you care about, give it to somebody you don't care about, give it to somebody you don't even like. As long as they are Jewish, just give it to them. Take a few extras and give them to people. It doesn't cost you anything. Just take a few and give them out. You see somebody? Hey, you're Jewish? Just like the Chabad guys do—"Hey, you're Jewish? Oh, yes? Okay, let's put tefillin on you." See you there. "Hey, you're Jewish? Yeah? Here's a CD." That's it.

1:32:37Just give people CDs. Oh, what is this? Oh, it's good. What is it? It's really good. That's it. That's all it is. Don't say, "Oh, it's this rabbi. He used to be on Wall Street." Don't kill the surprise. Just tell them it's good and let curiosity cause them to open it and see what it is. Another thing is, there are Asher Yatzar posters. I know that all of you, or most of you, know the blessing by heart. But if you want to have focus when you're making a blessing, you have to look at the words. really two options: either close your eyes and focus on the words, or look at the words. Most of us have a hard time closing our eyes because our attention span is very short. We are used to using phones, text messaging, and emails, and so on. We have to look at something. So there's a blessing card. Look at the words. If you look at the words when you pray, it'll change your life. For example, There are a lot of people who go and pray, but they don't really feel anything. They come, they pray two or three times a day, but everything stays the same. As soon as a problem arises, all bets are off. They forget God even exists. They go to shul, they pray. Mitzvot, they do mitzvot. Lulav, they have the best lulav. Etrog, they have the best etrog. Beit Knesset, they'll donate to the Beit Knesset. They'll buy an aliyah or two. But when it comes to problems,

1:34:03Financial issues, marriage issues, this issue, that issue— all of a sudden, you forget God exists. Part of the reason is because when we pray to Hashem, our prayer is fake. Our prayer is fake. Why? We just go through the motions. We go through the motions. We know the prayer; after you do it a bunch of times, you start remembering the whole thing by heart. You zoom through it. It's like a race—a race to the last word. Who finished fast? "Ah, I beat you. I beat you. You took an extra minute." Everybody's competing to see who finishes fast. Most Batei Kneset, you have to be like, you know, you have to be in a race. Because if not, they have already finished the Shacharit, and you're still doing Modeh Ani. But the reality is, if you pray too fast, you're not going to have time to think about it. And Amidah... Shema Yisrael and Amidah are two of the most important prayers in Judaism, much more important than your day-to-day average prayer. This is the foundation of prayer. Now, the number one most important prayer in Judaism is Birkat Hamazon because that's the only berachah in the entire Torah. There's a pasuk in the Torah that says you have to do it and...

1:35:16After that, it's Shema Yisrael and Amidah. But if you do Shema Yisrael and Amidah in such a way that you know the whole thing by heart, that you forget where you are, you start with Shema Yisrael, you finish with Birkat Hamazon somehow, then guess what? Hashem says, take that Shema Yisrael and give it to the church or something. Don't give it to me. Sometimes people are so, so lost when it comes to prayer that they forget where they are. There was one time a guy, true story, in the middle of Amidah, everybody's praying and his friend finished and he looks at his friend and he sees the guy's moving, moving, moving, and then he goes like this. So the guy's like, what is this? What is he talking to malachim? What is this two? What is a peace sign? Where he became Ronald Reagan? What's happening here? So after he finished, the prayer is finished, everybody's finished, he says... ...the middle of Amidah, everybody's praying, and his friend finished. He looks at his friend and sees the guy's moving, moving, moving, and then he goes like this. So the guy's like, what is this? Is he talking to malachim? What is this, two? What is a peace sign? Did he become Ronald Reagan? What's happening here? So after he finished, the prayer is finished, everybody's finished, he says... What happened? What do you mean? What was this thing about? It was, oh, listen, we were praying, but I started thinking about the vacation that's coming up this weekend. I'm going to the Caribbean. So I already started thinking about the vacation. I figured, I pictured myself at the bar and the bartender was gone. I said, two drinks, two drinks. Make it two.

1:36:39Two drinks. Sometimes we start praying, and we leave. Our body is here, our soul is somewhere else. We're thinking about the stock market. We're thinking about the boyfriend, girlfriend, this friend, that friend. Everything but HaKadosh Baruch Hu. There's a small little secret about how to change your Amidah in one second. To become the best prayer of your day. A small, tiny secret. Proven. Segulah of segulot, you do this, and all of a sudden, your prayer becomes meaningful. All of a sudden, your prayers become something that is accepted, wanted, and desired by Hashem. This, rabotai, is actually in most of your siddurim. It's just that we never paid attention to it or perhaps we skipped it. Now, sometimes you see in a siddur... Prayer and next to certain words, there are small, tiny little letters. Now, in many siddurim, you'll see that in the Amidah, there is next to the word for the name of Hashem, and each one of the prayers, each one of the blessings, next to each name of Hashem, Yud-Heh-Vav-Heh, many of them have small little words.

1:37:57If you read them, it says, "The Master of all, who was, is, and will be." This is the description of Hashem that we know of. This is what Hashem is that we know of. Meaning, He's the Master of all. He was. He has no beginning. He has no father. He has no uncle. He has no creator. He always was here. There was no beginning before Him. There was nothing else but Him. He is right now, meaning that HaKadosh Baruch Hu, just like He always was, and He's here right now, He cares about creation just as much now as He did when He first created the world. He's as conscious of every single creature today just like He was when He created it 5,779 years ago. Just like when He was talking to Adam HaRishon, and He told him, "Here, name the animals, here are the trees, here is the fruit, here is this." He was really involved in creation. He's just as involved today. And better yet, He always will be. There will never be a time that Hashem goes on vacation. Hashem doesn't go to Cancun. Hashem doesn't go to the Caribbean. Hashem doesn't go on break.

1:39:18Lo yishan, lo yanum, lo yishan ve lo yanum, Hashem doesn't go to sleep, doesn't rest, nothing. Now, why is this specifically here, next to the name of Hashem? Because if a Jew looks at the prayer of Amidah, he breezes through Amidah and he says the name of Hashem just like he says the word Baruch or the word Atah or Ani or, you know, Minim, Malshinim—all the different words have the same value to him. The good ones, the bad ones, they all have Hashem's name. It's just like everything else. Guess what? That prayer has no meaning. That's like a guf without a neshamah. It's like a body without a soul. Why? You said Hashem's name like you're saying Shmuley. Like you're saying Yaron. Like you're saying Yossi. It's like saying, yeah, yeah, Hashem. That's the problem. Many times we pray, but we forget that we're praying to Hashem. We forget that we're praying to Hashem. How do we remind ourselves? Every time you get to the berachah, you get to the name of Hashem,

1:40:27You say Hashem's name, Adonai, but then in your mind you think, Every single prayer, you do it. If this is too hard for you, do it at least for the first three. But do it for all of them. Why? It'll change your prayer. All of a sudden, you'll start realizing, Wow, I'm actually talking to Hashem now. Wow. Wow. I'm asking Hashem for stuff. Wow, Hashem can give me this stuff that I want, that I need. Wow, Hashem is real. He's actually listening to my... You actually start developing a relationship with HaKadosh Baruch Hu exactly the way He wants you to, through His Amidah. by understanding who you're dealing with. You're dealing with someone that was, that is, that will be, and most importantly, that's Adon HaKol, master of all. When you realize, when you contemplate master of all, you're realizing, wait a minute, master of all means master of my parnassah, master of my marriage, master of my zivug, master of my children, master of my school, master of my job, master of everything and anything that I have in my life.

1:41:47If He's the Master, that means I have to pray to Him, nothing else. I have to depend on Him, nothing else. This, Rabotai HaYekarim, changes prayer. It changes it dramatically. Try it, and you'll see your prayer change. You'll see it become more meaningful. Don't worry that everybody else is finishing before you. It's not about who finishes first; it's about whose prayer has kavanah. If your prayer has kavanah, then it's worth it to pray. If your prayer has no kavanah, it's not worth it to pray. And I'll give you one last thing, and then you can ask me as many questions as you want or go home, whichever you prefer. But we all know that the Gemara says that a baby learns the entire Torah inside his mother's belly throughout the nine months. There's a malach sent from Shamayim for each one of us, boys and girls, and they sit together over there and learn chavruta. for nine months. What did they learn? The entire Torah. Fifty years ago, a very special event took place. Because the Gemara says that as soon as the baby is born, that malach hits the baby and makes him forget everything. Why? Because if he knew everything, he wouldn't learn.

1:43:08But if he forgot it, that means that anytime he's going to learn it, it's going to be easy for him to learn it because it's almost like a—no, not almost—it's a reminder. It's not really learning it anew. So sometimes you'll read something, but you never really read it, but you know it. Why? Because you learned it already many years ago while you were still inside your mommy's belly. Now, Rabbi, there's a question. If a rabbi walks into the room, what are we supposed to do? Stand up. Why? It's not kavod for the rabbi. It's kavod for the Torah that the rabbi has. The rabbi, if the rabbi is an am ha'aretz, he can call himself rabbi, call himself Pikachu. It doesn't make a difference. If he doesn't know anything, you don't stand up for him just because he decided to call himself rabbi. But if he's a talmid chacham, It also doesn't matter if he's called a rabbi or not. If he's a talmid chacham, we stand up. Why? For the Torah that he has in him. So then the Gaon of Vilna asks a fantastic question. How come we don't stand up every time we see a pregnant woman? Why? Because the little baby inside, he knows more than any rabbi in the world. He knows the entire Torah.

1:44:21Fifty years ago, there was a baby born, and the malach didn't hit it. Meaning that by the time this baby started talking, at four years old, he knew the entire Torah. The Steipler Gaon writes it in his book. Rav Kanievsky's father. He writes in his book that he knew this boy. Fifty years ago, at four years old, he knew the entire Torah. Rav Tzadka, alav ha-shalom, came. this little boy and started asking him questions just to see up to when did they teach, like from where. Okay, so he started asking by heart. He said, the kid said the whole Chumash by heart. He said, okay, let's go to Mishnah. Started first Mishnah, finished all of Mishnah by heart, the whole thing by heart. Everything, you know, by heart. Up to when? He got up to the Ben Ish Chai 120 years ago. He knew the whole Ben Ish Chai. Knew the whole Ben Ish Chai. And this happened several times. Rav Yagen, alav ha-shalom, also knew a kid like this. Also knew a kid like this. That was born and came to the world and actually knew the entire Torah. So this, we have actually documented evidence that this has happened, that this exists.

1:45:47So the question is that the Gemara is not saying that the baby is learning the whole Torah just to make you like babies. The baby really is learning the whole Torah. So now we go back to the original question that the Gaon MiVilna asked. How come every time we see a pregnant woman, how come we don't stand up for the honor of the baby? He knows the whole Torah, how come we don't stand up for him? The reason is, Rabotai HaYekarim, is because the baby is not learning Torah resistance. He's like a computer. A computer, if you have Microsoft Word or some other word processing software, if you write a Sefer Torah on Microsoft Word or you write a Sefer Kodesh on Microsoft Word, Microsoft Word doesn't go to Gan Eden. If you train your dog to go save kids, kids that are drowning, kids that are this and... If the dog saves the kid, he doesn't go to Gan Eden. He doesn't go to Gan Eden. Why? Because he's programmed to do this. It's not something that has resistance. He has no Yetzer Hara. He's just a program. If you program a robot to jump up and down, the robot doesn't get any credit for jumping up and down. That's what he's programmed to do. The baby, he's not learning it like you're learning it. Why? He has no Yetzer Hara. He's simply there, and the Malach is teaching him as much as he wants.

1:47:17And that's why, Rabotai, even though the baby knows the entire Torah, we don't stand for him. Why? Because he has no resistance. He's simply being programmed. The only Torah that's valuable to Hashem It's Torah that has resistance. Torah that has a yetzer hara. Torah that has an evil inclination that tells you, no, no, don't learn too much. Don't become a rabbi on me. Don't, you know, just relax. You know, five minutes a day is enough. An hour a day is enough. Two hours a day is enough. Don't go crazy now. What do you think, you'll be Baba Sali now? People, the yetzer hara tells you not to study. As soon as you want to study, all of a sudden there's 15 phone calls. All of a sudden, there are 15 different things to do. That's the Torah that Hashem wants. Torah that's hard to learn. Torah that's very, very difficult because there are all types of distractions. That's the Torah that gets a lot of credit. So when you get to learn Torah, don't think that it's supposed to be easy. It's not supposed to be. Why? Because Hashem wants to give you full credit for it. He wants to give you 100% credit for your learning. So the shiur,

1:48:28You're learning. It's tough for you to sit down. It's tough for you to pay attention. It's tough for you to do this stuff. You do that, and that makes it more valuable. That makes it much more valuable. That's why I tell people, make sure that if you're already gonna do a mitzvah, go all the way. Do it, do it a hundred percent. Why? Because that's what makes it more valuable. Yes, it's much more difficult to pray with a hundred percent kavanah, and you're thinking, "Wow, every time I'm gonna say Hashem's name, I have to think, 'Adon Hakol.'" Baby, yeah, He's the Master of all. He was, He is, and He will be. You have to constantly think this, constantly think this. It sounds overwhelming, but once you actually do it, you want more of it because you're enjoying talking to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, and it's really not as hard as you think. It just looks as hard because there's resistance. There's the yetzer hara. Same thing with learning, same thing with shalom bayit, same thing with anything in the Torah. Now, there are many, many other segulot, many, many other things that a person can do in order to get different blessings from Heaven. But I always tell people who ask specifically for segulot: The number one segula of all is teshuva. You do teshuva, and your life becomes a miracle.

1:49:42It doesn't make a difference what situation you have, what difficulty you have, what obstacles you have. Once you start taking teshuva seriously, where every single day you're working on something, you're working on your prayer, you're working on modesty, you're working on your middot, you're working on your learning, you're working on something, not just exterior based. Not just exterior, don't just look like a Jew. outside, look like a Jew inside. Once you start taking teshuva seriously, your life becomes a miracle. Your whole life becomes simply a miracle. And I can tell you endless amounts of stories of different things that happened to me on a day-to-day basis. Because simply, we decide that we're going to work for Hashem, how we're going to pay the bills, how we're going to survive, how we're going to do all these things, I have no idea. But if you look at the stuff that we're doing on the internet, some of the pictures we post of different things, it looks like at least a $10-20 million organization. We just fed 400 different families in Eretz Yisrael for Shavuot. Right now we said 400 families in Eretz Yisrael are now getting where the money came from, only God knows. But at the right time, right place, Baruch Hashem, we did it. Now, we have on Pesach, we also fed 450 families. CDs, almost 100,000 of them, were given out for free just in the last couple of months. Over the last few years, I think it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 500,000-600,000.

1:51:02The shiurim are cards with lectures. Be'ezrat Hashem, there are all types of lectures, thousands of hours of lectures on different channels. There are special movies right now. There's a very, very big project that we're working on, and it's almost completed. It's the biggest project we've worked on probably since we started, which is the famous personal story that I have that people like so much, but actually turning it into a movie. Now we make short movies, we make short films about different, you know, 5-10 minute clips in a movie format that people like a lot and get a lot of people hooked on the longer lectures. But we thought that since so many people like the personal story and they like the movie, let's just do the whole thing. It's just that it's a big project. It's a really long movie. So it's been almost a year now. A year, year plus that we've been working on it. Baruch Hashem, we're in the last stage. I'd say that hopefully within the next couple of months, we're gonna release this movie, and hopefully, this is gonna be the number one tool that people are gonna use to do teshuva. Because simply, once you see this movie, you can't get bored; there's always action.

1:52:16Secondly, you can't say you don't connect to it. Why? Because the story has enough tikkunim, enough problems, that it relates to everybody. You have health issues? It's in the movie. You have money issues? That's in the movie. You have marriage issues? That's in the movie too. Hashem was very generous with us when it came to problems. So every one of them is in the movie, and it's all types of fantastic stories, miracles, and all types of wonderful things. Once a person sees this movie, it becomes a fantastic tool to get him into learning. Now you have to follow up. Okay, now, okay, I get it. Hashem runs the world. I want to do teshuva, but now what? That's where everybody else comes in. That's where giving the CDs, spreading the links, arranging shiurim like this — that's the follow-up. Because you can get people hooked on one thing, but then you have to have the follow-up. You have to have something that's going to get them to continue to learn. That's where the CDs, the app, the lectures, and all the other resources come in. And that's where you guys come in.

1:53:20So if a person wants to show HaKadosh Baruch Hu that his teshuvah is serious, that he's really, really serious or she's really serious to not only fix ourselves but also fix Am Yisrael, you should definitely do yourself a service and get yourself involved in kiruv. I don't ever really talk about money because it's an uncomfortable issue for me, but I think that sometimes you just have to do what you have to do simply because if you don't tell people what to do, they just don't know how to do it. So everyone has a paper That envelope will be given away. Anyone that wants to give, you can give. You could put your information on there and give it to me. You don't have to, don't worry. I won't take it personally. I won't even know if you don't give. The giving is for you; it's not for me. I don't get a salary. This is an opportunity for anyone that wants to give. You don't want to give? No problem. You can't give? No problem. Hashem knows you want to give. The key is at least you have an option. At least you have an option. Some people are more comfortable giving on the internet, some people are more comfortable giving in person, and some people are not comfortable giving at all. For me, it doesn't matter. Again, I'm just here to be the messenger. I give the Torah, and once in a blue moon, I tell people that there are different projects we're working on. Now we have many, many projects and many, many different things that we're working on. Our goal is to get every single Jew to at least know what the truth is.

1:54:39in their life, that's our goal. If there are 15 million Jews, we want to reach 15 million. If there are 50 million, I want to reach 50 million. If there are 500 million, I want to reach 500 million. That's the goal. The goal is to make Torah and Literally available, the full version of it is available in every single corner of the world, not just in Queens, Baruch Hashem, you have a lot of Torah here, not just in Brooklyn, Baruch Hashem, you have a lot of Torah there, not just here, but everywhere. The reason why is because if we don't start helping ourselves with this, simply, we're eventually going to be affected by it. Every one of us has a cousin, a brother, an aunt, an uncle, somebody that needs to do teshuva. So even though this may not help him directly, it'll help him indirectly. This is at least an option for anyone that wants it. If everyone doesn't want it, again, it's not a sale. It's just simply an idea. Last but not least, and more important than anything else, please, please take the CDs and learn from them.

1:55:45They're free. Take the blessing cards and use them. They're free. And you can look at the blessing. It'll give you a segula for refuah shlema. It'll give you learning Torah every single day. Once you're learning every single day, it becomes much easier to fulfill the mitzvot. The reason why I'm saying all this is because I don't think we have that much time. Mashiach is around the corner. I don't know if it's a month. I don't know if it's ten years. I have no idea. I'm not a prophet. All I know is that the way the world is going, there's not that much time. The world is going upside down. They're starting to teach kids in London about homosexuality at five years old. We're turning into Sodom and Gomorrah. There's not that much time. I don't know how much more Hashem can tolerate of this world. The Christians are running rampant everywhere. They're pretending to be Charedim. They're dressing like Charedim and they go into a Beit Knesset to recruit Jews to believe in their J.C. Penney. So, I don't know how much time we have... The Israeli government is doing everything against the Torah. Bibi Netanyahu just made a new rule: 30,000 people were allowed to violate Shabbat for the sake of Eurovision. I don't know how much time we have left. In the religious world, many people simply decide that they're going to make new halachot. You have religious people that just decide to make new halachot. They don't want to listen to Da'as Torah anymore. You tell them, listen, but I have proofs that there's a problem with XYZ. Yeah, but...

1:57:11I'm used to it. Oh, my rabbi does it. Oh, this one does it. Yeah, but I understand you're used to it and you did it and your rabbi is used to it. But there's new evidence to provide that's here, it's available, that shows that what you have is a problem. People are not willing to listen. And even people that actually are religious are sometimes religious for the wrong reason. Just yesterday, a woman that sells Kisui Rosh announced that she regrets... Until now, all of our publicity in our marketing was hiding the faces of the models because it's not modest to show women's faces if you want to be truly religious. Well, it's not modest to show different women's faces. It's better if you're just showing the Kisui Rosh (head coverings). It's enough to show the Kisui Rosh. There's no reason for the whole world to know the faces. So she writes on her page now that her business is Skyrocketed over the last few years. She thinks it's a mistake that she's hiding the models' faces, so she's going to start showing everything now. Meaning that even the mitzvot that she did all these years, she's regretting them. Meaning that all the mitzvot are now considered garbage. Just imagine, you gathered a million, two million, five million mitzvot over a few years, and with one email, one text message, you throw it all in the garbage.

1:58:35Meaning that if we don't understand the significance of our mitzvot, we don't understand the significance of not doing the mitzvot, we don't understand the significance of who Hashem is, what Hashem is, we don't understand the significance of anything. We're simply a lost people. It's time for each one of us to take action, to be a little bit more of a leader, to be a little bit more of an initiator, to be a little bit more of somebody that cares, not just about himself or herself, but about the people around you, about the people that maybe are not around you but are part of the same nation, the same community, and try to do something about it. I really hope that the next time I come, it's going to be 20 times more people. Because I'm willing to come. I don't charge. It's free. Even the plane, nobody paid for. But the reality is, I don't care. Hashem pays one way or the other. The key is to just get the people. Just get a lot of people. Anyone who wants to arrange shiurim, do exactly what Avraham did. He called a few people, arranged the place, and arranged the time. Baruch Hashem, we have Torah here. And this Torah is going to go all over the world. Everyone here has probably gone to Rabbi Zaki's shiurim. There's an endless amount of people that study those shiurim. Right now, on our little channel,

1:59:40We have 2 million minutes per month. 2 million minutes per month of people learning Torah. 2 million minutes per month. If every second is a mitzvah, just think about the amount of Torah that's in the world. Somebody that sponsors a lecture, somebody that does an Ilui Nishmat on a lecture, they pay $500 to have their name mentioned for Ilui Nishmat for somebody. That somebody is not a one-time mitzvah like you donate $500 to some Chanukah party. that's your Torah, it's there, that's your Torah, it's staying there, that's your Torah, it's going to be part of those two million minutes per month. Every time somebody watches it, there are more mitzvot. These are the types of things a person needs to think about. You have to think about your own neshamot because there are some things that each one of us did that we really don't even know that we did them. But in Shamayim they know, and the only way that we can do teshuva for it is by getting somebody else to do teshuva for it, because we forgot we did it. I asked most guys, 20, 25, 30 years old. They call me—different, religious, not religious; it doesn't make a difference. Most of them are religious, actually. I said, listen, I'm addicted to wasting seed. Then I started watching your lectures, and Baruch Hashem, I stopped. So is that good? Is it enough? I said, no, it's a beginning. He goes, what do I do? How do I undo everything I did? I said, do you know how many times you did it? He goes, is that a serious question? I said, well, technically it's a serious question, but I know you don't have an answer.

2:01:06So, but I want to show you that you don't know. He said, okay, so what's the point? He said, well, if you don't know how many times you did it, that means it's a lot. That means that the only way for you to do teshuvah is to get somebody else to do teshuvah. You have to do teshuvah by being sorry for it. You have to do teshuvah by, you know, stopping it. You have to do teshuvah by regretting it, all that stuff. But you have to undo the damage you did when you were 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, until you stopped. How are you going to undo it? you're gonna do it by getting somebody else to undo it, getting somebody else to stop. Every time he doesn't do it, that's like you stopped. You have to get somebody else to do teshuvah. So this, Rabotai, is something that every single guy has to take into account. Why? You don't want to show up to Shamayim with even a single karet on your bill. what happens to a person single and that's one time every guy needs to take this into account. It's not a joke. I know it's not a comfortable issue, but what can I do? This is part of the problem where, unfortunately, we are one of the only people that talk about this issue. This is an issue that's

2:02:17Running rampant in yeshivot, in kollelim, in secular houses, in non-Jewish houses. Everybody has this addiction because we don't know the consequence. We don't know the magnitude of the sin. I have a whole playlist of lectures that we've made and some other rabbis have made about this topic. You have to educate yourself about this topic. That CD "Wall Street to the Western Wall Part Two" has a couple of lectures about it. Even the Mussar series has a few lectures about it. You have to learn this; you have to know what it is. You have to know how to stop it, and you have to get other people to stop when you're doing kiruv. That's part of your teshuva because you can't fix this sin by yourself. Same thing with women. Women that walked around immodestly for a long time. First 15, 20, 30, 40 years of marriage. She walked around like a single woman. Guess what? People looked at you. People sinned because of you. How are you going to undo it? Yeah, okay. Now you're modest. Now you look like a Bat Yisrael. Now you're Kodesh Kodashim. Good for you. Now you have a nice Kisui Rosh. You look like Tznuah. You look like Sarah Imeinu. Good. From now moving forward in Shamayim, they're very happy with you. But what about the first 20 years? What about the first 30 years? What about the first 40 years? What about that time you went to the beach with not so many clothes? What about when you went to the movie with that boyfriend that wasn't exactly Jewish?

2:03:38What about when you went to the wedding and you forgot half your clothes at home? What about all that stuff? What do you think, it's free? It's a free lunch? No, you have to undo it. How do you undo it? Getting other people to do teshuvah. That's how you undo it. Why? Because, yes, there are certain things that you can do to fix it, but those things to fix it by yourself are too difficult. For example, the Arizal says, if you wasted seed one time in your life, one time, not five zillion times, one time, You have to fast 84 times. Good luck with that one. Number one, good luck with fasting 84 times and surviving. And number two, even if you survived, what are you going to do about the other endless number of teenage years that you had? A woman walked around immodest one time. She went on Fifth Avenue. She went on Queens Boulevard. She went on one of these blocks that have a lot of people. One time she went immodest. One time. Not her whole life. One time. But it happened to be a day that 5,000 people looked at her. What do you think? Those 5,000 people sinned one time because of her? No, my friends. That was the first time they saw. Then they thought about it a second time. Then that memory never left. Then what happens?

2:04:58A woman that walks around immodest, there's no free lunch in Shamayim. All these rabbis that tell you, no, you're a tzaddeket, everything is good, it doesn't really work that way in Shamayim. You have to know, you have to fix this. But there's an easy way to fix it. There's an easy way to fix it. How? You get your friend to do teshuva. You get someone that's not your friend to do teshuva. You simply get a Jew to do teshuva. It doesn't matter if they're your friend or not your friend. You get somebody to do teshuva. One person, two people, five people. Every time you violated Shabbat, you have to fix it. How do you fix it? Get somebody else to keep Shabbat. Why? Because from now on, every time he keeps Shabbat, she keeps Shabbat, it's like you kept Shabbat twice. So every Shabbat is like two Shabbatot for you. But then he has a wife, so now it's like three Shabbatot for you. Then he has kids, him and five kids. Now you have seven people keeping Shabbat because of you. So every Shabbat for you is eight people. It's eight Shabbatot. That's how you fix your deficit. This is the same thing with all of Mitzvot. That's why HaKadosh Baruch Hu says to the Prophet, don't let your past sins, don't let your past sins be the obstacle that causes you harm. Why the past sins? I did Teshuvah already. Yeah, but the sins are still an obstacle. Why are they an obstacle? Because you still didn't fix all of them. The way to fix them is to do Kiruv, Rabotai HaKedoshim.

2:06:13So with that said, please ask any questions you want. If you want, you can actually just leave it, they'll see the rest of it and record it. Anyone that has any questions, we can answer any topic. But again, thank you very much for learning with me. Chavot, anybody? Usually when I say questions, everybody's quiet. But then I turn off the camera and then there are 5,000 questions. So I'll pretend like the camera's off. One camera's off actually, out of two. Yes, Chavot. One malach is your chavruta for nine months. No, no. One just for you. That's your malach. Your malach. He has a different malach. I have a different one. He's the malach that tells you that you have a few interesting conversations with him according to the Gemara. One of the conversations that he says to you is, you know, this whole Torah, you have to fulfill it, right? You say, yes. You know that if you don't fulfill it, you're going to see me again. It's a little bit of a threat. It's a little bit of a threat. So he's your chavruta, but he's also a malach. He doesn't have the mercy of Hashem. But yeah, one malach for each one of us. Next. Anybody?

2:07:35Yeah, go ahead. No, and the reason why you don't get rewarded for learning inside the mother's belly is because you don't have free choice. It's not like you have a way to stop it, you have a way to go away from it. It's like a computer program. If you put, let's say, the entire Shas, the entire Talmud Bavli, Inside your computer program, you download the entire Shas into your computer program. It doesn't get a mitzvah for every word. Why? Because you programmed it. The same thing with a human being who was programmed with the Torah inside. You get credit for it if you learn it here. But the beauty is that when you learn Torah here, Hashem says it's in your mouth and It's in your heart to do it. Meaning that the Torah and learning it and fulfilling it is the most natural thing that a human being can do, that a Jew can do. Why? That's what you were programmed to do. You weren't programmed to be a diamond dealer or a stockbroker or, I don't know, some type of movie star. That's not what we were programmed to do. We were programmed to learn Torah and fulfill it. That's how we were programmed. So if a person actually pushes themselves to overcome the yetzer hara,

2:09:04Torah becomes sweet to them, becomes natural to them, and they enjoy it. Because that's what they're programmed to do. So now, when you actually start learning, you'll start seeing that the Torah starts coming naturally to you, and sometimes you see, even though you're seeing something for the first time, it's like you're reminded of it. Because in reality, you already know it; it's just that you haven't learned it in 20 years. Because the last time you learned it, you were a baby. So that's why HaKadosh Baruch Hu teaches us this Torah in the first place, because He wants us to literally have access to the entire Torah. If our learning of Torah was all dependent on us learning it from brand new, from nothing in this world, and we never learned it as babies, we simply wouldn't be able to pass even one parashah, because it's so enormous. But because it's all being reminded to us, Then it becomes much easier, and a person could accept it and really understand it if he just applies himself. Yes, so there are a few places. One of them is Sefer Yechezkel. I'll give it to you now. In Sefer Yechezkel, HaKadosh Baruch Hu says to Yechezkel, says to Ezekiel...

2:10:28HaKadosh Baruch Hu says to Yechezkel that you don't let the past sins be your obstacle, meaning that if you do teshuva, good, but if you don't do teshuva, then you have a serious problem. So, for example... It says in Sefer Yechezkel, chapter 3, from verse 16 all the way to verse 21. So he says when a righteous person turns from his righteousness and acts corruptly and I place a stumbling block before him, he will die because you did not warn him. He will die for his sin, and his righteousness that he did will not be remembered, and I will demand his blood from your hand. But you, if you did warn him, the righteous man, that righteous man should not sin. And he did not sin. He will surely live because he was careful. And as for you, you will have saved your own soul. So here, Hashem says it literally. Literally, if you save somebody else, you're saving your own soul. If you don't save somebody else, you're actually hurting your own soul.

2:11:51And it's simple. This is not hard to understand. You don't need to get multiple commentaries. It's just simple, simply what he says in Hebrew, English, or any other language. There are several other sources in the Torah like this. This is chapter 3, verses 20 to 21, that I read to you. But it also starts at verse 17, addressing a different aspect. People who are not righteous—meaning this was talking about someone who is religious already, but in reality, he's not religious enough. Verses before, I talk about somebody that's completely not religious, showing us that whether he's religious or not, he still has to do teshuva. Whether he's religious or not, you still are responsible for him. Why? You're a Jew. He's a Jew. You're responsible for him. Chazal said, "Kol Yisrael areivim zeh bazeh," and that's one of the laws of the Torah. All of Am Yisrael are responsible for each other. What do you mean responsible for each other? Responsible for the neshama and the guf. You're not only responsible to give him some money so he has food and... You're also responsible for his neshama. His neshama having food. So, a person that helps another Jew do teshuva, in essence, he's helping himself. Next question. Yes? Yes, Baruch Hashem. Yes.

2:13:23So, in the business world, we used to do something called cold calling. Now, cold calling is the hardest form of sales. And the reason why is because, first of all, you're calling a bunch of strangers. And you're asking them to send you money. They don't even know you yet. You're asking them to send you money. In my business, it was the highest... most difficult because we were not even selling them something tangible. Like, they're not buying a car or a house that they could live in. They're buying a stock or some type of, you know, investment, usually with stocks. So it's not like if they buy Microsoft stock, they get a little box of software in the mail. You know, they get nothing. They get, you know, a piece of paper that says, "Hi Mr. Jones, you bought $500,000 worth of this stock." That's it. You have a statement once a month, and that's it. to get the client to eventually invest a certain amount of money, you first have to get the client. The way we did it many times was cold calling. We'd call a bunch of different people and try to convince them to become clients. Now, an average broker that wants to be successful will have to make somewhere in the neighborhood of six, seven, or eight hundred phone calls per day, and

2:14:44because 90% of the dials that you're going to make, no one's going to answer, or they're just going to hang up on you. So you made 700 phone calls; already you know 630, you're not going to talk to anybody. You're not talking to anybody. Either no one picks up, or it's a busy signal, or it's a wrong phone number, or the guy hangs up. You say, "Hi Mr. Jones, this is such and such," he knows he doesn't know you, and he hangs up on you. That's already 90%. The other 10%, give you three to five seconds to convince them to stay on the phone. Now, when you look at the statistics like this, it doesn't look so good. Now, even if you're really, really a good salesman, that 10% that's left, those 70 people that are left, and you've spent 12 hours calling people and Finally, you got, let's say, 70 people to answer. Out of those 70 people that answer, 90% of them are not even willing to have a conversation with you past one minute. So you can't even really present anything to them. So now you're really left with a very, very small number. Out of the entire day, 700 phone calls, most likely you'll have between 7 and 12 phone calls where you actually have a real conversation that could last 5, 10 minutes, maybe a half hour, where you have an opportunity to sell to the guy and...

2:16:06Now, when you look at those numbers, it's tragic. I'm going to make 700 phone calls in hopes that I'm going to get 10 people to talk to me, in hopes that out of the 10 people, I can convince one of them, not all 10, one of them, to buy something from me. One person out of 700. Now, sometimes you can go on a cold strike, 7,000 people in a row you call over a bunch of days, 10 days, Haven't made a single sale. Now, why do you continue? Why do you continue doing it again the next day just as excited, just as powerful, just as this? Why? Because you know what the end result is. I don't care about what I have to go through in order to get that one guy, because I know that my boss made a million dollars last month doing the same thing. Now, in the beginning, he didn't make a dollar. But at some point, he got enough dollars and enough people, enough things, that he got a lot of money and... And that was my example to people. All the guys that came to work for me, a lot of the guys were young—18, 19, 20, 25, some people a little older. And their motivation was not to make phone calls. They weren't motivated to make phone calls. They didn't like making phone calls. They didn't like anything. What did they like? They liked my paycheck. Why? Because they knew I made $1.6 million in one month. So that was motivating enough that it was worth it to do whatever it is that this guy wants us to do.

2:17:33Not everybody makes that kind of money. But the point is that a person has to visualize not the struggle, not the journey, but the outcome, both for himself and for other people. At the same time, he has to give himself a fighting chance to win. Sometimes there are certain things that are just not even worth it because it's impossible to win, like, for example, if you have a list of... 10,000 phone numbers, but they're all wrong. Then it's garbage. You can call those 10,000 numbers 50 million times. It’s never gonna become right. You have to have the right phone numbers. So that's the same thing when it comes to groups, when it comes to WhatsApp groups or Facebook groups or things like that. You have to make sure that it's the right group. Now, they don't necessarily have to love everything you post, but they can't be empty. Like there are certain people that are allergic, where every time you make a post of either myself or Rav Mizrachi, you know, you have, let's say, I don't know, 100 people in a group, and 99% of them make nasty comments. A group like that, it's better to leave. Why? Because there are a million other groups that don't have these resha'im in them.

2:18:42You don't need to expose yourself to all these comments, especially if it bothers you. There are just too many groups and too many things. You can start a group every day, five times a day, without having these people in it. So that's why I tell my team that's on Facebook and all the other platforms, if you encounter so many people, like a lot of people who are negative, just leave. Let's move on to another one. It's not worth the battle and the comment battle. Oh, that's not nice to say. Oh, you shouldn't say this. Don't even waste your time. The point of social media is to post Torah. Nothing else. Don't post pictures of your family. Don't post pictures of the restaurant you went to. Don't post pictures of your new hat or you praying. It's not for that. Having social media is simply to post Torah. That's the only reason that HaKadosh Baruch Hu did it. He created it for that. If you use it for something else, you're wasting a gift that Hashem gave you. Because every single time You are now posting a picture of your lunch. You're posting a picture of, I don't know, some movie star you like, or some soccer player making a goal. In Shamayim, there's something called din v'cheshbon. What's din v'cheshbon? Judgment and accounting. Judgment is, first thing to analyze, did you make a sin or did you make a mitzvah?

2:19:59That's the din. Din is judgment. What did you do? Good or bad? Oh, he posted a shiur Torah. Okay, that's good. That's good. Oh, he posted, you know, somebody playing soccer. Ooh, not so good. Why? Because that's going to make some guy that was about to go learn press on your soccer player. And he's going to watch the five-minute movie of the guy making goals instead of learning Torah. That's not good. instead of him doing teshuva, instead of getting closer to Hashem, he's watching some guy hit a ball because you posted it. So, that's din. That's not good that you posted that. Oh, you posted lunch? Oh, that reminded him that he forgot his lunch, so instead of him going to the shiur, he's now going to get some lunch instead. Instead of him going to the shiur, he's going to get lunch. Because you reminded him with your nice, delicious sandwich and the cake next to it, you reminded him that he's hungry now. So you posted a nice picture of your lunch and you reminded somebody that was about to learn Torah to go eat. So obviously, that cannot be good. But then there's the cheshbon. Cheshbon is, what could you have done with that time? Meaning, forget about whether it was good or bad.

2:21:10was spent in the world. You took an X amount of time to spend in the world to do this. It took you one minute, two minutes to take a picture of your lunch, to take a picture of your kids and your wife, and then decide which one of the pictures I'm gonna put on my Facebook profile. "Oh, no. I don't like this picture." "Oh, this one is good." "Oh, wow, you look cute in this one." And you have this whole analysis. You waste 15 minutes choosing which picture to show the world. Guess what, in Shamayim they say, "Huh?" Yaron, 15 minutes of your life you spent deciding on this picture. What else could you have done with these 15 minutes? Well, in 15 minutes you could learn Torah, you could teach people, you could make a video, you could sleep because you always complain you never sleep. You could, I don't know, you could smash your head against the wall. You could do something that's definitely much more productive. then posting a picture of your family on the internet and they're going to do the account of what you could have done with those 15 minutes. That's his bone. So now when a person manages their life, they say, "Wait a minute. How much of my day am I doing mitzvot?" Not the whole thing. "What am I doing instead?" Oh, it's not exactly mitzvot. Okay, it's not a matter of whether it's a sin or not. It's also whether I'm wasting my time or not. So sometimes, some of these groups are a complete waste of time and

2:22:31where you literally have, it's just a group of haters. Places like that, you run away from. But if it's a balance, there's some haters, which there always will be. There's always Haman, always exists in every generation. And then there's some people that are neutral. And then there's some people that are lovers. That's fine. That's perfectly fine. But just make sure that you are spending your time wisely. And use social media only for that. Don't use it to be friends with people, make comments. All that stuff is a complete waste of time. Use social media simply to post Torah. Go, shoot, leave. Like a sniper. That's how you are with social media. Go, shoot some Torah, leave. Go, shoot, leave. Go, shoot, leave. That's your mission. Your mission is to save the neshamot. You go, you take a shiur Torah, post it, gone. Why? Because the rest of social media is garbage. They're going to show you all types of things that are immodest. All your friends that are doing things that are against Hashem. All the cousins that you haven't talked to that only Hashem knows what they're doing. And everybody has these family members and friends and friends of friends

2:23:34Always decide that they're gonna post the worst things in the world. So, staying on social media without just posting, being really targeted, you're bound to sin, you're bound to sin. You have to be very, very precise and very protective of your own neshamot when you're doing it. Same thing with WhatsApp. All of these groups. It's a wonderful way to share Torah, but it's also a wonderful way to ruin your neshamah. I have a situation, or I had a situation, Baruch Hashem. Where a woman told me that she's contemplating leaving her husband. I said, "Hashem, why? What happened? What did he do to you?" She goes, "No, he's a tzaddik." I said, "Wow. Well, every woman I know wants your husband then. Why do you want to leave him? Why are you the only one that wants to leave him?" She goes, "Oh, I fell in love." I said, "With your husband?" She goes, "No." I said, "With who?" She responded, "Oh, my friend." I'm like, "Who's your friend? How do you know him? What's up?" What do you mean you know him? "Oh, we were in the same WhatsApp group, and he decided to connect with me because he saw my profile picture on WhatsApp. So he decided to private message me, and we've been private messaging each other for six months, and we're in love." I said, "So what are you going to do with your six kids?" "Oh, that's why I'm calling you." "I'm sorry. I'm not a babysitter."

2:25:00Now, as you would have it, I found out who the guy is, and gave him a little bit of mussar from Gehinnom, and Baruch Hashem, he ran away, and she's happily married again. And Baruch Hashem, her husband never found out, and everything is good. Why do I tell you this story? Because again, you could use WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, all this stuff to get to Gehinnom. Your choice. If you look at everybody's profile picture, it's not going to Gan Eden. If you go, post, leave, you could do a lot of really, really wonderful things. A lot of wonderful things. You could reach a lot of neshamot. And I can tell you that 99% of the people that watch our shiurim, I've never met in person. They're all over the world. We have people from Egypt. We have people from Dubai. People from... Australia, Nigeria, obviously all over America, Israel, Canada, Shetach Beit Shemesh, literally from every corner of the world, people are watching the shiur Torah that we're making right now.

2:26:06It's unbelievable how many people are looking for the truth. People are leaving their religions. They're converting to Judaism. People are doing teshuva all over again. Rabbis, rabbis are actually contacting us and they're doing teshuva because of some of the stuff we say. Because some of the stuff that we say they never learned. They simply never learned it. It doesn't make them bad, just they never learned it. People literally send emails and comments every single day: "Wow, this changed my life. This changed my life. This changed my life." And you know, when you realize it's all Hashem, it's not that you have no credit, but it makes you happy that you realize: "Okay, my work is valuable; I'm doing something meaningful in the world." You actually have a purpose because people are literally changing their lives. You're not just some person that's looking for popularity. That's the other thing that a lot of people try to do: they try to make sure that they do things that are popular. Don't try to be popular. In fact, try to be unpopular because unpopular is usually closer to being right. In this generation, a lot of these popular speakers that say divrei Torah—it's not always the kosherest Torah. Let me just tell you that they're very, very popular, but they're also very, very goyish.

2:27:20Many of these people that speak Torah, and they also speak Torah, mention the Chafetz Chaim, the Baal Shem Tov, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and all types of Tzaddikim, in the same paragraph as Tony Robbins. In the same paragraph as some non-Jewish inspirational speaker. To put a Gadol HaDor in the same world, forget the same paragraph, These people are busy with the Torah, why? For example, you mentioned someone like the Chafetz Chaim. He learned Torah his entire life. His entire life he dedicated to our work on his middot, giving his entire lifetime to Am Yisrael. And then you're comparing him to a Tony Robbins, a person charged with sexual harassment. Six different women have already admitted that he's harassed them, and a few men as well.

2:28:23And he gives marriage advice, but he's divorced twice. You're comparing Rav Ovadia, the Chafetz Chaim, the Baal Shem Tov, the Tzaddikim of Am Yisrael with this To'evat Hashem? That's bizayon for the Torah. So anyone that starts dropping names to you of familiar faces, familiar famous speakers, personally, off button. That's my opinion. You can do whatever you want. That's your neshama. As soon as I hear any of those names, I press the off button. Why? That means that you put Rav Ovadia, the Chafetz Chaim, and all these people, all the tzaddikim of Am Yisrael, on the same level as this guy. Means that there's something wrong with your brain. Either you don't know what to rise, or you don't know what you're talking about. I'm not really sure, but either way, it doesn't look so good. So, it's very important that if you're going to listen to Torah or you're going to spread Torah, make sure it's kosher Torah. Make sure it's kosher Torah. Make sure it's kosher organizations. Make sure it's kosher rabbis. Make sure it's kosher shuls. Make sure you put a little thought into what you're doing, just like you're investing into a business and...

2:29:25You're not going to invest blindly into a business. You're not going to invest blindly into a house. You're going to check. You're going to send an inspector to make sure if the pipes are good, if the bathrooms are good, if this is good, if that's good. You're going to inspect. So inspect. Inspect, and that way you make a smarter investment. Anything else? Yes? Not the same way as a Jew. No, not the same way as a Jew. They don't have the same level of neshamah as a Jew. But we do know there's a machloket, a debate, regarding whether Jewish men and Jewish women both learn Torah while there's a pregnancy. And the reason why there's a debate is because we know that the men are obligated to learn Torah much more than the women. Women are just obligated to learn the basics of how to run a Jewish house. But they don't have to study every day. They just have to learn how to pray, Shabbat, holidays, kashrut, and how to run the house. You know, educate the kids with basic parashat hashavua, which in this generation is really a lot, but in the previous generation wasn't very much. So there was a debate between the chachamim whether they even learn in the mama's belly or not, and the conclusion was that they also do. They also do.

2:30:49But as far as goyim, I don't believe they do simply because of two things. Number one, they don't have the obligation to learn Torah at all. They have to learn Mussar strictly. They have to learn, you know, that God exists, but they have to learn things that improve their character traits. But the second thing is that when you teach a non-Jew Torah and you teach a Jew Torah, it's a world of difference as far as how they react to it. Now I see, for example, I deal with a lot of converts. I deal with a lot of Jews, a lot of converts, but Baruch Hashem, I deal with a lot of converts. And I see how the convert, in front of my eyes, you know, he's learned with me for X amount of time, a few years, a few months, whatever it is. In the beginning, I teach, I teach, I teach, and they only get a small percentage of what I'm talking about. After the conversion is finished, all of a sudden, it's like they go on supercharge. All of a sudden, they understand a lot more. Why? They got a new neshamah. They have a new super neshamah of a Jew. And that neshamah can handle a lot more. Now, of course, there are many smart non-Jews. There are many good non-Jews. But it's not the same neshamah, no matter how you paint it. So I've seen a

2:32:06Literally, a person that's never known anything in his life—a Jewish guy—never knew anything in his life. Within a matter of five, six months, he became very serious. Like I told you, he became much like somebody that was really like you could have a serious conversation about the world with. Whereas I have some people that are not Jewish, five years they listen to the shiurim, nothing has changed. They watch five shiurim a week. They watch more than Jewish people do. Five years, nothing has changed. Same person, same thing. They're entertained, they like it. You ask them a question, maybe they'll be able to give you an answer. But as far as the character traits, as far as who the person is, as far as their connection with Hashem, not very much has changed. That's not always. Obviously, many of them have changed. Many of them have improved. But it's not a given like it is with a Jew. If you put a Jew in four walls, lock him in there with Sifrei Torah, there's no way that he's coming out a rasha. He has to come out a tzaddik. it's not the same necessarily with a non-Jew. It's a different neshama. So that's why I say, if anybody really, really loves the Torah and wants to fulfill it and they're not born Jewish, convert. Highly, highly recommend converting. But if they can't for different reasons, because, I don't know, marriage reasons or financial reasons, whatever the case is, then they can't. But if they have the opportunity to do it, they should definitely do it. But either way, as far as their obligation in the world, it's not the same as a Jew. So that's why they don't have

2:33:30the same teaching as the Jew. Anything else? Yes? Well, obviously Hashem wants you to deal with the problems, but first and foremost, He wants you to know that The same source that gave you the problems is the source that has the solutions. A lot of times, people forget that part. They think that, okay, I have a problem. I know that Hashem is good. I know that Hashem has given me this problem. But somehow along the lines, they forget that He's also the one who's giving you the solution. He has a solution before He gave you the problem. For example, somebody came to me a few days ago, and they said they're having some financial issues, and they were wondering whether they should ask a family member for financial help. So I said, "Well, why wouldn't you? What's the question?" He said, "Well, I usually ask for help, but then I started listening to him and I started realizing that maybe I shouldn't because this person is anti-Torah."

2:34:51Every time I talk to him, he says things that are against the Torah. So I said, "Okay, so obviously this is a test from Hashem. Hashem wants to know whether you believe in Hashem or you believe in the god of money. Meaning, wherever the money is, that's where you're gonna go. If you believe in Hashem, you're not gonna ask this person for money. Why? Because he says things against your Father in Heaven. How could you ask him for anything? If you believe in the god of money, then guess what, you can ask him for money." this is another, this is apparently his first financial test, or at least that I know of, and he's having a very, very difficult time. He's having a very difficult time passing this test. Why? Because the solution is only a phone call away according to him, forgetting that the solution doesn't even require a phone call. This requires Hashem for you to pray to Him, to talk to Him. to know, to acknowledge that He is the only place you can get a solution from. Not your uncle, or your bank, or the loan manager, or something else. Once a person understands that the problem came from Hashem, but also the solution only comes from Hashem, and

2:36:05Then you pass the test. So those are the first two things that a person needs to know when it comes to problems. Don't forget that it's not just the problems that come from Hashem. He's not just rebuking you. He's not just showing you love, but also He has a solution waiting for you. And you have to do something to earn that solution. Whatever that case may be. Obviously, every case has to be evaluated based on that. Sometimes you're going to have problems for different reasons. For example, if somebody has a past where part of their life, like me, for example, wasn't religious. Now, I wasn't murdering people in the streets, but I wasn't religious. So that past doesn't just go away because now I teach people to do teshuva. That past still exists, so I have to fix it. I have to fix certain sins that I've made in my past. Some of them I could help myself by fixing by getting people religious and... Some of them I have to fix by just working on myself internally. Different character traits, different weaknesses that I have, whatever it is, everybody has that. So HaKadosh Baruch Hu sometimes sees that your teshuva is very, very serious. He sees that all of a sudden you became modest. All of a sudden you become a learner. All of a sudden you're a ba'al chesed. All of a sudden you love Am Yisrael, you love Hashem. All of a sudden everything changes and your teshuva is really, really serious.

2:37:23He says, "Okay, great. Now, sometimes you step into something smelly, and it's filthy and disgusting. You can clean it. Take some water and clean it. You can clean the filth, but the smell is still there. The filth is gone. You don't see it. It's white like it was, but it still smells." Sometimes there are certain sins that we've committed in our lives that, yes, our teshuvah cleans the filth, but the smell is still there. There's still a record in the world for what we did. Hashem says, "I don't want there to be a record of what you did, so I have to fix it. I have to clean it with special high-pressure water, high-pressure problems." Now, those problems can be over there or here or... it's over there, it really, really hurts. If it's over here, it hurts, but much, much less—much, much less. So instead of having, let's say, a problem over there for thousands of years, you have a problem here for five minutes. Anybody in the world will pick five minutes over thousands of years. No?

2:38:39So that's why God says, I like your teshuva. I like what you're doing. Everything is fantastic. But there's still a little bit of smell from 25 years ago about that thing that you did that you forgot about. Well, I didn't forget. It's still a little bit, so I'm going to clean it for you. Why? Because when I see you face to face, like I saw Moshe Rabbeinu, I want us to hug and kiss, and everything is perfect. Why? Because you finished your teshuva in this world, and you came to me clean. So sometimes the problems that we get in this world... Is HaKadosh Baruch Hu doing us a favor? And Chachamim say in many places in the Gemara, the Zohar, and many Sifrei Tzaddikim that if a person truly knew the value of suffering, he would actually pray for it. That's how valuable suffering is. Because suffering here for one minute could literally mean thousands of years of suffering over there. And anyone that knows what that even means simply will pick that one minute times a thousand just to avoid one minute over there. So, unfortunately, some of us have made sins. All of us have made sins to some extent. And we have to clean it. Some things we can clean directly, some indirectly. Some Hashem has to help us.

2:39:51But either way, trust me when I tell you that when you show up to Shamayim after 120 and you see your cheshbon, if you worked hard, if you worked hard on your neshama, you're going to be the happiest camper in eternity. Why? Because you know that you showed up, and you're clean forever. But if you were lazy, if you're one of these spiritually lazy people that wants everybody else to do their job, you know, like they only want to do... learning when it's gifted to them on a silver platter. Their only learning is going to be superficial. She's only going to be modest if she's inside the house, but not when she's outside of the house. They're going to eat kosher if everybody pays for the kosher. They only do mitzvot if other people pay for it. All types of things that people become spiritually lazy about. They don't try, they don't toil for it. Then you're going to show up to Shamayim and they're going to say, "Listen, you did good for a five-year-old, but you have a 90-year-old neshama and..."

2:40:52So if you were five, then yeah, you'd be pretty good. But since you're 90, it's not so good. So now that laziness has to, you know, you have to fix it. But you can't fix it in that world anymore because you left it. So you came to this world to work. And that's what the Sefer Iyov says: A person came to this world to toil, to work hard. Not work hard on Wall Street. Not work hard on 47th Street. And not work hard in some construction company. Work hard meaning on their neshama. Every day you have to work on something. Something to fix. Nobody's perfect. Every one of us has something we can fix. Arrogance, stinginess, watching our eyes, all types of things. Everybody knows. Within five seconds, you know already there's five things wrong with you. I know there's ten for me. So everybody can pick one and work on it today. The next day, see if, you know, work on it again, work on it again, work on it again, until you get to a point where you're disgusted from that desire that's against Hashem. Then you start the next one.

2:42:02That's really the point. You're supposed to become disgusted with sins. So sometimes you hear people say, "Oh yeah, I did teshuva. I remember I used to be with girls. It was fun." If he still talks like that, he didn't do teshuva yet. Why? Because if he's still proud of his past that he used to be with girls and he used to cheat and he used to lie, that's not teshuva. The third step of teshuva is regretting. The first step is stopping, then committing not to go back, and the third is regretting it. If you're not regretting it, that means you never did teshuva. But then you're going to ask yourself, wait a minute, shouldn't you regret it first? And then that regret should cause you to stop? It's a good question. The Rambam writes that the steps of doing teshuva are first stopping, then committing to not going back, then regretting, and then Hashem is going to sign that you did teshuva. So Rabbi Yisrael Salanter writes in Or Yisrael, he says, this seems out of order. Shouldn't you first regret it and that regret is going to lead you to stop it? He says, no. Why? The first time you make a sin, you're not really sure if it's allowed, not allowed. You're just testing the water. It's like a little kid that plays with the electric socket. He puts his finger in just to see what's going to happen. If nothing happens,

2:43:27He puts two fingers. If nothing happens, he puts a fork. Why? Nothing happened. So the first time a Jew sins, and he sees, oh yeah, in the book it says mot yumat, but nothing happened. I smoked a cigarette on Shabbat, but nothing happened. So he makes the sin a second time. But what's different is that if nothing happens after the second time, in his eyes, de-asur na'aseh mutar. In his eyes now, since he did the same sin twice, what was forbidden is now allowed. Not only allowed, but a mitzvah. So now when a person first does teshuva, he's not doing teshuva because he regrets it. He doesn't regret anything. What do you mean it was a mitzvah? I've been driving on Shabbat for 20 years because it was a mitzvah to do it. No one punished me. So how could I know to regret it? Why am I going to do teshuva? Oh, I want to be a tzaddik. I want to be better than normal. i'm not doing teshuva because I regret my sins. I'm doing teshuva because I want to be better than the average. So in reality, a person does teshuva not because he regrets the sins. He doesn't even know that it's a sin. He doesn't even know how bad the sin is yet. He just knows you're not really supposed to drive on Shabbat. So if you want to be a tzaddik, then you stop driving on Shabbat. So he stops initially, still thinking that in reality it was allowed, but I'm gonna be better.

2:44:56then he commits to stopping. That's step number two. After you're away from the sin long enough, you're able to look at the sin from an outside perspective. When you look at things from the outside, the picture is clearer. Why? If you're inside, you don't realize there's anything wrong. If you're one of those people that works in a public restroom, you don't realize how smelly it is. If you work in a sewage system, if you're doing it for long enough, it's simple for you to have a sandwich with some tuna, with some chicken cutlet inside the sewer. Why? You're used to the smell. You don't realize there's anything wrong there. But if you're outside of the sewer, if you're outside of the bathroom, you realize, oh, this is disgusting. Once you're away from your sin for long enough, you realize, wait a minute, this is disgusting. Every time I light a fire on Shabbat, it's like me yelling to Hashem, "I don't believe in You." That's disgusting behavior. So the third step is you become disgusted by the sin. And once you become disgusted by the sin, Hashem says, "Now he did Teshuvah, that's the stamp." But until you get to step number three of regretting the sin and becoming disgusted by it, you're still on step number one or two.

2:46:18Because you still think it's allowed, but you shouldn't really do it. It's not recommended. It's allowed to drive X amount of miles per hour on certain roads, but it's not recommended. In reality, once you're away from it long enough, you realize not only is it not recommended, it's also not allowed. Anything else? Thank you for learning with me. I hope to see all of you soon. As I said, try to get people to come to the shiurim. I believe every week. Every Tuesday is here, right? Every Monday. Every Monday is here. So that's a big shiur. You have Rabbi Mizrachi, one of the greatest mezakeh harabim in all generations and definitely the number one in this generation, that you have an opportunity to learn from him every single week. Aside from that, Anytime you want to bring us to come here, just get some people. I'm more than happy to come. We can learn together. You can pick the topic. You could have a questions and answers session. You could have a topic. Whatever it is. It doesn't really make a difference. The point is, Torah, Baruch Hashem, is endless. And if we learn it together, B’ezrat Hashem, we'll do teshuva together and get Am Yisrael to get close to HaKadosh Baruch Hu together. Baruch Adonai Le'olam. Amen ve'amen. So I came here, I came here with my shiur. Oh my God.

2:47:36I just have a question. I know the answer. I want to see maybe I know the answer. So I had one little character that I could call this. So he heard a voice that said, "I don't want to shoot you." Is there anything I can do? Yes, the Baruch says that you should listen to the Ba'al until he says "tze," meaning that you have to listen to Hashem until He tells you to leave. Meaning that one shouldn't listen to it. Even if he tells you not to do teshuva, in our case, he's testing you. And that was the test that I had done, where he was supposed to know enough Torah to know not to listen to that voice. But in reality, he was looking for an excuse. So a person at his level was supposed to know that he wasn't supposed to be wrong. But there is, the Rambam does write it, there is a punishment, the worst punishment of all in this world, which is that Hashem takes away the free choice. Which means He decided He doesn't want the person to be wrong.

2:48:45I don't. Thank you, thank you very much. And be in touch. Thank you, thank you. You have to send me, you have to send me, you have to send me, you have to send me, you have to send me, you have to send me, you have to send me, you have to send me, you have to send me. A good guy, you know, a person, you don't have any craziness. Sometimes it takes a lot of effort. You have to look in the right places. If I have somebody that matches some of what I actually want, whatever it is, if she has something that matches, what does she want? Actually, I have somebody

2:50:09She's Bukharian. She's 28. There's an age difference between me and my wife. My wife is four years older than me. So, yeah. My wife is four years older than me. So to me, it doesn't matter. For some people, it doesn't matter. I have one that's 28, maybe it's a possibility. But anyway, that's just one of them. Either way. Shalom. Shalom. Shalom. Some soup. So send me the information. We'll do whatever we can. Thank you. We have a size of TTO? Yeah, like size of TV. I don't know. It's too big? Yeah, I got to get someone else. No, these are all the same size. These are all the same size. And this one, is it in English? This one is in Hebrew. This one is in Hebrew. This one is in Hebrew. Is it translated or what? I don't know.

2:51:10He just has Hebrew lectures, but I have some online of his that have subtitles. But they're online. So you can just look up the name and then go to his... So there's him, and there are some of his that have English subtitles on them. And they're pretty good. You can do that. We're always adding a few more. So if people want to hear his story, he just wants to speak English. So, if he spoke English, I’d be very excited. We probably have around 30 years of recordings with subtitles. Yeah. So, I'll check it out. Alright, thank you. Alright, thanks. Hi, we have a few minutes. I just sent you a message about work. Yeah, I get a lot of messages, but... Okay, okay. Everybody else? Okay, so, does anybody else have quick stuff? Okay. Huh? Quick? Okay, so I'll spend some more time here. Shoot.

2:52:25So, like, I know we're supposed to do, like, Hashem as well, and have so much time, but, like, there are so many different interpretations and different ways that, like, everybody says something else. And, like, the place, like, Nicaragua, for example, like, I don't know who traveled to choose his grandma, and, like, my sister's, like, totally... You can't pick one, you have to pick a Gadol. Gadol meaning the... Well, first of all, the halacha that everybody goes by is Shulchan Aruch. Now, each of the Gedolim, whoever the Gedolim are, the biggest rabbis in the world, whatever books they published that took the Shulchan Aruch and applied it to the generation, they didn't put their own opinion to it. They just took whatever Halacha, the Shulchan Aruch, and they applied it to the generation. So whatever his opinion is, that's the Shulchan Aruch. The Shulchan Aruch is Torah. No, I mean, but the thing is that we, as regular people, don't know how to interpret the Shulchan Aruch to our day-to-day life, because the Shulchan Aruch was written 500 years ago. So, first and foremost, if it's a Gadol, then it has to be. If you're Sephardic, usually it's a Rav. A Rav, yeah, that's what everybody's going by, a Rav. If you're Ashkenazi, then different people have different choices. But, yeah, there are a few choices. So, why is Ashkenazi different?

2:53:54because it's all attention, it's all halacha, it's all the laws of the Torah, but there's still things that were customs. There are still things that are not halacha, but they're customs. So the customs, the Sephardi Rabbi, who's going to be an expert on Sephardi customs, because that's where he goes, he has his traditions, you know, But I think it's fine, it's fine. Yeah, I think it's fine. You can be quite young, that's all right, that would be your route, as far as that's to go. But as far as your community, or the route that you do, or the one that you ask questions on, you can't go yourself and, you know, pick yourself up if you're very new, or a relative of yours, to go search and have your book and have your question. Sometimes you need something faster. Right, so in that situation, you need somebody to take care of you, you need somebody to guide you. So in fact... Whether the rabbi is that you are motivated by. Let's say, for example, you like Rabbi Zaks and you like the... So if you have a question, you send him a text and you ask the question. If you like what I said, then you send a text and you ask the question. If you have your local rabbi and he's available, then you communicate with him. But you ask him. Sometimes if you have a question and the answer doesn't really fit with you or there's a problem with it, ask him, "Do you have a source for that question? Where can I find what you said?"

2:55:17So you know that what he's saying is what the Shulchan Aruch says, and that's just his opinion. Next, that's all he needs to get a bunch. You have to find, you have to find that. Right, you have a big rabbi, which is a gadol hador, that's a generational leader. And then that's who is, you know, the main pilot being, but basically, they don't take that seriously. And then you have, and that's, you're going to get a lot of questions. The answer is, if you're going to say yes, why is it yes? If it's no, then why is it no? Where did you start? The answer is no. The reason why it's no, the thing is that exercise is perfectly fine. But what's not fine is, first of all, most of these yoga groups are very mixed. The second thing that's a real problem is yoga stems from avodah zarah.

2:56:37So that's never allowed. It doesn't matter who your father is. Because he's ignorant. He's either ignorant or he's scared to tell you no. That's most people in the generation. Most people are scared to tell people no because they're scared that if they say no, they don't mean it, it's going to come back, maybe this, maybe that. People are scared. People want to be believed and corrected. They want to please everyone. If your parents are... Telling you normal things, you have to respect. But if they tell you to go against the law, you're not allowed to do that. Hashem comes before you. Hashem comes before your husband, Hashem comes before your kids, Hashem comes before everyone. So, it's hard, but you'll see that when you show your parents that Hashem is really important to you, they'll stop asking you to do things that are against the Torah. Not necessarily because they like Hashem, but because they love you. So, they're not going to want to hurt you. They may not care about it, but they care about you enough to just tell them that you can't do that.

2:57:53And maybe just thinking about the last insight, maybe logically. Thank you so much. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Thank you. I'm sure there's somebody in there. I don't remember which way to light it. I know that people like to play with lights, but they're in Russia. Yes, yes, yes. Can I get a picture with you? Yes, of course, of course.

2:59:03One, two, three. Can I take a picture? I've never looked so possessed in any picture as I do. Thank you very much. You're fired. Did you ever, ever see... Because the flash was on. It has to be the... I took one without the flash. No, no, this is amazing. I've never seen myself possessed. Tell me I have a spirit of it now. This is real. What is it? This is real.

3:00:32You'll have it ready for whenever you're ready. Rabbi, thank you so much. You know my colors. These are from Yerushalayim. Thank you. There's a white one also. Yeah, they're from Yerushalayim. I'm not that holy yet, but... Thank you. It's not a tablecloth? Thank you again, Rabbi. Thank you for coming. It's going to be good. I appreciate you coming. Keep learning together. If you have questions, send them my way. Anything you have, please be in touch. Thank you. We're all in this together. We're on the same boat. Sometimes I'm on this side, sometimes I'm on that side, sometimes I'm on both sides. Where were you born, Rabbi? In Eretz Yisrael. Then I moved to the U.S. when I was 10. Why are you saying it's from another country I never heard of? No, our ancestors are from Libya. There you go. Thank you, Rabbi. Bye. So you attended your first lecture, Baruch Hashem. Have you gone to Rabbi Mizrachi's lectures yet? Putting my books away. You have a question? I'm just going to pack up because we're waiting. Go ahead. Go ahead.

3:02:03Guys learned right. No, it's not for little girls to come or little kids to come because they can't stay still, especially since it's long. uh, even if you get them to stay still for a half hour, it's, uh, you can't stay for a couple of hours. But the key is to teach them about everything they need for their age at home. Uh, the more, uh, the more you teach them, the better they will be with the lifestyle you have. Uh, the key is really, the main thing is just to teach you and your husband all the things that you need to know. And how old is the oldest kid? Oh, that's the oldest? Okay, so that's much easier because at that age, they're pretty much like your computers; whatever you program, they do.

3:03:10Yeah, no, there are hundreds at this age. If you're older, 12 or 15, then it becomes a little more difficult. But the main thing is, if you and your husband are on the same page and you continue learning, then it's certainly not too difficult. Yeah, well, I don't have to be here for you too much. That's the point of the interview. 99% of my students I either never met or I only met once. Even for giyur, I don't necessarily meet all my students face-to-face. "And then, at some point, you start asking questions. Things you have difficulties with, things you don't understand, things you do understand, whatever it is, stuff that happens. I start using your progress to answer questions. If you don't have any questions, I ask you one of these questions. If your questions are regular questions, that's good. If your questions are too high, then they're false questions. It depends on the question. That's the way I reach knowledge."

3:04:16And then, at some point, you know, you start asking questions. Things you have difficulties with, things you don't understand, things you do understand, whatever it is, stuff that happens. I start using your progress to answer questions. If you don't have any questions, I ask you one of these questions. If your questions are, you know, regular questions, that's good. If your questions are too high, then they're false questions. It depends on the question. That's the way I reach knowledge. As far as time, I don't know how long it takes. It depends on different people. But once you get to, let's say, that point where the student, you know, they say, "Okay, we're ready," let's say, "I'm going on for a while," then it's okay. So, rate yourself. Here's a list of things you need to know. Assuming you did all the things, you moved to a Jewish community, your mother, your husband learns every day, he goes to shul, he's become part of the community and everything.

3:05:24So, assuming all of those things have happened, now you have some knowledge. So, before I test you, you ask yourself, from 1 to 10, what do you rate yourself? And if you tell me I rate myself a 5, then there's no point in me testing you. Why? Because you rate yourself as a passenger. If you rate yourself, let's say, 8 or 9 out of 10, okay, then I'll test you. If I agree, then we move on and I take you to the Dayan. If... You know, if it's not enough, if I say, okay, it's not really quite eight, it's maybe like a six, you still need to learn. I'll tell you what things you need to get stronger on and then we test it again a few months later. That's usually how it progresses. Yeah. Some of them love me, some of them hate me. So, it's like a love-hate relationship. Some of them love me, some of them hate me. So, it's like a love-hate relationship.

3:06:42It's better. It's better to keep them on. Okay, put it up. It's the switch here, okay? Okay. Okay. Okay. That's number one. Okay. Outside. Outside. Huh? You carry lights outside. Lights over there. Okay. I will stay. Huh? I will stay until the end. No, no, I know. Last time we were together until one, two, three, four, five. Where does your husband stand with everything? Is he on the same page as you? No, it's the opposite. The opposite. If you wait until they're older, you're going to have a very, very difficult time converting them. Because then they're going to have their own...

3:08:00mindset, and then they have to pretty much do an independent conversion themselves. No, at this age, they simply are going to be a copy of you. It's a copy machine. So they'll do whatever you want them to do. Once they get to that age of 10, 11, or 12, they start having their own opinions about stuff, and then it becomes much more difficult. And then they have to do really at 12 years old for a girl, 13 for a boy. They have to pretty much convert as if they're an adult. And then what if your son says, okay, I don't want to convert? Now you have a problem. Why? Because if you convert and he doesn't want to convert, you're not allowed to live together because he's considered an adult at 13 years old, according to halacha. And he's going to say, so you're not allowed to live with him. What are you gonna do with your 13-year-old kid? like in Judaism, he's considered an adult. In our reality, he's not. So now you have a problem. So it's definitely much better to try to do it as soon as you possibly can while they're still young. Go ahead. No, I mean, the secular school is not an option.

3:09:04You have to send them at some point to the Yeshiva, but secular school, public school, secular school. Secular school is like public school, just with the Hebrew ones. Should I look for a... This is a good community. This is a good community. This is where you are, and the Bakarans are very welcoming people. I don't know what happened. There's so much of a problem today that you don't know who's who. You don't know who's who. So I would recommend trying to look for regular, traditional Orthodox places like this.

3:10:17Do you work there? Is there a regional data over there? He's the only one working in that space. So find, see if there are other options. I mean, it's not the end of the world, but, you know, to be there as long as they're not crazy. You have to learn a little more about it. I don't know. Are they Messianics? Oh, no, I haven't even. Thank you. Okay, so. No, because some, some of the Christians, the way the Rabbi died, and he didn't come back to life. Yeah. So, that's the thing. So you have to, there are a couple of different versions. What? I don't understand. He's seven? I know he just turned six. He's seven. He's here for two, three hours. He's a kid. I know he can't be around any of them.

3:11:17It's okay. It's a work in progress, but the main thing is to try to do it while they're young. Don't delay. Community, try to find a shul that's regular. If it's a Chabad, as long as it's a normal Chabad. If there's not enough of it, then it becomes not an option. So you have to find out a lot more about it. Right, so everybody, the problem is that sometimes it's good, and sometimes it's not good. You have to find out. Also, they didn't require a lot of action. Sometimes they didn't even announce it. You have to find out what kind of shul it is. Like, we've moved four times in the last five years. So it's not so easy. Even if you're Jewish or you're a Muslim, it's not so easy. Learning has to continue. I think the biggest obstacle probably for you guys is going to be the mekorot. So I'd like to learn which you might be more about. So that's another thing that could work together. Right, you have to find something that's similar. Find something similar. Count which one you have a problem with.

3:12:36And I'll try to take it to Frank. No, no, no. Just tell me which ones you have a problem finding. I'll try to find you something similar that you could learn from. What did you learn from them? What did you learn from them? Yeah, we... Did you understand English as far as... We understand. But not really. Yeah. So, honestly, we've been doing this for a long time. And we just, I guess, want to learn from the shiurim. You're doing great. Keep learning from the shiurim. You're doing great. You just have to continue. But it doesn't work sometimes, you know... Do you want to be sold out more? It's America, right? Yeah. It's America. It's America. It's America. Every day, a little bit. Every day, a little bit. Don't overwhelm yourself.

3:13:40Every day, a little bit. You can have sometimes more, sometimes less, but just know it's a marathon. Even if you convert tomorrow, nothing changes. You still have to do all this stuff. Right, you still have to learn everything. Right, so even if the conversion was the easy part, let's say you get in, you're finished, you still have to do all this. You still have to learn everything. You still have to do everything. So keep learning. Keep asking questions. Do you want to ask him something? Do you want to ask him something? Go ahead. Oh, he can hear you. I'm sorry. Where's what? The bathroom? The bathroom? Okay, so the bathroom is that way. Okay, do you need to go to the bathroom? Okay. It's hot, it's hot. Yeah. Oh, I just have a question. Okay.

3:15:05A couple of years ago, he worked with a Jewish man, and he said, "Jacob, when he went to give him his hand, he didn't find it." And I couldn't find it. I couldn't find the reason why. If I didn't have a girl, there's some people in Mexico. They come in all colors and all shapes. They didn't ask the people, well, I tell you, today I went to the school. I walked up three stories with these boxes, because the elevator didn't work. So I'm swaying by the time I get up there. I see a guy, a religious guy. And he's just there socializing with someone else. And I say, do you have water? He looks at me and goes, "Good morning." No. And what do I say? This is a nasty question. They exist in the world. They exist. Like flies. They exist on the water. So they're just nasty. Don't take it to heart. They're nasty to me. There's no reason. Nasty. That's the reason. People are nasty. People take out their anger and frustration on other people. Sometimes there's no reason. It's just reality. If there was a reason, I'd tell you. No. I wish there was, but then I would say, okay, they're nasty. Okay.

3:16:26Why would it be? I never really understood. Why would it be considered stealing? What are you stealing? Because you have a system that makes money, you're stealing? No, what happened is a whole complicated case. I was 23 at the time. I had just lost my phone on my mom's birthday. And I went to Israel. I was 24 at the time. My wife and I were married. I was financially not making anything. I was trading options. I was trading stuff. Okay. What are you stealing? Because you have a system that makes money, you're stealing? No, what happened is a whole complicated case. I was 23 at the time. I had just lost my phone on my mom's birthday. And I went to Eretz Yisrael. I was 24 at the time. My wife and I were married. I was financially not making anything. I was trading options. I was trading stuff. Thank you.

3:17:50Thank you.