Wall Street Story for the Holy Teenagers at ShoraShim

0:13Wonderful to be here at Shoreshim. Thank you for having me, Baruch Hashem. My name is Yaron Reuven, and I'm here to learn with you. So, a lot of people have heard, Baruch Hashem, thousands and thousands of people all over the world have heard my personal story of why I left Wall Street and decided to be a Mezakeh HaRabim, someone that goes out to different places and... To get Am Yisrael to do teshuva. If you give me a napkin, please. I have water all over the place. Get Am Yisrael to do teshuva, to wake up. You know, they say that if, thank you. They say that if someone, chas v'shalom, chas v'shalom, if someone loses consciousness, first, they give him CPR. They try to give him mouth-to-mouth, try to do something to wake him up. Get him out of his situation because he's sleeping, but it's not a healthy sleep. But if that doesn't work, if that doesn't work, if the mouth-to-mouth doesn't work, the CPR doesn't work, the next thing they do is they hit his heart. And they slap him in the face a few times. Gotta wake him up. The guy drowned.

1:39If they slap him a few times, they have to wake him up. Because if he stays asleep, he's not going to wake up. If that doesn't work, they have to go bring the ambulance. They're going to have to put an electric shock. Electric shock. They take these devices, they put on his chest and shock him back to life, hopefully. They electrocute him in order to help him come back to life. It hurts a lot. If you do it to a person that's not sleeping, it hurts a lot. If they're sleeping, it could save their life. If it doesn't work, then you call Chevra Kadisha. Then you say goodbye. We see that in our tefillah, Hashem constantly says that He's trying to wake us up. He's trying to wake us up. But we're awake. We're all here with Hashem. We're laughing. We're joking. We're enjoying, we're eating, we're drinking, we're playing soccer, we're playing the stock market. Everybody's awake. What do you mean awake? Awake means spiritually awake. Awake means understanding what's the point. Why are you here? Every human being goes through several stages of his life. At some point, he has to ask himself, what's the point? Why am I here? If I'm here to make money, then why are there poor people in the world?

3:07I'm assuming you all believe in God. If you believe in God, that means God is smarter than you. So, God put you in the world for a reason. He didn't put you in the world just to go play soccer. He didn't put you in the world just to go to the stock market. He didn't put you in the world just to read some Harry Potter books. He put you in the world for a reason, and there has to be both a universal reason, meaning a reason for all of mankind, and... And it has to be a personalized reason. Why are you here? So everybody has to go through their life, sometimes when you're 15, sometimes when you're 25, sometimes when you're 50. The point is, you always have to ask yourself, why are you here? What's the point? If it was just for money, if Hashem put everybody in the world just to make money, then why are there poor people? There's a flaw in the system. If Hashem made people come to the world just to get married, then why are there so many people that are single? Why are there people that get divorced? The whole point is to be married. Why are you getting divorced? You're doing the opposite. If the point is to have children, then why are there so many people that can't have kids? And so on and so forth. For all of the physical things in the world, you see that there's no way that any of that is the point. There's no way that any of that is the point. I thought at one point when I was a teenager, I was your age, I thought my point in life was to be a football player. I used to play football in high school.

4:29I was very passionate about it, and for the first couple of years, I was pretty good. Then, after I joined the varsity team, I was no longer good because they were all three times my size. Each one was Amalek, his brother Goliath, and his brother. And I'm this little Jewish guy. So, it didn't work out for me; my dream didn't work out for me. Later on, when I was 18 years old... decided that I didn't want to go to college anymore. Even though I was a very good student, I decided that I wanted to go into the work world. I was already working since I was a teenager, since I was maybe 10 years old. I always had money, always had jobs. I had two newspaper routes and Worked for a shoe store, worked for a clothing store, worked for electronic stores. By the time I was 17, I was already making $100,000 a year, so money was not necessarily something that I didn't know about or discovered later on in my life. I was a hustler. I made money; I worked really, really hard. While the rest of my friends went to bars and hung out with girls all day, I went and made money. I wanted to be a millionaire because I thought that's my goal. I thought to be a millionaire was a good goal to have.

5:39Somebody asked me, "What do you want to do when you grow up?" I said, "I want to make millions." He goes, "Yeah, but what do you want to do?" I said, "I don't care. I just want to make millions." Yes? When I was 17 years old, I was working in the electronics business. What is it? Oh, maybe. I was in the electronics business selling computers. And in those times, there was still money to be made in the business. There's still money to be made in the business. It's not like today where you pretty much buy a computer for 300 bucks. When I was 17, I was a very, very good salesman. But in addition to that, I also did other things. I did whatever I could to make money. But mostly, I was not planning on being in that business forever because I realized that The only way for me to make my dream money, which is millions, was to own the store. And I hated the business. I hated selling computers. I hated working for people. So I didn't want to do it. I did it at that time because it was a good way to make money. So I went to college. I went to one year of college. I went to Binghamton University, which was a top state school in New York. I had nearly a perfect GPA, which means really good. And...

7:05I was planning on becoming a psychiatrist. I liked helping people. I liked talking, as you can see. And I had a decent brain. But then after the first year, I realized that in order for me to be a psychiatrist or an accountant or a lawyer or a doctor or anything that's going to make millions, I have to be in school for millions of years. I have to be in school forever. I have to go to college, college, you know, today college is like high school. You waste the first four years; you waste three and a half of them. And then only in the last semester do you actually discover what you want to do. The first three and a half years you're really busy drinking. Drinking, hanging out with girls, and stuff like that was a complete waste of time. All the other kids would smoke pot all day and drink and so on, doing nothing. Me, I was already in the business world at that time. I didn't want to be a loser, so I realized college was not for me. I wanted to go make money. So, I decided to leave school and go back to selling electronics. But then I realized that I hated it even more when I came back to it. So, I wanted to look for something else. A friend of mine was in the car business, so I asked him, "Okay, maybe I could start selling cars." So I went to this car shop in New York and...

8:11I arranged the meeting. I'm 18 years old at this time, and I met with the manager. I asked them, "Okay, before we sit down and spend any of your time, what does your top guy make, meaning your number one salesman? What does he make?" He said, "Oh, maybe around 150, 160 thousand dollars." I said, "Okay, thank you. I'm not interested." He said, "What do you mean you're not interested, son?" I said, "I'm not interested in the job because it's not a lot of money." He said, "Yes, for him, it's a lot of money." me, it's not because if I'm making a hundred thousand now, if he's making 150-160, that means he's been here for at least five years. You can't just make 150 in your first year walking in, so that means I'm going to wait another five years just to make another 50%. It's not for me. He was very, very confused at my logic, but he agreed with it, and I left. So then my friend called me crazy, and he told me I think you could have gotten a good job over there. But what do you want? I said I want to make millions. He said there's only one thing that you can do to make that kind of money, and you could do what I'm trying to do. What are you trying to do? He said I'm a stockbroker. I said, okay, I know what stockbrokers are. I had a few dollars; I started investing in the market. I just didn't know you could do it without going to school. So I said, okay, give me a job. He got me an interview. I went to this place in New York and

9:30I got the interview, and the guy says, "Okay, listen. First, since you don't really know much, you don't have a license, and so on and so forth, you have to pay your dues. You pretty much have to do whatever we tell you. You have to make phone calls, you have to get us coffee, you have to do all the wonderful things that no one else wants to do." "Okay, fine," I said. "And then we're going to teach you how to actually sell stocks, how to research, and so on and so forth." "Okay, fine. How much do I make?" I asked. He says, "You make a huge amount—only 250 bucks a week." That's $1,000 a month. That's a lot less than I was making. I'm taking a 90% pay cut. I said, "Deal." Why did I say, "Deal?" Because I looked at the parking lot and I looked at the employees there, and everybody had a nice car—a car that costs a lot of money. I said, "Okay, something must be going on. They're doing something right here. They're doing something right. I'm getting a job. Okay, I'm going to start at $1,000 a month. Obviously, they're not making $1,000 a month if each guy has a car that's worth $200,000." So, I got the job. started seeing how Wall Street kind of works. I saw that people are making a good amount of money, but it takes a while. The first firm didn't really work out for me because there were criminals, and I don't like criminals. I left after a few months. Well, actually, I got fired because I didn't want to do what they wanted me to do, and I went to another firm, and

10:53And, long story short, because we don't have much time, I worked for other people for the first three years. The first three years of business, the most I made per month was somewhere around $1,500 or $1,400 per month. But now my schedule is very different. My schedule started, I started my day somewhere around 6:30 in the morning, got to the office by 8, worked till 8 o'clock at night, went home. Another hour of travel and then studied for the Series 7 test to get a license to actually become one of the guys that's actually making real money. For the first three years in the business, I'm just paying my dues pretty much. I'm doing all the work; they're making all the money. My boss was making a fortune, and one of the ways I knew is because he was buying jewelry for his family and had a brand new car and a brand new house and a brand new this and a brand new that, and he was making one hundred, two hundred thousand dollars a month. So I knew I was in the right direction. It's just that at some point, I had to break this thousand-dollar threshold I was on. So after three years, I realized that this boss was taking advantage of me. I left and went to another firm, a firm called Raymond James, which is a well-known firm in the industry, and

12:06I worked there for a few months under the false belief that the guy I was working with was going to be my partner. After a few months, I realized he wasn't a partner; he was just a thief. The partnership broke up. I told the manager of the office, the guy that owned the place, "Listen, I don't want to be partners with anyone. I want to be independent within your office." He says, "Okay, that's a good idea. I like you. You're a nice guy. But the problem is, to be independent, you have to come up with $4,000 to $5,000 a month." And I said, "For what?" He said, "For the rent, for the secretary, for the stuff, for the stuff, for the stuff, and more stuff." Meaning, he has to make money for me regardless of whether I make money or not. He has to make at least $60,000 a year. He says, "Do you have it?" I said, "No." He says, "How are you going to pay me?" I said, "I don't know, but if I'm going to go to another place, I'm going to go through this whole story again. Just give me an opportunity and I'll do it. I'll get you the money." He said, "Okay, what are your intentions here? What's your point? What are you trying to do?" And me, a little 21-year-old kid, a little cuckoo... ponytail. He asked me, this guy that's been in the business for almost 20 years, "What are your intentions here?" And my answer immediately was, "To buy you out." I was very bold and I was a very hard worker, and I really believed what I was saying. Call it naive, call it arrogant, it doesn't make a difference. My goal was to buy him out.

13:33He said, "Let me think about it." He got back to me after a few days and said, "Okay, you can become independent within the firm." I started making a few phone calls, and then September 11th happened. Just literally a few days after I became independent, September 11th happened. According to everybody else at that time, it was the worst time in the world. The market just crashed. The U.S. economy plummeted. The dot-com bubble burst even more, and so on and so forth. All hell broke loose, in so many words, and... For me, that was the market opportunity. Why? No one was happy with their broker. If no one's happy with their broker, maybe I have an opportunity. If you look at everyone else's failure as something negative, then you'll fail just like them. If you look at every failure as an opportunity, you can succeed in life and... That's what I did, and I realized that I can't just inherit 20 years' worth of experience overnight. The fact still is that I'm only in it for three years, and the average guy who's making real money has been in it for 20 years. I can't just get 20 years' worth of experience overnight, but I can do something else. What can I do? I can work more than anyone else. They work 9 to 5 on average. They work 9 or 10 hours a day. Maybe I could work more. So, I figured if I start my day at around 5:30 and...

14:55I can get to the office at 6:30. I can do all the research I need to do by 8. Work till midnight. Because at midnight, at that point, I can't make any more phone calls to California and other states. But at midnight, I can stop working because, at that point, usually my ear will start falling off. And I can't make any more phone calls. At midnight, I get on the bus, get back home. By the time I get home, it's around 1:30 or 2 o'clock in the morning. Fall asleep for a couple of hours and go back to work the next day. Sounds like a plan, no? Hard though easy to say it and done, but we did it and I went to work. Every day when I would come home, I'd see these guys that lived around the block from me hanging out, you know, smoking cigarettes, beer, and marijuana, and everything else in between. They would ask me why I was walking around and where I was going to work from this job at 2 o'clock in the morning. And the answer was: that's the job. So who's your boss? I said, me. The first six months were a nightmare. Because for the first six months, every single penny that I made went to this boss, $5,000 a month. After six months, I finally made my first $1,000, meaning I kept $1,000. Out of all the money that I made, I finally made $1,000 for myself. To me, that was a million dollars. Because you work six months to finally make $1,000. Now at this point, I'm borrowing a dollar every day from my friend Dmitry because I didn't have any money. I needed a dollar to buy a coffee for 50 cents and a donut.

16:22I would sneak onto a bus because I didn't have money to pay for the bus, 2.50 each way. You know, this is part of my past, and to this day, every day I would sneak onto a bus and steal 2.50. You know, when someone goes up to Shamayim, after 120 years, even if he kept Shabbat and he kept mitzvot and he kept everything, if he comes up to Shamayim to go to Gan Eden, they say, "Oh, sir, do not enter." Why? You stole 2.50. You have to come back in a gilgul. Makes you think again before you want to steal even 2.50. You have to come back in another gilgul even for 2.50. At that point, I was struggling just to eat. 50 cents was my food for the day. Sometimes I didn't even get the 50 cents. But it was hard and it was difficult. So when I got a thousand bucks, to me that was a million. To me, it was everything. The next month, I got $5,000. The next month, I made seven. The next month, I made $11,000. The next month, I made $17,000. In November of 2002, exactly a year after I started, or slightly over a year after I started, I made $117,000 in one month. I broke an office record. Everybody thought I was something special. I got a letter from the CEO of Raymond James. I was the new kid on the block. After that, everything changed. A bad month would become $50,000 a month. I started getting a lot of clients.

17:52I made people money when everybody else was losing it. I was calling them when their brokers were hiding under the desk, because when somebody's losing your money, the last thing they want to do is talk to you. I was making them money in a bad market, and I was willing to answer their phone calls or even call them at midnight, because that was my skill. I didn't know a lot, but I could work more than anybody else. So that's how it worked. that I'd start making more and more money. By August of 2003, two years after I started at this firm, Raymond James, I made my first million dollars. I became the number three top-producing broker in the entire country for the firm, which had about 5,000 people. Then I had to make a decision: do I stay there, or do I leave, meaning start my own shop? I decided that it's better for me to fail at my own dream of To live fulfilling somebody else's dream, when you work for other people, in essence, you could do well. But it's their dream you're living. I didn't want to live somebody else's dream. If I was already going to make money, I wanted to make my own money. So I decided to go on my own, start my own shop, and started hiring some people and

19:14In the beginning, it was difficult, but then after that, things got much better. It got to a point where an average month, if it was just decent, was $200,000, then $300,000, then $400,000. We just started printing money. By May of 2006, I made 1.6 million dollars in one day. It got to a point where it was absurd. There was no shortage of money. There was only one problem. There was no point. You're all impressed like everybody else is impressed. It's success stories. You learn the Warren Buffett story or Michael Jordan story or anybody else's story. Wow, he has a house, he has a car, he has this, he has that. Little do we know that 99.9% of all of those people are either suicidal or depressed or have no idea why they're even alive. Money is half the battle. It's something that helps you do stuff. You can buy stuff. You can buy these amazing books. The books are amazing. The only thing is, the only way the books work is if you read them. If you just buy books, it's nice. You have a nice collection of books. But the good thing about these books you have here, Chochmat Shlomo, these books, if you read all of them, you definitely have olam haba. You definitely have a point in life. You're definitely going to succeed in life. Definitely. Now, if you go to a different library, like the public library, like the Library of Congress, you read their books, you definitely have no point. You're definitely going to miss life. You're definitely going to be depressed. Why? Because there's no point and

20:44that's the problem. Most people live a whole life, 70, 80, 100 years with no point because they thought, like I thought, that the point was to make money. After I made money, and money was no longer a problem, I got depressed. Why? There's no point. Okay, so I have the money. Now what? Okay, so you buy a bracelet, you buy a car, and you buy a four-million-dollar apartment on Wall Street and had an apartment on the 35th floor. My balcony alone was 400 square feet. It's a big space, bigger than this, almost, actually. It's about the size of this, a little smaller than this. The apartment itself was 2,000 square feet. It's double the size of my house today. And that was an apartment. Today, I have a house, a big place. Millions of dollars in the bank, in the market, clients. I was on CNBC, that stock market channel, if any of you guys know what it is. I was on Bloomberg, I was on CNN, I wrote articles, and so on and so forth. I trained over 135 different people that worked for me, salesmen. I was the guy that knew how to sell anything. But when it came to a point, when it came to a purpose that I didn't have, I...

22:04So I'd look for things to do to keep myself occupied. My hobby was playing poker. I used to go play poker, and I was relatively good at poker. I played at the World Series several times. I won a few tournaments in Las Vegas and Atlantic City. I was the guy everybody wanted to play because I had a bunch of money. But then, when they lost it to me, they didn't really want to play me anymore. On an average weekend, I would put fifty to one hundred fifty thousand dollars on the table. And I thought that was fun. But then, after a while, that lost its fun. Why? There was no point again. Okay, so you win the tournament, then what? Okay, so you win the cash game, then what? What's the point? Am I going to do this for 70 years? Then what? What happens? And I realized, little by little, there's no point to all of it. And I know it all sounds cool, you have a bracelet, you have a car, you have this, you have fun. But believe me when I tell you, when Shlomo HaMelech said at the end of Kohelet, he said it several times actually, All of the good, all of the material in the world, it's all nonsense. Why? It's not going to give you a point in life. I'm not saying go be homeless and collect change and just sit in a kollel all day. The point is you have to have a point. There has to be a purpose. Now, since I was looking in the wrong direction, Hashem gave me different signs. In the book of Deuteronomy, Hashem says that before the end of time comes,

23:32Before the Mashiach comes, He's going to give an opportunity to every single person to do teshuva. The Rambam says that every Jew that makes it through Gog and Magog, the last war before Mashiach comes, every one of them will do teshuva, meaning every one of them will be a Baal Teshuva. But that's only the ones that make it. So who's going to make it? The ones that do teshuva before the war. Hashem made a promise. That means Hashem is not kidding; that means Hashem says that I have to do it. If He says that, He has to do it. So that means that when He said you're going to have an opportunity to see the truth, it will only be if you look for Me and you look for Me with all of your heart and all of your soul. The problem is that most of us are too busy looking for money, looking for girls, looking for drinks, looking for hobbies, looking for sports, looking for this, looking for that—everything except looking for God. So He gives us a hint. He gives us messages. Sometimes the message is a problem with your job. Sometimes it's a problem with your parents, your brothers, your sisters, your wife, your health, your finances. He gives you problems. That's how He talks to you because we're not Moshe Rabbeinu. He's not going to talk to us out of a burning bush. He has to talk to us through our life experiences. So if a person pays attention and he realizes that everything in the world is run by the Boss, by Hashem Yitbarach,

24:56Then he's going to realize, oh, this flat tire, there's a reason for it. I got a flat tire. What's the point? There's a reason for it. Maybe Hashem is saving my life. Maybe if I didn't have a flat tire, I would continue driving, and there was an accident ahead of me, and I would die. So He's actually doing me a favor. Yeah, but now you're going to miss an appointment. No. You miss an appointment theoretically, but in reality, He's saving your life. So there has to be a good in it. But if you're not paying attention to the signs and Hashem gives you different problems and different tests, and you don't pay attention, then He gives you more difficult signs. So, in November of 2006, I decided that I'm going to have an elective surgery, meaning a surgery I didn't have to do. But there was something that annoyed me. It's called hemorrhoids. Hemorrhoids, you don't have to worry, only two-thirds of the population has it. Everyone has it, but not everybody necessarily wants to have surgery. had nothing to do with my life. I was, you know, money didn't have much of a point. So I wanted to just be perfectly healthy. Yes, hemorrhoids are when you have a vein grow in your rectal area, and it makes you very uncomfortable. It's hard for you to sit down, hard for you to stand up. It's painful. I

26:16It's a painful thing. Yes. Don't worry, it's not, you know, no one needs to make fun of it because it's actually something that two-thirds of the human population has. If you don't have it exactly, it's a pain in the butt. Whoever made that expression had hemorrhoids. The point is that if you don't have it now, at some point you may have it, Hashem yishmor. But there are cures for it, baruch Hashem. By the way, it's very common for pregnant women, very common for pregnant women to get it during pregnancy. Now, some people have it temporarily and... either because of their diet, the food that they eat, or because they have stress or other things. But for some people, it's a chronic condition, meaning it continues forever. For me, it kept coming back every six months, and it was very annoying to me. So I decided that I'm going to have surgery. I'm going to go to a doctor who is an expert and tell him I want to get rid of this annoying problem. I don't want to have a pain in the butt ever. Not once, not twice a year, not ever. I want to fix it. I have money. How much do you need to fix the problem? I have to use this money for some reason. So he said, yes, no problem. We'll have the surgery. You come on a Wednesday and you're back to work on Monday. I said, okay, good deal. I came to the surgery. This guy is a professional, an expert in the business for almost two decades, almost 20 years. And he says he has three or four surgeries a day. It's a very common surgery. You have the surgery, you go home the same day. You feel a little uncomfortable when you go into the bathroom for a couple of days, but it's not the end of the world. Typically.

27:47I had the surgery. I woke up from the surgery, but something changed. What changed? My whole body. Something changed in my entire body. Something went wrong during the surgery. They cut some type of nerve that even 13 years later or 12 years later, they still haven't figured out what it was. But something changed the entire makeup of my nervous system. My whole body was affected. I woke up from the surgery screaming and yelling my lungs out because what I felt wasn't a localized pain. What I felt was pain everywhere—my feet, my arms, my head—everything, everything hurt. But it wasn't the kind of hurt like when you fall and hurt your leg or break your leg. It was a hurt like I was on fire. While I was being cut open with a dagger—that kind of hurt—and electrocuted at the same time. Nightmare. Now they tried giving me morphine because they had no idea what was going on. Why am I screaming my lungs out? But then they discovered that my body is not accepting this morphine. They asked my wife if I was a drug addict. And my wife says, no, I'm actually anti-drugs. I never took a drug in my life. I like my brain, and drugs ruin your brain.

29:02I decided not to take any drugs, but now when I finally had to take drugs because of the pain aspect, it didn't work. My body rejected it. They gave me more and more and more, and eventually got to a point where they told my wife, "Listen, we just gave him the most amount of morphine legally allowed, which would kill most people. After this, we can't do anything. If it doesn't work, there's nothing else we can do." Hashem had mercy on me, Baruch Hashem, and it worked. It calmed me down, and... that they said, "Okay, we have no idea what just happened, sir, but you're calm. Go home." At the end, it's like an elective surgery. It's not like heart surgery; it's not brain surgery. It's an elective, superficial surgery on some skin. I said, "Okay." I went home. We got a shawarma sandwich on the way home. Ate the sandwich. Told everybody it was a very interesting day. There were teachings that someone told me about this place called Gehinnom. Now, I know what it looks like. I told him, "Okay guys, I'm going to sleep. Good night." Forty-five minutes after I went to sleep, I woke up with even worse pain than I had a few hours before. The only difference now is it didn't stop for 62 days. My body started failing.

30:2462 days. The most amount of consecutive sleep that I could get was 15 minutes. And anyone that wants to test it, if you don't sleep for a while, you start dying; your body starts failing. So my eyes started bleeding, my ears started bleeding. I started urinating blood—all types of fun things, the stuff that happens to people who are dying. And that's what the doctor said: "He's dying. Why? We have no idea. Something happened; his body changed. There's nothing we can do." So for those couple of wonderful months, life was hell. After two months, the pain started subsiding; it started slowing down. I only had to take 20 painkillers a day to survive. And then I had to say, okay, you know what? I have to go back to work. I have to go back to life. Now, yes, I'm in pain, but not as much as the pain I had yesterday or the day before or the day before that. So let me start going back to life. Now, at this point, I can't really move well because my whole body is in pain. It's not just the rectal area; it's everything. Why? We don't know. So to walk from there, from that door to, let's say, the end of the room here, would take me somewhere in the neighborhood of about 45 minutes.

31:42Finally, I got to the office, but now I can't really work so well. I'm either in pain or I'm half asleep because of all the painkillers. But I'm trying. After a little while, the pain slows down. I start getting back to myself. I start going back to making money. I start going back to rebuilding the business. And then I feel a pain in my leg. The next day, I can't move. I have to go to the emergency room. They do some serious tests. They say, "Sir, you have an abscess. You have an internal infection between two muscles. And within a matter of maybe an hour or two, this infection would have exploded, gone into your bloodstream, and you would have died on the spot." An abscess is an internal infection. How old were you when you had this? 26.

32:44No, it was 1.6 million dollars in one day. So, more than that. Yeah, for the year at 26. At 26 years old, my top year was 5 million dollars. The first year, at 26 years old, before the surgery, by the time I got to the surgery, I had made 5 million dollars for that year. That's what I took home, not like what I made. I made more than that, but there are taxes and expenses and so on. Yes, zero, nothing. I donate a lot of money. I had Chabad guys come to my office every week, and I'd give them a bunch of money once in a while. At a later feeling, I'd go to shul and... During Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, I'd keep Pesach the best I could, meaning I wouldn't eat chametz. I didn't eat on Yom Kippur. But as far as Shabbat, as far as real kosher, no, I didn't work on Shabbat. I played poker on Shabbat. Or I watched movies on Shabbat. Or I went to the pool on Shabbat. Or I did all the other things that you're not allowed to do. Working is one of the things you're not allowed to do. There's a lot of other stuff you're also not allowed to do.

33:58Shabbat is so holy that the Gemara in Masechet Shabbat says that you have to have special clothes just for Shabbat. Just for Shabbat, you have to have special clothes. That's how holy Shabbat is. Shabbat is so holy that you're not allowed to do anything that you do normally during the rest of the week. Why? Because it's Shabbat. It's a special day that Hashem created specifically for you. Why? Why did Hashem create Shabbat? Hashem says there's no way for a human being to ever feel like Me. Why? Because you're human. You're the creation. He's the Creator. So there's only one thing that can make us somewhat similar, that will give you a good feeling. What's that feeling? I created for six days. For six days, Hashem took all of His creations and put them together. He put the sun and the moon and the sky and the water and the oxygen and the animals and everything. He put them all into place over six days, and on the seventh day, He says, "This is the day I'm not going to create." Why? Because that's one thing you can also do.

35:00You could also not create, but what does it mean not to create? Sleep all day? No. By not creating, it means you're not going to do all of the mundane things you did during the first six days and focus specifically on doing. What is your goal? What's your goal in life? Learn Torah and fulfill mitzvot. That's your goal in life. That's your goal in life. That's why you came to the world. It's not to play soccer. It's not to make money. It's not all the other things. It takes a while for us to get to this point, though. I didn't know this at that time. I knew that there's something called Shabbat. I actually kept Shabbat for about a year and a half when I was 17. I learned a little bit here and there, you know, throughout my life. I went to a religious school when I was a kid up to about 10 years old. So I knew what Judaism was. But as far as keeping it, I kept whatever made sense to me, like most people today. People keep whatever makes sense to them. If it doesn't make sense, then they don't keep it. One of the things that caused me to go this way is because when I asked questions, people didn't have answers. So, I asked somebody one time, "Does the Torah believe in dinosaurs?" I asked a serious question. The first person I asked said, "I don't know."

36:13Rabbi has said, "I don't know." Third rabbi, I said, "Yeah, sure." I said, "Where does it say?" He goes, "I don't know, so you believe it, but you don't know?" And I started asking questions that I was interested in and i was interested in dinosaurs. i was interested in UFOs. i was interested in money. i was interested in science. i was interested in that type of stuff. i asked questions. i figured that every rabbi is supposed to know. i didn't know that there's different types of rabbis. i didn't know that there's different types of knowledge. just because you go to a certain rabbi and ask him about dinosaurs and he doesn't know, doesn't mean he doesn't know anything. he just doesn't know about dinosaurs. He may know about shechita. He may know about taharat mishpacha. He may know about Shabbat. He may know about other things. Just like if you go to a doctor. Go to a doctor, listen, I have a heart problem. Sorry, I don't know. What do you mean? What kind of doctor are you? I'm a dentist. I'm a dentist. What do you want from my life? You go to a dentist, he goes, yeah, listen, I have a problem with my brain. I'm sorry, I'm a dentist. What you guys don't know about the brain, they don't teach you in medical school. No, we teach what we know over there. We have a certain skill. I didn't know this. I was naive. I was young. So eventually, we got to a point where we realized that this knowledge was something I needed to have. I realized it after the fact. So now the first surgery I had was a nightmare. I recovered nine months later. I'm back in the hospital. I'm having another surgery that's worse than the first and...

37:39i'm now in an intensive care unit for almost a month. Intensive care unit is usually where people die. They live or die, 50-50. Guys that get shot, guys that get heart attacks. Intensive care unit is that at any given moment, somebody's dead next to you. And I was there for almost a month. After a month of being in an intensive care unit, they released me eventually. I went back home. I went back to my life. Pain, agony, but things started getting better and better and better until six months later. Six months later, I have another pain. different body part. I'm back at the hospital, another surgery, another intensive care unit, another nightmare. Released after another few weeks, I'm back home. Three months later, if you notice, the times keep getting shorter. Three months later, I'm back in the hospital. I'm back in surgery. I'm back on painkillers. I'm back with the nightmare. Then it gets to a point where it's every single month and month I'm having either a surgery or something, and then it gets to a point where it's every week. Every week, I'm at a doctor or a hospital at least two to three times a week. Eventually, I get to a point where I become an experiment. Seriously, I become an experiment in the lab. They actually start doing experiments on my body because they have no idea what's wrong. They have no idea why a simple surgery is

38:56led to a body completely failing. What does it have to do with your lungs? What does it have to do with your liver? What does it have to do with your kidneys? What does it have to do with everything else? It has nothing to do with it. Since I had money, I went to all types of doctors. We went to over 50 different doctors just simply trying to diagnose it. No one was able to figure it out, not the traditional doctors, not the specialist doctors, not the holistic doctors, no one. Had to live in pain and agony not for a month, not for a year, and not for two—for seven years. Seven years of 24 hours a day—pain, surgeries, agony, nightmare. After seven years, I didn't really want to live anymore. But Hashem wanted me to live apparently. I went through the test, and it was time for me to realize what's the point. So one day My mom decides to call a bunch of different rabbis to ask for a blessing because her son, who donated a Sefer Torah and donated a bunch of money to the Beit Knesset and donated money to anybody that asked, doesn't really keep much. And he's in really bad shape, meaning me. She knew that's not enough. So maybe we'll get a blessing from a rabbi. She called a bunch of different rabbis, but on that day, no one picked up. She called for almost two hours all over the world. Any rabbi that pretty much existed, she called them.

40:20Eventually, she reaches a number in Jerusalem. A woman answers the phone, and she asks for a certain rabbi. But the woman says, "I'm sorry, ma'am, wrong number. There's no such rabbi here." My mom, since she's been dialing the phone for two hours just looking for anybody to answer, starts breaking down and crying to the woman. She doesn't know who she is; she's just crying hysterically because she's trying to reach out but can't find a rabbi for two hours. Hashem only gives you tests that you can handle. If you have a difficulty in your life, that means you can handle it. Apparently, my mom also got a test. She got to her own limit. So Hashem had to make a miracle. What was the miracle? The woman on the other side of the phone, the wrong phone number, all of a sudden identified my mom's voice and called her by her name, Doris. Mom said, "How do you know my name?" She stopped crying. It's a wrong phone number in a different country. "How do you know my name?" she says. "Well, I'm your niece." "Niece? Who's your niece?" "I'm your brother's and sister's niece, Pnina." "How did I get to you? I don't have your phone number. We've never spoken on the phone before in our life." They are related, but that doesn't mean they are connected. Plenty of us have relatives in different countries; it doesn't mean anything.

41:43She called the wrong phone number. She reached somebody that's actually related to her. That person actually identified her voice, which by itself is a miracle of its own. And now we found out he is the only person that can help. Pnina says, "Why are you crying?" She tells her the whole story. She goes, "Oh, yes. We all know about it. Yaron is very sick. But what are you looking for?" She says, "I just need a blessing from a rabbi, from somebody." She goes, "Oh, well, why don't you talk to my brother, Rabbi Ephraim, because..." Will he talk to me? Yeah, of course. Talmid Chacham, he's Baruch Hashem. He also lives a couple of doors down from Rav Ovadia. Maybe he could pray for you, maybe connect you to Rav Ovadia, something, do something. She goes, okay, connect me. She calls Rabbi Ephraim, Rabbi Ephraim is at the corner learning Torah like he always does, Baruch Hashem. But then Rabbi Ephraim calls her back. Fine calls her back, and she tells him the story. Now, at this point, I didn't know that Rabbi Ephraim even existed because when I left Israel, I was 10 years old. Rabbi Ephraim was a baby. He was much younger than I am, so I didn't know he existed. I didn't know he was my cousin. I didn't know he's in the world. So, my mom asked him, "You know, what should we do? What should we do?" And right away, right away, "Yes, you want to get the pizza? You can get the pizza."

43:01Enjoy. So, right away Fine got to the point. "Yes, does he speak Hebrew? Because he doesn't speak English." So, "Yes, he speaks Hebrew." She's okay. "So, can I call him?" She goes, "No, he's not gonna talk to you. He's not gonna talk to anybody. He's very antisocial. He's in a lot of pain." And at that very moment, at that very moment, she's telling him he's not gonna talk to you, I decided to call my mom on the other line. As you can see, the miracles get bigger and bigger. I called my mom on the other line while she's on the phone with Ephraim. She's crying hysterically. She's telling me to talk to this guy. I have no idea why she's crying. I don't know. I'm getting into the middle of the story. "Talk to him, talk to him." I said, "Oh, why is he making you cry, this person?" She said, "Talk to Ephraim." "Who's Ephraim?" "He's your cousin. He's this, he's that." I said, "So could you just stop crying, have him call me? I'll talk to anybody, just stop crying." It's like hell on earth hearing your mom cry. So, brother Ephraim calls me and right away I... We hit it off. How you doing? How you doing? And then he said, did you ever hear the story about Yehuda and Tamar? I said, I don't know who Yehuda is and I don't know who Tamar is. But tell me. So he tells me the story that's in the book of Genesis in Sefer Bereishit of the son of Yaakov Avinu that had two sons or three sons, Er and Onan.

44:29He wanted to marry; he wanted them to get married. So, first, the first son married this tzaddeket named Tamar. Now, Tamar had a prophecy. Prophecy means she spoke to Hashem in her own way, through a dream or an epiphany of some kind. She saw the future, and she saw that the Mashiach, the one that's going to save all of us after we all do teshuvah and... It's gonna come from Shevet Yehuda. It's gonna come from Yehuda. So she wanted in. She wanted to be part of this family. She wanted to be part of the big mission. She wanted a purpose in life. She didn't care about money. She didn't care about Wall Street. She didn't care about lollipops. She cared about being part of the big mission, the ultimate purpose. She says, okay, I have to marry this Er. I'll marry Er. Looks mean nothing. Money means nothing. Why? I want to be part of the big mission. The Boss's mission. But then Er did something that's disgusting to Hashem. He did something called wasting seed. In today's world, it's called masturbation. In other words, he used the seed instead of bringing children into the world, he used it for nothing. So when they were supposed to bring children into the world, he didn't want to have children. He didn't want to have children, which unfortunately for him is considered, according to our Shulchan Aruch, the biggest sin in the entire Torah.

45:52Why? Because according to the Gemara, Masechet Niddah, if anybody wants to see it, the Gemara calls wasting seed 100% murder. Just like you murdered somebody in cold blood, you shot him in the face and you killed him, wasting seed is the same thing. The only difference is, instead of killing one person, you killed 300 million. Because the average person ejaculates 300 million different seeds. Now, most of you probably didn't notice until now. Neither did I. Now, another thing about wasting seed is, it's also one of the ways that a person can lose all of their money. Hashem says, I'm going to give you shefa. I'm going to give you good. Now, the good is going to come in multiple ways. It could be money, it could be kids, it could be a wife, it could be a lot of stuff. But you can lose all of it by wasting your seed. If you use the shefa that I give you the right way, you keep all the good that I give you. If you don't, I take it back. Because you're wasting the shefa. So you'll see many times people that undergo a similar financial collapse to what I experienced, also wasted seed, either by being with women who are not their wives or in other ways.

47:11So the first son wasted seed, so Hashem killed him. So then Yehudah knew that Tamar was a tzaddeket. He says, you know what, why don't you marry my other son? Why don't you marry my other son? Because you haven't had kids yet. Why don't you marry my other son? So she married his other son, and he didn't know that his other son was also clueless about mitzvot, clueless about the Torah, clueless about what he's allowed and not allowed to do. So he also wasted seed. So Hashem killed him too. After that, Yehudah and Tamar, as the story goes, Yehudah and Tamar herself actually ended up getting married. She pretended to be a prostitute because she knew that Yehuda wouldn't want to marry her in a normal way. But she wanted to marry him because she wanted to be one of the tools that Hashem is going to use to bring Mashiach. So she says there's no way for me to marry Yehuda, and his third son is too young. So he's not going to let me marry him, especially since the first two sons died. So she wants to still be part of the big mission.

48:21She pretended to be a prostitute and fooled him because, in those days, prostitutes would cover their faces, unlike today. So, the way you knew if someone was a prostitute was if they covered their face. So, Yehuda didn't know. Long story short, you can read it from Sefer Bereishit. She fooled him into being with her, and then eventually she... It was discovered that she was the woman, and she was pregnant. One of the sons is actually going to be the way that we're going to get to the Mashiach. Now, this was the first story. There are obviously more details to the story, but this was the first story that Rabbi Ephraim told me. Yes, you had a question? No, a mamzer doesn't come from lack of marriage. A mamzer comes from eshet ish. If somebody... If the first person she was married to died, then she married the second son. He died, too. So then after that, she was a widow. He was single. They were both widows. Her husbands died, and his wife died. So now they're allowed to get married, no problem. Especially at this point, since Hashem didn't give the Torah officially at this point, so there was a lot more leniency to certain rules.

49:37So, this was a permissible thing. This is actually what Hashem wanted to happen. The point being is that this was a wonderful story for me because it was very creative. And I saw that Hashem's work is very miraculous, very creative, very amazing. So how Hashem made all of this happen, because He needed to hide... this whole story from the Satan. Because Satan, once the Mashiach comes, Hashem slaughters the Satan. So the Satan is doing everything possible to slow down the Mashiach from coming. So Hashem, every time there's a story that's related to Mashiach, you'll notice that it's a very unusual story. That's the way that Hashem is hiding from the Satan. Hiding the story from the Satan. Now, this was the first story that I heard from Rabbi Efraim. I liked it. I asked him for more stories. So he told me, "What kind of story do you like?" I said, "I don't know." So I started telling him my problems. He said, "Oh, it's a very interesting problem. Somebody else in the Torah had the same problem." And he tells me that someone else in the Torah had the same problem. So then I started asking questions. And he said, "Oh, wow, that's a really good question. Rabbi so-and-so asked the same question 850 years ago in this book on this page." And to me, it was like, "What do you mean? How do you remember the book? How do you remember the page number?" I thought maybe he just so happened to have the book right there.

50:55So then I asked another question. He said, "Wow, it's a really good question. Rabbi so-and-so asked the same question 350 years ago in this book on this page." And I said, "What are the chances of him having both books for both of my questions?" I didn't know that Talmidei Chachamim, people who learn Torah, think that way. So I continued asking questions. I didn't even know I had that many questions. I asked about dinosaurs too. Got the answer. I'll give you the answer before she wins. The point is that I saw that there are answers to everything, and he has them. We spoke for almost two hours. The next week, he called me on Thursday at four o'clock. We spoke for three hours. The next week, Thursday at four o'clock, we spoke for five hours. The next week, Thursday at four o'clock, we spoke for seven hours. And every week after that, every Thursday at 4 o'clock, my life would shut down because my conversation with Rabbi Fein would begin. Wall Street could die for me, for all I cared. My health didn't mean anything anymore. I could be in pain. I could not be in pain. I could be busy, not busy. It didn't make a difference. At 4 o'clock, everything ends. Why? Life started at 4 o'clock on Thursday. I could start getting answers for questions that I had my whole life. Because now I started realizing

52:16There's a point. There's a point to life beyond money, beyond the pain, beyond everything else. Now, as I started finding out answers to the questions that I had—nine months worth of questions—I started realizing that the answers mean that I have a problem. Number one, I'm not keeping mitzvot. According to the Torah, if you look at Parashat Ki Tisa, which we actually learned recently, a few months ago... Hashem says that someone who is a Mechalel Shabbat—a person that violates Shabbat—has some pasuk written about it twelve times in the Torah, stating that he has death upon death and is cut off from the nation. So I asked, what does this mean? What does it mean? How do you die twice? So the answer was... First death is a shorter life in this world. Second death means there's no Gan Eden. There's no Olam HaBa. I said, okay, so once you die twice, you died here, there's no Olam HaBa, then what? What's the cutoff from the nation? And the answer shocked me. The answer shocked me because the answer is that once a person's a Mechalel Shabbat on purpose, then he's no longer considered part of Am Yisrael. He's considered like an idol worshiper in the eyes of Hashem. Why? Because the idol worshiper also drives on Shabbat.

53:42Yeah, but I feel like I'm a Jew. Feelings could be misleading. A lot of people feel things sometimes, but it's just a guess; it's nothing else. Feelings mean nothing. What are you doing? What are you doing with it? The point is, at the time, I realized I had a serious problem. I had to start keeping Shabbat, and then I realized that the kosher that I thought I was keeping by not eating meat in non-kosher places wasn't enough. Why? Because even if I'm eating pizza from a non-kosher place, it's also meat. Because part of the sauce has meat in it. The non-kosher pizzerias use meat to create flavoring for their sauce. They also use meat to create flavoring for their cheese. That's why if you go to the supermarket, the regular supermarket, the kosher supermarket, you'll see that there are four or five different kosher cheeses and around 500 non-kosher cheeses. Why are there so many non-kosher products? Because the non-kosher ones use ingredients that we are not allowed to use as Jews, mainly meat—different types of meat, usually pork. So when you eat non-kosher pizza, not only are you eating non-kosher meat, but you're also eating milk and meat together. Then I realized that my kosher wasn't kosher enough, my Shabbat wasn't enough, and then I realized there's another problem: I am also married to a woman I am not allowed to marry. She's not Jewish and...

55:03How do you tell somebody to stop being not Jewish? Convert them? You can't convert somebody if they don't want to convert; that's a fake conversion. Because if somebody wants to be a Jew, then they're going to do it on their own. But if somebody doesn't want to be a Jew, if they have a belief—they believe in JC Penny, they believe in Jesus over there, the idiot that died 2,000 years ago. They go believe in him. They believe in Buddha. They believe in Muhammad. They believe in a cat. They believe in a rat. They believe in the monkeys like in India. There are different sects. There are 80 different sects in India. One of them published just last week that there's a new religion in India. Their god is Donald Trump. I'm dead serious. Because they wanted to compete with a different religion, a different religion that announced three weeks ago their god is a monkey. Why? Because the monkey stands in the middle of the street and everyone—there's a video of this—people copied him. He puts his hand on their head and they walk away. They think he's giving them a blessing. Little do they realize he's just wiping his hand on their head. So, and then there's a bunch of them that believe in a cow and...

56:13They believe in a cow because the cow carries their baby for nine months. They figure a human carries a baby for nine months. The cow carries a baby for nine months. That must mean she's a god. Stupidity. Complete stupidity. No different than Christianity. No different than any other religion other than Judaism. And the reason why is because Judaism is the only one that has scientific proofs that it's real. But now, to tell somebody to stop believing something is not possible because they believe it. You can't just say "stop doing this." You believe it. You can't just stop believing something. So then I decided that the only way for me to help her was to find out if it's true. If Christianity is true, then I want to be a Christian. Why should I be a Jew if Christianity is true? But if Christianity is false... Not only am I going to run away from it, but I am also going to help her run away from it. Why? Because she's the one who saved my life for the last seven years. She's the only one who actually helped me throughout my sickness. Why wouldn't I help her? So I started looking into Christianity, and little by little, I'll save you the time, I found out that not only is it nonsense, it's complete falsehood. It's idol worship.

57:30It's not only falsehood. It's idol worship. It's no different than worshipping a cow. It's no different than worshipping a Buddha statue or a rat or a dog or anything else. It's idol worship. It's nonsense. It's no different than worshipping money, which unfortunately many people do because they work so hard for money that they forget to serve God. That's also a form of idol worship. Now point I realized it's idol worship, so I had to save her. So, I started giving her information little by little. She started realizing that this is true, but she needed more. So, she started doing her own research. Eventually, I showed her a video by Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi. There was a debate between him and a Christian professor. Now, since the yetzer hara Yetzer Hara does not want people to convert. Yetzer Hara does not want people to do teshuva. And the reason why is because the Zohar HaKadosh says that there are certain types of souls, there are certain types of souls that are very big, very significant, very important. The types of souls that are so big, so significant, they can bring the Mashiach themselves.

58:40Now, everything that Hashem created, He created an opposite effect to it. In essence, meaning, just as Hashem has kisei hakavod, He has a throne of glory, He also created a kisei hakavod for the Satan himself. Hashem has the power to create, but He gave the power to destroy to the Satan himself also. Of course, with the permission of Hashem. The point is that everything has an opposite: tall, short, light, darkness, and so on and so forth. There are certain souls in the world that the Zohar HaKadosh says have so much power that they can bring Mashiach. But if Hashem just released them into the world easily, then it would be the end. So, He made a deal with the Satan. What's the deal? They're going to be your hostages. Those souls are going to be your hostages, meaning that the only way they could be freed is through serious mesirut nefesh, major sacrifice. This is why you see some of the most important human beings that ever lived in history came from unusual circumstances. Moshe Rabbeinu, Yitro, Rabbi Akiva, David HaMelech, Ruth, Rabbi Meir Baal HaNes, and so on and so forth. Some of the greatest people that ever lived either came from unusual Jewish stories or conversion stories. The point being is that very unusual circumstances.

1:00:07In order for them to be released from a satan, something had to happen. So, if the town will get involved and do everything he can... When I tried showing her the video by Rav Mizrachi, immediately she hated it. Not because of the facts; she hated it because she didn't like Rav Mizrachi, and she thought that the Christian guy was an idiot. She was right that the Christian guy was an idiot, but she didn't know that, in time, she would become Rav Mizrachi's biggest fan. But at this point, neither one of us knew it. So she watched part one of the debate. She said, "Okay, it makes some sense, but I don't like it." I convinced her to watch part two. "Okay, it's nice, but I still don't like it." Part three she never watched. So now, I'm trying to give her other videos, other rabbis, other information. Rabbi Ephraim is trying to help us also, giving us more information, but it's very hard. The Satan is fighting hard. Our life goes into a mess. We start losing all of our money during this time. Whatever money we didn't lose, we're losing now. My health starts getting worse. All hell breaks loose. We continue. Eventually, I discover another video by the same Rabbi Mizrachi called Torah and Science.

1:01:23I told her, "Let's watch this. We both like science. We both like Torah. Let's watch Torah and Science." She goes, "Oh, it's this guy again." I said, "Yeah, don't worry about the guy. Let's just look at the facts." Fine, we watch part one. It's a three-part movie. We watch part one. After part one, we're both fans of Rav Mizrachi's. Why? It's amazing. It's information we never heard of. It's information that's provable. It's information that changed the way we looked at the world. Now we want to go and watch part two right away. Part two wasn't working; we couldn't find a working video online. So then we skipped to part three. Part three is even more amazing than part one. Now my wife realizes that Christianity is complete nonsense, but she still doesn't know if the JC guy is nonsense. New Testament is nonsense, but maybe the JC guy is real. She still has a safek, she still has a doubt. So later that night, she talks to Hashem in her own words; in Judaism, we call this hitbodedut, and she prays to Hashem. She says, "Hashem," I only found this out later on, "Hashem, at this point, we have learned Torah for almost two years, and I realize that we're not allowed to be married."

1:02:45I'm not allowed to be married to Yaron, and Yaron is not allowed to be married to me because he's Jewish and I'm not. The problem is that until now, I believed that if I didn't believe in this guy, I would go to hell. I was taught to believe that you cannot become Jewish—it's either you're born Jewish or not. That's what I was led to believe. So, Hashem, if you really want me to become a Jew, I need something more. But if I can't become a Jew, then please kill me. And the reason why is because I know that I can't leave Yaron. She can't leave me. She loves me. And he's not going to leave me either. So since I don't want to ruin his Olam HaBa, it's better off if you just kill me, Hashem. So she prays for Hashem to kill her. It's a very unusual prayer. Usually, people pray to live. The next day, She wakes up in the morning. I was up all night studying. I find Rav Mizrahi, part two, working. I give it to her. I say, "Listen, let's watch part two." She says, "Fine." We watch part two, and part two has the sign, has Hashem's answer. In the book of Devarim, Hashem says to Am Yisrael that at the end of days, before the Mashiach comes,

1:04:13he's going to send us to the four corners of the world because we sinned. We sinned a lot. And instead of doing teshuva initially, instead of doing teshuva, what we're going to do is we're going to pray to false gods. The god of stone and the god of wood. Now this is very interesting because it's symbolic. God of stone, we know that's the stone of Mecca. for the Muslims. God of wood, we know it's the wooden cross for Christianity. But this could just be a simple coincidence. So then Rav Mizrachi, in the video, shows that this verse in the Torah also has something called Torah codes, which are hidden secrets within the verses that have the names of these false gods. Both Christianity and the Muslim religion are mentioned in this verse and no other place in the Torah. For me, it was a very cool secret to find out, but for my wife, it was everything.

1:05:14The spot she says, "Okay. How soon can I convert? I'm taking on everything. Everything." "No, whatever we have to do, we're doing." I said, "Yeah, you have to cover your hair. You have to be modest. We're doing it, keeping Shabbat. We do everything." "Why?" "Because now everything has changed." "Why did everything change?" "Because now I know God said it." Now I'm going to ask you guys a question, one question only: Is a Jew obligated to believe in dinosaurs? you're saying no. You're raising your hand with a different question. Okay, I asked, let's answer this question one question at a time. Is a Jew obligated to believe in dinosaurs? Is he obligated to believe in dinosaurs? Why? How do you know dinosaurs are true? Where? We need a source. Can you say it's in the Torah? Oh, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

1:06:30Okay, but I still want to know, where are dinosaurs in the Torah? I need to know. Do you? Okay? Okay, let's do this. Hold on. Hold on. All right. Show of hands, show of hands, show of hands, show of hands. Let's just do this easily because if everybody talks, we're not gonna hear each other. Okay, the show of hands. How many of you believe dinosaurs actually existed? One, two, three, four. Okay, you guys don't believe in dinosaurs? You believe dinosaurs existed or no? So what are those bones in the museums? They're fake. You're right. They are fake. You're right. They are fake. Most of them are fake. But do we believe in dinosaurs? Most of them are fake. You still believe in dinosaurs? Okay. No. The bones, they're bones, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's a dinosaur bone. Okay, so most of you believe in dinosaurs. Now, why do you believe in dinosaurs? Now, if all the museums, all the museums announced to you tomorrow in the news that all of the bones are fake, do you still believe in dinosaurs? Why? No, no, the ones that have the bones, the ones that have the bones, all of the museums have a unanimous meaning. All of them say, listen, all the bones we have, they're all fake. Meaning, there's no proof for dinosaurs.

1:07:56Do you still believe in dinosaurs? You believe you're convinced because you like the movie. I'm asking you, is there any actual substantial reason for why you believe what you believe? What's the reason? No, it is a hundred percent the original. It's the same 101, just a different paper. No, no, no, they're not, no, they're telling none of us. How do you know it existed? They're telling you that whatever they had was plastic. It's not real. Now, do you still have a reason to believe in dinosaurs? What is your reason for believing in dinosaurs? I'll save you the time because we're running out of time. The reason for you believing in dinosaurs is because you're actually obligated to do it. Why are you obligated to believe in dinosaurs? Because it is in the Torah. Where is it in the Torah? Right in the beginning. Beginning in Sefer Bereishit. In Sefer Bereishit. No, before Noach. Before Noach. In Sefer Bereishit, on the fifth day. Avotai, you want to hear what dinosaurs are? On the fifth day.

1:09:15Vayomer Elohim: yishretzu hamayim sheretz nefesh chayah v'of ya'ofef al ha'aretz al p'nei rakia ha-shamayim. Vayivra Elohim et ha-taninim ha-gdolim v'et kol nefesh ha-chayah haromeset asher shar'tzu hamayim le-minehem, v'et kol of kanaf le-mino, vayar Elohim ki tov. Sefer Bereishit says in chapter 1, verse 20: God said, "Let the waters teem with teeming living creatures and fowl that fly above over the earth across the expanse of the heavens." And God created the great sea giants and every living being that creeps, with which the waters teemed after their kinds, and all the winged fowl of every kind, and God saw that it was good, and He blessed them. So here... One of the most important things that a person needs to know is that you must, over time—not right away—invest time in learning Lashon HaKodesh. You must invest time in learning Hebrew. I see that you guys pray in Hebrew, Baruch Hashem. You have very good rabbis that teach you not only how to pray in Hebrew but how to pronounce the words. The reason why this is important is because the only way you're going to find out is...

1:10:26The difference between false and true is if you can see it yourself with your own eyes. I can tell you whatever I want right now. I could sell ice to an Eskimo. I'm a good salesman. But it doesn't mean it's true. You need to see with your own eyes. Now I'm going to show you with your own eyes that I just read to you that dinosaurs existed. And the reason why is because here, if you just read the English translation, you have a mistake. Why? Because the English translation says that God created the great sea giants, but that's not what it says. The English translation, unfortunately, is wrong. What it says here is that it means giant lizards. Giant lizards, by definition, are dinosaurs. No, a whale is not a lizard. A whale is not a lizard. Tanin in Hebrew is lizard. A reptile. Reptile, yes. Reptile, lizard. These are reptiles. So we have giant reptiles. Actually, it's a better word. Giant reptiles are in the Torah. What are these giant reptiles? They are in the Torah. Now,

1:11:43So now, hold on a second, what does this really mean at the end of all of it? What it means at the end of all of it is the following: now that we know that God said it and not your own opinion and... not just a rabbi and not just some speaker and not just some scientific language or some science video. But actually God—God Himself—said it. Once you know God said it, everything changes. Why? Because now I have to listen and God came to us by a miracle right now and He showed Himself to us. A bat kol, a Heavenly voice, came out from the ceiling, from the sky, from the heavens and said, "Rabotai, you have to do from now on one, two, three." Is anyone here even going to think twice about it and not do it, or are you all going to do it? Of course, you're going to do it, right, because God said it. Is anyone here going to say, "You know, God, I don't really feel like it"?

1:12:50Heavenly voice, a bat kol, just told you from now on you have to wear long-sleeve shirts. Are you going to say, "God, you know, I'm kind of hot. I don't like it"? No. Why? Because God said it. Meaning that once you know for sure that God said it, it changes the value. The price is different. If you go to a restaurant, and there's no price on anything, what are you going to do? You're going to order everything. Why? It looks like it's free. But what's the way? They say, no, no, sir, turn the menu around, and then you're going to see the price. And you see that the average price for the steak is $150. All of a sudden, you're not hungry anymore. All of a sudden, you're not hungry. Not only do you not want anything, you don't want anything at all. Can I have free water? Free what? Why? Because now you read the price has changed. The price has changed once you know God said it. Once you know God said it, the price changed. Now that you know that God said dinosaurs exist, the price changed. But what does it mean also? It also means that now that we know that God, when He says something, it changes the value. We also have to find out what else did He say. Now, in this week's parasha...

1:14:03Hashem says to Am Yisrael that if they're going to sin with non-Jewish girls, if they're going to sin by idol worship, if they're going to do anything similar to idol worship, like be a violator of Shabbat, He's going to kill them. And we learn from the end of this parasha that Am Yisrael decided that they like these non-Jewish girls. Maybe they're going to convert them. Maybe they're going to hang out with them. Maybe they're going to date them for a little while. So now Am Yisrael goes... With these women, and we see at the end of the parasha that Hashem brings a plague and kills 24,000 of Am Yisrael, almost to the point that He almost killed everyone. The only reason He didn't kill everyone is because Pinchas ben Elazar ben Aharon HaKohen killed the original sinner, and everyone got the point, and they all stopped.

1:15:09Cosbi and Zimri, and Cosbi was a woman, and Zimri was the man. Zimri was the head of the Shimon tribe. He was the first one that sinned with the goya, and after they all saw him, they thought it was allowed. After they saw a rabbi commit a sin, they thought it was allowed too. They didn't realize that it was not allowed. So they did the same thing. They saw him make a sin, so they did the same thing. They saw him talking in the shul, so they talked in shul. They saw him stealing, so they stole. They saw him doing wrong, so they thought it was allowed, so they did it also. Hashem says not only... It is not allowed, but if you continue, I'm going to punish you because I said it earlier in the book. Just like I said "dinosaurs," I also said you're not allowed to be with goyot. I also said you're not allowed to violate Shabbat. I also said you're not allowed to eat non-kosher. I also said you're not allowed to be with your own wife when she's not pure. I said a lot of things you need to know. Why? Because that changes the price.

1:16:10The price is that if you violate Hashem's word, there's a cost to it. It's expensive. I didn't know it until it was almost too late. I almost died. By the time we realized that God said all these things, I realized that I have to become religious. My wife realized she has to convert. We converted; we did teshuva; we changed our lives. He stopped b'chasdei Hashem. We didn't know that Hashem is just gonna make miracles for us. We just thought, "Hopefully, He's gonna forgive us because we're trying." Now, I'm still sick at this point. So Hashem wants to give you signs that He likes you. Sometimes there are small signs. Sometimes there are big signs. Now, the day after we studied and we met with the Beit Din and so on and so forth, they said you're going to convert on such-and-such date. We were very excited, and we knew that we couldn't waste any time. Now that we're learning Torah and following Torah, we cannot be in the same house at this point unless we're married. So, we decided the same day that...

1:17:13Same day, she's going to convert. We're also going to have a chuppah the same day. We can't waste any time. We don't have any time to plan, not for parties, not for anything. All we need is a couple of kosher witnesses, a minyan, and we're finished. We're going to have a kosher wedding with kosher people. Why? Because we have a lot of making up to do. We've messed up for enough time. So we go and we plan. The problem is, at this point, I'm in my 30s. I didn't know that Hashem was going to throw me a curveball. What was the curveball? He gave me another infection. The infection got so big that I knew that as soon as we finished, I could barely walk, I could barely move. I was in an enormous amount of pain, but I knew I'm not missing this Beit Din appointment. She has to convert. We're not going to say, listen, but I said to her, honey, we can't, even though we have this plan to get married right after this, we can't. Why? I have to go to the emergency room. I have to go to the emergency room and have surgery. Five minutes after the conversion is finished. Why? Because I'm dying again. Okay, fine. Not so exciting anymore. So we go. They ask her questions. They're very impressed with how much knowledge she has, Baruch Hashem. She passes the test. We're all excited. I say, okay, now you have to go to a mikveh.

1:18:35After the final step of the conversion, which is to go to a mikveh, you go in as Christina, and you come out as Sarah. You go in as Steve, and you come out as Yaakov. You come out kadosh; you come out like a baby. The Rambam says that a person who converts is considered like a newborn baby. Now... She goes into the mikveh. I'm here before she goes into the mikveh. I'm in an enormous amount of pain, containing myself not to scream. She goes into the mikveh, and all of a sudden, my pain stops. Now I can't—I'm too excited to think why the pain is gone. All I'm thinking is, Baruch Hashem, she's converted, and we'll go to the hospital. But now she comes out; we're excited. We call her Efraim. And then I realized, I don't have any pain anymore, so why go to the hospital? Let's go get married. Let's go have the chuppah. She goes, really? When I go to the hospital? I said, no, I don't have pain. If my pain went away, who knows? I'm not going to complain. Okay, fine. We go back to the room. I said, okay, let me change. I go to the bathroom. I undress, and I see that my entire body is full of blood. How? The surgery was done a different way.

1:19:58Usually, the surgeries had to be done at the hospital. They had to cut me, and it was very, very painful. They had to leave the cut open because they needed to let the infection come out, so they couldn't stitch it up. It was a very, very painful nightmare process. This time, somebody else did the surgery, and it didn't hurt. This time, the pain went away on its own. Hashem just wanted to make sure that I knew He’s running the show. Our life has been full of miracles since that day. At that point, I realized that not only is Hashem running the show, but He's happy with what we're doing. So we decided that we're going to invest more and more time into getting other people just like you, just like me, to realize that there are much more important things in life than money, than girls, Drinks and steaks, then pizza, then all of the material world that we chase our whole life. There's much more important things. The most important thing is to find out if God said it. If God said it, why? Because once you know He said it, the price changes. Once you know He said it, you have to do it. So I would say the most important lesson today is

1:21:12...is to give you a little bit of chizuk to realize that your number one job in your life is to find out what God really said. Those books behind you, they're not just for show. They're not just for the show. They're for you to read them. The rabbis bought them for you so you can read them. Why? Because that's what God said... those books—that's what God said. Once you know what He said, you can succeed in anything in life. Even if you want to go into the business world, even if you want to be a professional in something, even if you want to be successful with money, successful in marriage, successful with kids, successful in anything. Why? Because the Torah is instructions, instructions on how to win in life. Everything. You don't have to be a rabbi that speaks to the world and so on. You could be a regular Jew that works and eats and drinks, has a family, has a wife, has kids, and so on. But at the very least, at the very least, you have to know what's the point behind all of it. What's the point behind all of it? Once you know the point behind all of it, then you have an instruction set to follow. That instruction set is going to tell you how to do what you want to do and...

1:22:29And if you're allowed to do it, it's going to tell you right and wrong. Am I allowed to do this? Am I not allowed to do this? If I'm allowed to do it, how am I allowed to do it? If I'm not allowed to do it, why am I not allowed to do it? If I'm allowed to get a haircut, good. What kind of haircut can I get? Can I get a haircut where I shave my sides like the goyim? Or can I get a haircut where everything has to be number two? Oh, number two. Why? Because the Torah says that you're not allowed to shave your head. God said it. Not the rabbi. God said it. Point is, it's important for us to know what God said. Once we know that, it means we're going to follow the rest of what He says. And we're going to be able to win, and you're not going to have to have the same test I did. Because my test was very painful, and like I told you, right now, we're in the last generation. Mashiach's gonna come any day. Could be next week, could be next year, could be ten years. Either way, the point is, the Messiah is coming, and we have to be ready before He comes. Because once he comes, time's out. Game's over. No more teshuva. We have to do teshuva. We have to get closer to Hashem and know what He said and do what He said before He comes. Why? Because when He comes, we need to be ready. It's game time. So, b'ezrat Hashem, this gives all of us a little bit of chizuk to at least spend more time finding out what God said. After you know what He said, then you do it. And b'ezrat Hashem, you'll have a wonderful life here and in olam haba. Yes? Yeah, guys, it's time for Q&A now. Go ahead.

1:23:58How about it? You guys, guys, sit down. Guys, come on. Go, go. You can do it. Go, go. How about it? They want to beat you. Can, can, can. You guys are jumping. I got it. Go ahead. Ask the question. Yes. Yes. Yes. Kind of says the same thing, but it's not the same thing. So I'll give you an example. Now, the first religion, the first religion that ever was created, organized religion. The first organized religion is Judaism. Before Judaism was born, the only thing that was around was idol worship.

1:24:59People praying to statues and things like that. After that, Christianity was born almost 1500 years after Judaism. And about 500 years later, Islam was founded. Now... No, no, this is historical proof. Everybody knows that Christianity came after Judaism because Christianity, they called their... Huh? About 1500 years after Judaism. And then 500 years later, this is historical fact they agree with. Now, both Christianity and Islam, both of them believe that the Torah is real. and they call it the Old Testament. They call it the original book. They say that their religion in Christianity, the New Testament, and in Islam, the Quran, is the second part. So our Torah is the first part, and their book is the second part. They believe that the Torah came from God at Mount Sinai, but they also believe that their New Testament or the Quran also came from God. Now, so...

1:26:14One thing that we all agree with, both the Jews, the Christians, and the Muslims, all agree that the Torah came from God. Everybody agrees the Torah came from God at Mount Sinai. Everybody agrees. No one disagrees with it. So that's already... No, so here's the thing. They all agree that the Torah itself is real. Now they say that their second book, their New Testament, is a continuation of the Torah. The Jews are saying it's not. It's not a continuation, it's nonsense. So how do you prove it? The way you prove it is that if you're saying that your second book, a continuation of the first book, that means that the two books need to agree with each other. Meaning that if the first book says that there was Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov—those were the forefathers—if your book says there was Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, and Steve, that's a problem. Why? Because you're contradicting the first book. If the first book says Yaakov came down to Egypt with 70 people...

1:27:19Here's the thing: the Old Testament is not wrong because no one says it's wrong. Everybody agrees it's right. The key here is to fight to prove if the New Testament is right or wrong. The way you prove it is by seeing that there are mistakes in it. So, there are mistakes where you see that the New Testament contradicts the Old Testament, and it's not possible. The New Testament was written by people; it wasn't written by God. Seeing that Jesus was a sinner. He was not a righteous person, right? Christianity was created between 70 to 300 years after he died. Meaning, Jesus himself never created Christianity. Jesus was actually a Jew. He was a sinner, a very big sinner. No, it's an actual fact. These are historical facts and... he doesn't believe he's a sinner, but he knows that Christianity was created after Jesus died. It wasn't during his life. During his life, he was a Jew. Christianity was created after he died. But the point is that you'll see in this movie and other things that I could show you. You'll see that the New Testament has mistakes in it. Yes, the New Testament has mistakes in it. It's a CD you put in a computer or in the car, and

1:28:40you could go online. You could just type in my name, type in the name of the lecture. You'll see it on YouTube. Uh-huh. Oh, Torah and Science, that's one of the DVDs. Yes, I'll give you Torah and Science, the Rabbi Mizrachi CD. He has it with him. I'll give it to you. So the point is that you have to see if there's a mistake. Once you see there's mistakes in the New Testament, then you know for sure if there's mistakes, there's no way that it's from God because God doesn't make mistakes. so once you see there's mistakes in a book, then you see that it's not divine anymore. So we see that there are no mistakes in the Torah, but there are plenty of mistakes in the New Testament. There are plenty of mistakes in the Quran that prove that they're fake. If you have a guy that you want to prove that Christianity is wrong, you have to show him the mistakes in the New Testament.

1:29:45No, the Old Testament is also another name for the Torah. The New Testament is all about Jesus. Yes, right. So what you have to do, the best thing to do, is to give him a lecture by somebody who is a professional and talks about that, proving to him that his religion is fake and... so the way you could do it is by either giving them that Torah and Science DVD or the debate. There are several things. If you send me a text message, I could send you a few different things you can give to this person. And if they learn it, they'll see clearly that their religion is complete nonsense. And they may actually even want to convert to Judaism. There could be seven Noahide laws, but the point is that many of them usually want more than just Noahide laws. Either way, if you have people that you care about who are not Jewish, there's no problem with you sharing that information with them. It's actually a mitzvah. Yeah, Noahide. Noahide. You have to keep the seven Noahide laws. Okay, seven Noahide laws, yeah. So,