Want To Be Yaakov When We Really Desire Like Esav

0:16B'Shem Hashem Na'aseh Ve'Natzliach, Shiur Torah, Baruch Haba'im, Shavua Tov, Chodesh Tov. The shiur B'ezrat Hashem tonight is Sunday night at Sha'arei Tzion. We are continuing our shiurim on Sunday nights. For the last month or so, we've been doing a different shiur, a different topic each week. So far, so good. Baruch Hashem, until further notice, maybe we'll start a series at some point. I know a few people have asked me about starting new series. They've suggested different sefarim to do it, but it's easier said than done to do a series on a sefer, even if you have the sefer. You have to really be baki in the inyan. You have to be an expert in the sefer if you're going to do a series on it because people are depending on you. Even if it's one person or a thousand people or, Baruch Hashem, tens of thousands of people watching the shiurim, You have to know what you're doing before you do a series. Plus, it's a very big commitment because a lot of the things that people suggest are usually big sefarim. So you're talking about a multi-year commitment, especially with the way I talk. You know, a short conversation for me is 45 minutes. How you doing? 45 minutes later. Good, good.

1:33So B'ezrat Hashem, today's shiur will be for refuah shlema for Sarah bat Levana, for Levana bat Sarah, for Ovadia ben Levana, Yosef ben Levana, Rav Efraim ben Shulamit, Rabbanit Sarah bat Anat, Chaim ben Sarah, also for Devorah bat Mercedes, and Elisheva Chaya bat Sarah. So today, some of the things I wanted to talk about are really less like we did in the last couple of lectures. and more of the practical day-to-day battle that each and every one of us deals with, where if you've been watching me for more than one or two lectures, by now you realize that we don't sugarcoat; we don't even know how to do it. We tell you what HaKadosh Baruch Hu said and what Chazal said, and take it as you may.

2:57You like it, you don't like it, it's really not my responsibility. My responsibility is to give you the emet, and you do what you please with it. The question is, what do you want to be? Do you want to be Yaakov, or do you want to be Esav? And in the merit of this week's parashat Toldot, where we meet both of them, we meet Esav and Yaakov, which in essence are the two powers in the world today. You have Yaakov, the tzaddikim, the people that are trying their best to do the will of Hashem. And you have Esav, which represents the rest of the people who are doing everything in their power to destroy everything that Hashem wants. The question is, who do you want to be? That's the question. Now, practically speaking, most people, if you're watching me after one, two, three, four, or five lectures, and you continue watching after that, you at the very least desire to be like Yaakov. You desire to be like Sarah Imeinu. You desire to be like Avraham, Yitzchak. You desire to be like Moshe Rabbeinu. Nothing less. You desire to be like Miriam. You desire to be like David HaMelech. You want to be. You hear so many wonderful things said about these people. Why wouldn't I want to be like them? What's the problem?

4:23Problem is that we have desires also while we desire to be like Yaakov. We also have desires like Esav. Not to be like Esav; we just desire the same stuff he does. We don't want the same verse to be written on us. It's "Esav saneti." Hashem hates Esav. No one wants Hashem to write a verse in the Torah in heaven saying, "It's such and such, I hate him." Oh, you know him? Yeah, I hate him. Who wants to go up to Shamayim and hear, "Oh, here's that guy. Yeah, Hashem, that's the guy you hate, right?" Yeah, yeah, that's him. Nobody wants that. Nobody wants to go up to Shamayim and be the one that everyone is pointing at, in every single generation. He's going to point at him, Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, Moshe, Aharon, David, Shlomo, all the tzaddikim from the beginning of time all the way to today, all going to point at him, "Oh, hey, it's the rasha. Hey, hey, it's the guy that You said You hate, Hashem." You don't want that. He's the guy that destroyed the Brit, Hashem. That's the guy. Yeah, that's the criminal. No one wants that. The embarrassment a person will have, he would want death all over again. The embarrassment a woman that lived her life immodestly in this world will experience in Shamayim, the second she arrives, she would want to die again. You can move the bag, Tzaddik. You can move the bag. It's not a holy...

5:44embarrassment she would feel just the second she arrives when every single generation from the beginning of time points at her and says, "Oh, that's the criminal." She would want to die again. Such embarrassment, no one wants to be. No one wants to be such a criminal, but we'll have to admit we have desires like Esav. We have desires like Esav, we do. So what do we do when we want to be like Yaakov, but our desire is not so much? Yaakov, he's in the tent all day learning Torah. Today a guy tells me, "Oh listen, I'm on a new level now. I studied a whole hour today. I watched a movie after. I watched HBO after, Hashem Yerachem." I watched, you know, sports after and a little bit before and sometimes during. But I did a whole hour today. I'm Yaakov, right? Mini, micro, something. The Y. You know, like the half of the Yud, maybe. People don't want to be Ish-Ohalim where you're in the tent 18, 19 hours a day. Okay, you don't have to be.

6:58Can you do eight? No? Okay, can you do five? How about this? Why don't you do a couple of hours? But just the rest of the time, stop making aveirot like Esav. How about that for a deal? That's the key. Not everyone can immediately elevate themselves to such a high level of Kedusha that they could take their body and simply ignore it. Ignore all of its desires and say, “No, no, no. Not now. Maybe later. Physical desires? No. On Shabbat. I'll see you on Shabbat. I'm learning all week. Talk to you on Shabbat.” Who can do that? Not many. Not many. A few, Baruch Hashem, in the world, but not that many. I have, Baruch Hashem, Talmidei Yeshiva, you know, they learn all day. They sin at night, Hashem Yerachem. They learn all day in the kollel, yeshiva, everything the rabbi tells them, but why do they call me? Because they're addicted to all the to'evot in the world.

8:08All the filth in the world are addicted. Meaning all of the Torah that they learn all day, all of it goes to the Sitra Achra. All of it goes to the Satan. Why? You learn all day, so it has to go somewhere. HaKadosh Baruch Hu does not want a Torah full of filth, so He has to give it to someone. Oh, we give it to the Satan. That's what the Zohar HaKadosh says about certain sins, especially the sins of the young ones. The young generation that's addicted to gilah arayot, women that are promiscuous in modesty, all of the mitzvot go to the Satan. But the good news is, when they do teshuva, they can get it all back and turn all of their aveirot into mitzvot, even more. The reality is, what's the difference between Esav and Yaakov? The difference is, Rabotai HaYekarim, is desires. They both have the same desires, just one controls them and one does not. Now we see in this week's parasha, Parashat Toldot, we meet Esav and Yaakov. Interestingly, after very little that we've learned about Yitzchak, which we'll, b'ezrat Hashem, if we have the time, we'll cover why there's so little about Yitzchak. You see, Avraham Avinu, three different parashot. Yaakov, the rest of Sefer Bereishit talks about Yaakov.

9:31Yitzchak, there's maybe, I don't know, five verses that mention his name. This is Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov. It's not like Avraham and, you know, Yaakov and there's someone in between. Yitzchak Kodesh Kodashim. But there's very little about Yitzchak. It seems like there's even more about Esav than there is about Yitzchak. How come? But here, when we first meet Esav, We see that already from the beten, already from his mommy's belly, he already had middot mushchatot. He already had corrupted character traits. He already desired avodah zarah. What does it mean he desired avodah zarah? Well, he wanted to go find Yoshke. That was his grandson, by the way. There's a mekubal that says that he found, I think I told you guys the chidush, the Esav gilgul of Yoshke. I gave you guys the chidush about this about a year ago. Yoshke is JC, Jesus the fool. By the way, for anyone who takes offense from me making fun of avodah zarah, good, get offended. Learn Gemara, you'll see that it's a mitzvah from the Torah to make fun of avodah zarah. Mitzvah. Mitzvah is just like you eat kosher, just like you put on tefillin, just like you keep Shabbat, you make fun of avodah zarah, it's a mitzvah.

10:53Sometimes people send me mail. "Oh, it's not so nice. You make fun of the Christians." I don't make fun of the Christians; I make fun of their beliefs. Why? To help them get out of that filth so they could also be part of Hashem's Olam HaBa. You know how many Christians I got out of that filth and now they're b'ezrat Hashem serving the King? Not me, but if I don't, it's okay. Everything is okay. "We love you, it's okay." Guess what? They get much worse. Inviting me to churches or something, then you guys are not gonna have a shiur. I'm kidding. Now I have to go to church. Anyway, rabotai, we see that Esav and Yaakov already in the beginning, there is a battle. There's a battle, a very famous battle. HaKadosh Baruch Hu tells their mother, Rivkah, "Vayomer Adonai la, shnei goyim be'viteich, u'shnei le'omim mimei'ayich yiparedu." You have two nations in your belly. How is it? One's a Jew, one's Christian. How could it be? Same belly. No conversion. No Beit Din. Already inside. Both one tzaddik, one rasha. How can it be?

12:11Chazal say that, why does this question, why did Rivka ask for this prophecy? She asked for news. What's going on here, HaKadosh Baruch Hu? I'm scared. I went by the Beit Midrash. Ben Porat Yosef, Ben Porat Alei Ayin, Yaakov is celebrating. He starts singing, "HaKadosh Baruch Hu, we love You," everything. He's happy. He's so quiet. But now it's Beit Midrash again. but she goes past the church, Hashem Yerachem. She starts dancing, starts doing all types of Christmas carols. By the way, as a side note, just to make you guys happy, Baruch Hashem, we took a little walk on Shabbat. You know, unfortunately, you live in America, you have goyim. Even in Jewish neighborhoods. Not necessarily are the goyim always bad. If you want to live in a Jewish neighborhood, you're also going to have goyim. And the goyim also express themselves. So part of the things they do at this time of the season is they put their Christmas stuff. You know, the Santa Shmenta, all that nonsense. Some fat guy with a suit that Coca-Cola invented. No, that's the truth. If you look at the history, who Santa Claus is,

13:35looks nothing like that guy. First of all, it was some guy from Christianity who invented him. But the reason why he's red and white is because Coca-Cola invented it. That's the history. People don't know that they're worshiping Coca-Cola. Now, when we pass by, how do you know that the education of a kid is going in the right direction? When you pass by, you know, my wife and I are talking, and the little babies in the carriages... And my daughter, God bless her, she points, "Ima, Ima, that's the yetzer hara, that's the yetzer hara." Pointing, "What, yetzer hara? Oh, look, Santa." I said that it was worth it to come to the world just for this. It was worth it to come to the world just for this. Now if that wasn't good enough, there were a few Jewish girls who forgot half their clothes at home. forgot to get forgetful. You wear like half a skirt and half a shirt. No, you know, walking around on Shabbat, you know, sometimes with my wife, God bless her, she shows my kids different videos, educational videos, Torah a little bit, now all types of things, and uses the internet for it. And sometimes, you know, it has an advertisement. So my wife tells them, "Close your eyes, advertisement." Why? Because 99% of the time...

15:02It's filth on these advertisements. They show you half-naked women selling soap. What does the half-naked woman have to do with the soap? I have no idea. Get a car wash today, but there's a naked woman. What does it have to do with her? I'm getting a car wash. Everything is always filth. So my wife, God bless her, what does she do? She tells the kids, "Close your eyes, advertisements." That's what she does. So we keep walking, same walk, same walk, walking, walking, walking, and then these girls are walking up the street, and Ovadia says, "Ima, advertisement, close your eyes, advertisement, close your eyes." Two and a half year old tzaddik. Just for that, it was worth it to come to the world. I could go to Olam Haba and say, "Hashem, I did it." No, come on, find me, come on, advertisement. I should call, from now on, that's what I'm calling ima alisti, advertisement. Advertisement. Watch out. Close your eyes, Ima. Advertisement. So I figured I'd make you guys a little happy in the beginning. If I scare you, no. So now we see Esav and Yaakov already battling. Yaakov wants to go to the Beit Midrash, learn Torah. Esav wants to go to a place of Avodah Zarah. He wants to be Buddha, Shmuda, all those things. What does it really mean?

16:20Christianity wasn't even born yet. Buddhism, no one's even heard of it. What does it really mean? He wanted to go to a place of Avodah Zarah. So the truth is, we find this out shortly later when Esav sees Yaakov after he did what he did throughout the day and He sees that Yaakov has a dish, a nice, beautiful dish of food, and he says to him, "Give me from this red, red stuff. Give me this red, red stuff because I'm really tired," to the point where he's almost going to die, he says. And on that, his name became Edom. He wants something Adom because the dish was red. Adom is red. And because of that, his name is Edom, which sounds like Adom. Edom sounds like Adom. So what, if you eat cholent, your name is Cholent?

17:35You eat some schnitzel, your name is now schnitzel? No, what's the real meaning here? What's HaKadosh Baruch Hu trying to tell us? He's trying to give us an answer. What did Esav really desire in the beginning when he was still in the belly of his mom? Materialism. Materializing HaKadosh Baruch Hu. He wanted an image. We say in our Torah, HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, He has no body, He has no likeness of a body. Christians, what do they say, or they call themselves now a new or revised name, Messianic Jews—same thing as Christianity, by the way. There's nothing Jewish about Messianic Jews. Even the sign is not Jewish. What do they say? They say, no, no, God is really your skin. God, you know, made Himself into a body. Unfortunately, some Jews think that their rabbi became a body also, became God also, as I showed you guys a couple of weeks ago from my recording. You see, that's what they learn in certain yeshivot in the world. That their rabbi, who was a tzaddik, unfortunately, they are turning everything that he stood for into the opposite. They tell you that the rabbi became G-d, or a piece of G-d, or something G-d, whatever shtuyot comes into their head. So, you can't trust anyone anymore to protect you from Esav. Why? Because Esav, what does he want? He wants materialism, to materialize G-d.

18:59materialize every desire, everything he wants, he wants it now. Everything she wants, she wants it today. She wants it yesterday. "Why are you late? I should have known what I wanted before I told you." Addiction to stuff. So now, each one of us is trying in our own ways to be like Yaakov. Why? Because we know that Yaakov's end is both; Hashem is very good. Yaakov, HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, et Yaakov ahavti. Yaakov, I loved him. I love Yaakov. Like He loved Avraham, like He loved Yitzchak, He loves Yaakov. From Yaakov, we are all here. All of Am Yisrael comes from Yaakov. But Esav sanei’ti, I hate Esav. Even though they're brothers, even though they both have the same father, even though they both have the same grandfather, everything is the same, they all grew up, they were almost identical. Until they were teenagers. So much so...

19:59But Chazal say that originally, even though the desires of Esav were terrible, he also had things that were good to such an extent that half of Am Yisrael's tribes were supposed to come from Esav—six and six. But because he chose to fulfill his desires in this world, he lost his Olam Haba. He lost his Olam Hazeh. He lost everything. So, we want the end of Yaakov, who got all 12 tribes. We want to have a blessing written on us in Shamayim, not curses, not hatred. When I arrive to Hashem and say, "Oh, tzaddik or tzaddeket has arrived," a nice welcome. That's what we want. But we have desires. We have desires that make us, unfortunately, sometimes act like Esav. So, The question is, how do we deal with this? Now, there was a certain Rishon, a certain Chacham, who lived almost 800 years ago, after Rabbeinu Yonah and the Ramban. His name was the Rashba, Rabbi Shlomo ben Aderet. And in his sefer, one of his sefarim, Chidushei Aggadot,

21:25He writes the commentary and explanation on all of the different stories in the Gemara, all of the different Aggadot that we have. Some people like to make fun of the Torah, even if they call themselves religious. Why? Because they don't understand what it says. They don't understand the real significance and the depth of the story, so they assume it's optional to believe this. Anytime somebody says it's optional to believe something that's in the Gemara, that only shows you one thing: that person has exercised their option not to read the Gemara. Why? Because the Gemara says if you don't believe something that's in the Gemara, you're a kofer. You cannot be counted in the minyan, even if you give yourself the title of rabbi. Unfortunately, there are certain people in the world who say it's optional to believe certain things and... First, understand what's being said. Then criticize it. Then say what you want to say. See what all the chachamim before you have said. Don't think that you're such a big chacham that you could just decide that you're going to criticize all of the giants that came before you. Now, the Rashba, he wrote a book, took all the Aggadot that are in the Shas, and he gave commentary and deep explanation about each and every one of them.

22:53And one of the Gedolei HaDor from a little over a hundred years ago, Rabbi Yechiel Michel Feinstein, the uncle of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, he was also a giant in the Torah, and he would say that learning the Rashba, learning the Rashba, strengthens your mind, makes your mind straight. Makes it straight where it takes your brain to good places. This is something that is very much needed in our generation because you see that sometimes people learn Torah, but they still have thoughts of kefirah. Many times those thoughts of kefirah stem from two places. One, a specific sin of gilui arayot, For men, it's wasting seed. For women, it's promiscuity, or even if she's immodest regularly. And the second thing is a teacher who is a heretic himself. If you learn from a heretic, you will become a heretic. Why? Because we do not have such mental prowess and such holiness that we can decipher the holiness within the heresy that he says.

24:19That's what the Gemara in Moed Katan says: if your teacher, if your rabbi has middot and character traits like a Malach Hashem, he's trying to be a Malach Hashem, he's trying to be a good guy, learn from him. But if he has filthy character traits, he's arrogant, he does all types of things, he makes fun of the chachamim, he makes fun of the Torah, he makes fun of all types of things that are holy, not allowed to learn from him. Not that you shouldn't — not allowed. On the first one, it says you should learn from him. You should learn from the guy that's trying to be a tzaddik like a Malach Hashem. The second one, it says, not allowed. Not that you shouldn't; it means it's an aveirah. It means it's a sin to learn from someone that's a heretic. Unfortunately today, rabotai yekarim, somebody asked me just a few days ago, started a new website in the UK, torasecrets.uk.com for some rabbis, but he asked me, can you recommend some rabbis I could put on the channel. I gave him a few names, and he asked, "Do you have any more?" I said, "I'm sorry. I can't vouch for anybody else. I don't know. I mean, there might be other people. I personally can't vouch for anybody else in the English-speaking world. There are so many, yeah, but today the number is great. But as far as someone that I could say, you know what? I'll put my Olam HaBa on it that this guy says kosher Torah and..."

25:48can't tell you this one is good, that one I know. The ones that are bad, I know. A few that are good, but not many. Not many. Why? Because unfortunately, it's only a matter of time before you see some of these people taking it, crumpling it like toilet paper, and deciding to give their own opinion instead. Why? For the comfort of the tzibur, the comfort of the crowd. Whatever is popular with this kehillah, we'll say here. Whatever is popular with that kehillah, we'll say there. If they speak to Charedim, they'll talk about stuff like that. If they speak to Modern Orthodox, they'll talk about stuff like that. And they change. You know, like Plato. Someone like that, now let's learn from him. So, now the Rashba, He's one of the Rishonim, one of the giants that we had. That is, Torah strains your mind, meaning that it literally, once you learn it, you literally understand how you're supposed to think. How you're supposed to think about everything. And he has a beautiful chidush. It says in the Gemara Masechet Berachot, page 58, it says that Rabbi Meir Baal HaNes, any time it says Rabbi Meir in the Gemara, it's Rabbi Meir Baal HaNes.

27:04Just like anytime it says Rabbi Shimon, Rabbi Shimon, Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai. Now, even though Rabbi Meir has several names, and his name was really not Rabbi Meir, the reason why he's called Rabbi Meir is because Meir means he brought light. What light? He brought light to the world with his Torah, with his holiness. Now, the Rashba says that Rabbi Meir says that at the time of Yam Suf, when HaKadosh Baruch Hu split the ocean, We hear, we see from the Torah, the Rin Torah, that it says something that we say regularly. All of Am Yisrael started singing with Moshe Rabbeinu about HaKadosh Baruch Hu, sanctifying Him. And then Rabbi Meir Baal HaNes says, when it says the verse, "This is my God and I will glorify Him." Who said this? Who sang this? Who was doing this? Now, Rabbi Meir Baal HaNes says the little babies inside their mommy's bellies, they were singing. The belly became transparent. Women who got pregnant already at the time of Egypt, that means that they had six of them.

28:26Six little babies. Every woman has a belly. The belly becomes transparent. You get six little munchkins pointing at the Shamayim. This is my G-d, and I will glorify Him. Imagine. So, Rabbi Meir says, the babies inside their mommy's bellies were the ones that were singing the Shirah L'Hashem. Where do we learn this from? We learn this from the book of Tehillim. David HaMelech writes a Psalm in chapter 68, verse 27. He says, "In congregations, bless God, my Lord, all who descend from Israel."

29:29So, the Rashba says, what does this verse have to do with this? He says, this is the verse that talks about the kids, the babies, pointing. They were descendants of Am Yisrael. They were pointing and saying, "This is God and I will glorify Him." How do we know he's talking about the babies? It says, the Gemara in Masechet Nida, says Makor is another name for the private part of a woman. So Makor Mekoma Tameh, Tameh. So the Gemara of Masechet Niddah says that a Makor is Tameh, meaning it becomes Tameh, which is the part of the female body. Once a month, she has a time of the month, it becomes Tameh. And the Gemara goes into extent and details how the Tumah of the Niddah is more impure than anything else in the world.

30:30Not that it makes the woman a bad woman, not that chas v'shalom it makes her evil, chas v'shalom. In essence, this is a time of the month the woman is forbidden to her husband. If she has her friend, her girlfriend, and her girlfriend, every time she sees her she wants to give her a hug, no problem. Her husband, on the other hand, is not allowed to touch her. Why? She's tameh to him. She's also never allowed to touch any other guy. But the point being is that, unless it's her father, And some say, yeah, what about her brother? What about her brother? If she's a grown woman, the Rambam says, if she's a grown woman and she touches or hugs her grown brother, only stupid people do this. That's what the Rambam says, that's the actual language of the Rambam. Meaning, it's not a sin like it is with some strange man, because that's completely forbidden. You see sometimes at weddings, Bar Mitzvot, all types of things, or at the Beit Knesset sometimes, You see women that are married hugging their next-door neighbor or different people. Ah, how are you? How are you? How are you? HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, I'm out of here. This is a place of Gilui Arayot. Where is she hugging you? No, it's Beit Knesset. They're good friends. What good friends? She's an Eshes Ish. She's a married woman. She's not allowed to touch any other man. Not allowed to touch any other man. Even her husband, the Shulchan Aruch says, she's not allowed to touch him in public. In your private home?

31:55No problem. As long as she's not niddah. In public, you're not even allowed to hold your husband's hand. That's what the Shulchan Aruch says. But unfortunately, people are confused in this generation. Why? They've modernized the Torah so much that you see many times rabbis, rabbis of kehillot, have their profile pictures on their websites or Facebook pages with their wives and kids, hugging their wife. You know, they want to show the people that they love their wife. What they're not understanding is they're showing the people also, if the people understood, they're showing that they hate Hashem. Why? They don't follow His law. They may not mean that, but that's what it shows. You can't tell your wife, "Honey, I love you," and you have a girlfriend on the side. You can't. You could say "I love you" until you turn blue in the face. If you have a girlfriend on the side, you don't love anybody other than yourself. So now, isha nida, an impure woman, she has a time of the month, she's forbidden to her husband. By default, any woman that's not married, she's not allowed to go to the mikveh, which means she is always nida. So all of the guys that have girlfriends, if you want Gan Eden, leave your girlfriend or get married immediately. You want Gehinnom, continue ignoring me. Continue ignoring the Torah.

33:20Why? Every time you touch your girlfriend, whether it's touching hands or, Hashem yirachem, even worse, every single time, you are building yourself a nice penthouse in Gehinnom. This is what the Torah says. Why? Because it's issur niddah. Issur niddah is one of the worst crimes in the Torah. To such an extent that the Arizal says, if you violated the issur niddah one time, one time you were with the niddah, one time. One time. Not every week, every day. Some guys, they find a new wife every day. They think they're having a good time. One time you touch the niddah, you have to fast 82 times. Pretty much kill yourself. 82 times. One time. Now, obviously, since our generation is very, very weak, no one can fast 82 times unless they're an extremely holy person. And they divide it over a period of time. What do you do if you had Baal teshuvah, or even if you're not, but whatever you are and you did it a bunch of times, what do you do? First of all, stop. Don't tell me "I love her" or "I don't love her," don't tell me anything. Tell Hashem. Second, you have to stop the relationship. You have to make sure you never do it again. Don't put yourself in a scenario where it's going to happen again.

34:44Third, you have to start doing serious teshuvah by learning about the topic that’s going to give you strength to continue not doing it again. And fourth of all, you have to help other people discover the truth about issur niddah. Even if you're married and you never knew that you're not allowed to be with your wife whenever you feel like it, or your wife didn’t feel like going to the mikveh, but now, Baruch Hashem, you learn and she goes to the mikveh, you still have to do teshuvah. You have to educate people to let them know. How do you educate them if you're not an educator? You give them the shiur, you fast forward it to them, you press share. It helps you. Last but not least, you have to do tikkun. What's a tikkun? Just like the tikkun for wasting seed. Each time a person wasted seed, it's 84 fasts. Each time he touched nida, it's 82 fasts. Each time. So now, people can't fast that many times. What do they do? They do it with money. I mean, say you have to take money. How much money does it cost you to eat per day? How much money does it cost you to eat per day? Let's say, for example, it costs you, I don't know, $10 a day to eat. Unless you eat out every day, then it's going to cost you $100 a day. No wonder nobody has any money left! But the point is, if you eat at home, it costs you, let's say, $10 a day to eat.

35:59That means for each time you sinned, you have to fast 82 times. So that is 82 times 10. $820. You have to donate to zikui harabim, to kiruv, to help people do teshuva because that helps you with both aspects. Now, what if you did it a thousand times and you don't have $8 million? No problem. HaKadosh Baruch Hu knows you don't have $8 million. What do you have? You have $82. You have $800. You have $8,000. What do you have? You have something. Everybody has something. Start with something. And then make it on a regular basis. Little by little, you're going to start doing it. Even if it's literally $8. Or $8,000. Whatever you have, start donating for this specific purpose on a regular basis. Every single month. Every time you get a paycheck. Why? You have to fix it. You don't want to show up to Shamayim with these sins undone. Some people go to the extent where they literally go to Yerushalayim, to the neighborhood of the Bucharim. There's a place over there full of Mekubalim. They do specific tikkunim for people. They still donate to kiruv and other places. They don't have to necessarily donate to the Mekubalim. But the point being is that people that understand are very, very scared of showing up to Shamayim with these sins on their hands. Needless to say, issur nida is no different than the issur of wasting seed.

37:18Many times it's both; many times he was with the girl and he wasted seed. So, it's both that he has to fix. The point being about fixing is that doing teshuvah is not cheap and it's not easy. But HaKadosh Baruch Hu is not expecting you to do it overnight. He's simply expecting you to start, to do something, to do something on a regular basis. So now, the word makom means the area of the woman, and... Now that we know that this verse that's talking about the babies, pointing at HaKadosh Baruch Hu and saying this is Hashem and I'll glorify Him, we have a miracle to explain. What's the miracle? It's a miracle that most people either don't know about or don't discuss. What miracle? The Rashba says it's well known that pregnant women could have miscarriages if they see scary things or they have too much anxiety. Yet, despite the fact that Am Yisrael had the Egyptians chasing them to kill them from behind, the ocean in front of them, and a desert on the right and left full of anacondas and scorpions the size of humans, and

38:48No one, no one in Am Yisrael had a miscarriage. If you're going to talk about anxiety, what, you're late for rent, you're late on your mortgage, is that bigger anxiety than being where Am Yisrael was before the Yam Suf split? Even after the ocean split, how do you know it's not going to collapse on top of you? Even after the split, you go walk in the middle of the ocean and, oh, yeah, it's not gonna split; I'm the last one. Maybe it's gonna be a mistake. I'm gonna be the last one. It's gonna fall on me. Maybe the Egyptians are gonna catch up. What ended up happening is that the whole Yam Suf was like the shape of a rainbow. You went in one end and you came back to the same end. So many of Am Yisrael didn't know what happened to the Egyptians. They thought that it's a trap and... So much anxiety. You're carrying six little tinokim, tinokot, in your belly, and you're not anxious. So the Rashba says, look at this miracle. This place, naturally, naturally, with the nature that HaKadosh Baruch Hu instilled into the world, Yam Suf was supposed to turn into a Beit Kvarot, a cemetery. A cemetery, Hashem Yerachem, of babies.

40:12That's how scary it was, the whole thing. But yet, Baruch Hashem, HaKadosh Baruch Hu miraculously strengthened the hearts of the women, making this one of the biggest miracles that's not discussed. So now the question that arises is, who said the shira? Who's the one that actually said the song? The babies. The babies were the ones that were singing. Why were the babies the ones that were singing? Because they were the ones that were singing, praising HaKadosh Baruch Hu for not killing them. They were praising HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Why? Because right now, at any moment, at any moment, she gets stressed out, we're finished, guys. One guy tells his five brothers and sisters, "Hey guys, listen, everything's on the line right now." Everything's on the line. I'm nervous. The other one says that I'm also nervous. They speak Hebrew, by the way. Yeah, nervous, nervous. Everybody's nervous. Why? Any minute, we're out of here. But miraculously, they see everything is good. They see HaKadosh Baruch Hu in the heavens, opens the heavens. They point, everything is good. They start singing to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. You guys, while you're there, you just don't remember. Bad memories. Now,

41:43So what's the meaning of the end of the verse itself when it says Mekor Yisrael? Now that we know the Mekor has the meaning, the hidden meaning of referring to the babies, but what's the Pshat? Meaning, it still says the basic meaning of the verse says Mekor Yisrael, meaning the descendants of Yisrael. So the Rashba gives the chiddush that all of this preparation was for. He says, Mekor Yisrael, descendants of Yisrael, means this: One of two options is available. One, that the only babies that were saved and not miscarried were descendants of Am Yisrael, but there were some miscarriages among them.

42:43Who? The Erev Rav. The Erev Rav, the wicked ones, those that came from Egypt, wanted to fake conversions. There could have been some miscarriages among them. Why? Because they're not descendants of Am Yisrael. But he says there is an option two. Option two is, due to the merits of Mekor Yisrael, of the descendants of Am Yisrael, even the Erev Rav got protected. There were no miscarriages even for them. explaining two things. One, there is a significant difference between Mekor Yisrael Yaakov and Erev Rav Esav. You have to know this. In your mind, you have to make this huge difference in your mind. Why? Because you may have a relative that you care for that's potentially Erev Rav.

43:44You may have a father, a mother, a sister, a son, a daughter, a husband, a wife that's Erev Rav. Because with all of the stuff that's happened over the generations, HaKadosh Baruch Hu spread Erev Rav even among the Jews. You don't know who's Erev Rav just by looking at them. You only know by what comes out of their mouth and how they behave. So the first thing the Rashba teaches us is that you have to make a distinguishing difference in your own mind. There is a difference. There's Yaakov, there's a kosher Jew, and there's Erev Rav. Even if that Erev Rav is your cousin. No, I love him, though. He's a good guy. So what? He doesn't keep Shabbat. So what? He has a website against rabbis, but he's a good guy. He lent me a few dollars last month. He has the qualifications of Erev Rav. Don't go there and tell him, by the way, you're Erev Rav, but he has the qualifications. But don't lose hope. Why? Because of the second part.

44:45Second part is that the power of Yaakov can even save the Erev Rav. The power of the Kedusha of Yaakov, if implemented the right way, can even save the Erev Rav. Cousin, your uncle, your father, your mother, your nephew, your son, your daughter, your wife—right now hates Torah and everything about it. She has a whole webpage against me. She has a webpage, "I Hate Yaron Reuven." Why? Because he teaches Torah well. No problem. You can still save even her. No problem, you could save her. Will you? That's a different story. It's possible to save them—hard but possible. I wouldn't necessarily invest all my energy in trying to save Erev Rav, because there are plenty of people who are Yaakov that just don't know it, and you could save them easily. But nonetheless, don't lose hope, don't get offended. Don't get to a point where you're going to give up. No, no, it's okay. Every one of us is related to some Erev Rav. Even if they're not mamash Erev Rav, they act like it. So now, Rabbi Ephraim asks,

46:04Each one of us has to ask ourselves a question. It's easy to look in the mirror and say, I'm Mekor Yisrael. I'm Yaakov. I'm Yaakov. Yeah, that guy. That guy who's sitting next to me. That guy on the bus. That guy who works next to me. He's Erev Rav. I'm Mekor Yisrael. Every one of us really looks at ourselves. We're Mekor Yisrael. We're Yaakov. Everybody else is Erev Rav. Question is, who do we act more like? If we're looking to fulfill every single desire and every whim that we have, that's what Esav, their grandfather, was doing. If every time there's food being offered, you go even if you're not hungry, that's a little bit of Esav-ish. If somebody tells you, listen, there's a shiur Torah, you want to come? Are they serving food there? No? Oh no, I'm busy.

47:05I'm busy. No, it's a shiur Torah. Were they offering food? Yeah, maybe they have some cupcakes. No, you know, I had some cupcakes. Oh, it's a shiur Torah. Oh, there's food? Yeah, they're giving Chinese food. Okay, I'm coming. I'm coming. Yeah, but didn't you just eat? Yeah, yeah, but you know, a little Chinese food can never hurt. A little Chinese food can never hurt. That's a little bit of Erev Rav-ish. Not saying don't come. I'm just saying if you only come because of the food, it's a little Erev Rav. A little bit. It's like Midat Erev Rav. It's like, you know, sometimes you get a car wash or something and the guy missed a spot, but that's the main spot you brought the whole car to fix, and he missed it. That's it. It's like, yeah, you washed the car, it's good, but You missed the whole thing, the whole point of why I'm paying you. Twenty dollars is for that one spot! Come on! That's the point. If you're only coming for the food, okay, come, it's okay, but... So now, rabotai yekarim, sometimes we don't know that we act like it. For example,

48:32In my shiur in California, some time ago, a few people in the crowd found it funny. And since I don't have many jokes, I remember my jokes. I said, sometimes a person, you know, he likes a song that says "Hashem." Well, it makes him feel holy. So, there are a few songs that secular singers sing. One famous one is, "Whoever has emunah is never scared." Another one is, "We love you." And sometimes you see people singing these songs, you know, they're jamming in their car while they're driving on Shabbat. Yeah, he just finished Kiddush. He's all pumped up with Hashem. Yeah, Hashem Melech, Hashem Malach. He's got, you know, he's got Nissim Black on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, while he's driving on Shabbat. He forgot that on Shabbat, he's not supposed to drive. He forgot that you're actually singing Hashem Melech while you're spitting in His face.

49:51While you're stepping on Him. While you're stepping on His Torah and burning it to pieces. With every single time that you turn on the ignition. Every single time you press the pedal. You're burning Hashem's Torah every single time you press the pedal. Anywhere from 6,000 to 10,000 times. If you ask any Jew, even if the Jew doesn't like the Torah, even if he's a lefty liberal but still somewhat normal, which is kind of hard to find but nonetheless exists, even if she's a feminist, even if she's one of these unshackled, you tell him, "Listen, man. Here's a Sefer Torah, a hundred thousand dollars. Do me a favor and burn it for me." Almost, you're almost never gonna find a Jew to do this. I say "almost" because there are, unfortunately, some surprises. But nonetheless, it's hard to find a Jew that's willing to burn the Torah. Even during the Holocaust, there are stories. One particular guy was a complete, complete heretic. They asked him to burn the Torah. He said, "No, I'm not burning the Torah." The Nazis asked him to burn the Torah, do his business on top of the Torah. He says, "No." They said, "We're going to kill you." He says, "Kill me." And they killed him.

51:11During his life, he didn't keep a single mitzvah, married a goya, worshiped idols, did everything possible. During the Holocaust, he had to save his life. Do your business on top of this Torah? No. Burn this Torah? No. They killed him. The same thing happened at the Beit HaMikdash. One rasha in the Gemara made every sin under the sun. Titus asked him to do certain things for him against the Torah. He wasn't willing to do it. He killed him, cut him to pieces like steak. He was willing to do it before this whole thing. But to save his life, he wasn't willing to do it. Why? Because we don't think that when we drive on Shabbat, or when we go with a married woman who's not our wife... or when we eat non-kosher, or when we go with a girlfriend without marriage, or waste seed, or even forget to put on tefillin for like a year straight. You know, forget. You forgot to put on tefillin for a year straight. Or you forget half your dress at home. You only wear the mini part at the bottom. Or you walk around without sleeves, without arms, nothing. As a woman, you forgot to do the mitzvot. You're burning the Torah. You're burning the Torah.

52:32Woman tells me today, "Listen, I have a problem." "What's the problem?" "We grew up in an Orthodox home. Everything is good, but my daughter now, she's in her 20s. She has a non-Jewish boyfriend. Orthodox home, everybody's religious. But the girl is... I want to marry her... she's..." She wants to marry Mustafa. How could this be? In the same message, it says, yeah, you know, the reason why she didn't really care is because she was really agnostic. In so many words, she's atheist or close to it. That's the truth. How Orthodox is she if she doesn't follow the Torah and mitzvot? We don't think that violating the Torah is burning it. That's why sometimes you'll see oppresses Jewish praying on Shabbat while he's driving on Shabbat, saying, "Oh, I love you," while he's violating Shabbat, while he's violating every mitzvah in the Torah. Because we don't have the connection between the two. It has been damaged by what? By Esav's desires. We have a desire to go to a nightclub so we can meet someone.

53:52that can fulfill our animalistic behavior. So that desire, we're so enamored by it, we're so addicted to it, that we forget that there's a connection between Hashem and Shabbat. We forget there's a connection between marriage and being with somebody. We forget that the desire that Esav lost his olam haba is what's ruining ours. So that's why, even though sometimes you're not from Zera Amalek, you're not from Esav, you're Yaakov. We act like Esav. Now, Am Yisrael at the time of the ocean, really the ocean has a malach, an angel. And the angel came to HaKadosh Baruch Hu And said, I don't want to split the ocean for these people. I don't want to split it for them. Why should I split it for them? Why? Because they... What? Because they're descendants of Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov. They have nothing to do with them. Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov were tzaddikim. These people, the Midrash says, some of the people brought their avodah zara to the ocean. They crossed the ocean with the avodah zara in the bags.

55:18That statue is in the bags. So the angel goes to Hashem and says, "These Am Yisrael, these Bnei Yisrael are worshipping idols. Look, they have in their bags, idols. And the Egyptians that are chasing to kill them also worship idols. So why should I split for them and drown the others? It's not fair." So truly, out of everybody, there weren't many tzaddikim. There weren't many tzaddikim yet. Later on, they would become tzaddikim. But truly, there were only a few. A few people that were so righteous that they had confidence in HaKadosh Baruch Hu, that they wanted the Torah, they wanted to fulfill the mitzvot, and they had trust in Hashem to no extent. You had Moshe Rabbeinu, Aharon HaKohen, Miriam, all, you know, the prophets. You had Yehoshua ben Nun, Kalev ben Yefuneh, Yad Nachshon ben Aminadav jumped into the ocean first. You had a few, but not many. So who did the ocean split for? You can't say it split just for those handful of people. Maybe, oh, you had Shevet Levi. Okay, so you have, let's say, 20,000 or 30,000 people. But you have millions there. You have millions of people. Who did the ocean split for?

56:44So the Rashba goes into this whole miracle. He says on page 30 that there's an angel teaching every baby the entire Torah. But to such an extent, while he's in the belly, while she's in the belly, for nine months, the angel teaches them Torah. that's far beyond what their body is going to be able to handle once they leave. He gives them abilities they will not have normally once they leave. For example, a baby can see from one end of the world to the other end of the world. If their father went on a trip to some other country, he could see him. No problem. He doesn't need a phone, doesn't need Skype, nothing. Abba, you better remember to bring him a present. That's what he thinks. He knows what's going on. A lot of things that the angel gives the abilities of the baby, a human being afterward cannot do. But in addition to that, he teaches them an immense amount of Torah, the entire Torah. So although there was Moshe, Aharon, the tribe of Levi, Nachshon ben Aminadav,

58:09Yehoshua ben Nun, Kalev, Miriam, and a few others had bitachon in Hashem. The ones that had the most bitachon were the babies because they literally were learning the Torah and seeing Hashem live. So although Hashem said that based on nature... The teva, or nature, is another name for God. The numerical value of "teva" is 86, the same as the numerical value of "Elohim" (86). Teva, or nature, is just another way Hashem disguises His own behavior. So although, according to the nature that Hashem instilled into the world, the women shouldn't have been able to keep the pregnancy, and...

59:09The bitachon that the babies had while they were inside them, learning the Torah, seeing Hashem, singing to Hashem, was so high that it was impossible for Hashem to let anything hurt any of them. Hence, the reason why He split the ocean for them. So now, the Rashba asks the question: What about the babies of the Erev Rav? If they were saved, not the ones that died. Let's say the ones that were saved. We go with the argument that they were saved due to the merit of Bnei Yisrael, Mekor Yisrael. What about the babies of the Erev Rav? They were going to turn into being resha'im. So the Rashba says, it says that from the root of a snake came the viper. From here, we learn that these babies grew into the ones that torture us to this day. We saved them, but there were a few of them that didn't do teshuvah. More than a few. Until this day, they're torturing us. Until this day, they're being born. How are they being born? A person who doesn't ensure

1:00:33that his home is full of Kedusha and Tahara. The Rashba says these resha'im, these vipers, will come from him, meaning that they're already evil while they're in the belly of their mother. We learn this from Esav and Yaakov. Esav, although he had traits to do great things, already had evil traits from the beginning. Now the Ohr HaChaim HaKadosh elaborates on this. What does it mean if they don't act with Kedusha and Tahara? If they don't learn Torah, they don't do mitzvot. If the father doesn't learn Torah, don't be surprised if your son wants to be a football player. If the father doesn't watch his brit, don't be surprised if your daughter wants to marry Yoshke. If the mother doesn't keep Taharat Mishpacha, Don't expect anything out of this kid other than bad. Why? Because that's what the Torah says. And that's what the Ohr HaChaim says. In Parashat Tazria, the Ohr HaChaim says that all of the behavior and holiness of a child will stem from the Kedusha of the parents during the act itself—how they behave during the time that they're intimate.

1:02:02Don't complain if your 17, 18-year-old kid has no interest whatsoever in Moshe Rabbeinu. But he could tell you everything about Messi and Ronaldo. He could tell you everything about the salary cap of the NBA, the NFL, and MLB. He can tell you everything about every sport. He can tell you who won the last contest on some singing show. He can tell you everything about that stuff. But you tell him, listen, what about Shabbat, mitzvot, Esav, Yaakov, any of that stuff? No interest whatsoever. Why? Because that means you have something to do with it as a parent. Where do we learn it from? From the root of the snake comes the viper. You're the snake. That's what the Ohr HaChaim says. You're responsible for it. It doesn't mean it's permanent. It doesn't mean that you can't do anything about it. But don't blame God for it. You did something. Now, Masechet Kallah Rabbati in Perek Aleph says that there are certain people that are considered like mamzerim. A mamzer is someone that comes from a forbidden relationship.

1:03:15between a man and somebody else's wife, an eshet ish. The son from there is a mamzer. A mamzer is forbidden to marry a normal Jew. He's only allowed to marry another mamzer or a convert. Not to say that the convert, chas v'shalom, is lesser than a normal Jew, but that the convert could actually rescue This mamzer, from eternity of being a mamzer, he's a mamzer. His kids are going to be mamzerim. That's like his descendants' way out of being a mamzer. But they cannot marry a normal Jew. Many times, people would know who they were and what they were in the previous generation. There used to be a book. Sefer that every community had where you came from. Who's your father? Who's your mother? So, if there was a mamzer, they knew that you're not allowed to marry certain people. We lost this sefer in every generation. We lost it. So now we're forcing Hashem's hand, forcing Hashem's hand to do His will in order to eliminate this. Sometimes you see strange deaths in the world. Sometimes that's the reason. I know firsthand a story. Someone

1:04:34told me that he discovered later in his life that he himself was a product of incest. He himself was a product of incest. His mother had intimacy with her brother. Now, she didn't know he was her brother, though. The mistake was really done by her mother. Anyway, long story short, she fell in love with who? With her brother, who she didn't know was her brother. One of them came up. This guy already found out when he was older. He's married and has kids. He had a kid. What are you gonna do? I saw this firsthand. I'm telling you, it was one of the scariest stories I've ever seen in my life. I talked to him once as well, and his pride and joy was his son. His whole life, his pride and joy was his son. His son had a kid. He was so happy. One day, he sends me a message, crying, hysterical. What happened? He said, we don't know what happened yet. All I know is my son decided to take his little baby son. His son's a grown man. He took his baby son, I think he was maybe six months old or a year old, to the store with him. He put him in a baby seat. Turned on the car, and the car exploded. They both died.

1:05:57He wasn't a mobster. He wasn't connected to any gang or drug dealing or anything. To this day, no one can explain why the car exploded. I can explain it by telling you that Hashem didn't want this scene in the world. It's very sad. But that's Yad Hashem. Yad Hashem. Sad, but it's a reality. Why? As long as he continues the lineage, he's continuing the original sin. Intentional or unintentional, it's irrelevant. So the Chazal says here in Masechet Kallah Rabati, in Perek Aleph, that there are certain people that are considered like mamzerim. They're not mamzerim mamash, but they have the character traits of the mamzer. And one of them, I'll give you just a couple of examples, I'm not going to go through all ten. Two examples. One,

1:06:59a child of a niddah, a child born from his mother when she was with her husband, but she didn't go to the mikveh. She wasn't pure; she either never went to the mikveh or they pretty much decided that this month they're not doing it, and they were intimate, and the child was born from that. She was niddah. The Chazal say this is like a mamzer. The child is going to be born with the worst character traits in the world. He's going to be a hoodlum. He's going to be this; he's going to be a lot of bad things. It's going to be very, very difficult for this child to get close to the Torah. He's going to have a certain disgust for the Torah. It's not understandable, like he doesn't know why he doesn't like it. No one knows why he doesn't like it because everybody else is, let's say, religious. He doesn't know why he doesn't like it. She doesn't know why she doesn't like it. Second example is that the Gemara says, that's like a mamzer, not an actual mamzer, is if the husband or the wife, while they were intimate with each other, were thinking about somebody else. Hashem yerachem. In today's world, these are normal things. Sometimes they go to marriage counselors and tell them, "Listen, what? Your intimate life is not good? Why don't you put on a video?"

1:08:26And look at all the disgusting filth in the world while you're together. Get yourself more excited about each other while you're thinking about some filthy person. This, rabotai, is the filth of filth. And HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, this is like a mamzer. Now, the Zohar HaKadosh says that a child that comes from a nidah, a child that comes like this, Child that's going to be literally as if the power of the Satan brought him into the world. He's going to have a lot of middot megunot, a lot of bad character traits that he can overcome, she can overcome, but they're going to be very difficult, much more difficult than the norm. The kid has never been with anybody in his life. He's 17 years old, but he wants to be with a guy. What do you think this comes from? She's never been with a man in her life. She's 18 years old, but she declares herself a lesbian. Why? Why do you have this rotten ideology in your head that you don't want to be with a man? You've never been with a man. All right, tell me, listen, I've been with somebody and I didn't like it. I'm disgusted. Okay, no, okay. So let's say, let's give that argument some value.

1:09:45Something bad happened to her, a rape, something like that, okay, I can understand you have trauma. But today, Rabotai, we have literally people, a woman called me a month and a half ago, tells me our 28-year-old daughter wants to be a man. We don't know why. I told her, how many men has she been with? She goes, never with anybody. There's something wrong. There's something wrong with the water here. Something happened when? Originally. 29 years ago, something went wrong. Now, it's a very important question though. Now, a lot of people that are frum or a lot of people that are Baalei Teshuva, if they're smart, they're gonna think about something right now, and they're gonna start getting worried about what I just said. Why? Two reasons if you're Baal Teshuva. There is a very, very high likelihood that your parents did not go to the mikveh. Your mom did not go to the mikveh if you're Baal Teshuva. Why? She didn't go to the mikveh. It's very rare, especially in the exile. Worse yet, as I told you guys recently, there was a study done by an institution in America in 2017.

1:11:06nearly half of the women that call themselves Modern Orthodox, which is like "religious with style" or something like "religious with a Ferrari," admitted that they're not so careful with nidda. Meaning, if they skip a month or two or three or nine, no big deal. More than half of that half said they don't go to mikveh at all. Meaning, they call themselves religious because they cook cholent for Shabbat. They may even keep Shabbat to the best of their ability. But mikveh, nothing. These are the Orthodox. Modern Orthodox, to be exact. Modern Orthodox, nearly half of the children are coming from nidda. Which the Zohar HaKadosh says, you have a serious problem because the power that kid's getting is from Satan himself. Now you have a problem. Why? All the Baalei Teshuva, what, we're all now Koch of Satan? All of the Modern Orthodox, what, they're all from the Satan? What's going on? So they asked this question to the Chazon Ish. Chazon Ish, Gadol Olam. They asked him, there are many Baalei Teshuva in this generation, they told him.

1:12:32that did teshuva after they had kids. Which means that their kids are b'nei niddah. Their kids came from niddah. They didn't know, they didn't care, a mix of both, whatever it is. Bottom line is, she's got three, four, five, six kids. Not a single one of them went to the mikveh beforehand, or one out of the five. Whatever the case is, what do we do with these people? Should we stay away from them? They asked the Chazon Ish, Gadol HaDor. Should we stay away from them? The Chazon Ish gives an answer worth a million dollars a month. We take payments, though. He says the following: He says, check the children's behavior. Check the children's middot. If they have good middot, they're generous, they're nice, they're not anti-Torah. If they have good middot, that means that the kedushah, the power of the kedushah of the teshuvah that they made, has destroyed the tumah of niddah.

1:13:49Teshuvah that the parents did or the child did is so powerful it destroyed the most powerful force in the world, which is niddah. So that already, Rabotai, gives every single one of us a "get out of jail free" card, regardless of where you started, whether it's Amalek or it's Yaakov or you don't even know, and... The power of teshuvah can destroy all tumah. Now, but here it gives us an explanation that because of our addiction to desires, to fulfill our animalistic desires, this is leading many people to have strange desires. She suddenly wants to be with a woman; he suddenly wants to be with a man, Suddenly, they don't want to be married at all. Suddenly, they want to do all types of weird things. These weird things are coming from somewhere. Now, one of the former Rishon LeTzion, Rav Shlomo Amar—he's currently the Chief Rabbi of Yerushalayim, one of the Gedolei HaDor—recently had a shiur, and he said in the shiur...

1:15:14The Torah says that before the Messiah comes, Am Yisrael will fall into the 50th level of Tumah, the worst possible level. Before we received Matan Torah, we had so much idolatry and so many sins, and everything that we did brought us to the 49th level of Tumah, the 49th level of impurity, that had we made one more sin in Egypt, Hashem would have had to destroy the world. Because if we reach the 50th level, there's no recovery from that. But the Or HaChaim says that before Mashiach comes, we will get to the 50th level. But the only reason Hashem will allow the 50th level is because now we have the Torah, whereas in Egypt we did not have the Torah, and now we can recover from it through the power of the Torah. But needless to say, we will get to a level much worse than they did in Egypt. Much worse than just the idolatry and the harlotry and all of that stuff. So the Amal says, "I didn't know what the 50th level of Tumah is until I started seeing what's happening in the world with all of this homosexuality and filth in the world."

1:16:38He says that he's been getting questions from people for decades. He's an older person. Decades he's been getting questions from people. All types of strange questions. All types of difficult questions about murderers, rapists, pedophiles. You know, all types of things. But he says what happened to him last week is he got a question that is still shaking him up. He couldn't sleep the whole night because of this question. And he knows we are in the 50th level. We're in the 50th level. Why? He says a rabbi calls him and tells him he has a complication. One of the people in the kehillah, Orthodox Jew, religious, Hareidi. Not Esav, Hareidi. But this husband, this guy has a problem. What's the problem? Although he's Hareidi, although his wife is Hareidi, they're religious, they're frum, their daughter,

1:17:38Decided she wants to marry a woman. She's religious, but she wants to marry a woman. If that's not bad enough, because it's not the first story—we had this in Sodom and Gomorrah. What made this question shake one of the good olim last week? He says the question is... The father says, I'm not going to the wedding. No way in the world. He's rebuking, no way I'm going to stand for the Torah. The wife, the wife of this Orthodox guy, says, if you don't come to our daughter's wedding, I'm divorcing you. You don't come to our daughter's homosexual wedding, I'm divorcing you. And the question is, he comes to the rabbi, he says, do I destroy shalom bayit for this? The answer is, of course, you destroy all shalom bayit. If he wants to go marry some animal and the wife wants to be an animal and go to this party, they could be animals together. She's not a wife. She's an animal. She wants to go to a homosexual party? What is this? We take the Torah, put it in the garbage with such behavior. We're gonna manipulate it whenever you feel like it. Now, Rabbi Shlomo Amar says the following. He says,

1:19:02that Rabbenu Yitzchak HaRama, the Baal HaAkedah, says that when the community suddenly makes the smallest sin in the smallest sin in the Torah. Pick whatever you think is the smallest sin in the Torah. Allowed, let's say, for example, just hypothetically speaking, at the end of eating bread, you have to do mayim acharonim, which is just washing your fingertips. If you say to your kehillah... The rabbi of the kehillah says, from now on, no more mayim acharonim. He's not saying, from now on you're allowed to eat pig. He's not saying, from now on you're allowed to marry men with men. He's not saying that. Something small that most of us wouldn't even remember. Suddenly he says, from now on, no more mayim acharonim. Or anything else that people think is small. He says, Rabbi Yitzhak Amar says, making...

1:20:23The smallest sin, the smallest sin turned into something permissible is worse, a thousand times worse than somebody committing the biggest sin in the Torah by himself. Let's call it Shabbat. If they said, for example, you're not allowed to do such and such, something small, tiny. The rabbi says, "No, you know what? From now on, you're allowed." And it's not allowed, but he says it's allowed. Something tiny. That tiny change in the Torah, that change is a thousand times worse than driving on Shabbat while eating pork. A thousand times worse. That tiny change. And he continues, Rabbeinu Yitzchak Arama says...

1:21:24And whoever does not understand the specific issue does not even have the beginning of the understanding of the Torah of HaKadosh Baruch Hu. If you don't understand that changing the Torah even on the smallest thing, and making the smallest sin into something permissible, that's not a thousand times worse than somebody making the worst sin in the Torah by himself, you don't understand that that's worse. You have no concept whatsoever of what Torah Hashem is. You have no idea what it is. To you, it might as well be a history book. on a microscopic thing, and making the smallest sin into something permissible, that's not a thousand times worse than somebody making the worst sin in the Torah by himself. You don't understand that that's worse. You don't have any concept whatsoever of what Torat Hashem is. You have no idea what it is. To you, it might as well be a history book. Yeah, but I want this. You've had it for 20 years. You wasted your parents' money. You have no concept of what Torah is. So now Rabbi Shlomo Amar says this is exactly why HaKadosh Baruch Hu destroyed the world at Dor HaMabul. It wasn't homosexuality per se that destroyed the world. The Zohar HaKadosh says they were stealing; that was the last sin that pretty much took everything over the top for Hashem.

1:22:46They were stealing, they were murdering, they were committing every sin. But what was the thing that was most filthy and disgusting for Hashem? When they made marriage between men and men a mitzvah, where they would put a ketubah on it. Which unfortunately, rabotai yekarim, is happening right now. As we speak, there are certain people that call themselves religious Orthodox, who are saying it's okay to marry men with men. Hashem, you have Him. It's happening as we speak. This is why HaKadosh Baruch Hu destroyed the world, and as Shlomo HaMelech says, we are in the 50th level as we speak. Now, where did these people start? Do you think these people started with the first sin they ever made—homosexuality? Does anybody really think that they went for the home run on day one? It starts differently, 60 years ago, 70 years ago.

1:23:47You looked at the world at that time in world Jewry, and you looked at the Conservative Jews. At that time, you wouldn't find much of a difference between the Conservative Jews of 70 years ago and many of the Orthodox Jews of today. What happened about 60 years ago? They made a rule that they wanted to increase the number of people in their kehillah. Unity. In the name of unity, what did they do? They allowed people to drive to Beit Knesset on Shabbat. They figured that if they bring more people who are far away, who are not going to go to shul because you're not allowed to drive on Shabbat, they would make something, in their mind, minor, allowed. You're allowed to drive on Shabbat to Beit Knesset. will increase the size of the kehillah, which will increase the bank account of the kehillah. Also, we can build a bigger institution, and so on and so forth. Get the people to come, move closer, because we're doing kiruv. To do kiruv by telling people to drive on Shabbat, kiruv, and that will improve Judaism, right? They come to shul. Well, 60 years fast forward, the head rabbi of the Conservative movement and...

1:25:11openly homosexual head rabbi in Yerushalayim. The difference between Conservative and Reform today is almost zero. They both accept intermarriage. They both officiate intermarriages. The only major difference between Reform and Conservative is that the Reform, many of their people, including their rabbis, are not even Jewish. It's some Chinese woman from China. Never converted to anything. But she decides she wants to be a rabbi. It's a career. There is. I'm dead serious. It's a real story. I'm not making this stuff up. As sad as it sounds, it's true. The Conservative is still keeping to some extent. They haven't let the goy be the rabbi yet, at least not to my knowledge. And they haven't done bar mitzvah to dogs yet, which the Reform already have beaten to that.

1:26:13But as far as Torah, both of them abandoned the Torah completely. Where did it start from? A small minor infraction or "improvement," if you will, in their mind, of the Torah. Now, for all of us here in Florida, New York, America, and Israel who feel safe because we call ourselves Orthodox... We also know that in reality, there are different shades of Orthodox. People give it different names: Modern Orthodox, Chareidi, this, that. Everybody's got different shades and colors. Kippa Seruga, you know, knitted kippa, black kippa, all this stuff. Tachlis is, do you keep or you don't keep. Now here's a problem. In America, and in Israel, there is this problem called modern Orthodoxy. Why do I call it a problem? It's because the parents don't understand what it means to repeat the same mistakes as their grandparents and change the Torah a little bit. So if you notice, Modern Orthodoxy, modesty almost doesn't exist. Modesty, for many of the members of the people,

1:27:36modern Orthodoxy, modesty almost doesn't exist to such an extent that all of those girls that I was telling you about, there was the commercial. The commercial I told you about before, that little bud. You said that's commercial, close your eyes, all of them were Modern Orthodox. Every single one of them, their parents looked worse than them. They were right behind them; it was a worse commercial. Also Modern Orthodox. They said Shabbat Shalom, Good Shabbos, and You walk around a Jewish neighborhood on Shabbat, you're gonna see a bunch of people that keep Shabbat, but you don't know that until they start saying Shabbat Shalom or Good Shabbos. Why? Because you can't tell the difference based on their looks between them and the goyim. Can't tell the difference. Between them and the chilonim, you cannot tell the difference. Kisui Rosh almost doesn't exist. And if it does, it's usually a wig that's longer than the exile.

1:28:37You ask the woman, how come your wig is so long, but your skirt is so short? If it was the opposite, maybe it would be kosher. Long skirt, short wig, maybe you could find some leniency. If it's not from Avodah Zarah, I don't know. But your wig is long, your skirt is short. What happened? No, no, we're Modern Orthodox. We're Modern Orthodox. How come you guys, how come you're not wearing tzitzit? How come you don't wear tzitzit? How come you don't wear tzitzit? No, no, it's hot. It's Florida. It's hot. I'm not Orthodox. As long as I'm not wearing clothing with four corners, you don't have to wear tzitzit, right Rabbi? I'm not Orthodox. It says the first people who are going to be punished at the time of Mashiach are people who don't wear tzitzit. I'm not Orthodox. I'm not Orthodox. Why? You're so arrogant about all of your other mitzvot that you gave up on the mitzvah you can make every second. You ask them, how come, Mr. Religious, how come you don't watch your eyes and every woman that walks by you, you look at her even though your wife is right next to you? How come? How come you don't watch your eyes? You know, there's a verse in the Torah, you say Kriyat Shema twice a day.

1:29:56Don't follow your eyes. Don't follow your heart. How come you look, your heart and your eyes are already your next-door neighbor? They might as well pay rent. How come? How come they're over there so much? Your wife is right next to you. You have some kavod for your wife. HaKadosh Baruch Hu is everywhere. He's everywhere. You have no kavod. You're looking at everything. How come? No, no, we're Modern Orthodox. Modern Orthodox. So they tell you, they have a teshuva for everything. We're Modern Orthodox. No tzitzit, Modern Orthodox. No kisui rosh, Modern Orthodox. Short sleeves for a woman, Modern Orthodox. Short everything, modern—everything is Modern Orthodox. Have you noticed something? Before the Orthodox comes the modern. Meaning before you're hareidi, before you're Orthodox, which in essence is hareidi, Comes the modern, meaning that when you're Modern Orthodox, what's really Orthodox about you? The modernism. The modernism is the Orthodox. The issue is that when a person says he's hareidi moderni, he's Orthodox but modern. What does it mean? His zealousness...

1:31:18His Avodat Hashem, his everything, is being given to modernism. Every day, he reviews himself. She reviews herself. How could I look more like the queen? I don't want to look like these Chareidim. They cover their heads with a mitpachat. She looks like Sarah Imeinu. Sarah Imeinu is already 4,000 years old. Who wants to look like a 4,000-year-old woman? Nah, she has a kisui rosh. I want to cover my head. Oh, he looks like he has a suit on. No, I'm going to wear extra tights. He wants to get his suit from a designer named Extra Tight so you could see every rib in his body. She wants to get all the clothes that fit tight so you could see every figure and every move that she has in the name of modernism. Every day, he's constantly measuring himself not against Moshe Rabbeinu, Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov. He's not measuring himself against Rav Chaim Kanievsky, Rav Ovadia Yosef. These are not his role models. Who are his role models? Who are his role models? The Goyim. So when he mentions something, even in a shiur,

1:32:30If he's a rabbi, he's a speaker, what is he gonna mention to you as the source for his chokhmah? For his wisdom? He's gonna mention the Goyim. Sancho, he's gonna mention that noef, what's his name? The big giant guy. Tim Robbins, Tony Robbins. Womanizer that he is, he's the role model. He's not gonna mention the Rambam. He's gonna mention the Rambam next to Tony Robbins as if they're on the same level. Why? Because in his mind, Esav and Yaakov are battling constantly. In her mind, Esav and Yaakov are constantly battling. She wants to go to a shiur Torah, but as long as you don't tell her that she has to be modest and... She wants to go to a shiur Torah that's going to give her chizuk to continue her life as is. It's going to give her chizuk to continue walking around like someone who has never heard Torah in their life. It's going to give her chizuk that she's going to have miracles in her life. He's going to have miracles in his life as long as they say this one specific Tehillim, one perek, but no matter the fact that she's violating the entire Torah every second she exists. Someone sent me a video today

1:33:47and showed me how a person can manipulate even something holy. A holy rabbi made a shiur and said this month is a segulah, Rosh Chodesh Kislev. If a person does not complain about Hashem the entire month, which is very, very difficult, it doesn't only mean you have to be righteous, but you have to be righteous at a very high level. The Chachamim... I think it was one of the sayings that if you do this, you get miracles in your life. If you don't complain about Hashem for a month, in reality, if you do this all year, you're going to get miracles. Don't complain about Hashem; only thank Hashem, and you get miracles all year. But nonetheless, there's a special auspicious month to get miracles if you don't complain against Hashem. So one woman sends this to another one of my students. She says, "See, you don't have to do what Hashem says." Doesn't matter if I'm modest or not modest. As long as I don't complain against Hashem, I'm going to get miracles this month. I said, Rachmana Litzlan from such people. How they manipulate something holy to fit their cheshbon, their whole accounting, and how and who and what, just so they don't have to do teshuva. The problem is, Rabotai, Conservative used to be no different than Modern Orthodox.

1:35:16Grandkids from seven years ago today are marrying men with men. Even though the father today can say that it's not a big deal if you're not modest, it's not a big deal if you don't wear tzitzit, it's not a big deal if you don't cover your head, it's not a big deal if you drive on Shabbat. There are certain Modern Orthodox schools here in Florida that I know of. They literally have two to three hundred cars driving in on Shabbat and driving out on Shabbat, and... Because they're Modern Orthodox, and it's not such a big deal. And you're not allowed to rebuke in this generation, apparently. The reality is, rabotai, the parent who acts like this completely destroys the Torah, thinking that their kid will at least be okay because he's Modern Orthodox. The kid throws out the Orthodox, just keeps the modern. Shows up at the house, Abba, listen, this Torah stuff is not really for me. I'm more modern. I'm going to go be a computer programmer. I'm going to make an app. I'm going to design some new software. Okay, great, no problem. You're allowed to make money. You're allowed to make a living. Where are you going to live? I'm going to live in San Francisco with all the homosexuals.

1:36:29Where even the animals in San Francisco—real studies have been done—the animals in San Francisco have the highest level of homosexuality in the world. Meaning the tum'ah of the people has affected the animals. I'm not sure if Tel Aviv has a zoo, but if it doesn't, it's definitely going to beat San Francisco because it's become the capital of homosexuality in the world. Rachmana Litzlan, our own home country. So the son says, "Abba, I'm going to San Francisco." And what about the grandson? The grandson's just an outright animal. He has no concept whatsoever of what Kedusha is, what Tahara is. He marries a non-Jew. She marries a non-Jew. She has no concept and no care in the world of her grandfather's modern orthodoxy. And that's why, when we do not Keep strict. Keep the law of HaKadosh Baruch Hu strict, every house will be affected. Every house. Now, just to give you guys a little bit of food for thought of what the Tzaddikim did in order to keep their Kedusha. The Steipler Gaon, Rav Kanievsky's father, had Ruach HaKodesh. But you don't get Ruach HaKodesh just by learning books.

1:37:58You get to Ruach HaKodesh by also having Middot that match the books. One time he saw that his daughters were going to go to school, but the uniform that they had in the school wasn't modest enough to his criteria. He said, one second. He took his coat and he cut it, cut the bottom of the coat, and he put it on their sleeves, on his daughters' sleeves. Sewed it on. He goes, okay, now you can go. And the daughter says, "But Abba, we're going to look strange. We're going to look strange like everybody else, that we have these..." The stepfather goes and says, "What's so strange? It's strange that all of them are strange, that they have a Torah that says you have to be modest, and they choose not to be modest." they give you a shirt that's so tight on you. They're the strange ones. You're the normal one. You're the normal one; they're strange. They have a Torah, they have a rule book from the Torah, and they're going to violate it. They're strange. That's a holy person. A holy person thinks like this. The Rabbi says that when you keep the Torah, even though there are many, many people

1:39:24that are doing the opposite of you. You keep Shabbat, they drive on Shabbat. You keep kosher, they eat treif. You do everything that HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, and your girlfriend, your boyfriend, your friend, everybody else is doing the opposite. So it's hard sometimes, why? Because it looks like it's fun. You went to the shul on Shabbat, they went to the game. When they come back, they tell you a bunch of stories of what happened at the game. "Oh, he shot, and he beat him, and he did this, and he did that, and I met this girl, and we hung out," and they make you jealous of the fulfillment that they had. And you're not coming back from shul saying, "Oh, and the Rabbi said this, and the Rabbi said that." You're not saying that. What are you saying? You're saying, "Oh, that's the highlight of Shabbat." Okay, there was maybe a shiur, got a little excited, but no one's coming home with excitement like he came from a game. So it sounds like it's more fun to be at the game. Always remember, you are the mekor Yisrael. If you are fulfilling the Torah, you are the true descendants of Yisrael, and for you the world exists. They, until they do teshuva, are simply a fake version.

1:40:47There's the real bag that costs $2,000, and then there's the fake one for $15 in Chinatown. They both look the same, but everybody knows the real one is the real deal. Everyone knows. If you tell a woman, listen, let's say money is not an issue. Which bag do you want? The $3,000 Louis Vuitton that's really coming from the store or the one we got from Chinatown that's $13? Which one do you want for your birthday? Money is not an issue. Not a single woman on earth will say, I want a $13 fake. Not because of the look. Because they’re so good today, you can’t tell the difference. Not because of the look. No one wants to have a fake. No one wants to be fake. Even the ones that walk around with a fake don’t tell anybody, "By the way, you see my fake bag?" No one does that. Yeah, I just got it from Chinatown for $13. Ha, you paid $13,000 for yours. No one does that. When your girlfriend says to you, "Wow, it's a nice bag. Where'd you get it, your birthday?" Yeah, yeah, my birthday. Birthday? Tisha B'Av maybe. $13 in Chinatown, but you're not gonna tell her that. Why? Because you have to make her think it's real.

1:42:02until you can afford the real one. The point being is, when you keep Torah and mitzvot, it doesn't matter that they're more numerous than you, those who are violating the Torah. You are the real version. You are what the Torah says. You are the Mekor Yisrael. What's the biggest proof that a person can verify and validate that they are Mekor Yisrael? By fulfilling the mitzvah of Kiruv. By fulfilling the mitzvah of helping other Jews do teshuva. Why? Because we learned from the Rashba, the only reason why the Erev Rav was saved was because of the power of mikol Yisrael, of Yaakov, the kedusha of Yaakov. When you do kiruv, whether it's donating money, or it's giving out CDs, or it's sharing in the shiur or others that we do, when you bring people to the lecture, you try to get other people that are not necessarily on the right path. They're like a little fake, a little Esav, a little Yaakov. They want to be Yaakov, but they're doing a bunch of stuff Esav does.

1:43:14When you try to bring them and you do everything possible to bring kedusha to their life, you're validating for sure that you are mikol Yisrael. Why? Because the power of your kedusha can change them, even if they're Erev Rav themselves. Even if they're Erev Rav. This is why each one of us should never ever give up on doing kiruv. There are some people you need to give up on. They're anti-Torah to such an extent that they make fun of it. It's better you give up on them because, in essence, every time you come to them, they make more sins. Go find somebody else. Even though it's not yours, that somebody else is not your brother or your cousin or your loved one. Try to help other people do teshuva. You don't have anybody that you want to help do teshuva? Donate. Take the money that you work so hard for and give it to kiruv. We'll help them do teshuva. All of these shiurim are free, but they cost money. The point being, rabotai, the way to validate that we are Mekor Yisrael, that we are Yaakov, is by helping other people take part in the Kedusha. This is the biggest difference between someone who's Mekor Yisrael and someone who's simply Esav. Now, unfortunately, Esav and Erev Rav don't just sit there quietly while Yaakov does kiruv.

1:44:44Some of Esav's descendants are very strong evil people, and I'll give you a couple of examples. One of the most loved Jewish people that has lived in the last hundred years is Rav Mordechai Eliyahu. This is a person that was an Ish Kodesh, a huge Talmid Chacham, and loved Am Yisrael. On a very high level, anyone that saw the video that we publicized today, where a frum scientist, who himself is a Baal Teshuvah, did research on the aura of people. You know, aura, everyone knows, is a real thing. But he did something different, something unique from what other people do. Other people, they use this machine to see what the aura is of a certain person. They see what your status is, what changes you, what doesn't change you, if you're doing this, if you're doing that. This Jew, this frum Jew, did something unique with this machine. He analyzed what the aura of a Jew looks like while he's fulfilling mitzvot, and when he's not. And it's amazing how the colors change, where it looks like when the person does a mitzvah, he literally becomes like a malach Hashem, becomes like an angel.

1:46:11white or purple when not doing so much yellow, that's the standard. Doing something bad, like for example, wearing tefillin that's pasul, that's not kosher, it becomes dark, as if you're making a sin. Wearing kosher tefillin becomes purple, like a purple crown on top of your head. You see the video; it's on our website on our YouTube page. We apologize, today it's like six minutes. Interestingly enough, he also covered kisuy rosh. He said when a woman covers her head with a mitpachat, it's like a man wearing tefillin. A woman who doesn't cover her head, it's like the yellow standard. A woman who covers her head with a wig, it's like batel tefillin, Shem Yerachem. It's like unkosher tefillin, he says. He goes, "I don't know," he says himself, "I don't know what's in these wigs, but every time we check the woman wearing a wig..." It was like the same results that we got when a guy was wearing tefillin that was not kosher, where the klaf was taken out. As if it was worse to wear the wig than to not cover your hair at all. This doesn't mean that you don't cover your head, it's a mitzvah. You're still making an aveirah if you're a married woman, and you have a head, you have to cover your head. If you don't have a head, or you're not married, you don't have to cover your head. But as long as you have a head, and you're married, you have to cover your head with a mitpachat.

1:47:38Sometimes we forget a head, but we still have one though. It's attached. Don't go home with—don't leave home without it. Now, one of the interesting things he had in the video is he had a video of Rav Ovadia Yosef. Rav Ovadia Yosef, he takes a video of him naturally. He looks like naturally without anything. He looks already like somebody that's wearing tefillin. When he put on a tallit—just tallit, not tefillin, just tallit—he looks like an angel, something that most of us probably can't even reach. Even if we put on tefillin, two of them. That's how holy he was. So, and this is scientific research. Believe, don't believe, that's your business. It's funny how anytime science proves the Torah is real, no one wants to believe it. Anytime science looks like it's contradicting the Torah, it's because science is wrong, but that's a different story. Oh, see, science said, science said, science. All of a sudden, everybody became a scientist. They don't even know how to spell science, but they're scientists. So now, one time they invited him to do a series of lectures, an all-day marathon, from the morning to night. And he was the Chief Rabbi of Israel at the time, Rishon LeTzion. And they had, go to this place in the north, an hour and a half lecture, half hour to the next place, an hour and a half lecture, 15 minutes to the next place, an hour and a half lecture, from morning to night, one lecture after another. He was already older. But for Torah, no problem.

1:49:08They arrive at the first location. They see that his big posters have been torn off and replaced with another poster: "Rav Mordechai Eliyahu is sick. You are canceled." He's not sick. He has no idea who said he's sick. They go to the door with all the people. They go to the door. It's locked. They find the gabbai of the beit knesset. "Oh, I thought it was canceled. You're sick." He goes, "No, I'm not sick. Baruch Hashem, I'm not sick. Can you open the place?" He goes, "Yeah, but I don't think anyone's going to come. Maybe someone's going to come." He goes into the place, waits for an hour and a half. Not a single person shows up. "Okay, let's go to the next location." They go to the next location, and the same exact thing happens. The poster is down, replaced by a different poster, "Rav Mordechai Eliyahu is sick, shiur canceled." Now, this is a nice poster; they put a lot of money into this. Shiur canceled. Again, they wait an hour and a half, and nobody shows up. The next place they go to, the same exact thing happens, meaning this Rasha Merusha, this Erev Rav Amalek,

1:50:23invested time, money, resources, and everything to destroy one shiur after another. The people that were helping Hashem were so upset, they couldn't believe somebody would do such a thing. In Eretz Yisrael, we're not in the UK with Mirvis. We're here in Eretz Yisrael, what's going on? One shiur after another, one after another, three, four, five, everything is canceled. It's obvious the whole thing is a system, some rush. I did all of this. Why don't we just—why do we call today? No, no, no, we already made a schedule. Maybe somebody's waiting for us at that time. One place, the whole day was one after another. He goes to every place, waits there for an hour and a half. Nobody shows up. They leave. He doesn't leave. As soon as he sees nobody's there, he sits there. Nobody's there. Okay, nobody's there. What can we do? We leave. you know, upset a little bit that you didn't do kiruv like you wanted to do, you didn't give chizuk to the nation like you wanted to do. But what can you do? It's in Hashem's hands. One place, a woman arrives, and she sees there's nobody there. Then the rabbi arrives, and he goes, "Oh, okay." Somebody says, "Oh, I saw that there's a poster right there." "You don't feel well?" "I feel well. We can do a shiur." "You could be in a shiur."

1:51:49An hour and a half he gives this woman a shiur. But he gives a shiur as if there are 5,000 people there. Just missing 4,999. That's it. He gives the shiur with all the passion and everything, like there's nothing wrong. They complete the day, one person the whole day. Supposed to be tens of thousands of people. At the end of the day, all the helpers are really, really upset, but there's nothing you can do. Who's this Amalek that did all of this? No one knows. Who's this rasha that manipulated and did all this? No one knows. But that's the will of Hashem. Harav Ovadia Yosef goes back home, goes back to the sefarim as if nothing happened. He knows whatever happened, HaKadosh Baruch Hu allowed it to happen. Years passed. Many years passed. And one day they get a call at his office, and they say, The guy, a respectable man, says, "I want to meet with the Kvod HaRav." So he comes, meets with the rabbi, a respectable religious man, sits with the rabbi, and says, "Kvod HaRav, I want to let you know that you influenced my life." The rabbi asks, "Who are you?" He responds, "Many years ago, you had a series of shiurim that someone ruined for you by putting signs everywhere."

1:53:16And you didn't have any shiurim except there was one shiur that you had with the woman. He goes, yeah. He goes, I was one of the bodyguards that was hired for the day. Rishon LeTzion has to have some people to protect him from the crowd and so on. I was one of the bodyguards that was hired for that day. I was a young kid. And I was hired to watch out for you. But I wasn't religious. I just was hired for my job. I saw how this old man keeps going to one place after another, another place, another place, and there's nobody there. But you keep trying, and you keep going to another place, and you never slow down. You never lose steam. And I said, what is he fighting for? Why does he care so much? What does he have that's so valuable that he's willing to put everything on the line just to share it with even a single woman that he doesn't even know? I must look into this, whatever this guy has, whatever this old man has. And I looked into the Torah. I looked into the Torah. I found the truth. I did teshuva. I married a kosher woman. I had, Baruch Hashem, kids. I started teaching Torah, started doing kiruv, helped a bunch of people do teshuva. Look at what happened, and we didn't even say a word. Imagine they let us speak.

1:54:41Imagine they let us speak. When a person means well, he means to bring Kedusha to the world. Even something that seems simple—just his action, just him going to the store, just him wearing a kippah, just him wearing tzitzit, just him doing a favor for someone, opening the door, being kind, doing business—his day-to-day behavior will help people do teshuva. Needless to say, if he actually tries to do more than that... That's the difference between someone that's Yaakov, that's Mekor Yisrael, versus Esav. This, Rabotai Yekarim, is something that we are all capable of doing. We're all capable of sharing Kedusha around the world. All you got to want to do is, number one, be authentic yourself, Don't be a faker. Don't be one of these modern people who cuts out a new mitzvah that doesn't fit your life or your desires every other day. And don't ever think that the secular person has a better life than you. That's a mistake. That's a very big mistake. People think that secular people have a better life. That's a very serious mistake that they have.

1:55:59Why do they think this? Because they see these people coming back from the game, coming back from the sports, coming back from all types of things, and it looks like they're having fun. Sometimes the avreich, the person that learns Torah all day and all night, makes the mistake of thinking that some of his family members are having a better time than him because they're not religious. To show the truth, all you have to do is wait a little bit. Wait a little bit and then see what unfolds eventually. What unfolds eventually? Baruch Hashem, I'm older than most of you, and I can tell you, I used to admire really, really rich people, although I was rich, Baruch Hashem, before Hashem took all that away from me. Baruch Hashem, I admired people that were much richer than me until I learned about their life.

1:57:00Admired people like Warren Buffett, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos—these are people on the Forbes 500, multi-billionaires, the richest people in the world. The average person today admires them like they are gods. Why? Each one is in the Forbes 500, each one is on the news every other day, each one has billions and billions of dollars, more than you have hair. So you figure this guy is admirable, but once you learn about their life and... you see how despicable their life really is. Warren Buffett, his own wife left him because he's simply unbearable. Even though he looks like a nice old man that eats a burger for $2 a day, that's his breakfast every single day. He has 80, 100 billion dollars, but he doesn't want to spend it. So he buys a $2 McDonald's burger every day—that's his breakfast. He still lives in the same house he did 50, 60 years ago, the one he grew up in. He doesn't want to buy a nice house to fit his budget. He doesn't want to spend his money. Thinks he's being wasteful as if he's taking the money to the grave with him. Relationship with the kids as if they're strangers. And his wife left him. The love of his life left him. Why? He's unbearable. He's a human being. He's cute like a teddy bear on TV. In reality, who can stand this? Steve Jobs. Everybody admires Steve Jobs. The Apple phone. Real genius and so on and so forth. All these people are geniuses. Doesn't mean they're good people, though.

1:58:24You read his bio. I was on the board of directors of a certain producer that made a film about him. He told us himself. I was really surprised. The most surprising thing about investigating Steve Jobs' life. What was surprising? Everyone that knew him hated him. Everyone agreed he's a genius. But they all hated him. Why? He was simply a rotten human being. An atheist at his core. A rotten human being. Jeff Bezos, the current richest man in the world, started Amazon. He has a defense mechanism, a psychological defense mechanism, every time he's uncomfortable. He has this obnoxious laugh. They make clips about it on TV, how funny this laugh is. Anyway, he looks like a really happy guy. One hundred billion dollars. Why wouldn't you be happy? His wife left him, divorced him. He cheated on her. On top of that, if that's not enough... And best of yet, it's a known thing. A known thing, there's a meeting at Amazon every day. Someone walks out of that meeting crying, hysterical like a little baby because of what Jeff Bezos did to them, how he insulted them and embarrassed them that day. Every day he murders somebody in cold blood. These are the people that Esav admires. These are the people Esav admires. Who does Yaakov admire? The Rambam, the Chazon Ish, the Ben Ish Chai.

1:59:47the Rambam, the Chazon Ish, the Ben Ish Chai. Why? They are the exact opposite of all that. It doesn't mean that they were all poor. It doesn't mean that they were less successful. It doesn't mean any of that. It means that one had an instruction set from HaKadosh Baruch Hu, and one had an instruction set from the Satan himself. What's the instruction set from Satan? Follow your desires. You want a woman? Go look for one in the streets. Wherever you can find one, just get one already. You want food? Go to any place, just eat whatever you can get. You have some type of desire? Fulfill it ASAP before it runs away from you. That's Esav. The difference between Esav and Yaakov is not the intellect, it's not the mental prowess, It's not what family you came from or what family you didn't come from. Because as we already saw, even if your family didn't keep any mitzvot and you came from niddah, you could still be Yaakov. Because the power of teshuvah can overcome all the tumah in the world. The major difference between Esav and Yaakov is what you do with your desires.

2:01:02If you try to fulfill every one of your animalistic desires, as if that's why you live in the world, you may succeed monetarily, you may not. But in life, for sure you will fail. You will live a life that's a complete failure. But if you fulfill the Torah and the instruction set of the Torah, desire will simply become part of your life. Good will be your entire life. The right direction will be your whole life, your destination. Why? Because you have a guaranteed track record from HaKadosh Baruch Hu. That's the only difference between the two: how you treat your desires. If your life is about fulfilling desires, unfortunately, you're acting like Esav, even if you were born Yaakov. If your life is about fulfilling what HaKadosh Baruch Hu said you should fulfill, which still means you'll have desires that you fulfill, just in a kosher way. You can eat also, but you'll eat kosher food. You can have intimacy also, but just with your wife when she's after the mikveh, and so on and so forth. You, my friend, will live a life of Yaakov and Sarah and Rivka and Leah and Rachel, and you will be in Olam Haba with them as well, in a good place. This, Be'ezrat Hashem, will give each and every one of us that's doing teshuva, that did teshuva, that's trying to do teshuva, a little bit more chizuk and a clear understanding of what's the difference between Esav and Yaakov, but also where you can be. Not where you are. It doesn't matter where you are, but where you can be. All of us have the power to do it. It's simply how we treat our desires.

2:02:13And you will be in Olam Haba with them as well, in a good place. This, Be'ezrat Hashem, will give each and every one of us that's doing teshuva, that did teshuva, that's trying to do teshuva, a little bit more chizuk and a clear understanding of what's the difference between Esav and Yaakov, but also where you can be. Not where you are. It doesn't matter where you are, but where you can be. All of us have the power to do it. It's simply how we treat our desires. He gives all of us chizuk to do teshuva, to get closer to Hashem and get further and further away from Esav while also bringing the ones that are acting like Esav together with us to act like Yaakov.