What Does Real Teshuva Look & Feel Like? (AMAZING Questions In New York)

0:18Good? Okay. We're here in Brooklyn. We were here a few months ago, and we had a nice shiur. It wasn't as big of a turnout, so I guess we got a good reputation here after the first shiur. But last time we talked a little bit about the story, personal story, and a few other things. Tonight, honestly, I wanted to really leave it up to you guys as far as what topic you want to pick. It seems like sometimes after the camera goes off, the questions and answers start, and they're much more interesting than the talk that I picked. So if anybody has any questions whatsoever about Judaism, whether they're philosophical questions or anything else, We can start with that, with one question, five questions, ten questions—whatever it is, as many questions as you have—and see where that goes. Because maybe it's something that all of you have a question about. If I talk about something, I have a lot of books in front of me. But if I talk about something and none of you are interested in it, it's not really going to serve any purpose. I'm more interested in talking about what you're interested in than what I'm interested in. And the reason why I'm confident that most likely...

1:35I'll be able to answer the questions with siyata dishmaya, with Hashem's help of course, is because at some point in my life, I was probably in your shoes. At some point in my life, I had a lot of questions. At some point in my life, I had a lot of doubts. At some point in my life, I went through a lot of problems. And as the prophet Yirmiyahu says in the third chapter, the beginning of the third chapter of the book of Eicha... He says, "I know suffering," so he starts this chapter. He says, "I know suffering." Why does he say, "I know suffering"? Because he witnessed the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash. So he says, "I know what suffering looks like. I saw a river of blood of the Jewish people that were murdered. I know what it feels like to see, to witness this horror." I know what it feels like to have doubts. I know what it feels like to have questions. He knows. And who is considered wise? Someone that has experience. If, let's say, for example, you wanted to get advice on how to become rich, you're not going to go to a homeless person. Obviously, he doesn't know how to be rich; if he knew, he wouldn't be homeless. On the other hand, you're not going to ask

2:57someone that's rich how to be the best husband in the world if he's never been married before. Just because he's rich doesn't mean he's gonna be a good husband. I So you have to go to somebody with ba'al experience, someone that has experience. So Baruch Hashem, when you have a lot of tikkunim in your life, you have a lot of different problems in your life. Those problems, you could use them for good or for bad. You could use those problems to help your life and elevate you to a much better level, build you up to be better, or you could just complain the rest of your life that you had a tough life. It's your choice. Either way, you're going to have the suffering. Either way, you're going to have the problems. The problems won't go away. The question is, how are you going to treat those problems? So, Baruch Hashem, we had a lot of different problems, whether it be money problems or relationship problems, all types of problems in our life. But Baruch Hashem, we're able, with the use of the Torah, to use these problems to the advantage of teaching Torah, learning Torah, and building a better life. If you don't mind moving out of the camera's way, because the camera's looking at it. So...

4:09Without further ado, why don't you guys start with some questions? Anybody have any questions? Everybody knows everything? No, go ahead. Okay, I'm sorry, that's one. What else? More? We'll have more than one question at once. No, next question. My background? I'm bored of my own story, but I guess other people didn't hear the story, so we'll say the story too. What else? What other questions? Huh? Donation? Okay, next. Significance of it, where you should donate, where you shouldn’t donate, anything specific about it or anything said. Okay? Anything else? Afterlife? Okay, I'll try to throw that in there, too. Marriage? Okay, marriage, we'll throw in there also. Shalom bayit. Business? Cheating in business, okay, that's possible too. You guys have to keep count because I'm gonna count on you to remind me if I forgot something. If you have anything else, you can throw it in the middle. Shacharit being at seven o'clock, you must attend.

5:33Start with that, yalla, said the same as him now seven as Leah. And we'll start with a little bit of a personal story and try to throw in some of these other topics. If you have a question in the middle of what I'm talking about, do not feel ashamed. Raise your hand and ask. It's not a prepared speech, b'ezrat Hashem, so you're not interrupting anything. I If you have a question about something that I said, if you don't understand what I said, ask me. Because again, like I said, the point is for you to know. I already know what I'm going to say. Meaning, I know the information, so it's not for me to talk. It's for you to listen and for it to affect you. So if you don't understand something, then how can it affect you? And if you misunderstand something, it's not going to be good. I had a student one time. I said this story last night, and people almost had a heart attack. I had a student. not too long ago, maybe about two years ago, she was going to conversion through somebody else for four years. When a woman goes through conversion, it's a little different than a man going through conversion. She has to learn a few things that are different, such as learning about something called "Taharas HaMishpacha" (family purity)—the whole issue of when she's allowed to be with her husband, when she's not, and so on and so forth. Now, this woman...

6:51She had to learn a lot of different things about Torah, about Shabbat, mitzvot, and so on. But the one subject no one ever thought of for four years is Taharas HaMishpacha. So, Baruch Hashem, my wife is very well versed in this section. And so, I tell my students to go to her. She teaches them whatever they need, sits down with them, and answers questions. So, this woman has been going to a rabbi for four years and... You would think she'd know everything by now, but she didn't. She goes to my wife, she asks her questions, and my wife is excited, she stays. And the woman tells you, she goes, aren't you a little embarrassed to go to the mikvah, though, every time? My wife says, no, absolutely not. It's holy, it's beautiful, it's amazing, it's freedom, it's peaceful, it's what could possibly be embarrassing? It's not like there's chas v'shalom, men looking or anything like that, or anyone looking, you have your own privacy. She says, "Yeah, but isn't it strange that another woman is touching you? To check you because who's touching you? What are you talking about? Who told you this?" She responds, "Isn't somebody checking you to see if you're niddah or not?" She says, "Chas v'shalom, who told you this crazy information?" She replies, "I don't know. I was scared to ask. I thought that's what happens." So, you see, the point here is that she misheard somebody say something. For four years, she thought that, chas v'shalom, the Jewish people are sick people.

8:16She thought that the women go to mikvah, they get touched by another person, chas v'shalom. This is craziness. But this small error became a big error. And Baruch Hashem, we had the privilege of fixing it. So honestly, I would have left the whole conversion process if I had thought what she thought. But Baruch Hashem, she had the strength to not fail. To overcome the test. So, the point being is that there's no such thing as a dumb question. There's no such thing as anything that's negative. If you have a question, you ask on the spot, live. So, my background is a little interesting. I walk about, you see Team Hashem, you get excited. This is part of Team Hashem. Baruch Hashem. So, he's part of our kiruv. He does a lot of zechuyot for Hashem. To me, that's the tzaddikim of the world—people that go out there and volunteer to do kiruv, to go out there and get Am Yisrael to come back to Hashem. So, I wasn't like this my whole life; most of my life was the complete opposite. I was born in Israel, and we moved to the United States when I was 10 years old, which is 27 years ago. At 10 years old, I only knew a few letters of the alphabet. When you're 10 years old, you learn the English language pretty quickly.

9:35and advanced in school pretty fast. I became what they call a Talmid Chacham, but in the secular world, I went to public school even though I came from a traditional family where they didn't exactly keep Shabbat or other things. But we kept tradition, so we'd have Kiddush and then go to the movies, you know, or we’d go to the beach. But you kept Kiddush, so you thought Kiddush is good. Eat kosher, but inside the house, outside the house, sometimes something, you know. I see people believe Hashem is only inside your house. He's only inside your fridge. He's not in the restaurant. Restaurant, you can eat whatever you want in there. At home, make sure you keep kosher. That's what I love; people tell me, "I'm kosher at home." I'm like, well, Hashem is not only inside the house. It's like saying your house is a Beit HaMikdash (Temple), and we should go there for korbanot (sacrifices). Hashem is only inside the house? He's nowhere else? This is what the yetzer hara (evil inclination) convinces us of. Yes, the yetzer hara convinces us that Hashem is only in one place, not everywhere. This is what I thought; he convinced me.

10:42Convinced you it is a very, very good argument, and I said listen, McDonald's once in a while is a big problem. You go to public school, you want to be like the public school people. What's with the public school people? You want to be a rapper, you want to be a football player, you want to be a movie star. You want to be everything but a Jew. Everything and anything but a Jew. The last thing in the world that you want to be is a Jew. Why? It's embarrassing. Embarrassing to be a Jew? You want to be a Jew when you don't know what being a Jew is. We know that when you're a Jew, you're a king. You don't want to be a Jew? You think that a Jew is like some strange guy who wears black and white all the time. You don't realize that's the king. You're thinking that's some strange guy. You think 50 Cent is cool. You think DMX is cool. You think that's tough. You think that's the guy. That's the guy who's telling everybody how much money he's got. He's got 20-inch rims. That's the cool. I want to be that guy. Fact that he just hung himself last week. You don't think about that. Not 50 Cent, another guy, another celebrity, Linkin Park's lead singer, sold millions and millions of records, had six kids, two wives, and more money than he could count, decided life is not worth living. If anyone ever thought that money can solve all of your problems, he helps you solve that problem. It doesn't, and...

12:03You could kill yourself even with a lot of money, and as a matter of fact, suicide is a rich person's problem. Poor people don't commit suicide; only rich people commit suicide statistically. Statistically, rich people commit suicide. Why? Because a poor person always has hope. "Once I get rich, I'm going to be happy," the poor person thinks. The rich guy already has the money and he's not happy. He's like, "I have nothing to live for," so he kills himself instead. So, I went to school. I played football in high school. How does a small Jewish guy play football with giants? I have no idea, but somehow I managed to get my butt kicked and played. I won a student-athlete award, not because I was a good athlete, but because I was the only guy that actually went to school and got good grades. I was an honor roll student, and so on and so forth. And I went to college for a little while. But I decided that I don't want to be a doctor. I don't want to be a lawyer. And I don't want to be in school for a hundred years. I want to do one thing: I want to make money. And to make money, you don't always need to go to school. Sometimes you do, but not always. If you want to be a doctor, you want to be a lawyer, you want to be an architect, you want to be an accountant, you want to do something that requires a degree, you have to go to school. Other than that, school is a waste of time.

13:28Other than that, school is a complete waste of time. If you're going to go to college and spend $50,000 to get a communications degree, please do your parents a favor and don't go to school. Go to work. If you're going to go to school and get a physical education degree, please save your parents $100,000. Please save your parents the headache. Do not go to school. Go to work, go to yeshiva, go do something with your life, and... School is not for you to party, even though people do it. They party seven out of eight years. They party, you know, it's seven out of eight years now; it's not three out of four. It's not four years. Why is it seven out of eight? Because colleges are meaningless. College is the new high school. It used to be that you go to high school, you fool around a little bit just to make sure you get into college. Your junior year is the most important; you get good grades in your junior year, you get into a good college. You go to college, you get a job. Now, high school is like junior high. Doesn't matter what you do, you're gonna get to college because they're gonna take you for $200,000. What do they care? You go to college, you waste time anyway, you party, you drink, you smoke, you do everything bad in the world. It's Sodom and Gomorrah because it doesn't matter anyway. Why? Because all that matters is grad school, the other $200,000 you have to spend. By the time you finish school, you're a senior citizen, you're a million dollars in debt. And then they're surprised why there's so many losers in the world and...

14:56With debt that they have no idea how they're ever gonna pay back because the guy got a communications degree after 10 years of college and a top salary for communications majors is maybe $30,000. But he owes half a million. He's never gonna pay it back. And then they're wondering why this country is bankrupt. Because the system is bankrupt. So, if you're gonna get a degree, go to school if you need to and... Either way, you need to go to a basic level of school because it teaches you how to think. But in general, advanced learning is only if you're actually going to do advanced learning. So I did some advanced learning. But then I realized that it was a waste of my time because I didn't want to be in any one of those professions. I wanted to go into business. So I went into the stock market business. Now, in the stock market business, there are obviously a bunch of different opportunities. One of the opportunities that I took advantage of was an opportunity that required the skill of speaking, being a salesperson. I already knew how to be a salesperson since I was a kid. So I used my skill of being a salesperson. The first few years, I didn't really make much money. Only my bosses made a lot of money. But that's just like paying your dues. You can't be CEO on day one. You have to eat the turf a little bit. You have to pay your dues. They make $100,000 a month. You make $1,000. So be it. But eventually, you have this dream that one day, I'm going to be the guy that makes $100,000. And that's what happened. In the year 2000... You want me to stop? Do you guys want to finish?

16:24So, if you want something, if in the year 2001, this boss/partner of mine panicked after he saw September 11th, and he left the business, leaving me, for the first time in my career, an opportunity to be independent, still work within a company, but be independent within a company. And I told the owner of the office... which is a part of a very big company, that I wanted to be independent. I don't want to have another partner. I don't want to have another boss. I want to be an independent broker. And he said, "Listen, I don't have a problem with you being an independent broker, but you just have to come up with about five thousand dollars a month in bills." And I said, "For what?" And he said, "Part of the rent, part of the secretary, part of the paper, part of the coffee, part of this, part of that." I said, "Yeah, but I don't use all those." He replied, "You just have to pay for it." "Why?" "That's life. Have the money for me." We're good. You don't have the money. You have a problem. I said, "Okay, I'll have the money for you." He goes, "Where are you going to get the money?" I replied, "I have no idea." "Yeah, if you could. Yeah, good. Thank you. How are you going to get it?" I said, "I have no idea. I have no idea. I have maybe $1,000 in the bank, $2,000 in the bank. I have no idea how I'm going to come up with this money, but I'll come up with the money." He said, "Okay, so why should I let you do this? Why should I take the risk on you? Maybe you're not going to make the money. Why should I take the risk on you? What's your intention here?"

17:47Me, being a young, at-the-time 21-year-old kid, answered boldly, "My intention is to buy you out." Anyway, it's a little older, sounds funny, younger guys think it's cute. In reality, it's silly. The guy's been in the business for 20 years. What 20-year-old's gonna buy him out? Or at least, that's what I thought. He says he found it amusing, an ambitious 20-year-old kid who wants to buy him out. Fine. "Go ahead, starting Monday. You can start working and start getting your own clients, but make sure you have my money." No problem. So for the first six months, every dollar that I made went to his account. I had to live off of the one dollar a day that I borrowed from this guy, Dimitri, to buy coffee and a doughnut. I because that's all I could afford, and I didn't want to borrow money from anybody. So, I borrowed a dollar and fifty cents for each. In order to get to work, I lived in Staten Island and had to go to work in Manhattan every day. I had to sneak onto a bus every morning and every night. I would leave the house at around 5:36 in the morning, get to the office at around 6:37, and work till about midnight, 12:30, maybe one. and

19:02get home another hour and a half, travel home, get home around 2. Sleep for a couple of hours and do it all over again the next day. That's what we call paying your dues. No one becomes a millionaire by doing nothing, even if it looks like it on TV. On TV, they give you the illusion that you become a millionaire just by being 50 Cent. just by being the Google guys, just by being Steve Jobs. No, those guys had to pay their dues. As a matter of fact, if you want the best proof, if any of you want to read, if you want to read any of the bios, you see that any bio of a story of somebody's life doesn't talk about the times they were successful. The life story of Steve Jobs does not talk about the times he was successful. The life story of Michael Jordan does not talk about the times he was successful. What it talks about for the majority of the book is their failures. Because that's the only valuable experience you have in your life. Your success is not experience. It's just benefits. That's all it is. You don't really learn much from success. You learn from failure. So I continued paying my dues for the first little while. But then after about six months, I got a little break. Some of my stocks started working out. What it talks about for the majority of the book is their failures. Because that's the only valuable experience you have in your life. Your success is not experience. It's just benefits. That's all it is. You don't really learn much from success. You learn from failure. So I continued paying my dues for the first little while. But then, after about six months, I got a little break. Some of my stocks started working out. Some of the...

20:21Investors were referring me to some people in a bad market. I made five thousand dollars. I made a thousand dollars, I'm sorry. I mean a thousand dollars that I actually was able to take home, which was a ton of money for me. The next month I made five thousand, the next month I made another five thousand, and the next month I made about ten thousand. The next month I made a hundred and seventeen thousand. One month, I made $117,000. I had just hit 22 years old. It's a lot of money. I broke the office record. Everyone started celebrating because I was the new star. Life was good for a moment, and then I picked up the phone and got back to work. The guy told me, "What are you doing? It's Friday. Why are you on the phone? You just made a lot of money. You made more money than the rest of the office did combined." I said, "Yeah, but I have to prepare for Monday." Yeah, but why don't you go party? I asked him, "For what?" "To go celebrate the money you made," he said. I responded, "I did." He asked, "When?" "Five minutes ago. It's over now. We have to go do it again." For me, it wasn't about making money to buy elaborate things. For me, it was the challenge. I just wanted to win. This is one of the decisions that everybody has to make in their life: Do you want to be a winner or a loser? It's your decision.

21:38Your decision, whether you're a winner or a loser, is your decision. You cannot blame anybody else for you being a loser. Not your Abba, not your Ima, not your uncle, not the guy that beat you up, not your childhood, not your future, not your color, not your nothing. Whether you're a winner or a loser is your decision. Obstacles will come in your way. If you're a man of color, you have certain obstacles. If you're a Jew, you have certain obstacles. If you're a male, you have certain obstacles. Female, certain obstacles. Everyone has obstacles. But those obstacles are supposed to build you, not make you a loser. You make yourself a loser or a winner. So, if I can go from making nothing and living off of a dollar a day, then I believe that anybody could do the same thing, and I've seen it. As a matter of fact, anyone that doesn't want to believe the story, one of my former employees is sitting in the room with you. You could ask him at the end. His name is Shani. He's laughing. So anyway, long story short, you make a hundred seventeen thousand a month, people think you're a big deal. Next month, you make another fifty, next month you make another hundred, next month you make another hundred eighty, and money starts pouring in. We're making money.

22:52Hiring people, I leave the company and start my own company. By the year 2006, we're at a point where we're pretty much printing money. A bad month is two or three hundred thousand dollars. A good month is a lot more. The best month during that year was May of 2006. We made 1.6 million dollars in one day. That was the kind of money that we were getting. The beautiful part about it is, despite how many employees I had, 90% of the money was what I was making. They were just filling up the room. It looked like it was a big company because there were a lot of employees, but most of them were just grinding water, trying to make it, trying to be the next millionaire. A few of them made money. A few of them made decent money. A couple of guys made some big money. But for the most part, 90% of the production was me. I had obviously more years in the business and more customers and so on. But anyway, life was good monetarily. Inside, it was doom. Inside, it was empty. Inside, I lived that joke I told you earlier about the rich guy and the poor guy and the rich guy who wanted to kill himself. Because even though I wasn't necessarily suicidal, I was very, very depressed. And the reason why is because you always think that once you get money, life is going to change. Something wonderful is going to happen, like all of a sudden you're not going to have problems.

24:17All of a sudden, things are going to work out. Many people come to me and tell me, "Listen, I want to donate so much money. If Hashem gives me this money, I'm going to donate a lot of money." So they wait to be rich to donate money. Did you ever think about maybe Hashem doesn't want you to donate a lot of money? He just wants you to donate what you have now. Everybody has 50 bucks to donate. Everybody has 20 bucks to donate. Everybody has a hundred bucks to donate and... Especially if you live in New York and you're single, you pay $3,000 a month in rent. You have 50 bucks, you have 20 bucks, you have a hundred bucks. Maybe that's what you should donate. Don't worry about donating $10,000. Don't worry about being the big dog that buys the Aliyah on Yom Kippur for a million dollars. That's not for you. Your test is to donate the five dollars that you have that's hard for you. Five bucks. Can you donate five dollars? That's worth a million dollars to Hashem. The five dollars are worth a million dollars to Hashem. So, for anyone that's waiting to be rich before they donate, it's a phenomenal, phenomenal excuse that the Yetzer Hara convinced you that you have to be rich to donate. You don't have to be rich to donate. If you have a dollar, it's a dollar more than you need, donate a dollar.

25:36100 more than you need, you donate 100, whatever it is, everybody could donate. I was sitting in a car yesterday with a wonderful human being, and he was telling me, "You know, I used to donate so much money. I used to do this, I used to do that." By this time, he's telling me these wonderful stories of how, in the past, he was able to do all these great things, and now he can't because times are rough. And I ask myself this question: Does he realize what he's saying right now? Okay, he used to donate thousands and thousands of dollars. Fine. You're not homeless. You're still driving a $100,000 car. That means you could donate $50. I mean, if you're driving a $100,000 car, you should be able to donate $50, $75, maybe even $100. I remember as a paperboy when I was 15, I donated $100 a couple of times. I was making $250 a week. So if you're driving a $100,000 car, you could donate $100. No, people have this work mentality that you need to be a millionaire to donate. So to answer your question in regards to donating for a subject that we hate, there's no price. Donate a dollar, donate a hundred, or even a million—it's irrelevant. Donations in Hashem's eyes are judged based on what you have. If you have a million and you donate a hundred, it's not considered a mitzvah on your level.

26:53Not why you have a million you donate a hundred. It's not good if you have a hundred, but you donate ten. It gets deducted as ma'aser. You are judged based on what you have, the tools you have. You can't be judged for not doing a good job if you don't have a job. Instead, that's in regards to donations. This is one thing that's very, very important for us to know and... As far as what to donate to, there are two major mitzvot in Judaism that a person must donate to, must try to do everything he can because it has the most amount of reward. Number one is that they both have in common, they have to have Torah in mind. If you're going to donate, you want to make it an investment. You don't want to just donate and hope that Philip, the big whale, is going to be saved. Or Bertha, the elephant from the Noahide Zoo is going to be saved. That's not going to get you any Gan Eden. Elephant being saved is not giving anyone Gan Eden. What's going to be saved if you save the human? You save a human, you get Gan Eden. You save an elephant, nothing. So we have to save our brothers and sisters that are off today. They don't know anything. They think they're going where they want to be going. They're still where we used to be. That's the guy you want to save. Either him or the guy that's studying Torah all day. That's the guy you want to save. Why? He's the only reason the world exists and...

28:17And we'll get to that in a moment. So those are the two top things you want to donate to. You could ask any major Rav. These are the top two things. There are obviously other things to donate to, whether it's homeless people, poor people, widows, orphans, and so on. But if you're talking about levels, the Gedolim were asked what's the top? Those are the two top things. Now... Money for me was always a tool. The same way you look at a hammer, I look at money. Whether I had money or I didn't have money, I always looked at it as a toolbox. Hashem didn't give me the test of valuing money as anything other than a tool. So when I had a bunch of money, I just thought that maybe this tool is going to help some of these problems go away. Little did I know that all it does is get me to arrive at the problems that I already had, and some new ones, in a limo. Problems don't go away. Sometimes you have more problems—more money, more problems. I think Biggie Smalls said that. He wasn't part of chassidus. So I have these new problems, I have these new so-called friends, and I'm doing my best to be the best that I can.

29:30Come to me for help. I ask him how much the help costs. They tell me a price. I write a check. I hope that's going to make me feel better. It does for a moment, but then I go back to my life. I'm still looking. What's the purpose? What's the point? Where is it going? Okay, so this year I made five million; next year, I'm going to make ten million. So what? What do you do with all of it? How many cars can you buy? How many houses can you buy? How many vacations can you go on? What's the point? Most people that want to be rich never ask those questions. They just want to be rich, and then they say, "I'll figure it out later." I got there. I asked the questions. Still no answers. Still no answers. Okay, so you go on vacation. You go on another vacation. You go on another vacation. Eventually, you want to go home. You know what the best part of a vacation is? Going home. Ask anyone that went on a long vacation. Best part, going home. Why? Home. It's my home. It's my bed. It's my TV. It's my bathroom. It's my whatever. Home. Best part of a vacation. You have a car. How many cars can you drive at once? If you're the best driver in the world. One car. How many cars does a really rich person drive? Zero. He doesn't drive. He has a driver. So even if he has a Bugatti for a million or two million dollars, he still doesn't drive it. Somebody else drives him.

30:51So the car is useless. The house is useless because you only live in one house. The vacations become useless because you're already bored of the same thing. Okay, so you saw the sun, you saw the sky, you saw the trees, you say it all looks like your backyard already. So what? What do you do then? What? I worked so hard to make this money, now what? I got there, and I didn't know what. Now what? Okay, I had a wife, she was wonderful, now what? So you have kids, the kids drive you crazy, now what? Do what? Go work, eat, drink, get some money, go to the bathroom a few times a day, eat, drink, go on vacation. Every day it's the same thing. Now what? What's the point? What's the difference between me and the cow? The cow doesn't have a mortgage bill. Actually, I should be a cow. If that's what life's about, I should be a lion. Everybody's scared of you. You don't have a mortgage bill. You're never stressed out. Roar at everybody, and they run away.

31:53You ever see a balding monkey? No. He's not stressed out. He has a wife. He has kids. He has a house. You may not want to live in his house. He has a house too. To him, it's a mansion. It's the whole jungle. What's the difference? What's the point? I asked myself this question. I didn't have an answer. And when I didn't have an answer, I got depressed. So what do you do when you get depressed? You have wealth; you go away, you run away, you run away from your problems. So I went. I went to Las Vegas. I went to Las Vegas for a little over a month. I started to play. I was a high-stakes poker player. I liked math; I liked psychology. The two are good for poker. Plus, I had money, so it was very difficult to beat me because I wasn't scared of losing. I played high-stakes poker and was a pretty decent player. I played with the best players in the world, the ones some people watch on TV. Beat many of them, lost to some of them. That was my fun. Went from stress to stress. After a month, month and a half, however long I was there, I came home. I'm back to now what? I'm back to, okay. I'm making money. Okay, the employees. Okay, everybody thinks I'm great. Oh, so then what? Still don't know. So what do I do? I said, you know what? Let me make my body better. I

33:12So I said, listen, you know what? There's one thing that's annoying me once or twice a year. It's called hemorrhoids. Two out of three people in America have it. It's a very common problem. It's annoying. It's not really such a big deal. So I go to the doctor. I'm like, what's the cost of fixing this annoying problem that bothers me once or twice a year? And he says, listen, it's only a few thousand dollars. And I say, okay, how much time? He goes, no, you come. I do the surgery. I do two or three surgeries a day for the last 20 years. you come to me. I give you a surgery on a Wednesday morning. You relax, you rest for a few days, and you're back to work on Monday. I said, okay, no problem. Even though I'm making $3,000 an hour, this, so two or three days, is a lot of money. I said I already have plenty, no big deal. Let me take the surgery. At least I thought. I wake up out of the surgery screaming and yelling in pain, asking my wife and my mom to kill me. I The pain is no longer hemorrhoids pain. The pain has now evolved into some type of mutation. It evolved into some type of alien; it evolved into something out of this world. The pain felt like someone took one of those daggers from the commando movies, connected it to an electric outlet, and just started cutting me up in my entire body over and over again. It wouldn't stop. That's the pain I had, and it wouldn't stop. Eventually, they gave me the most amount of morphine legally allowed, and I calmed down and

34:33They said, "We have no idea what just happened, but you seem okay. So, sorry, we have no idea what happened, but you can go home now. After all, it was only an elective surgery. It was an optional surgery. It's not like it caused some cancer or heart attack or anything like that. It's an optional surgery. Go home. Good luck. Thank you for coming." I was excited to go home, to run away from these people that caused me so much pain. I went home. We picked up shawarma on the way home. the sandwich, the very famous sandwich that I've mentioned in every one of my lectures. It was a good sandwich after all, and I thought that it's over. Little did I know it's just beginning. I went to sleep. I woke up 45 minutes later with more pain than I did the first time. Only this time, there were no doctors. There was no help, and there was no hope for 62 days. I This time it didn't stop after a couple of hours. This time it didn't stop for 62 days. This time it just got worse. This time it led to the rest of my body starting to fail. I started urinating blood, blood coming out of my eyes, infections in my ears, and so many words going back and forth to the doctors, where the doctors are saying, "We have no idea what happened, we have no idea what's wrong with him, we have no idea how it could all be, but he's probably dying." For a simple surgery.

36:04This wasn't exactly part of the plan. This is when having the answer to the question "What's the point in life?" starts mattering. Because if you're going to die, you need to know what's going to happen after. In Judaism, you have life here and which the sages call Alma DeSheikra, the world of lies. The reason why is because most of what we think is true is a lie. The Rambam explains that everything we desire naturally is bad for us. We desire money; too much of it will kill us, and We desire women. Too much of them will kill us. We desire intimacy, sex. Too much of it will kill us. We desire food. Too much of it will kill us. Everything we desire, we want too much of. We have no stop button. And if Hashem didn't put something in our way, we would die. So... Huh? Too much Torah, that's the one thing that you...

37:33can't die from. But the problem is that you don't have a desire for it naturally. Naturally, you don't have a desire for it, and the reason why is because you're not brought into the world knowing what Torah is. Most people think Torah is a bunch of stories about a bunch of old men that wear a hat, maybe a shtreimel, maybe a beard, maybe this, maybe that. Good stories in a desert. Most people think it's just stories; most people think it's a history book. Sh'ma was a history book. The Torah is an instruction set. It's an instruction set of how to live, what to do, how to be successful in life, in marriage, in business, and in everything and anything that you want to do. It's an instruction set for all of it. People spend tens of thousands of dollars trying to figure out how to be better, how to be a better quality version of themselves. They call it self-help. Beauty of the Torah is that anything that's any good in this world must have a source in the Torah. If it's good, it has to have a source in the Torah. If it's not in the Torah, it's definitely not good. So I'll give you an example. The

38:49One of the lines I actually mentioned earlier, what Biggie Smalls, the late rapper, said, "more money, more problems." It's also in Chazal. It's actually a Maamar Chazal. Chazal says more money, you're going to have more problems. It's not his invention. But I'll give you something even more interesting that I found as a chiddush that I thought was very interesting. Does anybody here have kids? One, two. Baruch Hashem, you're all young, so you haven't been beat up by your little kid yet. We'll talk about that soon. We'll talk about that soon. But if you have little kids, you know that your kids, for whatever reason or another, little kids like music. Little kids like music. They love music. And there's a song in the English language called, "If You're Happy and You Know It."

39:50If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands. Don't clap. The song is famous, and people think that it was invented by some guy about a hundred, two hundred years ago. Nonsense. It is in the Torah. In the Torah, where is it in Torah? The Prophet Yechezkel, in chapter 6, verse 11, tells us about the process of what would happen as part of mourning when someone died. What would happen when someone died? They would carry him all the way to the funeral, all the way to where they would bury him. But at that moment, there was a ritual they would do. And he says here, thus said Hashem, the Lord Hashem Elohim. He says, clap your hands, stomp your feet, and say, "Alas." He says, clap your hands, stomp your feet, and say, "Oy, oy." So the goyim changed it. Clap your hands, stomp your feet, and say "yay." So instead of us, this was a form of mourning. Like saying "oy vey." Like saying "Hashem yirachem." Like mourning. Like this is just a ritual, a thing that we did a few thousand years ago. So the goyim changed it. They said instead of mourning a funeral, let's make it something happy. They're happy because it's Jews dying over here. But anyway, point being is they changed it. What is it? Clap your hands, stomp your feet?

41:19Hooray, such a good song. What's my thought? Everything and anything that's any good in life must have a source in the Torah. Finding out these things, finding out all these freedoms, is fascinating to me because you see how true it is. You see why someone that's called the wisest man of all, Shlomo HaMelech, was addicted to Torah and... Addicted to Torah. All he wanted to do was learn Torah. You're the smartest guy in the world. You already know everything. You know nothing. I need to know Torah. The smartest, the richest, has everything, and all he wants to do is learn Torah. You understand why, when you find these things, you see anything that's any good has to have a source in the Torah. So anyway, I woke up out of the surgery. I'm in bad shape. I... Go to sleep. I wake up in worse shape. And now it's worse shape than I even thought because, aside from dying or at least that's what they thought, I don't have an interesting answer of what happens after. I heard about this concept of Gan Eden and Gehinom, but I had no idea what happens there. So, briefly, to answer the question that somebody else asked as far as life after life and...

42:39Judaism, we believe that this world is a world full of lies, meaning that everything that we want is really not so good for us. Everything that we don't want, that the Yetzer Hara says is poison, is really good for us. The Yetzer Hara says Torah is poison, but really, it's poison for him and vitamins for us. The people that are successful materially are usually the biggest resha'im. The people that are poor are sometimes the biggest tzaddikim. It's a lie. It's a world that's upside down. The Chazon Ish says this life is only a prosdor. This life is only a corridor. It's like a hallway, a short hallway that leads you to the real life. Every house has a small little hallway, some big, some small, but in general, the hallway is a small part of the house. No one would say, "Listen, the hallway is my house." No, it's just a small part of my house. Same thing with life. This life here that we think is real, that we think is everything, is really nothing. This life is just the corridor. It's just the place you do your job. It's the place you put your job application, it's the place you pay your dues to get to the real life. What's the real life? The real life is eternal. It's forever. I

43:51What is forever? It all depends on what you do in this corridor. If you do good in this hallway, if you follow the instructions, eternity is amazing. Everything and anything you can imagine—multiply it by a million. It's still not enough. The greatest of everything is not enough to describe one moment in Olam HaBa. Olam HaBa for a righteous person: if you combine all of the good of all the people—rich, poor, kings, servants, whoever—you combine all the good they ever had in their entire life from the beginning of mankind until the end, it's not enough to justify one moment in Olam HaBa. That's that part. On the other hand, if it's not so good... It's the exact opposite. All of the bad that anyone can imagine is much, much worse. There's a book in the Torah, one of the 24 books in the Torah, about a prophet named Iyov. Iyov was actually not Jewish. He was a Noahide. He was a righteous Gentile, and Iyov was a prophet who was able to talk to Hashem. In his book, it talks about his great test and

45:10He went from being a billionaire to being homeless. He went from having ten kids to all of his kids dying in one day. He went from being popular and amazing to everyone making fun of him all in one day. He lost everything and he had to suffer extraordinary pain both emotionally and physically to such an extent that the worms were coming out of his body, not just going in. And Chazal says that... ...of the pain that he had. It's worth it to have that pain for 70 years, meaning for a full life on this earth, rather than to spend one minute in the bad place, to spend one minute in Gehinnom. It's hard for us to understand how bad it can really be, so ideally, we should avoid going there. Now, at this point, when I had the surgery, I didn't know the details of either one of the places, and... I knew that there's something called Gehinnom. There's something called Gan Eden. But apparently, if you give some tzedakah, you should be going to Gan Eden, at least that's what I thought. So, I went through this phase of two months of quickly dying. At some point after two months, Hashem had mercy on me and He started easing the pain. I started coming back to myself. I thought that, okay

46:38I saw what Gehinnom looks like in this world at least. Now I'm going to go back to work, go back to making money, go back to building my company, go back to figuring out I have another chance at life. Nine months later, I get a pain in my leg. Go to the doctor the next day because I can't handle the pain anymore. It's even worse than what the things were before. They tell me that I have an infection between two muscles called an abscess, an internal abscess that is so big and so dangerous that if I had waited a few hours, it would have exploded, gotten into my bloodstream, and I would have died instantly. So I have to have emergency surgery, and the recovery is even more difficult than the surgery because they have to reopen the surgery every day several times a day and... Lots of fun. So anyway, for the next 10 days, I'm in an intensive care unit with constant morphine in my system. The second surgery was worse than the first. Eventually, the hospital stay is over. I think, okay, fine, this is over. Stage two is done. I'm finished. Gone. Enough. Six months later, another infection, another surgery.

47:46recovery. Three months later, another surgery, another recovery, and then it gets to a point where it's every month. And then it gets to a point where every single day of my life, I'm living in 24 hours a day of pain. But now it's not one part of my body. Like I told you, as soon as the surgery happened, my body changed. Now, I have something called being hypersensitive and Meaning that I feel pain much more than you do. Now, when I was a football player, I barely felt pain because you have to have a high pain tolerance in order to play football. You can't cry if somebody hits you. Now, if you're hypersensitive, you can't play football. Why? Because if you do this to them, they feel it much more. So I became hypersensitive. So aside from already having pain, the pain itself was felt worse to me than what it even was. And it already was bad. But now the pain was not in one place; it was everywhere—from my neck all the way to the bottom of my feet. I had to be on constant painkillers, but even that wasn't helpful. I still had to tolerate pain. I still had to deal with it.

49:03Once in a while, something new would happen. One day, my legs started hurting. The next day, they became puffy. The day after that, they doubled in size. When your legs double in size unnaturally, it's not fun. You go to the doctor, hoping that this guy who went to school for a million years is going to have a solution. He owes $250,000 to somebody; he should have some type of solution, and... Unfortunately, he knew less than I did. What did he tell me? He told me, "Maybe it's from the heat. Maybe your legs doubled in size in 24 hours from the heat." I said, "You should go back to school or at least ask for a refund. Heat? This is the stupidity that you deal with in the medical world. People think that doctors are geniuses and... Cornell, Cornell, top university, top hospital, top idiots. I went to every hospital and everywhere. Over the next few years, I realized this problem was not going away. Over the next few years, I realized this problem is permanent, or at least I thought so. The pain that I had, that I thought was only going to last for a day, then for a month, then for two months, and then for nine months, continued for the next seven years.

50:26Seven years of 24 hours a day pain non-stop. No breaks. No Shabbat. No vacation. Once in a while, the pain became tolerable where I would be able to manage life. But it was always pain, just degrees of pain. Some pain I was still able to have a conversation. Some pain I wasn't able to stand. And it got worse over time. So eventually, you have that much pain. You're not able to run your business. You're not able to run your life. You start losing the purpose of life. If there was a purpose, you don't want it anymore. One of the most horrific things that a person can feel is that their suffering is for no reason. Everyone suffers. Everyone has a different level of suffering, but everyone suffers in their life, one way or another. Some people suffer from health... Some people suffer from money issues. Some people suffer from their kids. Some people suffer from sicknesses and so on and so forth. People suffer. That's life; we all have suffering. Unfortunately, it's part of life. Very much a big part of life, actually. It's a bigger part of life than joy in many cases. But the worst part about being secular, the worst part about not having 100% emunah in Hashem Yitbarach is...

51:52that when you don't have emunah in Hashem, you think that your suffering is for no reason. You're just suffering. You're like, you know, I'm speaking to you. He doesn't like you. He forgot about you. He went to sleep, and you're still in pain. There's no reason for it. Like when people ask, where was God during the Holocaust? Where was God last weekend when this Arab terrorist Decided to murder three Jews. Where was God during the pogroms? Where was God during all of these sicknesses? Where was God when kids are being abused and insulted? Where was God? The answer is very simple: when you learn Torah, He did it. He pressed the go button. Nothing in the world happens without Hashem saying this has to happen. If a leaf—every tree has tens of thousands of leaves, some more, some less—but a leaf at some point falls off the tree, the leaf has to ask God for permission. "Can I fall?" "No." Next day, "Can I fall?" "No." Next day, "Can I fall?" "Okay, today you can fall. Now you can fall." That's God. If you believe in something else, that's not God. It's something else.

53:11God, the God of Israel, the God of the Torah, controls everything—anything and everything in between. Things you know, things you don't know, and He even knows what's in your mind. As a matter of fact, one of the 13 principles of faith to know whether you believe in Judaism or not is if you believe that He knows what's inside your mind. If you don't, you suspect you may not be a Jew. If you're going to go through a conversion, Baruch Hashem, we have the honor of helping many converts go through conversion. They're going to ask you, "Do you believe in the 13 principles of faith?" You're going to say, "Yes, of course, I believe in anything you say. Just give me the test. Give me the certificate. Give me something." Okay, tell us, what are the 13 principles of faith? Explain them to us. They're going to ask you, "Oh, do you know that God knows what's in your mind?" No, no, I don't believe in that. He knows everything else, not what's in my mind. He knows what's in His mind. complicated. I'm difficult. I'm smart. I'm this, I'm that. I'm something you've never heard of. Everybody always tells me, "I have a story you've never heard of. Everything is unique." You are unique, but more to God. He's your Father, but He still knows what's in your mind. It's not so unique to Him. Why? He created you. He put it in you, and...

54:34So when you suffer without God, it's miserable. It's hopeless. You want to die because you see that there's no point to this. He's beating me up, beating me up, beating me up, and nothing but bad is going to come out of it. Other than me being in pain, there's nothing good out of it. Once you start learning Torah, you get to a stage where you start... Learning about Yirat Shamayim, about fear of Hashem. After you learn about some Yirat Shamayim, you start learning about Emunah. And I don't mean Emunah like some Emunah channel tells you, "Listen, if you believe God is good, then that's Emunah." That's not Emunah. That's just somebody saying it's Emunah. Emunah means that Hashem runs the world. Emunah means that Hashem runs the world and He has you in mind. Emunah means that Hashem wants good for you even though you see it as bad. Emunah means that when it's dark, you still believe in God. When it's horrible, you have no question in your mind that God's pressing the button. When there's murder, there's pogroms, there's Holocaust, you know who did it. And you know He did it for a good reason, even though it's hard for us to fathom. It's hard for us to understand what could possibly be so good about six million people, Hashem Elokim ya'an.

55:55Everything that the Merciful One does, everything that Hashem does, has to be the best, not just good—the best. What does it mean, "the best"? You have Infinite amount of ways to go from point A to point B. It’s not the same tomorrow morning or tomorrow afternoon when I go back to Florida to my home, wife, and two little kids. There are multiple ways of going home. I'm taking JetBlue; JetBlue's going to take me home. But in reality, there’s more than one way to go home. You could take Spirit if you want to torture yourself. You could take United Airlines if you want them to rip you off. You could drive if you want to waste a lot of time. You can go on a boat if you're a multimillionaire with nothing to do with your time. There are many, many different options of how to get home. Rabbi Akiva gives us a chidush. He says, Hashem has even more ways to bring you from point A to point B. An infinite amount of ways. The way that He picks is always the best way. Even if it hurts. Even if it's difficult. Even if you don't understand. Even if you think you understand. The way He picked is always the best.

57:13It's always the best option, meaning that the most difficult things for us to understand are still the best option. To be a Jew, you have to believe this. That's emunah. That's an emunah channel. It's not some guy that tells you things that are against the Torah, but he has payos and you think he's a tzaddik. That's not emunah. Payos don't make you have belief. What makes you believe is your actions, your... Are you going through a tough time? Yes. Do you still believe in God? Yes, that's emunah. If you don't believe in God, you never had emunah in the first place. Emunah is not something you lose. You can only gain it. Once you have it, it's permanent. It's like a body part. You can't just lose it. It's not something you lose in the street. No, I used to have emunah in Hashem, but I went through a tough time. I don't believe in it anymore. No, that means you never had it. You had something else. Maybe it was gas. It wasn't emunah. It wasn't emunah. It was something else. You had a burp. Maybe it wasn't emunah. Emunah is not something you lose. You don't lose it. Once you have it, it's permanent; it becomes part of you. It's like DNA. It becomes part of you. If it's a little here, a little there, it's not emunah. It's something else. It's like maybe it's on the way to having emunah.

58:39So, anyone who wants to teach you emunah, tell them what emunah is. If they give you a different definition, it's not emunah. It's something else. Emunah is something that, once you have it, becomes part of you. So, I didn't have this. I didn't have anything close to it. So, to me, without emunah, life was terrible. Why? Because, to me, I was suffering for no reason. So, I wanted to die, especially after seven years. Hashem promises us that He's not going to give us a test that we can't pass. I got to that point where I was starting to fail, meaning I started looking for an exit strategy. So Hashem sent me the answer. When Avraham Avinu was three years old, he got out of the cave. He had to hide in the cave; his father put him in the cave because the evil, idol-worshipping king at the time

59:46Wanted to kill him. So he hid the little baby in a cave. After he came out of the cave, the Midrash says, he's three years old, and he's looking at the sky, and he sees the sun. He says, "Wow, that's God. That's God." But then the sun went down, and the moon came up. "Ah, the moon must be stronger. It took down the sun like nobody's business. Knocked it out. That's God." But then he saw it changed again. Now he's confused. He's looking for God. He's looking for God. He thinks maybe the tree, maybe this, maybe that, maybe this, maybe that. But he keeps looking for God because he says there must be a God. This beautiful painting didn't just appear. Like some idiots say in the world today that everything came from nothing. Even if you want to believe everything came from nothing, where did the first nothing come from? The first cell. Let's say we all came from a cell. There was a cell, went through mitosis or meiosis, which splits the cell. then splits it again so 2 becomes 4, 4 becomes 8, and so on and so forth, and eventually becomes a fish. And the fish somehow grows legs, and the legs somehow become a lizard, and somehow it becomes a monkey. And the monkey is sitting in front of you, giving you a lecture for the next two hours. Fine, let's say you want to believe it. Let's say you want to believe all of that, fine. Where did the first cell come from?

1:01:07must be a Creator. You must believe in something. Even if you don't believe in Judaism, you still must believe in God. You still must believe in an infinite God. Which means, you're a fool. Why? If you already believe in the Creator that created the first cell, why are you limiting this Creator to only one cell? Why can't He create two cells? And if He created two cells, why can't He create four? And if He created four, why can't He just create the chicken and not the egg? And if He already created the chicken, why can't He create the farm and the house and the sky and the heavens and everything? Why are you limiting your Creator? What kind of Creator do you have? What, does He need a job? Does He need money? What kind of Creator is this? If you already believe in a Creator because you're a logical, rational person, you must believe in the God of Israel. Anything otherwise is pure craziness. So now I believed in God. The Judaism part was a little bit difficult for me. I thought Judaism was optional. I thought I could keep, and that makes me a tzaddik. I don't keep, I'm still okay. So now when I'm suffering and I don't have any emunah, I want to end this deal because I figured I'm okay anyway. This life, after life, is gonna be okay. I'm gonna get it anyway. I gave some tzedakah. I donated some money. I should be okay. Hashem obviously had a different plan for me. He said, "No, no, no, you stay right there. I decide when you live and die." But He also knew that I couldn't tolerate anymore.

1:02:32So one day my mom, with a sense like a typical mom, had a feeling that something was fishy, something was wrong. She started calling different rabbis, asking for a bracha. She called Israel, she called America, she called anyone and everyone she had in this little black book. But today, unlike other days, no one's picking up the phone. For two hours, she's dialing the phone. No one's picking up the phone. Eventually, after two hours, a woman in Israel picks up the phone and... My mom asked for a certain rabbi's name. That rabbi is not available, not because he's not there, but because the woman says, "You've dialed the wrong phone number. You dialed the wrong phone number in the wrong country." My mom is hysterical, crying because she's been dialing for two hours to ask for a simple bracha. Finally, she gets a human being, and the human being is the wrong person. She starts crying, but Hashem Yitbarach did exactly what He did for Avraham Avinu. After Avraham Avinu was looking, looking, looking, looking, looking, looking, what did Hashem do? He peeked in and said, "Oh, you're looking for Me? I'm God. I'm God."

1:03:44I'm the one that's right. I'm the one who put the moon. I'm the one who put the sun. I'm the one that's Me, says the Ba'al HaBirah, the King, the one who's the Ba'al HaBayit, the Owner. He peeked in and said, "Hey, it's Me you're looking for. It's Me." The same thing happened in my mom's story. My mom is looking for God. She's looking for blessings, and Hashem made it so that the woman hears my mom crying—the strange woman, the wrong phone number—and... Different country and she says, "Nechama," which is my mom's name. My mom is in shock and she says, "Who are you? How do you know my name?" She replies, "I'm your niece, your brother's daughter." But my mom is bewildered and asks, "How did I reach you?" She answers, "How did I get to you? I called the wrong phone number, and I don't even have your phone number for it to be some type of mistake, and we've never talked on the phone before. We don't have each other's phone numbers." you've dialed the wrong phone number in a country that has 15 or so million people, and you reach one person, and that one person identifies your voice even though you've never talked on the phone before. On top of that, that one person is the only one that can help you. Why? Because Penina, which is her name, says to my mom, "Why are you crying?"

1:05:08My mom says, "Because my kid is dying. Everyone knows Yaron is sick. He's dying, and I need a blessing from a big rabbi." He says, "If you're looking for a big rabbi, why don't you call my brother, Rav Ephraim? He's a big talmid chacham. He's very accomplished in the Torah himself, but on top of that, he lives only a building or so away from Rav Ovadia. He can connect you if necessary." So my mom calls Rav Ephraim. He's on a call. He calls her back. They talk. And Rav Ephraim is very, very wise, far beyond his years. And right away he asked my mom a very serious question: Does he speak Hebrew? Because Rav Ephraim and I have never spoken before. I actually didn't even know he existed. When I left Eretz Yisrael when I was 10, he was still a baby. So... She says, "Yeah, he speaks Hebrew." So I said, "I could just call him myself and talk to him and see if I can help him." She said, "No, he would never talk to you." And at that very moment when she said, "He would never talk to you," I decided out of the blue to call my mother for the first time in maybe a year. That's when Hashem peeks in again, twice in the same day, and He says, "I'm the one running the show." My mom...

1:06:34Answers the phone, hysterically crying. And she says, "Talk to him, talk to him!" I asked her, "Well, who talked to whom and why are you crying?" She says, "Just talk to Ephraim." I said, "Who's Ephraim? Why is he making you cry?" She says, "Your cousin. Talk to him, he can help you." I said, "If it's going to stop you from crying, you can have him call me. Just stop crying. The worst thing in the world you can hear is your mom crying." I waited for this phone call. The phone call comes in. This guy named Ephraim calls me. "Hi," he says. "You like stories?" I said, "Yeah, sure, I like stories." He asked, "But have you ever heard the story of Judah and Tamar?" I said, "I don't even know who they are." So he tells me the story of Judah and Tamar and all the different secrets in the story of how it leads to the Messiah and... Still to this day, one of my favorite stories, if not my favorite story of all time. It took me four years to realize why he chose that story, which is something I'll tell in another lecture. The story of Judah and Tamar is a biblical story of how Judah had two sons, Er and Onan, as mentioned in Sefer Bereshit. Judah was one of the twelve tribes, one of the sons of Yaakov Avinu.

1:07:58He had two sons. He tried marrying one of them to this woman named Tamar, but he was wicked. He didn't want to have kids. He wanted to keep his wife pretty. He didn't want to get her pregnant. So what he did is he wasted seed. Instead of being with his wife in order to make kids, he ended up being with his wife, but the ejaculation happened outside of the body, and In Hashem's eyes, even before He gave Am Yisrael the Torah, that was considered a huge sin. That was considered such a huge sin to the point that the Torah calls it 100% murder. Why murder? Because each one of these seeds has a life in it. Now, the Gemara Masechet Niddah, page 16, talks about what is in every one of these seeds. Every time there's a seed, there's a malach (angel). There's an angel called Lailah who takes the seed, comes to Hashem, and says, "Hashem, what will be with the seed? Will it be tall? Will it be short? Will it be rich? Will it be poor? What's going to be its name?" and so on and so forth. Hashem decides whether the seed is going to come to life or not, and Hashem decides how this life is going to be—whether it's going to be a tall person, a short person, a rich person, a poor person, and so on and so forth. Meaning, it doesn't pay to work overtime because it's already decided.

1:09:27Only thing that's in your decision is whether you follow Hashem or not, whether you have Yirat Shamayim or not. Whether you're rich, poor, tall, short, white, black—all that stuff is not your choice. The only thing that's your choice is whether you have Yirat Shamayim or not, whether you connect to Hashem and follow what He says. That's your choice. So in Shamayim, they say each one of these seeds is supposed to be a potential life. When you waste it, that means you're committing murder. According to recent science, they said that every time a male ejaculates, it's approximately 300 million seeds. Meaning, a person that wastes seed on purpose, which is a very, very common problem in today's world, is Jewish world and otherwise is committing murder of potentially 300 million people, almost the size of America. By the end of a week, an average high school student has destroyed half the world. This is a reality now. How does this affect you? Number one, it's one of the three biggest sins in Judaism. We're not going to go into the details of what happens in a bad place called Gehinnom, but you should know there's a cost for everything, and

1:10:46The three biggest sins in Judaism are Chilul Shabbat, Chilul Hashem, and Zera Levatala B'mezid. Chilul Shabbat means you decide to smoke a cigarette on Shabbat, drive on Shabbat, write on Shabbat. All of those things are considered Chilul Shabbat. That is considered one of the top three sins in Judaism. Chilul Shabbat. The second one is Chilul Hashem, desecrating Hashem's name. You go, you open a website against the Torah. You open a website against some rabbi that doesn't deserve this type of shame. You go against Hashem. You bring shame to the Torah; you bring shame to Hashem. That's the second biggest sin. The third one is wasting seed on purpose. The reason why I say these are the three worst sins is because the punishment for them is the worst. Now, the hot place they call Gehinnom has seven levels.

1:11:47And one of them, the worst level, only three types of sinners enter it. And those are the three. So for anyone that does it, it's obviously something you have to do teshuva for, and with the help of Hashem, you'll succeed. There is a way to do teshuva for it. Yeah, question. How about Gilui Arayot? Is Gilui Arayot one of the three? Gilui Arayot is a big sin, but it's not one of the top three. It's not one of the top three. It is a huge sin, though. Zerah Levatala also applies to goyim, and we learn it actually from the story of Er and Onan because Er and Onan were goyim; there were no halachot. Er and Onan were goyim; there were no halachot, and Hashem said that Er wasted seed, so He killed him. He died because Hashem killed him. Then there's a mitzvah in Judaism and the Torah called Yibum, so when a

1:12:48Brother dies, a married brother dies, and he has a wife with no kids. There's a mitzvah for his brother, the living brother, to marry the wife. There's no kids yet. We don't fulfill this mitzvah anymore, but in those days they did. So Yehudah said to his other son, "Marry your brother's wife and bring a child into the world in his name. It's a mitzvah." He married her, but he was also the same type of rasha. He also didn't want to ruin her beauty. He also didn't want to get her pregnant. He also wasted seed, and... So what did Hashem do? He killed them too. So from here we learn this is actually one of the foundational sources of where we learn that wasting seed is not only something that Hashem hates, but He hates it for all of mankind, not just for Jews. The story goes that Tamar had prophecy, and she received a secret in the prophecy, and... The Messiah is going to come from the seed of Yehudah from the father of these two sons that just died, but Yehudah also had another son. She said to him, "Can I marry the third son?" He said, "Yeah, you just have to wait. He's too young." But Yehudah never had any intention to have her marry the son. She realized this, and she wanted to have the mitzvah of being part of the Messianic lineage.

1:14:16So she decided to take upon herself a big mission. What was the mission? She pretended to be a prostitute. Now, in those days, prostitutes were very different than today. Prostitutes today look like regular people. They all have no clothes on. This is reality. In the old days, prostitutes looked different than regular people. The prostitute had no clothes on; real people had clothes on. Today, they all look the same. A prostitute sometimes has more clothes on than regular people. Reality, I mean listen, anyone that has their grandparents about did you and Saba, you and Savta wear the clothes that people wear today. It's like yes, we used to wear them, but back then we called what they wear underwear. People walk around today with underwear; just they don't have anything on top of it. Same thing. This is reality. Sad, but it's reality, and the days of 4,000 years ago were even more different.

1:15:18The difference between a prostitute and a regular righteous woman, or even a regular woman, was that a prostitute covered her face. That's how you knew she was a prostitute. So, all of these Muslims that cover their faces thinking that they are tzaddikim, in reality, they look like prostitutes in the Torah. This is Hashem laughing at them. I'm laughing at them. People make new rules, and Hashem laughs in their face. You can't add to my Torah. anyway, she pretended to be a prostitute, so she convinced Yehuda to sleep with her. Hashem wanted this to happen, so He actually pushed Yehuda's yetzer hara to make him do something he wouldn't normally do, and he ended up actually sleeping with her. Now, the story goes, she said, "Listen, I need to get paid. I..." And he said, listen, I don't have any money on me, but I'm a very rich and powerful person. I'll give you the money. You have my word. She goes, listen, I don't trust your word. I need some down payment. He's like, fine, what do you want? She goes, I want three things. I want the shaft, the stick that you hold on. So it's known as a very reputable thing. The ring, which was used for a signature—in those days, you used a ring for a signature. And your cloak.

1:16:36Those three things, everyone knows are yours. So if you don't want to pay me, I'm going to come to your castle and say, hey, who does this belong to? And I'll say, it's yours. No one's going to say it's my stick. No one's going to say it's my signature. No one's going to say it's my cloak. These all things are distinctively yours. So if you're going to try to beat me on the payment, declare bankruptcy, chapter 11, I'm coming after you. No problem. Judah had no plans of not paying. He obviously wanted to pay; he just had to get back home, get the money, and come back. So, he said it was embarrassing for him to pay, so he sent his friend. His friend came, looked for the prostitute, but couldn't find her. He asked people, "Do you see a prostitute?" They answered, "We don't have prostitutes here." All of a sudden, the prostitute vanished from the face of the earth, and Yehuda said to his friend, "Listen, listen, don't ask people if there's a prostitute because then they'll start knowing I was with a prostitute. Let's leave this busha, this embarrassment, in the background. Let it go away. Let her keep whatever she got. Let it go away." But, as Hashem would have it, He made the seed that came out of Yehuda bring twins.

1:17:46inside Tamar's stomach, and a few months later, people started noticing. They went to Yehuda and said, "Listen, your daughter-in-law is pregnant, but she's not married. This is a bizayon (disgrace). This is disrespect for the kingship. This is disrespect for your family. How can she be with someone without being married?" He says, "You're right, the punishment is burning." Throw her in the fire. Go arrest her, throw her in the fire. With the pregnancy, with everything, because he doesn't know it's him. They throw her in jail. They say, "Listen, do you have any last requests before we throw you in the fire?" She says, "I only have one request." They ask, "What's your request?" She replies, "I just want to see Yehuda. I want to see Yehuda. I want to talk to him for two seconds. It's my last request. You know, some people ask for ice cream. Some people ask for steak. I just want to talk to the guy for one second." They say, "Okay, no, you're going to die in a few minutes. We'll give you this." They bring Yehuda and she says to him, "Who do these belong to? She shows him the stick, she shows him the signature, she shows him the underwear. She doesn't say, 'Hey, hey, this is yours. You, you, it's your DNA.' She didn't say that. Meaning, she showed it to him and she left the option to him."

1:19:01say, "You owe me welfare. You owe me this fare. You owe me that fare. You owe me child support." Nothing was said. "Who does this belong to? Who does this belong to? Yours? Somebody else's? Who does it belong to?" Meaning, she was telling him and she's teaching us that it's better—it's better to jump into a fire and burn to death than to embarrass somebody in public. If she was at a Beit Din, she could have said, "You did this. You're the one that got me pregnant. This is yours." He would have gotten embarrassed. She said it's better to jump into a fire and die an innocent death. She's innocent. It's better to die in this fire than to embarrass him or anyone. That's what we learn from this. That's why Rav Avigdor Miller says someone who embarrasses another person in public has no share in Olam Haba. They must work their entire life to do teshuvah for even one embarrassment. to get that Olam Haba back. It's very serious stuff. You can't just embarrass people and think it's funny. All of us did it at some point. Meaning that this is another one of the many reasons we need to do teshuvah. So now, all the way from Florida. So,

1:20:17That's the story of Yehuda and Tamar in so many words, and the reason why Hashem made this strange act lead to the Mashiach is because the Mashiach knows that once the Yetzer Hara knows that once the Mashiach comes, it's game over for him, too. Hashem slaughters him, so he's been trying to get in the way of the Mashiach's lineage this whole time. Hashem said, "Listen, let's make this strange thing happen where the Yetzer Hara is gonna look at these and think there's no way anything good is coming out of Yehuda being with a prostitute. So, I'm gonna leave it alone. I'm not gonna bother. I'm not gonna get in the way." He goes away on vacation to Cancun, and meanwhile, Mashiach comes into the world. So that was the story, and there's obviously a lot more details to the story, but I'm giving you a brief overview of it. Like the story we continue talking. I start asking him questions, this Rav Ephraim, and he gives me answers. But the type of answers that he gives me are very different than the answers that I'm used to. The reason why is because I'm used to people giving me their opinions. I ask you, "What do you think of the market?" You tell me your opinion. You don't have any valid proof that what you think is going to happen.

1:21:32You what do you think of this? New invention? You give me your opinion. I ask you what you think of the future, you give me your opinion. Most people talk about their opinion. It's very little fact. Here it was different. Here, there was no opinion. I asked the question. Rav Ephraim said, "Oh, what a great question! You know that Rabbi so-and-so asked the same question eight hundred and fifty years ago." this book on this page and this line and this is what it says, and he knows it by heart. I thought in the beginning, maybe he just happened to have this one book in front of him and he knows the page number. So I asked another question, and he said, "Wow, what a great question!" So I already feel good about myself, asking two good questions in a row. He says it's this Rabbi on this page in this book on this line. He knows it by heart. It also happens that he has two books. What's the chance of having both books on the same page, and he knows it? So I ask a third question. He knows the page, he knows the Rabbi, and he knows the number. I asked, "You have all these books, but not all these books?" It took me a while to understand what just happened here, so I just started asking questions. For the next hour and 40 minutes, we're talking, I'm asking questions, and he gives me answers. And...

1:22:48After the call, I feel this is the greatest thing in the world. When you've been looking for answers your entire life and finally you get some answers with sources, and it's not opinion. It's fact. It's proof. There's a source for it. It's the highest high you can possibly imagine. you've ever had questions and they haven't been answered. You go into a session, and you start getting answers one after another. No greater pleasure in the world exists. I run to my wife and I tell her, "He knows it!" And she goes, "Who is he and what does he know?" I said, "Rav Ephraim knows the secret to the world." That's the stuff you've been looking for all these years because, yeah, he knows it. So I keep talking to him, only I don't know his phone number. So I wait for his phone call. The following week, he calls me on Thursday at four o'clock, and this time I take advantage of the call. It's not an hour and forty minutes; it's three hours, three hours of questions and answers. I wait patiently the next week, same time, Thursday at four o'clock. He calls me and...

1:24:03We have a conversation, questions and answers, five hours. Next week, Thursday at four o'clock, seven hours. Seven hours of questions and answers, no breaks, no nothing. Honestly, I didn't know I had that many questions. If you had a question, I probably asked it. I started creating questions, started coming up with questions. I started studying for the questions, sometimes to know if you know the answers, sometimes to know if there is an answer. And every single time this rabbi asked the same question, you're not the first guy to ask it. He asked it in this year, 800 years ago, 1,000 years ago, 2,000 years ago, on this Gemara, on this page, and this is what it says on the spot. Something a computer couldn't do. And I was fascinated. Something amazing. I was considered pretty smart in the secular world, but this is something different. This is divine. This is not human. This is not supposed to be. Again, according to my knowledge of what Torah is, Torah to me at that point was like a book of stories. I didn't know Torah does this to your brain. I didn't know Torah goes into your brain and starts shaping things up and fixes this stuff and you become superhuman. I didn't know that's what it does. I thought you learn some things, nice stories. You become a decent human being. Hopefully, you grow a beard, you bring a hat. Good luck to you. I ...

1:25:31So what, Torah? He has books. I have books. Mine is archaeology, science, this, that. He has Gemara, whatever he has in there. What's the big deal? I didn't know Torah starts reshaping your inside. I didn't know. But this is what it does. But it takes time. It takes effort. It takes mesirut nefesh. You want to change? Torah is the only way. So I got addicted. I saw this is the greatest thing in the world, and now, all of a sudden, I'm starting to get answers. One of the most important answers that I got was the one I didn't really like that much, but I started getting it. What was it? There's a reason for all my pain. But I don't really like the reason. What's the reason? Hashem's not happy. That's the reason. Hashem's not happy, and He started giving me signs, and I didn't want to listen. Therefore, He has to give me more signs. If someone chas v'shalom, Drowns. They take him out of the water, and what do they do in the beginning? They slap him around a couple of times, hopefully, he wakes up. If he doesn't wake up, what do they do? They give mouth-to-mouth, which is a little uncomfortable, a little inconvenient. Maybe a combination of slaps and mouth-to-mouth also. Gotta do what you gotta do. If that doesn't work, what do they do? They bring the electric

1:26:56Start shocking you, start electrocuting him. You can make toast on those electric things. Either it becomes toast or it becomes a human being again. If that doesn't work, they call it a condition. They say it could be because a rabbi said a kaddish on him. He's finished. But they don’t start with the electric shock; they start with the slaps. This is no different than HaShem. Sherman, initially He's calling you, giving you signs. He gives you a flat tire. He gives you problems at home. He gives you a few more bills than you can afford. He gives you a few annoying things. He even gives you a pimple. Something to get your attention. Something is above you. He wants your attention. You reached in your pocket and you grabbed the quarter instead of a dime. That's God talking to you. He's everywhere. He's anywhere and He's talking to you. You're not Moshe Rabbeinu. He's not talking to you face to face. He's not talking to you through a burning bush, but He's talking to you nonetheless. You have to pay attention. But you don't want to pay attention and it's time for Him. It's time for you to pick up the phone. So after a few slaps don't work, what happens?

1:28:06has to give you mouth-to-mouth, a little uncomfortable, a little pain, a little suffering. You still don't answer, and He gets you to a point of being electrocuted. It's very painful; I felt it. It sucks. That doesn't work. It's time to go to the Chevra Kadisha. My cousin was in his 20s didn't know him. He lived in America, but I'm told that he was a wonderful person. He lived a secular life and didn't really know much about religion, but I heard that he was a wonderful, wonderful human being. This past Rosh Hashanah, on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, since he didn't come from a Jewish religious home, he decided that on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, it's a good idea for him to go and a scooter. He decided to go outside and hang out on a scooter. Innocent, peaceful. You could even call it exercise. What he didn't know that day, when he woke up at 26 years old, was that it would be the last day of his life. Because as soon as he got on top of the scooter, something happened and he slipped off the scooter and

1:29:34No one hit him. No one pushed him. No one was even around. But he slipped off the scooter and he hit his head. The neighbor next door saw him. She saw that he's on the floor, unconscious. She called 9-1-1. They picked him up. They took him to the hospital. They gave him a few checks. They said, don't worry, you have a long way ahead of you. Everything's gonna be okay. Everything looks okay. He says, Baruch Hashem. Obviously, he doesn't say those words, but he goes back home. He's excited and to go back to his 26 years of life. He goes home, he has a little bit of a headache, he goes to sleep, and he never wakes up again. Do you think that anyone in their right mind thought that this young 26-year-old wonderful human being was going to end so quickly? Usually, when we think of the end, we think, ah, he's got 120 at least.

1:30:36120 years old, at least he's gonna be 110. Okay, maybe this guy, he smoked a few cigarettes. Maybe 75 years old. No one thinks of a 26-year-old dying. But if Hashem sees that you're not paying attention and there's no way for you to fulfill your tikkun, if you did teshuva... Not if you're on a scooter on the second day of Rosh Hashanah. If you did teshuva, yeah. Or if you died before you were able to do teshuva. Meaning you die as an infant, you die as a child before bar mitzvah. You just came here purely for something like that, yes. But if you're in the age of doing teshuva, you're in the age of observing mitzvot, you don't keep mitzvot, there's no way that you fulfilled your tikkun. Because you created new sins that you have to fix now by not following the Torah. So now, Hashem will give you signs. He'll talk to you. He'll try to help you, try to get you back home. "Son, please come home. Come home. Come home." You're not listening. He has to call. So now, Rabbi Ephraim has these answers, and I realized, "Okay, Abba has been calling me, and I didn't want to pick up the phone. That's the reason I hated it. I hated it because it was real. I hated it because it was right. I hated it because it was just. I hated it because he was right."

1:32:08according to his world. I'm living in his world. He's not living in mine, meaning he calls the shots. He's right. I didn't listen. I didn't do in fact. I was married to a non-Jew. So now I'm realizing I have a problem, so I have to start listening more to what he's saying. I continue to learn Torah little by little. My wife learns everything that I learn. To cut the story a little shorter than normal and... Eventually, she realizes herself that the religion she was in, which was Christianity, is bogus. It's completely made up. It's complete nonsense, aside from being idolatry. It's complete stupidity. All you have to do is read the source. They say that their new book, their New Testament, comes from our old book, meaning it's an extension of our book, which is called the Old Testament in their language. We call it the Torah and... means that the first book must agree with the second, and the second must agree with the first. They can't contradict each other. The problem is, if you read both books, there's nothing but contradictions and

1:33:14The only thing that exists is contradictions. The only things that exist are things that don't agree with each other, even things that are simple, like numbers. For example, one of my favorites is the fact that it says in the Torah, in no less than three places, that Yaakov Avinu came down to Egypt with 70 souls. Hashem wrote this, not even Moshe Rabbeinu. Hashem wrote that Yaakov Avinu came down to Egypt with 70 souls. The New Testament says 75. All of a sudden, we have an extra five people. Where did these five people come from? So this is at least three mistakes. Another one of my favorites is the way they translate the word "Re'em." The Re'em is a huge, giant animal that's kind of a mix between a deer and a bull. It doesn't exist anymore, but it was a huge, huge animal. And he even talks about the days of David HaMelech, about 3,000 years ago, in the most popular version out of the 200,000 versions of Christianity's New Testament. They have many versions of the same book because, obviously, no one knows which one's right. That's what happens with lies; no one knows which one is the truth and which ones are lies. It ends up being all lies. What ends up happening is that the most popular version is called the King James Version, so the most popular version, which means the most accepted one, and...

1:34:38translated the word of the M to a unicorn. A unicorn is in cartoons. A unicorn is not a real animal. Somebody made it up as part of fairy tale stories. It never existed. But that's what happens when you don't know Hebrew. You just create stuff. So just like the unicorn is a fictional animal that's part of kids' stories, the whole New Testament is a fictional story, part of like stories that people like to believe, and... One of the most important proofs that you know that Christianity is complete bogus is it doesn't teach reality, meaning everyone that lives in the world for more than 13 years and becomes an adult knows that there are consequences to our actions. You do good, you get good; you do bad, you get bad. That's just reality. Saying anything otherwise is being intellectually dishonest. Saying that you do bad and you'll get good all the time is just a lie. It's not reality. Saying you do good and you're only going to get bad your whole life is not reality. Sometimes you'll get good. In their book, you don't do anything, just believe in some idiot who died 2,000 years ago, and everything's okay.

1:35:48everything's okay. That's not reality. That's an intellectual lie. Anyone who is an intellectual will know this is a lie. This cannot come from God. Why? Because even people don't live like this, so of course their Creator wouldn’t have a rule like this. This is the stuff that we started discovering, and little by little, we started realizing that Judaism is amazing. But initially, we thought that conversion was not necessarily part of Judaism because we only heard bad things about conversion and we heard that you got turned away and that Judaism doesn't really accept conversions and all this hocus-pocus nonsense. In reality, if you actually learn it out, you see that the Sages, the Prophets The entire Torah is very much a big fan of conversions, so much so that it's mentioned more times than any other mitzvah in the Torah—36 times. Thirty-six times it's mentioned in the Torah what special protection and privileges the converts get from Hashem. So much so that someone that gets in the way of a conversion, according to the Torah, has no share in the World to Come and

1:36:58get in the way. I'll give you an example from the Torah itself. There was a prophet named Eliyahu HaNavi. You know Eliyahu HaNavi. Everyone knows Eliyahu HaNavi—Elijah the Prophet. Elijah the Prophet had a right-hand man. His name was Elisha. Elisha the Prophet. Elisha had a servant called Gehazi. So Gehazi wasn't exactly a tzaddik; he liked money too much. So one day There was a non-Jewish king who was sick with a sickness called tzara'at, and no one was able to heal him. Until they told him, "Listen, there's this prophet, the Jewish prophet called Elisha. Maybe he can help you." He says, "Bring him." Elisha came with his assistant Gehazi. He looked at him, saw that he's a decent human being, and saw this big potential in this king to be good. He healed him on the spot and The king was so fascinated. "So, how did you do it? Where'd you do it? Oh my God. This is part of the Torah and so on and so forth. It's all from Hashem. So, how much should I pay you? I could give you half my kingdom, whatever you want. I'll pay you, you just healed me. It's amazing." He goes, "No, no, no. This is only for Hashem. We do it for free." Elisha not accepting money impressed the king even more than Elisha healing him and

1:38:22In the world of the king, everyone did everything just for money. So, all of a sudden, this guy just gave him life all over again for free. To him, this was amazing. He says, "I want to be like you. I want to be Jewish." Elisha says, "No worry. I'll help you. You want to be Jewish, you got to learn, you got to do this, you got to do that. I'll help you." He goes on his way, the king is excited, but Gehazi, the assistant, is not so excited and He says, "We just missed out on a bankroll. We just missed out on a big cash day. We're gonna go back to the desert and..." We can have a castle instead. What does he do, this Gehazi Rasha? He goes back to the king, he says, listen, my leader, my master, he's very honest, he's very humble, he's very this, he's very that, he's tzaddik, he's not going to ask you for money. But in reality, he needs some stuff. He needs, he needs six suits, he needs this, he needs that. The king says, no problem, I'll give him whatever he wants. But now Gehazi, now the king says, ah, but this was, after all, it was for money. So I like Judaism.

1:39:30But I'm not gonna convert anymore. I like Judaism. It's good. It's nice. Tzaddikim. But I'm not converting anymore. Why? It's all about money. It's tainted. He tainted the religion for him. When Elisha the prophet found out that Gehazi did this, he cursed him. And the Gemara of Masechet Sanhedrin says Gehazi has no share in the World to Come. Why? You got in the way of a Jew. He was supposed to be a Jew one day. Do you know what it's like to bring a Jew to the world? The whole world was worth it to build it for just one Jew. Any one of you in this room? Saying Amen one time in your life was worth it for Hashem to create the entire world. All of the problems, all of the pogroms, all of the Holocaust, all the suffering, all of the craziness that ever happened in the world was worth it for Hashem to create just for one of you to say Amen. Amen, one time in your life. That's how much Hashem loves you. Do you understand how much He loves you? You say Amen one time. So now this Gechazi HaRasha killed an opportunity of someone saying Amen several times a day, just in the morning. Several more times a day in the afternoon, learning Torah all day. Maybe even converting other people, family, kids, and so on. He ruined it.

1:40:54That's how much Hashem loves a Jew. So we didn't know this. We thought that, you know, Judaism doesn't have conversion. But thousands meaning that it's even more important than an amen, and it keeps going higher. All of it goes up, and eventually it gets to a point where one word, one letter of Torah, is worth somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred thousand amens. One letter of Torah is worth about a hundred thousand amens. So you reading "Bereishit bara Elohim et hashamayim v'et haaretz"—just the word "Bereishit"... You have half a dozen letters. You just fulfilled 600,000 amens—over half a million amens, over half a million reasons for Hashem to create the world just for you. You said "Bereishit." Imagine you learn Torah. Imagine you learn a whole parasha. You know you are obligated to learn the parashat hashavua every week. You have to learn the parasha.

1:42:06Not just like watch the YouTube video and that's it. Learn the actual parasha. Read with a midrash, read a little bit. It takes a little bit of time every day. You learn it. It's huge. Every word has at least three letters on average. Some words have a little less, but most words have at least three letters. Each time, each letter, it's a hundred thousand amens—a hundred thousand reasons for Hashem to create the world for you. Imagine how happy He is when you're learning Torah. It doesn't matter if you understand or don't understand; you're starting out. But imagine how much your Father in Heaven is jumping in joy when you're learning Parashat Shavuot and you have a shiur at 11 or 12 o'clock at night. Learning Torah is much more valuable than the pizza and the cookies. Much more valuable, much more valuable than Sprite. That's what He created the world for. Now, when you don't know this, you're missing out on... Hashem says, "You have no idea what you're missing out on. I have to wake you up. I have to wake you up for you. I'm waking you up; the pain is for you. It's not for Him. He doesn't get joy out of giving you pain. It's for you, the pain." So I didn't like the answer because I knew it was right. And we continued learning.

1:43:24Eventually, my wife realized that not only is Christianity bogus, but conversion is very much welcomed in Judaism. Baruch Hashem, she converted, and as soon as she found out the truth, she became more religious than me. One day, she took on everything. I'm still playing around a little bit. I'm serious, but I'm not all in—maybe 75% in. One day, I'm all in. Whatever she knew, she took everything. He sued you all, sneered everything. Anything we knew, we did it. That's teshuva. That's real teshuva. You want to be saved when Mashiach comes—tomorrow, next week, next year, next month, whenever it is, ten years from now—whenever you want to be saved, you have to be all in. It's not a matter of you knowing everything. It's not about that number. They're not expecting you to be the Gaon of Vilna now. It's not that. But whatever you know, you have to say Birkat Hamazon after you eat. Don't skip Birkat Hamazon just because you don't want to recite it. By the way, which is really foolish because the number one blessing in Judaism for parnassah is Birkat Hamazon. If you want financial success, you should recite Birkat Hamazon at least once a day. If you don't want to make money, then don't recite Birkat Hamazon.

1:44:53Don't eat. You don't want to be rich? People always ask me, "How do you make money, make money, make money?" Why? Because you're thanking Hashem a hundred times for giving you something to eat that made you full. A hundred times for something to eat that made you full. He says, "Oh, let me give him more to eat. Let me give him even more fancy stuff to eat. Let me give him a fancy house to eat the food that he likes." So excited about your big cut Amazon you say no. No, is this pizza mezonot? Oh, if it's motzi, I'm not eating it. If it's motzi, I'm not eating it. I need mezonot pizza. I need mezonot pizza. By the way, that's all nonsense. Ninety-nine percent of pizza is a hundred percent motzi. In order for it to be mezonot, it would be ten times the price. It would be much, much more expensive than fifteen, twenty dollars and So mezzonot pizza is a little bit—don't play with that. You eat one slice, a regular-sized slice. You know another half a slice, just do the Birkat HaMazon. Number one, you're getting yourself out of doubt, and number two, it's the number one blessing in Judaism. It's more important than Ma'ariv, more important than Ma'ariv. It's more important than Amidah.

1:46:08Birkat HaMazon is more important than Amidah. Why? Because Birkat HaMazon is the only mitzvah that's written directly in the Torah. It says, it's written in the Torah to do Birkat HaMazon. It's not written in the Torah to say Shema Yisrael. It's written Shema Yisrael. It doesn't say to do it twice a day. We learn it from Chazal to do it twice a day. But it's not literal. Amidah also, we learned from Chazal to do it, but it's not literal. Birkat HaMazon is literal. Alright, it says you have to bless Hashem when you eat. Who wrote Birkat HaMazon? First part, Masechet Brachot, Gemara Masechet Brachot. First paragraph, who wrote it? Moshe Rabbeinu. Moshe Rabbeinu wrote the first paragraph of Birkat HaMazon. Second paragraph, Gadol HaDor, Yehoshua Bin Nun. Yehoshua Bin Nun. Anyone that can get there, appreciate it. Who wrote the second paragraph of Birkat HaMazon? See, Satan has to interfere. He's like the shoe, where the shoe is going. Baruch Hashem. So, Birkat HaMazon, second paragraph, Gadol HaDor after Moshe Rabbeinu, Yehoshua Bin Nun.

1:47:26Sure, Bin Nun, Yehoshua Bin Nun. It's not like some local tiny little rabbi. We just passed this parasha last week. Yehoshua Bin Nun, it's Yehoshua Bin Nun. After that, who wrote the next part? Shlomo HaMelech, HaMelech, HaMelech, HaMelech. Mashiach is coming from David HaMelech, Shlomo HaMelech. He wrote the next part. After that, the Chachamim from Yavneh, the greatest sages of all time. That's who wrote Birkat HaMazon. That's Birkat HaMazon. We say no, no, let me do Mitzvah, not let me do Mitzvah. No, it's the number one blessing in all of Judaism. We're skipping it. People complain upon us all the time. This is the key upon us. I'm upon us to pick up the Mitzvah at least once a day. You want good health? Do Asher Yatzar. Asher Yatzar is thanking Hashem that your body works. Be'ezrat Hashem, in about a month from now, we're gonna get our shipment of Asher Yatzar cards. I'll send it to you guys. It's something to have on your walls and...

1:48:27It's free of charge. If you want to donate, you can donate. If you want to take it for free, take it for free. To me, the only thing that matters is that you actually do it. Every time you go to the bathroom, you read this. Why? Because you don't want to deal with what I dealt with. You see all the health nightmares I'm talking to you about? That's because the body stopped working and... Every time you go to the bathroom, you say it works. I went to the bathroom. I went. It's a big deal. Trust me, it's a big deal. If you can't go to the bathroom or you go too much or something doesn't work in your body, you're going to hate the day you were born. I lived it for seven years. Every time you go to the bathroom, you should thank Hashem more than you thank Him for anything else. Why? Because it's mamash a miracle. It's a miracle that you can take food, you take all the nutrients from this food, and... Gained from all the nutrients and anything that's no good for you comes out of the body. You don't have to press any buttons, and on top of it, it tastes good. Depends who your wife is. If she doesn't know how to cook, that's nothing good. My wife is... Hey, you ever say that's how you put this outside of your bathroom? Oh, I'm sure it's made out of plastic so it doesn't go bad. Even if there's some water on it, even something like this, you wipe it off. You put it on your wall. You say the "Asher Yatzar" bracha on top like this one.

1:49:46reminds you to say it. After you say it a bunch of times, you're gonna remember it by heart. But it's still a big segula and a bigger zechut to read it directly from the page. Why? Because when you read the words in the holy language, it helps you with your neshama, not just your mind. So, b'ezrat Hashem, if you don't have this card, get something for now. They're gonna send it in about a month from now. We're gonna have them distributed. I'll send it to a video to somebody here to give them out to you guys. But you should start doing it right now. You want to be healthy, you do it yourself and... You want to have a panacea, you do the ketoret. These are basic level things we take for granted. I took all of this for granted, but eventually Hashem said, "Okay, enough's enough." He sent me Ephraim, and I started learning with Ephraim, and little by little we realized what kind of trouble we were in. But Baruch Hashem, we started getting ourselves out of trouble. But when Hashem is happy with you... He makes the world around you change. Shlomo HaMelech said, when Hashem is happy with you, He even makes your enemies come to you and say, "I'm sorry." Now, we haven't necessarily gotten to that point, but He did make some other miracles for us. On the day that my wife converted, I had a very, very deep, painful abscess infection.

1:51:06Even though we were supposed to have our chuppah the same day to make sure that everything was kosher because we were already together, we said that we can't make it to the chuppah. The only thing we can make it to is the hospital, finish the conversion, and go to the hospital. I have to have an emergency surgery. Interestingly enough, if the miracles that we saw up to this point were not enough—and I haven't even told you 10% of them... I made another big miracle happen. As soon as she dipped in the mikveh, my pain stopped. Stopped. I didn't know why it stopped, but I said, "Okay, honey, this is amazing, but I don't have any pain anymore. So who wants to go to the hospital with no pain? I don't want to go with the pain. You want me to go without the pain? Fine." So we went to where we're supposed to go. I said, "Oh, let me change." I go to the bathroom. and I take off my pants, and I see that my whole body is full of blood. The surgery happened; it just didn't require doctors. The infection was healed — don't ask me how, don't ask me why, I don't know. All I know is that it happened. From that moment on, my health continued to improve. I

1:52:30Little by little, I started understanding why somebody like Rav Ephraim is so excited and addicted to Torah. It's magical. It's amazing. It's better than anything you can possibly imagine, even without the miracles I told you about. You want something? You want to get to a high level of Torah? You want to get to a high level of Kedusha? You have to try. You have to give 100% of your effort into it. You have to get to a point of taking it seriously. I'm not talking about just learning 15 minutes here and there, watching one of my short clips and thinking that's your Limud Torah. That's good. That's going to get you good on the way to work. While he's smoking a cigarette on the way back from the gym, whatever, getting a small clip—five minutes, ten minutes. It's good, it's healthy, you should always have Torah on your own, you know, watching it or listening to it. But five, ten minutes a day is not enough, my friends. That's how you start. I started with 15 minutes a day, but my 15 minutes meant that there was no such thing as not having it.

1:53:3115 minutes had to happen, maybe more, but never less. There was never a skipped day. That's how I started. I asked Rav, a friend, "Listen, well, I'm already learning with you for seven hours. Can I just do eight hours and skip the whole rest of the week?" He said, "Actually, what you can do is skip the seven hours, just do 15 minutes a day." 15 minutes a day is more important than seven hours in one day. I asked him, "How could it be?" He said, "To give you an example, if I told you that you need to eat, but you can eat as much as you want, however you want." I said, "Okay, great. What can I eat?" He said, "Anything you want." I said, "Terrific, but you could only eat once a week, and..." That's not gonna work. He says exactly, your neshama needs to eat every day. Even if it's only 15 minutes a day, you must feed it every day. Coming to Avodat Hashem once a week is good—10 o'clock at night, you guys come out, you have some popcorn, you have some this, you have some that. It's good, it's great. It's not enough. You've got to have oxygen for your neshama every day. You've got to come to kavod HaRav. You've got to come. You've got to learn. You've got to do something. You've got to learn Torah every day, even if it's only 15 minutes a day. Why? Because you're feeding your neshama. You can't starve your neshama and think you're going to get a good result at the end of the week. By the time you make it once a week, your neshama is dying.

1:54:48Finally, finally gave me some Torah. You have to do something. It's very easy to learn Torah today. It doesn't always have to be in books. You could watch videos. You could listen to it. In the next month or two, we're gonna be coming out with an app. You can listen to all the shiurim on an app. You could already listen to them on SoundCloud, on YouTube, on my website Be'ezrat Hashem dot org. It's very easy. The Torah, Hashem Yitbarach told us, the Torah is not in heaven, meaning it's easy. Even more so in our generation, even more so now. It's not far away; you don't have to go to a town that's 60 miles away like the sages used to have to do to learn something. They'd have to travel two or three days. My mama said that Chazal said the biggest chesed is from travel. That's how far it was. Now you don't have to travel anywhere. All you gotta do is have a phone, press play, and... Press play. You have over 200 shiurim that I did, over 250 different clips on different topics and different issues. Even my personal story. I try to have different things each time. I'm not the only guy. You have Rabbi Mizrachi, shlita, tzaddik, who has been making thousands upon thousands of shiurim for 23 years. Every shiur is golden. It's easy. You don't want to reach, you don't know what shiurim are, you have books and...

1:56:12Read Parashat HaShavua. Get Midrash Me'am Lo'ez. You have right over there, Midrash Me'am Lo'ez, the greatest Midrash that exists. It gives you the Midrash of the Torah in a story format. Rabbi Yaakov Culi wrote it 300 years ago. He used to fast for a whole week. For a whole week, Rabbi Yaakov Culi used to fast from Motzei Shabbat to Friday. Why? He wanted to make sure he only asked Torah. Why? So you could have a Midrash sitting over there collecting dust. No, you read it, you pick it up. Why do you have to fast all week to read this? Every book has five, six, seven hundred sources: Zohar, Gemara, Mishnah, everything. You have it sitting on a shelf; you have to read it. Everything you want is presented in a story format—it's addictive. This is the cure, my friends. This is the cure. You start learning. You start putting it into your system. You start seeing the wiring in your brain start changing. It doesn't happen overnight. You start seeing your neshama (soul) fixed. You start seeing things happen. It doesn't happen overnight. Sometimes it takes longer for some people. Sometimes it takes less. But you have to do it. You have to do it for yourself. Invest in yourself. Which questions haven't I answered? Okay, so give me some new ones. Yeah.

1:57:38Okay, so the first process was my rebbe told me that I have to learn every day. He said that more important than any mitzvah that you're going to do, you have to learn. So Shimon HaTzadik told us, "Leave me, but don't leave my Torah." Why? Because if you leave me and have my Torah, you'll have your way home. It's a map to come back home. It's a map to come back to Hashem. But if you leave my Torah and only believe in Hashem, eventually you're going to leave Hashem too. Because you need the Torah to continue believing in Hashem. You need the Torah to know what Hashem actually wants from you. So the first thing he said is you have to learn every day. Learn 15 minutes a day. That was my first commitment. I'm going to learn 15 minutes a day, beyond the commitment of learning within the seven hours that I enjoyed, which to me wasn't even learning—it was just Gan Eden. Started learning 15 minutes a day, and little by little, I started realizing, "Oh, you know what? I can't continue learning this stuff, believing it, saying it's right, and not doing anything." So I said, "Okay, you know what? I'm going to start praying." I started doing tefillin every day. I had tefillin; I started praying. I started, you know, getting into it, but I only prayed once a day. Little by little, I started saying, "You know, it's not so right that I only pray once a day. I mean, I should pray at least twice."

1:59:01So I prayed twice a day. Which ones did I pray? Sometimes it was Shacharit and Mincha, sometimes it was Shacharit and Arvit, sometimes Mincha and Arvit. Whatever, I picked and chose. After a little while, I said, you know, twice a day is not really kosher. It's like half kosher. So okay, so we gotta start praying three times a day. So little by little, I started praying three times a day. Then after that, I started seeing little by little that 15 minutes a day is just not enough. I wanted to study more. So I found myself studying instead of 15 minutes, an hour, two hours, three hours. So I said, you know what? Instead of it just being an accident, let me do it on purpose. Let me commit to more than 15 minutes a day. From now on, it's an hour a day. So now I made a rule. From now on, it's going to be at least an hour a day, no matter what. I had to study an hour a day. So I studied an hour a day. The more you study, the more things change, and you start taking on mitzvot. So now a holiday came up. I said, okay, I don't know this holiday, I don't know much about it. I started asking Rabbi Ephraim, "What is this holiday?" For everything I had questions about, I would ask him. That's why one of the most important things to do in teshuva is to make yourself a rabbi. Without making yourself a rabbi, your teshuva is going to be a rocky ride; you're not going to know what to do. And like I said earlier today...

2:00:14In the Gemara, it actually talks about somebody that wants to be their own rabbi. The Gemara in Masechet Yevamot says, you want to be your own rabbi, you want to make your own halachot, you want to make your own thing, just read the book and decide for yourself what it means. Just so you know, in Shamayim, Hashem hates you. You keep Shabbat, you keep taharat haMishpacha, you keep kosher, you keep everything, but God hates you. Why does He hate you? Because you're such a ga'avan, you're so prideful, you're not even willing to double-check if you're right or wrong. Meaning, you could be a rasha for seven years and not even know it. You could do something wrong for seven years without even knowing it. Who do you think you are, not going to listen to anybody? Go to the local rabbi, he studied his whole life, not like you for six months, not like you for six years. He studied his whole life. Double-check. Maybe you're wrong. Maybe you're wrong. If you're wrong, it means it can be a matter of life or death. You're so confident in yourself, you have to make yourself a rabbi. This is Gemara Masechet Yevamot, page 109b. So, this is the type of stuff that's very, very important for you to know. You need to have a rabbi. You need to learn every day. I started adding to the learning, adding to the maasim tovim. I started keeping fasts. All of a sudden, I started fasting on Tisha B'Av. All of a sudden, I started fasting on Shiva Asar B'Tammuz.

2:01:34All of a sudden, all of these things made sense to me. Of course, I realized that I wanted to keep this Torah. And one of the parashot in the Torah says that if you eat non-kosher food, it impureifies your body. But not in a sense of impureifies it where you become sick physically, impureifies it in a sense where you become spiritually sick. You can still build buildings, you can still do math problems in your head, you can still write books, But as far as understanding Torah or remembering it, not possible. You'll lose most of what you learn. Why? Because you have an impure soul. Because everything that you eat turns to blood. And the Torah says your blood, that's your nefesh. So if the blood is coming from an impure animal, that means that your neshama is impure, partially impure. So to add Torah, which is the only thing that's pure in this world, to an impure neshama, you have a problem. So you're not going to keep all this Torah. So I said, I want to keep this Torah. I'm working really hard to learn this Torah. I don't want to lose it. So I started eating kosher inside the house and outside the house. First, it was because I wanted to keep my Torah. Then it was because I realized that God is also outside the house.

2:02:52So, God is everywhere, but again in the beginning, you don't realize He's everywhere; you think He's just somewhere. So, I started praying, I started doing tefillin, I started learning, and I started keeping holidays. The more and more I did, the more I started realizing that I'm not the only one. So, the next big thing that I did was I decided that I need to try to help other people and... I have to try to help other people realize what I realized. So, I started giving out CDs for Rabbi Mizrachi. I started sponsoring CDs for Rabbi Mizrachi. And I also started giving out the book Science Comes of Age or The Coming Revolution by Rabbi Zamir Cohen. That's uh, was translated to English and a few other little trinkets like the cat Amazon and other stuff. I would send packages to people and I also built a YouTube channel to record the shiurim by Rabbi Ephraim Kachlon, my rav. So, I started, you started. I sent them, you know, whatever he needed to.

2:03:53With the camera and everything else to set himself up, and every time he did a shiur, he would record it and send it to me via USB, email, or whatever it was, and I started putting it online. So, I started publicizing his channel. I started a group on Facebook called "Torah Lessons to Help Our Lives," and the initial two members were me and him. Only it was not really him because he was never on the internet—it was really me twice. Today, we have about 10,000 people. It's one of the biggest Jewish groups on Facebook, like religious Jewish groups on Facebook. I think maybe top two or top three. Unfortunately, there are not too many really big religious groups on Facebook. It started just with me and him, or really me twice, and then other people started joining, and so on and so forth. Other rabbis also post there, too. So I started posting for him. I started sending people some CDs. I started sending people some books, and all of a sudden, I started seeing... The prophet Jeremiah meant the prophet Jeremiah was told something by Hashem. That's very special about kiruv, which actually is the one question I didn't answer. It's good you reminded me. In chapter 15, verse 19, it says the following: Kiruv, doing, helping other people do teshuva. Somebody asked me about it, either you or somebody else asked me about it. I forgot to answer it.

2:05:18So it's called siyata dishmaya, you asked the same question somebody else asked but we both forgot. So the prophet Jeremiah says the following, he says So therefore, Hashem said, if you do teshuva, I will bring you back and let you stand before Me. Meaning your teshuva, regardless of what sin you made, whether it's chilul Shabbat, wasting seed, chilul Hashem, even idol worship. Even idol worship, you could do teshuva. Hashem said you could do teshuva to such an extent that You can be considered one of the most righteous people that ever lived, to such an extent that you can go on a higher level than a tzaddik gamur, someone who is religious from birth. A baal teshuvah has an opportunity to get to a higher level. How can he get to a higher level? If he does teshuvah that gets to a point of having yirah and ahavah, not just yirah. If he has both fear and love of Hashem...

2:06:25Now, Chazal says having fear of Hashem only is a connection to Hashem, but it's incomplete. It's good, but it's not complete. Having a connection to Hashem by just loving Him is nothing. It doesn't exist. It's not possible. Why? Because if you need to love something, you need to know what it is. If you know what God is, of course you're going to be scared. Which means it's either only yirah or yirah and ahavah. So Chazal says if you get to the levels of Baal Teshuva, used to be Mechalel Shabbat, idol worshiper, intermarried, all these things, you will now get to a point of having Ahavat Hashem and Yirat Shamayim. You are considered on a higher level than someone that's been righteous his whole life. Everyone here in this room has the opportunity to do that, even more so. Prophet Jeremiah says if you help somebody else do teshuva, you give him a CD—Rabbi Reuven's "From Wall Street to the Western Wall," Rabbi Mizrachi's "Torah and Science," Rabbi Ilan Nava's near-death experience—whatever CD is motivating you. You give it to somebody, it costs a dollar, and...

2:07:38You give it to somebody. That guy listens to the CD. You give him a link for free. It's on the internet. You go to bezrat hashem.org, pick any one of my lectures, you press copy, press paste, text it to somebody. Someone listens, someone does teshuva, it goes to your credit. Hashem says you're going to be like My mouth, meaning you pray, I do. You pray for something, I'll do it. Why? You're special. You're a VIP. You... VIP, you want a real story. I'll tell you a real story live from today. I said it already earlier today, but it's such a good story, I say it twice in one day. I have two students, b'ezrat Hashem, who not only do teshuva, keep mitzvot, and learn Torah, but are also very involved in kiruv. One of them works for me. He, b'ezrat Hashem, is an amazing human being, and each one of the people on Team Hashem has different miracles. If you have seen some of my past lectures, you would see some of the stories I tell about people that work for Team Hashem. It's unbelievable. Most of them are working for free. So he works and he helps us with the website, movies, and so on. Anyway, b'ezrat Hashem, he told me today that they came to me and...

2:09:03They came to us and asked us for some advice about his wife's job. I told him, "Listen, this is what you should do. You should start already setting up things to a point where you can work from home. It's going to be easy for you to raise kids, it's going to be easy for you to be a wife, it's going to be easy for you to learn, and so on. But you work for a company, and you know, they can't trust you to work from home from day one or even after six months. Only after she starts setting it up, they like you, they're paying you, they think you're great. Set it up, what you do and..." You hire an assistant. You tell the boss, you need to get an assistant because he likes you and he thinks you're wonderful. He says, "I need an assistant to help me be better." Hire an assistant and teach her all the things that you need to do yourself but don't really need to do yourself. Somebody else can do it. Teach her all that stuff. If it's packing boxes, if it's writing basic emails, the major stuff you do. Small stuff, get somebody else to do it. Teach her how to do it. Little by little, she'll be good, and eventually, you can be more productive. You can make more money for the company because you can do more of what you do best. If you're making more money for the company, it doesn't matter where you work from—work from home, work from Afghanistan, work from the office—it doesn't make a difference. You make more money for the company. They don't care where you work from. So this is what you tell him. This is your plan. She thinks it's a good idea, and...

2:10:30How do I tell him? I said, call him, tell him, meet him, whatever. She's a little shy, God bless her, which is a very good character trait. But a few hours ago, she sends me a text and says, you're never gonna believe it. She has a busha. She says, a miracle happened today. I went to work, and my boss came to me. I was planning on telling him exactly what you said, but he came to my office, and he beat me to it, and he says to me, you know what, I think you need an assistant. And I think you need to teach your assistant to do all the things that you shouldn't be doing so you can make more money for the company. You want Hashem to fulfill what you say? You get His children back home. You get His children back home. You get Him back home. He's missing. He misses them. Abba is looking for them. Abba is looking for them, and He needs you to help Him. He's looking for them. You're the one that could find them. Now imagine a king who has all the money in the world, all the power in the world, but he only has one child. One day, the child gets lost. Do you think all the money matters? Nothing. Do you think all the power matters? Nothing. Ten, fifteen years later, some guy calls him. He says, "Mr. King, how are you?" The king responds, "Why are you calling me 'mister'? I'm the king."

2:11:57Listen, let's not mind the formalities. I just want to send you a text and show you a picture. He sends him a picture. He says, "Oh, is this your son?" Says, "Yes, this is my son. Where is he?" "He's in my house. You want me to bring him over?" "Yeah, absolutely, bring him over." You bring him over and say, "Hey, you, Mr. King, call me 'Mister'? Call me 'Uncle,' call me 'Abba,' call me whatever you want. How did you find my son?" "Oh, I found him in the woods. He's been lost for a long time." Now, the guy that brought the son back, do you think the king is going to forget about him? Is he going to let him go hungry? Is he going to let him go homeless? Is he going to let him suffer? Or the opposite? Is he going to put him on a VIP list? Anytime this guy wants anything, he gets it. You don't have to be a genius. Instant, so this is why doing kiruv is the number one thing you can possibly do. When people ask me why I left Wall Street, that's the reason why. Even though I could go back to being on Wall Street and within maybe two years, I could probably be a millionaire again, it's better for me to live off of donations and...

2:13:06Miracles every month and have no idea how I'm gonna pay rent. No idea how I'm gonna pay anything. No idea how I'm gonna work or do anything. All I know is I can learn Torah, teach people to do teshuva. It's better for me to learn and live like that than to have two, three, four, five, five hundred million dollars in the bank. It's all worthless in comparison to one hour of Torah once you know what Torah is. Now, some of you understand what I say, some of you don't, some of you understand more. I'm telling you, whatever you want to be as far as material, I got there. I got to the end zone. I got there. I saw it. I'm not saying don't waste your time and don't try to make money. Everybody needs to make a living at some point or another. But if you have a choice, you can go to yeshiva, go to yeshiva. You have a choice: watch a football game or learn Torah, learn Torah. You have a choice: waste your time, waste your life, or actually do teshuva. The choice is obvious. This is how you get to be happy. I didn't know this, so when I had all the money in the world, I wasn't happy. Happiness is free. Next question. We covered everything, no?

2:14:27Did I pray Maariv? Eventually, yes. Oh, no, tonight, no, I haven't prayed Maariv. I still have to pray Maariv. So let's do Maariv. Baruch Adonai le'olam. Amen ve'amen.