Who Are You Really? - MUSSAR Iggeret HaRAMBAN (11)

0:14Good to be back here in Aventura, Florida. We just came back from New York this afternoon. Anyone that missed out on watching the lectures online, if you were able to come out live and you missed it, I think you're crazy. But live, we had, I think, just... The last count was somewhere, a few hours after it, over 20,000 views of just the lecture last night, Baruch Hashem. So the event in New York was mamash unbelievable. We had a lecture on Sunday night with myself and Rabbi Zitron for almost a little over four hours. A little over four hours talking about Pegam HaBrit, the issue of Shemirat HaBrit, the issues of modesty, or better yet, immodesty. And both of us spoke for a little while, maybe about 40 minutes or so each. And then we went into questions and answers with the crowd. And for anyone who hasn't watched the shiur, this is one of those really exciting shiurim because at some point after about two and a half, three hours, a spiritual fist fight starts.

1:36where one guy, who's a renowned atheist and a major kofer (heretic), just, the beliefs themselves are problematic, but the actions are worse. And this guy likes to mess with rabbis. So he thought that he's going to have a good time with us. He actually had a debate with Rabbi Zitron about a year ago, where Rabbi Zitron pretty much refuted him and proved all of his false theories for what they are: false. And that's why the guy, even though he recorded the lecture, he didn't put it online, because it's pretty much just showing the world your embarrassment. But anyway, apparently, as soon as he came, I saw this guy looks a little familiar. Then I was told this is the guy in the crowd. So for the whole time, for the first two and a half hours, three hours, waiting for him to say something, but it was very interesting because the guy was writing notes as if it was mamash like he was writing an essay. But that also shows you the way of the wicked and

2:49The way of the wicked, when somebody wants to manipulate the Torah, when somebody wants to go against, they're going to look to you as if they are doing something good. They look to you as if they're studious. They look to you as if they're... doing something, you know, with a pure heart until the venom leaves their mouth. But there's a mitzvah in the Torah that every Jew is obligated to fulfill; it's called to destroy Amalek. know doing something, you know, with a pure heart until the venom leaves their mouth. But there's a mitzvah in the Torah that every Jew is obligated to fulfill; it's called to destroy Amalek. Now, Amalek is not just the person like we know from the Tanakh, where HaKadosh Baruch Hu had Am Yisrael fight Amalek at the time of Moshe Rabbeinu and Yehoshua Rabbeinu. And this is the arch-nemesis of Am Yisrael. And this is where all of the major enemies that Am Yisrael has had throughout history come from—Amalek. Specifically, the nation of Amalek, or Haman, you know, the story of Purim, Nazi Germany, Machshemo v'Zichro. But that's just a person. Today we don't know who Amalek is as a person. So, because if we did, and we had a Sanhedrin, we would be obligated to actually kill them.

4:05But since we don't know, we're not allowed to kill anybody. But there is a much more dangerous Amalek. There's a much more dangerous Amalek in the world. And that's an Amalek that causes safek, causes doubt. There are different types of people in the world. Many of them are Jewish, unfortunately. As the Navi says, "Your conquerors and destroyers will come from within you." Meaning, you are your own worst enemy, Am Yisrael. So, there are certain people whose primary function in the world is to create doubt in the minds of Jewish people—young, old, male, female, irrelevant. Their job is to give you doubt about doing Torah and mitzvot and get you to a point where you abandon the Torah, you abandon HaKadosh Baruch Hu, and you become an atheist, you become a missionary Christian, you become anything but a kosher Jew.

5:09And the way that they do it is by using clever tongue and clever speech, and trying to create doubts by giving you big questions that you perhaps don't know the answer to, but put you in a position where, wait a minute, if you don't know the answer to this, how could you really justify keeping Shabbat? If you don't know this, how could you really justify keeping kosher? If you don't know this, how could you really justify such and such? And a person already has yetzer hara inside him anyway, so when the yetzer hara comes from the outside as well, that person's yetzer hara goes on turbo. If the person does not have the yirat Shamayim, the fear of HaKadosh Baruch Hu, that's necessary at that point, it's very, very easy to see a person fail. yetzer hara inside him anyway, so when the yetzer hara comes from the outside as well, that person's yetzer hara goes on turbo. If the person does not have the yirat Shamayim, the fear of HaKadosh Baruch Hu, that's necessary at that point, it's very, very easy to see a person fail. So, the two things are, one, this is a person that has come to a point where let's say they started doing teshuva, they started doing mitzvot, they keep Shabbat, they keep kashrut, they keep other mitzvot like shomer negiah. You're preserving yourself until you're married, whether you're male or female, you have to preserve yourself. You're not allowed to touch the opposite sex until you're married.

6:28For many reasons that we've talked about in the past, and you start doing it, but you're starting to see that your life is a little more difficult. You really have the urge, and someone calls you and they want to hang out with you. You really have the urge to eat a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich or something, and it's right in front of you, and somebody offered you a free sandwich. You really have the urge, and there's a TV show that has a bunch of pritzut on it, and you really want to watch it, and so on and so forth. If you have yirat shamayim, you're going to simply run away. If you don't have yirat shamayim, you may fall. Now, Amalek, his job is to make sure you fall. How? By putting that doubt in your mind. So when you're already weak, and the Yetzer Hara shows up with a TV show, with a movie, with a girl, with a guy, with a casino, with something, That doubt now gives birth to an action. And then what ends up happening is the person says, you know what, ever since I've become religious,

7:37my life really became much more difficult. You know, ever since I started keeping Shabbat, I'm making less money instead of more money, like I'm supposed to. Like I think I'm supposed to. Ever since I became religious, I've been sick. Ever since I've become religious, such and such has been happening. Meaning that there is a remorse, there is a remorse in your mitzvot, that you've fulfilled the mitzvot, but you're not really sure, maybe I shouldn't have done it. So now if you fall off, I don't have to tell you what happens. But what happens if you just simply say it? You simply say, you know what? Ever since I've become religious, my life sucks. Is that a big deal? Is that a sin? How many of you think it's a sin? One, two. How big of a sin from one to ten? One. ten? Why ten? There's a big, big difference between you guys. This is a bet? No, actually, you bet on the head or having a moral crime, killing somebody—that's a 10. That's a 10. You rate regretting the mitzvot the same way as murder?

9:07Why? Because you lose everything you ever did. Chazak u'baruch. Chazak u'baruch. The Rambam, in Hilchot Teshuvah, chapter 3, halacha number 3, says the following: Anyone who changes his mind about the mitzvot that he has performed and regrets the merits that he has earned, saying in his heart, not even saying out loud, in his heart, He says, what value was it in doing this? What value do I get out of keeping Shabbat? What value do I get out of keeping my brit? What do I get out of this? Come on, my life is not really that great anyway. I wish I hadn't performed them. Why? Because I'd still be with Christine. I'd still be with Jose. I'd still be, you know, going to the movies every weekend with my friends. I'd still be playing poker, Texas Hold'em, with Daniel Negreanu and the rest of the degenerates. Really, I'd still be doing all this fun stuff. So the Rambam says, if he says these things in his heart, he loses all of his mitzvot and no merit.

10:22...preserved for him at all, meaning not only has he now made his sin by saying something as if the mitzvot are not worth very much, but all the work that he's done already for the last year, two years, three years, five years, 50, 60 years—he's 70 years old, he's been religious for 50 years—imagine how many mitzvot a person has in 50 years. All of it is gone. ...all the merit is gone. Everything goes to the basket. He wants to go to Gan Eden and start all over again, meaning if he dies the next day, he goes up to Shamayim. They say, "Well, sorry sir, you have nothing. Your spiritual bank account is in bankruptcy." "Wow, what do you mean? I put on tefillin, I did this and that." "Yes, but you said that's not worth anything, so we said it's not worth anything." where does the Rambam get this from? The prophet Yechezkel says in chapter 33, verse 12, "The righteousness of the upright will not save him on the day of his transgression."

11:36So this specifically applies to somebody who regrets their previous deeds, meaning not just what they're doing now, but what they did in the past. It's not like, you know, "It's really hard to keep Shabbat; I don't feel like doing it anymore." That's one thing—you don't lose the past for that. if you say, "You know what? I wish I didn't. I wish I didn't keep Shabbat. I wish I didn't go into a kosher business. I wish I was still in the cash advance, murdering people's bank accounts or business. I wish I was still going out with Christine and Jose. I wish I was still there." Rambam says, "Okay, that person wishes, he gets his wish, he loses everything." And just as a person's merits and sins are weighed... the time of his death, so too the sins of every inhabitant in the world together with his merits are weighed on the festival of Rosh Hashanah. If one is found righteous, his verdict is sealed for life, but if one is found wicked, his verdict is sealed for death. So here we see, Rabotai, it is a very, very big deal. But if he repents, if he does teshuva...

12:45He can get life again. If not, he gets death. The point is, Rabotai Yekarim, that a Jew is supposed to train himself before the Yetzer Hara arrives, before the Yetzer Hara arrives, to not allow any of this nonsense into his mind or her mind, because if you do, you could literally lose all the work that you've done. Now, even if somebody has made this mistake and has said it, that doesn't mean that you should continue making sins. Start all over. You'll do teshuva, and if your teshuva is really, really serious, you could even turn all of your aveirot, all of your sins, into mitzvot. But the point being is that we learn from the halacha, we learn from the laws, the laws of HaKadosh Baruch Hu, that a Jew is supposed to not only be careful with his actions, but even with his thoughts. even with his thoughts. This is halacha; this is not an opinion. This is simply what the law is. Now, the problem is that sometimes we have different friends or family members that simply work for Amalek. They're full-time employees of Amalek. Their job is to constantly weaken us.

14:01calling us all types of names, making fun of us, making us feel bad about missing out on all types of sins. Ah, you missed out last night when we had the best party. Yeah, he danced with her and he went out with her and he went out with this one, and he starts making you feel bad about missing out on sins. Oh, come on, you should be in this business. This guy just started six months ago. He already made a million dollars. Yeah, but your business is stealing money from people. no stealing, no stealing. The guy made a million dollars; he could give a lot of tzedakah now. And they start making you feel bad about doing mitzvot. That’s a midat Amalek. What’s another example of midat Amalek? Say that... if you want to open the hearts of some people, you know you teach Torah, and you have the ability to do it. Sometimes it's good to start off a shiur with a joke. I'm not very good at this, not very good at jokes. Even when I tell jokes, nobody laughs, so I quit. But that's what they say; they say if you want to start off a shiur to open up their heart, start off with a joke. Start off with a joke. Not

15:18middle of the shiur is a joke. Sometimes I have jokesters that come to my shiur. I used to have this guy come to my shiur when I was in Boca Raton. Every five minutes, a joke. Every five minutes, I'd say something, something, something, something, something, and he's like, "Oh, this," and he'd make a joke, and everybody's ha ha ha, and five minutes later, ha ha ha, and five minutes later, ha ha ha. After he did it a few times, I said, "Okay, the door's over there, and ha ha over there." Why? Because that's actually, Rabotai Yekarim, Midat Amalek. The Gemara says in Masechet Avoda Zara, A person that makes jokes during a shiur for the sake of lightening the topic because they feel it's too tense—the Rabbi is talking about stuff that's scary, the Rabbi is talking about stuff that's a little bit stressful—alright, it's too much, so somebody decides to volunteer their humor, the most recent joke they invented, to make light of the issue.

16:18Rabbi Eliezer ben Horkenos says, the beginning of his punishment is suffering in this world. That's just the beginning. Why? Because we learned from Sefer Bereshit that this is the attitude of Amalek, of how they try to cool off the nation from learning real Torah. What's one of the examples? Any of you heard of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah? You heard, right? Sodom and Gomorrah, there was the nephew of Avraham Avinu, left Avraham, went to Sodom, and became the judge over there. Now, Sodom and Gomorrah were full of immodesty, full of homosexuality, and full of all types of things that HaKadosh Baruch Hu hates. And HaKadosh Baruch Hu decided to destroy Sodom. Now, because Lot was the nephew of Avraham Avinu, he had some merits, so Hashem sent angels to save Lot.

17:18So when the angels came and told Lot, "Listen, you got to get out of here and take whoever you want with you, but whoever doesn't come is going to die. After you get out of the city, after you get over the mountain, we're destroying everything here." So Lot took it seriously. He understood what he was dealing with. So he came to his sons-in-law. You know, I figured if you come to your own sons, sometimes your sons don't want to listen to you. your sons-in-law, your sons-in-law usually want to marry your daughter, they want to be with your daughter, so usually they're going to listen to you. So it says that Lot came to his sons-in-law. Chapter 19, verse 14, it says that Lot seemed like a joke in the eyes of his sons-in-law. Meaning, Lot came to them and said, "Come on, Hashem is going to destroy Sodom. We got to get out of here." Oh, you old man, you're gonna tell us what to do? No, no, come on, come on, old man, go! You and your angels and your God and whoever you want, you go, go, go. We're good over here. Get out of here! And they started making fun of him. Hashem killed them, obviously, all those people. But the point is, what were they trying to do? They made fun. They made fun of Lot trying to do something good.

18:38And Chachamim say this is a Midat Amalek. This is a character trait of Amalek, making fun of serious things, especially when it comes to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. So, When a person comes and tries to make fun of the Torah, you have a mitzvah. And what's that mitzvah? The mitzvah is that you have to rebuke them as strongly as possible. Without being vulgar, without violence, but you have to rebuke them, insult them, and completely, completely put them in a situation where they're discredited in public. Generally speaking, if you embarrass your fellow Jew in public, you lose Olam HaBa. You have a fellow Jew, a kosher Jew, and you decide to make fun of him in public. You decide to embarrass him in public. Unless you do teshuvah, you've lost Olam HaBa. Even if you keep Shabbat, keep brit, keep everything, you lost Olam HaBa. You have to do serious, serious teshuvah to undo the damage of embarrassing another Jew in public. But when someone is a rasha,

19:44that tries to weaken the public, then your mitzvah is the exact opposite. You have to embarrass them in public. Why? Because if you don't, they look credible in front of people. They're saying something, and you start debating them as if it's an intellectual conversation. So some people are going to say, "Okay, I agree with the rabbi, but there's always going to be at least one victim who will say, 'Maybe this Amalek is right. Maybe I shouldn't keep Torah and mitzvot.'" So you are obligated to rebuke them with full force. All the weapons have to come out. ...because you have to discredit them in every way, shape, or form so there's nothing left in the minds of the rest of the people watching that makes them think there's even a one percent chance that this guy is correct. So, this rasha that came to our lecture on Sunday, he's already done it to a few rabbis. He comes to the lecture, pretends like he's listening, just like you said, and he writes notes...

20:49it looks like he's paying attention and right at the end of the lecture, whenever the lecture is about to end, he throws a bomb at the rabbi with one of these tough questions. Unless you have studied the topic, you can't answer it. Unless you have studied science or medicine or other subjects that not every rabbi is an expert in, you won't know how to respond. the rabbi may not know how to answer it, so all of a sudden he makes a big deal out of it. So now the whole hour, two hours, three hours you gave everybody goes right into the garbage, and now they look at this Amalek as the new chacham. "Wow, yeah, he beat the rabbi. Yeah, he proved the rabbi wrong here. The rabbi didn't know what to answer." He asked the rabbi, "How old is the world?" And the rabbi said, "5779." He said, "Yeah, but there are dinosaurs that the scientists say are millions of years old." And the rabbi didn't know what to say. Oh, ha, ha. So now, all of a sudden, in the minds of the rest of the people with their yetzer hara already working, all of a sudden it's like, "Oh, so if the rabbi is wrong about the age of the world," maybe he’s wrong about Shabbat, maybe he’s wrong about kashrut, maybe he’s wrong about everything. Maybe there's no God, maybe there's this, maybe this guy, this Amalek, is God. Who knows what? That's what happens. So now, most rabbis in America are relatively quieter than I am.

22:11They don't like to fight. They don't like to raise their voices, generally speaking. They definitely don't like debate. I, on the other hand, love debate. Why? Because this is what I did for a living for almost 20 years. This is what I trained for for 20 years. And the key is, so when somebody comes with information, if their information is correct, I'll... lower my head, you're right, I'm wrong, no problem. if you're going to come here and throw a bunch of venom and pretend as if it's a cure, then my obligation is to do the opposite. So this guy thought that just like he ruined three or four other rabbis' lectures in the last year or so, he's going to come here. So I highly recommend you watch that video and you see that if, b'ezrat Hashem, one day Amalek comes to you, this is how you're supposed to be. Why? It's the only way to defend it. The only other way aside from that is to run away.

23:13Literally, physically run away. Like somebody starts saying stuff, you just say, okay, one second. And you start running. Just start running. Where are you going? I don't know. Go, go, go, go. Keep running, running, running. Run as far as you can. Run as far as you can. If you have his phone number, put it on block. That's how you have to behave with people like that. So it's not a problem to have doubt. It's not a problem to be ignorant. It's not a problem even to have false beliefs. It's not a problem. It's wrong, but it's not a problem. Why? If you have a wrong belief, let's say you think that the clock behind you is God. Now, it's stupid, but it's your belief. I can't fault you for that. I don't know, maybe you came from a monkey after all, I don't know. You thought the clock is God, who knows? The problem is only if you start preaching it to other people. and it's even more of a problem if you preach it to them against their will when they're in a place where they're trying to learn Torah. They're trying to learn about the real God. If they came to your lecture about atheism and you want to tell them the clock is God, then they came for it, they asked for it. They're clients, they're customers.

24:31But if they came to learn about HaKadosh Baruch Hu, and you are pushing your disgusting venom into their heads to ruin every belief that they have, now you're a dangerous person. Now it's not just your beliefs, now it's your actions. And that's what the Torah says, this person is not only a min, but he's also somebody that's a machti rabim, that causes other people to sin. And this, the Rambam says, is one of the categories of the 24 different types of people that HaKadosh Baruch Hu does not allow them to do teshuva. Meaning, He does not help them do teshuva. They can do teshuva, but Hashem does not help them. And even if they come to you asking you for help to do teshuva, you're not allowed to help them. It's to that extent. Because you can never trust such a person. So why do we get to such a level? Usually, it's because we don't have enough understanding of who HaKadosh Baruch Hu is. And that's what the Ramban is trying to teach us with this letter that he wrote almost 900 years ago to his son. Up to now, the Ramban has actually scared us quite a bit, and we're going to see how he continues to do it today. So he says, "My son, heed the discipline of your father and do not forsake the guidance of your mother." Then he continues and he tells you, "Make sure to accustom yourself to speak gently to all people at all times," meaning speak to people at their level.

25:42quite a bit, and we're going to see how he continues to do it today. So he says, "My son, heed the discipline of your father and do not forsake the guidance of your mother." Then he continues and tells you, "Make sure to accustom yourself to speak gently to all people at all times," meaning, speak to people at their level. Not necessarily speak gently like people think gently, like you have a monotone voice and you're speaking as though you're addressing kindergarten kids. Some people, if you speak to them that way, will simply think that there is something wrong with you mentally. "Why do you speak to me as if I'm mentally challenged? I'm not five years old. You can speak to me like a human being. You don't need to speak to me like, 'Hi, how are you? God is real.' That's not going to help me if you talk to me like that. Talk to me like a regular person. But talk to me like a regular person, though." So, you have to accustom yourself to speak to people gently at all times, meaning gently to their neshama. Gentle to their neshama, meaning take their neshama, see where they are at least, how they portray themselves, and accustom yourselves to them. If they are angry, then you have to obviously know that you can't

26:57light them up even more. If they're calm, then you could do something else. If they're young, you talk to them a certain way. If they're older, you talk to them a certain way. If they're Holocaust survivors, you talk to them a certain way. If their parents are Holocaust survivors, which means they're extremely emotional, then you talk to them a different way. The point is that you must accustom yourselves to their neshama. Gentle to his deah neshama who was at the desk in the seminar because gentle speech will protect you from anger, meaning that if you're constantly taking the other person and where they are into account, you're never going to get angry when they reject what you're saying. Why? Because all you care about is them. So if they're rejecting what you're saying, you simply understand. Okay, so I have to do a better job and... And help them understand me differently. By the way, I'm the one speaking, not them. So you can turn around and look at me. Me, me, Ken. This is not a coffee shop. Anger is the most serious character flaw which causes one to sin. If a person does not control themselves, and only takes their own opinion into account, you just want to tell people what you think and you care less about what they think. That's going to lead you to sin. It's a flawed character.

28:12and a person that has such a flawed character, eventually people are going to disagree with him. And since he doesn't really care about anything but himself, it's gonna lead him to anger. And this anger flaring up is going to cause the person to go to Gehinnom, which we talked about already. Gehinnom is not a fun place. Once you've distanced yourself from this anger, the quality of humility will enter your heart. Humility is the sterling quality. It's the finest of all admirable traits. The goal of every Jew is to humble themselves as much as possible. And we'll talk a little bit about that today as well. And one of the reasons is because this humility, on the heels of humility, comes the fear of G-d. If you're working on humbling yourself, understanding who HaKadosh Baruch Hu is, understanding that your job is to not only help yourselves but help your brothers and sisters, understanding that you're here to serve G-d and not just please yourself and fulfill your own desires, that's going to lead you to fear G-d, which is one of the mitzvot of the Torah.

29:21And through humility, the fear of God will intensify in your heart. The fear of God will intensify in your heart to the extent that you will always be aware of where you've come from and where you're destined to go. You'll realize that in life, meaning while you're alive, you're as frail as the maggot or the worm, all the more so in death. Meaning that you've come from nothing, you've come from a putrid seed that everyone who sees it is disgusted by, and eventually your body just becomes a nice dinner for a bunch of maggots and worms for about a year, depending on how fat you are. That's why the Mishnah in Avot says, someone who eats a lot of meat will eventually have a lot of maggots. Why? Somebody has to eat it. Somebody has to eat it. Why? Somebody dies. They just preserve that? If they're a tzaddik, yes. But if they're not, then no. So now we arrive at where we are, the Rambam, which is the next line. It says, in this sense of humility, it will remind you of the one before whom you will be called for judgment, the King of Glory.

30:48The fact that you have now worked on yourself, you're trying to humble yourself, you're trying to fear Hashem, ultimately, what's the main goal? It is to have a relatively simple, basic understanding of who HaKadosh Baruch Hu is. Why do you need to know who HaKadosh Baruch Hu is? it's not about who's going to perform the next miracle for you. It's not about who's going to give you parnassah so you could buy the next house. It's not about who's going to be the one that's going to find you your zivug one day. It's not just about who's the one that created the world. It's not just about that. It's about who you will one day have to meet face to face and face judgment for every single action you've ever done. If you've done good according to the Torah, you'll get rewarded for it. If you've done bad, you'll get punished for it. But it's a different kind of payment. Now, most people don't take this into consideration—to such an extent that most people live their lives without even considering judgment until it's too late.

32:08Sometimes a person is going to speed on the highway on a regular basis and cut people off and only start realizing that he should be a more careful driver after he gets into an accident. But sometimes it's too late. When I was a kid, I had a couple of friends who used to like to race cars. They had fancy-schmancy cars. They worked on their cars and they put all types of rims on their cars and all types of radios. They put a lot of money into their cars, and all day, all they did was sit in front of one of the guys' houses, just looking at their cars, washing their cars 500 times a day, then racing them, then going back, and then racing them again, and then fixing a part, and then racing them again. All day, every day, it was the same thing. And every time you knew if you wanted to find these two guys or three guys, you didn't need to go far. You just walked by the house, they were either there, or if they weren't there, they'd be there a few minutes after they finished one of the races. One day, somebody did something to one of their sisters. Yelled at her, insulted her, did something that they didn't really like. So the three of them went into their cars.

33:32wanted to go beat this guy up. So, the guy saw these three guys and, uh, he got into his car and started driving away. Now, this is like, uh, "Fast and Furious." Sounds like fun, right? So, they started chasing him down the highway. Boom, boom, like in the movies—three cars after one. He feels like he's James Bond. He goes here, he goes there, he goes here, he goes there, he goes here, he goes there, then he goes into a truck and he dies. It's not funny, he died. Yeah, he died. He died. And the guy that was ahead, he went to jail for a bunch of years for driving a car, a fast, really cool car. Why? He murdered somebody. I know it seems funny, but it's not funny.

34:34The fast and furious part. We have to make it entertaining before we shock you. It was fun to drive fast until it wasn't fun anymore. It was fun to drive fast until it wasn't fun anymore. Why? Because somebody died. If he would have thought about it one minute before, decided to go into a car and chase this guy down, it wouldn't have happened. They would have never gotten to the car. Okay, they would have been a little bit upset somebody insulted their sister, and so, but that would have gone away like anything else. decided to go into a car and chase this guy down. It wouldn't have happened. They would have never gotten to the car. Okay, they would have been a little bit upset somebody insulted their sister, and so, but that would have gone away like anything else. And this guy would have been alive. Maybe he got married, had a couple of kids. Maybe one of them would have been a big rabbi. Maybe one of them would have been some gvir that built yeshivot. Maybe this guy would have been productive, I don't know, curing cancer. Who knows what he would have done? But no, he died. Another time, one of these guys, his name was Reagan.

35:50Reagan, big kid, tall. Played basketball. Was a good athlete. And once in a while, he had a mood. So nobody really liked to mess with him. One day, he had a mood in front of the wrong guy. And the wrong guy was also from around the block. And he wasn't scared like everybody else. Why? He had a bat in his car. So he took the bat and he hit Reagan in the head. And Reagan became mentally disabled for the rest of his life. I have a lot of these stories. I lived through them. You get old, you get to see a lot of these horrible stories. Now let me ask you a question. When the guy put the bat in his car, was he planning on hitting Reagan in his head? No, he was planning on playing baseball. That's what he was planning to do. But when Reagan acted this way, and that guy acted that way, push came to shove, they didn't prepare themselves. Mood went out of control, anger went out of control, and one guy is disabled for the rest of his life. And the other guy is in jail, still to this day.

37:11Why? It was attempted murder. The point is, most people do not think about the consequences until it's too late. Needless to say, when they're young like you, because you're just trying to have some fun. The point of what I'm trying to tell you is that you are allowed to have fun, but don't be stupid. Think, you have a brain, Baruch Hashem. Your brain, even if your IQ is slightly above a monkey, is still more sophisticated than all of the technology in the world combined. There's more wiring in your brain than all of the wiring from Verizon, AT&T, Qualcomm, Google, Apple, and everybody else combined in the world in every single one of your brains. Use it before you lose it. Use it simply before you take an action that's going to be too late. A few people that I know didn't. Some people died. Some people are still in the hospital to this day. Some people are in jail. That's what happens when you get old. You get to see all types of stuff like this. It doesn't matter where you live. It doesn't matter what religion you grew up in.

38:37Doesn't matter what your beliefs are. Just a few days ago, somebody went to shul, praying in, what is it, North Hollywood? North Miami? Young Israel, North Miami. And he's sitting outside, sitting outside. Some crazy guy decides to pull over and shoot him. Five, six times. Baruch Hashem, he's still alive. But the point is, is that Whatever that crazy guy was thinking obviously was no good. Almost a hundred years ago, they said, "Every bullet has a name on it." The bullet is never going to hit anyone who doesn't deserve it, anyone that Hashem does not want it to happen to. That does not mean that the person who got shot was meant to get shot. But never ever think that it's an accident. Everything is directed by HaKadosh Baruch Hu.

39:38it's not accidental that some crazy guy decided to go shoot him. Hashem directed it to happen that way, apparently for whatever reason, He wanted him to get shot. That guy wanted to shoot somebody, so he used him to shoot somebody, but he didn't want him to die. So he shot him, but he hurt him, but he didn't kill him. Why? That, I have no idea. I'm not a prophet or a son of a prophet. All I know is that nothing in the world happens by happenstance. the only thing that we have control over is whether we are going to be the vessel that Hashem is going to use to deliver His message—the good one or the bad one. That's the only decision we have in this world. If you think clearly about what Hashem wants from you, what Hashem expects from you, guess what? You'll be a messenger of good things. if you don't think—not if you think bad things—if you simply don't think, you just leave your house with whatever you have on, even if it's nothing. Walk around half-naked, you don't think much, you're just going, "Ah, whatever, let's get out of the shower. I feel comfortable with this, it's hot outside." You're asking, "Ah, come on, clothes. It's going to take me at least another five minutes to put clothes on. Why do I need this? Let me just go free like Adam was naked in the beginning. Why not? If Hashem created the body, why can't I just walk around naked?"

41:04walk around like this all the time. Well, they call it clothes, but in reality, it's not clothes. Why? You see 90% of the body. You don't even need an imagination. For some people, you don't even need an imagination. You can't look. Practically, it's the same thing. They could take a shower just like that, and nothing would change. Why? They didn't think. They didn't think, wait a minute. I'm gonna go outside showing my body to a bunch of strangers. For what? Why would I show my precious body deserves respect, deserves honor, was created by the King of Kings, and is supposed to represent the King of Kings. I'm gonna show it to a bunch of people I don't even know? Why? Why offer the multi-million dollar diamond for free? For what purpose? What do you get out of it? What, so he whistled at you? Are you a dog?

42:16You want people to whistle at you? Go to the zoo over there. They'll put you behind a cage. Everybody's gonna whistle at you. Maybe they'll throw some bananas too. Every day they'll feed you. You don't have to worry about food. You're just sitting in your little cage. And they'll say, what's the problem? How come everybody looks at the cow and the cow's naked? If nobody noticed, the cow, even though it's black and white, is naked. But nobody says, the cow is naked. Rabbi, what should we do about this? Nobody says that. Why? Because it's a cow. It's a cow. Nobody thinks the cow should wear clothes. These crazy people that put clothes on their dogs—they're crazy. Everybody knows they're crazy. When somebody goes shopping for clothes for their dog, they're crazy. There's something wrong with them. Regular people look at animals. Animals are not supposed to have clothes on. Humans are supposed to have clothes on. So, when you see a human being with no clothes on, you're supposed to think, there's something wrong. If that human is you, or your daughter, or your sister, or your mom, you're supposed to ask yourself, how come you're trying to do the same thing as the cow? Why are you following the cow's wardrobe?

43:44The cow is a cow. Why are you dressing like her? Rabotai, if you respect yourself, you're not going to show yourself to the whole world. You're going to preserve yourself and only show your beauty to eyes that deserve it. Not José and Carlos from the supermarket. Now, any woman, that instead of being offended by what I say, actually listens to what I say and thinks about it for a good five minutes, will agree. Every woman that's going to take five minutes and think about it will say, "Wait a minute, I'm not married to José. I'm not married to Carlos over there. I'm not married to that construction guy. I'm not married to that guy who looks like he's homeless, a murderer, or something. I'm not married to him either. Why am I showing my body to him?" I'm not married to these people. Why am I showing my body to them? What am I getting out of it? Anyone that thinks about it for a second says, no, I'm going to cover myself. One day I'm going to be with my husband. He can see whatever he wants. He's my husband. Everybody else, nothing. Why? I'm a queen. My Father is HaKadosh Baruch Hu. I'm a respectable woman. All you need to do is think. The same thing with you guys.

45:13Sometimes guys like to dress like girls. They like to wear clothes that are so tight you don't know if it's skin or it's clothes. Or they spend time at the manicure and the pedicure, or they do their eyebrows. The guys of this generation have become so feminine you have no idea who's who. He looks like a girl, but he's like, hey, what's up, man? Wait, oh, I thought, sorry, I thought it was ma'am. I thought it was ma'am. Ma'am, could you please move over? Oh, no, I'm not ma'am. Oh, okay, sorry, buddy. You had the long hair and the eyebrows. I was sure you were a ma'am. Okay, man. It's confusing. Why? He looks like a girl. Got two earrings, four earrings. Why do guys wear earrings? Girls wear earrings. Why do guys wear earrings? Girls wear earrings because it's a sign of, it's a thing of beauty. It's jewelry for a woman. Men are not supposed to wear jewelry. It's a feminine thing. Earrings—show me one time in history that Jewish males wore earrings. Jewish males, not goyim. Only in recent generations.

46:34the mitzvah says don't do the things of women, don't wear the clothes of women, don't act like women. Why? Because you're supposed to distinguish yourself. You have a role as a male, she has a role as a female. You're supposed to be easily distinguishable. If both of you have four earrings and maybe a little belly button ring, and both of you are wearing tight jeans and a t-shirt, and you like long hairdos and she likes long hairdos... tell the difference. Both of you went to the same manicure, pedicure, and did your eyebrows. You can't tell the difference. The point is, Rabotai, that if you simply think instead of being offended about the things that I'm saying, you'll agree. You'll agree 100%. Why? You're normal human beings. You just never thought about some of this stuff. Most people don't think about this stuff. They just do. Why? It's a style because Kanye West started it or Lil Jon or Lil Wayne or some other moron. Some little guy started it and decided to wear girl pants. Some little guy started to wear girl pants that are tight and at his ankles. So a bunch of Jewish kids are wearing pants at their ankles, but they walk like this, like they have a diaper.

47:54why, why, why do you want to walk around looking like you have a diaper on? But man, ask yourself this question: why are your pants down? Why? Why do you want to show everybody your underwear? What's wrong with you? If you thought about what I'm saying, you know I'm right. And it's not just me; you're right because you have the same opinion. You've never thought about it. If you actually walk around in the street and you see some nasty, fat, gross person, but he shows his underwear... has his pants down, he shows underwear, and one of the underwears has a hole in it with all types of branches coming out of that hole. You say, "Wow, he's stylish, like Lil Wayne. He's like 50. This guy's gonna be the next rap star." No, what are you gonna say? He's like, "Hey buddy, pick your pants up. You plumber, pick your pants up, you're gross." Why? "I'm stylish, I'm 50, I'm 25, I'm 70, I'm something." right? No. Why? It's disgusting. How come it's disgusting on him and not on you? Because you never thought about it, never thought about it. The Torah makes all the sense in the world. All we simply need to do is think, that's it. Just think about the results of our actions. It's funny, but it's not funny.

49:20It's funny because we're doing a bunch of stupid things, but it's not funny because we're still doing them. So the point of all of these shiurim is just to make us think a little bit. Make us think a little bit about some of the silly things that we do without thinking. That's what causes most of the problems. And the reason why is because, Rabotai, the yetzer hara's number one job is to convince you that there's not going to be any judgment. You're not going to have to pay the bill. There's never going to be a car accident. There's never going to be a sickness. There's never going to be any problem. But that's what I'm telling you. As a result of getting old, you get to see a bunch of stuff. And you realize, everyone has problems. Everyone has problems. Life is full of problems. which means you're gonna have problems at some point, and you're gonna need to know how to deal with them. The idea is to know how to deal with them before they happen. The number one tool is to start thinking before you do stuff. Why? Because as soon as the problem comes, you're gonna already be trained at thinking, and you'll be able to solve the problem quicker. But if the first time you actually put thought

50:31the first time you put pen and paper together to put some thoughts together is after the problem occurred, guess what, you're not gonna know what to do. Now, when it comes to judgment, as you guys heard last week from the shiur that we talked about regarding what happens after a person dies, in the grave where the judgment already begins at that moment and then after the grave Torah tells us that actually, we're being judged every moment. The prophet Iyov, in the book of Iyov, says in chapter seven, verse number 18: Iyov says to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, "You inspect him every morning and observe him every moment." tells Hashem, "You inspect man every day, but not just every day, the whole day, every moment of the day. Every moment of the day, You inspect them. Inspect them for what? Did he do a mitzvah? Did he do an aveirah? Did he do a mitzvah, or did he commit a sin? Which one did he do? Why? I have to pay him."

51:53For a mitzvah, the payment is, initially, he gets an opportunity to do another mitzvah. For an aveirah, he gets, what's the payment? Another aveirah. Meaning, domino effect. But ultimately speaking, there has to be a reward and punishment in the end. Now the Yetzer Hara is going to convince you that no, no, no, you don't need this stuff, there's no judgment, enough, it's too much. Well, here you go. Torah tells us, in Yalkut Shimoni, Sefer Bereshit, Remez 44. Rabbi Acha said, even a tree is judged by HaKadosh Baruch Hu for not giving fruit. Even a tree, a tree that's supposed to be a fruit tree, came out with fruit, but all of them are rotten. Or it's a tree that's supposed to come up, bloom, and have beautiful flowers in the spring. This year, not so much. That tree will be judged in heaven.

52:54Now, the details of how a tree is judged or not is irrelevant for us. What do we learn from this? What do we learn from this? Chachamim say, why is HaKadosh Baruch Hu telling us that even a tree is going to be judged? To teach us that every single thing in creation is supervised. Everything has a purpose, everything has to be part of the system, everything has a consequence. if you live your life with a thought process that every single action you have will have a consequence, there's a cause and there's an effect, you'll live a very, very different life. But if you simply roam around like a wildebeest, just hoping that no one catches you, eventually someone's going to catch you, and by then it's too late. Now, Rabbeinu Yonah in Shaar Aleph says the fear that a person must have in order to begin his relationship with HaKadosh Baruch Hu. It's the first start with an understanding that you yourself are going to be punished because you like your body too much, meaning you like to please yourself. You like to eat too much, you like to do all types of things, and you figure that if my body has a desire, I should fulfill it.

54:22If you're not going to pay attention, you can leave. Leave. You with me? If you're not with me, you can leave. This is not school. We're here to learn, but it's not school. You don't have to be here. You haven't listened for five minutes, and it's distracting to the other people. A person will get punished because he figures that there's no judgment for anything. And therefore, he figures that every single time he has a desire, or she has a desire, she should fulfill it. So Rabbeinu Yonah says, you should already start with the understanding that by doing that, you're definitely going to get punished. What kind of punishment? We'll just put it this way, he says. Rabbeinu Yonah says, every single desire has a special punishment for it, if this is not a desire that's allowed. Meaning you're allowed to be intimate, but only with your wife, only with your husband at an appropriate time when she's not niddah. But if you figure, no, I'm not married. I'm just gonna do whatever I feel like. Why? Because I have a physical desire. I want a boyfriend. I want a girlfriend. I want whatever I want. Well, just look at it this way. Just imagine that every single time you have a desire and you don't fulfill it, you're gonna get a city full of gold and diamonds.

55:50For not fulfilling that desire, because that's a mitzvah. You have a desire, you overcome yourself, huge reward. Or you fulfill that desire. So Hashem is going to say, I'm going to cut off your pinky. Oh, I don't want to do it. All of a sudden, I don't really have that desire that much. Yeah, but it's a really strong desire. Okay, so I'll cut off your thumb too. Oh, that desire just dropped by 90%. Oh, you still have some? Oh, I'll cut off the pointer too. Just imagine, the punishment that I just described to you is not even 1% of 1% of 1% of 1% of what a person gets for making a sin. One time. And Rabbeinu Yonah says, once you understand the cost of fulfilling those physical desires that are forbidden, whether it be non-kosher food, or non-kosher intimacy, or simply non-kosher behavior, Once you understand the cost, your desires are simply supposed to just go away. Why? It's not worth it anymore. I want to do it, but I'm not going to risk my fingers. I'm not going to risk my toes. I'm not going to risk my eyes. I'm not going to risk anything. I just want to have fun. This is not fun anymore. The Chovot HaLevavot, Rabbeinu Bachya, says in his book,

57:20In Shaar Keniyah, this is a chapter specifically dedicated to understanding who owns you. He says the following: A person at first delves and thinks to himself, what am I made out of? Meaning my body. At some point, you're supposed to think, you touch a piece of meat, Look at your hands. You're different than the table. You're different than the lamps. You're different than everything. Okay, what am I made of? You think of stuff. Ooh, this, that. You realize, okay, you're unique to creation to some extent. But in reality, where did this all come from? Putrid seed came from nothing. Came from something that if you saw it on the floor, you'd be disgusted. Eventually, what's going to happen to it? It's going to be lunch for some worms and maggots. That's what it's going to be. So he thinks about it already, he's like, oh, so this, what am I, a living schnitzel? If you put all the chemicals that make up your body, you could buy them for $13. Then he thinks, okay, what world did I come into? You look at the world around you, not the...

58:41hip-hop videos that pretend like they're all rich, even though it's all rented cars. You look at the world around you, you see the world around you, what is it comprised of? Everybody has problems. Every other person has a sick member of their family that has a disease that's incurable. Every other person is depressed. Everyone is on some type of drug, whether it's Ritalin, or it's some type of antidepressant, or it's, you know, painkillers. Everybody's on some drug now. Kids grow up already, they're like, oh, he's six years old. Yeah, he's ADD. What do you mean he's six? For heaven's sake, what ADD? He's a kid. Every kid in this generation has attention deficit disorder, the fake disease of the generation. No, he can't pay attention. He jumps around. Yes, he's a kid. That's what he's supposed to do. If he doesn't jump around, that's what makes him not normal. If the kid doesn't jump around, that's not normal. Why? He's a kid. He's six. He's seven. He's eight. He's nine. He's supposed to climb the walls. If he doesn't, there's something wrong. What do you mean? But everybody else is sitting. Yeah, because they're already drugged.

59:58Teachers have become lazy; they just want people to be corpses in their classes, so every other kid is just going to class high, but he has no idea why. "Honey, take this, it's vitamins." After a person realizes the world around them is full of corruption, full of disease, and full of problems, He starts realizing, what's the point of every person that's now? Okay, we're all 15, 16, 17, 18 years old. What are we gonna have? And he realizes that if you're alive, you actually think about it, I'm destined to have problems. Not because Hashem hates me, but that's just because that's life. Meaning I am destined already to have problems. There's not a single person in the world that's not gonna have problems. Everybody's destined to have problems. So already now he's like, oh, wow. I'm made out of a shefa. I'm in a world that's full of disease and corruption. I'm destined to have more and more hardship to the extent where I'm not going to be able to rest very much, except, you know, maybe when I go on vacation once a year and pretend like I'm not suffering. And in the end, he turns into dust, meaning he's even less than what he started.

1:01:31So this is life for everybody. What's the difference between somebody that observes Torah and the rest of mankind? Technically, the beginning and the end are the same. They come from a putrid seed, they're all gonna turn into dust, they're all gonna have problems, they all live in the same world full of problems and disease. What's the difference? The difference, the Chovot HaLevavot says is how you live in the middle. Knowing that you're starting from this point, you're gonna end at that point, you're gonna live in this world of problems so on and so forth, how are you going to manage that life, knowing all of this information? How are you going to manage? What are you going to do about it? Are you just going to be like another one of the, uh, the mice that goes in the train and follows and works, and, you know, eats and sleeps and works and eats and sleeps and works and eats and sleeps, once in a while reproduces, and that’s it? That’s it? That’s your life? Or there has to be a bigger purpose?

1:02:42At that point, a person needs to understand that the only way to have a bigger purpose is by thinking, "Okay, there has to be something bigger than this." And the Chovot HaLevavot says he arrives at the conclusion that there must be a Creator. And once he realizes the significance, the purity, the magnitude, the awesomeness of this Creator, and he realizes how pure He is, how big He is, how enormous He is, how wise He is. He realizes even more how little he or she is. And at that point, a normal human being should arrive at the conclusion that I need to be scared of this Creator. Why? Because I'm simply nothing, He's everything, and I'm here to serve Him. Who am I to disobey someone that's so magnificent, someone that's so enormous, someone that's so amazing? Who am I to actually intentionally disobey this Creator that gave us a rule book? Now, the Torah HaKedoshah,

1:03:59tells us that if a person chooses wisely, he has an enormous amount of reward both in this world and the next. For anyone who prayed Mincha, you know that in Mincha, after Amidah, you have Tehillim. And in Tehillim, HaKadosh Baruch Hu says to David HaMelech, He guides the humble in justice and He teaches the humble His ways. What does it mean? He judges, He guides them in their mishpat, in their justice. Every single day, there's some type of mishpat, there's some type of court case. But if you humble yourself and you realize that HaKadosh Baruch Hu is above you, HaKadosh Baruch Hu Himself will teach you which way He wants you to go. You know, okay, I just want to do what Hashem wants. Oh, you want to do what I want? Okay, I'll direct you to the right place. I'll direct you to the right destination.

1:05:02Why? Because all of the ways of Hashem are kindness and truth. All Hashem wants is to fulfill His will, which is full of kindness and truth. If you want to fulfill His will as well, He's going to help you. If not, He won't. And as it says... will instruct him in the way that he chooses. If a person chooses to do good, Hashem will help him in that choice. If a person chooses to do bad, He will also help him in that. Now, some people are going to say, "Yeah, listen, I'm good enough. I already keep a couple of things. I give tzedakah once in a while. I go to beit knesset once or twice a year. I read whenever I get time. I'm good."

1:06:04The Torah in Parashat Nitzavim says there's a certain type of person that HaKadosh Baruch Hu loves and a certain type of person that HaKadosh Baruch Hu hates. Who are these people? If a person does what HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, obviously He calls them, "This is My lover. This is a person that loves Me." On the other hand, If a person doesn't do His will, it doesn't automatically make Hashem hate him. This is a person that's wicked; Hashem is not happy with him, but He doesn't make him hate him. Who does Hashem say, "I actually hate this person"? In Parashat Nitzavim, chapter 29, verse 18, He says, if a person blesses themselves in his heart, saying, "Peace will be with me..." though I walk as my own heart sees fit. Meaning, a person says, listen, I'm okay. You do you, I'll do me. You live your life, I'll live my life; I'm fine. I keep Shabbat my way, even though I'm doing certain things that Torah says no. Hashem understands me.

1:07:24Hashem understands that I have to play with Facebook on Shabbat. Hashem understands. Hashem understands that I like to play basketball with the guys on Shabbat. Hashem understands that I like to drive a little bit on Shabbat. Hashem understands that I like to eat at least one bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich a month. Hashem understands that I can't leave my girlfriend. Hashem understands that I can't leave my boyfriend because I love him. Hashem understands this and that. Peace will be with me, I'm gonna be okay. Don't worry, Hashem understands. So let's see what Hashem says about that person. A person that says, "Peace will be with me." Hashem will not be willing to forgive him. For then Hashem's anger and jealousy will smoke against this person. the entire imprecation written in his book will come down upon him, and Hashem will erase his name from under the heavens. Hashem will set him aside for evil from among all the tribes of Israel, like all the imprecations of the covenant that are written in this book of the Torah. Meaning, if a person is simply wicked because he doesn't know anything

1:08:32He doesn't know that you're not allowed to eat certain things. He doesn't know you're not allowed to touch certain things. He doesn't know you're not allowed to look at certain things. But he's trying to learn, that's one thing. But a person simply wastes time. He has the truth staring him in the face, but he prefers to play with his phone instead. He has the truth staring him in the face, but he decides, ah, this guy's crazy. he's too stringent. He's this, he's that. I'm not ready for this. Well, he is risking becoming a person that HaKadosh Baruch Hu hates. Why? It's not about the fact that he sins. It's the fact that he doesn't care. Sinning is expected. Everybody sins. I sin, you sin, everybody sins. There's no such thing as a person who doesn't sin. Even a tzaddik sins, accidentally, but he sins. It's not about sinning that's the problem. It's about sinning and thinking, "Ah, this sin, Hashem is just going to have to understand, I'm just going to be a sinner. Hashem is just going to have to understand that I'm not leaving her. Hashem has to understand that I have to do this, this, and that, even though He said no. Hashem has to just find a way for me to go to heaven."

1:09:53person that has that kind of an attitude, HaKadosh Baruch Hu says that person gets the worst klala, the worst curse in the entire Torah. Why? It's not about the sin. It's about the attitude. And that's why, Rabotai Yekarim, this is what we're trying to understand here. The Ramban is trying to tell us that if you simply think for a moment, whom are you going to face judgment in front of at some point? What does that mean? We'll finish with a couple of small things, and then you guys can ask any questions that you want. The Ramban writes that you have to think, you're gonna be in front of the King of Glory. You're gonna be in front of the King of Kings at some point. You have to think, what are you gonna look like when you get to that point? All your wisdom that you think you have is not gonna be worth very much. All your jokes when you get there are not gonna be worth very much.

1:11:07says that the judgment in heaven is very different than here. Here, usually, you have a crime and there's a punishment. In shamayim, there's something called din and cheshbon. What is din and cheshbon? What is that, a double punishment almost? It's just a little worse. The din is, okay, somebody stole. So, let's say, for example, somebody steals; he loses an arm. That's the din. Cheshbon, the accounting, is that now, after Hashem punishes him for whatever sin he made—whatever sin she made; she decided to walk around half-naked—Hashem punishes her for it. but after that punishment is paid, then they do an accounting. What is this accounting? This accounting is what you could have done that's good, that's a mitzvah, with the time that you've sinned. Meaning, you went around and let's say, for example, you decide to buy a hero full of bacon.

1:12:20A big one-foot hero. Now it took you, I don't know, let's say 20 minutes to eat this hero. So during every single bite that you took, it is a sin in itself. It's not just one sin for the entire sandwich; every bite is a sin. So that, every sin, has to be paid for. But now, after you finish the sandwich, Hashem punishes for that sandwich, right? Everybody understands that part. The Gemara says, no, no, it's further than that. Now Hashem does the accounting. What's the accounting? How long did it take you to eat the sandwich? Took you 20 minutes? So that's 20 minutes that you could have actually been doing a mitzvah. By eating a kosher sandwich. By going to a shiur Torah. By putting tefillin on. By praying. By doing something good. That's an additional punishment. And that's scary. Why? Because we realize that the wrath in Heaven is very different from anything we could possibly understand as humans. It's not limited like ours. Even the most vicious person in the world cannot understand the wrath of Heaven because he's still human. He also cannot understand the love of Heaven because he's still human. cannot understand the wrath of Heaven because he's still human. He also cannot understand the love of Heaven because he's still human. The point being, Rabotai, is the more we understand about how Hashem judges us, the easier it is to overcome some of these strong desires. Because we realize that, yes, I have a strong desire to do something against Hashem, but once I understand the punishment for it, once I understand what it is going to cost me, it simply becomes not worth it.

1:13:51It's like saying, listen, I really want this sandwich, but there's a sign on top of the sandwich: "You eat the sandwich, death penalty." You know what? I'll just eat a cake. I don't want to eat the sandwich. Why? I'm not that hungry. Why? You were hungry. You were hungry until you haven't eaten in two days. Yeah, but if you touch the sandwich, it's a bullet. I don't want to die. I'm not that hungry anymore. Once a person understands that the judgment is that severe, he simply says sin is not worth it. Sin is not worth it. That's why the Chachamim constantly, constantly said that you have to understand the judgment. Why? Because that's the only thing that's going to help you overcome the big sins, especially the sins of youth. The sins of youth are generally, specifically speaking, moral crimes, meaning things that have to do with promiscuity and things of that nature. The addiction to fulfilling your physical desire is the most... addiction that a human body could possibly have. It's the strongest desire that a human being could possibly have. But you also get the biggest reward for overcoming it. If a person preserves themselves, the amount of reward that they are going to get is infinite; infinity is not enough.

1:15:13If they don't, the punishment isn't. Which means that you have to take into consideration, is it really worth it to walk around with short shorts and show a bunch of strangers my body? Is it really worth it to have a boyfriend before I'm married? Is it really worth it to have a girlfriend before I'm married? Even though we're not really doing it, but we're doing it, but we're not really doing it. Is it really worth it to do this even by myself? Is it really worth it? Once you start realizing. So the Mesilat Yesharim gives us our last suggestion and then I'll open up for questions. The Mesilat Yesharim in chapter 23 says that a person needs to do themselves a service. What is this service? One of the most important Mussar books that was ever written, about 300 or so years ago, was written by the Ramchal, Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto. It's called the Mesilat Yesharim. Highly recommended, I did a whole series about this book. And it writes in chapter 23 that a person needs to do themselves a service, do themselves a favor. What? Vividly illustrate the day of judgment.

1:16:32Meaning, learn enough Torah, learn enough about punishment, where you could vividly imagine what happens if you sin. Some of the stuff that we're trying to do. Why? If you could illustrate in your mind, okay, if I touch her, they're going to cut my hands off. If I look at this, they're going to take my eyes out. If I put this in here, then what are they going to do to me? you could actually vividly illustrate it. Guess what? 95% of the desire runs away. This means that learning this stuff is not really a device; it's survival, especially when it comes to promiscuity and things of that nature. So, one should, he says, paint a sharp mental picture of what he will experience after death. when he's presented to the heavenly court for judgment in view of the celestial legions. The defendant will stand in front of the King of Kings, the ultimate source of sanctity and purity. The Almighty is surrounded by ministering angels who carry out His wishes with absolute perfection. We've talked about what some of these angels do in the previous shiurim. And he, the defendant, will stand exposed to their intense scrutiny

1:17:56painfully aware of the worst of his actions. Overwhelmed, will the defendant be able to raise his head? Will the defendant be able to dare even open his mouth? When the court asks him, "Have you lost your tongue?" Meaning, why are you silent? You talked so much for seventy years, you had all types of jokes, all types of comments. When the court asks him, "Where's the honor and glory that you prided yourself in during your life?" What is he going to answer? Nothing. How is he going to deal with this rebuke from Heaven? Nothing. He's going to crawl into the ground. And if someone would even for a moment form a true and forceful impression of this idea, of what happens after a person dies, all of his pride will run and fly away from him and never return again. Meaning that some of the things that people don't like to hear about are actually some of the primary things that we need to learn about, myself included, in order not to sin. Because sometimes the desires are so strong that the only way we can overcome them is by simply understanding that they are not worth it.

1:19:19And that's why the Gemara in Masechet Ta'anit, page 11a, says: How do we know that all of the evidence of our life is going to be presented in Heaven on our final Judgment Day? Because the Torah tells us that anyone who thinks that they can sin in the privacy of their home and no one's going to testify against them is mistaken, the Gemara says. The very stones of the walls of his house, the wooden beams of his own house, are going to be used as the witnesses. Now they're concealing his crime, but later on, they're going to cry out and condemn him for his hidden sins. The person's own soul that resides within him that's bearing and witnessing all of this wrongdoing will testify against him. And when the court issues a verdict, the person is so overwhelmed with sin, he has no choice but to attach his signature, writing a confession and humbly accepting the sentence, whatever sentence it is, saying, yes, this verdict is indeed true and just.

1:20:47meaning, after a person is shown a movie of their life, of every single sin that he thought was secret. No one knew that he was in the bathroom. No one knew that he was with her. No one knew that she was with him. No one knew this, no one knew that. They show him, we knew everything. The level of embarrassment that a person will have on that day is going to create such confusion, you say, okay, yeah, this is all right. Where can I just sign to end this embarrassment? Just punish me already. That's the punishment. That's the embarrassment that people like to talk about. Yes, the worst punishment is the embarrassment. It's not really the worst. It's just that it's the beginning. So... That's what the Ramban is trying to teach us, is that you need to understand that the judgment in heaven is not like the judgment of a court in this world. A court in this world or a king in this world is flesh and blood, here today, gone tomorrow. The law can change, the sentence can change, all types of things can change. The sentence in heaven doesn't change. When a person understands what the sentence in heaven could potentially mean, chas v'shalom, most of his or her desires simply run away. Why? It's just not worth it. Now, even though none of this is pleasing to hear, it's what we need to. Why? Because first, as part of teshuvah, we need to stop sinning, and then we start focusing on doing more and more mitzvot.

1:21:58most of his or her desires simply run away. Why? It's just not worth it. Now, even though none of this is pleasing to hear, it's what we need to. Why? Because first, as part of teshuvah, we need to stop sinning, and then we start focusing on doing more and more mitzvot. If you just focus on mitzvot, do mitzvot, okay, you put on tefillin, and you kept like half of the Shabbat, and you ate kosher once in a while, and you didn't go out tonight with the guys, but maybe tomorrow, what's gonna happen? Yeah, you're gonna have a bunch of mitzvot, but they're gonna be full of filth, of the sins that you're still making. That's why teshuvah first starts with returning to Hashem. Return to Hashem by what? By stopping your ways, stopping the bad stuff. Once you stop the bad stuff, then not only is it easier to fill your time with mitzvot, the mitzvot are complete. The mitzvot are pure. They're clean. They're not full of filth. And that's the key. The key to teshuvah is to first understand we can't be one of these people that regrets any mitzvot we've done. That's just silly and a very, very big sin. We can't be one of these people that says, "No, no, I'm good. I'm good the way I am." Because that's a very, very dangerous move to make.

1:23:18And last but not least, we need to constantly realize that at some point, every single one of us is going to meet HaKadosh Baruch Hu. We have to have something to say on that day that's to our merit. If we don't start doing teshuvah today, we're not going to have it. Any questions? Yes. Yes. Yosef Mizrachi was pointing out that it says in the New Testament that Jesus cursed a tree, a fig tree, for not producing fruit. Right. But it wasn't the right season, so obviously Yosef Mizrachi was right because, I mean, if the Christians believe that this guy was God and he wanted the tree to produce... What's the question? The question is that, obviously...

1:24:24this wouldn't apply, the punishment wouldn't apply in this specific case because the tree was... because it was a different season, right? Right, okay, so what's the question? No, I just figured out the answer to the question. Okay, next question, yes. For young kids, according to halacha, young kids are allowed to play with a ball because they're young, below the age of mitzvot. But adults, which for Judaism begins at 13 for boys and 12 for girls, are only allowed to play with a ball if they're playing with their child. Otherwise, it's considered muktze, meaning you're not allowed to touch it, just like you're not allowed to touch a pen. Why? Because it's not oneg Shabbat. It's not honor for Shabbat for you to bring a secular item into a kodesh. It's not something you're supposed to do. You should not play basketball on Shabbat because Shabbat is the day that HaKadosh Baruch Hu and you are supposed to celebrate together, a day that He created just for you. Playing basketball is not exactly the ideal way of celebrating something holy.

1:25:31It's a mundane thing to do. So by bringing the mundane into the holy, it's desecrating Shabbat, and that, therefore, the Chachamim decreed that balls are actually muktzeh on Shabbat for adults, unless they're playing with their child, which is a part of oneg Shabbat. But if it's just playing for their pleasure, for a game, and so on, it becomes a very big problem. The same thing with talking business. Talking business six days a week is not a problem. On Shabbat, it's a problem. Even though, per se, you're not actually doing business. You're just talking about the building that you want to buy, and he happens to be the seller or the broker, and so on. You're not actually doing business. That's still a violation. Why? That's bringing the mundane into the holy. In essence, you've made Shabbat into just another day, but it's a day off of work instead of a holy day. So that's, in essence, all of these sports and things of that nature. You're gonna find 5,000 rabbis that are lenient about everything, including Shabbat. They're gonna find a way for you to do whatever you want. I'm telling you what Halacha is. I'll tell you what Halacha is. Halacha is what HaKadosh Baruch Hu wants you to do. HaKadosh Baruch Hu does not want anybody to play basketball on Shabbat.

1:26:39He wants you to learn Torah. He wants you to go to Batei Knesset and pray. He wants you to eat, enjoy, rest a little bit. That's what He wants you to do. He definitely does not want you to play soccer or basketball or anything else. Unless, again, you have a kid, it's your son or something like that, and you're playing with him and that's part of your enjoyment of Shabbat. That's a different story. But generally speaking, the guys that are playing basketball sometimes with their rabbis, they should switch rabbis. Yes? Just to follow up, so that means like also other things, like let's say you play with Nerf guns, that wouldn't be allowed either? Again, like I said, generally speaking, it's not the ideal way to spend Shabbat. It's not the ideal way to spend Shabbat. The ideal way of spending Shabbat, put it this way. You're supposed to, according to our Torah, look forward to Shabbat the whole week and almost partially mourn that Shabbat is over. You're supposed to prepare for Shabbat the whole week and mourn that it's finished at the end. You're supposed to be sad at Havdalah. Who's gonna be sad that Shabbat's over? It's just a day off. You play basketball all day. You can play basketball the next day. You can play basketball every day. You can play with a Nerf gun all day. You can do all these things you could do every day. So what's the difference between Shabbat and the rest of the week? It's just a day off of school. It's a day off of work. That's all it is. That's what people have turned it into. And that's the problem that people simply don't take into account. Why? It's not that people are naturally evil. It's that people don't think.

1:28:05...and that's why we have an entire generation of so-called Modern Orthodox kids, Modern Orthodox girls and boys, and even sometimes really, you know, Hasidish or whatever types of all types of religious people that don't really care for Shabbat. They keep it, meaning they don't drive a car, they don't watch TV, they don't light cigarettes... But if, let's say, there was some "get out of jail free card," and somebody said, "Listen, from now on, you can keep Shabbat if you want, but you don't have to," all of them would stop keeping it. Why? Because they're not really enjoying Shabbat. The only difference for them on Shabbat is that it's just a bigger meal. That's it. They eat like a horse. Other than that, nothing changes. Why? Because the rest of it is a mundane day. They play basketball, they play football, and very, very little Torah. The only Torah people usually learn is the few words that the rabbi says after Seudah Shlishit and maybe after Shacharit in the morning. 90% of the people are not even listening. They can't wait to go home and start eating.

1:29:07It just becomes another day that you eat like a pig, sleep, and, you know, pretty much do whatever you want. It's a day off. It's a vacation. The same thing goes with people that fast for no reason. Fasting is supposed to be done, you know, in order to make yourself spiritually elevated. If you're going to use that fast to become spiritually elevated by learning Torah all day, but if you fasted... But you slept the whole day? That's not a fast, that's just a diet. Tisha B'Av is coming up, less than two weeks. We're all obligated to fast. But the point of the fast is to make you spiritually elevated as a result of the learning and the mourning you're going to do over the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash, in order to elevate you and get closer to understanding what HaKadosh Baruch Hu really wants. But if simply the whole day you're thinking about, "Oh, the steak is going to be delicious at 8 o'clock. Oh, the coffee is going to be amazing at 7:45. Oh, I can't wait to have that dessert." The whole day you're thinking about food, and you sleep 90% of the day. That's not a fast. That's just a diet. You just took a diet. Hashem doesn't want diets. A fast is supposed to be a day that you get spiritually elevated by using the tools that Hashem gave us, which is the Torah. If a person is not learning Torah while he's fasting, there's no point in the fast.

1:30:29Yes? Why do we wait between meat and milk and not milk and meat? Chachamim explained it in a couple of ways. There are several different opinions about how much time you should wait between meat and milk. Generally speaking, the ones that said to wait, some said to wait... you know, an hour. Others said to wait two hours. Others said to wait six hours. And some said to wait 24 hours after you eat meat before you eat milk. And the reason why is because they're determining how long the taste ...of the meat still remains with you. Some say that it lasts this much, some say that much, and so on, and others have other timings, other reasons for it. But they're saying that in essence, the taste is supposed to be gone, plus it's supposed to be completely digested. So some say it takes six hours to fully digest the food, some say it's more, after it's completely out of your body, and so on and so forth.

1:31:34But when it comes to dairy, dairy takes much less time to digest, and the taste itself does not linger as long. If you drink a cup of milk and then simply drink a cup of water right after, it's as if you never drank the milk. On the other hand, if you eat a nice juicy 16-ounce steak, you could drink as much water as you want, but that taste will stay with you for a little while. So that's also another thing. Generally, Orthodox Jews keep six hours after meat. Six hours after meat. And as far as milk, you wash your mouth and you could have meat. You could do what you want. Chicken, chicken technically is considered pareve. It's not really meat. But the Chachamim decreed that it is meat because it looks too much alike and people weren't able to tell the difference. By looking at, you know, seeing somebody eat chicken, they thought it was steak, and people started making mistakes. So they decreed that chicken has to be treated the same way as meat. you have to also wait six hours after chicken as well. Even though it's not really meat, the Chachamim still decided that a rabbinical mitzvah is no less than a biblical mitzvah. People think it's different, but actually sometimes the rabbinical mitzvot have a worse punishment than a biblical mitzvah. So that's also another thing. Generally, after meat and poultry, you wait six hours. After dairy, you just wash your mouth and you're good. But why do we wait?

1:33:01I just explained. We wait because, again, the Chachamim decided that six hours is the agreed upon time. But is it written in the Torah that you should wait in between? Yes, well, it says several times in the Torah that you're not allowed to cook a kid in its mother's milk. Three times it's mentioned in the Torah. So the Chachamim say, why is it mentioned three times, the same exact pasuk? Hashem didn't waste a single letter in the Torah. Why is He mentioning the same exact thing three times? that's because it has three different sins involved in milk and meat. The first one is eating it; you are not allowed to eat it together. So if you don't wait, it's as if the milk and the meat are in your body at the same time, and generally speaking, it's not supposed to be, especially since if you eat meat, the meat stays in your body longer, relatively close to where your digestion is and where your taste buds are. More so than milk. Milk goes straight to the stomach and usually leaves your body relatively quicker. So they said that, in essence, if you don't wait, it's as if you've eaten milk and meat together. The second reason why it says don't despair is because you're also not allowed to cook it together. Even, let's say, for example, you're not going to eat it yourself, but you want to work as a chef in a non-kosher restaurant. Not allowed. Why? Non-kosher restaurants use milk and meat together on a regular basis.

1:34:25The reason why you rarely find kosher bread in a supermarket is because they use milk and meat as different types of ingredients in their bread. So that's why, when you go to the supermarket, 90% of the breads are not kosher. you would think it's bread, what is it? It's flour, what's the big deal? No, there are different ingredients that go into the bread that are not kosher. So the second thing is, you're not allowed to cook it. Last but not least, you're not allowed to benefit from it. What does it mean to benefit from it? Let's say you want to own a non-kosher restaurant and sell non-kosher meat. Not allowed. That's also not allowed. Not allowed to benefit. So if, let's say for example, mistakenly, you were making a nice juicy burger, and by accident, by accident, your brother or your sister threw a piece of cheese on the barbecue. Now, obviously, you know you can't eat it. What about if I want to give it to my dog? I'll give it to my dog. The dog is not Jewish. Not allowed. Why? If you feed the dog that cheeseburger, you're still benefiting. How? By the fact that now you won't have to spend money on dog food.

1:35:31because you fed them this. So you benefit financially from it, therefore you're not allowed. So that's why it's mentioned three different times. Yes? On Shabbat? No. Well, first of all, you're not allowed to tell anybody to do anything that you're not allowed to do, even if they're not Jewish. Meaning, if you have a goy, you have, I don't know, Mr. Wong, who works in your house, Okay, Mr. Wong is not a Jew, and he doesn't have to keep Shabbat. You're not allowed to tell him to do anything that you're forbidden to do on Shabbat. You're not telling him to turn on the light, you're not telling him to do anything that you're forbidden to do, even though he's not Jewish. Why? Because he's, in essence, your messenger; he's your extended arm. If you told him to turn it on and he turned it on, it's the same thing as you turning it on. Now, if he turns it on by himself because he wants to use the light, that's a different story. But if he's turning it on specifically for you, that's forbidden. The same thing goes with the kid. You're not allowed to tell the kid to do it. There are leniencies in a time of trouble where, let's say, for example,

1:36:41uh, this is a pikuach nefesh or a sick person involved, then there's more leniency, and they say that if you're going to do it in a strange way, then you can use a child for it. But, meaning on a first basis, you're not allowed to tell a kid or a non-Jew to do something that you're forbidden to do. Plus, more importantly, you're not allowed to watch TV on Shabbat regardless because, like I said about basketball and other things, it's not oneg Shabbat. It's not the right honor for Shabbat to be watching TV. So even if somebody says, "Listen, I'll just leave the TV on. I'll leave the TV on. I won't turn it on. I'll leave the TV on and I'll put the remote away. So I'm just, whatever is on, I'm going to watch." That's also forbidden. Why? Because it's a violation of oneg Shabbat. It's not something you're supposed to do on Shabbat. Technically, it's not something you're supposed to do at all, ever. But even if you say, "No, no, I'm going to watch a shiur Torah on Shabbat." Watch Rabbi Reuven on Shabbat on YouTube. I'm just going to play a whole series, you know, the whole Shabbat. That's also forbidden. Why? It's not oneg Shabbat to watch TV on Shabbat. Yes? I'm sorry, I didn't hear. Can somebody take antidepressants if they're depressed? It depends. If they are clinically depressed,

1:38:00Meaning, they've tried all of the necessary things that the rabbis have suggested. Professional rabbis, not just somebody that has a hat. People that understand the mind, people that understand depression, they've tried that. They have also gone to, they have even used other professional help, whether it be a psychiatrist, that works within the body of Torah. Not the secular or goyim. Like a Jewish, Talmid Chacham, that's a psychiatrist also. and they determine that this person at this stage needs the help of antidepressants or any medicine, no problem. No problem at all. Even people that have, for example, pain, and they need painkillers, and, for example, they tried, let's say, Percocet or Vicodin or anything like that, and those things don't work for them, or they numb them in certain ways they don't like, and they say, listen, the only thing that works for me is the CBD. No problem, you could use it. If it's for medicinal reasons, no problem. If you've tried all the other things, and this is the only thing that works, it's a mitzvah to use it. Not just you're allowed, it's actually a mitzvah to do it.

1:39:05but if you simply just decided for yourself, "Listen, I'm a little depressed because my girlfriend left me. Let me take a couple of pills to numb the pain. I'll take a couple of Xanax just to make sure it goes away for a little while." No, it's not allowed. That's killing yourself. So, it's important to know that you need to get some guidance. Go to somebody who knows a few things. get some professional help, not just one or the other. Usually, try to have the rabbi work with the psychiatrist, one who is at least willing to comply with the rules of the Torah. It's not going to tell you, "Listen, you're depressed; go masturbate." There are some people that say that, and there are plenty of them that do. They say, "No, no, it relieves your anxiety." That's what those psychiatrists today say: "Go do that, relieve yourself, relieve your tensions." Somebody like that you have to throw off a bridge. not use them as a doctor. So somebody that's gonna work with the body within the scope of the Torah, if he recommends for you to use a certain medicine, no problem at all. But if it's a person that's completely an atheist or an idol worshiper of some kind, or somebody just telling you things that are completely ignoring the Torah, no, then it's not allowed. So you have to choose your doctors wisely. Somebody asked me today, what about people that are addicted to stuff? Can they go to AA meetings?

1:40:24Now, it's well known that AA meetings, Alcoholics Anonymous, Sexaholics Anonymous, and all these different types of anonymous programs are, yes, they're catered to help the addicts, but they're also catered to recruit Christians. Meaning, the Christian missionaries use this as a hunting ground to recruit people to their religion, especially if those people are Jews. That's why they host these Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in churches. So under no condition is any Jew ever allowed to go into a church. Not for medicinal reasons, not for any reason. To such an extent that Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, zt"l, wrote in a halacha, they asked him a difficult question. What if a big rabbi has a meeting with, let's say, you know, the Prime Minister of England once a year, and the Prime Minister has a big event, and he invites him, for the sake of peace, to come to the event, but the event is at a church, which they do every year in London. what it says, it's a hundred percent forbidden. It's like, "Yeah, but what about if it's going to create tension between the Jews and the goyim?" He says, "Let it create tension between the Jews and goyim." It's to that extent. Why? Because this is a place of idolatry. So needless to say, if he is not allowed to go as a leader, needless to say, we're not allowed to go as individuals. You have to find a Jewish organization that deals with the addicts. There's a few in Florida, there's a bunch of them in New York. They exist. They're just not as common, but they exist. Yes, yes.

1:41:56No, it's incorrect. The Sephardic Ashkenazim are relatively similar in this. Soup, for example, if you want to have soup, if the majority of the dish is water, you could only use it and heat up the food before Shabbat starts and leave it on the plata. Leave it on the... On the hot plate, once you've actually lifted the soup and put it down somewhere else, at that point, whether you're Sephardi or Ashkenazi, you can no longer bring it back onto the hot plate. The only way you're allowed to put it on a hot plate is if you either take it directly from the hot plate and leave it on the hot plate the whole time or if you lift it but never put it down. But that's for both Ashkenazim and Sephardim from what I know. But as far as if you've taken it off, if you've taken the soup off of the hot plate and you put it down, Sephardim are also forbidden to put it back on. But that's only if the majority of the dish is liquid. If the dish has liquid in it, like for example, there are many dishes, like different types of stews or different types of dishes that have liquid in them, because if they don't, they're simply going to burn up, but it's not the majority.

1:43:19it's a small part of it that's not a problem—you can lift it and put it back on. It's not a problem because that's not the majority of it. The majority of it is chicken and potatoes and all types of things. But if the majority of it, like soup, is liquid, then that's a different situation. I have a book in my car for anybody that wants one. I can give you a free book, yes. non-Jewish people have either Gan Eden or Gehinnom. The reward for righteous non-Jews is that if they fulfill the seven Noahide laws and all of the ethical laws of the Torah, because Hashem said so, they have their own heaven. and they fulfill the seven Noahide laws and all of the ethical laws of the Torah, because Hashem said so, they have their own heaven. They have their own heaven; it’s not on the same level as the Jews' heaven, because they didn't fulfill as many mitzvot and didn't fulfill as much of an obligation, similar to how the janitor is not going to get the same paycheck as the CEO, but they still get a retirement plan. Okay? If, on the other hand, they don't, whether it's because they stay Christians or Catholics or other types of heretics or atheists, then they go to Gehinnom for eternity. And it's not a good place. So they also have Gan Eden, they also have Gehinnom, but believe it or not, to my knowledge, the Gehinnom for Jews is also worse for Jews. Meaning that heaven is better for Jews, but the Gehinnom is also worse. Meaning it's

1:44:50Wait. It's not that Gan Eden is better for Jews than for non-Jews, but Gehinnom is the same. No, Gehinnom is also worse. But needless to say, it's terrible regardless, as far as our understanding. Yes? Yes, both. If a Jew denied the Torah and violated the Torah, then his soul, in essence, will also be destroyed just like the non-Jew. That's what it means when it says in the Torah, he has no share in the World to Come. That means that he goes through an extended period of suffering, which could be millions of years, until the soul, the part that Hashem created separate from him, is officially destroyed, just like the non-Jew is destroyed. So, yeah, technically. Yes? I just want to ask your opinion. So, I just, you think about, I don't even know what it is.

1:45:55What is it? Anunnaki. In history back then. And they found some stuff in Israel. Do you know those? You mean the what? The scrolls? The Dead Sea Scrolls? No. It's spelled like A-N-U-N-N-A-K-I. Oh, Rabbi, it's a civilization that they believe is some ancient civilization. uh, a lot of people, uh, you know, especially in recent years, um, like the last 70 years or so, like to do a lot of investigation about aliens because either some people think they saw strange beings and so on Now, the Torah does not say that there are no other creatures in other places. It doesn't say that. It also doesn't say that we are the only living beings. Meaning that it is possible that there are living beings on other planets. It's possible. But the Torah doesn't discuss it. And the reason why is because they're never going to come here. They're never going to affect our life. That's why the Torah doesn't discuss it. The Torah generally discusses only the things that will affect your life.

1:47:20So, could there be other beings in other places? Possible. Is it going to affect our life in any way? Absolutely not. Because if it would, it would be in the Torah. However, that doesn't actually mean that the things that people find in caves, in pyramids, and so on, are actually aliens. It doesn't mean that. Why? Because the Torah does discuss that in this world there are many, many strange beings that exist and have existed throughout history. The Gemara talks extensively about them, and the Zohar also talks extensively about them. If we saw them today, to us they would be aliens. They have the image of aliens. For example, there are really, really small people. ...that if you look at them, this must be an alien. No, it's just this really, really small person. It's not a midget. It's not like somebody that's short or deformed. No, no. It's like a really, really small civilization. And there are some really, really big people. Like we read in the parasha, Anakim. There's also a creature that is connected. It's like a beast that is connected to the ground to its umbilical cord.

1:48:27...and anything that comes next to it, he kills. It's a vicious, vicious beast, and you can only kill it in one way. There are also, you know, things like werewolves. They actually have existed. Binyamin, one of the tribes, was a werewolf, actually. Like one of Yaakov's sons would turn into a wolf... ...so there are all types of really, really interesting beings and creatures in the world now and that have existed in the past. If we saw them, we would deem them as aliens from a foreign planet, but they're not from a foreign planet—they're from here. It's just that they're not as common; they're not as found. Some of them don't exist anymore. There is an animal called the tachash... This animal was created solely for the reason of the Mishkan, which was the Beit HaMikdash that we had in the desert. It's a beautiful animal that is similar, as far as body features, to a deer—a really, really big deer—but has the skin of a snake. Extremely colorful and so beautiful that its skin would be priceless.

1:49:34Now, this being actually existed in the world, and that's how they made the Mishkan. The whole thing that covered the Mishkan was its skin. Now we don't have it anymore. If it existed in the world, we would think this thing definitely came from a different planet because it doesn't look like anything else we've ever seen. But it has existed. Same thing with other animals and other creatures. Shlomo HaMelech, for example, wanted to show his people that he's aware of the other worlds, so he actually had one of the kings of the demons, His name was Ashmedai. He actually had them bring several of these creatures to the kingdom, and he brought him a person with several heads, a small person, all types of creatures that, if we saw them, would look like aliens to us. They look like something that we've seen in movies and things of that nature, but they're not. They just exist in the world, but in different parts. There's also a physical Gan Eden and Gehinnom, and a spiritual Gan Eden and Gehinnom. meaning that there is a place in the world that has all the horrible things that I described to you guys in She'ol; it actually exists in the world.

1:50:45There's also a spiritual one, but there's actually one that's a physical one with fire and people screaming and so on and so forth. It actually exists in the world. Some old recording, some say it's fake. I don't believe it's fake because it matches all of the descriptions. There was a team of drillers that were drilling in the Arctic years ago. I think it was maybe 25-30 years ago. And they drilled really, really deep into the ground until they started hearing some strange sounds. So they put down a recorder, down a hole that was, I think, a few miles deep. And they recorded the sounds. And the recording you can actually find online. And if you hear it, you'll immediately become scared. And the reason why is because it sounds like everything I described: screaming, yelling, torture, the worst of the worst. You hear this, you're not going to sleep for a couple of nights. So, now some people say, no, it's fake. Whether it's fake or not is irrelevant. It actually does exist. There is a physical place in the world that is Gehenom, that's designated to punish the souls that go against Hashem. There's also a place, Gan Eden, that exists in the world physically. We have it in the Torah, in Sefer Bereshit, that Adam and Chava were actually in a physical Gan Eden, in heaven. But there's also a spiritual one, which is above the world.

1:52:03so the point is that there's a lot of stuff in the world that, to us, if we saw it today—if one of these beings walked in right now—we'd say, "No, this must be... where's the spaceship? Where is it?" No, it actually exists. It's just we're not familiar with it right now. They're still discovering new species on a regular basis, which means that out of the land, which is about 28% of the globe... we haven't even explored half of it. We actually haven't even explored a third of it. We don't know much about the land in the world. Most of the land in the world, we don't know anything about. Needless to say, the ocean, which is 71% of the world, The ocean, we literally, you ask scientists, how much do we know about the ocean? They'll tell you, "Nothing." It's like, "Yeah, but you know about 40,000 different types of fish." Like, "Yeah, those 40,000 types of fish are literally nothing in comparison to what's in there." So the amount of knowledge that we have is vast in comparison to zero.

1:53:07It's a lot. It's a lot of books. You could fill up entire auditoriums with the books of knowledge that we have about the world. But in comparison to what's available and the amount of species that are out there and the amount of information that's out there, it's insignificant. But you know, they say they come to the world for the gold in Israel. And if you took a gold in a day, in a boat, you know, the gold, and you can be more healthy, it's... It's an interesting theory. It's an interesting theory. They usually use different types of ancient writing, whether it be hieroglyphics or other types of ancient writing, that they try to translate based on some type of... Keystone that they believe they understand, and many times they realize years later that they completely misunderstood the message. They think that it said, you know, King Jaja went and conquered the next kingdom, and later on, they say, no, King Jaja went to the bathroom. They made a completely big mistake. It's just that what they thought was a commandment ended up being a newspaper. And...

1:54:26So a lot of the stuff that they translate is generally theoretical. But more importantly, you should know that all of the stuff that's of any value, of any good in the world exists in the Torah. So for example, any information you want to find out about gold, you'll see in the Gemara, it says that the world has seven different types of gold. And each type of gold has a different, not just a different chemical composition as far as, yes, it's gold, but it has different abilities. Like, for example, there's a certain type of gold that actually is good for health. There's a certain type of gold that replicates itself. That's actually how Shlomo HaMelech built the Beit HaMikdash, full of gold. Where did he get this gold? He actually had cities of gold because he knew where to find a certain type of gold that replicated itself. like literally gave birth to other gold. So you put, let's say, a bar of gold in a drawer; the next morning you have two, the next morning you have four, the next morning you have eight, the next morning you have sixteen, and so on and so forth. Gold that replicates itself. Today's gold, the only thing we have today, is gold that doesn't do anything.

1:55:26doesn't do anything other than stay in the Federal Reserve for absolutely no reason. So the point is that there are a lot of things that have existed and were in the possession of Am Yisrael throughout history that you could actually find most of the stuff, actually not most, almost everything that exists in the world, if it has value, you'll find it in the Torah. For example, people love superheroes. You know, they made movies out of it, comic books, and so on and so forth. All of the stories, virtually all of the superheroes, you'll find them in the Torah. Incredible Hulk, the Flash guy, you know, the Wolverine—all of these people actually existed in the Torah. The tribe, the 12 tribes, each one of them had superpowers. You look at the Midrash Me'am Loez, you look at, there's a section called the third book that describes the wars of the tribes. And you'll see how the 12 sons of Yaakov went to war and each one of them had superpowers. Now, these books were written thousands of years ago. It's not like two weeks ago. So it couldn't have been that this came second. This was all written before the comic books.

1:56:39And you see, literally, the description of what people see on a movie screen is written in the Torah 2,000 years ago. So, a lot of things that we put a lot of value on actually exist in the Torah, and many of the people that brought them to light were actually Jews. For example, the theory of relativity, what Einstein became famous for. He didn't invent anything. The Rambam already wrote it 900 years ago. Rambam wrote about the theory of relativity 900 years ago. It's not some innovation that Einstein came up with. It's just that, unfortunately, not many people learned the Rambam. And many, many, many things that you'll see from the Torah are extraordinary. I assume you like science. Yeah, I like it. So I'm going to bring you a book. You're going to come to the shiur tomorrow? Tomorrow? No, I'm working tomorrow. I think I will come Wednesday or Thursday. Wednesday is tomorrow. Wednesday's tomorrow? Oh, it's next week, Wednesday. Okay, so next time you come, I'm going to give you a book. It's called Science Comes of Age. It's a book by Rabbi Zamir Cohen that shows all types of amazing scientific information that we, like modern people, believe was discovered by scientists. But actually, he shows you where you can find it in the Torah from 2,000, 3,000 years ago.

1:58:06I actually made a whole series of short movies, short films about it. It's called Torah, Science, and Ancient Wisdom. If you go to my page, you'll see Torah, Science, and Ancient Wisdom. It's five different short films, about 15 minutes each. And it shows different scientific facts. and where it's actually written in the Torah with the illustrations and so on. Really, really interesting stuff. And you'll literally see one of the main things that helped me become really religious and believe in Hashem 100% is that I realized that all of the wisdom that we put any value to in this world of these smart people and so on and so forth, all they're doing is replicating what our sages already knew 3,000 years ago. So, when you see that we already possessed all of this information, and sometimes much more advanced than the scientists, you realize, wait a minute, why should I go to the secondary? Why don't I just stick with the source? So, for example, you look at the sky and

1:59:09you could probably, with your naked eyes, see—I don't know—somewhere around maybe a thousand, fifteen hundred stars. You can count in the sky if you're not in Florida. There's a lot of pollution. But if you go to upstate New York or different places where there's less pollution, you'll see a lot of stars. But maximum, maybe fifteen hundred stars. If you have binoculars, you could count up to six thousand stars. At the time of Galileo Galilei, they put together the telescope, and they thought that before him there were six thousand stars and... Then after they had the telescope, they figured that there were much more, probably several thousand more. Then they realized, as they developed it more, they could see hundreds of thousands and even millions. Now, you fast forward to 1994 and NASA connected a supercomputer to a telescope. they did an estimate of the amount of stars that are in the universe of 10 to the 21st power, meaning 10 with 21 zeros after it. They estimated, then advanced the computer a little more. The University in Australia, in 2004, arrived at a more precise conclusion of 10 to the 19th power, 10 to the 19th power. That was in 2004. Now, our Torah

2:00:32We have a written Torah and an oral Torah. The oral Torah in Tractate Berakhot, page 32b, says HaKadosh Baruch Hu told us exactly how many stars, not an estimate, but exactly the number of stars in the universe that He created just for us. and the exact number is one, zero, six, four, three, four, zero, and then 12 zeros after it. Meaning 10 to the 18th power plus 64, three, four, zero, and then 12 zeros after it. Meaning that science took a couple thousand years to arrive at a number that's extremely close to a number that we have that's a precise number. They're 10 to the 19th power, we're 10 to the 18th with a little bit more. Meaning that they're estimating; we have an exact number. We have an exact number, and we didn't have a telescope. We didn't have a telescope, meaning at the time the Gemara was written, there was no telescope. The telescope was only invented 400 years ago. The Gemara was written almost 1,600 years ago. So we had this information well before telescopes existed, meaning that the only way we could have such a number would be that we got it from the One who put it there.

2:01:40So when you see this type of information exist in our Torah, you realize that it has to be divine. A divine hand has written it, and that makes fulfilling all of the mitzvot much, much easier. There's a very good movie by Rabbi Mizrachi called Torah and Science. Type it on YouTube, Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi, or just type it on YouTube, Torah and Science. And... Or you could just ask Michal, and she'll send you the link. And you'll see this movie is like four hours, and it's full of interesting information like I'm telling you. So there's different things. Generally speaking, with the solids like gold and all types of metals, I don't recommend swallowing any of that because some of them can actually have poison. That's not good for us. But, you know, everything is worth checking into as far as does it have a source in the Torah or not. Yes? Yes?

2:02:43You make a bracha on food that's not kosher? Meaning if you eat pig, do you make a bracha on it? No. No. No, it's like when someone asks, do you make a bracha on stolen food? Let's say he had a sandwich, you took it and ran away with it. Do you still have to do a bracha on it? No, it's not yours. You don't have to make a bracha on it. It's a mitzvah haba'ah b'aveirah. So you're not allowed to do it. You only heard that from a guy named Ephraim Goldberg. Stop learning from him. So they probably listened to Ephraim as well. It's idolatry according to the Rambam for everybody. It's not idolatry just for them. There's no such thing as idolatry just for them and not idolatry for us. If it's idolatry, it's idolatry. So you're telling me the statue is a statue for him, but it's not a statue for me. It's the dumbest thing anybody could ever say. I'm really surprised people actually take stuff like that seriously.

2:03:46like saying this is a chair for you, but for me, it's not a chair, it's a work of art. Who are you selling this to? I have a book and the Brooklyn Bridge for sale also. No, it’s idolatry. It’s idolatry for everybody. There’s no such thing as idolatry for us and idolatry for them. Idolatry for us can be much more extensive; we have more things that can be idolatry. But Christianity is 100% idolatry, yes. Okay. It depends on the level of the neshama, it depends on the sensitivity of the neshama. Different people are given different tools to connect to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. If they're seeing spiritual things in a positive way, they're good things, it could be that their neshama is on a higher level or tuned differently than other people's neshama. If they're seeing it as a result of things that are not good, wickedness, witchcraft, and things of that nature, then obviously they're bringing it on themselves. But... higher level or tuned differently than other people's neshama. If they're seeing it as a result of things that are not good, wickedness, witchcraft, and things of that nature, then obviously they're bringing it on themselves. But...

2:04:54The spiritual things exist, whether we see them or not; it's just that certain people's neshama is more tuned to it than others. I know a few people that see things on a regular basis, and I know other people that you could put ten pairs of glasses on them, and they won't see anything, including what's in front of them. know, so it just depends on how the neshama is tuned. Same thing as far as, you know, a person can learn Torah now and have a certain level of understanding of it. Fast forward three, four, five years, go back to the same exact thing we learned today, and he'll understand it differently because he did certain things during those several years. The next time he learns that same page, it'll be like a world of difference. Why? Because his neshama is tuned differently. I could tell you myself, for example Not that I'm anything special, just to give you some perspective on things. The first time I ever heard about Gehinnom, I just thought of it as a scary movie. It didn't make me cry, it didn't make me necessarily lose any sleep, it simply, you know, it wasn't cool, it wasn't great, but I forgot about it moments after I learned about it.

2:06:03The next time, it affected me a little bit more. When I did this shiur about Gehinnom about a year ago or so, studying for it was one of the most difficult things that I encountered in my entire life. And I can tell you that I've encountered quite a few difficult things. Pretty much just imagine somebody reading a sefer and crying hysterically the whole time. That's what it was for a few days. Why? It's the same information. I've learned it before. But the neshama tuned in differently. You have a different level of understanding where HaKadosh Baruch Hu is exposing your neshama to different things. There's a different opening that wasn't open last time. so now you have a different understanding of the same thing you know. Death here and death there is the same definition, but your understanding of what death here versus death there is two different things. How you actually are, how your mind translates it into an actual visual perspective. So, the next time that I learned about it, I took it very, very differently. So it makes it a lot more difficult to learn about, but quite frankly, I see that since we had that shiur, there's even more of a need to learn about it, because it's probably helped more people do teshuva than almost every other lecture that we have, simply because people never understood that there is a punishment in the world. People simply think that you either get rewarded or nothing. Like there's no downside. It's a completely ridiculous concept, but it's only as a result of ignorance.

2:07:24So hence the reason why we mention it much more often now than we did when we first started our shiurim, you know, five, six years ago. So, you know, your neshama will be tuned differently. The more Torah you learn, the more differently your neshama will react to certain things. When they, for example, ask Rav Chaim Kanievsky certain questions, gives them an answer, and sometimes people don't understand the answer. It's like, "Why?" It's like, "Well, it's written in the Torah." "But what do you mean? I asked you a question about my parnassah, this is my specific situation," and he shows them a pasuk. Many times they have no idea how he connected this to that, but in his mind, in his perspective, this is not only right, this is exactly it. And it ends up being exactly it; it's just that they're not tuned in to understand what he sees. So that's the thing. When it comes to different types of beings and spirits and things of that nature, certain people can see it on a regular basis. Other people can't see it. And the ones that don't see it, I promise you, they're better for it. They're better for it. Anything else? Yes. What are things that can soften a person's judgment on Shabbat?

2:08:43The biggest thing that a person can do to soften their judgment is to fulfill the mitzvot of the Torah. The more he fulfills the mitzvot in the Torah and applies the mitzvot of the Torah to shape his character and improve it, the better his judgment is going to be in heaven. If a person fulfills the Torah, he's going to help himself a great deal. Even more so is to help other people become religious. Whether it's by giving them CDs, spreading lectures, you know, giving money, collecting money from people, encouraging them to donate. Let's say, for example, if you don't have any money, but you know somebody that does, the better his judgment is going to be in Heaven. If a person fulfills the Torah, he is going to help himself a great deal. Even more so is to help other people become religious. Whether it's by giving them CDs, spreading lectures, giving money, collecting money from people, or encouraging them to donate. Let's say, for example, if you don't have any money, but you know somebody that does, And you tell them, "Listen, why don't you give $500 to this?" Why? And you give them a little five-second scoop: "Oh, it's a good cause. It's this, this and that." If you encourage them to give money, it's even more so than if you gave money yourself. So, for anybody that has middle or upper-class friends or family, this should be your number one mission, even more so than you giving.

2:09:43simply because you can get people to give a lot more than you can give yourself anyway. By doing this, by helping other people give for the sake of publicizing Torah and publicizing teshuva, you're helping yourself a great deal, mainly because not only are you encouraging other people to do mitzvot, but there's going to be results. from that money that's invested into helping people do teshuva, and every single time a person who does teshuva does a mitzvah, it goes into your account. So now, every Shabbat from now on, you know you keep one Shabbat, he keeps one Shabbat, so now you've kept two Shabbatot. Now he has a wife; she keeps Shabbat, now you have three Shabbatot. Every Shabbat is now, instead of one, it's three. Now they're going to have, let's say, three, four, five kids. So now every Shabbat is now eight Shabbatot for you. So now you have literally every week you're keeping eight Shabbatot. Now if you made two people religious, five people religious, ten people religious, the amount of reward you're going to get is enormous. And it says in the Torah, it says in the Mishnah in Pirkei Avot, that HaKadosh Baruch Hu is not gonna send, if somebody is a mezakeh harabim, somebody helps people become religious, he has special protection. Why? He doesn't want the rabbi to be in Gehennom and the students to be in Gan Eden. Because then the students are not gonna enjoy their Gan Eden. They're gonna enjoy their heaven. So what happens? So He gives special protection to that rabbi that helped him go into heaven. Meaning, doesn't necessarily mean, literally mean a title of a rabbi, meaning the person that helped him do teshuva.

2:11:08you are the one that collected that five hundred or that five thousand or that five hundred thousand dollars you collected and that money was used to help people become religious, that will give you special protection in heaven against certain tikkunim and different aveirot and so on and so forth that you potentially will fall into. Why? Because Hashem does not want you to be punished when you've helped so many people get reward. Because punishing you would, in essence, be also punishing them. So He's going to give you special protection as a result of it. So that's one of the, that is the biggest thing that a person can do in order to soften their judgment: help people become religious. But of course, that always means, like I said in last night's lecture in New York, that helping people become religious assumes that you yourself are living a religious life. You know, whether as a Jew or as a non-Jew, you're fulfilling your role. If you're a Jew, you're a righteous Jew. If you're a non-Jew, you're a righteous non-Jew. If you're a non-Jew that's in the process of conversion, then you're, in essence, living a Jewish life, per se, until you complete your conversion. But the point is that if a person will do those couple of things, they'll help themselves a great deal. Because there's no person in the world that can wipe all of their sins by themselves overnight. It takes time, and quite frankly, most of us are not going to remember most of our sins unless we do specific things. For example, if you want to remember some of the sins that you forgot about, this is a segulah from the chachamim: you should study at night all the way into the morning without sleeping. Study all the way at night, all the way into the morning, and start praying. When you pray, usually Hashem is going to give you some type of idea of something that you forgot about that you sinned.

2:12:22all of their sins by themselves overnight. It takes time, and quite frankly, most of us are not going to remember most of our sins unless we do specific things. For example, if you want to remember some of the sins that you forgot about, this is a segulah from the chachamim: you should study at night all the way into the morning without sleeping. Study all the way at night, all the way into the morning, and start praying. When you pray, usually Hashem is going to give you some type of idea of something that you forgot about that you sinned. So it works. It works. You can do it. It works. I mean, it's very hard. It's something to study all night. Meaning it's like a special thing that a person can do in order to get something beyond the norm. The segulah is to learn all night. The segulah is to learn Torah all night, all the way to the morning, into prayer. That's the segulah. That's what you're supposed to do. You learn all night, serious Torah. Not like you're watching a debate between a Christian and a Jew. You know, like serious, serious Torah learning. You learn Gemara, you learn Halacha, you learn serious stuff the whole night. By the time you get to the morning and you pray, Hashem will give you one...

2:13:37One thing that perhaps you forgot about. But this is generally not really meant for the general public or the average person. There are plenty of sins that we've all committed that we know about. We don't need to remember the ones we forgot about. Let's first deal with the ones we know about. Let's first address and rectify the ones that we know about. Then we'll deal with the ones that we forgot about. You know, so it's a wonderful segulah for people who are at that level. But with the exception of maybe a handful of people that I know watch my shiurim, I don't think anybody that I know is at that level. So... Not including myself. There are plenty of things I need to fix that I know of. I don't need to be reminded of anything. Yes? What's the case for, let's say, a non-Jew who somehow gets some people to do teshuvah, even to get to Judaism and, you know, to keep Torah? What's the case for that person who is not a Jew? great thing if somebody is not Jewish that helps other people become religious. He gets an enormous, enormous reward. First of all, it's part of their mission as a non-Jew in the world to help Jews become religious. But they get an enormous reward. I mean, the amount of reward that Hashem says He gives for helping a person do teshuvah is 310 different worlds.

2:15:00Now, I can't give you a visual perspective of what these beautiful worlds look like, but the point is that the reward for getting a Jew to do teshuvah, a Jewish woman or a Jewish man to do teshuvah, is enormous whether that person is a Jew or a non-Jew who helped them. It's an enormous reward. They may even have such a merit that they could have the right to convert during their lifetime and become a Jew or other things. I know that from all of the converts that we've dealt with throughout the last several years, Baruch Hashem, I mean, there's probably, I don't know, quite a few people that we've dealt with and tried to help convert, but out of the cases that completed... quite a few people that we've dealt with and tried to help convert, but out of the cases that completed completed cases, meaning people that started the journey and completed it. The only ones that have completed it were people that cared enough about a mitzvah that they contributed to kiruv in some way or another. Some with money, some with skill, some with time—something. They cared about helping Jews do teshuva. Everyone else that didn't make it...

2:16:18It's not that we decide who and what—it’s just that many of the ones who didn't care, they just cared about themselves, and they always had an excuse to only care about themselves. From my experience, they never succeeded in converting, at least not yet. Every single person that I've helped, which is almost 20 people, maybe more, have completed their conversion. Every single one of them was involved in one way or another with kiruv, with actually helping Jews do teshuva. While all of the others that haven't, you know, some of them are still in the process. Most of them are still in the process. But some of them fell off completely, like just disappeared. The ground swallowed them somehow, or they just decided otherwise. It's usually, you know, they didn't have it. They didn't have it. Now, some people do help. Jews become ba'alei teshuva. But still, Hashem didn't allow them to convert for one reason or another. That doesn't make them bad. It doesn't mean that Hashem doesn't want their mitzvot or that they're not good enough. It's just that Hashem doesn't want this yet or at all or whatever it is. But I'm just telling you from the success aspect of it.

2:17:27There's a common element with all of the people that I've dealt with personally who have actually converted. Every single one of them who has converted has helped with kiruv on a regular basis, not as a one-time thing. I'll give you one example, and then we'll finish for the night because we have another shiur tomorrow with questions. One guy, one of my students, tried converting for, I think it was maybe 14 years—12, 14 years. That's a really long time. I mean, you could pretty much, you should be able to have a Bar Mitzvah already. Fourteen years. No matter what he did, it failed. Something always happened. Marriage broke up, marriage started, marriage, something, money, this, always, something always happened to just mess it up. Fourteen years. Now, one day we get in touch, and I tried to help in a certain way. Then, one day, he just gets the urge out of nowhere to donate a large amount of money, much more than typical, specifically to help somebody do teshuva.

2:18:44Now, I didn't know about this. I simply just one day, I see it in the envelope, somebody sent me a check and said, wow, okay, Baruch Hashem, fantastic. This is a lifeline for us for this month. Now, I didn't think much of it aside from the fact that this helped us, but for whatever reason or another, in Shamayim, that was the ticket. Why? Literally within less than a year, conversion was completed. Fourteen years, everything and anything failed. Always a reason, something. That moment you calculate, I think it was less than a year—11 months—conversion was completed. There were no strings pulled; there was no like, "Oh, we greased this guy." No, nothing. Nothing changed. Just something happened in Shamayim, and they said, "Oh, okay, fine. Check." So everybody has to do their own mesirat nefesh, their own sacrifice, in order to get, in essence, the ticket in. That Hashem is going to say, "I want you as part of My nation." And the best ticket is to show that you actually care about His nation. Unfortunately, many times I see people that convert through other rabbis, not through me, and they really are anti-Semitic.

2:19:58I find this becoming very, very common where people convert, but they actually don't like Jews. They come into the Jewish people thinking they're better than the Jewish people, talk bad about them, say all types of things. So, those people, unfortunately, what the Gemara says, are like a skin disease to the nation. They're the Erev Rav. And unfortunately, there's quite a few of them. Baruch Hashem, there are plenty more that are good. Plenty more that are good converts. But the point is that you see, the common denominator, at least from my experience, and I'm certain it's the same from other rabbis, because I dealt with so many of them already, and you see a common element among people. It's people that care about Am Yisrael; Hashem wants them to become part of Am Yisrael. People that don't care about Am Yisrael... Why should I let you convert? Like what? People? I have a bunch of them. Why you? So baruch Hashem. Baruch Hashem. B'ezrat Hashem. We'll continue tomorrow with more questions. B'ezrat Hashem. With more answers. Baruch Adonai le'olam. Amen ve'amen.

2:22:38Why should I let you convert? Like what? People? I have a bunch of them. Why you? So Baruch Hashem. Baruch Hashem. B'ezrat Hashem. We'll continue tomorrow with more questions. B'ezrat Hashem. With more answers. Baruch Adonai le'olam. Amen ve'amen.