Why CoronaVirus Hurting Religious Too, MIKVEH HETER, Kids @ Home & More - STUMP THE RABBI (46)

0:16We're back to our Wednesday night Sunny Isles, Florida, Stump the Rabbi. You guys asked me some questions. Be'ezrat Hashem, HaKadosh Baruch Hu will give us the answers. So, obviously, things are heating up. Looks like The rules are changing with everything that's going on with this coronavirus, since no one really knows what's going on and what to do, and everyone's pretty much winging it. You know what winging it means? Winging it means that you're unprepared and you have to do your best. A very, very bad strategy, but sometimes you have no choice. No one has special training in how to handle an epidemic. No matter how many books you read, no matter how many exercises you take and make,

1:21the truth is, when push comes to shove, and you start seeing that every day another few hundred bodies, another few hundred bodies, people could become very, very distraught to the extent where they themselves start feeling like they don't want to be in this world anymore. All of these doctors and nurses that are handling the patients this is why, when a person is going to make a decision of what he's going to do during his life, and decides to be a doctor, this is, you know, not why they signed up. Really, most doctors and nurses, they sign up, they want to help people, but under normal conditions. No one wants to be a war doctor, where you start seeing that there are people, but they're missing limbs, missing arms, missing legs, missing heads, missing, you know, stomachs all opened up, you see the intestines falling out, Hashem yishmor.

2:25Rabbi Fahim once told me that when he was younger, maybe almost 20 years ago, 15 years ago, his father, God bless him, he's a very special person. He's got a unique neshama. So, a lot of things in his life. And also for my family, from my mom's side. They're interesting people. My grandfather, if you guys remember, I told you my grandfather used to bury people. Not because that was his profession, but because there were so many people dying from the bombs that somebody had to do it. So my father and his brother, my grandfather, Gabriel, alav ha-shalom, Gabriel ben Kamuna, may HaKadosh Baruch Hu bless him and raise his neshama. He He was the hero. He was the hero of the city back there in Tripoli, in Libya, but during the war there were bombings and there were bodies everywhere, buildings exploding, Hashem yishmor. And because of the kavod for the guf, you have to give kavod to the guf, somebody had to go bury, you had to take people out of these places. in Libya, but during the war, there were bombings and there were bodies everywhere, buildings exploding, Hashem yishmor. And because of the kavod for the guf, you have to give kavod to the guf, somebody had to go bury, you had to take people out of these places.

3:49him and his brothers would go inside the buildings, inside this rubble, and take pieces of the body, take the people, wrap them up, go and bury them, and so on. And my mom, God bless her, tells me that when she was younger, my grandfather used to tell them stories on Shabbat. He would sit down all the kids and tell them stories on Shabbat, and... He would tell them all these stories, but not stories that were made up—stories of his life. Because the stories of his life are much better than the stories that are made up. And he would tell them about all the things that he did, this and that. And he told them about how he buried people, and sometimes he would have to bury people at night. So he would see different things that are not of this world—different spirits and ghosts and so on. things moving, talking, all types of things. You would see all types of things, and, uh, you know, little kids—sometimes they get too scared of this stuff, sometimes they love this stuff, but they want it, but they're scared also. Anyway, he told my mom that every time he looks at his hands—you look at your hands, what do you see? Nothing. You see your hand.

5:08"If you see something else, there's a mental institution we can send you to. But when he looked at his hand, he would see all the people he buried. All the neshamot. All the people that he buried. That's what he saw. And my mom says to him, Abba, aren't you scared? You see all these things in a cemetery at night. See these things in your hand. You're not scared? He says, Binti, my daughter," You have to be scared of the living ones, not the dead ones. The living ones are much more dangerous. People, alive, are much more dangerous than the ones that already left. It's true. It's true. It is true. Even though we're more scared of the things that are beyond this world, the things that are of this world are much more dangerous. People are scared of coronavirus, but they're not scared of walking around half-naked. They're not scared. It's the most ridiculous thing in the world. You see people, now Baruch Hashem, I don't have to go outside anyway, in general, but today, now because we're doing the shiur a little earlier, it's daylight.

6:19It's daylight on the way here. So over here, apparently, there's no clothing stores. On the way here, you see people walking on the streets. And you can't close your eyes because you're going to get into a car crash. But you have to do whatever you got to do to not look. And you see mamash people walking around with a mask and no clothes on. It's like, I'm just thinking, why don't you just put the mask on your body? At least it's less Gehinnom for you. But no, no, they put the mask on but no clothes. It's really the level of stupidity in this generation has to have surpassed every other generation in history. It has to, it has to. Because it just doesn't make any sense. How do you think that you are not susceptible to disease? Forget about Gehinnom. Let's just put Gehinnom aside for a second. You're not susceptible to disease just simply by being naked, right? how do you think that makes sense? Oh no, but I don't have holes in, uh, in, uh, in my arms. Well, technically, uh, you do. They're called pores. They're called pores, and you can get sick that way also. Not common, but it happens. But even more so, when you wear barely any clothes, some of the parts that are supposed to be covered have holes. But people don't think.

7:37No, no, as long as I cover my mouth, I look like, you know, I look like Batman. I'm safe. I'm safe. Safe where? In Gehinnom, they're going to put the mask on you over there also. People don't think. Mamash don't think. Scared of coronavirus, but they're not scared of Hashem. Chaval, chaval, mamash, it's a missed opportunity for a lot of people, but it's also a great opportunity for some others that are taking advantage and watching shiurei Torah and doing teshuva and doing whatever they need to do. So, my uncle, Rabbi Chaim's father, Rabbi Chaim, he's an enormous talmid chacham, but if you look at him, if you talk to him, You'll think initially, before he starts giving the Torah, that he's barely average. Barely average. Why? He's such a humble person. You would think he's nothing, like nothing. The humblest person I've ever met in my life. Something unusual. It's unbelievable how special he is. When I talk to him, I'm so uncomfortable because he's such a unique person. But he talks to me like we're friends. It's unbelievable. Anyway...

8:55Rav Chaim, he wanted his kids to grow up in such a way where HaKadosh Baruch Hu is number one. But you need to know what to stay away from. You need to know what's bad. You need to know what is forbidden. Now, why do I say this? Because today there is this mentality in some parts of the world, in the religious community, that if you close your eyes, it doesn't exist. It's a mentality that some people have. Now, children have that mentality also. Little kids, when you hide from them, you know, before maturity age, when they're like one, two, or three years old, if you hide behind the wall, their mentality is that you're not hiding. Their mentality is that you're gone forever. And that's why they start crying sometimes. they don't realize that you're actually behind the wall. There are psychological experiments that have been done and so on. I remember back in school, I studied this, and it's unbelievable that the mentality of a child is that when you hide from them, they believe that you're gone forever. Not just gone for now, but gone forever. You just disappeared. And when they close their eyes, they think that...

10:20That's it. Like no one can see them. No one can see them. Why? Because they can't see you. So therefore, they don't have the calculation yet, mature enough to think that you can see them even though they can't see you. Unfortunately, this is also a mistake that is made on a day-to-day basis, not on purpose, not because of stupidity, but rather because of a lack of knowledge and also upbringing and also peer pressure. where sometimes people think that if you hide everything in the world from the kids, you pretty much just seclude them into a room. You know, they go, they learn, they go home, they eat, they go to sleep, they go, they learn, they go home, sleep. Like there's no computers, there's no phones, there's no television, there's no secular people, there's nothing. And they think that this is good. Now, initially, it is good. Initially, in the beginning, it is good when they don't know how to handle themselves. But if you raise a kid like this for too long, it becomes dangerous. And the reason why is because the kid is not going to be a kid forever. Eventually, he's going to become an adult, b'ezrat Hashem.

11:29Once he gets to 16, 17, 18, or 19 years old, he's going to want to see the world because he's going to go to yeshiva. He's going to go to the store, he's going to do things, and he's going to see things for the first time, but at a mature age, at an older age. Now, if you're an 18-year-old kid with a lot of hormones and... and for the first time in your life, you see one of these magazines, or you see a phone, one of these smartphones, or you see one of these screens, and you're getting free access for five minutes, that's it. It could destroy the person to pieces. Why? Because they don't have the built-in defense mechanism. They were never built that way. So that's why the Chachamim, whether it be Rav Moshe Feinstein, or Rav Kamenetsky, or Rav Aharon Rata, whose yahrzeit was just a couple of days ago, all of the Gedolei HaDor, Rav Ovadia, they would start teaching their children about the issues of Gemara Berit at a very young age. Rav Ovadia one time wrote that it was his minhag, his custom, to start teaching the kids about Gehenom at six years old. Six years old. Now, of course, he's not telling them all the details that I told you guys in a three-and-a-half-hour shiur, you know, what they do and how they do, but they know Gehenom, fire.

12:56You know, it's not good. Why? Because you need to raise your kids in a way where it's not just secluding them from the forbidden, but also explaining to them why. Why this is not good. why this is not a place for us to see. Now, some parents are more, uh, experienced, more, uh, adventurous, if you will, but know how to handle the kids better than most, where they're able to show their kids certain things that are unusual, but they know how to explain it to them. Now, Rav Chaim Cachlon, Rav Ephraim's father, is one of those people. He and Rabbanit Shulamit are experts of experts in how to handle and raise kids. One example, Baruch Hashem, is you simply see the results of their own kids. One better than the other. You guys only know about Rav Ephraim. You don't know about Rabbanit Kochava. You don't know about Rabbanit Sarah. You don't know about Rabbanit Rachel. You don't know about his brother who is almost finished with the Shas, Gavriel. You don't know about this. Tzaddikim, one after another. Unbelievable. They built a house for tiferet. Unbelievable. But it wasn't easy. We know how many tears, how many difficulties and all types of things.

14:23Now, Rav Chaim, he took a kid that was not his kid, that had Down syndrome. Down syndrome, as you guys know, Down syndrome is not a flu. It's not coronavirus that has a cure. There's no cure for Down syndrome. But... Rav Chaim found a cure. There's no cure, though, but they found a cure. What's the cure? Torah. But a unique type of Torah. Unique type of Torah. What kind of Torah? Torah like everybody else. Meaning, he took this kid, and unlike the traditional model of treating people with autism and Down syndrome and so on, which is to seclude them. with people that are like them. You send them to special schools for Down syndrome, set up special schools for autism, and so on and so forth, and therefore, all of their peers are just like them. That is the standard model worldwide: in America, Israel, everywhere.

15:35You got a kid, a shem yishmor, that has Down syndrome or has autism and so on, automatically they throw these kids into a place where all of their peers are just like them, the teachers know how to handle it, and they grow up in their own life, in their own world. Some are better than others, some are worse than others, but that's it. Rav Chaim, who built a school, he built the yeshiva years ago, he didn't buy into this. What did he do? He took this kid with Down syndrome, a severe case of Down syndrome. It wasn't mild. The mother says that when she first got the child—she adopted him—he was like the worst case. Tongue sticking out, couldn't walk, couldn't speak, the worst of the worst. Eventually, she brought this child. To have time, and he started teaching him Torah with everybody else. Who's everybody else? Normal people—all the people he teaches every day. Oh, we have a new student! Adults, young kids, all the others are coming to his Kollel every day, and they're learning Daf Yomi, they learn Parashah, they learn Halacha, they learn Mussar, and so on and so forth. But we have a new kid as he is coming. What? He's going to learn with us? Oh!

16:59He's coming to learn with us? Yeah, he's coming to learn with us. Rabotai, everyone was a little shocked, but no one's going to say anything to the Rav, right? It's going to stop. A few days, no, it didn't stop. A few years, not going to stop. Guess what? Today, Rabotai, this kid almost finished, almost completed the entire Shas. This kid speaks normally, acts normally, and almost completed the entire Shas Gemara, not just any Shas, Shas Gemara Bavli. They interviewed him a year and a half ago in Hidabroot, him and Rav Chaim. And the interviewer, who is a religious Jew, says to him, "I must be honest with you, I'm uncomfortable. You know more Torah than I do. I didn't complete all these Masechtot and so on and so forth." Why? Torah is a cure for everything. But it has to be done in a certain way by certain people.

18:04But the thing is, though, so they asked Rav Chaim, why did you have this idea to bring him among regular people? It's the opposite of the norm. The biggest experts in the world are saying not to do this, to bring him among his peers. He says, that's the problem. If his peers are just like him, then that's what he's gonna look up to, which means he's not gonna strive to be better. Naturally, he's gonna look at his peers. That's the best that it is. That's the best that it could be. That's it. But when you put him among regular people that are much better than him, and you work with him and you have patience with him, little by little his natural human instinct, his neshamah, his Jewish neshamah, is going to want more. It's going to want more. And the neshamah could overcome the body. And that's exactly what happened. So, Rabbi Ephraim spoke to him one time, and he tells him, Mazal Tov, I need to do this, that. He goes, now it's, what's your next step? What are you planning on doing now? What are you working on now? He says to Rabbi Ephraim, I'm looking for a shidduch. I want to get married. I'm looking for a shidduch.

19:18Stop. It's not the same. Maybe you find somebody, it's good for you. No, no, I don't want you to misunderstand. He says, I'm a very special person. I don't want a person like me. I want a regular person. I don't want a girl with autism or Down syndrome. No. No, I want a regular person. I'm a very unique person. Instead of saying "I want," he says, "What's that he got?" like my email. So you have a tzaddik in Eretz Yisrael. Now, a person that saw him 5, 10, 15 years ago, you told him the story today, it's like, imagine it, it's like a fairy tale. It's like your fairy tale stories in the Gemara maybe. It's like your fairy tale stories from the Chassidim. No. It's real life. Real life right now. So, Rav Chaim, he one time takes all of what I just said to you as an intro to what I'm about to tell you now. One time, he tells Rav Ephraim, "Come, I want to take you somewhere." Where does he take him? As a little kid, he takes him to a terrorist attack. It was a terrorist bombing, and they needed help; they needed some volunteers, and he takes his little boy with him.

20:36And Rabbi Ephraim tells me, there were pieces of body, flesh, arms, legs, Hashem Yishmor, everywhere. He says, to this day, I remember it like it was yesterday. Exactly how it looked. Exactly how all of it looked. So, when a person understands how frail he is, how... much of a nothing he is, how it could all end in a second if he doesn't start thinking about how to improve his chances, how to improve his life. How do I get this God, who is in control of all of this, to favor me? A person that doesn't think things like that is a person with no brain. So how come so many people are not thinking that way? It's not that they're not thinking that way; it's that they're not thinking, period. Because that's the number one job of the Satan. The number one job of the Satan is to occupy your mind with everything but what's the point of life.

21:43So he's going to do all types of things to occupy your mind. He's going to give you all types of issues with money. You're going to think about money constantly. Too much money, too little money. Need money, want money, have money, no money, constantly. People's minds are constantly about money. Oh, he gave me money, and I owe him money. Oh, I owe him money. He owes me money. I have money. You need money, money, money, money, constantly. People's minds are constantly about money. And if it's not money, then it's about respect. Oh, I want respect. Oh, how come you didn't say thank you to me? Oh, how come you didn't call me? Why don't you come over? Why don't you do this? Every time somebody looks at you, why are you looking at me that way? Constantly looking for why, why, why, why is the world treating me this way? As if you're something special. Everybody thinks they're special. Everybody thinks they're special. How can you be talking to me that way? Why'd you yell at me, Rabbi? I don't like when you yell at me. Who yelled at you? What are you talking about? No, no, you were saying something, and I feel like you were talking to me. Talking to you. I wasn't even looking at you. What are you talking about? And even if I was talking to you, why can't I yell at you? What's the problem? What, you're not a yellable candidate? What's the, who are you? Oh, right, yeah, no, you need to act. Everybody thinks they're special. Everybody thinks they're special. Everybody thinks they're special. How can you be talking to me that way? Why did you yell at me, Rabbi? I don't like when you yell at me. Who yelled at you? What are you talking about? No, no, you were saying something, and I feel like you were talking to me. Talking to you? I wasn't even looking at you. What are you talking about? And even if I was talking to you, why can't I yell at you? What's the problem? What, you're not a yellable candidate? What's the, who are you? Oh, right, yeah, no, you need to act. Everybody thinks they're special. Everybody thinks they're special.

22:52Why? That's Satan. Satan constantly puts it in your mind. Puts it in your mind. Look, look, Rabbi. No, no, no. He's this. He's this. He's this. Why? To get you away. Get you away. And if it's not that, Hashem, if a person opens up the door for Satan himself, Opens up the door for the Satan himself. Now, Satan didn't come to him. Satan was waiting outside. He opened the door for him. What? Looking at immorality. He goes, starts looking on the internet. He looks on television. He looks on his phone, starts looking at women, starts looking at this, starts looking at that. No, no, Rabbi. It's only, uh, it's only a movie. It's not, uh... It's only a show on TV. It's on PBS, Rabbi. It's only on PBS. No, it's Discovery Channel. No, it's just the news, Rabbi. What could be so bad about the news? What could be so bad about the news? Hashem Yishmor. You cannot watch anything today. Why? Even the commercials. Even the commercials. The commercial is, "Die and don't watch them."

23:56Why? Commercials are full of immorality. It doesn't matter whether they're selling you a tire or soap or Bamba or potato chips or toothbrushes. For whatever reason or another, the Satan has somehow convinced the entire humanity that all products require someone naked, even if it has nothing to do with it. We have a new business, we're selling software, by naked people. We have a new business, we're selling soap, naked people. We're selling tires, naked people. We're selling Q-tips to hotel chains, naked people. Everything requires immorality. Why? The Satan wants you to think about them. Think about those naked people. Think about money. Think about how people are not giving you enough respect. Think about how you're supposed to get something that's better than what you're getting. Why? As long as your mind is constantly thinking about all these things, you're not going to have time to think about what's the point of life. Why am I here? How come there's almost a million people confirmed with coronavirus and I don't have it? Did you think about that?

25:11Oh yeah, no, it's because I'm staying home. Yeah, it's because you're staying home. You actually think that's because you're staying home, you didn't get coronavirus. Rabotai, HaKadosh Baruch Hu will decide who, what, when, and where at all times, regardless of whether there is a virus you know about or you don't know about. That's how He's been running the world since the beginning. who's a rabbi that made a short video to tell people about his own personal story, his failure and success at the same time. And he says, There was an event that they were invited to at the same time that he had a lecture that he was giving. But things started heating up in Eretz Yisrael with the whole coronavirus. It was a week or two ago. And his wife was saying, "Listen, we shouldn't go." This was before pretty much the whole country was shut down. So I guess this was maybe three weeks ago. And his wife says, "No, no, we shouldn't go. Maybe we'll get infected, this, that, the other thing."

26:17Even though it's a family event, even though it's a lecture. So he says to her, "Listen, usually when we go to all these places, we take public transportation. And of course, you don't want to be next to all these people. So this is what we're going to do. Because we already got paid for the lecture, let's use all that money to get ourselves a private driver. That way we can go to the event, say hello, give everybody the kavod." We care, we love you. Don't touch anyone—no hugs, no kisses, nothing, just hello. Yeah, we're here, we'll go back. Okay, I go give a quick lecture, don't touch anyone there. We go, private driver is waiting for us at the door. We're not going to make any profit; we're going to spend all the money we got for the lecture just on this private driver. Wife says, "You know what, let's do it." They go—the wife, the husband, I think the kid. They go. They go to the event, say hello, and go to the lecture. He gives the lecture and says hello. I don't know what he teaches; I'm assuming it's Torah because he's a rabbi. Finished. They go home. Everybody's got coronavirus. Everybody's got coronavirus. And he says, look at this.

27:33Look at this, rabotai. Every bullet's got its name, like the Chafetz Chaim said. How did we get coronavirus? We didn't touch anyone. We didn't kiss anyone. We didn't touch anything. We're really sterile. How did we get it? The driver had coronavirus. The driver had coronavirus and he didn't know it. But he said, Baruch Hashem, we're okay. We're getting through it. Baruch Hashem, other people will get through it too. A person that's not thinking is not going to see how much Hashgacha Pratit, how much of a private lesson, a private shiur this Rav and his wife got to know that every bullet's got its name, and it's very important for us to know it. It's very important for us to think about things like this every single day. Why? Because if you realize that every bullet has its name, every person has got, and you take that lesson with you from this whole crisis that's happening, it was worth it for Hashem to do it.

28:34Why? Because that means you have finally discovered the first foundational belief in HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Belief in Hashgacha Pratit. Belief in Divine Providence. Belief that Hashem knows what He's doing. Everyone that is dying right now, Rabotai, although it's sad, although we're sorry for it, the reality is, it was their time to die anyway. It's not the coronavirus that killed them. And they were destined to die. When? Rosh Hashanah. On Rosh Hashanah, HaKadosh Baruch Hu decided, this is how it's going to be. And I heard Rav Mizrachi quote the Rav of Volozhin, a few hundred years ago, who said, you have to understand, HaKadosh Baruch Hu has such mercy. That even when He does something that is awful, from our perspective, He still has mercy. How so? Already on Rosh Hashanah, He decided there's going to be a certain number of people that are going to leave this world.

29:43Some are going to die from cancer. Some are going to die from coronavirus. Some are going to die from car accidents. Some are going to die just from natural death. Some are going to die from heart attacks. Some are going to die from this. Some are going to die. People are going to die. Some are 90. Some are 20. Some are 50. Some are 12. Some are 2. Some are 90. Whatever. People are going to die. Every year, 57 million people die. Every year, according to statistics. The last calculation was in 2017. 57 million people die every year. that means that over 250,000 to 200,000 people die every day without coronavirus. In His mercy, Hashem says, "I already decided who's going to die this year, but at the same token, I want to give it to you on your head right now to make sure that everybody does, or at least wakes up and starts thinking, 'What's the point of life?' That's the whole point of Coronavirus." You think it's called Corona for no reason? Corona, the crown—the crown of glory. He's trying to explain to everybody, "I'm the one running the show. Until you get it, it's going to get worse." So now, in His mercy, He says, "Listen, I already decided how many people are going to go already at Rosh Hashanah before you even knew about Coronavirus."

31:03But at the same time, there is a Din coming into the world where a lot of people have to do teshuvah. But because I love you, because you're My creation, because all of it is part of the plan, I'm going to throw and combine the ones that are supposed to die anyway into this Din at the same time. Meaning, all of the people that were supposed to die anyway this year are simply dying during this coronavirus. Meaning that if it wasn't the coronavirus, they would have actually just died anyway for some other reason, regardless of what the age is. But in Hashem's mercy, it's not that there are more people dying this year. It's exactly what was calculated. And that's how merciful HaKadosh Baruch Hu is. Now, of course, everybody in their own perspective and their own life and their own eyes is not going to see things that way, especially if they are suffering directly. But the point is that it's important for us to see it this way.

32:09And the reason why is because this is one of the biggest benefits in this world of being a ben Torah, being a bat Torah, being a person that's glued to the Torah. The Torah is their number one. Because if you live a life, whether you're secular or religious, whether you have emunah or you don't have emunah, in your life, you're going to suffer. Everyone suffers. It doesn't matter who, what, when, or how—male, female, young, old, religious, non-religious, Jew, non-Jew. Everyone suffers, with no exceptions. There has never been a human being since the beginning of the world until now, and until the time of Mashiach. Even if Mashiach comes next week, next year, or in 20 years, there will never be a person who did not suffer in his life. Everybody suffers—some more, some less. Some every year, some sometimes. But everybody suffers. One of the biggest benefits of being glued to the Torah and having the right ideology that's based on the Torah is that when you have the Torah, you now have something that a person who doesn't have Torah doesn't have. Even though you both have suffering, you have 50 pounds of suffering, he has 50 pounds of suffering.

33:28You have a difficult wife, he has a difficult wife. You have an issue with your kids, he has an issue with his kids. You don't have any money, he doesn't have any money. You have too much money, he has too much money. You have this; whatever you have, it's the same thing. All things are the same, let's say. All things are equal. If you're glued to the Torah, you are enjoying life and still happy, with the suffering. Why? Because the Torah doesn't remove the suffering per se. but rather gives you a reason, a value for them. You understand where the suffering's coming from. You understand who's hitting you with the stick. Not like a dog, when a dog, you hit him with a stick, what does a dog do? Bites the stick. You fool, it's not the stick, it's the guy that's holding the stick. People without Torah are like dogs.

34:28Why? They're biting the stick. They're biting the stick. No, it's not the stick, you fool. Who holds the stick? It's not coronavirus. It's HaKadosh Baruch Hu. find out instead of asking all of these ridiculous questions about when is it going to be over, when is this, when is that. Listen, why don't you do something better, something more useful, like what can I do to help my circumstance with Hashem? What can I do to help my people's circumstance with the relationship with Hashem? What can I do? Stop asking for cures. No cure. There's no cure. And there will never be a cure. The cure is teshuva. And when a person understands that it's not the stick, it's not the stick that's the problem. with the relationship with Hashem. What can I do? Stop asking for cures. No cure. There's no cure. And there will never be a cure. The cure is teshuva. And when a person understands that it's not the stick, it's not the stick that's the problem.

35:29It's the issue with who's holding the stick. A person that has Torah in his life and is glued to the Torah, with real emunah, understands that this suffering was going to come anyway. Now the question is, what am I getting for it? Why am I getting the suffering? And even more so, what can I do about it? What can I do for the suffering? What can I do about the suffering? A person with no Torah doesn't have that. Just like a dog doesn't have that, Rabotai. Now, it's very, very important to know that sometimes we act like dogs, even if we don't mean to. Why? Pure ignorance. We educated ourselves about business. We educated ourselves about all types of expertise. We educated ourselves about all types of subjects that we find interesting. Whether it be politics, or it be the sciences, or it be languages, or whatever, or cooking, whatever it is. But we did not educate ourselves about Torah. We didn't educate ourselves about the purpose of life. So now, when we need this knowledge, we don't know what to do.

36:39So that means that we're suffering for no reason. In our minds, we're suffering for no reason because we don't know who's holding the stick. We're thinking, oh, stay inside. Don't go outside. Don't touch. Don't this. Don't that. Yeah, you got to protect yourself, protect your body and so on. Don't start hugging people. Don't start doing things that are against the law. I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is that we have to learn something very valuable from this crisis. Why is HaKadosh Baruch Hu hitting us? Why is HaKadosh Baruch Hu hitting us? He's hitting the religious, and he's hitting the non-religious. It's not like He's just hitting the non-religious people and making it clear, "Oh no, no, it's because you're not keeping Shabbat, I'm hitting you." No, He's also hitting the religious. Now, I don't know what's in Hashem's mind, but I do know that the Gemara obligates us to look at His Torah and evaluate things based on what we see. Throughout history, HaKadosh Baruch Hu has given us many painful episodes, whether it be the destruction of the First and the Second Beit HaMikdash,

37:50Or it is the pogroms and inquisitions, or the Holocaust, or everything in between that you heard of and didn't hear of. The bombings from these Arabs, the persecution and anti-Semitism from all the Christians and the Catholics that's been going on for over 2,000 years. All of this has been happening for years. And interestingly enough, Rabotai, our Torah discusses it. Our Torah discusses both aspects. If you ask, why are the secular people, people who are not keeping Torah and mitzvot, why are they dying? Why are they getting sick? Why are they suffering? You don't have to be a big talmid chacham to know that. All you got to do is believe that the Torah is real. You believe the Torah is real? That already gives you the answer. Why? Because half of the Torah discusses the punishments that Hashem will give the people that forsake Him, that do not follow the Torah.

38:52And he tells us many times, in many places, the entire Sefer Vayikra—Sefer Vayikra we just started—is full of dinim, full of laws, and at the same time punishments of what's going to happen to the people that don't follow it. A person brings a korban but he wasn't supposed to, death penalty. A person brings the incense offering, makes a mistake—death penalty. Does this—death penalty. Does this—lashes. Does that. All types of constant, constant punishments for religious people. We're not talking about secular people. Needless to say, for non-religious people that are forsaking it, not following it. Person doesn't pray to Hashem. Person doesn't learn His Torah. Person touches his wife and she's nida. Person touches a girl and he's not married to her. She's nida. Some guy came up with a fake letter recently, last week, and put Rabbi Yosef's signature on it, saying because of this coronavirus, women don't have to go to the mikveh.

40:12This went all over the news. People still don't think it's real. Now it's in a lawsuit, the guy's getting arrested, charges being pressed, forgery and so on. There is no leniency whatsoever. A woman that does not go into a mikveh is nida. With corona, without corona. It doesn't make a difference. If a woman is niddah and you touch her, whether she's your wife or your girlfriend, you touch her finger. I'm not even talking about being intimate with her—that goes without saying. You touch her, you have a serious problem with HaKadosh Baruch Hu. You kiss her, you hug her, you show affection to her, you're intimate with her, karet tikaret. You get karet, she gets karet. What's karet? Karet, Rabotai, is the worst possible punishment there is. It could mean HaKadosh Baruch Hu will kill the person's kids, little babies, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 15 years old. Kill them. Why? To cause the parents suffering because they went and violated the law. Another form of karet is to kill the person before the age of 60. Before the age of 60.

41:25One of the sages had a 60th birthday. He made a celebration. Jews are not known to make celebrations for this. They asked him in the Gemara, "Why are you making a celebration?" He answered, "No, no, I know that I didn't violate any karet sins. I cannot be smitten because I didn't die before 60." The Sage, a sage who learned Torah all day, maybe thought he made a mistake. Correct? A person that violates an issur karet and does not do teshuva loses his or her olam haba. A wife that allows her husband to be with her when she's niddah—she has no olam haba. A husband that touches his wife when she's niddah—no olam haba. Boyfriend and girlfriend—no olam haba. What does no olam haba mean? It means That doesn't end. Seventh level. Son will tell you all the details. He knows all of them. He studies it intensively. And he's scared to death of it. Why? Because Gehinom, Rabotai, is not a picnic. It's not a picnic. It's all the suffering that you can imagine, to the infinite power. It's not even a minute of it. The Ramban, Nachmanides.

42:51almost 900 years ago, 850 years ago, the Ramban writes in Shaar HaGmul and also in a commentary to Sefer Iyov, he says the following: Look at the suffering that Iyov had. All of his kids died in one day, boys and girls. He lost all of his money, he was a billionaire, lost all of his money in one day, became broke, homeless. Shalom bayit problems. His friends became enemies, and if that wasn't enough, he became so sick, he started having worms come out of his body because his whole body was full of pus and infections. The whole body. What I told you I had for many years, he had all over his entire body. Not one abscess, not two abscesses, the whole thing. The Ramban writes, This suffering, this suffering that Job had, the worst type of suffering we have described in the Torah. So much suffering that there are some chachamim saying, maybe it's not a real story. Maybe it's just like Moshe Rabbeinu wrote it to teach us some mussar so we don't make any sins. Because such suffering is just, it's impossible to understand how such a person could go through this and live. How did he not commit suicide? Rabotai yikarim.

44:21The Ramban writes, not one year, 70 years like this, 70 years like this, is better than one minute in Gehenom. One minute in Gehenom. So imagine, you, you, next time you want to make a sin, next time you want to be with your wife, and she's niddah. Next time you want to be with your girlfriend. The Ramban writes, not one year, 70 years like this, 70 years like this, is better than one minute in Gehenom. One minute in Gehenom. So imagine, you, you, next time you want to make a sin, next time you want to be with your wife, and she's niddah. Next time you want to be with your girlfriend, Next time you want to be with your boyfriend, imagine yourself for a moment. You can't, you haven't followed the advice. The advice is, if you get really hot, go take a cold shower. You don't have a shower next to you? Start doing some push-ups and sit-ups. Exert yourself.

45:31Start jumping up and down. That doesn't work? Pinch yourself. Create some pain. Pinch yourself on your wrist over here, the back of your thigh. Sensitive parts without injuring yourself, but to the point to cool yourself off. That doesn't work? Start imagining the following. Start imagining you being tied to a bed and you're going into a furnace like they go in China. In China, they're burning bodies like it's going out of style. They're burning millions of people. Why? They don't want the news to know that a lot of people are dying from coronavirus over there. and it's not five a day like they make the world believe. There's a guy that they interviewed or they called in a crematorium where they're burning the bodies over there. He says the people are losing their minds because there are so many bodies. This is five, six times the amount of work, and every day it keeps multiplying itself. Now imagine that guy is dead. That guy is dead. So he's not feeling the burning. At least in our mind, he's not feeling the burning. In reality, he is feeling it. But that's a different story for a different day. Imagine he's not dead. He's alive. Just tied to the bed, can't get out. Oh, he's not tied; he's just paralyzed, but he feels everything, and he's brought in slowly—not far, not thrown like, you know, or something, or a nice hamburger or something into the fire. No, no, slowly into it.

46:35just tied to the bed, can't get out. Oh, he's not tied; he's just paralyzed, but he feels everything, and he's brought in slowly—not far, not thrown like, you know, or something, or a nice hamburger or something into the fire. No, no, slowly into it. feet. And then, you know, maybe you'll twist them around. Let's change to another side. And the fingers and the toes to make sure they're all even. One at a time with a little fire. Make it nice and crisp and dark and melt. That horrible thought, keep that. It's important for you. Why? Next time you want to sin, think about that. And that, Rabotai Yekarim, is nothing in comparison to a isur nida. In comparison to issur nida. In comparison to being with a girlfriend, boyfriend. In comparison to being with your wife without a mikveh. You have to know this. Sometimes Torah has to get very visual. Because we don't get the message when it's just text. What's our ra'ayah? What's our ra'ayah? What's our proof Torah has to be this way? Gemara says,

47:54When Rivka evaluated the situation, she saw that her son, Yaakov, doesn't have any options over there. Doesn't have any options. Esav, rasha merusha, he's marrying two goyot, two horrible people, but Yaakov is kodesh. She comes to Yitzchak. The Gemara says she comes to Yitzchak and she tells him, Yitzchak, if you're not going to send him to go marry a good woman, for what do I have life? What do I need to live for? I'd rather die. And the Gemara says, she took the waste from her nose and she put it on the table. As a sign of how horrible she feels this is. Hashem says, why would you do such a thing? I mean, you're talking to Yitzchak Avinu, he's religious. He's religious, he's not secular. He's not a Zionist. What are you going to do this for? What do you think Yitzchak Avinu wants his son Yaakov to go marry some zonah or something? What does he want? He wants him to marry a bat Yisrael. He wants him to marry somebody good. What's all the special effects?

49:16The Gemara says sometimes you need a visual to get the point. Sometimes you need a visual. Why? Because our Yetzer Hara works with a visual. He sends you a text message and then an email and then this mail and then that mail and if that's not enough he sends it to your house and then it's your friend and all of a sudden your long-lost cousin shows up and all of a sudden your best friend shows up and all of a sudden and all of a sudden the Yetzer Hara is going to go and... He's going to give you a visual. So sometimes we need to give ourselves a visual in order to avoid the Yetzer Hara, especially right now, because people who do not have the Torah are losing their minds. They're losing their minds. They're thinking that this entire situation of having nothing to do—you're at home all day, most people are not working, most people are not able to go outside—means that life is over. Most people think that life is over. Opposite. Opposite, Rabbi. This is a chance of a lifetime for you to do the most important things in your life. HaKadosh Baruch Hu has put the world on hold in order for you to start thinking about what you were supposed to be thinking this whole time. Fewer distractions.

50:35Stop focusing on money. Stop focusing on women. Stop focusing on men. Stop focusing on materialism. Start thinking about why I am in this world. When a person gets to that question, automatically he starts desiring an answer. He gets to the point where he discovers the truth. He sees that Hashem is the one who runs the world. He wants me in this world. Why? What am I supposed to do? Torah says to serve Him. How do I serve Him? Okay, let's see what the Torah says. I have to keep this. I have to keep Shabbat. I have to keep Taharat HaMishpacha. I have to keep Kashrut. I have to fix my Middot, my character traits. I have to be charitable. I have to be this. I have to be that. I have to do all these different things. I have responsibilities. Some I have, some I don't have. Some I'm doing, some I'm not doing. But the point is, Rabotai, if I'm alive, that means that I'm still supposed to be doing all these things. So how come there's the confusion?

51:37There's a confusion right now, which is that both religious people who follow, and non-religious people who don't follow, seem to be getting punished. Both are dying every other day, Hashem Yirachem, another announcement of some rabbi dying, another religious person dying, and secular people too. But they make a bigger deal of the religious guy dying. How come every time a religious guy dies, there are 15 articles? Secular people die, and most people don't even know, except the family. How come? That is the Satan himself. Satan knows if he tells you that 3, 4, 5 Italians, 7, 8, 9, 10 Greeks, 35 non-religious, non-Hindus died, what do you get? I don't care. I'm not going to do anything for you. But if he tells you some rabbi died, ooh, maybe it's not worth it to be a rabbi. Maybe it's not worth it to be religious. Maybe it's not worth it to be Jewish. I thought that if I was religious, then I'd be protected. If this rabbi, who was a big rabbi, is dying, then what's the point? That's Satan's work. Satan is going to bring you all of these confusions. And if you don't have the answer already beforehand, he starts cooling you off.

53:02So why is this happening, Rabotai? The Gemara gives us the answer. The Gemara Masechet Shabbat says the following: At the time of the Beit HaMikdash, when HaKadosh Baruch Hu saw that Am Yisrael had sinned to the extent where it passed the line, there's a line. There's a certain amount that He allows of sins to accumulate and accumulate and accumulate before He brings His wrath to the world. Hashem doesn't punish right away. Before He brings the wrath to the world, He lets it accumulate. And Am Yisrael passed the line. Satan, the kategor, came to Hashem and said, Hashem, let me go to work. Hashem said to the angels, "Okay, before I release Malach HaMavet to start running in the streets with a chainsaw, before I let him loose and no one's going to be able to stop him other than me, Malachim, go to all of the religious people, all the rabbis, go to them, put on their neshama a stamp of the old tav. Tav for Torah."

54:25Malachim went, put the stamp on it. You have that stamp on your forehead, you can't see it. But the Malach HaMavet can see it. He sees it, he runs away. That's why if you're learning Torah, you can't die. David HaMelech was learning Torah, and Malach HaMavet couldn't kill him. So he had to get him away from the Torah. So he started making noise outside to get David HaMelech to get up because he thought that someone was violating Shabbat. He got up, he wasn't learning Torah, slipped down the stairs, and died. Point is, rabotai, Malach HaMavet saw all these people, all these rabbis, all these religious people have the stamp of Torah on their forehead. "Hey, hey, hey, Hashem, what's going on here? I can't go to work in such a place. What kind of conditions are these, ruining my job?" Hashem says, "No, these people kept Torah." Malach HaMavet says to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, "HaKadosh Baruch Hu, Your stamp is emet. Your stamp is truth." But in this particular situation, there's an issue. What's the issue? You said they follow the Torah. They follow most of the Torah, is the real question. What's most of the Torah? They follow Shabbat, kashrut, Pesach, matzot, Sukkot, all types of things. Good! They even learn. Fantastic! But they're not fulfilling one mitzvah.

55:49they're not fulfilling one mitzvah, and that mitzvah is, you must rebuke your brother, you must tell Am Yisrael to keep Shabbat, you must tell Am Yisrael to stop doing all types of things against Hashem, you must tell Am Yisrael to keep kashrut, to keep taharat mishpacha, to keep tzniut, you have to tell Am Yisrael these religious people cannot just be religious by themselves and worry about their own secluded, quarantined-by-choice community. No, they have to go to the people, the rest of the people, that don't know what the real deal is in Shamayim. And they're not doing it. That there's no people of truth, of emet. What's emet? Giving people the emet. HaKadosh Baruch Hu says to Malach HaMavet, unfortunately you are right. And he turns all of the stamps that were tav on their forehead to start with them first. Start with them first. Kill them first, these religious people. Why? They knew, and they could have saved everybody else. And they didn't. They didn't do enough kiruv. They studied for themselves. They did the mitzvot for themselves. They didn't care enough about their brothers. Kill them first.

57:13The taf now changed to tochiyach. For the mitzvah of hocheach tochiach et amitecha. Now, rabotai, the angels that try to defend the people say to Hashem, "But Hashem, you know that these people are wicked, these secular people, Zionists." They give the argument. to give the argument. Malach HaMavet says, yes, these people were wicked, and even if they would have told them about Shabbat, about Taharat HaMishpacha, about Gemara Brit, about all these sins, they wouldn't have done teshuva anyway. True, Hashem knew that these were wicked people. The problem is they're still obligated to do kiruv. Why? They did not know. They did not know that if they go to these people's communities in Florida, New York, California, Tel Aviv, and all these places, they didn't know if it's going to work or it's not going to work.

58:26Which means they were still obligated to try their hishtadlut. Just like they have hishtadlut for parnasah, they have hishtadlut for limud, they have hishtadlut for zivug, they have hishtadlut for everything else. You have to have hishtadlut to do kiruv. You put money behind it, even if you don't know if it's going to work or not. You buy a thousand CDs, sponsor a thousand CDs, sponsor five or ten lectures, spend a bunch of money, give your ma'aser for kiruv, even if you don't know if it's going to work or not. Why? Because that's not in your hands whether it's going to work or not. What's in your hands is to try. HaKadosh Baruch Hu is the one who decides if it works or not. When they heard this, the case was closed. And that's why HaKadosh Baruch Hu punishes the righteous and the wicked. Needless to say, Rabotai, that's what's happening right now. Baruch Hashem, not to the same extent. And B'ezrat Hashem, not going to be to the same extent. But never have a question of why a rabbi such and such is dying or dead, and this guy that acts like Hitler is not dead. This Ish Kadosh is dead, but this Rasha Merusha is not dead.

59:46This tzaddeket is dead, but this wicked Jezebel is not dead. How come? Don't ask such questions. Don't ask such questions. Why? Because you now have the answer. The answer is, Rabotai Yekarim, everyone, everyone made a mistake. There's not a single one of us that's innocent. But, the good news is, if you're alive, you can do something about it. You start with your own teshuva. You start with your own teshuva. You start making sure that your tzedakah, your ma'aser, becomes money that you are investing into kiruv that works. Kiruv that has a history of working. You're seeing that the people are not getting more religious with most of these organizations that are literally spending hundreds of millions of dollars doing Chanukah parties. But not many people are doing teshuva. Yet you have a few rabbis, a few good kiruv organizations that are doing big things that are helping people change their lives on a daily basis. How? By telling them the emet, telling them the truth. You have to make sure that you make this investment on a regular basis. Why? That's your obligation—to save yourself. It's not about saving them; it's about saving yourself. Whether they get saved or not is in the hands of Hashem. But you have to save yourself first.

1:01:12Save yourself by making the investment. The second thing is, you have to start taking Torah more seriously. Learning has to become a key part of your daily life. Without learning, you're not going to have the power to stay strong with Torah. You're not going to have the power, the spiritual power, to stay strong with kiruv. You're not going to have the spiritual power to stay strong with teshuva. Meaning, if you're just giving for kiruv, it's not enough to keep you religious. Not enough. If you're just giving money for kiruv, it's not enough to keep you with yirat Shamayim. It's not enough. If you're doing mitzvot, keeping Shabbat, keeping taharat hamishpacha, keeping, keeping, keeping, but you're not learning Torah, it's not enough to keep you strong, to keep you with yirat Shamayim. It's going to go away after a while. You need that constant fuel, that constant spiritual fuel, to get yourself strong, and that's learning Torah. You have to learn Torah every day. You have to set time, an hour, two hours, three hours, five hours, depending on your schedule. Right now, everybody's schedule seems like it's open. Completely free. 24 hours to do nothing. Or 24 hours to buy yourself Olam HaBa. When we go all up to Shamayim,

1:02:31HaKadosh Baruch Hu is going to say, wait, hold on a second. Before we judge your entire life that's full of excuses because you had school, and you had work, and you had your kids, and you had your parents, and you had your job, and you had this, and you had that. Before we calculate your entire life that's full of excuses of why you didn't learn, let's just look at the month that you didn't have work. And you didn't have this, you didn't have anything. You had a month to do nothing. What did you do then? What did you do during that time? When you had time? Oh, you watched sports. You had reruns of Mike Tyson boxing. You watched podcasts of some crazy secular guy that sounds like he knows the future. You watched magicians on YouTube. You watched Donald Trump give a speech 16 times a day in reruns. You watched the market go up and down during the same minute simultaneously and confuse people. You did a lot of stuff, but you didn't learn Torah. What does that mean to HaKadosh Baruch Hu? That means that...

1:03:38The rest of the time that you said, “No, no, Hashem, I was busy. I couldn't learn because I was working. I couldn't learn because I was going to school. I couldn't learn because of my wife. I couldn't learn because of my cousin. I couldn't learn because of this.” HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, “Okay, let's say those excuses are valid before we evaluate them.” What did you do when you did have time? Ah, you didn't learn Torah during that time. You didn't do teshuva during that time. You didn't get close to HaKadosh Baruch Hu during that time, which means you didn't want to. You didn't want to when you had time, and surely you didn't want to when you didn't have time. On that, Rabotai Yekarim, comes the big din, comes the big punishment, the scary, the awful one. Why? HaKadosh Baruch Hu knows the real deal and He's going to show it to us. At that point, it's too late. So this is why, Rabotai, you have to make time to learn. You have to make time to do some cheshbon nefesh, accounting. What can I do to make myself better? What can I do to make my family better? What can I do to make Am Yisrael better? What can I do to make my community better?

1:04:51That's what you're supposed to be doing. Stop watching the news. Stop it. It's a waste of time. It's only going to confuse you. It's only the Satan giving you things to occupy your mind and confuse you. Learn Torah. Learn about the holiday. Learn about what's going to happen. There's that. There's a lot of things to learn. There's no end. With that being said, hopefully, this gives us enough Mussar to get us to learn a little bit more. Who wants to start with some questions? What's the main focus of study that we should focus on? Main focus of studying? A person starting out has to do the basics. Everybody has to do it. In reality, most people in the world today are starting out, even if they've been religious their whole life. Basics mean you have to learn the Chumash, no matter how old you are, whether you're 5, 50, or 15. It doesn't make a difference. You have to learn the Chumash. What does it mean to learn the Chumash? The Shulchan Aruch says you have to do Shnayim Mikra Ve'Echad Targum. You have to learn the weekly parasha.

1:06:12Twice, read it. Read it in a language that you understand, whether that be English or Portuguese or French or whatever it is. Read it in a language you understand. You have to understand what you're reading, and you have to read the commentary by Rashi. In my opinion, and many, many other people's opinion, the best translation for English is ArtScroll. ArtScroll is the best translation. Their Chumash, their Stone Edition, that's the one I recommend for all people to buy. Not because I get any commissions, or even they know I exist, but rather because that's the one that I see, that's the one that I know works, that's the one that I've... reviewed many, many times, Baruch Hashem, that has the most authentic translation. They also translate the Chumash to different languages, I believe to French, Spanish, and others. The point is, you have to read the Chumash with commentary every week. Now, if you've never read the Chumash in your life, then, you know, right now we're at Sefer Vayikra. We're already in the third book of the Chumash, three out of five. If you start right now, for the first time in your life, you're going to be lost. So what you should do is forget about where everybody else is and start at the beginning. Go to Bereishit. Start at Bereishit. Start at the beginning. Read Bereishit with commentary to start understanding where all of this comes from. You're going to have to read the Chumash every week for the rest of your life. That's the first thing. The second thing is, aside from learning the Chumash every week and every day...

1:07:40You have to read a little bit of Chumash and fulfill your obligation. Aside from that, you have to learn some halacha. You have to learn a few halachot every day. Why do you have to learn halachot every day? You have to learn how to be a Jew. You're not going to learn that from the Chumash by itself. You're going to learn most of the laws you have to learn from halacha. If you... You are an English speaker. There are plenty of books for you to learn halacha from. If you're Sephardic, the Ashkenazim have countless books that they can learn halacha from. But it all depends on which halacha you want to start with. The main recommendation is to first start with Hilchot Shabbat. Learn Hilchot Shabbat. The reason why Hilchot Shabbat is the main thing to start learning before learning the day-to-day halachot or the other holidays is because from Hilchot Shabbat, you learn a lot of other laws. You'll end up learning the laws for the holidays, and you'll end up learning the laws for other things. Shabbat is the focal point of Jewish life.

1:08:43And so many, many other things are learned from Shabbat. And that's why, for example, in the Gemara, Masechet Shabbat is called the mini Shas. It's a mini Gemara. Why? Most people that learn Masechet Shabbat will end up completing the entire Shas. But most people that study, they finish a few masechtot, they finish Ta'anit, and Megillah, and Berachot, and Avodah Zarah, and a few others, and they're on a roll, on a roll, on a roll. They get to Masechet Shabbat, it's so big, it's so difficult at times, they give up. They give up. So anyone that overcomes that will eventually finish Shas usually. Why? Because it's a big masechet, but it's also one that has a lot of different points you learn from. The point being is, you don't start learning Gemara from Masechet Shabbat. That's just being stupid. You start with easier masechtot. You have to have a rabbi to tell you which one to start with, when, how, what to read. But the point being is, before you get to Gemara, you have to start with Chumash, you have to start with a few halachot every day.

1:09:44Third, you have to learn Mussar. You have to learn how to behave, how to be a decent human being. And that's whether you're a Jew or a Gentile. What's Mussar? These lectures are Mussar. You can watch our lectures for Mussar. You can buy some books that are Mussar books, like Mesilat Yesharim, which is called Path of the Just, Chovot HaLevavot, Or Yisrael, Netivot, there are many, many Mussar books that are very good. ...that you can buy. A combination of a book and our lectures is good too, or just our lectures, whatever you want. The point is, Mussar every day. How long? For eternity, forever. You learn Mussar all the time. Why? Because there's always something you have to improve. But sometimes you have people who learn Mussar and nothing changes. Like there was one time a guy came to his rabbi, he says, "Rabbi, can you help me with a shidduch?" Rabbi says, "Of course, you're a ben Torah, I'm going to help you." She brings him this girl; she's good, comes from a good family. He goes on a date, comes back to the rabbi, "Rabbi, I don't think she's good enough for me. I need somebody better, a little higher." The rabbi says, "Okay, you know, sometimes that happens. Okay, no problem." He gives him another girl. "No, no, no good." "What's wrong with her?" "No, look, this, that, looks, this, that."

1:10:59Okay. He gives him another girl. "Ah, Rabbi, no, she's like, this girl you gave me, she's like, she's a G-d." "What? She's a G-d?" "Yeah. She has no body or likeness of a body. A G-d, she's not good enough. I need somebody else." "Okay, I'll give you somebody else." Somebody else, somebody else, somebody else. Five, six people. No, no, shiduch is good enough. The rabbi got the point. It's not the girls. It's his ga'ava. It's his pride. This guy is too prideful. So he says to him, listen, go to my friend. He teaches mussar. He teaches serious mussar, Path of the Just. He can teach you. Go learn with him for a few months, then come back after you finish. Okay. Goes, learns there, finishes, comes back to the rabbi. Goes to the rabbi. "Let's go. Where's the shidduch? Oh, bring the shidduch." Perfect girl. The rabbi even worked on this girl for a few months to find the perfect girl. Gives him this girl. She's beautiful. She has money. She comes from a good family. Everything's good. The guy comes back the next day. "Rabbi, she's not good enough." "What happened? How come she's not good enough?" "Because listen, Rav, before..."

1:12:05I knew so much Torah, I said, how could I find somebody that's good enough for me? That's beautiful, that knows, and this and that. Now I'm also humble. So it's definitely not going to be enough for me. After I learned, I'm also humble. I'm also humble. What does that mean? The guy's learning, but he's not applying. There are many hamorim, there are many donkeys. They learn lectures for 10 years and still know nothing. Why? They're still hamorim; they still don't apply anything. Meaning, when you learn Mussar, Rabotai, and you don't apply it, it's like cooking but not eating. It's worthless. It's worthless. So you have to apply the Mussar you learn. You watch a lecture, but if you're not applying the things you've learned, you're wasting two hours of your time. That's why I always tell people to write notes. Why? You're not going to remember 90% of what the speaker said. How are you going to remember to apply it the next day? Okay, it's hot on you now. You remember it now because you just learned it now. Five minutes after you're at the door, the Satan shows up with delete. Forgot everything.

1:13:15Two hours after the lecture, Rabbi, I have a big yetzer hara, I got to do something. What big yetzer hara? We just had a lecture for two hours. How do you have a yetzer hara already? I don't know, Rabbi, can you help me? It's three o'clock in the morning. Yeah, yeah, can you talk? No, I can't talk, no. No, I can't talk. People call me at three o'clock in the morning, think I'm going to pick up the phone. By the way, it doesn't matter whether you call me at three o'clock in the morning or three o'clock in the afternoon, I'm not going to pick up the phone. I don't pick up the phone. Unless someone's dying, I'm not picking up the phone. Why? It's not necessary. It's not necessary. Don't call me, please. People, stop calling me. Unless it's really, really urgent, send me a text, and we'll make an appointment. People call me all the time, "No, no, I have a problem." Like you're the only one in the world that has a problem. And I can't, I can't, because what happens is if I'm on the phone, I'm on the phone. That means that I'm giving you my time. Whether it's 40 minutes or two hours, I'm giving you my time. Just like when I come to a lecture, I don't think about how long this lecture is gonna be. I'm gonna give you my everything. However long it's going to be. That means when the lecture is over, if you guys still have questions, I'm going to be here until 5 o'clock in the morning. Why? Because that's my mentality. If I'm already doing something, I'm doing it until the end. So if I'm going to have a phone call with somebody, I'm not going to think, you know, you only have 15 minutes. No, no, we're only going to have a 5-minute conversation. No, I'm going to be on the phone with you until we solve the problem. That usually takes 45 minutes minimum.

1:14:38And the reality is most of these issues do not require conversation. It's just a few text messages. And during the text message, I could help 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 other people. So to designate 45 minutes for one person and abandon 400, it's just not fair. It's not right, and it's not smart. So that's why I say it's only in an emergency. The best way to talk to me is to come to a shiur. Yeah, but I live in Alaska. Okay, come to Florida. What can I tell you? The reality is that, rabotai, people call me all the time, and they want me to pick up, and they get offended I don't pick up. It's not offensive. It's that I have to; I'm limited. I'm only one person. Until HaKadosh Baruch Hu makes Ovadia and Yosef grow up, that's all you got. That's all you got. I can't multiply myself. So that means that I have to use my time effectively to help as many people as possible. So, you have to be also very, very merciful with your questions. Look for the answer yourself before you ask me. Don't ask me what time Shabbat comes in; go look. Because what happens is, when you send me questions, at some point I'm going to look at it, and I'm going to spend, I don't know, five seconds, twenty seconds, two minutes, three minutes reading your question. And if that question could have been answered already on your own, then why? Because I could have used that time for somebody else.

1:16:02Now, again, I don't mind questions, but a lot of times people waste time, they waste questions, and what ends up happening is that when I see that you're crying "wolf" three, four, five times, I just stop, I just put you on delete; I don't look at your text at all. You ask me a bunch of nonsensical questions that you could find out on your own on a regular basis, eventually, you're just going to get deleted. No offense. Why? You're killing people. You're killing people. Why? Because you are lazy. You're spiritually lazy. And you're not searching yourself. That means that I cannot help other people. And that means that I'm spending too much time with you on things that you can help yourself with. Open a book. What parasha is this week? Now, that may not seem like a big deal. But when you get 500 messages a day, it's a big deal. Because even if I don't answer it, I have to read it. So, it's not fair. My email has turned into spam. I don't even answer emails most of the time. It's maybe two people that I respond to in emails. You know, the only reason people ask questions is because you have to be merciful. Why? Don't be selfish. Ask questions, but ask real questions. Ask questions that you haven't gotten the answer to on your own. Now, this is important. Why? Because this is part of Mussar. So, you have Chumash.

1:17:23You have Halacha, you have Mussar, and then you have the questions. What's the question? The questions are everything. You have to have your Rabbi, whether that's me, or it's Rabbi Mizrachi, or it's your local Rabbi, whoever it is, you have to have somebody to ask general questions, day-to-day life questions. That is part of your learning also. If you see that you don't have any questions, that's a problem. That means you're not learning enough. Because the more you learn, the more questions you have. So that's also part of your learning. Once you've done this for a little while, you've learned some Mussar, you've learned some Halacha, you've learned the Chumash, and so on, you have to ask your Rabbi if you're ready to start learning Gemara. Start learning Gemara. You start learning Gemara. Usually, you start with one of the small masechtot, like masechet Brachot, Ta'anit, Megillah. One of these, like I said, you have to read these things in your first language, whether that's English or Russian or French or whatever it is. Read it in your first language. And this is the main stuff. This is the main foundational stuff. Do not go into the mystical. Some people want to skip the basics and go to Maaseh Merkavah.

1:18:34They already want to learn how Hashem created the world. They want to learn miracles. Some woman made a comment the other day. She said, "Do you have anybody that can teach me Sefer HaRaziel?" This is one of the angels that apparently brought some learning to the world and is very Kabbalistic. She wants to learn it. She doesn't know how to wear clothes, but she wants to learn Kabbalah. She doesn't know how to wear clothes. She doesn't know how to get dressed. But she wants to learn Kabbalah. Why? Because people always want something that is not good for them. So you have to learn the basics. You have to learn the basics. The basics are what I just said. There are a few other things. But the point is, this is where you start. You have to learn every single day. The most important part of learning... is not necessarily what you're learning, but the time and the persistence, that it's every day. Now, in the beginning, you have to make sure that you're learning things that you're interested in. Usually, everybody's interested in Chumash, but less frequently are they interested in Halacha. Less frequently are they interested in some of the other things. So in the beginning, learn stuff that you're very interested in.

1:19:57Because you have to build yourself up, you have to build your spiritual immune system to be able to handle more Torah. One other extra that I would tell you that's very important, it could be as part of your Mussar. is to learn a biography of one of our sages at all times. Always be reading at some point, a little bit every week. It doesn't necessarily need to be every day, but maybe it's something you could do on Shabbat. To learn a biography of one of our sages. Pick one, whichever one you connect to or you heard about. You know the name, whether it's Rav Ovadia, Rav Moshe Feinstein, whatever you want, Rashi, Rambam, whoever you've heard and you want to learn more about this person, surely there's a biography. Someone wrote a book about him. Read these biographies. Why? You have to learn why we hold our sages so dear. And the only way you're going to know that is by learning about them and learning about their lives. And you'll see how amazing they really are. Next question. Yes, Yehoshua. So now with the kids being kind of home with the parents more often, is there a good way to... Handle the kids' craziness? Yes.

1:21:10So how do you handle kids right now that everybody's in quarantine? They're home, and in some places like in Israel, you're not even allowed to go outside. Baruch Hashem, by me, we're still allowed to go outside. Not going to the park, but still walking around the street every so often to get some fresh air—the kids need it. Adults, sometimes yes, sometimes no, but kids for sure need to go outside a little bit. But in some places, they can't. So what do you do? It all depends on your kids. It depends on how old your kids are and how developed they are mentally. But most importantly, you have to understand that kids are not like adults or teenagers, who can just sit there, look at the wall, do nothing all day, or sleep all day. Kids have to be active. they have to do something. You have to occupy them. So you have to give them all types of tasks to occupy them, but kosher tasks. Now, if you followed already the first thing that we discussed in the beginning of the shiur, which is you taught them what's allowed, what's not allowed,

1:22:15And they know that there are certain things that are on the screen, on the phone, or on a computer that are allowed, and certain things that are not allowed. So that means that you can give them certain shows or programs or lectures to watch that are allowed. Don't ever give them the freedom to pick themselves. You have to monitor it. You have to, as a parent... As a big brother, as a supervisor, you have to monitor and you have to allow the kids to watch something that's going to occupy their mind for a half hour at a time, 10 minutes at a time, whatever it is. Some type of educational show, a lecture, something that's kosher, but kosher from Aleph to Tav. Not like, you know, kosher-ish. like it has to be kosher if it's about animals, if it's about Torah, if it's about Aleph Bet, if it's about ABC, if it's about math. All of these things are good subjects to teach your kids, and you can have all these wonderful programs. There's also a wonderful website called Torah Live, so Torah Live is a fantastic website organization that has countless videos that teach Torah, but in a video format that many Jewish schools are adopting now and applying to the school curriculum. This is a fantastic tool for both schools and for parents to use to teach their kids different mitzvot.

1:23:38So this is something that you could have the kids watch, and it's about all types of things. The videos that I have watched have been fantastic, about tefillin, about Pesach, about Shabbat, aveidah (returning something that was lost), Kiddush Hashem— all types of videos. They have what's called Torah Live. Every video that I've watched so far from them, from time to time I get an email from them, and I watch some of their stuff, and it's fantastic work. They have a new program that came out for Pesach. Really, really nice stuff. The point is about this being another tool that you could use to teach the kids Torah, but in an entertaining way. You should also teach them some math and some language from wherever they are. Kids are much more inclined to learn from videos than they are from books. In the beginning, you'd still have to teach them from books, though. You don't abandon the books and... But you have to do a little bit of this. Okay, if you read one page, if we read together one page or one story or one parasha from the book, we'll watch the video. You make a deal with them. But that's once they've developed a little bit, six, seven, eight years old. When they're three, four years old, there's not much negotiating. Why? You pretty much tell them something they don't like, they start crying.

1:24:53So there's not much negotiating. So you have to work with them. You have to give them activities. Other activities could be puzzles. Have them build puzzles that you could do on Shabbat even. Or during the week, painting, drawing, all types of different exercises. You can even have them help you clean the house. Even though they're not really cleaning because they don't know how to clean, they can pretend to clean. And you can pretend they're cleaning, but at least they're active. Keep them active. You know, don't just send them outside to play basketball and say, "I'll see you at 8 o'clock at night." That's not going to be good. It's not going to be good for the kids, and it's not going to be good for the parent. You have to give them activities that develop their brain and at the same time keep them, you know, in the system. Don't just send them outside or to their room and pretty much hope the day is over before too long. That's not going to be good. So, there are some specific videos that you could educate them with, or CDs that you could hear, lectures, maybe they could watch me. I have some students that are one year old, two years old, three years old. We have students of all ages. Parents send me pictures of their babies watching my lectures. They're better than you guys. They're focused. They don't even fall asleep during a lecture. They're into the lecture. Two years old. Seven years old. I got one kid who's already been listening to me for four years. He started at seven; he's now eleven.

1:26:15Talmid Chacham. So, the point is, Rabotai, you have to give the kids some lectures. Sometimes they'll like me, sometimes they'll like somebody else. As long as it's kosher, you have to get them to watch it. Every day, there has to be Torah, though. Kids must learn Torah every day. Must. Aleph Bet, I've recommended many times the program by Rabbi Gold. Rabbi Gold in Eretz Yisrael has a program, it's like $40, you buy it, download it to your computer, and it teaches you the biblical language. From the basics, Aleph, Bet, Gimel, Dalet, all the way to Tav, to the Nikud. All of the little dots, and why, and who, and how to build words. There are also similar programs in English and I'm sure in other languages. The reason why I keep mentioning the other languages is because, again, if you're going to be living in this world, you're gonna have to know the language. So you have to have some basic language skills to know how to speak, to know how to communicate, to know how to eventually do your own things. It's not good for a person to be completely ignorant. You know, some people are in America for 20-25 years, and they do not speak English.

1:27:29it's ridiculous. You should know, I'm not saying be an expert, be a scholar, or even write books in that language, but you need to have some basic common skills, even more so for your kids. I mean, some language is important, but again, that's after you've done the basics like teaching them Torah and so on. Puzzles, games, painting, music. You know, these are some of the things you can teach them. But the biggest thing of all, Rebbe, is to designate a certain amount of your time as a parent to spend with them. Meaning, Many times, parents lose their patience with their kids, not because the kids are bad, but rather because the parents want to take care of the kids and their other obligations at the same time. So in reality, they're in both worlds at the same time. The kid notices it and realizes the parent is not really into this activity, so he's not really into the activity. He doesn't want to do it either. So he starts acting out.

1:28:40And the parent thinks it's just because the kid is a bad kid or he's spoiled, but it's not true. It's because the kid is simply a reflection of the parent. When the kid sees the parent’s not really interested in his activity, in his drawing, in his painting, in his book, in his this, then the kid's not interested in it. So you have to designate a certain amount of time Every day, just turn off your phone, put it somewhere else, turn off all of your obligations, whatever they may be, and spend a little bit of time with the kid. Just with the kid. Doing the activity with him. Doing the activity with her. And you'll see that the kid is much more into it. It can't be the whole day because you still have your responsibilities. You still have to clean. You still have to cook. You still have to work and all that other stuff. But you have to spend a certain amount of time with the kid. you have to. Why? Because the kid has to know that these things are good. And the only way he's going to determine that is if you're willing to do them also. So that's difficult when you have a very busy schedule. So HaKadosh Baruch Hu made you less busy now. You're in quarantine.

1:29:40quarantine. So that's another thing you could do. And I promise you that these things are not easy, but they work. They work. I see it from my own life, my own family. I have a wife that knows all this stuff and does all of it. But the point is that even for people that know it, it's not always easy. You know, because sometimes you have health issues, you have financial issues, you have family issues. You have all types of distractions that make you forget or not remember some of these things. The point being is, it's always good to refresh yourself a little bit and try again. Most importantly, Rabotai, know that the kid, he is your product. He's your product. If you yell, he'll yell. If you curse, he'll curse. If you like Torah, he'll like Torah. If you appreciate mitzvot, he'll appreciate mitzvot. So that's the point. That's what you have to understand. You have to educate by example. Next question: Why is Gemara considered the best thing to learn?

1:30:46Gemara, why is Gemara considered the best thing to learn for the audience online to hear? The answer is that if we only, if chas v'shalom, we had a choice. Where the Goyim in past times had a lot more control over Am Yisrael than they do now, Baruch Hashem. And they forbade us to learn Torah many times. Now, initially the Oral Torah, which is the Gemara, was oral, meaning we didn't write it. We just transmitted it orally. So when they told us not to learn Torah, the way we pacified them was by sometimes giving them our books or not learning with books. But we still learned Torah. So, the sages say that if you ever get to a point where the goyim say, "Listen, either you guys stop learning, either you guys give us the Oral Torah or you give us the Written Torah. But you have to give up one of them." We would actually give them the Written Torah. We would give them the Chumash. We would give them the Tanach. Not the Oral Torah.

1:31:52Why? Because the Oral Torah is the best. Why is it the best? That's the answer. I'm trying to elaborate on your question. Why is it the best? Because if you learn the Tanach by itself, you're not going to know how to be a Jew. You're not going to know how to do any mitzvah. You're not going to know how to keep Shabbat. You're not going to know how to keep Taharat HaMishpacha. You're not going to know how to keep kosher. Why? Because the Chumash, the Tanach, does not elaborate on how to do anything. Like it says, keep Shabbat or Hashem's going to kill you. And you go to Gehinnom and Kaf HaKela and all these horrible, horrible things. But the reality is, Rabotai, how do you keep Shabbat? Well, you put it in the box. It says, put on tefillin, or you're forsaking the covenant. And the Gemara says that someone that forsakes the covenant of tefillin goes to Gehinnom forever. Go, keep tefillin. Where does it say all of this stuff? All of it is in the Gemara. Which means that the Gemara not only teaches us what to do and how to do it, but it also teaches us where we got this from in the written Torah. Meaning that inside the Gemara, if you learn the entire Shas, you will simultaneously learn the entire Tanakh as well.

1:33:14Why? Because everything that's written in the Gemara that tells you about the debates between the sages to get to the halacha, to get to the law, and why they got to the law, and who and what and where, they have to provide you a source. It cannot be an opinion. They say, where did you get this from? What's your source? He says, oh, the source is in the book here, and verse here, and paragraph here. That's the source of this statement, but not the whole statement. Just these three words. That's my source for this halacha. So what happened there? There you not only learned the halacha, But you also learned a piece of the Chumash, a piece of the Tanach. Which means that when we learn the Gemara, we're, in essence, simultaneously learning everything at once. It's the foundation of our entire Torah. But that's also, Rabotai, the biggest enemy, the biggest enemy for the Satan and his wife. Gemara has the same Gematria, Talmud has the same Gematria as the Satan's wife's name.

1:34:22Why? Because one of the tikkunim from Gemara Brit, for someone who wasted seed, is to learn Gemara. Even more so, the Satan fights against the Gemara much more. Whether it's with the Christians who burn the Gemara, or the fake Jews, like the Messianic Jews, who are really Christians also, that constantly fight against the Gemara, or the heretics, the apikorsim, atheists who fight against the Gemara. How come nobody fights against the Chumash? Because it's not the Chumash that obligates everyone. It's the Gemara that does it. The Gemara is the one that explains what the Chumash is saying. If you just read the Chumash, the five books of Moses, or even the entire Tanakh, without the Gemara, you could simply translate everything the way you feel like it. You could pretty much say that keeping a Brit Milah is not a Brit Milah of cutting your foreskin and your male member. Brit Milah is a covenant of the heart, that you are, you know, giving your heart to Hashem. Why? Because you can decide that orlah means your heart. There is a verse in the Tanakh that says that you have orlah on your heart and Hashem is going to remove it at the time of Mashiach. So they could manipulate the Torah.

1:35:42The point is that without the Oral Torah, without the Gemara, we're not going to know how to do anything. So it's very, very critical for us to learn it, but also very critical for us to know that this is the tool to fight the Satan. You cannot fight the Satan, you cannot fight Christianity, you cannot fight atheism, you cannot fight heresy without being someone that learns Gemara because it gives you not only the wisdom, The tools, but also gives you the spiritual strength to do it. It's much more difficult, but that's because the reward and the significance are much higher. Next question. Noach Hanan, you have a question. Usually after the camera's off, 15 questions. Especially in this time, that would Okay, let's say we ourselves know why Hashem is doing everything and we're trying to work on ourselves to do whatever we need to do and strengthen ourselves. But let's say you're working with goyim, and sometimes, whenever you see them, because they're affected by the situation and how they act and how they see things, they constantly see it their way and talk to you, imposing their view and even their decisions based on their fears. So, how do you take that with you, working on yourself and trying to block them out, or even trying to teach them in a way to see whatever is happening is coming from Hashem? How do we basically reconcile the Torah in their view and what's happening to them?

1:37:06based on their fears. So, how do you take that with you, working on yourself and trying to block them out, or even trying to teach them in a way to see whatever is happening is coming from Hashem? How do we basically reconcile the Torah in their view and what's happening to them? world around you is not going to change and automatically have the same ideology as you. The goal is to learn how to apply the Torah to the world around you. But it begins with you. The Ba'alei Tosafot in Moshav Zekenim, in Parashat Acharei Mot, says that the life of a person in the mitzvot, and how he fulfills the mitzvot, and what kind of significance it will have, is based on what kind of intention he had when he fulfilled the mitzvot. So it says, if he fulfilled the mitzvot just for the sake of getting a reward in this world, he wants to get parnasah, he wants to find a zivug, he wants to have a nice house, and just have good in this world,

1:38:25says that this person will eventually get the good in this world. And he'll have a little, small Olam HaBa, a small Gan Eden. Like he's fulfilling the mitzvah, but not really for the greatest reason. He just wants to have a good life. So he'll get it. He'll get it eventually. Hashem will give it to him. But not much will be saved for his heaven. He'll have a heaven, but it'll be like a mini heaven. The next level is if a person fulfills the mitzvot with yirat shamayim. He has fear. He has fear of gehinnom. He has fear of losing. He has fear of angering Hashem and so on. So such a person is higher. He's fulfilling the mitzvot out of fear. And such a person will be saved. Part of his reward will be that the wicked people will not hurt him. They're not going to affect him. lawsuits, you know, all types of accusations and so on, all this stuff, he'll be protected from it. Why? Because he's serving Hashem with Yirat Shamayim. That's one of the rewards for someone that has Yirat Shamayim: he will not only have a good Olam Haba, but also have special protection in this world against wicked people. But then there's the person that serves Hashem out of love.

1:39:46It says a person that serves Hashem out of love benefits in this world and the next world. So, what does it mean to serve Hashem out of love? Serving Hashem out of love means that a person does not abandon this world and just put himself in some box and say, "I love Hashem, I love Hashem," and start breakdancing all day. No, that's not loving Hashem. Serving Hashem out of love is by looking at all of the mitzvot and seeing how I can connect these mitzvot to this world that I live in. My job, I have a job, I need to make money. How can I connect this job and this money to Hashem? This, you know, breakfast, I need to eat breakfast, I'm hungry when I wake up. How can I connect this breakfast to a mitzvah? And so on and so forth. Everything that he does, he connects to a mitzvah constantly, actively, at all times, 24 hours a day. Nothing is separate from Hashem.

1:40:47When a person does such a thing, he starts seeing that the world around him changes tremendously. His relationship with Hashem changes tremendously. But that doesn't mean that he doesn't have Yirat Shamayim. Yirat Shamayim is required to get to the level of loving Hashem. But the point is that there's even a higher level than the one that serves Hashem out of love. And that level is a unique level of a person that simply abandons their body. abandons all materialism and cares less about materialism and all things related to it, but serves Hashem in such a way that it's literally as if his body doesn't exist, as if her body doesn't exist, with complete obsession about Hashem and serving Him and helping His people and so on, which maybe we'll talk about later or next time. But the point is, Rabotai, is that what Hashem really wants from us, He doesn't want us to turn into Chanoch. You know, Chanoch was someone that was so holy that Hashem turned him into a malach. Turned him into the angel Metatron. We're not even allowed to say his name. At the time of Noach, everyone was dying at 600, 900, 1,000 years old. Chanoch, youngster, 365 years old, Hashem took him.

1:42:02So the Chatam Sofer says, how come Hashem took him? He was a tzaddik. How come He took him? He says, because Chanoch secluded himself away from the world to such an extent that he purified himself to the extent that he had no connection to this world. So Hashem took him. He says, listen, if I want angels, I create an angel. Hashem didn't like it. Even though He turned him into a malach, He didn't like it. That was not the point. And the Chatam Sofer says that Avraham Avinu was much more significant than Chanoch, but he didn't turn into an angel. Why? Because HaKadosh Baruch Hu has a will. What's His will? It's for you to connect the mitzvot to this world, not disconnect from this world. So even though Avraham Avinu could have also turned into an angel and secluded himself, Avraham Avinu didn't do it. He, in essence, didn't sanctify himself to the same level as Chanoch did. Why? Because he wanted to fulfill the will of Hashem by going out there and helping people do teshuva.

1:43:03So, when you help people, you're not secluded from them; you get affected by them. Sometimes by their heresy, sometimes by their nonsense, sometimes by all types of other things. And it affects you. But as long as you are serving Hashem, you'll find a way to stay strong and apply all of the things going on in your life to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, to your life. So, with that being said, is that... It all depends on what position a person is in. If a person is a boss, then people can't just choose to talk to him. They have to be allowed to talk to him. Why? Because he's the boss. He doesn't have to talk to his employees. If he wants to give them a message, he can send somebody else to deliver it. But most people are not bosses. Most people are employees, which means that the boss or their supervisor can choose whenever they feel like talking to them. The employee doesn't have a choice. He or she sits there and has to pretty much listen to this boss or manager talk about whatever they are discussing most of the time.

1:44:10So what do you got to do? If the person is talking sensible things, no problem, you could talk to them and in your mind, you know, try to apply whatever they're saying to Torah and also if they're receptive, try to explain to them that your ideology is Torah and HaShem and so on. If they're not receptive or they're completely empty, to the extent where you mentioning the word "God" could potentially get you fired or something like that, the first advice I would say is, you know, at the first opportunity, find a different job. But if it's simply that they're not receptive to it, they're empty, they're just, it's not going to work, then really all you got to do is occupy yourself a lot. Work really, really hard. More hard than you typically do. Why? People don't want to bother somebody who's busy. People don't want to bother somebody who's busy. So as soon as you know that this person, every day at 12, 3:30, 2 o'clock, or a certain time, is walking, she's walking down the hall and always passes by you and they always come to your office, make sure that during that time or even before and after it, you start doing some big projects. So when they're coming in, they're seeing you with tape, with computers, with mice, your hair is over here, your arm is over here, you're under the desk, you're on top of the desk, you're making points. Yeah, yeah, listen, I'll be right back. You're busy. Why? Avoid the conversation.

1:45:33Avoid the conversation altogether. That's the way you gotta do it. You gotta be busy. Too busy for people. Why? Because people are bored and they want to talk to somebody. Doesn't mean it has to be you. Doesn't mean it has to be you. Now, the beautiful part about this is that they'll benefit from not talking to you. Aside from the fact they're not going to be hurting you, which is a plus, they'll also benefit in a material way. Why? Because they see that you're busy. Oh, what are you doing? I'm working on a big thing right now. I'll be right back. I'm working. If you're working for the boss, the boss wants you working. He doesn't want you socializing. Listen, I've got this deadline. UPS is coming. FedEx is coming. IRS is coming. Trump is coming. Gehinnom is coming. Somebody's coming. I’ve got to meet this deadline. I didn't give you anything. No, no, no. It's something you don't know about. I'm doing it. I'll get back to you. Get busy. That's the way you do it. Like I said, if they're receptive, especially if they're Jewish, try to engage in a certain way as long as it's permissible in your work environment and so on, and you're not stealing the boss's time, and the boss is the one that's doing it with you, no problem. Talk to them and so on to a certain extent. Tell them the truth. But if it's a person that's completely empty, or it's a person that's not receptive at all, something like that,

1:46:47Keep yourself busy to avoid the conversation at all costs. If you cannot avoid the conversation, which sometimes happens when you are caught off guard, then you have to learn a talent. And the talent is to look at someone and at nothing at the same time. And that means that I could look at you, but see everything, even though you could see my eyes, you could see that I'm looking at you, but I see everything that's behind you. I'm looking through you. Why? I don't want to see you. I want to see something that's behind you. You have to learn that it takes a lot of time and effort to develop, but you have to do that. Sometimes, you pretty much have to pretend like you're looking at people and you're receptive to some extent, but in reality, you're thinking about Parashat HaShavua, Hilchot Shabbat, your marriage, and all these things that are really important in life. And, you know, every so often say, "Wow, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah." Eventually, they'll see the United Nations, they'll walk away. But don't engage. Don't engage. If you don't want this conversation, don't engage in the conversation. Don't be like, "Oh yeah, Trump, yeah, yeah, I saw it. Yeah, what do you think?" Don't ask them questions. Be so, you know, kind of, you know, cold that, you know, people when they talk, they want feedback.

1:48:01And when they see they're not getting feedback, they don't want to talk. So that means that if they're staying with you for a while, that's because you're feeding them. You're feeding them, so don't feed them as much. And again, like I said, it all depends on how receptive they are and how not receptive they are, if they're empty, if they're not empty, and so on. Next. What's the measure for measure for not being able to say Kaddish now? Not being able to say Kaddish? Why are people losing Kaddish? I mean, it's very, it's very easy to, the whole issue with Beit Knesset, is very, very easy to at least give one of the reasons that it could be a reason that Hashem is simply shutting down our Batei Knesset and not wanting our Kaddish, not wanting our Minyanim. And the easiest reason I can think of—again, I don't know exactly what's on Hashem's mind—but I can give you a reason that's very obvious, which is that the Minyanim that we have today are simply a disaster.

1:49:09You know, either you have a situation where you go to a minyan, but people are talking in the middle of prayer, and the Shulchan Aruch says that a person that talks in Beit Knesset, you know, his aveirah is too big. His aveirah is too big. The Zohar HaKadosh says a person that talks in Beit Knesset has no God. This person is an atheist. Why? Because he's talking in Beit Knesset, just mundane things. and not even during the prayer, even if it's before. He's talking mundane things in the Beit Knesset. This person doesn't believe in God. Why? Because this is the house of God. How are you talking about mundane things? Needless to say, somebody talks in the middle of prayer. Somebody talks in the middle of prayer. Shulchan Aruch says the aveirah is too big, and it's the only thing in the Shulchan Aruch. that he says, Rabbi Yosef Karo says, this is too big. Why? Because everybody's prayers are being held up because of this. So talking in Beit Knesset is a very, very simple thing that you can say people are unfortunately doing in almost every Beit Knesset. You go to prayer, you're not really sure whether it's Kaddish or it's somebody's conversation sometimes that you're saying Amen to.

1:50:20That's one. Second reason is that unfortunately, Rabotai, there are many places where the minyan itself is not kosher. The minyan itself is not kosher. Where you have rabbis and kehilot that are counting people for minyan that are not Shomrei Shabbat. People are not keeping Shabbat and they're counting them as part of the ten for minyan. Or they give these people an aliyah, they say birkot haTorah, and people say amen, which is a sin for everybody. It's berachah levatalah; it’s saying Hashem's name in vain. A mechalel Shabbat goes up to the Torah, says birkot haTorah as one of the main aliyot. If he says the berachah and people say amen, it's a sin for the entire kehillah for using Hashem's name in vain. It's berachah levatalah. Why? He's an idol worshiper, now let's say amen. He's an idol worshiper. Mechalel Shabbat is an idol worshiper. That's what HaKadosh Baruch Hu says. That's what Shulchan Aruch says. That's what the Zohar says, what the Gemara says. So, if a Mechalel Shabbat gets an aliyah on Shabbat, and people want to say amen. So HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, why are they coming? There's no person. What do you mean, no person?

1:51:37Where is no person? There's no leader here to rebuke. So where is this? You're giving him a Mechalel Shabbat, an aliyah. How are you giving him an aliyah? Why don't you give the Christian guy an aliyah also? Why don't you give the janitor from Mexico, that's a goy, an aliyah also? Why don't you give Mustafa an aliyah also? Barack Obama, an aliyah also. It's the same thing. How are you going to give him an aliyah? So that's the problem. Many batei knesset, unfortunately, are not kosher places. Why? The minyan is not kosher. You know how many emails I get from places where people are telling me, "Listen, I go to this Beit Knesset and it's like half the people are driving on Shabbat." I say, find a new Beit Knesset. If you don't have a kosher minyan, find a new Beit Knesset. If enough people did this, guess what? The rabbis will be forced to change. I'm not saying to kick out the people that are not keeping Shabbat. Even the Rambam doesn't say to kick out the people that are not keeping Shabbat. But don't give them an aliyah. Don't count them as part of the minyan. Yeah, but what if they get offended? Let them get offended. Let them get offended. Why are you so worried about the Mechalel Shabbat getting offended, but you're not worried about HaKadosh Baruch Hu getting offended?

1:52:53He should know, he's a Mechalel Shabbat; he has certain treatment. What's that treatment? Like a goy. A bad one, not a good one, because there are many good goyim. A good goy comes to the Beit HaMikdash, wants to give a korban, we accept this korban. A Mechalel Shabbat comes to the Beit HaMikdash, wants to bring a korban, we reject the korban. Go give it to your mother. Why? Because you're desecrating Hashem's name every day. Let him get offended. Why? Once he realizes that our Torah is not a novel. Our Torah is not subject to interpretation. Our Torah is our Torah. HaKadosh Baruch Hu gave it to us on Mount Sinai. That's what you're celebrating on Pesach. Celebrating the exile. Celebrating that we got out of there. The exodus. We got out of there. For what? To get the Torah. so many, but they have non-kosher minyanim, or they have a kosher minyan, but they give the aliyot to all the rich guys. So, who says a minyan like this—who needs it? Who needs this? I came to such a place, but there's nothing there. Hashem says, "I came to a place like this, to a Bet Knesset, to My house, and I see a bunch of idol worshipers saying..."

1:54:13Who needs such a Bet Knesset? That's reason number three. The fourth reason is because the Bet Knesset is not just a place of prayer. The Bet Knesset is supposed to be a Bet Midrash. It's supposed to be a place where you learn Torah. Many, but the Knesset, they're simply a place for socializing. People go, they pray, they socialize, and they go home. What about shiur Torah? Maybe once a week on Shabbat. But you have seven days a week. What do you do with the other six days? No, you know, people are busy. Yeah, so they're busy. So tell them not to be busy and come learn Torah. If you don't teach Torah in a Bet Knesset, there's no point to the place. There's no point to the place. You have to teach to learn the Bet Knesset. So these are just some of the reasons that I can think of that are clear as to why HaKadosh Baruch Hu simply is shutting down all of our Batei Knesset. Maybe if we don't have it for a while, we'll miss it and we'll appreciate it more. Why? Because when you don't have something, that's when you appreciate it. When you have it and it comes easy for you and you walk into God's house three times a day, it's like it's your house and you start feeling comfortable. And that's why

1:55:28It says, and the Prophet says, that when a third Beit HaMikdash is built, there's going to be a rule, the same rule that they had at the first and the second Beit HaMikdash. What's that rule? The rule is that if you enter in the northern entrance, you're not allowed to exit from the northern entrance. You have to exit from the southern one. If you entered from the east, you're not allowed to exit from the east. You have to exit from the west. Why? But my car is over here. Why do I have to go all the way to the end, to the other side, then go all the way around the building? It's going to take me just 40 minutes to get there. 40 minutes just to go, why waste all this time? The door is right behind me. I just got in, I want to say hello to the rabbi, and I'm leaving. No, no, no. You have to go all the way to the other side of the building. Why? The Ya'avetz, the Ya'avetz, alav hashalom, says, It's very important you know that if you violate this rule, you have a very serious problem with HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Why? If you exit, if you enter and exit from the same place, from the same door, if it's your house, it's not a problem.

1:56:40But the Beit Hamikdash is not your house. If you exit from the same place you entered and see the same walls twice in one day, chas v'shalom, you might think that the walls of the Beit Hamikdash are something that, ah, it's like my house. I'm used to it. Why? I saw it twice in one day. And the moment you start treating the Beit Hamikdash, the House of God, like it's your house, you have a very serious problem with HaKadosh Baruch Hu. The Beit Knesset is a mini Beit Hamikdash. Many people treat it like it's their house. It's not your house. You can't walk around in the Beit Knesset looking like you just came out of the laundry or like you came out of some type of war. You have to go into the Beit Knesset with the understanding that it is HaKadosh Baruch Hu's house. You are coming to pray, not to socialize. If people don't respect this, HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, "Who needs them? Who needs the Beit Knesset?" Last but not least, many times people go to the Beit Knesset, but their Tefillah is keva, Tefillat Keva. It's a prayer that they're so used to, they're like robots. Like we talked about last night, we had a whole shiur about it last night for two hours.

1:57:56Do not make your Tefillah, Tefillat Keva, something that's just customary, like a robot. You go at the specific time, put on Tefillin, do this. No, no, you just can't wait to get out. You have to have more Kavanah. Sometimes praying by yourself helps you with Kavanah. Sometimes it doesn't. It depends. The point is that HaKadosh Baruch Hu is rebuking all of us. He says, I don't want you to say Kaddish because your Kaddish was in the middle of somebody's conversation. So let him talk now. Let him talk. I don't want to hear Kaddish. You have thickness that I've seen with my own eyes, my own ears. People are talking during Kaddish. In Boca Raton, in Boca Raton, the rabbi was talking in the middle of Kaddish. The rabbi. The rabbi is talking in the middle of Kaddish. On stage. He wasn't even hiding it. On stage. He's on the top of this huge, beautiful synagogue. He's on stage, this Amalek that he is. And he's talking in the middle of Kaddish. Thirty people are saying Kaddish for somebody that they loved, that died. And this guy's having a conversation. And that's why the kehillah talks in the middle of Kaddish. So you can't, you don't know if you're saying amen to the conversation or to the Kaddish. You're not really sure. You're not really sure. A place like this, who needs this? Who needs a place like this? Who needs a place like this? So, that's the point. Who wants us to know? You want to pray? Pray. You don't want to pray? No.

1:59:19So now, Rabotai, we have a very serious rebuke. Why? Because HaKadosh Baruch Hu tells us, I give you a gift. What's the gift? Power to pray in a minyan. When you pray in a minyan, Rabotai, you pray in a minyan, it's a real minyan, it's a kosher minyan, everybody's prayers get answered. Even if one of the people didn't have full kavanah. Or even if nine people didn't have full kavanah. But they have a little bit. You had one guy, first five minutes. Another guy, the next minute. Another guy, the next 30 seconds. Another guy, everybody had a part of that tefillat kavanah. HaKadosh Baruch Hu takes the best of everyone and combines it as if everyone had a perfect tefillah. That's the benefit of praying with a minyan. Whereas when you pray by yourself, unless you have full kavanah, it's toilet paper. And it's hard. It's hard to have kavanah every single time. Yetzer hara works hard on your tefillah. It's very hard. I wish we all had it. I wish I had kavanah in every prayer. I wish. I wish. It's like having Olam HaBa in this world, having kavanah in every prayer. It's hard. We have to work on it. So that means that the minyan has a very big benefit if it's a kosher minyan. But if half the kehillah acts like goyim, a third of them are really goyim,

2:00:46The other part that's left, you're not really sure. Some places, you actually have real goyim. They look more like Jews than the Jews. But they don't even tell the rabbi that they're in the process of conversion. So they count them as part of the minyan. The point is, we have to... Clean up, clean up our acts. We clean up our acts, HaKadosh Baruch Hu is going to want us to say His name and sanctify His name in Kaddish, because that's really what you're doing with Kaddish. You're sanctifying Hashem's name. You're sanctifying Hashem's name. But when you're sanctifying Hashem's name, when you're giving compliments, but at the same time insulting, Hashem says, I don't want this and I don't want that. It's like having a wife. You say, I love you. Give her a nice righty-right in the morning. Good morning. She says, honey, don't say good morning. Don't say you love me. Just don't touch me, right? That's what God is telling us. Don't say Kaddish, don't say anything, just stop insulting me by talking in the Beit Knesset. Stop insulting me by putting Reshaim to be the rabbis, or to be the people that go up to the Torah, or the Baal Koreh is a Mechalel Shabbat, or is married to a Goya. Or as some places have, the Baal Koreh has a good voice, but he's a wicked person.

2:02:07But they make him chazan anyway. And the Gemara Masechet Ta'anit says, a place that has a chazan who has a good voice but bad actions, instead of bringing a bracha to the kehillah, he's bringing a klalah. He's cursing the entire kehillah. Why? HaKadosh Baruch Hu hates him. Hates him. So we have to clean up our acts. And they say, oh, don't be judgmental. I'm not being judgmental. HaKadosh Baruch Hu is being judgmental. HaKadosh Baruch Hu is being judgmental. Our job is not to be judgmental. Our job is to apply the law. Because if we apply the law, then HaKadosh Baruch Hu is happy. If we don't apply the law, then He has to do the job. He has to apply the law. But He applies the law with coronavirus. He applies the law in different ways. So I promise you, it's better that we apply the law than He does. Next question and then we're done. Unless you guys have some other main things.

2:03:07Yes, right. Okay, so what's the question? You have to understand, as far as when it comes to the issue of Gehinnom, most people, including rabbis, are simply not learned about the topic. They're not learned about the topic. Now, to not be learned about every topic in the Torah does not necessarily make a person a heretic or evil. What makes a person a heretic or evil is to know that they're not learned about the topic, but still make comments on it, still discuss it, and still pretend like they know. For anyone to say that Gehinnom is only 12 months for everyone, that makes them a heretic. And the reason why is because the Gemara specifically says otherwise.

2:04:34The Gemara doesn't say it's only 12 months. It says it's 12 months for some people, and it could be as much as forever for others. In many places, 16b, 17a, and in many other places, it talks about how Gehinnom can be forever, it can be for a certain amount of time, and so on and so forth. So for anyone to say the maximum sentence for everyone is 12 months, that is simply arrogance which creates heresy. And the reason why is because to think that someone that's a murderer, and then someone that is a rapist, and then someone that's a Mechalel Shabbat, and someone that stole $5, and someone that committed some war crime, are all going to get 12 months no matter what. The Ramban writes in the beginning of Sha'ar HaGmul, that that person is a heretic. Because he is turning God into an evil God. To say that God is going to judge all sinners equally makes Him an evil God, chas v'shalom. Why? The guy that stole $5, or $50, or $50,000, is obviously not like Hitler. So why does Hitler, who killed 6 million people, get one year, and the guy that stole $50 get one year? It doesn't make any sense.

2:06:01Doesn't make any sense. The guy that violated Shabbat on purpose his whole life, HaKadosh Baruch Hu calls him an idol worshiper. Why should he get only one year, and then the guy that, let's say, I don't know, cursed a few times, or hit somebody, but didn't kill him, why should he get one year? It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense. For anyone to say that, it shows that they are not only not learned in the subject, but they have a heretical mentality and they're very, very arrogant because they're speaking about somebody without knowing it. They've never read basic level, basic level Gemara. Because this is not tough Gemara. This is not like something you have to understand from the commentary. This is literal Gemara. And it's literal Rishonim. And it's literal Acharonim. And it's literal everything. Rashi talks about it. Rashi in a commentary to the Chumash.

2:07:06Go to Parashat Korach. Go to Parashat Korach. It says that Korach, Korach, the ground swallowed him and he's in Gehenom. Then Rashi writes over there that Korach is still screaming to this day. To this day that Hashem is Emet, His Torah is Emet, Moshe Rabbeinu is Emet. Wait a minute, hold on a second. How is Korach in Gehenom for over 3,300 years? What, he's the only one? He's the only one that hasn't gotten up for more than a year. Everybody else, the murderers and the rapists, they get shorter sentences. So for a person to say such things, it simply shows they're ignorant and arrogant at the same time, which is the worst combination. Not only do you not know, but you don't know that you don't know, and you're pretending to know, which makes such a person the most deadly, vicious, evil enemy of the Torah that could possibly exist. So now, it's important for us to know that sometimes it's purely from ignorance, and they're embarrassed that they are a rabbi and they don't know. So they don't think you know, and therefore they just give you an answer. Other times, it's because they do know, but they don't think that you're ready to know, and therefore they don't want to tell you.

2:08:30Other times, it's a different way, where they think that they can get you to know in a different way, in a different time, in a different this, in a different that, and you shouldn't focus on it, you should focus on something else. Bottom line is, rabotai, you look at the sefarim hakedoshim, you see the sages mention Gehinom on a regular basis, and they do not sugarcoat it. At all. At all, rabotai. i mean the stuff that the sages say. I happen to have said, of course, a few things that, uh, my, uh, you know, my notes are that, uh, I have. But also, my dear friend who has the website "Daf Yomi Review," Yosef Sebag, who's also a physicist and an engineer, has a section on the website for anyone that wants to review it. You go on that website, and there's a section that talks about Ge'enom. And there are a few pages

2:09:31Worth of short little paragraph, short little commentary, sources of different sages discussed Ge'enom. It's not, he also has my lecture on there as well for more information. But the point is, Rabotai, you see some of the things that are written about Ge'enom here by the same, by the sages and different sefarim. And you see, who are these jokesters today that are mentioning there's no Ge'enom or it's only a year or... Who are these clowns? They're bigger than Rabbi Yonatan Eibeschutz? They're bigger than Rabbi Akiva? They're bigger than Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai? They're bigger than the greatest sages we've ever had in history? You know, it's a ridiculous thing. The Rambam writes it clearly. The Rambam writes it clearly. The Baal Shem Tov, Baal Shem Tov, Chassidut, talks about it. But these clowns, in some of the things it says, you have horrible things. It says there's an angel called Kushiel who administers the punishment, and he hits every person with a club of fire and then throws each person into a fire. And after they're consumed by the fire, they miraculously come out of the fire and regenerate anew.

2:10:51this cycle happens seven times each day and three times each night. They're also found in a primordial darkness that existed before the world was created, and so each soul cannot see the other souls there. Does that sound like something that's for 12 months? Okay, a little Care Bear place. Does that sound like a fun place to be in, Rabotai, for a minute? Seven times they're destroying the person in the morning, another three times at night, and throughout the whole time, they're killing them. They're killing the person. He has to feel the pain of death ten times a day. That's just one punishment. We're not talking about all of it. That's like he didn't have a seder of learning in the morning and at night for Torah in Israel, so he has a seder of Ge'enom in the morning and night instead. You have another one. Says that, Rabbi Yisrael Salanter...

2:12:09And as Beit Kelim in volume 2 says, the fire of Gehenom in level 1. First level. This is the easiest one. Best one. It's like the Taj Mahal. It's like vacation. Vacation Gehenom. The good place. The one you get out of eventually. First level Gehenom. Fire there is 60 times greater than the fire of our world. What's the fire of our world? Lava. Lava is 3000 degrees. Gain up 60 times. That's the fire of the first level. This means the difference. What does it mean 60 times? What does it mean? What does it mean 60 times? What is this? You’re talking about tens of thousands of degrees. What does that mean? She explains. This means the difference in pain between someone in this world, who is inside a physical fire, getting burned alive, and someone in this world, who is outside the fire.

2:13:11That's the difference. So imagine, the difference between 60 times greater in this world is like one guy is in a fire, suffering, right? The other guy is not suffering at all. That's the difference between a fire here and a fire there. And that's the best level of Gehenna; that's the vacation one. That's the difference in pain, someone in a fire whose strength... It's just two times the fire of our world. If the fire is 3,000 degrees, double it, 6,000 degrees. Rabbi Saif Hassid and Mikhael say that it is like somebody inside a fire and outside of a fire. That's just double what we have in this world. But,

2:14:12The first level of Gehinnom is not double. It's 60 times. It's 60 times, Abutai. And that is the lowest level of fire of Gehinnom. That's the lowest level. Why? Because Gehinnom has seven different types of fire. Green fire, this fire, that fire. All types of fires that don't exist in this world. Now, people say, wait a minute, how does a soul suffer? There's no body. The clown Friedman said, "I just don't get burned, right? I just don't get burned, right?" This shows he never studied Gemara. The Gemara says that putting a prick of a needle on a dead body hurts; the soul feels pain 60 times more than the body does. What's our proof, aside from the Gemara, that we don't need any other proof, but just to give us a visual? Anyone ever have a nightmare? Anyone ever had what's called a night terror? You have a nightmare where people are beating you up, people are burning you, people are cutting you. In your dream, do you feel it? 100%. When you wake up, you feel like you just went to Gehinnom. And HaKadosh Baruch Hu did put you there for a little bit just to feel it, to scare you. You're supposed to use that dream as mussar.

2:15:40after it, you feel pain in that dream. How come? How do you feel pain? No one's touching you. No one's touching you. No one's touching you. How come? Because your neshamah feels a lot more than your body, a lot more than your body. If anything, your body helps you feel less pain. It's the opposite, rabotai. Your neshamah feels a lot more. When you dream a bad dream and someone's beating you up or hurting you in any other way, chas v'shalom, you're feeling it a lot more than your body does. And when you're out of it, you feel like you got hit. One of my dear students had this experience for a while. It wasn't just a short dream. He had a situation, he got into a coma. And you know what happened to him in the coma? He told me. He says in the coma he had a situation where he had these Arabs show up and start opening up his brain and start digging little by little. Digging into his brain. Taking little pieces. And he's alive and he's feeling every piece. Baruch Hashem he did teshuvah after that. Why did he do teshuvah if it didn't hurt? He felt like he was there for a thousand years. They were digging into his brain.

2:17:00With a little screw and a big screw. Why? Why? Because it hurts. Why do we teach this? Because this pain from my words is much softer than the pain of Gehinnom. I'd rather you get scared to death from my words so you don't have to go to Gehinnom. I plan on going to Gan Eden. I would like to see you guys there. I'm working really hard to go to Gan Eden. I'm working really hard to bring other people to Gan Eden. I would love to see you there also. Chaval that you're going to go to Gehinnom if you don't do teshuva. Chaval. Why do you want to go to Gehinnom? It's no fun there. It's no fun there at all. Now, Rabotai, we're going to finish off with a couple of short stories. Now that we have a little bit more Yirat Shamayim. We have to understand, Rabotai, that Torah is not there to just scare us. Torah is for us to serve HaKadosh Baruch Hu. But sometimes we need to get scared. This is the time to be scared because people are dying, and the Satan is having a party. The Rabbi again tells a story, says that a woman lost her husband.

2:18:19and came to the Rabbi again and said, "Listen, Rav, I need your help." "What's wrong?" "My husband keeps coming to me in my dream, and he has the image of a dog, but I know it's my husband, and he keeps threatening me that he's going to kill me." And he says to her, "So tell me the truth. Did you go to the mikveh?" "Of course, I'm a religious woman." "Where did you go to the mikveh?" He said, "If you went to the mikveh, you have nothing to worry about. It's something else. He's upset about something else." "Okay, thank you, Rabbi." She comes back a few days later, scared to death, crying, and she's got a mark on her neck. "What happened?" Rabbi, I don't know what's going on, but he's been coming to me in my dream, and he came to me again last night, and he started choking me. And he told me, "I'm going to kill you, and I'm going to kill everything you like. I'm going to kill everything." And when I woke up, I had this mark on my neck. You said not to worry.

2:19:33asked you a question before that. Do you remember the question? She says, "Yes, I'm sorry, Rabbi." "What do you mean, 'I'm sorry, Rabbi'?" "I lied." "Ah, you lied? Go die then. You didn't have to see him." How does he know? He knows because he's suffering right now in Gehenom. You told him you're going to the mikveh. Instead, you went to have coffee. So every time he was with you, he thought you went to Gan Eden. He was going to Gan Eden, right? Everything's good. You go up to Shamayim, and it says every single time you touched your wife, it was Yisur Nidah. We're going to have to burn you for it. And now, he wants to take his revenge on you. So, Rabbi, I don't want to die. Oh, you don't want to die now? No, I don't want to die. Okay, so let's do tikkunim. You got to help him. You got to get him out of Gehenom. How? You got to do this, this, this, this. I'll do a bunch of different things. Baruch Hashem, the dream stopped. The dream stopped. People think that life is hefker, you can do whatever you want. Go wherever you want, be wherever you want. No, it's Corona, so...

2:20:40...who runs the world? With or without Corona, with or without Corona, hopefully the mikvehs do not get shut down here and anywhere else. But already I see certain places they're shutting them down. Montreal just announced that they're shutting down the mikvehs, but the rabbis are getting involved, and hopefully they're going to open up the mikvehs for the women. Men's mikvehs are irrelevant, really. There's no need for a guy to go to a mikveh whatsoever right now... Generally speaking, guys in this world and in today's age, you know, mikvehs are not exactly what they used to be because a lot of times these mikvehs turn into, like, a gymnasium, with people walking around naked and so on. And the Sefer Chasidim says that if people are walking around naked in the mikveh, it's more aveirah than mitzvah. Don't go to such a place. But the women's mikveh, we have to have it. Without a woman going to a mikveh, we cannot have Judaism. can't have Judaism, can't have babies, can't have anything. So, women, we have to do whatever we have to do. We have to pray to Hashem, cry to Hashem day and night until they open up the mikveh in Montreal and any other place that shut it down. We have to pray to HaKadosh Baruch Hu not to close the mikvehs over here and anywhere else. Why? Because without a mikveh, you simply cannot have a Jewish home. So it's a very, very big deal, Rabotai.

2:21:59don't think for a second that just because the government or whoever is shutting down the mikveh that it's now okay to be with your husband because you're an onus and you can't go to the mikveh, so it's not your fault. False. If there's no mikveh, there's no intimacy, for however long, even if it has to be forever. Why? Because there's no leniency when it comes to this. There's no leniency. Under no condition is a man allowed to be with a woman without a mikveh. No condition. There's no leniency ever. To such an extent it says, die and don't sin. So we have to understand, HaKadosh Baruch Hu means business. Now, the beautiful thing is, HaKadosh Baruch Hu has a lot of mercy on us, and He gives us a lot of opportunities. In December of 2009, a story was published, a story of Rabbi Yehuda Peretz, who was a convert from Christianity. He was actually a priest in Mexico. And his rabbi told him, some prominent rabbis told him that he must tell the story.

2:23:25What's the story? He says that he converted from Christianity. He was a priest. And his wife was a natural-born Jew. But they were interested in why they clicked right away. Why they... things seem so unique, but you know, they wanted to know a little bit more. So they went to a famous autistic Jew by the name of Ben, who is one of these unique autistic kids that knows how to communicate with people through a special computer. And he tells them things that his neshama sees that the average person can't see. And they asked him some questions. And his wife, Roni, asked, "How come I married a convert? It's unusual. Not because there's anything wrong with converts, but because I've tried other things, and nothing fit. But when I saw him, it was like I knew him forever. How come? It doesn't make any sense. He used to be a priest, this guy. Now he's a rabbi, this, that. What's going on?"

2:24:51We both did teshuvah together, and everything worked out. The autistic kid says, "You asked for it." He says, "When did I ask for it?" He says, "Both of you were married in a previous gilgul. And both of you went against Hashem. Both of you went against Hashem. Both of you did bad things. But before you both died, before you both died..." You, the woman, Rani, you did a little bit of teshuvah. So HaKadosh Baruch Hu said, okay, you can't go to Gan Eden because you did a lot of bad stuff, but you don't have to go to Gehinom forever because you did a little bit of teshuvah. So I'm going to give you another try, give you a gilgul, reincarnation. So, yes, what about my husband? Oh, your husband, yeah, he didn't do teshuvah. So we're going to give him a reincarnation, but it's going to be difficult. Why difficult? He's going to come back as a goy. He's going to come back as a non-Jew. So how could he do teshuvah if he's a non-Jew? Oh, he has to convert to Judaism. You started crying in Shamayim. How is he going to know? How is he going to do it? Please let me help him. Okay. They agreed in Shamayim for you guys to meet somehow and have an unusual attraction to each other and help each other do teshuvah. And that's what happened.

2:26:20New secular woman, he's a priest, but in a previous life, both of you were Jews. This was a story that was published years ago in a paper. A friend of mine from Eretz Yisrael sent it to me, a very interesting story, with more details in it. These people live in Eretz Yisrael, in Kiryat Sefer, and they have six kids, Baruch Hashem. Point being, Rabotai, HaKadosh Baruch Hu has a lot of mercy. has a lot of mercy. He doesn't want to send us to Gehinom. He doesn't want to send us coronavirus. He doesn't want to send us to any place we don't want to be in. But we have to stop forcing His hand by doing bad things. We simply have to do teshuva. We have to keep Shabbat. We have to learn Torah. We have to keep kashrut. We have to protect our brit. We have to protect our marriage. Taharat HaMishpacha. A woman must be modest. If you're not a modest woman, it doesn't matter what mitzvot you're keeping because you're not going to go to Gan Eden anyway. Because a woman who walks around not modest is causing other people to sin.

2:27:24It's very, very important for us to take things seriously. Over the next few days, you have an opportunity to learn a little more Torah before Pesach, so you have something to say during Pesach. Take advantage of it. Take advantage of it. We'll have one more shiur before Pesach on Sunday, here. Then there's a little short break, then we'll come back, but we'll talk more about that on Sunday. Hopefully, this gives us the chizuk that we need in order to get closer and closer to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, the mussar that we need, and not the one that I planned. It was something completely different that I actually planned on talking to you guys about, but apparently this is what we all needed to learn, myself included. Baruch Adonai l'olam. Amen v'Amen.