Why Do We Need Reward & Punishment? (Beth Gavriel Bucharian Center New York)

0:13go well for two hours, then we'll do it again for another two hours. Thank you for having me. At the Beth Gavriel Bukharian Center here in New York, Baruch Hashem, the last time I was here, it's been a while, a long time. You guys miss me? I missed you guys. I was thinking about you for a year and a half already. Last time, Baruch Hashem, we had a nice turnout, a lot of people, a lot of teshuva, and Baruch Hashem, a lot of bracha. I'm still in touch with a few people from the last time we've been here. And today, Baruch Hashem, we also have Ida Brut recording, and we have people from Facebook Live from all over the world who are watching. So Baruch Hashem, you guys are all part of the same mitzvah. You're all part of kiruv right now. Now, another thing before I start, and I forget, I want to do a refuah shlema. We usually do a refuah shlema. Now, today's refuah shlema list is not a typical refuah shlema list. The reason why is because sometimes somebody needs a refuah shlema because they have, you know, not a cold, something a little more than a cold.

1:21Sometimes somebody has a machala bar minan, bar minan, somebody has a machala, but it's okay. It's gonna be okay. It's just painful. But sometimes, somebody has a condition that the doctors say only a miracle, only a miracle, can help. And that, Rabotai, is where we're at. That is where we're at. So we need a special refuah shlema. Tuchayim Yisrael, Zura, Ben-Raya, Rachel. That's the name, HaKadosh Baruch Hu knows I tried to pronounce it correctly. Also, Refuah Shlema to Levana Bat-Sara, Sara Bat-Levana, Rachel Bat-Shulamit, and Sara Bat-Anat, and Rav Ephraim Ben-Shulamit. HaKadosh Baruch Hu will give them Refuah Shlema, Refuah Hanefesh, Refuah Haguf, and also David Ben-Esriah, Doris Bat-Jorah. Those who receive Refuah Shelemah, Refuah Hanefesh, and Refuah Haguf from HaKadosh Baruch Hu are truly blessed. People who have never experienced pain in their life do not know the value of Refuah Hanefesh and Refuah Haguf. The reason is that when you have never been sick beyond a cold, you don't really appreciate the fact that you're able to even go to the bathroom without pain.

2:44When you have never experienced pain in your life, you've been relatively healthy, Baruch Hashem, you never say, Baruch Hashem, that I wake up and I'm not suffering. Right from the moment you wake up, you take things for granted. But somebody who has experienced some pain will tell you that the fact that you're able to walk, run, operate, eat, drink, even do something as simple as go to the bathroom without screaming, is mamash chasdei Hashem. You look at them funny because it's hard for you to understand when you haven't been sick. On the other hand, someone that's spiritually sick, someone that's spiritually sick is even in a worse condition. Someone that's spiritually sick is in a much, much worse condition than someone that's physically sick. Why is that? because Rabbi Yisrael Salanter says in Or Yisrael that we have many doctors, as many doctors as there are physical ailments. In his day, almost 200 years ago, he said if there's an ailment, someone has a cold, we have a medicine. If someone has a broken leg, we have a doctor that fixes the broken leg. We have just as many doctors as we have ailments.

4:08when it comes to spirituality, for the spiritually sick, there's no hope. Why no hope? No one wants to be the doctor, and the patient doesn't know he's a patient. The spiritually sick do not know that they're sick. So, it's our job, meaning us, not just me, it's our job to remind them. It's our job to remind them that they're spiritually sick. Now, a lot of people always go to different rabbis, whether it's mekubalim, real ones, fake ones, and ask them for blessings. Someone came to Rav Nissim Yagen, a"h, and the guy was a multi-millionaire, worth at least a hundred million dollars. And he comes to the Rav and gives him a check, a donation to his organization. And he says, Kvod HaRav, give me a blessing. So Rav Nissim Yagen, zt"l, says in his lecture, you know, I was really wondering, what does somebody that has a hundred million dollars in the bank at least, what does he want? Does he want shalom bayit? Does he want refuah shlema? Does he want his kids to be tzaddikim? What does he want? What does he want, Rabotai?

5:38He says, "Bless me," but you have a hundred million dollars already. Is that not enough? If you give him a hundred, he wants 200. If you give him 200, he wants 400. There are some people who are so rich, so rich with money, that they forget about the world. Instead of becoming rich spiritually, instead of doing something good with it, they turn the wealth into poverty. Where they're so poor, all they have is money. I know some people like this. Some on Wall Street, some off Wall Street. But people have, and they ask for blessings for money, whether they have it or they don't have it. They ask for blessings for things that are material most of the time. When someone is sick, he asks for blessings to be healthy. The Gemara says if you were smart, you would have asked for health before you got sick. Someone who is smart asks for a cure before they get sick. Why don't you ask for a cure? Why don't you say, "Hashem, thank you for allowing me to go to the bathroom." Say, "Asher Yatzar" with kavanah, not like you're in a hurry for an appointment. "Hashem, thank you for letting me go to the bathroom, but I don't have time for you."

7:03Thank you for letting me eat, but I don't have time to do Birkat HaMazon. You had time to eat for three hours, five meals. But to do Birkat HaMazon, say thank you, we didn't have time. It's not nice. But we ask for blessings. In this week's parasha, rabotai, we always connect something to the parasha because that's the secret of the Torah. The way that you know it's divine is that you can always find something relevant in the parasha to your life at that moment. Amash, I was looking at it while you guys were setting up. I was looking at the Chumash a lot. I saw this nice thing and it says in the parasha at the beginning of Va'eira. Now we're going through—we've gone through already seven plagues. Pharaoh got it on his head seven times, still didn't do teshuva. This plague, that plague, this plague, that plague. He keeps getting hit, isn't doing teshuva. It gets to a point where his own people and... Come to Pharaoh and they say, Vayomeru avdei Pharaoh elav, Ad matai yihiyeh lanu lemokesh? Shalach et ha-anashim v'ya'avdu et Hashem Eloheihem. Pharaoh's servants said to him, "How long will this be a snare for us? Send out the men that they may serve Hashem their God." And then it continues, it says, "Do you not yet know that Egypt is lost?"

8:30In so many words, Rabotai, it got to a point where even Pharaoh's people said, "How long are you going to be in action? How long are you going to be stubborn and keep sinning and going against God? Don't you realize by now you lost the battle? We used to be the number-one country in the world, now we're on the bottom. We used to be this, now we're not." They had money, they had power, they had fame, they had fortune; everything went to nothing, bupkis. Just like the Romans, just like the Greeks, just like the Babylonians, just like the Spaniards, just like anyone that went against Am Yisrael throughout all of history. And I was talking to a very, very special neshamah earlier today about all the different civilizations that have gone against Am Yisrael and went over them. And we say, look at all these different nations. When they were hosting Am Yisrael,

9:31They had the blessing. They did what they had to do. When the Egyptians hosted Am Yisrael, without torturing us, they became the richest country in the world. They had a Jew running their treasury. His name was Yosef HaTzaddik. He capitalized on insights none of us could ever imagine, and... something called prophecy. Next thing you know, he builds the country to such an extent that they become the richest country in the world in a matter of a few years. They went against Yisrael and they became nothing. You fast forward a little while, you go to the Babylonians. When they hosted Yisrael, they were on top. They went against us and became nothing. Anyone know Babylonian today? It's Iraq, by the way, but no one knows that Iraq is Babylonian. Then you have the Romans. Anyone know any Romans roaming around the street with their spears and helmets? Greeks, the Greeks of today are not the Greeks of yesterday. Greeks of today are more concentrated on the beach.

10:53Back then, they were concentrating on conquering the world. Two different countries, two different civilizations. And you see, time after time, the nations of the world were gifted the blessing from Hashem. All they had to do was one thing: be nice to My children. That's it. Be nice to My children, and I will give you parnasah tova, a zivug, everything you want. Now, why do I say that I spoke to a special soul that said to me, why did I say I spoke to another Jew? Because this neshama became a Jew today. Today. He and his wife chose to be Jews. And such a person puts pressure on the rest of us. reason why is because he and his wife chose to be Jews. Sometimes, some of us don't want to be Jews. I had a person contact me and say, "You know what? I don't know if it was better off for me to be born not a Jew. Maybe I should have been born something else. It's an easier life. I don't have to deal with anti-Semitism. I don't have to deal with mitzvot. I don't have to deal with this. I don't have to deal with that." and

12:10I said you're right as long as you think that being a Jew is just a religion that you do on the side. But if you realize that being a Jew means that you are the son of God mamash, that you're the daughter of God mamash, then only a fool would ask for such a request. Now, how do we know what this Torah, this holy Torah, is? Kind of power it has, what kind of significance it has, why should we yearn to be Jews? So someone came to the Chida a few hundred years ago, a couple hundred years ago. He lived in the 1700s. Rav Yosef Chaim Azulai, he came to the Chida. He says, "Rebbe, I want to know the numbers for the lotto." you know what's going on in Shamayim. I want to know why I have to go work if I win the lotto. Trust me, I'm in the corner all day, all night. No, no, I need lotto numbers, lotto numbers. Ignores them. Lotto numbers for the lotto numbers. No, what do you care? Just give me the lotto numbers. The fact that he thought he had the lotto numbers is amazing to begin with and

13:38Eventually, the Chida says to him, "Okay." He took a paper, wrote down the numbers, put it in an envelope, and said, "Here's the numbers, but you're only allowed to open it tomorrow. I'm going to leave it here with the sefarim. And tomorrow you come, and you open it, and you'll see it's sealed." Okay. So the next day he comes to the yeshiva. He's excited to go to the envelope. He opens the envelope. He sees the lotto numbers. It's mamash the winning numbers of last night. Of last night. He says, "We could have won." He goes, "Exactly. We don't use the Torah for such things. We know the information. The Torah has the power to have all information. It's infinite. But it's not what we use the Torah for. That's not what the Torah is for." The Torah is not for you to win some material. The Torah is not for you to make a hundred million dollars. Whether Hashem decides to give you a hundred million or not is irrelevant. What the Torah is for is to make you win at life. Life here, the life of Olam HaBa. Now, when a person understands that Hashem Himself gave us this Torah,

15:05Understand it is a rule book, and every rule book has pluses and minuses, meaning if you look at the rule book of traffic, like the New York Traffic Rule Book, if you go under a certain speed limit on a specific road, you're on a plus, you're good. If you go above, you're in a minus. There's a penalty for it. If you stop at a stop sign, you are a welcome citizen. We're happy with you. If not, you're violating the law. You're also welcome because we want your money. But nonetheless, you have pluses and minuses. So the Gemara in Masechet Chagigah, page 15. The Gemara, for anyone who does not know, just in case, it's the Oral Torah. We have the Written Torah and we have the Oral Torah. So the Written Torah is the Five Books of Moses, and the Oral Torah is what was transmitted orally. It's the Gemara, it's the Mishnah, it's the Zohar. It's all of the different texts that explain what it actually says in the Written Torah. So for argument's sake, if this is one of the books of the Gemara, this is a part of Masechet Shabbat. So anytime that I say Masechet Shabbat, this is a part of the Gemara. There are 73 of these.

16:2173 of these. So if I say, it says in the Gemara, Masechet Shabbat, such and such, I'm not referring to the whole book. I'm referring to one line inside the book. So imagine what it says in the entire book. So in the Gemara, Masechet Chagigah, page 15a, and it continues to 15b. It says Hashem Yitbarach reserves a spot for each person in Gan Eden and also in Gehenom. Every person has a reserved spot. Now, when Hashem decided, "I want to put this neshama in this body," you have a reservation. He already knew you're coming to the world. Just so you know, when you come down, you already have a nice villa, either in Gan Eden or in Gehenom, same price. If he's righteous or she's righteous, they go to Gan Eden. If not, Gehenom. This is not politically correct, but the Torah isn't either. This is reality. The reason why we need to talk about reality, not political correctness, is because in the world we live in today, if there's no penalty, we don't change.

17:48The New York State decided to pass a law: there's now no more speed limits. And now you actually don't even have stop signs, and now you don't have any traffic signs. And now you don't have any, uh, you can park anywhere you want. Within a matter of five minutes, there's a permanent traffic jam that will never change. Everyone's gonna try to get from point A to point B in a matter of seconds, and it's gonna be a shomer. What kind of accidents, because no one cares about anybody else? Everyone is gonna act as if they created the law. So if there's no consequences, there's no law. There's no... No one is going to change. No one is going to fix. No one is going to have any manners. No one is going to have any care in the world about anybody else. So it's very, very important for Am Yisrael to know that there is Gan Eden and there is Gehenom. Even though in the English-speaking world, Gehenom is almost like a curse word. No one mentions it. It's like it's a mystery. Do we have it? Do we not have it? Someone even says, "Listen, it's just a washing machine. It's a good thing for you." Okay, you go there. Let me know how it was. If it's so good, you go over there and tell me how it was.

18:57For anyone who wants to know the details, if you have the strength, the mental strength, spiritual strength, we did a whole three and a half hour show about it just two weeks ago. It's very, very scary. It's not a washing machine. We're going to end the Gehenom subject there. Anyone who wants to know more can learn it from there. The point being, Rabotai, is that knowing that there is a consequence is necessary. It's necessary because some of the things that I'm going to tell you tonight... Going to have the ability to give you the ultimate blessing. You want good kids, you can get it. You want a neset rach, I can't promise a hundred million dollars, but a neset rach where you have hatzlacha, where your money is going to good things and not to medical bills. Shemirat Hanim is not going to fix tires. It's not going to fix roofs. It's going to things that you want it to go to. You can get it. Someone that wants to have a good marriage, Shalom Bayit, you can get it. Baruch Haba. Since Hashem is here, I have to say Baruch Haba, especially Baruch Haba. Anyone that wants the blessings, you can get it. Now the caveat is this: Hashem says, I want to give you. I only created the world for you.

20:20I'm perfect. I have everything. I don't need anything. Hashem says to the prophet Moshe, "Mine is the money, mine is the gold." Meaning everything is mine. Everything is mine. The money you think is yours is mine. The house you think is yours is mine. The wife you think is yours is my daughter. The husband you think is yours is my son. Your kids, my kids. Everything is mine. If I want, I'll take it back. Everything is mine. I created it all for you. The Sfat Emet, one of the sages in our history, says that Hashem only created the world because He's good. And good, the definition of good, is not someone that's nice. Good means creates good. Someone can say they're a good person, but if their hobby is assassinating people, they're not exactly a good person. They can say they're a good person from here until tomorrow, they're still not a good person if they're assassinating people. Someone could say, "Listen, I donate a million dollars a year," but if all the million dollars is coming from stealing money, you're not a good person. No, thank you for the donation. So, good is defined by creating good. So, Hashem, in His ultimate goodness, says, "I want to create good." So, the Sfat Emet says He created the world where He can give His creation the ultimate good.

21:43He can give His creation the ultimate good. But His wisdom also told Him that you cannot give anything for free because then it's not good. Then it becomes poison. If you take your kids and every time they ask for candy you give it to them, eventually you're going to have a 500-pound kid that's going to hate you. If you take your kids and you tell them they can play with whatever they want, then you're going to have a wife that's going to kill you because you let the kid play with the electricity. And now the kid's in the hospital, God forbid. So giving him everything he wants is not exactly a good idea, even if he's cute. David HaMelech, David HaMelech, Kodesh Kodashim, made a mistake like that with one of his sons. He made a mistake with one of his sons. He said, son, whatever you want. The son took advantage of it. Yes for everything. And David HaMelech never said no. You know what happened at the end of the story? The son said, I want to be king, Abba. David HaMelech said, no. I'm going to kill you, Abba. That's what he tried to do. Avshalom. It's in the Torah. So just because you give doesn't mean it's good. So Hashem says, I'm going to give based on your efforts. Based on whether you deserve it or not.

23:07Which means that really, my ultimate purpose is to give to you. But you have to deserve it at the same time. If you deserve it, you're both getting the gift, and on top of it, I'm happy because now I'm doing what I want to do, which is to give to you. But if you're doing bad, then I can't give to you. then I have to punish you because now you're withholding me from doing what I want to do. I want to give to you. You're stopping me from giving to you. So, on the plus side, if we listen to some of the things we're going to say tonight, we're going to see that these things can give us blessings without end. If you have sickness, you can cure it. You want evidence? You're looking at it. Anyone that knows my personal story, I fought for my life for seven years and... Used to be a Wall Street executive; I had a firm, an insurance company, a hedge fund, a brokerage firm—whatever you want, I had it. I was on TV; I had money to burn. And then Hashem took everything away in five minutes. In five minutes, everything became worthless because the surgery went wrong, and I went into pain that did not stop for seven years. For seven years, pain that did not stop to such an extent that I was praying...

24:31praying, forgot to kill me. I asked my wife to kill me; she didn't want to listen. I asked my mom to kill me; she didn't want to listen. No one wanted to listen to me. You figure, 20 million dollars, somebody's going to listen to you. No one wants to listen to me all of a sudden. Baruch Hashem, they didn't listen. Hashem listened though. Hashem said, "Son, I'm only doing this to you because I love you." I just didn't realize it. So anyone that wants to know the details of the story, it's in our CDs, Baruch Hashem, we have A few hundred CDs that we brought over here, whoever doesn't have a CD yet, it's track number one on CD two. Very inspiring story. I get inspired sometimes by it. I say, if it wasn't me, I wouldn't believe it. But nonetheless, my rabbotai, the key is to understand that Hashem does everything for our good, for our benefit. But He says, listen, if you stop Me from giving you good, I have to punish you. For your good, I have to punish you. So if you want, you want a medical miracle. Not like, oh listen, the headache went away. No, like someone has a catastrophic disease, 50 doctors say, I'm sorry sir, you're going to die. Sorry, enjoy the rest of your life.

25:58There's nothing we can do for you. We don't even know what's wrong with you. To cure something, you have to diagnose it. If we can't diagnose it, enjoy the rest of your life. 50 doctors, not 5, not 2, not 10, became an experiment. You know, the experiment, they say, one out of a million people is this, I was the one. You ever wonder, who was the one guy? I was the guy. One out of a million is... I was the guy. I was an experiment. Because regular medicine didn't work, we tried experimental medicine, this medicine, that medicine. Nightmare. But all for a bigger good. Medical miracle, you start listening to God. But you start listening to God not because you like it. You start listening to God because He said so. You don't stop eating pork because you stop liking it. You're always going to like it. You liked it once, I never ate it, but if you liked it once, you're always going to like it. You stop eating because God said don't eat pork. You don't stop going to the casino because all of a sudden you're a Moshe Rabbeinu; you don't gamble, you're a tzaddik. No, no, you don't gamble because Hashem said don't gamble. Hashem says when you gamble, number one, if you're gambling against another person, you're stealing from him and...

27:23Why are you stealing from me? He doesn't want to give it to you. Yeah, but we have rules. Yeah, he doesn't really want to play by the rules. If it was up to him, he'd take the money back. Every time you win a hand, you just stole money. Every time you win a hand, $5, $500, $5,000, whatever you won, you just stole the money. So in Shamayim, you go up to Shamayim and say, Gan Eden, I'm here. I kept Shabbat, Taharat HaMishpacha, everything. Yeah, you can't get in. What do you mean? I kept everything. You have blood on your hands, sir. What blood? You stole $5 in a cash game of poker in 2018. Remember? You count that? Yes, we count that. You can't steal money and go to Gan Eden. You have to do teshuva. I liked poker. I loved poker. But then I realized Hashem said no. So I stopped. So it's not that I stopped liking it. You like it, but Hashem said no. So teshuva is not that all of a sudden your brain gets rewired and all of a sudden you stop liking all the things that you like. Teshuva is when you actually start realizing that it's not worth the risk. Teshuva is when you start realizing that you like Hashem and you like eternity much more than you like this desire. So on one hand,

28:39you can get an extraordinary amount of blessings if you listen to some of the things that the Torah says. On the other hand, you'll see that the opposite is also true. So anyone that has any type of suffering in their life, even if that suffering is that they got a flat tire on the way to work. Even if that suffering is that their kids are giving them an attitude. Even if the suffering is that they're struggling to pay the bills. Even if the suffering is they're just stressed out all the time. They have all the money in the world, they have all the time in the world, they have all the good things in the world, but they're miserable. That's Hashem talking to you. He says, "My daughter, my son, we need to talk. Something's missing. Because if something is missing, you're going to feel it. If something's not missing, you're going to be happy all the time. It's a great feeling, you should try it."

29:39So now, when it comes to modesty, most people think this is an elective mitzvah, meaning you can do it if you want, you can do it if you don't want. Now, if it was my opinion, then you shouldn't listen to it. So instead, I brought you the Torah, meaning it's God's opinion. It starts off this way: Hashem said, it's a good indication God's talking. Hashem said, this is in the book of Isaiah, in the Tanakh, chapter 3 verse 16. Hashem said, Because the daughters of Zion, meaning Am Yisrael, are haughty—meaning they're arrogant—walking with outstretched necks. You know, they want to make sure they show their stuff. Make sure everybody's paying attention. "I'm here. I'm here. Steve, you saw I'm here. Carlos at the supermarket, you saw I'm here. I'm here."

31:02In the house, she looks like Tisha B'Av. She's in the pajamas for the husband. At the supermarket, a runway model. It's supposed to be the opposite. Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, walking with outstretched necks and winking eyes. She likes to flirt. Hey, what are you doing? Yeah, how's your wife? Oh, really? I like her. Why are you talking to me? Is she your husband? Why are you friends with guys? What good is going to come out of it? What good is going to come out of having guy friends? Anyone that still believes in the term "platonic relationships," meaning men and women being friends, still has no idea what it means to be a Jew. Why? Because in reality, when you're a Jew, you realize there's no such thing. Men think a certain way. Women think a certain way. Women look at a guy and say, "Wow, he's so nice. He has a nice personality. He looks like he's funny." He looks like he's generous. He looks like he's smart because he has glasses. She doesn't know the guy's a tembel, doesn't know anything. But he has glasses; he looks smart. But she thinks about his personality. The guy, he can see the smartest woman in creation. All he thinks about is the klafte.

32:18Oh, yeah, she wants me. Every guy is convinced that every girl in the world wants him. And he starts thinking, yeah, about the weekend and this. He has a whole plan. He's married with six kids. No one's looking at him. He's 100 pounds overweight, but he's thinking about the weekend. Yeah, yeah, she wants me. I know. That's the way she looked at me. Because when she talked, she said something to Carlos to bring something from aisle four. She was looking at me. Hashem said because the daughters of Zion were haughty, walking with outstretched necks and winking eyes, walking with dainty steps, jingling with their feet, meaning they were wearing high heels. But not just the high heels where you could barely tell; they wanted to make sure you knew they were here. So, they put little bells on them. They put little bells. "Hey Romans, we're here." I therefore the Lord will afflict the heads of the daughters of Zion with lesions and Hashem will bare their private parts. On that day, the Lord will remove the splendor of the shoe bells, the headscarves, the moon-shaped ornaments, the necklaces, the bracelets, the veils, and

33:33bonnets, the leg bands, the hair ties. He goes into details of every single piece of clothing the woman wears in that day. So trust me, shalom. You don't think maybe Hashem doesn't know you're hiding it from Him? He doesn't know you wore that extra little ribbon for Carlos at the supermarket because he liked red? He's telling you, every single thing you do, I see it, and for every single thing you did for the wrong reason, you're going to get an extra punishment for it. And... It's not a joke. If you read this, you understand the Midrash of what it says. You think he's talking about New York, you think he's talking about Florida, you think he's talking about Miami—everywhere. But this is a couple of thousand years ago. Shlomo HaMelech says, "There is nothing new under the sun." The sins we made yesterday, we're still making today. The Mashiach didn't come yesterday, and that's why he still hasn't come today. We're not ready. Now he goes into details that are horrible. Makes my Gehinnom shiur sound like Gan Eden. He talks about how some people used to wear wigs. Wigs.

34:59But not wigs that were allowed where you could wear them under hats. Rashi says the word Ya'an actually means Pe'ah Nochrit. In those days, the women that had, let's say, bald spots from sicknesses or such, would wear something to cover the bald spot, but on top of it, they would put a kisui rosh, they would put a hat or a scarf or something. He said some women just forgot to put the scarf. someone like there's so much they forgot to put the hat on. They wanted to walk around like the rest of the goyim with long hair. Kind of sounds like today, doesn't it? Now Rashi says that's an extra punishment. Why? Because when they came to them, says the prophet Yeshayahu, look what you're doing. The goyim are looking at you. The goyim want to marry you. So bnot Yisrael, hakdoshot, what did they say? So what's the worst thing that can happen? The Romans will want to marry us? Fine, let them marry us then. We acted like goyim to such an extent, we stopped minding being goyim. We wanted to be goyim. This is like reading the newspaper today.

36:24Isaiah goes into details of every single jewel and every single ornament, every single modest tool that the women have, to show that there's divine knowledge. It's also going to be a measure-for-measure punishment for each and every single act. If the woman wore a special piece of clothing for her husband to enjoy, it is a mitzvah. mitzvah, they give you a special section, you beautified yourself for your husband. But if you beautified yourself for Carlos, and for the supermarket clerk, and for the guy that works at the mall, and for the police officer downstairs, and for everyone else to look at you, the same tool could either be a potion for life or a potion of poison. Same tool.

37:28Now who is he talking about? Is he talking about some women that didn't know anything, maybe? Maybe he's talking about some women that never went to yeshiva. Maybe they were, you know, new baalei teshuva, maybe. Maybe he was talking about some people that were off the derech. They didn't really know, they weren't really sure, they grew up in a secular house. Who is he talking about in this Tanakh? Who is he talking about? He's talking about the rabbis' wives. That's how low he went. The rabbis' wives were wearing wigs, the rabbis' wives were wearing big heels, the rabbis' wives didn't want to be Jews anymore. So, on the bad side, when a woman is not modest, because of the nature of men... Just understand the risk before we start talking about the good things. Just understand that the risk is that when she walks around not modestly and someone who's not her husband sees her and he imagines himself being with her, either at that moment or later on. That could lead him to commit the worst sin in all of Judaism, which is called wasting seed. There are three major sins in Judaism and

38:54Where if you don't do teshuva for them, there's nothing that can help you. No Kaddish in the world can help you. One of them is wasting seed on purpose. Another one is chilul Hashem, which is desecrating Hashem's name on purpose. And the third one is being a mechallel Shabbat on purpose. You know that you're a Jew, you know that Shabbat is a holy day, you just decide, I don't feel like keeping it. I'm going to drive to shul like some people in Florida do. I was going to this Beit Knesset when I first moved there. They call themselves an Orthodox shul. Half the kehillah drives on Shabbat to Beit Knesset. So I'm thinking something's wrong. Maybe nobody told them. But then I see the rabbi is one of the top rabbis in all of Florida. So this must be nuts. Maybe he doesn't know. But he's a Dayan. He's a rabbi. He's a this. He's a that. What's wrong? Oh, look at the paycheck. Oh, okay. Paycheck. Fine. When you make over a million dollars a year, the Torah changes.

40:00Abaye says, "Men of truth are lost." That's what Hashem said right before He decided to destroy the Beit HaMikdash. No one wants to tell the truth, no one's gonna do teshuva. So when a woman walks around thinking that, "No, I'm just doing it to make myself feel good." First, you should know that she's lying to herself. Why? If you were living on an island by yourself and your next-door neighbor was a monkey and a giraffe, would you still wear high heels? Would you still wear the tank top that has extra sparkles on it? Would you still wear the short shorts with, you know, the extra lines and the brand names like Gucci and all that stuff? Are you still going to do all that stuff? No, you're gonna cover your body with everything so the bugs don't eat your skin. Which means the only reason you're not modest is because you want all the goyim to look at you. That's a sin. That's a sin. Now, if one of those people that looks at you is a Jew, it's even a bigger problem, because you could potentially make him sin.

41:25When does a Jew think of another woman? Just so you know, a guy that doesn't protect his eyes, Hashem punishes him measure for measure. That's what we learned from the last two parashot, all the plagues. We did a couple of shiurim over the last couple of years showing how Hashem operates with measure for measure even through the plagues. Why He used frogs instead of cats, dogs, or mice or whatever other creatures are in the world. Why He used blood instead of oil or tar or anything else in the world. Why He used the barad, which was ice with lava inside it, which is against nature. Why each and every single one of these plagues was used. There's a reason for it; it's not just random. Nothing is random. Operates with measure for measure even through the plagues. Why He used frogs instead of cats, dogs, or mice or whatever other creatures are in the world. Why He used blood instead of oil or tar or anything else in the world. Why He used the barad, which was ice with lava inside it, which is against nature. Why each and every single one of these plagues was used. There's a reason for it; it's not just random. Nothing is random. It's not a slot machine. It's God. So why He did it, we have a mefarshim about specifically each and every single thing of why He did it. It's amazing. Now when a man looks at a woman that's not his wife,

42:29there's also a measure-for-measure punishment on that too before all the Shemirat Einayim stuff happens. What is it? He's going to think about that woman at the worst possible times to make sure that he suffers extra. When is it? When he's praying to God. We just did our Amidah. We did our Amidah, and if there's somebody in the room that doesn't watch his eyes, for sure I can guarantee you he thought about a woman that's not his wife. For sure, guaranteed. Had to be, that's when he's thinking about it. When? Amidah. The most intimate moment with God, Hashem says, no, no, no, you don't like me. You don't care about me. You like some woman that's not your wife. Here, think about her. Pray to her. Pray to her. She can help you. Anyone who values their prayers and wants salvation from Hashem knows it's not a good time to have such thoughts. When is another critical time to be mindful? When he's intimate with his wife. The Gemara says if such a thing happens, some of the major sages suggest it might be considered, although it's not halakha, that it could be akin to a mamzer, not really a legitimate child. To that extent—why? Because he's thinking about another woman. Measure for measure. Women should make sure their husbands are not looking at other women, acting like a gilgul of a mamtarah (a fountain) that looks at everything that moves. You have to start telling your husband to stop looking. Why? Because a man is punished in another way when he's thinking about someone else.

43:53when he's intimate with his wife. And the Gemara says, if such a thing happens, some of the major sages suggest it might be considered, although it's not halakha, that it could be akin to a mamzer, not really a legitimate child. To that extent—why? Because he's thinking about another woman. Measure for measure. So we see these things are not like, Hashem, no, you can dress however you want, do whatever you want. Those are things in the Torah. Now, on the other hand, for the men, you need to learn how to watch your eyes. Unfortunately, in today's world, it's very, very difficult to be in business and watch your eyes. Why? Because no one likes to wear clothes when you're in business. You meet customers, you meet this, you meet that. Of course, it's difficult. You have to do the best you possibly can. Don't stare at anything. Don't stare at anything. Stare at your kids, stare at the siddur, stare at the Gemara, stare at your wife. Everything else, don't stare. One look, you don't get punished. Anything beyond that is a problem. You have to limit it. It's very hard. I'm not, there's no like imagination, we all became Moshe Rabbeinu overnight, and all of us are never going to look again. You have to do the best you can. Hashem values your effort. Haba l'taher,

45:20The Gemara says that someone that looks to become purified, they help him from Shamayim. They see you're looking to purify your eyes, Hashem's not going to give you those tests. But if He sees you're looking anyway, you don't care, you're not trying even, He's going to give you extra sins, measure for measure. Someone says that someone who looks to become impure, someone who looks to sin, they open a door for him. Why? Don't let the door hit you on the way out. We're not gonna help you. So, now for the men, you have a serious job to watch your eyes. The women give a serious risk. Why? You could think that you're wearing an innocent skirt that's a little too short and... Who cares that he's looking? It's not my problem. He's looking? It's not my problem that he's looking. Why do I care what he's looking at? I'm wearing it for me. I'm hot. Everyone's hot all of a sudden in this generation. We have a first generation where everyone has air conditioners instead of living in Vizhnitz, but we're all hot. Am Yisrael was in the desert for 40 years, and not one time did anyone complain about the heat. I

46:42We have air conditioners, and it's like three degrees in New York right now, but still people are hot. Your heart—are you full of it? So the risk is the following: Rabbeinu Yonah says a woman who causes a man to sin, meaning waste seed, because of whatever action she took and will not be released from Gehinom until all that she created, meaning all of the demons and all the sins that she created as a result of her actions, are destroyed from the world. Meaning, even if she kept everything else, she has a serious problem. Why? She has to do teshuva. She cannot just walk around thinking, "No, it's their problem. If they're looking, it's their problem." So now You have sometimes women and men saying, "Listen, but my rabbi said it's okay. My rabbi said it's okay for me to wear these tight clothes. He didn't say anything. Even his wife wears the long wig that reaches the floor. What's the problem? What's the problem with wearing the long wig that's... What's the problem?"

47:59What's the problem with wearing clothes and looking like I just came off of a runway show from the green? Well, what's the problem? The rabbi does it, the rabbi's wife does it? Let's ask ourselves a question. If, chas v'shalom, a woman came home and she said to her husband, "Honey, I went to my checkup with my doctor, and the doctor did the checks, and he said there's possibly something I..." Something he found, but he doesn't know what it is, though. I don't know what it is, but there's something there. What does the husband do? If he loves her, his heart drops. He picks it up, puts it back in shape, and says, "Okay, we got to get another opinion. We're gonna get another opinion. Okay. It's something; we have to figure out what happened." She says, "I agree. I already made an appointment for 50 doctors." Why? Because there's a possibility there's something. He said, "There is something. I made an appointment for a hundred doctors to make sure he's wrong. If it's possibly, it's fifty; if it's for sure, it's a hundred." Meaning, we're not taking any risks to save our bodies. We're going to make sure we get fifty to a hundred opinions. But to save our souls, we're saying, "Listen, one rabbi said it's okay, so I'm doing it." We have one opinion; it's enough, and...

49:22Understand the logic here of the Yetzer Hara. The Yetzer Hara says, "Listen, one rabbi said it's okay," or "One rabbi didn't say anything, so it must be okay." By default, if he doesn't say, it must be okay. So we're gonna use his opinion. But how come when you had something possibly in the blood, and this and that, the hair looked right? You had a little zit over here; something happened. It was unusual. Fifty opinions were just the beginning. How come you double-checked so much? Because you're worried. So, at the very least, we should be worried about our neshamot. At the very least, we should be worried about our neshamot. So, the Yetzer Hara is going to convince us not to do it. And the way it works is like this. There was one time a story where these three thieves... See a guy and they say, one guy says, "Listen, I'm gonna steal his donkey." The other guy says, "I'm gonna steal his little sheep." The last guy says, "I'm gonna steal his clothes." Okay, so the first one waits for the guy to go inside wherever he was going and...

50:50...steals the sheep when the guy wasn't paying attention. He was focused on something else. He took the sheep immediately. The guy sees someone stealing his sheep. He wants to run after him, but who's going to watch my donkey? So the second guy comes and says, "I'll watch your donkey. Go, go chase him. Go get him." He goes chasing, chasing, chasing. He comes back without the sheep, and now he also doesn't have a donkey, and... So now he's so sad he doesn't know what to do. Another guy comes to him and says, "Listen, you know what? Looks like you need a cold drink. Why don't we go to the well together?" He goes, "Yeah, maybe, you know what, let's go to the well." They go to the well, and the second guy that brought him, invited him to help him out, pretends like his wallet fell into the well. He's like, "Listen, my wallet, you know how much money I have in that wallet? I need that wallet." I'll get a few because, listen, if you get my wallet, I have enough money in that wallet to buy you a new donkey and a new sheep. He jumps into the water after he takes off his clothes. The guy takes his clothes and runs away. There's no wallet, there's no nothing, and now he also doesn't have clothes. That, rabotai, is a nice story, but that's also the yetzer hara that we deal with every single day. First, he looks for you to not pay attention to the rules and...

52:17Instead of looking into the books, you look at some rabbi or some rabbinit that doesn't keep mitzvot. They say they're rabbis, they say they're rabbanit, they say they're religious, but they're not necessarily keeping. And you use that as an excuse for not doing it. You saw some guy driving on Shabbat, so you said, oh listen, he had a beard, so he must be religious. You're allowed to drive on Shabbat. Moshe Rabbeinu didn't have a car, that's why there was no driving then. Types of rules that you make in your mind. You're not paying attention to reality. That's the sheep. But yet, the satan doesn't finish with the sheep. He says, "Okay, you gave me the sheep because you didn't pay attention. Now I want to get something bigger. Now I want to get the real hotel. Now I want to get the donkey." Now, a person starts doing bad things gets used to doing bad things on a regular basis, and he starts giving up his world here. His main thing here is why he starts living a life without Torah, without mitzvot, without direction. The only direction that he gets is maybe from Oprah Winfrey, Hashem not so much. He looks at talk shows and self-help books for instructions instead of looking for instructions from Hashem. He looks for instructions from people.

53:45That's the Yetzirah. After that, the Satan says, "Listen, I have three jobs." The Gemara in Masechet Berachot says, "Satan, Malach HaMavet, and Yetzirah are all the same thing." First, the Yetzirah convinces you to make a sin, convinces you to wear something not modest, convinces you to turn on your phone on Shabbat, convinces you to watch TV on Shabbat, convinces you to watch TV, period. convinced you to do something against God because, hey, come on, does Hashem really care about this little thing? That's the Yetzer Hara. After you made the sin, he then becomes Satan. What's Satan? He goes up to Shamayim and says, "Hashem, look what Your son is doing. Look what he's doing. You just gave him $5,000 this week on one deal and look what he's doing with the money. He went to the casino." Look what he's doing with the money. He's buying things that are not allowed. He's buying non-kosher food. He's doing this. Look what he's doing with Your money, Hashem. He goes and he tells on you. After enough accounting is made, he says, okay, now I have to do my last job. It's called Malach Hamavet. Hashem sends him and he says, okay, we need to meet. And he sends him, Hashem. Now it's time to pay the bill. That's the close.

55:08That's the close. So all of these things need to remind us that on one end, there's a din, there's a dayan, there's someone that's watching, there's someone that cares. On the other hand, there's also good. Any man that is in business, which is most men today, prays to Hashem at least once, twice, three times, or fifty times a day for parnassah tovah. So you can afford to get another car, and another house, and another this, and another that, and pay for the yeshiva, and pay for the kollel, and pay for this, and pay for that. There's a lot of things to pay for. So you pray for parnassah tovah. There are a few amazing secrets in the Torah for parnassah tovah. The Zohar HaKadosh says a man that tells his wife to take off the kisui rosh—No, I don't want you to wear a scarf on your head, I want you to not cover it or to look like you're not covering it by wearing a wig—the Zohar HaKadosh says that's an arur. That person is cursed and everything he does is cursed. If Hashem wanted to give you a blessing for parnassah, that little single tiny statement you just made ruined everything.

56:36The opposite meaning if you tell your wife, "Honey, you know how beautiful you look with a nice scarf on your head. You know how beautiful you look with a nice hat on your head because now I know when I see you, you're mine. You're not somebody else's. Only I get to enjoy your beauty, not everyone else." So, a smart man that wants parnassah tova, that wants success in his business, already has a lot of zechuyot. Get your wife to be modest and... Get your wife to be modest. Why? Because every single time she's not modest, it leads somebody else to waste seed. It leads somebody else to make a sin. What do you think? It ends at his house? It ends at yours. So you be smart. Say, "Honey, I don't even like when you're not modest. Forget about it's not good. Forget it's not a sin. I don't like it." Every smart guy will realize he has to encourage his wife with good words, with soft words. You're not talking about getting home like I'm talking about. This is just to remind you to talk to your wife in a nice way and tell her how amazing she is when she's modest. And the best thing is, what do you do to finish it off? Honey, here's a credit card, buy whatever you want as long as it's modest. Buy it and...

58:00Why? The Gemara in Masechet Beitza, page 17a, and also Masechet Rosh Hashanah, page 17b, says if you use money that Hashem gave you for a mitzvah, Hashem pays for it. Meaning, Hashem decides in Shamayim that I'm going to give so-and-so $100,000. I'm going to give him $100,000. Now, this person wants to give tzedakah. Hashem says, that's not part of the parnasah I told you. You want to give $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 tzedakah, that's on top. Meaning, I already decided to give you $100,000. You decided to give $20,000 tzedakah, now I'm going to give you the $20,000 tzedakah back. That's the deal. Minimum, you get what you gave back. Why? Because that money, in essence, all you did is you took it from My hand and you gave it to one of My children. That's My responsibility.

59:02So you were a good employee. Thank you very much. Here's the money back. You lent me money. You became a shutaf with Hashem. Use money for Shabbat. A lot of people, sometimes, they're cheap on Shabbat. They go to a grocery store, they look, oh, this challah is too expensive. It's $4.99. Let's get the one for $3.50 that looks stale. We'll save $1.50 on Shabbat. No, it's tough times. Look, it's so cold outside. People try to save money on challot, people try to save money on candles, people try to save money on Shabbat. Why? Hashem's paying for it. Someone that has even an ounce of emunah goes shopping for Shabbat without looking at prices. If you like it, if you need it, you buy it. Why? Hashem's paying for it anyway. How do I know? I've been doing it for years. It's amazing. It's amazing. How do I see? I learned it from my Rav. Rav Ephraim, sheyichye. He is an avrech in the kollel, has already, Baruch Hashem, published six books. The seventh one, b'ezrat Hashem, is coming out soon. He hasn't hit 30 yet. On top of that, he's already written over 40 books for other rabbis. How much does he get? $500 a month. Avrech in the kollel, $500 a month. If he was American, he'd get $500,000 a month.

1:00:27Avrech in the kollel, kodesh kodeshim, $500 a month. Now, I went to visit him. It's like a little Gan Eden seeing him in operation. Why? You just see Gan Eden. You just see things that are beyond nature. So we went to the supermarket. I'm thinking, okay, listen, $500 a month. Of course, there's terumot. You can't live off of actual $500 a month. People donate to make up for, you know, you have five kids, six kids. It costs more than $500 a month in any country in the world. Even in third-world countries, it's more than $500 a month. But nonetheless, the salary itself at the kollel is $500 a month. So you're thinking that if someone was going to shortchange on chalav, instead of the $5, the $3, instead of the Coke, you get water from the fountain. Instead of the candles, you pretend like it's candles, but it's really just, you know, plastic. And all types of things to save money. That's what you expect. I go to the supermarket with him, and I see him with a cart, and he says to me, no, bring a cart. I said, you have one? He goes, yeah, yeah, bring one. Already, I was like, what's going on here? Who's coming?

1:01:30So we go shopping and he doesn't shop like us. You know, we go shopping and we take one. Oh, you know, sugar. Yeah, we need it. We put it nice and neat. Oh, candy. Yeah, the kids like it. We put it nice and neat. We put one and two and sometimes we indulge and we get three. Our father doesn't do such a thing. He shops like this. He sees an aisle. He sees something his wife or kids like. He goes like this and empties it into the cart. shops. It's unbelievable. We saw this card go through within moments. Then I said, "Wow, maybe you got a bonus." And I start filling up my cart, and we have two carts full, like my house, like a tractor trailer. We go to the cash register and

1:02:31he gives them a card, and this is not a credit card; it's a debit card. He gives it to them, and it goes through. I don't know, it was over, maybe like five or six hundred dollars. I just told you he makes five hundred dollars a month. So we finished. They pack everything up over there. It's not exactly the best customer service in the world, but nonetheless, we finished shopping. And he says, "Oh, Baruch Hashem, you just witnessed a miracle." I said, "What do you mean? What's the miracle?" He says, "Oh, I didn't know if there was any money in the bank. That's emunah. You see, Rabotai, that's emunah. One second, I have to press a button over here. Technical difficulties. So when you have emunah, you see what the Gemara says." Hashem says if you use the money that I gave you for mitzvot, I'll pay for it. I decided you're gonna get a hundred thousand, but if you use money for mitzvot, for Shabbat, for holidays, for Yeshivot, for Torah, I'll pay for it. Meaning that if you see that at the end of the year you...

1:03:57you made a hundred thousand but nothing was left, you got exactly what you deserve, like he said. But if you made a hundred thousand, and you were able to give a lot of tzedakah, you were able to do a lot of mitzvot, you were able to do a lot of good things with all this money, and on top of it you had something left, that's a good sign you have some bracha in your money. So it's wise to use your money for good things. One way that a person can actually get his bracha is to encourage his wife to be modest. One way that he can lose all of his bracha is to make sure that his wife is not modest. Like telling his wife, "You know what, you should wear something tighter." You know, you should do this. You should do this to make her look not modest. That's a person that doesn't like to have parnassah. That's a person that's ruining himself. So now you're going to ask me, well, how is it that some of these celebrities, some of these celebrities, the last thing on their mind is modesty. It's the opposite. Their business is lack of modesty. But they have an endless amount of money. On them, it's written in Parashat Va'etchanan.

1:05:19The last three verses. If you see people that are violating Shabbat, violating Hashem's name, violating and committing sins on a regular basis, but still look like they have material reward, just so you know, this is the most miserable person on earth. The reason why is because Hashem decided to pay them here. He's decided they have no Olam HaBa. This is a horrible, horrible situation. This is like somebody that has a disease that's going to kill him in a year, but he doesn't know it, so he still goes and works overtime to save for a vacation he's never going to have. He doesn't know he only has a year to live, so he goes and works overtime. He doesn't see his family, doesn't see his kids, and... Doesn't do anything fine because he's saving for next year's vacation. Little does he know he's not gonna see next year. That's that person, a person that you see gets a reward here, but Hashem has decided, "We're finished. I'm done with you." So, one way that a person can get this parnassah tova is through modesty.

1:06:42Another way to get miracles, including medical miracles, is shalom bayit. Shalom bayit. The Mishnah, which comes even before the Gemara, says that when a man and a woman merit to have shalom bayit, the Shechinah comes down. So the Chachamim, Commentary, what does this actually mean? It says that when there is shalom bayit, this is referring to the time of what we're going to read about in two weeks' parasha, Yitro. At Mount Sinai, Hashem brought down the Shechinah from where it was to this earth. Everyone saw the words and sounds of God; they saw, not just heard, they saw the sounds and... Do you see sounds, those images of sounds? It was actually scientific research done in a few different major institutions, one of them being in Israel, and a few software programs were developed to show that Hebrew, the holy language, is the only language where if you say it, it could actually make an image, a visual image.

1:08:06that looks exactly like the letter. Meaning, if you say Aleph, the program draws Aleph in 3D. If you say Bet, the program draws Bet. The letter Bet in 3D. If you say any other letter in any other language, it doesn't do it. There's an amazing book by Rabbi Zamir Cohen, the head of Hidabroot, that shows this research. It's really astounding. Anyone who doesn't have it can contact me. You can get it on the website. You can get it on... Amazon. You can get it on our website and so on. It's something that's a must-read for anyone who likes science. But nonetheless, Am Yisrael was able to see the sounds and noises from Hashem. But before all of this happened, Am Yisrael, if you remember, were slaves for a very long time. And they weren't slaves like today's slaves that get $150,000 a year for being a butler.

1:09:06Back then, if you didn't do the job, they'd chop off your arms, chop off your legs. People came to Mount Sinai missing eyes, missing limbs, missing this, missing that. And the Shechinah cannot come down to a place of imperfection. So the Malachim came to Hashem, the Gemara says, Malachim came to Hashem and said, "Hashem, there's a bunch of Ba'alei Mum, people that are deformed, missing arms, missing fingers, missing eyes, blind, deaf, broken back, and so on." You can't, you can't bring the Shechinah to such a place. Hashem said, no problem, I'll fix it. Everyone became perfect. The one that was blind started to see. The one that was crippled began to walk. The one that was missing an arm became like a starfish and had a new arm. Amazing. So the Mishnah says that Ish and Isha can have the same exact thing. One time somebody came to Rabbi Feinstein.

1:10:07He says, we had a daughter, and Hashem, she's been in the hospital since the day she was born. Check after check. They don't know what's wrong with her, but all they can tell us after four months of her being in the hospital is that she's dying. And we don't know why. Diagnosis, nothing. Illness, we don't know. Doctors, the best ones in the world. Nothing. So Rabbi Ephraim, he's not exactly a doctor. Talmid Chacham. Talmid Chacham says, let me look at the book. He says, let me ask you a question. How is your wife reacting to this? Ah, the wife. Sorry I didn't marry her. Well, strike one. But, okay, whatever, sorry you're married, but how is she reacting to this? Ah, it's all her fault. Strike two. Okay, but, fine, it's her fault, but are you helping her? No, listen, she doesn't deserve anything. Okay, strike three. That's your answer.

1:11:24He says, excuse me. He says, that's your answer. If you do what I tell you, that's going to be your answer. What is the answer? What are you talking about? You just asked me about my wife. I'm telling you, my daughter's dying. They're giving her a couple of weeks to live. She's a baby. She can't defend herself. What does it have to do with my wife that I don't even want to be married to? He says, exactly. If you do what I tell you, that means you're going to do what the Torah says. Do what the Torah says, you're going to have a miracle. What's the miracle? What are you talking about? It says, right now, the husband and wife do not have shalom bayit. If the husband and wife have no shalom bayit, the Shekhinah can't come. If the Shekhinah can't come, the child is going to stay sick. If you turn your frown, that upside-down smile, right side up, If you change your attitude, if you start honoring your wife, if you start respecting her, if you stop being cheap, if you start being generous, if you do this, if you do all these different things to create shalom bayit, mamash shalom bayit, not fake shalom bayit, the Shekhinah can come. And if the Shekhinah comes, miracles can happen. Not 30 days passed.

1:12:50Remember, the doctor said two weeks, four months in the hospital, two weeks left. A month passes, he comes back to Rav Fine. He says, "For the love, I just want to tell you that a miracle happened. The doctors just released my daughter. She's home, and before they released her, they asked me, 'How could it be? What happened? What did you give her? What did you do?'" It's not the same kid. Why was she even in the hospital for so long? It's two different bodies. So Shalom Bayit is not just a nice thing to have; it's a secret for success. If you're looking for miracles, it's one way to get it—health miracles, of course. The next thing is another way to get an extra blessing.

1:13:51all kinds, is something that's very logical? Hashem yitbarach says to the prophet Yirmiyahu, "If you bring someone precious when they used to be a zalul, they used to be not so precious, you will be like My mouth." So the chachamim say, Hashem is telling you a secret to success. What's the secret to success? This is the most important mouth that ever existed and ever will be—the mouth of Hashem. Anything He says, happens. He said the world should come up, the world came up. He said the sun should stay here, the sun stayed there. He said the tree should come up, the tree came up. He said the animals, the fish, this, that—everything He said came to life. In ten different utterances, He created the entire world. This is the Mishnah in Avot, chapter 5, Mishnah 1. In ten different utterances, He created the entire world. Meaning if He says something, it happens. But Hashem says to the prophet Yirmiyahu,

1:15:10If you bring something precious, when they used to be not so precious, you will be like My mouth. Meaning, you say something and I make it true. And the sages say to such an extent that even if Hashem says yes, and you say no, Hashem says, okay, I'll agree with him, no. You could change Hashem's word. What's the secret? Hashem happens to tell us His secret many times in the Torah. He says, I have children. Their name is Bnei Yisrael. Bnei Yisrael are very precious to me. They're my firstborn. I love them so much. I miss them so much, especially when they're far away. Especially when they don't even know that I'm their Father. Especially when they don't know that I care about them. Especially when they don't know that I want good for them. And I miss them. And I want them to come back. But they don't come back on their own. Now I have sons. And I have daughters. And it's great. But there's this one that's in the middle of New York missing. And there's another one in the middle of Florida missing. There's another one in California. There's another one. There's another one. There's another one. Today we have 80% of Am Yisrael missing. Hashem says, "You bring one. You bring one."

1:16:37back to Me, you will be like My mouth. You get someone to do teshuva, you pray, and I answer. It's a VIP. Your prayer will be like My words. So, this is the reason when people ask me, "Why would you leave Wall Street with millions and this and that, and all the material?" Okay, so you lost, you can make it back, and this and that. I said, "I have a much better deal." I I do what God says, He does the rest. This, Rabotai, is something that every single person can do. You don't need to be a speaker. All you need to do is care. All you need to do is care. You have family, you have friends, you have neighbors, you have people in your kehillah, in your community. Unless you live in Bnei Brak, where everyone's religious, the reality is you probably know somebody that's violating Shabbat. The reality is you probably know one woman that's not modest. The reality is you probably know somebody that doesn't keep Taharat HaMishpacha. The reality is you probably know somebody that's not keeping mitzvot. Now if you come to them and you yourself are not keeping, it's better off you didn't say anything. Why? Because you're making it a joke.

1:17:57So first, we have to do teshuva ourselves. You can't come to a woman and tell her, listen, you should be modest when you yourself are wearing a miniskirt. Oh, you know, the rabbi said that if you do this, this, and this, it's not good, and you yourself are doing it. Then you're making it a joke. It's better off you didn't say anything. But if we first start working on ourselves and we start doing teshuva, the best thing we can do for ourselves is to get other people to join us. People are going to ask you, why did you start covering your body? You used to wear fewer clothes than everybody else. What changed? You're not hot anymore? Oh, God doesn't like it. What do you mean God doesn't like it? Look at what the Prophet Isaiah said: all the things you show are going to end up becoming rotten, all the things will become moldy, all the punishment. I'm not reading to you guys. If you want to read it, I told you the verses, you can read it. Horrible, horrible things he says. And the Gemara Masechet Shabbat goes into more details. Scary, scary. So if we start becoming modest, then we could tell you, "You know, I'm doing it not because I all of a sudden like to cover my hair. I like my hair. Not because I like to wear extra clothes. I'm more comfortable with less. Not because..."

1:19:27I like long skirts. I'm actually more comfortable with pants, but it doesn't matter what I like. No, it matters what God likes because He's the boss. He's the one that's in charge of whether I'm going to have bracha or not. He's the one that's in charge of whether I'm going to have parnasah or not. I want my kids to succeed. I want my husband to succeed. I want to remain healthy. I want to have blessing. I want to have parnasah. I want to have refuah shleimah. I want to have all the good in this world and the next world forever. He's the one in charge. I can't go to anyone else. I can't ask someone else. I can't go, "Hey Bill Gates, listen, can you take care of my health?" Hey, Warren Buffett, can you please give us a house? Hey, Donald Trump, can you please give us, no, good kids? I can't go to anyone else. All I can do is go to Hashem. So if I'm going to go to Hashem and ask Him for a bunch of things, at the very least, I should do something that He said to do. I'm obligated to do it anyway, even without asking. So it's not that I necessarily like it. I like Him.

1:20:39Eventually, you start realizing that you do actually like it because it gives you a feeling that immodesty can never give you. In Parashat Kedoshim, Hashem says, "Be holy because I am holy. Sanctify yourself; make yourself holy because I am holy." That's the sign that you're My children if you feel holy. That's good. That's good. But if you're immodest, it's impossible for you to feel holy. You could pretend like you're holy. There are a lot of people that pretend to be holy. But in reality, everyone knows. Everyone knows. Everyone knows whether they're righteous or not. Everyone knows the truth. Hashem says, "I want you to feel holy." When a woman is modest, she feels holy. She has a feeling that's beyond what any man can feel normally. A man can only reach such a level after he has studied extensively, after he has learned a lot of Torah, after he has prayed, after he has put a lot of effort into it. Why? Because he doesn't have that built-in inclination, that built-in spirituality. Women are naturally higher in spirituality than men. That's why men are obligated to learn Torah, and women are obligated to learn the basics. Still obligated to learn Torah. You can't know nothing, because then how do you know if you're keeping?

1:22:03You need to know the basics, but men are obligated to learn above and beyond. Why? Because in order for them to reach a higher level of spirituality, a higher level of closeness, a higher level of holiness for Hashem, they have to learn a lot more. Women, one tear and they're already up there. One tear and they're already in Shamayim and they're talking to Hashem, to the malachim, everything is good. One tear. Men, you have to punch them in the face for them to cry. And even then, he wants to act tough, like it doesn't hurt. So, a woman could have a special feeling of holiness, a special feeling of holiness when she's modest. I know from my wife, God bless her, she's a very beautiful woman. And before we did teshuvah, before everything, before the whole story began, I mean, one of the things that was a special beautiful feature about her was her hair. So, when we found out that she has to cover her hair, for me, it's not a problem. Why? It's not my hair. I don't have to wear it. I wear a kippah. I don't mind the kippah. For her, it's a big deal. Why? It's a very big symbol of her beauty. In the beginning, it was tough. In the beginning, it was very tough for her. She did it, but it was tough. Why? It's a very big adjustment.

1:23:28Very big adjustment. But she tells me now that after she went through that initial transition period of understanding why, who, what, when, and how, Hashem gave her a special feeling of holiness every time she wore it to such an extent that now she wears it to go to sleep too. Not as tight and so on like she does during the regular day, but she says, I want to go, when I go to sleep, I put my kisui rosh. Why? I feel protected. Feel close to Hashem. I feel if I'm not wearing it, Hashem goes away somewhere. He's not protecting me as much. It's different. I don't understand this. Maybe you women can understand it. The point is, Rabotai, when you actually protect yourself like you are a priceless jewel, Hashem gives you the feeling that you are. When you treat yourself like you're just some abandoned property, Hashem gives you the feeling that you are. When the men use their money like it's poker chips that are made out of plastic and are not worth anything, that's what your finances will be like. You'll work till no end, and you'll never have enough. When you use the money that He gives you for good things, when you use your time,

1:24:56Do good things like learning Torah, fulfilling His will, and making your job part of your life and not your life. It's part of your life, not your life. Even if you make a million dollars a minute, it's not your life. It's part of your life. If your job is your life, you have no life. Because if you get fired, or the business goes bankrupt, or you sell the business, then what? So if your job is your life, you have no life. So we have to know that your job is part of life. It's necessary. You need to make a living. You need to do what you have to do. Fine. But if it becomes part of your life, then you can actually be better at two things. You can be better at your job and better at life. Why? Because if it's part of your life, that means that if I'm already doing it, I'm doing it because I want to get to my life. So I might as well do this as well as possible so I can finish early. And not have to do even more of it. So I go home. So you don't go there and instead of selling whatever it is that you're selling, buying whatever it is that you're buying, doing whatever it is that you're doing, instead of wasting time playing on your phone on Facebook, you're actually doing your job. You're being productive. You're ambitious. You're doing what you have to do. You finish your job, you go home, you actually start life. You actually become better at your job by making it not your life.

1:26:21then you become better at life too. Why? Because you've been waiting for your life the whole day. You see your wife, you see your kids, you see your Torah, you see all the good things that are real life, and all of a sudden you start enjoying. All of a sudden you start enjoying life. You start realizing there's a bigger purpose. You start realizing you're not a cow that's just here to eat and drink. There's more to life than just that. So, of course, all of the things that I'm telling you are a transition. All of the things that I'm telling you take time. nonetheless, the decision to do all of it is secondary. If you're already going to work, at least work and have blessing. If you're already going to do anything in life, at least make sure it's done well; otherwise, you're just wasting your time. You want blessings when it comes down to teshuvah. You want blessings when it comes down to parnassah tovah. These are just a few tiny secrets of how to do it. The secret to keep yourself motivated is to learn Mussar. If you're getting a positive feeling out of all this and you're encouraged to maybe change and improve yourself, the secret to continuing to have this fire is to learn Mussar. Mussar is an obligation for everyone to learn because even though learning halachot, learning the laws of Judaism, is important and...

1:27:48If you don't have the fire, eventually you're not going to want to learn. Sometimes you have certain people, they know all the laws but they don't know how to behave. They can tell you every single page of the Shulchan Aruch and what it says, and how it says, and who says what, and who says this, and who says that, and why he says this, and why he says that. But when you tell the guy, "Excuse me," he looks at you like you have six heads. Like, just basic etiquette—nothing. Non-existent. That's because the Shulchan Aruch does not teach Mussar. That's not its sole purpose. You can learn Mussar from the mitzvot, but nonetheless, it's not the sole purpose of the Shulchan Aruch. Learning Mussar is learning etiquette. It's learning how to behave, how to be a human being. My father used to tell me, and still does to this day, "First of all, be a decent human being." Someone came to the Vilna Gaon, zt"l, and he said, "The Gra once said, 'To fix your middot, to fix your character traits, is your sole purpose in the world. That's why you came here. Not just the Vilna Gaon—all of us—to fix your character traits. That's your purpose.'" Anyway, people always ask at some point in their life—at least they should ask—"Why did I come to the world?"

1:29:15Does Hashem need another Jew? Does Hashem need another goy? Does Hashem need another woman? Does Hashem need another man? Does Hashem need another black guy? Another white guy? Another Asian guy? What does Hashem need all this for? For what? Your purpose is to fix yourself. You've been here before, like I have, and you didn't finish the job. You messed up somewhere. Hashem sent you again to fix it. How do you know what to fix? Whatever is most difficult. If you are quick to get angry, That's why you're here. You're here to fix that anger. If you're a stingy person, if before you take out a dollar, you do Shema Yisrael, that's what you came to the world to fix, that middah. There was one time a guy, they were asking for tzedakah, they were asking for tzedakah, finally, they got the tzedakah, and George Washington said, "It's so hot in there. I've been there for a while." So cheap he doesn't want to take the money out of his pocket—if that's your character trait, that's what you have to fix. If you like attention to such an extent that you want every single thing that moves to look at you, that's what you have to fix. If you can't stop eating, that's what you have to fix. If you're looking at me like I'm a hamburger, you have to fix that.

1:30:41So on and so forth, each one of us has one, two, three, four, five, or ninety different things to fix. That's why you're here. So the student of the Vilna Gaon said, "For the love of fixing yourself, if fixing your middot is why you came here, why isn't it one of the 613 mitzvot?" We have 613 mitzvot from God, 7 from the rabbis. Most people think it's the opposite. Most people think it's 613 from the rabbis, 7 from God. 613 from God. Not all of them are applicable to us, simply because we're not all women, we're not all men, we're not all kohanim, and we don't have the Beit HaMikdash. On average, an average person can do about half of them. Or should do and needs to do half of them. So they asked the Vilna Gaon, why... Didn't that person come to the shiur, the kollel? No, I didn't ask that. They asked how come the mitzvah of fixing your middot is not one of them. Why? He says because the mitzvot are supposed to be utilized in a way that they are fixing your middot. That's the point of all the mitzvot. The point of saying,

1:32:02We wake up in the morning, we say, thank you, Hashem, for bringing me back my neshama because You had emunah in me. What do you mean You had emunah in me? Hashem had emunah in you? Yes, rabotai. The Gemara says that when someone goes to sleep, it's one-sixtieth of death, meaning the neshama left the body. It went to Shamayim. It said, Hashem, I'm not going back. Look what he did. He stole from this one. He lied to that one. He looked at that one. He did this one. He reports on you. She wore this instead of that. She did this instead of that. He's telling on you. It's your own neshama. I'm not going back. I was pure before you put me in. Look at this body. Hashem says, no, no, no. I believe in him. I believe in her. Go back. No, Hashem. Go back. No. I command you. Meaning your neshama does not want to go back. But Hashem commands you to come back. Why? He says He has emunah in you. Today you're going to do teshuva. But that's to teach you something every morning. The first few words that you have to say when you first wake up. Why? Learn the trait of gratitude. Be grateful. Because there are a few people that Hashem hates.

1:33:27One of them is an ungrateful person. Someone you did good for, and he returns bad to you or forgets to say thank you. It's a very, very disgusting character trait. Ungrateful people. So, the first thing Hashem says, this little tiny mitzvah, yes, thank you, you're thanking Me. Thank you very much for the thank you. But in reality, you should use that same gratitude in your day-to-day life. With your employees, with your boss, with the clerk, with the waiter, with the wife, with the kids, with everything. Say thank you. Stop thinking the world owes you anything. No one owes you anything. Say thank you. The next thing is you have to wash your hands. There are several different reasons why you have to wash your hands, having to do with spirits and so on, but also to teach you cleanliness. You're not a monkey. You shouldn't eat like one. You shouldn't act like one. The Gemara says in Brachot that if, chas v'shalom, someone has someone die in his house,

1:34:43And in those days, it wasn't like today; some of the houses are 20 rooms, Baruch Hashem. In those days, everybody was relatively humble. The house was one room. There were no bedrooms. There were no bathrooms. The bathroom was outside of the city. There was a hole in the wall. There was a hole in the ground. So the whole house was a room. It says, if someone had someone die in his house, now there's no Chevra Kadisha that comes five minutes later. It takes time. So there's a body in the house. You're still a human; you still get hungry even though you're crying, crying, crying. Okay, eventually, you stop crying, and you get hungry again. So it says, what are you going to do? The body's tamei, the body's impure. It says make a separation. Make a separation if you have some gap in a wall or some type of vilon, as we say in English, a curtain of some kind separating it. 30 years in America and still don't know English. Some type of curtain, something separating why it's not covered to someone that died, to show him something that he can't do. That's why also you can't wait to eat next to them. It's not nice; they can't do the mitzvot anymore. It's not because it's impure and so on. It's because it's not nice because even though the body is dead, the neshama is still there and sees everything.

1:36:13He says, don't eat next to it, have a separation. The Gemara says, what if you don't have a curtain? He says, then turn around. If there's no curtain and there's no other room, turn around and have your back facing the body. Don't eat mamash on top of the body. So I had a question: why didn't the Gemara just say, go outside? What do you have to eat next to the body for? Go outside! Why? The secret is, rabotai, because only a dog eats outside. Meaning, it's better that you eat next to a dead body than go eat your little shawarma sandwich in the middle of the street and you have tahina over here and tahina over there, and tahina over here, and you look like one of the animals. Why? The mitzvot are there to teach you to be a human being, not to eat hot dogs in the middle of the street where everyone needs to see what's inside your mouth. These are basic minimal things that make sense to everybody here. But all of us have committed this sin at some point, myself included. Why? We didn't think like God. That's why Hashem says, "I don't think like you."

1:37:41So this, Rabotai, are a few small tokens that you can take home. And the most important thing, like I said, is to keep this fire, to continue learning all of these different character traits that are going to fix your life. If something is missing, it can fix it. If something is lacking, it can fix it. You have to learn Mussar. You have to learn Mussar. Why? Because Mussar is the potion. It's the cure to everything. It will teach you to not only become a better Jew, it will teach you to become a better person. We have Jews in the world. We have, Baruch Hashem, we have Jews. But we need better people too. Now, when the two are together, we have a good Am Yisrael. Something we could write home about, say, "Hashem, look. We really did teshuva. We really did teshuva. We keep Shabbat. We keep this, we keep this, we keep this, and on top of it, we keep all the nations. Look at us. Say, 'Wow, look at how civilized these people are. Look at how honest they are. Look at how modest they are. Look at how good they are.' We have something to be proud about. But if we act like goyim and...

1:39:06And we act like them. Then one of the Gedolei HaDor said, right before the Holocaust, if a Jew does not make themselves holy, Hashem sends the goy to make Havdalah. If a Jew does not sanctify himself, the goy makes Havdalah. If a Jew doesn't sanctify themselves, Hashem sends the goy to separate, to make sure he realizes you're not like us, stop pretending you're a goy. So before the Holocaust, a lot of people always ask this question: Why this, and why this, and why this, and why that? The why is very simple, it's written in the Torah. Parashat Bechukotai, Parashat Ki Tavo. The simple answer is the accounting of Hashem we don't know, but we do know what He did say. He did say that if we start acting like goyim, we start intermarrying, we start doing things that are not holy, He's going to make sure that He's going to use that same goyim we're pretending to be like to remind us that we're not goyim.

1:40:17So if we decide to make Shabbat like any other day and not keep it—Shabbat is like Monday, Shabbat is like Tuesday, Shabbat is like Wednesday—and we decide that we want to drive on Shabbat, we want to go to restaurants on Shabbat, we want to play with our phone on Shabbat, we want to do all the different things that we do the rest of the week, because Shabbat is like every other day for us, Hashem says, I'm going to have to send the goy to remind you it's not. People ask why did the Holocaust happen? All you need to do is look at statistics in Germany. There was over 80% assimilation, meaning over 80% of the Jews decided to marry goyim. They liked the goyim so much they married them. Just like what happened with the prophet Yeshayahu when he said to the women of Am Yisrael, "You know what you're gonna do? You're gonna marry the Romans and..." Want to be with you? She says, oh, let him come. Let us marry the Romans then. It's not an option. So all these different things are a little bit of a wake-up call. I know it's a little bit different than some of the lectures you hear, but again, I'm hoping that it's helpful. Now you can ask any question that you want, relevant or not relevant. Hashem will give me the answer. Anyone have questions? You can ask, same price.

1:41:43Usually, there's 500 questions after I shut off the camera. On camera, no one wants to ask questions. So, wait a few minutes. Questions? Nothing? No questions? I have a question. Okay, go ahead. There are a lot of people, I speak Hebrew more often. Yes, okay. Yes, yes. There are a lot of people who are, like you said, rabbis, rabbanim. And on top of this line, you can say that many people believe in them, and many of them come to them, and they do sermons with them, and still, they make mistakes and give the okay that they are allowed to do things that are forbidden, like to wear a veil, for example. Yes. Oh, you are God. God is great. Why is everything in the West? So I wanted to know, there are so many rabbis like that. Yes. And there are so many religious people today who say they are so religious and believe in them. Now you are saying that it is forbidden to wash your mouth. It is forbidden. It is forbidden, I also know that it is forbidden. But there are a lot of people who are washing their mouths up to here. Most of the people of Israel who are Haredim are learning. They are strong religious rabbis. They are big rabbis who come to their homes and make sermons. How can you believe in such a thing?

1:42:57okay, so there's a pasuk that answers your question. So she's asking, there are many, many rabbis that say one thing, but in reality, it's quite different. One example that she mentioned is that wigs, in reality, are not allowed. Now, anyone that wants to learn about the truth behind wearing wigs, which is mamash a plague within the religious world—plague being a bad thing because most religious women wear wigs. they're religious, but they're wearing wigs. According to our research, more than 127 poskim throughout history, going all the way back to Yonatan Ben Uzziel, who is from the Gemara, when he would study Torah and a bird flew over him, the bird would catch fire. He said it's not allowed, but we're saying today, the local rabbi says it is allowed, so we're going to listen to the local rabbi today. Yonatan ben Uziel, Kodesh Kodeshim from the Gemara, says no, but today they say yes. Or going all the way up to Rav Ovadia. Anyone who's Sephardic holds by Rav Ovadia most of the time. He also said it's not allowed for reasons of modesty. It's not a modest thing. Now, I've made several shiurim about the truth behind wigs. But even if you want to use the handful of poskim that are Ashkenazi, that say it's allowed to wear wigs...

1:44:22Many like to use the Lubavitcher Rebbe from Chabad. I love HaShalom. They want to use him as an excuse to wear wigs. Now, I've made extensive shiurim about why this is really not what he says and why his wife and his mother both covered their hair with a hat and not a wig. I actually showed the pictures; you can look it up online. So, if he believed in a wig, his wife would wear a wig, and he believed in a wig, his mom would wear a wig. But the proof is in the pudding; it's quite the opposite. I have this, so you can't say his wife is going against him, his mom is going against him, everyone's going against him. You can't logically think like this. Now, on top of that Even if you want to use the heter, you want to use the leniency from the Ashkenazi rabbis as a Sephardic, which is not allowed. There's one thing that all rabbis, all rabbis in all of history, from the beginning of the world all the way to the end of the world, that kosher rabbis are always going to agree on. The Gemara in Masechet Avodah Zarah says you're not allowed under any condition to benefit from idol worship. Meaning when Yehoshua bin Nun...

1:45:44Was good old Yehoshua bin Nun that took control after Moshe Rabbeinu. He came, they crossed the Jordan River. Hashem split the river into two like Yam Suf, another miracle. They split the river, they go to Eretz Yisrael, which was called Canaan at the time. You had a first mitzvah. What's the first mitzvah? Burn all the Asherah trees. What did the trees do? What did the trees do, you ask? What did the trees do? They didn't do anything, that means nothing. I'm telling you, they didn't do anything. I talked to them, they didn't say anything. I said, no, no, no, the trees, somebody worshipped them. Who? Somebody worshipped them in the past. Okay, but it's not the trees' fault that someone worshipped them. They have nice apples, they have nice oranges, they have nice this, they're nice. We're not going to worship them. No. Once someone worshipped them, that's it. You cannot benefit from them. You can't take fruits from them. Okay, fine, let's cut them up and make paper. No, you can't make paper out of them. Okay, let's burn them up and make fire. No, not to benefit. In any way, the only thing you can do with them is burn them to destroy them, not to benefit from the heat.

1:46:49Once something is used for idolatry, it cannot be something that a Jew benefits from in any way, shape, or form. You can't make paper out of it. You can't burn it for heat. You can't put it on your head. You can't eat it. You can't do anything with it. The only thing you can do is destroy it. Now, I was on Wall Street doing research for investments in businesses, in markets, in industries at the highest level you could imagine. That was my profession for almost two decades. You could say I was pretty good at my job. CNBC agreed, Bloomberg agreed, and CNN all agreed. And the clients agreed. And the bank account also agreed. This is what I did, research. I identified markets and so on and so forth. So you can't say I don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to research.

1:47:50Has nothing to do with Torah. This was my profession for two decades. Now I did research, myself and my team, on wigs. As a matter of fact, I already knew about wigs even before I became religious. I happened to watch an independent film by Chris Rock many years ago. I've always found it strange that people put wigs on their heads. Anyway, I watched this movie. But anyway, once I became religious... Realized this is not a small local problem. This is mamash an epidemic. So, I did some research on it, and after extensive research, based on my knowledge and expertise, it's impossible—impossible, meaning a 0% chance—for you to have any confidence whatsoever that your wig is not sourced from idol worship and The reason why is because more than 90% of the hair in the world that goes into wigs comes from India, and India has a culture of idolatry with over 80,000 religions, all of which are idol worship. All of which have the same cultural belief that they'll donate their hair. It's called tonsuring. As part of their idolatry, they shave their heads and give the hair to the idols, and

1:49:11sometimes because the idol got hit in the head and he got a bald spot, so they give him the hair for that. Sometimes because the idol was broke, so they want to sell their hair to give him money. All types of stupid reasons, but nonetheless, this is all forms of idol worship and now people argue, "No, no, but there are wigs coming from Brazil, there are wigs coming from Cambodia, there are wigs coming from China, there are wigs coming from Europe," and so on and so forth. We did the research. No, there isn't. There is a small portion of wigs coming from different markets, but it's not the market. Meaning, there is a practice in Russia that's awful but nonetheless existent where they go to the women's jails, beat them up, and then shave their heads and sell the hair. It's horrible. It's terrible, but when it comes to business, it's not enough people to create a market. There aren't jail cells full of millions and millions of women. Okay, so it's a few thousand women you shave the head. That's not a market; that's maybe a store. Because each wig, just so you know, each wig is not made from one woman's hair for one wig. Each wig is three heads.

1:50:22Each wig is made from the hair of three heads. So even if you had, let's say, a thousand cellmates that shaved their heads, and it took them 20 years to grow their hair, that's only 300 wigs. That's not even enough to stock a store. So, obviously, Russia is not the market. You go to Europe and ask your European friends in Italy, England, and France. By the way, how many bald-headed women are walking around who don't have some type of disease? They start laughing at you. like nobody shaves their head, maybe some random strange people do it for other reasons, but it's not a practice. And even if they did, they would do it for a lot of money, which means that the wig, instead of costing two or three thousand dollars, will cost more like twenty thousand dollars. Because the woman selling her hair, which took her 20 years to grow, is not selling it for 50 bucks. So it's not Europe, it's not Italy. Then they said, no, no, it's Brazil. The label says "Made in Brazil." I called some people in Brazil. I told them, "By the way, do you guys have a practice of shaving your head?" They started laughing at me. They said the people from Brazil are more likely to die from starvation before selling their hair. It's the nature of the people. It's not anything. I didn't create it. They said it. This leaves us with India. Why India?

1:51:47Even if you had some random people in different places selling their hair, it still would not be a market. The reason is because even if a bunch of people sold hair, it would still be for a price—50 bucks, 500 bucks, a thousand bucks, whatever. People value their hair, and all of that is much more expensive than free. And that's the point—the Indians give their hair for free. It's not one or two Indians. If you look at the research we have, I could provide it to you if you'd like. Over 20 million people show up to these temples on an annual basis—20 million. That's a market. Over 1 billion people in India, statistically, have donated their hair at least two and a half times. That's a market. That's a market. 10,000, 20,000, 30,000. It's not a market. That's a store. That's a community. So when it comes down to the wigs, unfortunately, Am Yisrael is suffering because Am Yisrael is ignoring the problem. The problem is not just the immodest aspect of it. The fact that there are 117, or more than 127 actually, poskim that say it's not allowed in...

1:53:09To wear a wig all the way from the days of the Gemara until today is not even relevant anymore. It doesn't matter whether it's modest or not. What matters is that it's avodah zarah. And avodah zarah you cannot benefit from. Because once the wig, even if there's one hair, you have however many hairs in an average wig, 30, 40, 50,000 hairs in an average wig. some more, some less, some are really long, some are short, but there are a lot of hairs in every wig. If one hair—not the whole wig, just one hair—came from avodah zarah (idolatry), you have to burn the whole thing because you don't know which hair it is. That's why I say that it's impossible to find a kosher wig. There is no such thing. There is no such thing as a kosher wig. Why? Because you cannot confirm the source. And as a secret to the wicked rabbis who pretend to be rabbis that are causing people to sin, they say that there's such a thing as kosher wigs and put a certification on it. How many certification companies are there for wigs that make them kosher? One. There's one. For meat, there's a new one every week.

1:54:32For all types of food, there's a new one every week. There's a bunch of them. There's OU, there's U, there's K, there's Star-K, there's this one, there's that one, there's a million and a half different ones. For wigs, there's only one. Why is there only one? Two reasons. Number one, no one believes that you can kasher a wig. No real chacham really believes you can kasher a wig. Why? How are you going to kasher it? How do you know where it came from? You have to follow the hair from the source all the way to the new head. You have to follow the wig. Okay, okay, Mr. Wig, me and you are going to come. We're going to go to the wig. Oh, here, honey, here. You have to go from the factory all the way to the wife. It's impossible. Because even if you got it from the factory, it wasn't idol worship. You don't know if it's going from India now to China for processing. You don't know where China is getting other hair from. They could be mixing it with other hair. And even if China doesn't do it, then they send it to France, or they send it to Italy, or they send it somewhere else. They put other hair. They put other things. The point is that you have to follow it from point A all the way to Z in order to make sure it's kosher. It's not possible. What's the second reason? That there's only one, because the guy behind it, the guy behind the kosher certification, doesn't actually believe that it needs to be kosher. Because when Rav Elyashiv came out 14 years ago and said you're not allowed to use these wigs from India and

1:55:57He said against Rav Elyashiv, and he published this. This is public knowledge. It's not like some conspiracy theory. He wrote it, and he says even if the wigs come from India, and even if they come from idolatry, still it's no problem. Meaning, he doesn't believe there needs to be any kashrut. It's like somebody says, there's no such thing as kosher meat, but I'll be the mashgiach for you. Do you understand? So all of these different things, unfortunately, are... existed and on a pasuk on them it says in the book of Isaiah, "They honored me with their mouths and with their lips, but their hearts were far away from me." People speak big and They say they're tzaddikim, they say they're this, they say they're that, but in reality, their hearts are very, very different. That's why the onus is on us, on all of us, to double-check everything. It doesn't matter if anyone said it. You don't learn from just simple people. If you're going to change your life for someone, because someone said something in a lecture, you have to double-check. You have to double-check. Okay, does God say it? Is that God's opinion? Show me in the book.

1:57:15show me a verse, show me where it says it in the book. Is it your opinion or is it God's opinion? If it's your opinion, thank you very much, but I'm not interested. What is it like? Somebody went to a kosher store and asked the guy, "Listen, I want to see the kosher certificate." He says, "Listen, for the Rav, you have nothing to worry about." "Okay, I understand you say I have nothing to worry about, but I want to see the kosher certificate before I eat here." Look at the wall; it has Baba Sali. Look at all the pictures I have on the wall. Look at all these. He says, "You know what, I agree with you. If they were here serving the sandwich and your picture was on the wall, I'd eat here. But until that happens, let me see the certificate." Let me see it in the book. Let me see what the sages say. Let's not trust people's words. Why? Because people sometimes make mistakes. Sometimes they make sins. Whatever it is, you have to double-check. You can't go up to Shamayim and say, no, no, the rabbi said it. What do you mean the rabbi said it? You double-checked what he said? If the rabbi says go kill somebody, are you going to go kill somebody? If the rabbi says go jump off a bridge, are you going to jump off a bridge? Double-check. It's your life. It's on the line. It's not just his. Maybe he doesn't care about his life. Maybe he's suicidal. Maybe he's crazy. Who knows?

1:58:36Okay, so for shalom bayit, shalom bayit is very, very dear to Hashem. As we said, when there is shalom bayit, the Shechinah comes. The Shechinah comes to a place where there is shalom bayit. As we said earlier with the story with Rav Efraim... Someone wants medical miracles. Someone wants financial miracles. You must, must work on shalom bayit to such an extent that Hashem says, when Sarah Imeinu heard that the malachim said, next year you're going to have a son, she laughed. And she said, how am I going to have a son? My husband's so old. Hashem said to Avraham, "Avraham, why did Sarah laugh and say, 'Am I going to have a son? I'm old.'" She didn't say, "I'm old." She said, "My husband's old." Why did Hashem change the wording a little bit? Why did He change it?

1:59:51Because Hashem teaches us the significance of Shalom Bayit, where He says, Shalom Bayit is so important to Me that I knew that I needed to change the truth a little bit. Why? Because if I would have told Avraham Avinu, "Avraham, your wife thinks you're old," Avraham would have been upset, chas v'shalom, and it would have created a Shalom Bayit problem. It's a big problem. So you're right that Shalom Bayit is very, very important. But... the big but. If your wife told you, "Honey, I love you. You're so dear to me. You're so amazing. You know what? You are the most precious jewel on earth for me, but I need you to give me a present. A present for our anniversary. What is it? I want you to get my boss's head and put it on our Shulchan Shabbat for us. My boss is so nice to me. I want his head." Like some people put deer on their walls, I want his head on my Shulchan Shabbat. Are you allowed to do it? Shalom bayit. You cannot make a mitzvah by way of aveirah is my point. Meaning, yes, shalom bayit is very, very important. But you're not allowed to go benefit from idol worship.

2:01:08Become a modest for the sake of shalom bayit. There's one "de'ish" that calls himself a rabbi, wears a hat, has long peyot, looks more religious than anybody you see in the pictures, but in essence, the guy is a rotzeach. He actually says in a lecture — I heard it with my own ears, it's not a rumor, it's mamash — he says on a regular basis that if your wife tells you she wants to go to the mixed beach on Shabbat for shalom bayit, you should take her and... This is a person that deserves to go to the zoo, not to a kehillah to give, you know. You can't listen to such people. So there are rules, and you have to double-check these rules in the books. If it's written in a book that for the sake of shalom bayit you're allowed to worship idols, ashrecha. Show it to me, I'll do it. But it's not sustained. There's no such heter. There's no such leniency, and that's the reality. So, shalom bayit, no shalom bayit, you can't do it. Now, a woman is allowed to wear a wig inside the house as long as it's not avodah zarah. But, like I said, avodah zarah is a serious problem. Some say that the synthetic wigs are not a problem, but recent research showed that about two to three percent of every synthetic wig is actually real hair. So, they're also a problem. They're also a problem.

2:02:24The point I'm trying to make is that I know it's a difficult mitzvah for some women. I understand, but remember, it's not necessarily supposed to be easy. If I told you, listen, if you work a regular job from 9 to 5, you come in at 9, you sit at the desk, you answer the phones, there's three phone calls a day, and... You go home at 5, you have a lunch break for an hour, and you're going to make 500 bucks a week. You're going to say, okay, not bad. But then I say, listen, on the other hand, you can work, start at 8. So it's an hour early. And you finish work at 5:30, half an hour late. So already it's an hour and a half more. Top of it, your whole schedule is full—meeting after meeting, phone call after phone call, nonstop busy—you don't have enough time to breathe, but you make a million dollars a week. But so now, and I have more, it's a lot more difficult. Which one do you do? Do you even consider the $500? You don't. That's us, Rabotai. Yes, it's hard.

2:03:37As a matter of fact, it's easy to be a guy today because you live in me time, like me. It's easy to be a guy. But if you're a Jew and a righteous Jew amongst the wicked, your salary is multiples after multiples after multiples of the multiples—much greater than it would have been if everyone else was tzaddikim also and... If everyone's tzaddikim, and everyone's Avraham Avinu, and everyone's Sarah Imeinu, it's not so special that you're also. The fact that everyone else is going against the tide, or is going one way, and you're going against it, that makes you special. That makes you chosen, that makes you a Patach. Like my mouth, you will be. And that's what Hashem wants to give you. But you have to give Him a reason. I know it's not easy. It wasn't easy for me to adjust. It wasn't easy for anybody to adjust. But I promise you that once you connect to Hashem, really, life is amazing. Why? Because once you connect to Hashem, really, you never have a problem again. You have problems, but you never have a problem. How could it be? You know, problems happen.

2:04:45But now when you're connected to Hashem, you know that He's been here for a while and He's got it under control. Once He's got it under control, it's not my problem anymore. Someone asked, "Listen, these shiurim you do, how much do you charge?" I said 50 people. So what do you mean, 50 people? I said, just bring 50 people, and I'm gonna come. It's like, yeah, but how much money is that? I said, 50 people. No, no, no, money. How much? I said, free, no money. No money exchanged. If they want to donate, donate. They asked, how are you gonna live? How are you gonna support yourself? CDs cost money, the TTC costs money. I said, everything costs money: the ticket here costs money, everything costs money. You're not gonna charge? I said, no. They said, well, how could it be? I said, because if I tell him, listen, in reality, when I was on Wall Street, I made $3,200 an hour. So I want the same rate. I want to come give you guys a two-hour lecture, $6,400 later, goodbye. Oh, on top of it, it cost me flight, cost me this. By the end of the day, $50,000 a day. That $50,000, you may even agree, because you like me and I'm charming, but someone may get disgusted.

2:06:04So this guy's only here for the money. I'm not going to listen to what he says. And I may cause somebody to not do teshuva. That's a serious problem. So to eliminate that risk, I say it's free. Why? I'm going to do what HaShem says. The rest of it is His business. It's His problem. That's the mentality, Rabotai. I know it's hard. It's hard for me. It's hard for you. It's hard for everyone. But that's the point of being a Jew. If it's not hard, you're not a Jew. I deal with a lot of converts all the time. They tell me it's so hard. I say, yes, exactly. Welcome to the club. We suffered for 3,300 years. You're just suffering for three months. Big deal. Big deal. Let's pay the dues. You have 3,300 years to go. Next question. Come, ask. Free.

2:07:06evidence like what? Like no, no, no evidence of the flood ever happening. Why is there no evidence of the flood ever happening? I'll give one example: marsupials, for example, couldn't have traveled from Turkey all the way to Australia. So the good news is that your question is already wrong to begin with. Why is it wrong to begin with? Now, your question assumes that there's no evidence of the flood happening. Now, if I told you... That not only is there evidence, but there is conclusive evidence that it happened. One, being from science. Two, being from archaeology. And an endless amount of other evidence that we're not going to have enough time to cover. But nonetheless, two that I'll mention to you. The one when it comes to archaeology is that they found the Ark. It's on top of Mount Ararat.

2:08:27And as a matter of fact, there are people who went inside it. There are pictures of it, and there are videos of it. They have existed for over 20 years. And where is it? Exactly where God said He put it. There aren't 10 mountains in the world named Ararat; there's one. And that's where they found it. And who found it? A Jew? No. A goy. So, it's there. I'll send you the video after the lecture. Send me a link. I'll send you the video. So, the actual boat is there. Two. There was a scientist, whose name I forget. Oh Hashem, I don't remember scientists' names. I usually remember rabbis. But a scientist who was very, very smart in the early 1900s came up with an enormous discovery. The enormous discovery was that all the continents fit each other like a puzzle. Meaning, according to his belief, they used to be a piece of one. They were all one piece. But something happened and they broke. The beautiful part is that the Zohar HaKadosh says exactly the same thing.

2:09:41The Zohar HaKadosh that was written 2,500 years ago says the world before the flood was one place, one Yabasha, and then it broke after the event. Why? Because the water of the flood was not like rain as you see here every few days or in Florida every day. No. The water of the flood came from the top and the bottom. Top and bottom. Hashem took two comets and Comets are, in essence, one giant ball of ice. Hashem made them pass by the sun in direct light, which means that they melted at hyper speed. All that water flooded the earth from the top. On top of it, there's an endless amount of water under the earth. Think that most of the water in the world is in the ocean. It's not. It's below the ocean. There's an enormous amount of water under the ocean, under the ground, which they're just discovering now, and this water is at a temperature very similar to lava. This temperature, according to Chazal, according to our sages, came from the bottom and melted everyone. So when the big giants that lived at the time that you don't have, you know, in the science books—they don't talk about giants, but they actually existed—

2:11:03The big giant said, "Listen, the water can come from the top, but still, we're so tall it can't drown us." Hashem says, "Don't worry, I'm going to melt you from the bottom. I'm going to melt you from the bottom." So that's what happened. So now the water that melted them came from the bottom. Where is that water? It's still on earth; it's still at the bottom of the earth. So you have the broken continents, which were proven scientifically. And the actual Ark was found. Next question. I'll give you another one. I'll ask the question. How do we know that the Oral Torah is real? Go ahead, ask away. I like this. I enjoy this. I do this all the time. Is it a decent answer? You don't like it so far? Okay, so we'll ask another question. How do we know that the Oral Torah is real? Rabbis have names on there. They weren't at Mount Sinai. How do we know it's real? Because the Oral Torah has information in it that no human could have possessed. For example, the number of stars. The number of stars in the world, according to scientists, in the 1600s, approximately 400 years ago, there was a person by the name of Galileo Galilei, who stole the invention from someone else.

2:12:29and came up with the telescope, and he said before them, they believed that there were somewhere in the neighborhood of 800 to 1,000 stars. Galileo Galilei said, "No, it's not 800 to 1,000; it's 8,000 to 10,000." With the advancement of the lens in the telescope, little by little, the numbers increased until they reached a point of a million, but until 1994... we thought that the number of stars in the world was something we could count. In 1994, NASA connected a supercomputer to the most advanced telescope of the time and had it calculate an estimate of all the stars in the universe, coming up with a number of 10 to the 20th power, which is 10 with 20 zeros after it. It's a very large number. Fast-forward 10 years. In 2004, a university in Australia had a better telescope and a better supercomputer and came up with a more precise number of 10 to the 18th power. Very nice for science, kudos to science. The Torah already knew it. Gemara, Masechet Berachot, page 32b.

2:13:54Hashem tells Am Yisrael, stop complaining. You say that I forgot you as if you are a wife I divorced many years ago and I forgot you used to be my wife. Look at what I did for you. Created the world with all of these stars, and He gives us the exact calculation of how to come up with the precise number of stars, which is 106,434,000,000,000,000 precisely 10 to the 18th power, just a little more exact than the Australians with their telescope from 14 years ago. How does the Torah know how many stars are in the universe before we even have a telescope? Created the world with all of these stars, and He gives us the exact calculation of how to come up with the precise number of stars, which is 106,434,000,000,000,000 precisely 10 to the 18th power, just a little more exact than the Australians with their telescope from 14 years ago. How does the Torah know how many stars are in the universe before we even have a telescope? At the time it was written, there was no telescope. Interesting, to say the least. Now, I have three videos full of science and Torah, with scientific proofs of the Torah. Not rational proofs, not biblical proofs that Moshe Rabbeinu—may you listen to him—no, scientific proofs. Scientific proofs on top of it. I have a book I can give you for free.

2:15:13It's written by Rabbi Zamir Cohen from Eid HaBurut. It's the only one that was translated to English. If you could read Hebrew, I could send you ones in Hebrew too. It is full of scientific facts. Science. Not only proving God, but also proving the Torah as the only book that was ever given by God. Not any other religion. But if we're not ready for books yet, I have three videos. Each video is approximately 20 minutes long. You spend an hour. If you have questions, you have doubts, you have cheshbon (questions or doubts), we'll do it. If you have more questions, you can ask now. Can I ask something now? Cheshbon? You mentioned Galileo. miscalculating the stars that the Gemara already knew everyone miscalculated, including NASA. But prior to him, everyone thought that the sun revolved around the earth. Okay, and actually even in the Gemara, it says that the sun revolved around the earth and under the rakia (firmament) and then over again, kind of like in a banana-shaped trajectory. Right? Did you read the Gemara or you just haven't heard it?

2:16:24So if you read the Gemara, then you would have also read that the opinion you just mentioned, which is the opposite of the reality that we know today, was not given by the Chachamim but rather by the scientists of that time, who were the Greeks. They relied on the opinion of the experts. Now, if I go to someone that's an expert in medicine and I tell him, listen... I want you to tell me what is the likelihood of XYZ happening. And he tells me 90%. And I go to the government, I say, Mr. Government, 90% chance of this and this happening. The government takes my word for it. A few years pass, they realize, hey, it's not 90%, it's 9%. Is it my fault or the guy's fault? So you can't blame Chazal for that one. Next. I mean, they argued. There was also another opinion that also said another... Right. The point is that you have to read the Gemara and see where the opinion comes from. Most of the scientific knowledge that's mentioned in the Gemara is coming from experts that were not sages. Which is coming from chachamim. Meaning, if there's wisdom in the goyim, you can believe it. There's no problem. If there's Torah in the goyim, don't believe them. Meaning, if they're saying they possess Torah, you can't believe them. But if they possess, they have wisdom. If it's medical wisdom, scientific wisdom, there's no problem.

2:17:51Even so, even that, even in regards to scientific knowledge, there's an endless amount of information that proves the Torah. There is zero information that disproves it. Again, even if you could tell me that a sage said this, which he didn't, but even if you found one somehow, someway, somebody said, "You know what, I agree with this. I said it. I was the guy." It's not the Greek; it's me. It still doesn't negate the Torah. No, no, I understand. Even if it's there. Even if a Chacham said it. I'm saying, right, but the source of information wasn't the sages. They used the knowledge of the Chachamim of the time. No, why? They're experts. They're experts in astrology. They're not experts. The Chachamim of the Goyim were experts in astrology. The Chazal are experts in Torah. Hashem said this. No, no. The information about stars came from Hashem. That was through Ruach HaKodesh. That didn't come from the Chachamim calculating anything. This was specifically a sentence from Hashem. The point being is that even if you have information where, let's say, for example, this one thing, Rava said it or somebody said it and made a mistake, it still doesn't negate the Torah. And the reason why is because he could make a mistake.

2:19:14but it still doesn't change the fact that God created the world. It still doesn't change the fact that Hashem knew things about creation that no human being could have known. For example, when He told us that if you have a fish in the world that has scales, then it must have fins. If it has fins, then it's not necessarily going to have scales. Sharks have fins but no scales. Dolphins have fins but no scales and so on and so forth. But He said that you'll know that if a fish is kosher, it must have fins and scales. So they ask, what if we just have scales? And Hashem responds, there's no such thing. What do you mean? There's no such thing. If it has scales, it must have fins. It must have fins. So if you just find half a fish and And the half that you found only had scales. You could be sure that the other half had the fins. So now, there were several different scientists that wanted to disprove this. One said the snake. The problem with that argument is that a snake is not a fish. So that's garbage. The second one found another fish and said this one. Then they looked at the fish itself and they saw that its fins actually do exist, they're just very, very small.

2:20:38Then they found a third fish. This one, mamash, didn't have fins. They took it out of the water, mamash. It did not have fins, but it had scales. But then they looked at it underwater before, while it was still alive. They said, wait, it has fins and scales. How could it be? The defense mechanism of that fish was that as soon as you took it out of the water, its fins would fall off like leaves or like feathers. the defense mechanism of that specific fish. So, the point being is that this knowledge is extraordinary because whoever said it, whoever said that there's never going to be a fish that only has scales but no fins, must have known every single fish that ever existed, which is over 40,000 different types of fish. And on top of it, every fish that would ever exist, including mutations. Because if you ever find a fish with just scales and no fins, you have a problem in the Torah. Next. So let's be in touch. Ask a million and a half questions. One condition. One condition. The price is free. The condition is not based on money.

2:21:59You ask questions, I provide answers. Sometimes the answers are going to be me saying it. Sometimes I'm going to provide you a video. Sometimes I'm going to provide you text. One condition. After you ask all intellectually honest questions, not just questions because you have nothing to do with yourself. All intellectually honest questions that are really looking for the truth. I prove to you that the Torah is real. You do 100% teshuva and you tell the world Hashem is real. Deal? We have here free tzitziot for anyone who wants to take on the mitzvah of tzitzit and wants a mitzvah from Hashem. Every second that he's wearing it. If you have a husband, give it to your husband. If you have children, give it to your children. Price? Free, Rabotai. Free. You also have Asher Yatzar blessings. The posters over there that we made, b'ezrat Hashem. Also, each one of them is on the website. They're $6 for one, $10 for two. But for you, Rabotai, free.

2:23:03Free. Just put them on your walls and use them. They're CDs. Free. Everything is free. Just do it.