Why Don't You Hear This From Rabbis?

1:21That if he does those, it doesn't make a difference even if he keeps Shabbat. One of them is wasting seed. If a person wastes seed, even if he keeps Shabbat, it doesn't matter. Nothing's going to help him. There are 36 specific sins where if a person does them, he has no share in Olam Haba unless he does teshuva. If he does teshuva, baruch haba, Gan Eden, Olam Haba, everything is good, we love you. But if a person commits these sins and does not do teshuva for them, no one can help him. No rabbi, no mekubal, no chassid, no nothing. Not his mom, not his dad, not his sister. It doesn't make a difference. He could be related directly to Moshe Rabbeinu. It's not going to help him. It's not going to help him. Why? Hashem said it in the Torah. In order for Hashem to change the Torah for you, it's not going to happen. It would make Him a liar. So, in reality, people ask me, wait a minute, you're telling me there are 36 karet. 36 things that are karet. Karet means cut off from Olam Haba. No Olam Haba. You lend a Jew money, you charge him interest, no Olam Haba.

2:23You eat on Yom Kippur, no Olam Haba. You eat chametz on Pesach, no Olam Haba. Mechalel Shabbat, no Olam Haba. And so on and so forth. The list goes on, scarier and scarier. So they ask me the same question: Why doesn't anybody else say this? Meaning, with the exception of Rav Mizrahi, Rav Zitron, a few others, that's it. If you calculate the percentages, it's an embarrassment. Probably not. I would say I don't know how many rabbis speak English. I would say it's probably not even 1%. It's probably not even 1% of the rabbis who actually speak about what you might know about. This is the biggest tragedy in Judaism. In reality, someone who knows everything I just told you because he read Masechet Shabbat, because he read Hilchot Shabbat, or because he just knows, if he read past that, should be aware and act accordingly. Cry for me. In reality, all of the rabbis should gather together and just cry. How long? Forever? Until everybody starts doing teshuva (repentance). That's what needs to happen. So, why don't they see this? Unfortunately, there are many, many reasons, and all of them are bad. There are numerous reasons why people don’t say it, and none of them are legitimate excuses not to say it.

3:44Some of the reasons are monetary. Some of the reasons are political correctness and the desire to be popular. Some of the reasons are simply because they don't believe it themselves. There are actually some rabbis who may be atheists. So I can't tell you the reasons for every rabbi, but I can tell you generally speaking, the people that find the truth tend to start seeking answers. people that hear these lectures and decide that they have to do something about it, at some point along the way, usually in the beginning, they ask themselves, "Why didn't my Rabbi say it? Why didn't somebody else tell me? Like, how come I never heard this?" This is a very common question and it is very, very sad. One of the other reasons that Again, only through experience. I had to learn this. My Rav told me this a long time ago, but again, these are some of the things that you're never going to take to heart until you see it. It's going to sound strange, stranger than other things, because if I told you, somebody's not going to tell you the truth because they want your money, and they know that if they tell you the truth, most likely you're not going to give them any money. You're not going to donate because they make you feel bad about yourself. So that's understandable—every normal person understands this.

5:13People want to go to Tony Robbins. Why? He makes you feel good about yourself. People want to go to all these self-help gurus. Why? Because they make you feel good. People like to give money to things that make them feel good. Somebody tells you, by the way, you should do teshuva, that doesn't necessarily always make a person feel good. It makes them feel like they're lacking. So if I told you money is the reason, it's very easy to understand. I told you political correctness is the reason. It's even easier to understand why because people are scared to say certain things because they want to be popular, and they don't want to offend anyone. They're so scared about offending you, and they're not really sure if you know or don't know, so they're just going to pretend like it doesn't exist. These are things that are easy to understand. The part that was very hard for me to understand is that they simply are clueless, and... The first darga of limud Torah they don't have. We have 48 things that you have to have in order to acquire Torah. The first one is limud Talmud, dedicated learning. I don't know about all the rabbis, but I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that every single person...

6:36that goes against the emet, doesn't know what he's talking about at all. He's never finished the Shas. Maybe he doesn't even know what the Shas is. He probably learned maybe a few parts of Hilchot Shabbat, but not the whole thing. Rambam, forget about it. Maybe he read like a few things on the internet. He read just enough to maybe pass a test, maybe not. Maybe he passed the test, maybe he didn't. What is it like? It's like you just passed the Regents in New York in chemistry, but you don't really know anything about chemistry. You just know enough to pass the test. You pass the test for your biology class, but in reality, if somebody told you to dissect a frog, you could start vomiting just thinking about it. Why? Because what's for you in biology? You're out of your mind. You just passed the math test or English test, but in reality, someone asks you, can you teach it to someone? He's like, teach what? No, what you just passed. No, it's all memory. I just remembered a few things and I passed the test. So what do you actually know? Nothing. As soon as you finish the test, deleted. Like a beeper. Like your voicemail messages that you don't want to answer, you just delete them. Same thing. Deleted. I'm telling you, Rabotai, this was the hardest thing for me to understand.

7:54How can somebody be a manhig of a kehillah, a rabbi, a so-called rabbi, sometimes a speaker, and not know anything? Until I started seeing with my own eyes, and you start seeing some of the things these people are saying, I ask my rabbi all the time, "Is this in the Torah?" He says, "No." "Is this in the Torah?" "No." "Is that in the Torah?" "No." Where is it from? He goes, "Maybe in a comic book. Maybe he found it in a comic book, maybe in a newspaper." And now you can double-check other rabbis. You can check other books. Remember the whole thing that happened with Pittsburgh? You can't forget. Then everybody cried out loud, "Oh, it's Kiddush Hashem, Kiddush Hashem." The Rambam says it's Kiddush Hashem. One rabbi said, "I want to check, where is this Rambam?" So I asked the rabbi who proclaimed on a big screen that it's Kiddush Hashem because the Rambam said it. And the rabbi said, "I can't find it in the Rambam."

8:56So I called the rabbi and said, "Rabbi, you mentioned in your shiur that your Rosh Yeshiva, a distinguished and important figure, said that these people who died sanctified Hashem’s name because they were Jewish, according to the Rambam. Where exactly does the Rambam say this?" The Rosh Yeshiva responded, "There is no such Rambam. But everybody thinks there's such a Rambam, so I said it. There's no Rambam that says that somebody that dies because he's a Jew is Kiddush Hashem. There's no such thing." We looked through the entire Rambam before we found this out because we didn't know that this is actually happening. We checked ourselves, and it's not in the Rambam. We thought, perhaps there's some hidden Rambam, like a book of the Rambam that no one ever heard about, and he's the only one that has the copy. He shared it with all the others who gave a lecture about it. They're all there, these people have this supposed Rambam, but for everyone else, it doesn't exist, Abutai.

10:10The saddest thing for me personally was seeing this Talmudic study confirmation come to life, where you realize that most people today simply don't know anything. They don't know much more than a secular person, and... They don't know much more than a person who just converted. Sometimes they know much less than a person who just converted. They don't know much more than a Baal Teshuva who has been learning for a few years. And oftentimes, my Talmidim ask their rabbis, "Oh, did you hear such and such?" I heard it from Rabbi Reuven in a shiur. "No, where is it?" And when he shows them, they respond, "Oh, wow, okay, nice. Okay, Chidush, that's good." It doesn't mean you have to know everything. But when, every week, you hear, "I've never heard this, never heard that," it raises the question, what did you hear then? What did you hear? So, this is not everybody, obviously. There are many Talmidei Chachamim in the world. But it doesn't seem like they're making many lectures. It seems like a lot of people that are steering people away from Yirat Shamayim are doing it with the same system, which is they're helping people stay ignorant because they're ignorant themselves. They don't know anything themselves.

11:38Because anyone who reads the Torah immediately understands, without being a big chacham, or even needing to be a big rabbi, that Hashem wants you to fear Him. There are even certain mitzvot in the Torah that are purely based on fear. For example, the Gemara asks, why did Hashem create thunder? Like, what good does thunder do in the world? Lightning, you can say, maybe Hashem likes the way it looks. Or maybe He wants to show us how it looks. Or maybe it creates certain damage in the world that comes through lightning. Somebody gets hit by lightning, Hashem yirachem. Lightning can start fires. So you can start rationalizing there's a use in the world for lightning. But thunder, there's no use. What does thunder do? Scare you. That's the reason why He created it. That's the reason why He created it. That's what the Gemara says. Why did Hashem create thunder? To scare you. That's it. The only purpose it has in the world. The world starts shaking, you feel like the whole thing is breaking. Perfect. Get scared. So, there are certain mitzvot like this. There are certain pesukim in the Torah that Hashem says, what do I want from you other than to fear Me? And so on and so forth. So, anyone that actually reads Torah...

12:58Arrives at the same conclusion, which means that anyone who arrives at a different conclusion simply did not learn. What is the first requirement of this chelek?