Work For God Or Man? - MUSSAR Pirkei Avot (38)

0:15good to be back. We did a shiur here a few weeks ago, and it has been very, very successful. A lot of people have told me it's one of the best shiurim they've attended. So, the good news is it has nothing to do with me; it all has to do with the siyata dishmaya. Hashem gives me certain words to say based on the crowd. If the crowd has merit, then Hashem gives me good words to say. If the crowd doesn't have merit, then chas v'shalom, I can sound like a fool. So, Baruch Hashem, the crowd here has merit every time. If you were in Miami already for the last couple of years, Baruch Hashem, together... And today, B'ezrat Hashem, I know with the amount of tests that we had to overcome just to get here today, I know it's going to be a good shiur, B'ezrat Hashem. So before I forget, let's do the Refuah Sheleimah. This shiur will also go to the Refuah Sheleimah of Michel Kotto, Amparo Beloufe, Reuven Yosef ben Rivka,

1:19Sarah Lea Batzara, Gladys Nunez, Edima Guerrero, Josefina Matos, Esperanza Avila, Raquel Sandler, and Monty Sandler, Lourdes Renzoli, Yehoshua Mikael ben Hadassah, David Gamliel ben Hadassah, Nancy Duesa. Patricia Valmana, Sonia Suarez, Nicole Valmana, Agustin Hernandez, Jorge Hernandez, Isabel Betancourt. I wasn't even close. Liliana Ante Bonilla, Gilberto Meneses, Jacqueline Rojas, Roger Prado, Olga Hernandez, Jocelyn Morejon, The good news with this list is that I see that the old names, Baruch Hashem, almost half of them are gone. So it's good, everybody got Refuah Sheleimah. I've been doing Refuah Sheleimah for them for over a year already. Baruch Hashem, they got Refuah Sheleimah. But now, we have a new list.

2:40Unfortunately, we have another half of the list of new names, so they're gonna have all sorts of wash them up. The greatest thing you can do for someone is contribute Torah for their name. You know when people make donations or they do any type of event, they usually want to do it for the refuah sheleimah or ilui neshama. to raise the soul of someone that's passed on. And it's interesting that in today's generation, unfortunately, we have a lot of ignorance. So sometimes you're going to see events that are against Hashem, but they're trying to raise the soul at the same time. For example, there was one time a soccer match Shabbat, they said, we are going to win this match for the benefit of an ilui neshamah of some player that died. On Shabbat, we're going to have this event that’s, you know, a party with all types of things that are against what Hashem dictated for the merit of this person. And the reality of it is that

3:56If anyone was able to hear this neshama in shamayim, they would say, "Please, please, don't do me any favors, no ilui neshamah, no nothing, you're making my situation worse." So the greatest thing you can do for somebody is to bring him the most pure thing in the world, which is the Torah, the purpose of creation. Now, Last night, shiur, Baruch Hashem, we got a lot of good feedback from the crowd that attended. I don't know if we published it online yet or not, but Baruch Hashem, we have the Facebook Live and YouTube and also our website, BezratHashem.org. But there's also something I'd like to tell everyone about. Anyone that is passionate about kiruv has to go to a website called TorahBank.com. TorahBank.com is a new, innovative website, and it's mamash 100% siyata d'shmaya how they came up with this idea and actually were able to implement it without being a multi-billion dollar company.

5:01this group of tzaddikim came together, and they decided that they want to help us do kiruv, but not only by helping us by publishing the lectures on Facebook and all these different places, but actually by encouraging people to actually do kiruv. Now, how do you encourage somebody to do something in life? One way is you pay them. Now, what if you don't have any money? You have to make him passionate. How do you make somebody passionate? By showing them there's results, there's an outcome. Even the greatest salesman in the world, if he eventually finds out that what he's selling is garbage, he's gonna lose all of his passion, even if he's making a lot of money, as long as he's a normal person. If he's a criminal, he's a criminal. But if he's a normal person, and he finds out that what he's selling is garbage, he's not gonna want to sell it anymore. But if what he's selling is the greatest thing in the world, He's gonna want to sell it if he sees that this product actually has results even more so. How do you show this guy results? Usually, when it's in business, it's money. But in the Torah world, usually, it's when you see people doing teshuvah. You see, oh listen, this guy was a Mechalel Shabbat, now he's keeping Shabbat. It's great results. This guy was not wearing tzitzit, now he's wearing tzitzit, Baruch Hashem.

6:20This guy was not eating kosher, now he's eating kosher. The problem is that from point A to point B can take a while. To go from Mechalel Shabbat to Shomer Shabbat can take a while. To go from eating Treif to eating Kosher can take a while. So how do you keep the guy that's doing Kiruv, that's sending lectures to his friends motivated? By showing them that actually people are watching. And that's what Torah Bank did. Torah Bank created a system that's similar to multi-level marketing, where when you actually go to their website and you sign up and you create a profile, they have the lectures of myself, Rav Mizrachi, and Rav Alon Anava. And you're able to take our lectures, take the link, and send it to wherever you want. Anyone that watched it is actually going to show up on your profile. Oh, you sent it to Steve. Steve watched it for 16 minutes. Joe watched it for 45 minutes. Menachem watched it for two hours and 20 minutes. So on and so forth, watched it for five hours. And you start seeing how much Torah you personally are bringing to the world. So when you show up to Shamayim, it's not going to be a surprise.

7:42You understand? So this is something that's mamash amazing. It's an amazing invention. B'ezrat Hashem, they're going to have a lot of hatzlacha. And anyone that's passionate about doing kiruv should definitely sign up. It's free. And listen, if you're already going to send a lecture, might as well know if anybody watched it. Sometimes, to get the guy that watched it, a lot of people say, "Listen, I sent my lecture, your personal story, or other lectures to a bunch of people, and not everybody responded. But then they call me a year later, like, 'Oh, this guy did Teshuva.' I'm like, 'What, he just did Teshuva overnight?' No, it took a year, just that it started a year ago. You just never knew he watched it. Now you know who to follow up with. You see that you sent it to ten people and..." Six of them watched it, four didn't watch it. You don't see them on the screen. So what do you do? You call those guys back. Tell them, "Hey, listen, did you watch that?" "Oh, I didn't get a chance to." "Oh, okay." Don't tell them, "Oh, I know you didn't watch it." Tell them, "Oh, you watched it? Take a look at it." And follow up with these people. Go ahead. Do they have to make a profile for you to be aware that they viewed it? Or is it just like whatever? Do they have to make a profile themselves? I'm assuming they do, but I'm not sure. I'm assuming they do, but it's simple. Name and email, I think.

8:55It's not like you have to put your credit card in or anything like that. So it makes things very, very simple. I think you're the one, as the sender, who may have to put their name in there. I'm not 100% sure. Just log on, you'll see it, but it's amazing how you're able to see who saw it, how much time they actually saw it for, and it's an extraordinary idea. Highly recommend it for anyone that's passionate about kiruv. And that's also one of the things that we learn about often, is that if you're not passionate about kiruv, then you don't know what it means. Because to be passionate about kiruv should be a given to all of us. Because that means that you love Hashem. And you're interested in making Him happy by bringing back His kids. You know, for the last few months, we've been looking for a house. Ever since the whole debacle with the Boca Raton Synagogue happened. And we decided that it's not the right community for us. There are obviously some good people in the community and some people that...

9:56perhaps need to get some more chizuk. But overall, for me, we decided that we need a change. So we've been looking for a house. And incidentally, as Hashem would have it, Rabbi Ephraim has also been looking for a house for the last month and a half in Jerusalem. So both of us, you know, we're looking, this place, that place, you see different options. And both of us learned mussar from it. What's the mussar? It's not easy to find a house because it's not just finding four walls and a door. You have to find a community, you have to find the right synagogue, you have to find the right people that are like-minded. It's not that easy. As a Jew, you're trying to find a good place. So then we learned, look at it this way. Hashem has been looking for a house for 2,000 years. 2,000 years of Him crying because He Himself destroyed His own house and He can't build a new house. Why? Because the community is not ready yet. So imagine we're going through a difficulty for a couple of months and how much we act like we're suffering. Oh, listen, it's hard. You don't have a house. You don't feel comfortable where you are. Hashem has not been comfortable for over 2,000 years. Why don't we cry for Him? So the least we can do is

11:18They say, you know what, Hashem, I understand. You're not ready to build Your house yet. The Mashiach is not ready to come here. You're not ready to send him. But you know what? Why are you not ready? Because there are not enough people in the community. So let's bring them back. Let's help people do teshuva. Let's get them to keep Shabbat. Let's get them to lay tefillin. Let's get the women to become modest. It's not that hard. What's the cure? The cure is telling them the truth. Treating people like adults. Letting them make the decision for themselves. If the guy wants the truth, he's gonna take the truth as it is. If he doesn't want it, it doesn't matter. For all of those people that are worried about, listen, if I tell him that he's a mechalel Shabbat, he's putting his Judaism on suspension. According to the Rambam, he's considered an idol worshiper. He's gonna be offended. He's gonna be this. If I tell her that, you know, as long as she's not modest and she's wearing her tank top and her miniskirts and Anytime she prays, the doors are closed in Shamayim. She's gonna be offended. She's gonna cry. Listen, if you don't tell them, they're not gonna change ever. They're never gonna change. You're not giving them a chance. If you tell them, the worst-case scenario is they get upset. So what?

12:40The best-case scenario, you just saved their life. Not about the life here. We're talking about eternal life. So, not telling them the truth is almost like hating them. It's like knowing that your friend has a train coming at them and not telling them to move out of the way. And that's one of the things that we as Jews, as the sons and daughters of Hashem Yitbarach, have to take into account. You love Hashem, you want to say Ahavat Hashem, Ahavat Hashem. Everybody says, I love Hashem, I love Hashem. Everybody loves Hashem. Okay, so how come you don't care about His children? Why don't you care about His children? Why don't you say something? So telling people the truth is the least you can do. Why do I mention this now, aside from everything we've mentioned so far, is because the biggest reason of why I'm in this house now Because I listened to Chazal and I told the owner of this house the truth, which hurt a lot. What was the truth? Almost ten years ago, they did a conversion, converted to Judaism, but through a conservative shul, through a conservative beit din. Now, according to Halacha

13:59doing a conversion through a Reform, Conservative, or Renewal type of Beit Din is worth zero. You go into the mikveh as a non-Jew, you come out of the mikveh as a non-Jew. Why? If you take a look at the procedure itself for the Conservative rabbis, generally it's the same. It's the same. three people asking you questions. Reform usually have women, and sometimes non-Jews, even asking questions. Forget about them. Conservative, at this point, are still keeping it somewhat the same. Sometimes the rabbi is gay, but let's say straight. No, but it's what happens. Those rabbis are sometimes gay. I'm not just making fun of it; it's a reality. They also announced recently that, as of now, Conservative schools are accepting people 100% without the need for conversion ever, and

15:00This is not something I'm just doing to jab at anybody. This is true. You go to their website, you find this out. So now, in a Conservative Beit Din five, ten years ago, the procedure was, in essence, the same: three people asking questions, you answer the questions, right? They say you accept upon yourself the mitzvot, you say yes. You go to a mikveh, you dip in the mikveh, you say the bracha. Chazak u'Baruch. Baruch, and everything is good. The process itself, in essence, is the same. So why is the Beit Din of the Conservative not kosher and the Beit Din of the Orthodox kosher? Why? Because the Beit Din of the Conservative also teaches that it's okay for you to drive on Shabbat. The Beit Din of the Conservative also teaches that you don't have to be modest and... The Beit Din of the Conservative teaches you things that are against the Torah, including that parts of the Oral Torah are not 100 percent true, are not divine. Once someone says that there are parts of the Torah that are not from Hashem, they are no longer part of Am Yisrael. They are no longer considered a dayan, they are no longer considered fair and righteous enough to judge or even be a witness.

16:19in any ceremony whatsoever that's Jewish. So kal vachomer, needless to say, they cannot be a judge to decide who's going to be a part of Am Yisrael and who's not. So the procedure, the picture looks the same, but the outcome is different. So now I have to tell this wonderful person that yes, I understand you've been living a Jewish life for 10 years, but I'm sorry to tell you that you're not Jewish. And in order for you to be Jewish, you have to go through a formal conversion. You have to learn certain things. And obviously, this involved a lot of tears and a lot of difficulties. But Baruch Hashem, because this person was seriously looking for the truth, they went through the whole process all over again, making sacrifices I don't even want to speak about. Sacrifices that none of us, including myself, would make. None of us would make them. I don't need to know what's in your heart. I know you're not going to make it. I don't think anybody else would be able to make it.

17:20That type of sacrifice. To do it all over again, and to become 100% frum. To become 100% Jewish. So this, when we go up to Shamayim, they're going to ask us, "How come you weren't religious?" "Oh, it was difficult." "Oh, was it more difficult for you than them?" Who are they going to bring? They're going to bring the Baal HaBayit, the Baalat HaBayit. I'll show you an example of why it was more difficult for her. It was more difficult for her. Did you make sacrifices like her? What sacrifice did you make? What, you woke up at 6 o'clock in the morning to go to shul? That's the sacrifice? So this is something that teaches us mussar—that it's time to wake up and stop making excuses, because the ones that are fulfilling the prophecy that it says in the Gemara Masechet Avodah Zarah, page 3b and also 4a, which is that there's going to be a lot of converts at the end of time. There's another Gemara in Bava Metzia... that talks about how the converts are like a skin disease for Am Yisrael. Why is it like a skin disease for Am Yisrael? Hashem counts the converts greater than He does natural born Jews. Why are they a skin disease all of a sudden? They're a skin disease because it's painful. It's a painful reminder of how zealous you're supposed to be.

18:47The convert chose to be part of Am Yisrael. We were born Jews. They're more zealous than us. We're supposed to be more zealous than them. They're reminding us. We're still walking while we're really supposed to be running to Hashem. So when Hashem has been looking for a house for the last couple of thousand years, the least we can do is start recruiting His children, start recruiting the people that are looking for the truth, and... Some of those people went through bad conversions, went through fake conversions, and they don't even know it. They went through the Reform and the Conservative, and they thought this is Judaism. What do they know? They're not Rabbanim. They're not, you know, Rebbetzins. Can't blame them. Can't be upset at them. Some people that go to even Messianics, which is 100% Christianity, call themselves Jews. This... new creation that's against Hashem, a new form of Avodah Zarah, has put us in a situation that's more dangerous than any other time in history. Any other time in history. What is the situation that we're in right now? The Gemara in Masechet Sotah, page 49.

20:08There's going to be certain things that happen before Mashiach comes. Very difficult things. We did a recent film about it, discussing different prophecies that are going to happen. But, in so many words, to sum it up, it says that the situation in the world is going to be unbearable. Unbearable to such an extent that everyone is going to have to question themselves: the guy with the hat and the beard and the one who just put on a kippah for the first time. The goy and the Jew. The one that's looking for the truth, the one that doesn't know what he's looking for. Everyone is going to have to question themselves. It's going to be difficult to stay close to Hashem because you're not going to know what's real and what's not. Now, what's happening right now, secretly but in plain sight, is the most dangerous thing that ever happened in history.

21:09What it is, is a Messianic form of Christianity that calls itself Judaism. To such an extent that if you ask them, "What are you?" they say, "We're Jews." So, for the first time ever, for the first time in history, you have Christians now calling themselves Jews, and... You now have people that call themselves Jews, and you actually don't know if they're Jews or not. This is a problem because in the past, if you look at 2,000 years ago, even though the Greeks and the Romans, yimach shemam v'zichram, killed us and tortured us, they did us a favor. Why was it a favor? They only killed our flesh. You want to convert? No. Dead. You want to be a Roman? No. Dead. You want to be a Greek? No. Dead. They did us a favor because they only killed the body. The soul? Gan Eden. But in today's world, what they're trying to do, yimach shemam, is they're trying to kill the soul. They're trying to tell you, listen, come to our synagogue, our messianic synagogue.

22:35And go worship Yoshke. JC Penny, he's our Messiah, he's our this, he's our that. But they don't tell you right away about JC Penny. They tell you, no, we're Jews, we're just, we call, we're a new tradition, we're modern, we're this, we're that. A few weeks into it, you realize it's not even Judaism. But by then, you're already stuck, you're already friendly with a few people, you already like the guy who calls himself a rabbi, he wears a tallit, he wears a kippah, he doesn't look any different than me. if anything, he looks more hip, more modern, more with the times. And Yaakov Avinu already gave us the prophecy about this over 4,000 years ago when he said in Parashat Vayishlach to Hashem. He cried out to Hashem before he came and met with Esav after running away from Esav for several decades. He had to come back. But in Parashat Vayishlach, the book of Bereshit (Genesis), chapter 32, verse 12, it says, "Rescue me, please." He's talking to Hashem. "Rescue me, please, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esav."

24:04I fear him, lest he come and strike me down, mother and children. So Chazal ask, "Wait a minute. We know there's not even one extra letter, let alone one extra word, in the entire Torah. So what is Yaakov Avinu doing here, reminding us that Esav is his brother? What, Hashem doesn't know?" Okay, you want Hashem to rescue you from your brother. We know you're talking about Esav. You only have one brother. Rescue me from Esav. We know that's your brother. So why does he say, "Rescue me, please, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esav"? There's a redundancy here. There's a superfluous word. What's happening here? Chazal gives us the chiddush. And I learned this with Rabbi Efraim when I told him about what's happening. And he told me, yeah, of course, this is already a prophecy of 4,000 years. Baruch Hashem, it's happening because we know that Mashiach is that much closer. What is this prophecy? It says, Hashem, when Esav is Esav, we know he's Esav. When Esav is Edom, we know he's Edom. Why? He's killing us.

25:27When he's the Roman, when he's the Greek, when he's the Nazi, we know it's him. He's trying to kill us. Rescue me from that hint. The problem is not when he's Esav. The problem is when he plays like he's my brother, Hashem, and I don't know if he's Esav or not. The problem is when he looks like me, acts like me, and thinks like me, but not really. This is why in the verse it says, "Rescue me from my brother and then from Esav." Because my brother is much scarier than Esav. Because I know who Esav is. I know who Edom is. My brother, I don't know. I don't know. Now unless we tell people the truth, whether they're already in the Messianic Avodah Zarah, whether they're in Conservative shuls and Reform shuls, Whether they are anywhere. If we don't tell them, how are they going to know? So now, it's a responsibility for us. Responsibility for us if we say, everybody says here we love Hashem, right? You love Hashem? Everybody loves Hashem, right? Everybody claims to love Hashem.

26:53Everyone loves Hashem. No one fears Hashem anymore, but everybody loves Hashem. So let's play that card. Even though yesterday we talked for three hours about how you can't love Hashem without fearing Him. But let's skip it for a second, hypothetically speaking. If you love someone, that means it has to be real love, because if it's for a price, then it's not love, it's self-interest. If you love your wife only because she does things for you, then you don't really love her. You love the things he does for you. It's like the old question that Chazal asks: Does the fisherman love fish? If he really loved fish, why does he kill them? No, he loves the outcome of the fish. He loves the way they taste. You can't say you love food because then you wouldn't kill the animal that actually becomes that food. You can't say you love your wife if the only time you love her is when she gives you stuff, whether it be children, food, intimacy, attention, or whatever. Kavod. Love has no price. Love is free. So if we really love Hashem, that means we have to love Him regardless of our life, regardless of whether we're millionaires or we're broke.

28:23We're sick, Hashem, or healthy. Everything is going good or everything is not going so good. If we love Hashem, that means it doesn't really make a difference what happens. Because we love Hashem. So, one simple test of whether we love Hashem, just a little test. If we love Hashem, we want Him to be happy. How could He be happy if so many of His children don't know He exists? How could He be happy if so many of His children are worshipping one of His creations? Whether it be JC or it be some Avodah Zarah in India... or it be some other false prophet from Islam or some other form of Avodah Zarah, even in Judaism. They've created Avodah Zarah. Unfortunately, they made their rabbis into gods. How could Hashem be happy with this if the first commandment out of the Ten is to remind us that He's the only one, no middleman, not even Moshe Rabbeinu.

29:43not even Moshe Rabbeinu can come between you and Hashem. The prophet of all prophets; if we needed him, he'd still be here. that says that you need a middleman to connect to Hashem, whether it be a Rebbe, a Rabbinate, some Tzaddik, or any other form of Avodah Zarah that they created. Anyone that says this is leading you astray, leading you away from Hashem, not to kedusha. So how could Hashem be happy if He not only doesn't have a house and But even his children don't know he exists. So the least we can do is tell the children, "Hey, by the way, you know, I know you prayed to this Yoshke guy, the guy that died 2,000 years ago, where it says in the Torah, God can't die. So he's not God. God's not flesh. We even learned it from Bilam, Bilam HaRasha. He still knew God."

30:56spoke to God. You stole a prophet. Says God's not flesh and blood, didn't change His mind. You look at the New Testament; the guy changes his mind every five minutes. One minute he says he's God, the next minute he curses a tree because it doesn't bear fruit. What kind of God are you if the tree doesn't listen to you? But then they change, they go, you know what, maybe the God thing doesn't work, so they say, okay, no, he's a Mashiach. A Mashiach can't die. A lot of confusion. Now, people that don't study Torah on a regular basis, they're not going to know this. Am Yisrael, the firstborn son of Hashem, doesn't know who God is. Because they think that as long as they kiss the mezuzah before they go to the soccer game on Shabbat, it's fine. It's not fine. Hashem says you're not allowed to light fire on Shabbat. The same goes with the rest of creation—the other seven and a half billion people who don't know who their Owner is. So the least we can do is tell them.

32:19sugarcoating without tainting the truth with our own personal opinion. Tell the truth because if you do, you have a chance to save their neshama. If we were politically correct, and we were worried about people's feelings, then Am Yisrael at the very least would have fewer Jews today. How do I know this? This house would not have more Jews, and... We didn't say anything, which is no. No, it's not my business. Conservative, Reform—it's not my business. What do I care? If I didn't care, why would I tell him something that breaks their heart? Yes, then. So now, we have to listen to Yaakov, you know, and understand the situation is much more dangerous than we think—much more dangerous than anything now.

33:20The Mishnah that we're up to now continues with this thought process. Rabbi Nechunya ben HaKana says, Someone takes upon himself the yoke of Torah. The yoke of government and the yoke of worldly responsibilities are removed from him. But if someone throws off the yoke of Torah from himself, then the yoke of government and the yoke of worldly responsibilities are actually placed upon him. The explanation, the simple explanation here, is that when someone wants to know their Creator, they only have one way to find out, one way: learn Torah. Now, you could know you have a Creator in multiple ways. You could either learn through seminars, through lectures like this, or through slaps and punches from Shamayim. One way or another, you're gonna learn.

34:45In the book of Ezekiel, Hashem tells the Prophet to tell Am Yisrael that they will serve Me whether they like it or not. The Rambam says in Hilchot Teshuva that everyone that survives the days of Mashiach will have done Teshuva. But the important part of this halacha that he mentions is not some philosophical statement. This is actual halacha. Whoever survives will have done teshuva, meaning not everyone will have the merit to survive because, in order to survive... You would have had to have already started doing teshuva. You would have had to already know who your Maker is. And he explains in the Midrashim on this specific Ezekiel that when Hashem says you're going to serve Me, whether you like it or not, it means that you're going to serve Me either through a nice way where you're going to say, oh wow, Sefer Torah, that's the love letter Hashem gave us.

36:09Wonderful, let me see what I said. He wrote for me. He wrote for you. He wrote you a personalized letter. Let me see what it says. Oh, it's instructions on how to live, how to be successful, how to love, how to not do bad things, and so on and so forth. You could learn that way. You could learn through the Torah. You could learn through seminars and... Hashem, you could learn through disasters—getting sick, having sickness, death, money loss, disasters. One way or another, you're going to find out who your Maker is. Now, Rabbi Nechunia ben HaKana is telling you that if you actually find out during the first way, there's a benefit to it. There's an added benefit to... Finding out who your Creator is by simply opening books, watching the lectures, and having seminars has a benefit to it. What's the benefit if you actually take this yoke upon yourself? Not just to find out who your Creator is, but actually seeing what it says. Then worldly responsibilities, whether they're from the government like...

37:36problems, lawsuits, fines, speeding tickets, audits—all of those things will be removed from you. Even the necessity to go work like everyone else will be removed from you. You won't have to do it. On the other hand, if you're already doing it, but you decide, you know what, it's not for me. It's not for me learning Torah. He says, well, in the book of Job, the prophet tells us that man was created to do something, to work. He has to have some type of responsibility, something in their life. They can't just sit there and do nothing. So if you're not going to take the responsibility of toiling in Torah, in the book of Job, chapter five, verse seven, it says, "Man must toil at something, for man was born to toil." So if it's not for Torah, then he's gonna toil for man.

39:00You're not going to work for a show, then you work for man. But you're definitely not going to do nothing. That, my friend, is not an option. So let's continue and understand what it actually means to really toil in Torah. Is studying 15 minutes a day toiling? So, first and foremost, we have to understand what is ol Torah. Ol Torah means the yoke of Torah, and the Rambam explains... that just like a plowing animal is carrying the yoke under all circumstances, you have the cow, it's carrying everything on it, the bull is carrying everything on it, rain or shine, it's carrying. You're going from city to city, it's carrying. Mud, sleet, dry, wet, doesn't matter, it keeps going. Under all conditions, it's going. Rambam says that's what toiling in Torah is. Regardless of what's happening in your life, Torah is never sacrificed. Torah is never at risk. It officially becomes the number one priority in your life. There are five zillion priorities we all have, but Torah is number one. Everything else is as distant as two, three, four, five, and five hundred.

40:27Distant, meaning you live your life with Torah as the purpose, with everything else around it. There are a couple of different types of people. One is the Avrech. The other one is the Baal Habayit. The Avrech is easier to understand how he can toil in Torah. This person wakes up in the morning, he goes to the Kollel, he studies Torah from morning to night, comes home, spends a couple of hours with the family, helps the wife with the kids, and then if he's a Talmid Chacham, he's going to go back to studying Torah. He's not going to watch TV. He's not watching the game. He comes home, spends a few hours with the family, takes care of the kids, takes care of the wife, whatever needs to take place in the house. A few hours, he's finished, studies Torah. Why? Because we learned yesterday from the Rambam that the Torah you're going to learn at night is much more valuable. Much, much more valuable. You're going to study 10 hours from 9 to 7, let's say, or even 9 to 5, you study 8 hours, let's say.

41:40Break, obviously, and so on. But let's say you studied eight hours during the day. Those two hours you're studying at night—from 10 to 12, from 11 to 1, from 12 to 2, whatever those couple of hours are—that's where your chokhmah is gonna come. That's where the siyata dishmaya is gonna come. You're gonna have chiddushim, real chiddushim, not this craziness that we have in this generation where everybody becomes Rashi... starts creating things that are contradicting the Torah, talking about chiddushim that agree with the Torah, insights that agree with what Chazal says. So, Rambam says that you're going to study, your main studying, your main chokhmah is going to come at night. But why? Because of the merit of you studying in the day. It also says this in the Gemara. In the Gemara, Masechet Chagigah, page 12b, Reish Lakish says, one who learns Torah at night, Hashem brings chesed on him during the day. Instead of watching different movies on TV, Netflix, YouTube, all this shtuyot that people waste their life, this nonsense that people waste their life doing nothing,

43:05Instead, you open Pirkei Avot, you open Gemara, you open Chumash, you open Sifrei Tzaddikim, you open Mussar, you open something that's going to wake up your neshama that's sleeping. At night, Reish Lakish, the Baal Teshuva, is telling you that my friend assures you that tomorrow in the morning during the day Peace of mind, you're not gonna have to worry about chasing customers. You're not gonna have to worry about chasing this, chasing that. Why? Because you did a chesed for Hashem by serving Him at night, by studying His Torah at night, by fulfilling His desire at night. He's gonna fulfill your desire in the morning. We did chesed for Hashem at night, so He will do chesed for you in the morning. To such an extent that Chazal says that someone who understands the significance of studying Torah, like real Torah, at night would never waste one night in an entire year on anything else, even including eating. He wouldn't even eat at night lest he waste time from studying.

44:30Because the Torah is so valuable that Chazal says the ones that really want the Torah know that even blinking their eyes is dangerous. So Rabbi Nechunya is telling you there's a benefit. There's a mystical benefit to doing all of this. If you're an Avrech, you have nothing to worry about. You want proof? Hashem is overseeing over a hundred thousand different people learning Torah in different kollel around the world. Baruch Hashem, you've never heard a story of a talmid chacham dying from hunger, a talmid chacham dying from starvation. You never hear that. Nah, I have been young, and now I am old. But I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging for bread. It's in Birkat Hamazon, it's in Tehillim. I've been young, I've been old, but I've never seen a righteous person starve or his children looking for food. Baruch Hashem, they're not all living a high-profile life on the 35th floor on Wall Street or anything. Most of them are living very, very modest lives according to our standards. It's like poverty. But to them, it's fine. They have food on the table. They have children that are eating. They have clothes. Baruch Hashem.

45:59living a higher life. But the reality of it is that the closer you are to Hashem, the more disconnected you are from this world. One of the great proofs that I heard was a story from Rav Zamir Cohen recently about one of the presidents of his yeshiva when he was a young student in Porat Yosef. There were two presidents of Porat Yosef. One of them was Rav Ovadia, Zecher Tzadik Livracha. And another one was Rav David Saliman Sasson. Rav David Saliman Sasson was a person who studied Torah with seriousness that you couldn't even measure, with dedication to Torah. Would you think it's the only thing he had in this world? His life was so simple that he would ride on a bicycle in the street. That's how he commuted from place to place — on a bicycle. No fancy cars, just a bicycle. Some people thought they needed to give him tzedakah because he looked so simple and modest. They thought maybe he didn't have enough, and just gave some tzedakah.

47:20What they didn't know is that he was a multi-billionaire. Multi-billionaire. Not billionaire, multi. There's rich, and there's billionaire. It's different. Different world. But for him, it meant nothing. He gave a lot of tzedakah, kolelim, yeshivot. There's a whole non-profit organization that he has, or charitable organization that he has, that supports many of these yeshivot to this day. But his life was Torah. And anyone that knows him says, "We never even saw him dealing with chasing money." It meant nothing. He gave a lot of tzedakah, kolelim, yeshivot. There's a whole non-profit organization that he has, or charitable organization that he has, that supports many of these yeshivot to this day. But his life was Torah. And anyone that knows him says, "We never even saw him dealing with chasing money." Not just after he had money. His whole life. Why? Because he toiled in Torah. Hashem said, oh, you toil in Torah. I wrote something in my Mishnah. Once you toil with Torah, you take it seriously like it's number one, I'll do the rest of the toiling for you. Government responsibilities, monetary responsibilities, don't worry about it. You have a tiny little business; I'll make it a big business. You have a tiny little building; I'll make it a big building.

48:41You have a tiny little piece of land that nobody wants? I'll make it into the most valuable property that everyone's ever imagined. Davka, they want to build the World Trade Center on it. Davka, they want to build a government building on it. And they want to pay an infinite amount of money for it. Why? You made my Torah number one. So for an avrech, it's easy. An avrech is already toiling in Torah. So you tell them, listen, just make sure you're already learning Torah. Don't just go to the kollel and smoke cigarettes all day. Don't just go to the kollel and every five minutes go outside and be on the phone. What's going on? What are you doing? Don't go to the kollel and treat it like a fashion show. Oh wow, your beard looks good. Oh wow, your belt looks good. Oh wow, you have nice shoes. You know, unfortunately, in this generation, sometimes you meet yeshiva students. What do they do? They're between each other. First thing they do, they turn around the tie. Like, what's the brand of your tie? Why do you care what brand my tie is? If it's this or if it's that, it's not going to make me better or make me worse. Well, you're not going to like me? You're going to like me? You're measuring me based on my tie? This is how far we are from where we're supposed to be.

50:01Now, in the secular world, it's obvious. But in the religious world, I see a few yeshiva students talking to each other and looking at each other's shoes. Wow, pshh, Ferragamo! How do you even know Ferragamo if you’re a Talmid Chacham? How do you even know who Ferragamo is? I know it because I was in that world most of my life. What do you know? You had the benefit of having frum parents. What do you know about Ferragamo? What do you know about Versace? What do you know about shtuyot? Why are you so addicted to this world if you're learning Torah? What kind of Torah are you learning? And then you start checking, and they just attend yeshiva. They don't learn Torah. Because if they really learned Torah, they wouldn't even know if they ate or not. It's an amazing story. One of many, many stories about Rav Ovadia. Rav Ovadia, Zecher Tzaddik L'Kadosh L'Vracha, loved Am Yisrael like no other. One day, someone asked him a serious question about halacha, and he had to find out the answer. But for him, his humility caused him to make sure that he reviews every single possible opinion ever written about this answer, including the opinion of simple avreichim that wrote a little notebook and published it. No one knows who this avrech is, but he has access to it. He wants to read his answer, and he's going to write as part of his answer why he's right or why he's wrong, why he discovered the truth or where he made his mistake.

51:22Caused him to make sure that he reviews every single possible opinion ever written about this answer, including the opinion of simple avreichim that wrote a little notebook and published it. No one knows who this avrech is, but he has access to it. He wants to read his answer, and he's going to write as part of his answer why he's right or why he's wrong, why he discovered the truth or where he made his mistake. He's going to review everyone's opinion. So writing some of his answers took a long time. One time, someone asked him a question, and he started learning and writing the teshuvah on Motzei Shabbat. On Tuesday, his son, Rav Yitzchak Yosef, who is the Rishon LeZion now, told the story. Says, "Abba, you know, you have to eat with us, you have to sleep, you have to rest." He goes, "Yeah, yeah, I'm almost finished." "Abba, you've been working on this since Shabbat." He goes, "Yeah, what, it's not Shabbat?" "No, Abba, it's Tuesday." He goes, "Oh, wow." He goes, "What do you mean? You're telling me you haven't eaten or slept since Shabbat?" He goes, "Yeah, I guess I forgot to sleep."

52:50Who forgets to sleep? We sometimes forget to wake up. Who forgets to sleep? He forgot to sleep. That's the difference. You understand? When you have the yoke of Torah and you know that it's the yoke, you know that it's the Torah, you forget to sleep. You forget that there are brands b'chlal. Forget that there is anything in this world because it all becomes dust. It all becomes meaningless. People are so astounded by the fact that I left Wall Street. I tell them, "What do you mean? You probably have like two hundred million dollars in the bank." No, you don't know. I lost everything. "What do you mean everything? Like, you probably still have a couple of million then?" No, no, like zero. Every month is a miracle. It's hard for people to believe because we live a very, very normal life, Baruch Hashem. We have a car, we have a house, we have this, we have that. Food is always in the house, Baruch Hashem. Kids are healthy. Nothing's missing. According to everybody else, they still have millions in the bank. No one wants to believe me. But they ask me, "Wait a minute. Why don't you just go back to Wall Street, make a few million dollars, and come back to doing Kiruv?" Logically, it makes sense.

54:16But that would mean I hate Hashem. Simply said, that would mean I hate Hashem. Because by doing that, I would say that, first of all, I think I'm the one that's making the money, not Hashem. And that the only way that I can have money is if I go make it. And number two, that means I just don't care about Hashem's children. Whether they're religious, not religious, they love Him, they hate Him, they connect to Him, it doesn't make a difference to me. If I'm not going to do kiruv, who will? Now, yes, there are many kiruv rabbis in the world. But from my experience, many do kiruv. How many actually succeed is a different story. This is not to be a judge or a jury or to say I'm better than anyone or any of that garbage because I don't think I'm better than anyone.

55:17but the reality of it is that I see people that have been doing kiruv for 20 years, and still there's barely one Baal Teshuva they can speak of. And then I see emails every single day, text messages every day, phone calls every single day. People tell me that they changed their life because they saw my story, they saw my lecture, they changed this and that. Okay, it's obviously working. Hashem wants it to work. How can I go back to Wall Street? But even more than all of this, Once you discover what the Torah is, to my small level, discover a little bit of what it is. A little bit. Not Rav Ovadia, not even 1% of 1% of him. But just a little bit taste. Everything turns to dust. All the money, all the Wall Street, all the fame, all the this, all the that, all of it becomes mamash worthless. It was never that meaningful to me in the first place. Now it's worthless. It's just grinding water. No matter how much you grind, it's going to stay water. Staying the same. So when someone is an avrech,

56:34You have an opportunity to really, truly toil in Torah and Hashem says, if you do it, you're not gonna have to worry about bills either. I'm gonna give you rich family members, rich friends, rich this, rich that. Some way, somehow, the money is gonna show up. When I first learned this, I didn't believe it. I have to tell you the truth, I didn't believe it because I said it's not possible. But then I saw it. I saw it the first time it was happening to Rav Ephraim and... Ephraim explained to me the inner workings of an Avrech. In Israel, an Avrech makes 1,600 shekels per month. He works full-time at the kollel, studying, goes to the kollel at 9 o'clock in the morning, goes to pray at 8, let's say. 9 o'clock in the morning he's at the kollel. He finishes around 5. Some guys finish around 7. They get home. Hours they learn again at night, sometimes night kollel, or they learn at home, but in general, most of the day they are in the kollel and have no time for a job. They're studying all day, just like you guys go to work all day; they go to kollel all day and get paid 1,600 shekels per month, which is approximately $400-500, tops.

57:55Israel is not exactly the middle of Africa where you live in huts. Israel is a modern, beautiful country, so that's not cheap. B'ezrat Hashem, many of these families have children—three, four, five, six, eight, nine, ten children. That's it, they have to sleep, they have to get clothes, and Average expenses are not going to be less than 8,000 shekels per month, if not more—10,000 to 12,000 shekels. Okay, but I'm starting the month with 1,600, assuming I came on time the whole month. Because if you're late, they deduct it. There's no joking around. The kollel is not like, "I'm gonna show up at 2 and they're still gonna pay me my measly 500 bucks." No, no, my friend, you show up at 2, you're not getting paid. And so now you have 10,000 shekels a month in bills. The maximum you're gonna make from your job is 1,600. That means you're already in the negative 8,400 to start the month. The only way you can do that is if this comes true. The only way you can do this is if what Rabbi Nechunya ben HaKanah says here

59:22In the Mishnah, which we got at Mount Sinai, if this comes true, that Hashem says, "Oh, you're toiling in My Torah? Okay, the worldly responsibilities, which means your bank account, I'll take care of that." Some have rich family members. Some don't. Rabbi Efraim doesn't. And Rabbi Efraim lives a life better than any of us. When they go on Shabbat to go shopping, they don't look at prices. They don't look to save. They don't even try to be frugal. I went shopping with him a few times, and I was certain he's got a million bucks in his pocket. Because he started, he said, "Take a cart," and he took a cart. We don't really need that much food. It's only us, him, and, you know, his few little kids. And I pointed at, like, I don't know, something. He's like, "Oh, you like that?" He takes it like this. He doesn't grab one or two. He's shopping like he's on one of those shows where you have, like, you know, 10 minutes or 2 minutes to collect as much as you can, and you get to keep it. That's how he shops. He knows the kids like cheese; he buys every type of cheese.

1:00:46Like drinks, he buys every type. "You like that? That? That?" "No, I don't really like that one." "Okay, but maybe you'll like it, just in case you like it. It's only Shabbat." I'm like, "Yeah, but you don't need it." "No, no, no, I'm gonna pay for it anyway." He spent almost 1,500 shekels just on one Shabbat. Not every Shabbat. I thought about it. "Why are you shopping all this?" "For you." "No, it's every Shabbat." So I was really worried. I'm like, starting to count. Okay, I have the money. Okay, good. I don't know if he has the money. He doesn't have the money. I have the money on me. But maybe the million bucks is really in his pocket. I'm not really sure. All I know is that I'm nervous as it gets at the cashier. Because I have a full cart that's going, it becomes a mountain. It became like a dump truck. And he has one that's bigger than mine. We go to the thing, shop, everything is fine. He gives them the card. The card goes through. Everything is great. It's like, oh, Baruch Hashem. After we leave, he goes, oh, see another miracle. I'm like, wow, what miracle? Oh, I didn't know if there was any money on the card. You understand? I didn't know if there was any money on the card. I didn't know if I had enough. I didn't know if there was any money on the debit card. I didn't know. I bought. Every Shabbat. Why? The Gemara says, Masechet Beitza...

1:02:14And the parnassah you're going to get is already decreed on Rosh Hashanah. So whether you work learning Torah or you work Wall Street, your parnassah is already decreed in Shamayim. If Hashem wants you to be rich, you can be rich as a talmid chacham. If Hashem wants you to be poor, you can be poor on Wall Street. He wanted the mashgiach of the yeshiva, Rav Dovid Sassoon, to be rich. It didn't mean that he had to stop learning Torah. We became richer than our wildest dreams. So here we learned something significant. The first type of person is the avreich. Don't worry about being an avreich. You want to learn Torah full-time? Take the Torah seriously, just like the cow takes its yoke seriously, and continue regardless of the difficulties. You can have tests. You can have tests. You can have difficulties. You can have times you don't know if there's money in the bank.

1:03:38How do you know that it's going to be okay? How do you know? I don't have money in the bank. I have to buy food for Shabbat. How do I know I'm not supposed to leave the kollel? You know because Hashem wants you to learn Torah. But how do you know you're doing enough when the only thing you can think about is Torah? If you're still thinking about the girls, you're still thinking about the guys, you're still thinking about baseball, you're still thinking about the government, you're still thinking about this world, you're not learning enough. Learning enough, so you can't really be a hundred percent sure that you're fulfilling your part. So you can't be a hundred percent sure that the other parts can be fulfilled. But if you could fulfill your part, you have nothing to worry about. That's enough. But what about a baal habayit? What about a business owner, a worker, a regular person? Not everybody can be in kollel. Not everybody's necessarily meant to be in kollel. What about the rest of us? This also applies to them.

1:04:38Tiferet Yisrael interprets this as a reference to one who is legitimately exempt from the yoke of Torah due to the preoccupation with his livelihood or government position and nonetheless assumes it, devoting himself to Torah study beyond his apparent limitations, and he is rewarded kindly. Someone who has a very, very serious test. He has a job that's consuming. He has tests and difficulties in his life that are taking up all of his time. Heaven forbid, he may have issues with kids, marriage, job, money, whatever it may be. Technically, such a person can't really be a Talmid Chacham. But if he fulfills... Share and take the Torah upon himself and make the Torah number one. Well, no matter what, he still studies every day. The reward will be just as significant. So the baal habayit, the business owner, the worker, is not exempt. In reality, he still has to fulfill his share.

1:05:59Now the question is, when or why did Rabbi Nechunya say this? It's always good to know the background of each one of these Mishnayot. Because last night we learned that Rabbi Chanina ben Chachinai said that learning at night, not wasting any time, that's going to save your life. Or if you do the opposite, you waste time, you don't learn at night. Amen. You're putting your life at risk. This is connecting to a new Mishnah that's telling you, if you actually do what? The rabbi from yesterday, Rabbi Chanina said, then you have nothing to worry about. When did he say this? He said this during the times of the Romans, yimach shemam v'zichram, who decreed that you're not allowed to learn Torah anymore. That's when he said this Mishnah. He said this Mishnah a couple of thousand years ago when the leaders, the government, the most powerful nation at the time, the evil Romans, were trying to destroy Am Yisrael and they decreed that anyone who learns Torah would receive the death penalty. And here we see the Emunah at play. Here we see Rabbi Chanina ben Dosa telling us, not only do you not listen to them, but if you listen to them...

1:07:25That's the cure. If you listen to them, you're gonna live. Because one of the benefits, one of the miraculous benefits, okay, one of the miraculous benefits, one of the miraculous rewards of studying and toiling in Torah is that Hashem takes away not only the worldly responsibilities but also... The yoke of government. The problems with government. Because Am Yisrael, what are you going to fight them with? Your spears? You're going to fight them with your guns? You're going to fight them with the Iron Dome? You're going to fight them with Tzahal? With the IDF? What are you going to fight them with? They're bigger than you. A dome is bigger than you. You've got seven and a half billion people. Who are you going to fight? You don't have enough missiles. For all the Arabs, two and a half billion Arabs just spit on Israel. They drown. You don't have it. You can't fight them. You couldn't fight them 2,000 years ago. You can't fight them today. Okay, so you want to look like you're trying. Fine. You're obligated to do it. Great. But in reality, you really think you can fight them? You can't fight them. What's the fight?

1:08:49Who is telling you to learn Torah? Moshe Rabbeinu told us. How did he fight and win all of his battles? Every thousand soldiers also had a thousand Talmidei Chachamim standing for them—a thousand people with spears and swords, a thousand people with Chumashim. Why? Because the guy with the sword needs Hashem to make sure the sword actually works and... How do we convince Hashem to make sure the sword works? If the guy with the Chumash, the Gemara, the Mishnah, actually reads and toils in Torah. It's the only way to win a war. So Rabbi Nechunia is telling us this Mishnah, not at a time that Am Yisrael is living a pleasant life. We're in a situation where Evil Romans are telling us that if we see you with the Chumash, we're killing you on the spot. If we see you teaching, we'll kill you in public like they did with the Ten Martyrs, one of them being Rabbi Akiva. They kill them in public, torture them. But even that...

1:10:17favor in comparison to what these messianics are doing to us today by fooling our nation to believe that we're supposed to worship some guy, whether it be Yoshke or some Rebbe or some other middleman between us and Hashem. The only answer to our prayers is Torah; the only way we can survive is Torah. Not Torah like hafif once in a while when I have a chance. I'll learn five minutes here, five minutes there. I'll watch a video for a few minutes. It's nice. It's got special effects. Yeah, all that stuff is good. He's looking along the day. You know, instead of smoking a cigarette and looking into the abyss, okay, so you watch a five-minute quick video, fine. Instead of sitting there eating your burger and imagining how the fries are gonna taste as soon as they arrive at your table, you put a shiur on. You listen to it instead of talking about basketball. You have a book in front of you that you're gonna read a few pesukim. Fine, but that's not your main learning. Imagining how the fries are going to taste as soon as they arrive at your table, you put a shiur on. You listen to it instead of talking about basketball. You have a book in front of you that you're going to read a few pesukim. Fine, but that's not your main learning. That's just to get through the day, to survive, to feed your neshama, not just your body. The stuff that's going to keep you alive at the end of times for eternity, keep you on the right derech and...

1:11:43That's the real Torah. That's the fulfillment of actually learning Torah in the morning and at night. You go to work at 8, wake up a little extra early, learn for half an hour, learn for 20 minutes, learn for an hour if you can. You get home, spend some time with the family, and don't go to sleep without learning Torah. A lot of people learn different parts of the mystical aspects of Judaism. People love the mystical parts of Judaism. But in reality, most people who learn the mystical parts of Judaism don't really know the basis behind any of them. Because many of them are not so mystical. For example, has anyone heard of Keriat Shema Al Hamita? Reading Shema Yisrael before you go to sleep. You have all heard about it, right? What do most people believe about why you read Keriat Shema Al Hamita? Why? No, you read it in the morning, but you also have to read it before you go to sleep. Why? Why do you read it? I know you know. Right, why? Why?

1:12:51Both of your answers were mystical answers, to be saved from some impurities, to make sure your kelipot are okay, to be safe from the Satan's wife. These are very, very mystical, holy Zohar-type of answers. The question is, why does it work? Why does Shema Yisrael work? Basic question. This is like Aleph Bet. Why does Shema Yisrael actually work? To protect you against Satan's wife. To protect you against wasting seed. To protect you against all of these mystical, crazy things that we can't see, can't hear, and can't think of. Why? Dedicating to what? Why Shema Yisrael? Why not, "Hashem, do me a favor. Tell her not to come"? The million and a half other covenants that you can be reminded of—why doesn't it say, "Okay, Hashem, I put tefillin on my arm, tefillin on my head"? That's also a covenant. Oh, I said, what about the Brit Milah? It's a covenant. You have two other covenants. Why are you mentioning Shema Yisrael? Why is it the prayer of Shema? You say, why?

1:14:05Why don't you say the Ten Commandments? Say the Ten Commandments. I got Ten Commandments. The first one, say the Ten Commandments. There's one God. The end. Why is Shema Yisrael the whole thing? It's long. It's long, Shema Yisrael. Why do I have to do such a long prayer? I want to go to sleep. Shema Yisrael, go to sleep. Who can say, "Hashem, I know what to eat?" Layla Tov. Layla Tov, go to sleep. You don't wake up. Okay, so you do the... we do you, okay? You're in the right direction, but it's not it yet. Simple answer, ABC answer. No, what's the answer? Because Shema Yisrael is actual verses from the Torah. That's it. Shema Yisrael works because the Satan is scared of the Torah. When you say Shema Yisrael, in essence, you're reading verses from the Torah and... As soon as the demons, the Shedim, the Satan, whoever, hears this stuff, they run away. They go, "Oh, he's a Talmid Chacham. She's a Tzadikah. They're learning Torah right now at 12 o'clock at night," and they're running away from here. Simple, my friend. You don't need to go to the Zohar HaKadosh.

1:15:20ABC, it's because you're reciting divrei Torah, and you are obligated to say some divrei Torah before you go to sleep for protection. Ideally, you would actually learn something—you'd open a Gemara, you'd open something and actually learn some Torah before you go to sleep. But since not all of us do that—I mean, I learn at 2 o'clock in the morning, and at least say Shema Yisrael. Because Shema Yisrael is actual verses from the Torah. That's why it works. It's also, if you look, another way to see how things can easily, when you're not studying the basics, you can very, very easily run away and go into some mystical world that you don't need to go into. I'm not saying it's not... It's real, but the problem is, though, if we spend so much time with mystical stuff, we can get lost. We can get lost in this mystical world and start worrying about the kelipot, and we still don't know the halachot of Shabbat. We're worrying about different images and features that are beyond our ability to even think about when we don't even know the basics. We don't even know when to pray in the morning and...

1:16:45So it's very important to keep the basics. Now, anyone that has Yalkut Yosef, Yalkut Yosef is difficult for most people to understand. So, Rav Yitzchak Yosef, Rav Ovadia's son, wrote Yalkut Yosef, This is specifically, I mean, it really could be used by both Sephardim and Ashkenazim, but I think that Sephardic people tend to get closer to this than Ashkenazim because Ashkenazim have other Poskim and Gedolim that they rely on. But he actually talks about both Sephardim and Ashkenazim here. Look, if the Ashkenazim have different minhagim and halachot, he mentions it and vice versa, but anyway...

1:17:45In this series, he, in essence, took everything that's in the Shulchan Aruch and modernized it in a way where he showed you how it's applicable to today. So obviously, we're not all grabbing a few rocks and lighting a fire in the street for fire; we have microwaves, ovens, and all types of boilers, and so on and so forth. Back then, they didn't have telephones; today, we have telephones. Back then, they didn't have electricity; today, we have electricity. Different things, so he shows you how it's applicable today and... modernized it in a way where he showed you how it's applicable to today. So obviously, we're not all grabbing a few rocks and lighting a fire in the street for fire; we have microwaves, ovens, and all types of boilers, and so on and so forth. Back then, they didn't have telephones; today, we have telephones. Back then, they didn't have electricity; today, we have electricity. Different things, so he shows you how it's applicable today and And this is one of the books that was actually also translated from Hebrew to English and also Spanish and a few other languages. It's a very, very successful collection. All Jews should have it. It's not a completed collection yet, as far as the Hebrew version is obviously completed. But the English translation is not completed yet. There's only about, I think, 15 out of 30 books or 16 out of 30 books, something like that. But anyway, in the Shabbat section, which is three books...

1:18:51Three books. This is one of them. At the end of the first book, in Siman 300, he talks about the halacha of the fourth meal of Shabbat. Now we all know about the first meal on Friday night. Second meal is Saturday morning. The third meal is between Mincha and Arvit. But here he's telling us it's an obligation to have a fourth meal when? It's not like a minhag. You have to do it. Now anyone that knows about the fourth meal, Very easily, it says yes. It says that anyone who eats the fourth meal is going to be saved from Gog u'Magog. The bone at the back of their neck gets its resources from the fourth meal. It's the only meal that it gets its resources from. Mystical stuff. The question is, why? Why is it necessary?

1:20:18Why couldn't Hashem feed the bone in the back of our neck any other way? Why David HaMelech? So now in the Gemara in Masechet Shabbat, page 30b It says a story of David HaMelech asking Hashem, "When am I going to die?" Hashem says, "I can't tell you." David responds, "Tell me the day I'm going to die, the day of the week. It's one out of seven." So, Hashem says, "You're going to die on Shabbat." Shabbat. Hashem, can't you take me on Friday? He says, "No, that would make you study Torah one less day, and one day of your Torah is worth more to Me than all of the korbanot that your son Shlomo is going to bring to Me. You know the korbanot Shlomo HaMelech brought just at the inauguration of the Beit HaMikdash..."

1:21:37Rav Mizrahi did the math on the inauguration of the Beit HaMikdash. Approximately 150 million dollars' worth of korbanot were spent just on the grand opening of the Beit HaMikdash. Hashem says, "One day of your Torah is worth more than all of those korbanot. So I can't take you from the world on Friday instead of on Shabbat, because that means you would study Torah one less day." "Okay, take me on Sunday." "No, no, no." No king could be a king at a time that another king is supposed to have his kingship. Meaning, you can't be a king for one more day because that day, the next day on Sunday, your son Shlomo is supposed to start his leadership. You can't go into his time. There's your time, and there's his time. Okay, so the Vilna Gaon knew that the Satan is... is the Yetzer Hara, and the Yetzer Hara is also Malach HaMavet. This is in Gemara, Bava Batra, page 16. It says, Yetzer Hara is Satan, is Malach HaMavet. First, Yetzer Hara is the nice one. He convinces you that doing an aveira, doing some sin, is good for you. Hashem doesn't mind. No, no, it's okay. Drive to shul, you're making a mitzvah. Drive to shul on Shabbat, you're making a mitzvah.

1:23:06convinces you you're making a mitzvah even though it's another aveira. It's nice to smile sometimes. He has long hair sometimes, short hair sometimes, heels. All types of nice ways he comes to you, yet often he convinces you that your aveira is a mitzvah and... After he convinced you he's the Satan. What's the Satan? He goes up to Shamayim and says, "Look what he did. Look what he did. Look, he just drove on Shabbat. Hashem, You said somebody drives on Shabbat, mot yumat." No, Hashem, he goes and tells on you. After that, Hashem says, "Okay, no. That's what I said. That's what I have to reveal." What does he do? He sends him. He becomes one of the Malach HaMavet. He's the one that has the job of taking the soul out. But this very same Gemara, David HaMelech knew this. He knew that in Gemara Berachot, we find out that Hashem created the Satan with a nature that's scared of Torah. Scared of Torah.

1:24:26David said, "Okay, so what I'm gonna do every Shabbat, as long as I'm studying Torah, he can't kill me." So, David HaMelech would start studying on Friday nights, and he wouldn't stop studying. He wouldn't stop learning Torah. We're sleeping five minutes after we eat the kiddush or two minutes after we eat cholent, and... David HaMelech was studying Torah because he knew that his life depended on it. And he studied and studied and studied. And when Shabbat ended, he'd have, like Amos the Tzaddik said, he'd have a celebration, a fourth meal. What's the fourth meal? He didn't worry about the resurrection of the dead. He didn't worry about the bone in the back of his neck. What did he worry about? Honoring Hashem for keeping him alive for another Shabbat. Hashem kept him alive because He fulfilled His promise. If I learn Torah, I put the yoke of Torah on myself, I don't have to worry about anything, even my life.

1:25:56And he studied Torah, and one of his ways of celebrating it was by having the fourth meal. So now, how did he die? In the Gemara, Shabbat, page 30, it talks about how the Satan had permission to take David HaMelech's life. But he saw that he was learning Torah. How could I kill him if he’s learning Torah? I can't kill him. So what did he do? He made some noise outside of his window, in a tree. David HaMelech got up off his chair to go see what it was. For a moment, he wasn't thinking about Torah because he slipped and fell. For that moment that he wasn't thinking about Torah, the Satan took his life. So now, Chazal asks a question... In the Gemara, Masechet Chagigah, page 13b, it says that someone who is in the middle of learning Torah and gets up to go do shtuyot, to go do nothing, to go check who's outside, to go watch the game, to go do something that's not Torah, they take hot coals that never get cool, which they call gechalei retamim, and they feed it to him as a punishment in Shamayim.

1:27:26for taking time away from the Holy Torah and going to waste it on something that's shtuyot, nonsense. So, obviously, David HaMelech knew this. So how could David HaMelech, who is Kodesh HaKodeshim, get up from the middle of learning Torah to go check who's on a tree? Why, he didn't know this ma'amar? No. Anybody? Unless you may have an answer. Let us scream. What is his business? He's learning Torah. No, Michael? You had something. I have a question. Is it more so that the yetzer hara prompts you to deviate from the path in which you're on, or does it actually manifest itself as a temptation out there? You're learning Torah?

1:28:26Someone who's learning Torah, they hear a phone. They go pick up the phone. You have a problem. Learning Torah, they hear the game. They go get up and see who's winning. But is it my desire to go look? Irrelevant. You get up, you go check, you've got a problem. You've got a problem. Why? You just took the Holy of Holies and treated it like it's worth less than... Nonsense! It's in this world. You have to value Torah. Once you value time, you're not going to do it. But it takes time, yes, of course, it takes discipline. Of course, you see it takes time to discipline yourself, absolutely. But let's stay on the subject at hand. How could the Vilna Gaon make such a simple error? As we see it right now, because we don't know the answer, and get up to go check who's outside in a tree? Okay, fellas, why is he giving up a klal? He's learning Torah. He knows that if he stops learning Torah for a moment, he's stopped growing for a moment.

1:29:37Satan can take his time. Malach HaMavet takes his life. So it's not only that he knows about this Gemara that there's a punishment in heaven for taking Torah and mevatel otah and treating it like it's not worth much. It's not only that punishment. Let's say that's in the back of the mind. The actual front of the mind is thinking that the only reason I'm studying non-stop is because I know that if I stop, Malach HaMavet is showing up at my door. So how could David HaMelech make this decision? No? You guys are typical Jews. You answer a question with a question. No, there are no dumb questions. Taking a Sefer Torah with him is not learning.

1:30:37There is a saying—we haven't found a source for it yet—that if someone is carrying a holy book, it gives them protection. There's a known thing about it. But unfortunately, we don't have a source in the Gemara about it. There's a joke, a story, that's kind of fun. It's a real story, actually kind of funny. I heard it from other friends, and... So there was one time a guy who was very, very arrogant, and he studied some Torah, but he considered himself much more than what he was. He considered himself a Talmid Chacham. He decided to write a book. Today, anybody with a beard can write a book. Sometimes, even without a beard, they can write a book too. So he wrote a book, and he thought that this book was like the Holy of Holies. The real Talmidei Chachamim said this is, they said what the Poskim sometimes say, which is that by writing this book, you made a sin of bal tashchit. What's bal tashchit? You wasted something. You're not allowed to waste stuff. You can't, if you have, let's say, for example, a lot of food, you don't eat all of it. You're not allowed to just throw out food. If it's still good, you have to use it.

1:31:57You have certain things that can be used or gifted to somebody, you have to give them. You can't just throw things away; you can't treat things with disrespect. They said by him writing this book, he made a sin of bal tashchit on the paper and the ink, meaning he wasted his time by writing this book. So one day he's at his house and... It's at night, and he says somebody's gonna. You know, maybe walk with me at night because nobody was able to go with him. You know what? I'm gonna take a copy of my book. I'll take a copy of my book. So one of the wise guys over there said, "Oh... Take a book, it's a good idea. It's a good idea if you take your book. Because, oh, you know that saying also, that if you take a holy book, it protects you at night? He goes, no, no. I know that if you take your book, the demons are going to come, they're going to see what's in the book, and they're going to know for sure you're not a talmid chacham. There's nothing to mess with you. They're going to go somewhere else. So now back to our question. I think it's even worse because...

1:33:11So he knows, he knows this is the day. He knows this is the day he takes a minute of Torah. The Malach HaMavet is about to show up. Because it also says that if you're in the middle of learning and you haven't finished your learning, you started and you stopped in the middle without stopping. He wasn't stopping learning. He was stopping to go check what's outside, what's making noise. It's the equivalent of, let's say if... At this point, it's equal because we don't understand what actually happened, which I'll tell you in a minute. But it's the equivalent of, let's say we're learning right now and the phone rings. We go pick it up. So what does the Chofetz Chaim say? The Chofetz Chaim says an amazing chiddush. Of course, the Vilna Gaon could have seen the Malach HaMavet. The Vilna Gaon also knew much more than we can even imagine. He knew the day he's gonna die.

1:34:27He knew that the minute he stops learning Torah on Shabbat, the Malach HaMavet would show up. He knew that the Malach HaMavet is scared of Torah. But he also knew the basics. The basics that we learned in last week's parasha of one of the 613 mitzvot, "You must rebuke your brother." He knew the basics. Chofetz Chaim says, when he heard something on a tree, he's like, wait, it's Shabbat. You're not allowed to climb a tree on Shabbat. Let me go stop them so they don't desecrate Hashem's name by climbing a tree on Shabbat. So he didn't stop learning. He went to fulfill a mitzvah. But the fact that the Satan had permission... He was able to remove the sefer and made him slip and made him stop thinking momentarily of Torah. And that was the moment. Why? Because Hashem decreed it to be that moment. It wasn't because he got up. It wasn't because he made a sin. The limitation is in our understanding, not in the freedom in there, not in our Torah. There's a decree from Hashem, but the point here is that we see how zealous and

1:35:52David was how honest he was. Just hearing some possibility of somebody making a sin already made his heart break. How could somebody sin against my Father? How could somebody go climb a tree on Shabbat? How could it be? Today, unfortunately, we have people driving on Shabbat; nobody says anything to them. No one says anything. No, I don't know well enough. No, I know, but I don't want to hurt him. No, I know, but maybe he'll stop on his own. Everybody has 500 excuses of why they're not going to tell anybody anything. To be the mouth didn't have any excuses. He heard something and got up. That's why he's not Rabbi Meir. So the reason why we have the fourth meal, Seudah Revi'it, is because of Rabbi Meir. When he survived Shabbat and He'd celebrate the Shabbat that he survived. Why does he deserve to have a meal named after him? Because look at how zealous he was. You be that zealous, they'll have a meal for you too. Now, to finish this Mishnah, I don't know any questions that you guys have.

1:37:15When someone is an Avreich, we already know, they have an opportunity of a lifetime to fulfill the will of Hashem. Someone's a Baal HaBayit, they have the same exact responsibility, they must learn Torah. Obviously, they have to work; they have to have their hishtadlut of working, but it does not exclude them from Torah. And the more they dedicate to Torah, the less they're gonna have to work. Because I'm gonna work for you. Now, if somebody is foolish enough to leave the Torah, it says here, then you can have something else to replace it. If someone throws off the yoke of Torah for himself, then Hashem has to give him something to do. So He said, "Okay, you can't just sit there and do nothing. So I'm gonna give you problems with the government. What is it? An audit from the IRS?"

1:38:16...investigations: SEC, FINRA, FBI, DEA—all these wonderful human beings showing up at 5 o'clock in the morning at your house. That's problems with the government, my friends. If that's not enough, oh by the way, the worldly responsibilities, they're gonna consume your life. You could work three jobs and still not have enough money. You ever see one of those people? They have three jobs and they're still broke... You have one guy who has half a job. He's a millionaire. How? Because Hashem decided he's going to be rich. Even if the guy has three jobs and works 90 hours a day, not 24 hours—somehow he invented another 66 hours. And one day, he works 90 hours a day. He's still broke. Why? Hashem says, you've got to spend all the time, instead of learning Torah, instead of connecting to Me, instead of honoring Me, instead of serving Me. You want to honor a man, you want to serve a man, you want to work for a man, you're going to do it for 90 hours a day. And you're still going to have nothing. Nothing in this world and nothing in the next world. Double punishment.

1:39:31because you took my gold, you took my priceless diamonds, and you treated them like they were worthless. And sometimes we see some of the punishments for this actually happen. You see people who have wasted their life, and they get older much faster. Sometimes you see a 70-year-old guy and... never learned to ride his life. A 65-year-old already started to go senile or started to lose his memory. In Gemara, Sukkah 52b, it says that idleness, you know, wasting your time doing nothing, eventually leads to intellectual dullness and ultimately forms of mental illness. In essence, if you're not going to use this brain and this neshama that Hashem gave you to learn His Torah and...

1:40:33Eventually, it's just going to shut down. It's going to die. You start having memory loss; you can start acting like a baby. You're 70 years old and acting like a baby. The ones that are Talmidei Chachamim, you see them as they get older, they get sharper. You see Rav Elyashiv, yeah, when he was 90 years old, sharper than the sharpest knife you can imagine. Any of the Tzaddikim, you see them sharp and... Amazing, ask him a question and he gives you an answer on the spot. Yeah, their body is not necessarily a 20-year-old body, but their mind is as sharp as it gets. You see someone who didn't learn Torah his entire life; at 70 years old, it's, "Who are you again? What? What do you want from me again? Oh, Steve. Oh, hi Steve. What, Steve? I'm sorry, I forgot who you are." They have no idea what's going on. Why? Ingmar, I told you that boredom doesn't only lead to sin like Shlomo HaMelech told us in Mishlei. But boredom also leads to stupidity and to mental illness. Sometimes you see somebody talks a lot and doesn't say anything, says 500 sentences, and you have no idea what he said. I...

1:41:52Happens often, unfortunately, in this generation. I remember I used to have these guys try to come to work for my firm. You know, people try to impress you, which, you know, whatever. I guess it's part of the gig; everybody likes to impress people. But sometimes people don't know where they stand, so they try to play like they are more than what they really are. So, for example, there were two ways they would do it. One way is by faking their resume. saying that they have much more skills than they really have. So you look at the resume, it's like some guy that's like a rocket scientist. And I had one guy that had a rocket scientist resume. The guy had licenses in the securities business. It was all these things. Amazing. Interview? Sounded fine. I mean, how much can you possibly find out in an interview? Interviewed the guy a few times, he sounded fine. Spoke well, spoke like Obama. Spoke well, looked fine, didn't look like a criminal or anything. Fine. Within two days on the job, I found out he's the biggest idiot I've ever met in my life. The whole thing was fake. Everything he said he knew, he didn't know anything. He didn't even know how to make a UPS slip. Remember I told you guys a story about him? I couldn't get rid of him. For 29 days I had to suffer from him.

1:43:10After 29 days, I fired him, and he still collected unemployment for two and a half years. He worked for 29 days and ended up collecting unemployment for two and a half years. Knowing how to cheat the system doesn't make him smart; it makes him a criminal. That's one way that people do it. Another way that people do it is by using big words. People love to sound like dictionaries, and These big words; they start using big words. So, I had a few guys come to me, and they start talking, and they start using these different words. One guy, I think it's whatever, different words like "flabbergasted" and "exuberant" and all these wonderful words that you read in books. But you don't actually talk like that. And why are they using these big words? In reality, they are trying to imply that they're more than what they really are. But how do you know someone's really smart? Know when they could explain something complex, something difficult in a very simple way for a two-year-old to understand. If your difficult thought process is something you can't explain to a four-year-old kid, you don't know it well enough. Right?

1:44:31But if you're using big words and no one in the room understands it except you, even if you are smart, no one knows. All they know is that you studied the dictionary. So you have to understand, when you explain yourself, Chazal tells us in a few Mishnayot that Chachamim have to be careful with their words. If you're really a chacham, You have to be very careful with the words you choose. Why? Because you have to make sure that whatever comes out of your mouth is understood by the public. If no one understands it but you, okay, you're smart, but no one knows it. They just know you studied the dictionary. So, people that fake it usually sound like that. Because people that actually know those words and know what they mean, don't use them. No one uses 20-letter words in actual language. Unless you're like some doctor or scientist and you need to use it because it's the only word to describe something. But in actual day-to-day language, no one uses some of these big words. They're just part of the English language. You have to be able to explain yourself in a very, very simple way. A very easy way. Why? Because somebody that's not in front of you may be overhearing it. And you may change his life. You may change his life. The six-year-old that's in the back, you may change his life.

1:45:53And I'll finish it with a story. A story that's going to give us enough rebuke for a generation. Enough mussar for a generation because it's a real story. I don't think I ever said it in a lecture before. I think I've told it to one person. Rabbi Ephraim, shlita, was born and raised in Netanya, Israel. In the neighborhood of Netanya, there was a very strange couple. The father was an alcoholic, drunk, a little crazy. Not all there. One time somebody got upset with him. He got upset with him, and he bit him. Bit him like a dog. Bit him. So he's not all there. He's the father. The mother, and if it wasn't for Mother Fran, I wouldn't believe this story. The mother is approximately one and a half feet tall. She's this big.

1:47:17She says, Rabbi Ephraim says she doesn't come up to his knee. And Rabbi Ephraim is slightly shorter than me, smaller than Paul. Rabbi Ephraim is slightly shorter than me, like maybe a couple of inches shorter than me. He says the woman does not come up to his knee. To his knee, she doesn't come up. He says all the kids, the little kids like my daughter, are bigger than her and make fun of her because she's smaller than the kids. And when they were going to get married, The initial Rabbanim didn't want to let it go through because then how are you going to have kids? It's physically impossible. This guy is a regular-sized guy, and this woman is compact like a CD. You know, how are you going to have any kids? They went to some Mekubal, which I don't know the name of. The Mekubal said, "I promise in Shamayim I will pray for you. You can have at least one son." So they let her get married, and they actually had a son. Now, when Rabbi Ephraim finished the Shas for the first time, he was still a young teenager. He finished the Shas, finished studying the entire Gemara for the first time as a young teenager. And every time he finishes the Shas, he has a party. And at one of his parties that he did later on, one of the many times that he finished the Shas,

1:48:44Rav Ovadia's son, Rav David Yosef, came to the party and made a speech at Rav Ephraim's event and said, "From now on, you have to call him Gaon. Not Rav, Gaon. Something special. Baruch Hashem." So Rav Ephraim finished his Shas. Baruch Hashem. Several years passed. One day he gets a phone call. It's a familiar voice. "Hi, yes. I'm formally inviting you to my party celebrating the completion of the Shas for the first time." "Thank you, who are you and why do I get the honor of receiving this invitation?" He said, "Because you are the one... Encouraged me to finish the Shas. Who are you? He said, "I am the son of the little compact woman and the drunk. I'm the teenage son of these two." "Oh, but I don't think we ever spoke. How did I encourage you to do anything?" "This is because the first time you finished the Shas, I was only 10 years old and saw you and how you finished the Shas. I saw how much respect everybody gave you. I said I want to do that, and from that moment on, all I did was get glued to the Torah and I started learning non-stop. Today I finished the Shas, and you're the first phone call I have." So he said, "I'll be there." He went to the party.

1:50:11Saw you and how you finished the Shas. I saw how much respect everybody gave you. I said I want to do that, and from that moment on, all I did was get glued to the Torah, and I started learning non-stop. Today I finished the Shas, and you're the first phone call I have. So he says, "I'll be there." He went to the party. It was an amazing event, something that no one in their wildest dreams would ever think. The son, the byproduct of an alcoholic and someone that's physically deformed, that everyone makes fun of, is going to be a talmid chacham, not a regular person. But it's just us. Rabbi Ephraim comes and makes an announcement. So Rabbi Ephraim talks to the mother, this little woman, and she gets so excited, she starts hysterically crying.

1:51:13The next day, the talmid chacham calls her and tells her, "Listen, you don't know what you did for my mom." She says, "What?" "You talking to her, you have no idea what kind of impact it had on her. It's the first time an adult spoke to her in years. And to give her such kavod for having me as a son, she never thought in her wildest dreams." So this story teaches a few things. Number one, you never know who's watching. Well, Ephraim is a little teenager finishing the Shas. Who knew that this is going to influence a kid that was supposed to be the biggest loser in the world based on where he came from, based on his nature and nurture. Both. He was supposed to be the biggest loser in the world, but he became a Talmid Chacham.

1:52:15You never know who's watching. And the second thing is, when you give people honor, you give them respect, you treat them like they're Hashem's children, you have an impact on them. But the biggest thing of all that we learn from this is that you don't have any excuses. Is your mother double the size of this cup? Is your father an alcoholic? Are you mentally challenged? Are you physically deformed? Do you have a test bigger than he did? Well, I'll finish the story with this. Just this past Pesach, Ephraim went to visit Netanya. He comes during Pesach. Usually, he goes to visit his parents in Netanya. He lives in Jerusalem. He went to visit his parents, and he was sitting in the Kollel over there learning Torah. All of a sudden, he gets a tap on his shoulder. He looks up, and it's a tall, handsome, and respectable person wearing a jacket. Not just an average person, but someone who is a rabbi of a known place, but it's a familiar face.

1:53:36And he gets a little closer and he says, it's the boy that finished the Shas. So not only did he finish the Shas once, he actually became a rav, an important rav in Eretz Yisrael of a kehillah. Even more so, a reminder that we don't have any excuses. No questions. This light is killing me. Yeah. Yeah, he did get blessings. I mean, it doesn't necessarily say that you're going to be rich if you do what Hashem says. It says that you'll have merit for it, the real sechar. The real s'char is not even in this world. As a matter of fact, the Rambam explains that anytime somebody gets anything in this world, let's say for example, somebody does a few mitzvot, Hashem says, okay, you know what, I'll give him a brand new car. Does a few mitzvot, He gives him a house, gives him a building, gives him a wife, gives him kids, all these things. He says that's not even really the real s'char, that's not really the reward.

1:55:03Not the real reward. Because this reward that you get in this world, it would be unfair. It would be unfair for Hashem to... Thank you. It would be unfair for Hashem to give you the reward in this world because you can't compare the greatest of treasures in this world to a second in Olam Haba. So why does Hashem give you a reward here? It's to fulfill mitzvah goreret mitzvah, or averah goreret averah. Every time you do a mitzvah, Hashem says, oh, you want to give donations? Okay, I'll give you more money. You give more donations. You like doing my mitzvot? You give donations, I'm going to give you more money so you can make more donations. What's the source of it? We see it in Tehillim. Tehillim is

1:56:04It says, Hashem is your guardian, Hashem is your protective shade at your right hand. Now, Hashem Shomrecha means Hashem is your guardian. Hashem Tzilecha, here it says the translation in English is Hashem is your protective shade, but Tzilecha really means your shadow. is the shadow of your right hand. What does the shadow of your right hand mean? It means that what you give, you get back, like tzeil. So here we see that the reward I mean, I had it open, but I had no idea what I was going to actually say. So that's Siyata Dishmaya. I tell you guys, I come to the lecture, it has nothing to do with me. So, you make me look knowledgeable, but I have to remind you guys, I know nothing. Everything is Hashem. Hashem can take away all the wisdom that I have in a second. Hashem can give me a lot of wisdom. Hashem can take wealth.

1:57:19give you wealth. Nothing to do with me. Nothing to do with me. I'll just tell you what he says. Parrot. Parrot. Alvai Parrot. So, as far as Hashem giving you a reward, why does He give you a reward? He gives you the ability to fulfill mitzvot. On the other hand, if someone makes a sin, sometimes you see him as a building also. So how does the guy that drives a Ferrari on Shabbat have a building? How does he have two buildings? This we learned from Parashat Va'etchanan, the last three verses. Hashem says, I pay my lovers for thousands of generations. I give my lovers, the ones that keep my mitzvot, for a thousand generations, meaning forever.

1:58:20But I pay my haters to their face to eliminate them. Meaning, you made a mitzvah at some point. You were 13, you did tefillin for the first time, you came to your orbit, to your job a few times. You wore tefillin, you're gonna get paid for that. You gave some tzedakah, you're gonna get paid for that. You did a bracha at some point, you're gonna get paid for that. You made a few mitzvot directly at some point. You're going to get paid for that. But since you're making certain sins that eliminate you from the next life, I have to pay you now. Why? I have to eliminate you. Because once you get to me, there's no more. It's over. So as far as getting... Reward here, the Rambam explains that yes, you get a reward here, but it's not the real reward. The real reward is Olam HaBa. And it's also one of the things we learn in Pirkei Avot, especially in chapter six, the sixth part of Avot. It talks about how you have to make sure you understand the real reward. It's not here.

1:59:40Now, as far as David HaMelech, listen, David HaMelech was a king. David HaMelech, the descendant of the Mashiach, is coming from him. David HaMelech is one of the greatest human beings that ever lived. If that's not a reward, then what is? They're not mentioning me in the Torah. So if that's not a reward, what is? Yes. A lot of times you get caught up in Western validation. Yetzer Hara. I'm getting money, so I must be doing the right thing. Yetzer Hara. 100%. That's the test. Hashem has to give you a test. There has to be an obstacle. There was somebody that came to Rav Shach one time. He was going to his shiurim. And one day he didn't show up. And Rav Shach said, I'll come in and come to my shiurim. He goes, no, Kavod HaRav, you have to understand, it was a soccer game. He goes, what's a soccer game? What is that? He goes, no, soccer, you know, kaduregel. What's that? He goes, you know,

2:01:01No, I don't know. What is it? He goes, listen, it's two teams, and each has a goal post, and there's one ball. The objective is for each team to kick the ball into the net. He goes, okay, so why don't you just give each other the ball, play nice, and kick the ball into the net? He goes, no. The whole point is that they try to put the goal in each other's post. He goes, okay, so why don't they play nice and let each other, he kicks it one time, you kick it one time. He goes, no, no, no, there's a goalie. There's a goalie there trying to stop the ball. He goes, so tell the goalie to move. He goes, no. If the goalie is not going to stop it, there's no point. He goes, ah, your ears should listen to your foolish mouth. If there's no one to stop you, there's no point. If the Yetzer Hara is not going to give you a soccer game in your mind, there's no point for your mitzvah. If you're not going to have the inclination to want to make money, your Torah is not going to be worth anything. If the girl that's dragging your eyes to her is not your wife,

2:02:17What's the point? If it's your wife, then it's a mitzvah. If it's not your wife, it's an aveirah. Life and death is a very thin line between them. That's the point. That's the point. That's the whole point of the game. If there's no Yetzer Hara, there's no point. No? Next. Let me go a little bit back to the beginning. I'm sure we were talking about that. Okay, the whole point of a mikveh is to make sure that it's natural water, that the water came there in a natural way, unassisted. So, for example, a pool cannot be a mikveh unless at least 40% of the pool's water came from rain. Um, so if, let's say, for example, a jacuzzi—you want to make your mikveh at home—it can't be because it's assisted. So, if you see a regular mikveh, they usually have a tube that's connected to the roof or somewhere outside that moves the water into the mikveh and fills up at least 40 percent of the mikveh's water. A river is one hundred percent rainwater, so, or an ocean is also one hundred percent natural. As a matter of fact, the highest level of mikveh is the ocean.

2:03:44The most purifying mikveh is the ocean. The problem is that most of the places where you can dip in the ocean have a lot of pritzut (immodesty), so you're not allowed to go. Not only are you not allowed to go dip there in the water, you're not even allowed to go there. If there are going to be people there, you're not allowed to go there. There's going to be women with immodesty. It's not a mitzvah; it's an aveirah. You're not allowed to go, no, no, so I'm going to go purify myself, go to the ocean to dip in a mikveh, and I'm going to go back home. I'm not going to look at the girls. No, my friend, if the girls are there, you're not allowed to go there. So the guys that do go to the, there's a few people that I know that go to the ocean, To dip in a mikveh, and they go at really, really, really early times, like really early in the morning when there's pretty much no one there. Also, they go to an exclusive part of the ocean where usually there's nobody there. It's ugly. There's no pretty beach; it's like rocks. They dip in the ocean, they come out. That's fine, that's good, but you don't need to do that. Just go to a mikveh. There's plenty of mikvehs, Baruch Hashem. We're not in the middle of Russia where the

2:04:51You have the NKVD and other communists over there killing people because you build a mikveh. Like Rabbi Zilber wrote in his book To Remain a Jew, they killed several people because of a mikveh. We're not in that world right now, Baruch Hashem. Hashem made it very, very easy to be a Jew. Very easy to be a Jew. No more questions. You have to work as much as your emunah is. Meaning that, yes, you have to have hishtadlut, you have to have effort, but you can't overdose on effort. But it's guilt driving me to do it. It's not actual. You know what I'm saying? It's like a lower earth. No, no. Oh, no, I have these bills. Well, I mean, the good news is, the good news is that David HaMelech taught us many, many things in Tehillim, in his Psalms, and he says that Hashem even pays reward...

2:06:18sustenance to a Rasha just because he believed that Hashem should help him, not because he deserves it. So if a Rasha prays for Hashem to help him rob a bank, Hashem will help him. Why? Because he believes that Hashem will help. Just that's enough of a reason for Hashem to help him. He's still gonna get punished for robbing the bank, but Hashem will help him do it. So if Hashem is helping the rasha, it's needless to say that He's going to help somebody who is learning Torah. But at the same time, we have to do our hishtadlut. We already know from Adam HaRishon that part of the curse of being in this world is that you have to sweat in this world. But this is a curse. Working is a curse. You don't overdose on curses. You know, you don't do too much of the curse. You do enough, just enough. How much do you work? Each person has to work based on their emunah, on their actual faith in Hashem, but also based on what you're doing with the rest of your time. So if, let's say, for example, you don't work, you don't have a job, you should be studying Torah all day. Like, all day. Not like two hours a day.

2:07:33like all day because you're not allowed to just sit there and do nothing. If Hashem gave you the leisure and the ability to sit there and live without actually working, if you're not making your world a Gan Eden of Torah, you'll have a Gehinnom of it. You'll get punished for all that wasted time, and one of those punishments is that He's going to put you in a situation where you have to deal with a lot of worldly problems. So, if you have an opportunity to study Torah uninterrupted, you have to do it. On the other hand, if you're the average person in the world who has a job, has a career, and can't really study Torah all day, this is really who this applies to most of the time, then you obviously have to make time for Torah. have to make some time in the morning, you have to make some time at night, you have to make every opportunity possible to learn Torah. In essence, what we're trying to learn in this Mishnah, and what Rabbi Nechunya is telling you, and also Rabbi Chanina from yesterday is telling you, is that it's very, very important for a person to manage their time properly because you're not allowed to waste time because the time is not yours and

2:08:45you don't know how much time you have. Even though everybody thinks they're going to live to a thousand, the reality of it is that you don't know. So when you show up to Shamayim, you want to have something to show for it. And for the few people that think that because they gave a few dollars in tzedakah, that's going to help them in Shamayim, then you have to understand that that is helping you more here than anything else. So, in the Gemara, Masechet Shabbat 156b, it talks about how tzedakah is going to save you from death, but also, not only save you from death, but also from death itself, and also from Gehinnom. And it says in the Gemara, there are three things about the tzedakah, but in the Tehillim... David HaMelech, Tehillim 121, it says, So when it says, What's Ezri Me'im Hashem? Where is a... David HaMelech is saying, where will my help come from? Ezri Me'im Hashem, my help will come from Hashem.

2:10:08In essence, what he's trying to tell us here is that a person has to understand that in reality, there's nothing but Hashem. There's nothing but Hashem. And his help is only going to come from Hashem. Only going to come from Hashem. So, if someone is going to take the role of being the person that gives tzedakah, They, in essence, need to understand that they have to do something that's going to be meaningful. So if, let's say, somebody makes an announcement and tells you, "Listen, there's a woman who doesn't have what to eat, doesn't really have a job, or is not making enough money, and she's about to give birth. And we need anyone that can contribute." And you say, "Oh, yeah, yeah, great. I want to contribute. I'm going to give five dollars." I'm gonna give five dollars. If you actually think that five dollars is going to get you to Gan Eden, then you have a serious problem. Because unless that's really your only five dollars or a significant amount of money for you—which in today's world in America, nobody values five dollars—you can't even get coffee for five dollars. What's five dollars gonna do for a woman who doesn't have any money to eat? What's five dollars gonna do for her?

2:11:31But the problem today is that we are confused. We think that giving a dollar to the homeless guy is going to get us to Gan Eden. We think that giving five dollars to a woman who doesn't have enough money to eat is going to get us to Gan Eden. We think that giving a hundred dollars for some Chanukah party or even five thousand dollars for some Chanukah party is going to help us in any way, shape, or form. So first and foremost, a person that's going to be a worker First thing first, David HaMelech is telling you, remember, you're going to work, where's the help really coming from? Hashem. All your money is coming from Hashem. First thing first, remember it's coming from Hashem. But also, remember that if you want the hand to shower yours, you have to use it appropriately. You have to actually pray to Hashem. You have to have a separate prayer to Hashem.

2:12:32to actually fulfill a mitzvah of tzedakah. Because if you don't pray to Hashem to fulfill the mitzvah of tzedakah, who says you're gonna get it? Maybe you're gonna be the guy that gives five dollars thinking that it's really a big deal. You actually have to have merit to give tzedakah. Even if you give five thousand dollars, if you don't have the merit in shamayim, it's gonna go to pay for the toilet paper for the beit knesset. It's going to go to pay for some fake rabbi that goes to casinos. It's going to go for the Hanukkah party that nobody made a mitzvah as a result of it. Instead, people actually ate without saying thank you to Hashem, without saying a bracha. If you don't have merit in shamayim, if you don't ask for Hashem to do you a chesed, do you a favor, and give you the merit to actually give tzedakah, even your work is a waste of time. so first things first, if you have the opportunity to learn Torah, obviously that's amazing. But for most people, this doesn't apply to them. You're going to be in the business world, you're going to be in the regular world, fine. Remember, you're still obligated to learn Torah, and in order for your entire day to be meaningful,

2:13:46You're not going to spend the entire day learning Torah; you're working. How do you make your entire day meaningful? How do you get a similar merit—not the same, but a similar merit—to the guy that studied Torah all day? You study two hours a day; he studied ten hours a day. How do you get there? Use the money that you made during that job to support Torah. Because if you use the money that you made to support Torah—not just five dollars and... but you use money to actually really support Torah, you exert yourself to support Torah, then your job becomes a mitzvah. It counts as if your entire day now was like learning Torah. Because now you took the money, you obviously paid the necessary bills you have, your rent, your mortgage, your whatever, your bills, whatever bills you have, your electric, your food, paid for your kids' education and so on. But then you took some money and you went and you

2:14:47recruited some of Hashem's children to come back to Him. You helped an avrech that doesn't have more than $400 a month to eat. You helped him have some more comfort. You made sure that he has money to eat. And this also reminds me of something that a lot of people have a misunderstanding about. There's a famous Issachar and Zevulun agreement in the Torah. Issachar and Zevulun had an agreement, a famous agreement, where one learned Torah, the other one worked, and the one that worked also learned Torah, but not to the same extent. But he made sure that he actually supported the one that learned Torah. And today, a lot of people think they have the same arrangement. They think they have the same arrangement because they support an avrech. Now, in order for you to have an Issachar and Zevulun agreement, There are two opinions on how it can be. One, in order for it to truly be an Issachar and Zevulun agreement, for you to truly have half the merits that he has. So, for example, every minute of Torah that he learns, it's mitzvot. You want to have those mitzvot also. So let's say, for example, he makes half a million mitzvot a day, you get half a million also. In order for it to be 50-50, there's two opinions. One opinion is, you have to pay for all of his bills.

2:16:10Not 500 bucks a month. All of his bills. Whatever his bills are, you have to pay for all of them. If it's 10,000 a month, it's 10,000 a month. If it's 5,000 a month, it's 5,000 a month. A lot of people think, "If I pay $300 to this avrech, it's Yissachar-Zevulun." It's not Yissachar-Zevulun. "Oh, I pay him $700. He only makes 400 bucks a month from the kollel. I pay him 700." But yeah, he needs 5,000. Your 700 is helping him, but you're not getting half of his mitzvot, and everybody else that's helping him is not getting anything. So, right, you have to be the one that frees him from the responsibility of money. So, that's the first opinion. Let's test the first opinion. The first opinion is you have to pay for all of his bills. The second opinion is you actually have to give him half of all your money. Meaning, if you make ten thousand a month, five thousand to him, five thousand to you. If you make a hundred thousand a month, fifty thousand to him, fifty thousand to you. A billion to you, a billion to him. That's the second opinion. Most hold by the first opinion. Let's work on that first. And then you can only support one avrech. Because let's say someone makes 100 grand a month, he supports 10 avrechim, right?

2:17:22Again, I'm not telling you what to do. I'm telling you what the sages say. What I'm saying to you is that the people that think that they are... Getting Yissachar and Zevulun by giving the guy a thousand dollars a month is really only Yissachar and Zevulun if a thousand dollars a month covers all of his bills. And I don't know anybody on Hashem's green earth who is living off a thousand dollars a month with five kids. Not in Israel, not in America. I don't think anywhere in the world, except, you know, third-world countries. I You know, so yes, you're getting mitzvot. It's a hundred percent mitzvot for supporting an avrech for $500 a month or $100 a month or $5,000. It's all mitzvot. But it's not Yissachar and Zevulun. We have to put ourselves where we belong. Put ourselves where we belong. Let's not think that we're going to Gan Eden, but in reality there's this effect if we're even going to enter it.

2:18:26You know, we don't, that's also the thing, if you don't have the merit of having the zechut, someone goes up to Shamayim, "Oh listen, I gave a lot of tzedakah." No, you didn't give any tzedakah. "What tzedakah did you give?" "No, no, I gave five thousand to the Beit Knesset Hanukkah party." That's not tzedakah. "I gave a car to the rabbi every year." That's a gift; that's not tzedakah. Maybe he said that's not tzedakah. "I gave $30,000 to the reform shul." That's actually a sin. "I gave, you know, a..." Give five dollars to the woman who is pregnant. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, it's okay. We have five dollars. So here we're going to give you back the five dollars. Go to the vending machine, you can buy whatever you want before you enter Gehinom. That's what you're going to have if you have this five dollars. Do you understand what's happening here? Go to the vending machine, buy a Coca-Cola or a Pepsi before you go to Gehinom, so you have something to drink. That's what you're going to get. You have to have merit to give tzedakah, my friends. You have to have merit. And that's why people don't understand this. People think that if they give $100 to any guy with a beard, it's chazak u'baruch. No, my friends. You have to have merit. You have to, you know, really, you have to give tzedakah. It supports Torah. It has to support Torah. If it's not supporting Torah, it's a fake if it's even a mitzvah. Unless it's, you know, poor people and, you know, people who don't have money to eat and so on.

2:19:47But if you're giving it to some Chanukah party or Purim party or any party, it's not tzedakah. That's like a gift; it's not tzedakah. Next question. Just after the shiur yesterday, I shut off the tape, and you guys talked to me for two more hours. It was better than the lecture. Okay, I'm gonna pretend like I shut off the camera. Kofrim. Heretics. Heretics. Yeah, same thing. There's actually, unfortunately, there's also something called Renewal. and they call themselves Orthodox, but in reality, they're Reform. It was actually started by someone who used to be in Chabad. He used to be in Chabad, and then he went off the deep end. He created a tallit that's rainbow-colored, which became very popular amongst the Reform people. And he...

2:21:01He's, you know, going to suffer for a long time for it. But anyway, there are a lot of different sects going against Hashem, unfortunately, and very few that are going with Hashem. So we have to try to be on the good side. Yeah. Yeah. Prayed on the beach? I'm trying to understand what you're saying. Prayed on the beach. Okay, guys, very, very spiritual feeling, right? Okay. Okay. And I thought about it. I'm like, I'm not going to do that. Because in the picture I showed him, I don't have a shirt on. And I'm just talking. He goes, what are you doing? He said, go to the beach for the mikveh. So I sent him the picture. But then I thought about it. I'm like, that's one of the handful of things that he's told me to do that blatantly would have been blasphemy to the biggest degree and looked so badly on me. What's the appropriate thing to do about that? Get a new rabbi, sure. But I mean, do we have a burden of obligation to now hinder that rabbi from continuing to do that?

2:22:23if he's a lamdan, if he's someone that learned Torah and he's considered a, I guess to some extent, somebody that's at least to some extent a talmid chacham, knows some Torah, You can't really rebuke him the way you would rebuke somebody that doesn't know anything. You still have to give him some type of honor because he has some Torah that he possesses. But you could do it in different ways. You could do it with an anonymous letter. You could do it by asking him, "Oh, listen, I heard this one rabbi mention something about a story similar to what you just told me, but obviously don't mention it's your story. What do you think of it? He said, da, da, da, da, da. He said it's not allowed. What do you think?" And you could, in essence, give him the rebuke indirectly. You must rebuke your brother, but not come to sin as a result of it. Meaning, yes, you have to rebuke your brother, but don't be a guy that's crossing the line and ends up embarrassing him in public. You understand? So there's a way to rebuke different people. In general, you should focus on people that are your equals.

2:23:37unless it's a community leader. If it's a rabbi, then usually what you would want to do is have another rabbi approach him. You would want to have another rabbi ask him a question or give him a message in the name of another rabbi, rather than you saying, "Listen, I don't think what you're doing is right." Because, number one, he's probably not going to listen to you. Number two, he's going to find you a chutzpah. He's going to find you very rude, and... and number three, it's not necessarily appropriate for a student to rebuke his teacher, even if he was only your teacher for a day. So there's a way to do things; you have to be very careful with rebuke. There's a way—I mean, listen, the problem today is that we've gotten so careful that no one rebukes, so we can't go to that extent. But there's a way to do it. There's a way to fulfill the mitzvah you're obligated to do. It's one of the 613 mitzvot, but

2:24:37One of the things that I think is very, very important to say is yesterday, I mentioned when somebody asked me a question. Last night, I got home, and there was already a question on the email that was relevant to the shiur. Baruch Hashem, there's one tzaddeiket ba'alat teshuva from San Francisco, and she sent me a question. I haven't had a chance to respond to it, so I'll respond to her now because I think maybe somebody else may be asking the same question. It's good for a clip anyway. for people to know. Now, yesterday we mentioned that when someone doesn't have a rav, someone doesn't have a rabbi, there are some Gedolei Torah, there are some sages that say, even in our generation, if you don't have a rabbi, if you don't make yourself a rabbi, it's better you don't even do teshuva. Because at least you're going to be ignorant. You're going to make sins out of ignorance. Whereas if you did teshuva, but you don't have a rabbi, you can become a walking chillul Hashem. you don't have anybody leading you in the right direction. You're gonna start deciding what this Halacha means to you. You're gonna decide what this specific thing means to you, which is a problem. It's a very, very serious problem.

2:25:50This is what happened with the Renewal guy. This is what happened with the Reform people. This is what happened with Modern Orthodox. This is Open Orthodox. This is what's happening with a lot of different people who are just not following rabbis. They just become their own rabbis, and it's a very serious problem. To such an extent that you sometimes see every time somebody gets off the deep end, they start saying things based on their own opinion, not their rabbi's. They don't have a rabbi, or they're not listening to him, and... So some people are saying that it's better if you didn’t do teshuva than actually do teshuva without a rabbi. Now, what if the only available rabbi you have locally is a Reform rabbi or a Conservative rabbi or Renewal? What if that's the only rabbi you have locally? Then what? No one says that your rabbi has to be local. No one says your rabbi has to be local. Your rabbi does not have to be local. Your synagogue doesn't have to be local. If the only shul you have locally is Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Renewal, or any of these movements that are against Hashem, if the only thing that's next to you is something that's against Hashem, don't go. You're not allowed to go. It's better you die and not go to one of these synagogues.

2:27:16It's better you die than go to one of these synagogues. Understand what I'm saying here, so if the rabbi there is not really a rabbi, it's some goy or some goya or some, you know, dog. If that's the rabbi in this shul, and that's the only local rabbi, he's not a rabbi. Don't have him as a rabbi. Find a new rabbi. If there's nobody local, then find somebody that's distant. My rabbi is in Israel. When I have a question, I go to Israel. Hashem had mercy on us; He created phones, He created Skype, He created text messaging, He created email. There are a million ways to communicate today. No one says your rabbi has to be local. So you can have a rabbi that's distant. You have a question, you call the rabbi, you text the rabbi, you email the rabbi. That's it. But in reality, you should move. You should move to a place where there is an Orthodox shul. Now, your local rabbi doesn't necessarily need to be your only rabbi. Most people throughout their religious life are going to have multiple rabbis. You can have one rabbi that's going to be your rabbi that is going to teach you mussar. One rabbi is going to teach you Gemara. One rabbi is going to teach you, you know, family purity or shalom bayit. Another rabbi is going to be your go-to guy when you have halachot.

2:28:33Everybody's going to be like your friendly rabbi, your guy that's going to answer the phone at 3 o'clock in the morning when you're down and you're not sure if you want to jump off the bridge or not. You need that rabbi, too. So you're going to have different rabbis. The one thing I would recommend, though, that I see happening constantly and creating a problem for a lot of rabbis more than it is for people, is... Many rabbis are making the mistake of befriending their students and becoming friends with their students. As a leader, it's the biggest mistake you can possibly make. If you want to be somebody's rabbi, you cannot be their friend. It doesn't necessarily mean that you can't be friendly. You can be friendly. You can invite them to dinner. You can invite them to an event. You can't be friends. You can't go on vacation together. Can't say, "Hey, what's up, buddy?" or "Oh, nothing. What's going on, bro?" No, that's not how you talk to a rabbi. You can't go out for a beer with your rabbi. If you want to be a friend, be a friend. And the reason why is because once you're friends, the respect changes. Respect changes. We learn this also from Pirkei Avot. I think a few weeks ago we learned about this. But we also learn this all the way back from...

2:29:56Elkanah, the father of Shmuel, Shmuel HaNavi, used to go to do the sacrifices four times a year, and each time he would go in a different direction. Same place, same location, but he would go in a different direction and We see from the prophets also that one of the very big mitzvot that Hashem had at the time of the Beit HaMikdash is that you were not allowed to leave the Beit HaMikdash from the same place you entered. You entered the front door, you leave from the back. You entered from the back, you leave from the front. You're never allowed to enter and leave from the same exit. The reason why... So the walls of the Beit HaMikdash don't start looking like the walls of your house. Translation: Don't get used to it. Don't get used to the Beit HaMikdash, the Holy of Holies, the house of Hashem Yitbarach, like you got used to your house. You could buy a multi-million dollar mansion, but after a few months, you're used to it. It's your house. It's not your mansion. It's your house. It just becomes regular. You're used to it.

2:31:15That's not your house. It's not your house. Your rabbi—don't get used to him. As soon as you start treating him like a friend, he's not your rabbi anymore. This is one of the biggest mistakes that I see today with young rabbis and young students of theirs. They want to play basketball with them. They want to kick it with them. They want to say "what's up" to them. They want to be friendly with them. They want to seem cool like them. And that's fine. You could be a mentor, but you're not going to be their rabbi. Mentor is fine. It's just not their rabbi. Mentor is a leader. It's just not their rabbi. Because a rabbi, according to Chazal, is someone the students have to feel like they fear God. Meaning he says they do. He says not allowed, they don't say no. But why? No. No why? No, why? I said no. No. In the end, this seems to our generation like some type of authoritarian mentality, Hitlerish slash Iran. No, no, my friends. This is respect and honor of Talmid Chacham.

2:32:23Honor of Talmid Chacham. A Talmid Chacham is all fire. It's really fire. You don't see it. A Talmid Chacham is surrounded by fire. Gehinom can't touch him. Talmid Chacham. Respecting a rabbi, I'm assuming your rabbi is a Talmid Chacham. If your rabbi is a Talmid Tipesh, then he's not really your rabbi. Understandably, you might be scared of him. He says yes, you say yes. He says no, you say no. You have a debate. You're not looking for a rabbi; you're looking for a friend. This happened to me with a student that I knew wasn't really a student, but nonetheless, he is unfortunately one of the victims of this book that came out and this teaching that came out and... that I mentioned to you guys yesterday, where they tell people that are goyim that they're allowed to keep Shabbat, even though Rambam says a non-Jew that keeps Shabbat,

2:33:36Death penalty, yeah, heavenly death penalty. A non-Jew is not allowed to keep Shabbat. Why? Because it's a Brit Beini u'Veineichem. Hashem says it's a covenant between Me and you, not Me and everyone. Not Me and all the nations, not Me and the Jews and the Noahides. No, no, Me and you. You being Am Yisrael. it's the only verse you need. There are many other proofs. It's the only verse you need that the covenant is only between Hashem and Am Yisrael. No one is allowed to keep Shabbat unless they're a Jew. So when someone says, who calls themselves a rabbi, or a couple of people call themselves rabbis, and they tell people, no, no, no, Rambam was wrong, or you misunderstood the Rambam, and you misunderstood this one, and everyone misunderstood except us, in this generation, in the year 2017, according to the Christians, we understood, no one else understood before us. We gave a Chiddush to the world. Rabbi Akiva didn't understand. Rabbi Akiva, who went up to Shamayim, went up to Shamayim and saw what happens there. He saw angels. He saw what's going on. He saw how things look. He didn't understand. But you, you too, you saw it. You understood. Rambam, who was able to go from place to place without cars, houses, planes or anything, country to country, just through Kabbalah.

2:34:59And one of the stories in the book of Rav Mazuz that came out recently is a Kabbalah that says he went from Egypt to a different country and back in three minutes. You're saying he didn't understand, but you understood from this generation. You understood. He was wrong, you were right. When we get out of that dream, we realize there's a problem. But now, they wrote a book... This book is saying that anyone can keep Shabbat, you could do this, you could do that, and unfortunately what's happening is that many of these people that are supposed to convert and become Jewish eventually decide, "Wait a minute, if I could just keep whatever I want, what do I need to convert for? Let me just stay and keep whatever I want and not get punished if I don't keep it. So I get the win either way." So what happens? One of the things that a non-Jew is not allowed to do, unless he's in the process of converting, is that he's not allowed to learn the Oral Torah. He's not allowed to learn the Gemara. Not allowed. But they said, these two rabbis, that he's allowed. So what is he doing? He's learning Gemara now.

2:36:15so now he comes to me, he says, listen, I have, he's a nice kid too, but he's making a very big mistake. Comes to me, he says, listen, I've been learning Gemara, and it says in the notes of Masechet Sanhedrin, I think it was page 59, there's a note, number 10, that says that if a Noahide is learning, it's only a problem if he's learning because he's trying to confuse the public, confuse Am Yisrael. I said, no, no, if you actually look at the actual Gemara itself, Yohanan says a guy that learns Oral Torah is not allowed. That's what the Gemara says; forget the notes. Rabbi Yochanan was able to revive the dead. But even before that, before I gave him the actual answer, he told me, "I'm studying Torah. I'm studying this. I'm doing all this." So I asked him, "Are you looking for an answer, or are you looking for validation?" Because if you were looking for an answer, you already got the answer from all my lectures, or Rabbi Mizrachi's lectures, that you're not allowed to learn Torah. But it sounds like you are looking for validation. You're looking to get permission to learn Torah. And obviously, you don't have permission, because we already said it, and the source that you're providing is wrong. You're wrong about the source. And I explained to him the source. So what does he do? He debates me. That's not a student.

2:37:43Nice kid. God bless him. Hopefully he does teshuva. Hopefully he converts at the end. But that's the difference between someone who's a student and someone who's a friend. He enjoys my lectures. I enjoy the fact that he gave out a few CDs. Baruch Hashem, nice people. But the reality of it is, when you have a Rav, he says yes, you say yes. He says jump, you say how high. That's a Rav. I didn't ask to be anybody's Rav, but you're understanding my point here. Many times, I had to do things I didn't really want to do due to this arrangement of having a Rav. So the only thing I can suggest to you guys, if you're gonna pick somebody to be a Rav—your local Rav, your YouTube Rav, your this Rav, or your that Rav—whoever your Rav is gonna be, get used to it. Get used to saying yes. Because that's the only way he's going to actually be able to help you. As soon as you start debating him, he's not your Rav anymore. Next. Yes. It's one of them. It's one of them. I mean, I know you stand in front of it, meaning you know it's actually one of the Pirkei Avot. It's one of the Mishnayot.

2:39:08is that you have to know who you're dealing with. You have to know who Hashem is. So this is actually a verse, that verse actually comes from the Mishnah. You have to know that you're standing in front of Hashem, which is technically you're standing in front of Hashem at all times, which is actually part of the reason why you're not allowed to be drunk or high, because in essence, you have to realize that Hashem is next to you. So how could you be next to the King of Kings drunk and a mess. Even more so if you're in a Beit Knesset, even more so in a place that's holy, that's a mini Beit HaMikdash. You're not allowed to pray if you're drunk. You're not allowed to pray if you're high. You're not allowed to pray after you smoked weed. You're not allowed to pray after you took a pill of ecstasy, even though you feel really spiritual. You're not to pray and Your spiritual state of mind is meaning disgusting to Hashem to such an extent that He killed two people because of it. Who are those two people? Nadav and Avihu, Aharon's sons. Aharon's sons, according to Chazal, had potential greater than Aharon and Moshe. But they came in front of Hashem in an inappropriate way. Hashem killed them.

2:40:24So, kal vachomer, needless to say, us coming in front of Hashem in a Beit Knesset after we just smoked a joint. After we just had a couple of drinks. So, this is something that we need to know. You know, when you go in front of Hashem, know where you're standing from. That makes me think of, like, you know, when you go to a bathhouse, and they're for drinking and whatnot. Having a cup of a drink, a l'chaim, is very different than getting drunk. Getting drunk, you're not learning Torah; it's better off you don't do it. They're not allowed to. How do they justify it? People have to, again. Some people do it wrong, but most people who do it know what they're doing. They say they're using Purim day as an excuse to get drunk. They're not allowed to, even according to that. So it's so weird. I go and I look around. How is this? Having a cup of a drink, a l'chaim, is very different than getting drunk. Getting drunk, you're not learning Torah; it's better off you don't do it. They're not allowed to. How do they justify it? People have to, again. Some people do it wrong, but most people who do it know what they're doing. They say they're using Purim day as an excuse to get drunk. They're not allowed to, even according to that. So it's so weird. I go and I look around. How is this?

2:41:44Listen, in reality, when you learn Torah, you're supposed to do as little as possible other than learning Torah. Because when you're really, really learning Torah, you have to be focused on the gold and diamonds that are in front of you. Not the peanuts and the Bamba, and the arak, and the scotch, and the girl, and the guy, and this and that. All that stuff, that's not what you're there for. You're not there to... It's not a social event. Also, when someone is toiling with Torah, this is what we talked about in Avrech. If someone is going to a shul or to a kollel or yeshiva, and they're just hanging out with their friends, that's not toiling in Torah. That's just Torah in the background. It's like background music, like an elevator. Well, it's nice, but you're not going to become a talmid chacham that way. So those events that they have, and they have a couple of drinks to get people to come, I guess that's their own kiruv strategy of getting people to come learn, but if they're not directing them in the right way once they're there, then they become part of the sin. I mean, listen, people are using different ways to attract people to the Torah. Unfortunately, no one really wants to use the way that Hashem used. What did Hashem do? Scared us to death.

2:43:09That's what works. If you look at this book that we talked about yesterday also, oh, I actually found another couple of copies. By the way, he was wrong. The guy that said yesterday that this is being published again—it's not being published. He meant the Hebrew version is being published. Yeah, the Hebrew version you can get for $10. But the English version is no longer in publication of this book by Rabbi Yisrael Salanter. It's no longer in publication, but you can get it secondhand from a few places. One guy was selling it for $500 on eBay, but I found a couple of copies online for around 40-something dollars, so I ordered them. To anyone that wants it, you can give me the money, and I'll give it to you. I figured it's like a rare event, like finding a Tanakh from 3,000 years ago.

2:44:09anyway, here, the Beit HaMikdash Salon says something interesting on page 66. He says the following: It's imperative that a person cleanses himself of corrupt character traits and sanctifies himself from the body's impurities. This can be achieved solely by observing the Torah and mitzvot. Okay? in this manner can one truly come to comprehend His great majesty and tremble in awe over His glorious splendor. So, first things first, we're seeing here that in order for us to even get to a point of Ahavat Hashem, of honoring His glory, we already read yesterday that the first stage is that you have to be scared to death.

2:45:13You can be punished if you don't do it; you get punished. The second step is to start knowing who you're standing in front of, like Rav Yisrael Salanter said. And you start honoring Hashem's majesty. After that, then you can begin loving Hashem. But how do you get to all of that? How do you get to a point of being scared of sinning, of showing that you're scared of sinning? He said in very simple words: start doing mitzvot. By actually doing mitzvot. You're showing you're scared. Because if I don't do the mitzvot, then obviously, I'm not scared. If I don't lay tefillin, then I don't think I'm going to get punished for it. If I don't keep Shabbat, then I don't think I'm going to get punished for it. So, in essence, what we're seeing here is something very, very important. The foundation of connection to Hashem is fear. must be scared. If you're not scared, you have a different God because my God is scary. He runs everything. When you run everything, that means I depend on you, and if I depend on you, of course I'm going to fear you. You could just pull the plug whenever you feel like it.

2:46:34People are scared of a cop giving them a ticket. People are scared of the IRS possibly auditing them. People are scared that their boss is going to fire them or their friend is going to yell at them. You're scared of people, but you're not scared of the Creator. If you're not scared of the Creator, you don't believe in One. You believe in something else. You have a different God. Your God is like a Smurf or something. It's Papa Smurf. It's not God. It's not God. It's not Hashem Yitbarach. Hashem Yitbarach is scary. So the strategy of Kiruv, you have to scare people. The source is in the Torah, Hashem Himself. He gave us the commandments. First commandment, we all died. Second, then He revived us. Resurrected the dead for the first time. Second commandment, we all died again. Revived us again. Then we all told Moshe Rabbeinu, you go talk to Him. And we'll sit here and listen. We'll just do whatever He wants. Why? If He continues talking, we're all going to die. Moshe Rabbeinu says, no, no, no, don't worry. Don't be so scared. Hashem is just scaring you so you don't sin. Meaning, even Hashem Himself, who wrote the book. He's the one who wrote the book, not me. I didn't write the book. He didn't ask me for permission to write the book. He wrote the book. He says, you need fear in order for you not to sin. Love will not make you not sin. Fear.

2:48:00will cause you not to sin. The foundation of connecting with Me is first to stop sinning. Stop desecrating My Name. Stop telling Me it's okay to lay tefillin without my shirt on at the beach. It's not okay. Stop sinning. And then we can start talking. Then you can say, okay, I believe. Then you can say, oh, maybe I'm gonna love You one day. But don't tell me you believe in Me, you love Me, and you're not even scared of Me. It's impossible. Impossible. Yeah. Yeah, you said that. Yeah. They all died. They died. Their neshama actually came out. Everybody's neshama was not at a level that they were able to hear Hashem's voice. Only Moshe Rabbeinu was able to hear His voice. So everyone died. Everyone died. Now, also, one of the things that's interesting is that in Gemara Masechet Shabbat, page 88a,

2:49:18It says that when Am Yisrael came to Mount Sinai, even though they were all at a low spiritual level by the time they got to Mount Sinai, which is Shavuot that's coming up. So what's coming up is when we got the Torah. Now, we just came out of Egypt. We were in the 49th level of impurity. By the time we got to Mount Sinai, we were actually in the 49th level of purity. We were at the highest level possible. Everyone became a prophet; the entire nation became prophets, so we were all excited to get the Torah and So Chazal asks, fine, if everybody was so excited to get the Torah, then why did Hashem threaten them by taking the mountain and bending it in a way where it covered the entire nation? Where it is written that Am Yisrael was under the mountain, not next to the mountain. Why were they under the mountain? Hashem bent the mountain and made it like a kippah or like a chuppah over Am Yisrael, and then He said to them the following: If you accept My Torah, good. But if you don't, this is where you're going to die. In essence, what He's telling them is that not only do you have to accept the Torah...

2:50:40Because if you don't, I'm going to destroy the world. But without My Torah, you can't live anyway. You can't fulfill your purpose anyway. You're already considered dead. So not only would He destroy the world, forget about that, because He could easily pick another nation. Among the 70 nations, He could pick another one. But the reality is that without the Torah, you're already considered dead. What are you living for? For the money? You can't take it with you. What are you living for? For the house? It stays here. The wife? Eventually, your body goes in one grave, her body goes in another grave. Your kids? After they get married, they're probably not even going to call you anymore. Your friends? Find a good friend. Find a real one. What are you living for? For what? For what? For the money? For the fame? What? What are you going to live for? You don't have Torah. You don't have a connection to Hashem. You don't have a connection to your purpose. Hashem already considers you dead. So He says, if you're not going to accept My Torah, you're already dead anyway. So Tosafot, so Tosafot says, why did Hashem

2:51:59threaten them? That's not a real question. It's not a real question why did Hashem threaten them? Why is it not a question? Tosafot says the following. Tosafot says, what did you think? You were gonna leave the world's destiny to chance? he's gonna leave whether the world was going to continue existing or not based on whether they want to or not? What kind of God would that be? That's a human mind that thinks like that. "Oh, if you want to come, you don't want to, don't come. Oh, you should come to this, but if you don't want to, you don't have to." That's a human being mentality. That's not God, my friends. The commandments are not a choice. The Torah is not a choice. And You have to get rewarded if you do good, but punished if you don't. Once you realize that one of the foundational principles of faith, or the 13 principles of faith, is that there's reward and punishment, you understand that there's no such thing as free choice. We have choice, which is a limited choice.

2:53:16We do good, we get rewarded. We do bad, we get punished. Free choice means you can do whatever you want, like the hippies. One day she's your wife, the next day somebody else is your wife. That's not Torah. That's Sodom and Gomorrah. So Tosafot says, to leave it up to free choice, that's not God. So you have to make sure they understood. Number one, it's not really up to you. Number two, even if it was up to you, you can't survive anyway without my Torah. You're already considered dead, anyway. So that also connects with this Mishnah, which says that when someone toils in Torah, Hashem takes away the worldly responsibilities, but when someone doesn't, Hashem gives them even more worldly responsibilities. And the reason why is because they have to do something. They have to do something to fulfill some type of purpose in their life. So at least if they're going to have worldly responsibilities, they're going to have some money. Hopefully, they'll still have a chance of supporting Torah. But if you don't do this and you don't do that, you're already considered dead. Nothing's going to help you. Next. So finish it off with one last thing. One last announcement. We're thinking about this. I just want to get some feedback from the crowd.

2:54:40Everyone that's watching, watching online, watching now, watching YouTube, all these different channels. We have a lot of different places where we're giving out the CDs. People are watching the shiurim. But it seems like the amount of questions that I get every day is getting to a point where it's very, very difficult to maintain. And it seems like a lot of these questions, people want to hear it actually, not just written, but they want to hear me say it. So we're actually thinking about starting a, uh, live, uh, broadcast of just questions and answers, like going on Facebook Live or some other venue. We'll try to actually just have, I don't know, a half-hour or an hour session once or twice a week. We'll see what happens. But any session at all, even if it's once a week, with just questions and answers. You could write your questions. You could send me your questions live online. I'll answer them on the spot based on Hashem. I may do it with Fried together if we could figure out the whole camera situation, being in Israel and America, or I could do it with someone else. But the point is that I want to see if there's really a market for it, if people really want it. Because it seems like the questions and answers are what people are mostly interested in. So, if there will be something like that...

2:55:58Do people want it? That's question number one. And number two, if we were to do it, it would probably be sometime in the afternoon, which is a time when everybody works. So is this even possible? Anyone who is interested or has any ideas about it can email me and tell me what they think. And anything else that comes up is that Hashem will succeed. Also, any communities that are looking to help their congregation do teshuva. Baruch Hashem, we got a shipment of 50,000 CDs recently. These are double CDs. CD number one, CD number two in the package. Anyone that's looking to sponsor them, sponsor them. If you don't have anybody to sponsor them, just call me. I'll send them to you for free. We just have to get people to do teshuva. That's really a tough one. It's not a money-making situation. You want a sponsor? You help people do teshuva. You don't have any money, but you have ambition. You want to help people do teshuva? Contact me. We'll send it to you for free. Just help people do teshuva. Just don't have them sitting on a shelf doing nothing. So, anything else? Baruch Adonai l'olam, amen ve'amen.