Yom Kippur - Last Chance Before HaShem Comes Knocking (9 minutes)

0:10The reason why I do what I do, and I left Wall Street, and I left everything, is because I'm scared for you. I'm okay, Baruch Hashem, I keep mitzvot, I learn Torah, I teach. Baruch Hashem, b'ezrat Hashem, hopefully, before I end my life, or Hashem takes it back, I'll complete my teshuva, b'ezrat Hashem. The problem is, all the people that are still wasting their life away, having no idea why they're here. I'm scared for you to go through the hell I went through. Seven years of this. It wasn't a week. It wasn't like a bad foot. It wasn't like, you know, he had cancer for six months and then he died. It was living in hell just here. All the time. Pain all the time. Everywhere. That's what I'm scared of. I'm scared of people actually getting to that. And if they don't get to it here, it gets even worse, because the next world, which, Baruch Hashem, we're not going to talk about because I don't know if you guys are at that level, it's much, much worse. Hashem is not kidding. That's why I do what I do. You have two options. One option is to start finding out what He wants. The other option, He's going to force you to. Just like He did to me. Why go through the pain?

1:33Why go through the anguish? Why go through the tikkun? Why waste your life away and waste the next 10 of your best years doing absolutely nothing with it, when all you could be doing is a few mitzvot? Become a basic level Jew and everything's fine. No one's telling you that you have to become a big rabbi, speaker, or travel the world to help people. Just be a basic level Jew. Find out what the Torah says about who's basic. What do you have to do to be basic? Basic cable. 60 bucks a month. You don't need HBO, Showtime, and everything else. Very basic. How do I get to basic? Once you're at basic, then you decide what you want to do after. But unless you know what the purpose of life is, there's no point. The Maggid of Dubno, one of the greatest sages that ever lived, Keila came to him and they told him, "For the love, teach us something for Rosh Hashanah." So the Maggid from Dubna said, "You know what? It's a good idea. I'm gonna tell you a story. Everything that every question you would ask me, I'll give you a story, a parable. Is that okay with you?"

2:52Rosh Hashanah is Judgment Day. Every one of us, whether you're a Jew or a Gentile, gets judged on that day. Most people think it's just a fun day, like I used to think. It's a fun day, you have a bunch of food, you go to the Beit Knesset, you see a bunch of friends you haven't seen all year. Everyone is dressed to impress. You know, the women wear extra mini-skirts just to make sure everyone knows what their legs look like. The men wear extra jewelry like they're 50 Cent. Everyone is dressed to impress. If somebody got a brand new car, they make sure to come right before the Chag and park right in front of the Beit Knesset, so everyone the entire Chag can see what kind of car they have. So, dressed to impress holiday. They think that Judgment Day is in 10 days. It's Yom Kippur. Wrong. Judgment Day is Rosh Hashanah. Judgment day, the day that Hashem decides whether you're gonna live or die, whether you're gonna have parnassah or not, whether you're gonna be rich or poor, get married or not. Judgment day is Rosh Hashanah. The appeal is Yom Kippur, meaning if your judgment's not good, chas v'shalom, your last chance to fix it is Yom Kippur. That's why everyone cries.

4:14everyone cries on Yom Kippur because it's the last chance, but if we prepared properly from the beginning, we would have nothing to cry about. So, the Maggid from Dubno said, "Listen, you have a couple of options." There were a couple of people on a horse and carriage after one of them had just stolen the national treasure from the city. So, he was on a horse and carriage... then he has the driver and they get to a border, and they stop him. So immediately, the guy that stole the treasure gets very worried. Why is he worried? Because he stole the treasure. If they catch the thief, unlike today where they might give you house arrest for the next six months, they would kill you on the spot back then. He says, okay, this may be my last few minutes. He's very worried; he's sweating bullets. The driver, on the other hand, is also very worried. He's like, ah, you know, I didn't steal anything, but I knew about it. Maybe they're going to blame me like I was part of the whole act. He's also worried. Okay, I'm not the thief, but I drove him all the way from there to here. Somewhat of a partner in this whole thing. Who's the only one in the carriage that's not worried?

5:43the horse. Why isn't the horse worried? He didn't do anything. So the Maggid of Dubno says, David HaMelech tells us in Tehillim, "Don't be like a horse or a donkey." Meaning, when you show up to Judgment Day, don't think you have nothing to worry about. You're the thief in this story. Or at the very best, you're the driver. You're definitely not the horse. You made a few sins this year. You screwed up a few times. You stole from Hashem if you didn't bless before you ate. Maybe you stole from a person too by taking money that didn't belong to you. Maybe you weren't nice to your parents like you're supposed to and didn't honor your parents with one of the Ten Commandments. Maybe, chas v'shalom, you drove on Shabbat and didn't realize that the minute you turned on the gas in your car on Shabbat, it's 6,000 fires. Not one fire, 6,000 of them. Maybe you weren't nice to your parents like you're supposed to and didn't honor your parents with one of the Ten Commandments. Maybe, chas v'shalom, you drove on Shabbat and didn't realize that the minute you turned on the gas in your car on Shabbat, it's 6,000 fires. Not one fire, 6,000 of them.

6:52I have an engineer who is a student of mine, and he did an analysis. He said a six-cylinder car, which is pretty much the lowest level in today's age, driving at the speed limit of 55 miles an hour, every time you press the gas, it's the equivalent of 6,000 fires. Hashem said in the Torah, don't light fire. Not fires. He said, don't light fire on Shabbat. Meaning, one time pressing the gas, you violated Shabbat 6,000 times. Maybe somebody did that. Maybe they even drove more than one second. They drove 15 minutes thinking they're doing a mitzvah by going to Beit Knesset with the car on Shabbat. A lot of people think that. They think that it's okay to drive on Shabbat to Beit Knesset. It's not a mitzvah. So maybe we made that sin. Maybe we ate Pizza Hut, non-kosher Pizza Hut, and just found out, oh wait a minute, not only did I eat non-kosher pizza, but it was pig too. All types of things. Maybe my girlfriend's not Jewish. My boyfriend's not Jewish. All types of things. We made all types of sins. Some big ones, some small ones. Some we know about, some we don't know about. So right now is an opportunity for us to wake up.

8:13Because we're either the guy that's in the carriage, the thief, or we're the driver. We're definitely not the horse. And it's much better that you wake up from my words than wait for Hashem's words, because His hurt.