KI TISA If God Loves Us Why Punish Us? - Stump The Rabbi (194)

We're back here on a Wednesday night stump rabbi where after some you guys will ask some questions and will give us some answers. Tonight's is for the lema for Ben Shulamit Rabanit Satan Leana Batimar David Benri and all of Amra and all the righteous Noahides that continue to watch our shim together with us learn together with us grow together with us. Uh just to give everyone a [snorts] update, the uh website bhour.org hashem has uh some new features that are already on there and new ones that are coming out very soon where we'll have uh many uh different questions that you guys ask me uh that uh we have different clips for them, different answers for them. If you go to that website, you go to there's two different search terminal terminals there. you could ask your question uh and uh the website will uh give you some videos or even textual answers uh based on all of the based on all of the Torah that we've learned together over the years. Uh anyone that wants to uh uh watch the sh on uh live but not on Facebook or Tik Tok or anything else, you want to go to our website, you go to bh.live bh.live live. You can watch our lectures live, which beem will continue growing and eventually have even more features uh coming soon. Anyone that wants to donate to uh help us with all the wonderful things that we're doing, you can donate on bhour.org or you could donate on bzem.org. Uh or you could donate or get some free stuff on uh kovstore.org kiruvstore.org. org and you can get yourself a box of 20 copies of this book. It's in English and Hebrew to distribute in your Jewish community. We sent out dozens and dozens of boxes today. Lots of work, many more coming up tomorrow. We already have another shipment of books uh on the way and uh people are already coming back for seconds and thirds. uh those that already received got such good feedback out of it from their community that they want more. We even have a uh school that's uh that got some of them and boashm people are enjoying the book. Uh so with that being said uh we have uh an extraordinary paras ahead of us uh parasitis which of course is the paras that is well known for the uh horrific downfall of uh am and uh you know due to the golden calf uh and uh this is a sin that we not only um not only got punished for uh even though Hashem still loves us even though Hashem still kept us uh he nearly destroyed us. Uh but needless to say this uh sin is a sin that we suffer for until this day. At the same token in this very same para we learn about mercy and everyone knows or at the very least they heard about God being merciful. So the question begs usually you know children ask this and not just children in age but spiritual children people that are you know new to the world of Torah, new to the relationship with God based on the holy Torah. Uh they asked the question if he loves us then why does he punish us? I mean, Rabbi, you have all of these shim and even films about punishment and gehenna and all these horrible reincarnations into all types of stones and uh plants and animals. If he loves us and at the same token you're saying he's merciful, then why does he punish us? Now, this is a very very important question. It's not a childish question at all. In fact, it's one of the most fundamental questions that a Jew must always ask until he gets the answer. And if you don't have an answer, I could assure you that there's part of you that in your relationship with Hashem, in your ine that's missing. It's easy to say, "I love Hashem," when everything is going good. You just got a raise at your job. You just uh, you know, launched a new business and it became a success instantly. Uh, you just got married to the love of your life. You just had a kid. Of course, it's easy to love Hashem when things are going good. But what about when you got fired? What about when the customer reneggged on the deal and didn't pay you the money that uh he owed you and committed to? What about when life, for lack of a better word, sucks? Do you still love God? Yeah. Yeah, Rabbi, I love God. So why you complaining? If you love God, then why are you complaining? No, I'm It's tough times, you know. But that's why I'm Wait, but you love God. You mean that everything that he does is good. So why are you complaining? You understand what I'm saying here? We have to find the answer. We have to find the answer. We have to find the answer. If God loves us, then why does he punish? And you can see the simple answer that you've heard me say over the years. Obviously, punishment is necessary. Just like any good parent that wants their children to be decent human beings must punish their children must punish us. Parents that do not punish their children, parents that do not rebuke their children should know for sure they are raising little Hitlers. That's a reality. Why? If you don't teach your kids there is right and wrong and not just no no no, but actually punish them by sending them to the room, putting them in the corner, uh you know, taking away things that they like, all types of things. And sometimes, believe it or not, in a politically correct world of that we live in, you still got to give that kid a slap or two, if you know what I mean. Now, in my age, in in my day, centuries ago, we didn't really get slaps. We got shoes, you know, a shoe that somehow left my mo my dear mother's hand across the room and landed on us and and all of a sudden you did chuva. Today, if you do that, probably they'll arrest you. Even though it's even more necessary today than in the past. The point being is everyone knows one of the keys to failure in our generation today where kids are simply clueless [clears throat and snorts] uh and purposeless and just causing trouble that the world has never seen before is because of their parents lack of discipline when they were younger. Uh they're the the kids today don't even know what discipline is. In fact, they're so used to being praised as winners, they don't even know what a loss is. Because when they were just a few years ago, they were competing for anything, they got a loser award or what is it called? Everyone is a winner, participation award. In so many words, a loser award. They actually got a loser award. The winner got an award, the loser got an award. So, what's the difference? Why should I try hard? This, unfortunately, is the poison of the generation. But we're not going to fix the generation today. What we can hope for is to at the very least have some more tools to fix ourselves in our relationship with because if we love Hashem, then why do we complain? If he loves us, then why does he punish us? The answer to both is the same. and will give us the tools to give us a clear answer that will bring us that missing piece of the puzzle that we so needed and didn't even realize it. Now of course the para is full of gems one gem after another but connecting the dots without helping you is simply impossible. You look at the storyline you look at the and you're not really sure what does one thing have to do with the other. So you kind of figure, yeah, well this is not really a history book. The Torah is not a history book. So Hashem is just telling us different things that uh he wants us to know. But that would be wrong because even though it is not a history book and it's certainly not in chronological order, one parasa that could be before could precede the second para but actually the event itself could have actually been the one that was later on. So the Torah is not chronologically written, but it is written in a format that everything that is next to each other is even more connected to each other than it is connected to parts of the Torah that are further apart. meaning there's a reason why is next to um there's a reason why we learn about the census before we learn about the before we learn about Shabbat before we learn about the golden calf and then killing a bunch of people that followed the horrific idolatry of the golden calf. All of them are connected and they're much more connected than you can possibly imagine. So with all of that being said in the introduction in your hands, let's start working through the parab. So first and foremost tellsuhenu, you have to do a census. What's a census? Count my dear children. Count the Jews. Count them. I want you to count them. and tell me how many you got. Does Hashem not know how many Jews there are? Obviously, he knows. So, of course, the the simple meaning is is that Hashem wants us to know that we love him and that that he loves us and that he counts us like jewels. But at the same token, if that was the complete answer, then why didn't he count everyone? We only counted the Jews that were male between the ages of 20 and 60. We didn't count the females. We didn't count the elders. We didn't count the children. And we didn't even count the Levy tribe. So, we're missing a lot. I mean, if he loves us, he wants all of us. No. No. Because the counting was not just to show that he loves us, but even more. Later on we see that tells us the way that you have to count the Jewish people is in order to make sure that there's no you know which is evil eye brought upon is you're not allowed to count Jews. So what do you do? You fulfill the mitzvah of makita shekel which is everyone whether rich or poor has to give the same half a shekel coin and you count the coins. So in today's world when we need to count how many people are in the betet in order to make sure we have at least 10 Jews that are observant of Shabbat so we could actually pray together and say kadesh together and take the out then we don't count the Jews we either say one of the verses from the Torah or that has 10 words or we count some object that everyone has whether it's the chair they're sitting on or if they're wear the keepa shoes were counting something but not the Jew itself. Why? Because this brings now as a side note you have to know that in essence is something that's telling you that something contradictory to what you've probably learned in many places. Many times people give shim about mazal mazal how to change your mazal. If you type on the internet how to change your mazal, I'm sure you're going to get countless hits. Countless people have spoken about mazal as if it's a simple subject. But mazal really is much more complicated than you can possibly imagine. Because if was not subject to mazal, number one, why are we subject to? And even more so, why does the when it talks about different people that have different mazal where he is righteous, his mazal is better, he is wicked, his mazal is lower, but sometimes you see that this one is righteous, but he dies young because his mazal. Wait, but you said that if he's a Jew, he's above the mazal. So the katan the tofoot over there comments in page 28 28a he says even though said that is above the mazal that's generally speaking more specifically could simply have mazal as the reason of why someone will live or die someone will be rich or poor, get married or not married. Meaning that yes, we're above the mazal generally speaking, subject to the small print, where in essence, Hashem says, but not in this case. You're above the mazal, but not in this case. You're above the mazal, but not him. You're above the mazal, but not her. You're above the mazal, but not today. meaning that mazal generally is not something that is relevant to am is but rather to the gentiles except there are exceptions and those exceptions are based on whether someone is uh reincarnation and there's an account that he has to uh to to fulfill uh or there's a kaparat of a note that hashem wants to give him or there's a test or there is all types of other things that are in the infinite calculator that has in so many words mazal is not necessarily so simple in fact it's impossible to understand which is the exact opposite of simple so nowad says is very much a real thing and we want to make sure that we don't count the Jews that I love and you count only specific ones and I want you to count them in a specific way the total comes up to a little over 600,000 which we find out later on in the Torah. But we have to ask ourselves why do we care about this number if it's not even the real number. It's not how many Jews there were in desert at Mount Si. It's a lot more than 600,000. This is just the 600,000 people that were able to be soldiers. They were capable of being soldiers because they were between the age of 20 and 60. But and there were not a female because there's no female soldiers in the Jewish army. Uh there there were not children because no children in the army of of of Israel. There are no uh older people because there's no older people in the army and so many and so on and so forth. So why do we need to know this number the 600,000 number? We have to answer these questions. We have to answer these questions. After that we see that commands Mosher Renu to make a special oil. This oil that Mosherenu made is a oil unlike any other oil that ever existed before or after. This is an oil that Mosherenu made said this oil of elevation to sanctity shall uh shall remain before me for your generations. And Khazal explains to us that even though these uh uh the amount of 12 logs, that's the measure biblical measurement, 12 logs of oil Mosherenu made was used on the misbeh the different parts of the uh uh the bet mikdash of the desert, if you will, uh on the Kanim. Uh, you know, this is something that was used for hundreds of years all over the place. All over the place. The tabernacle had this. The beta mdcdash had this. I mean, this is something that was literally used massive amounts of it. But yet for hundreds of years, the amount of oil stayed exactly the same, even though Moshe Rabenu only made it once and never again. And this 12 logs of oil was eventually hidden with the Arona and the uh the uh ten commandments and uh the staff and several other things that were hidden by Yoshi the king when he saw that uh the beta mdash was going to be destroyed. So he hid these things and this oil will be necessary uh for us to use when the Messiah comes. But the point being is that this oil was a very very special oil and the say in the um in the Torah that this oil was prophesied by in essence he promised us that this oil will be forever for your generations. This is chapter uh 30 verse 31. This oil will be for your generations meaning forever. And forever is actually referring to it'll never go down in in in amount no matter how much you use it. You could pour 10 gallons out of it turned around the bottle stayed exactly the same. Literally an open miracle for hundreds of years. And one of the hints that this is what it's going to be is that when it's uh mentioned in the Torah says that this uh this will be this uh this oil and Z is the letter Z and H which are the numerical value of 12 which stands for the 12 logs of quantity of oil. This special oil was extraordinarily important, but we know very little about it today because we don't read about it every day. What we do know a lot about is the why? Because we read it about the every single day in our prayer. There are segments of this week's para in our prayer that we read every day. And in fact reading the uh for a uh uh each day is a extraordinary for wrote an huge book over 700 pages about the different benefits of reading the uh many actually said you should read it from a claf uh from a uh a parchment. Uh we got a few of them uh for a couple of students that asked us to uh to get it from them from uh it's uh it's something that they read from instead of reading from the sidul and this certainly is something uh that uh can help. But the point is is that this uh is something that we know a lot about because we read it every single day and we know there's rules. You're not allowed to remake the You're not allowed to, you know, actually combine all of these things in the in the same way that Moshe Rabenu did. But nonetheless, we know that the itself has many lessons in it. Number one, the message itself is what happens from the it's obviously part of the servitude in the beta mikdash. In the uh uh beta mikdash of the desert, in the first and the second beta mikdash, it would make smoke. The smoke would be not just regular smoke. It would actually literally make a pillar of smoke that would reach all the way to the heavens and would not move right or left. Even if it rained and even if there was strong wind, it was miraculously there. The in talks about the family, the lineage of family that uh actually knew the special secrets of the and what made the smoke do that. Aside from the uh the supernatural, there was also a natural way of ingredients that made the smoke and made the smoke the way it was. But one of the interesting things that we also learn in about the is one of the ingredients the ingredient of was the only ingredient out of the entire 11 that not only didn't smell good but rather this which is uh galbinum this smelled horrible like horrible horrible terri terrible. Now, there is a Yemenite food that uh sounds the same. I'm actually wondering if it's the same ingredient, but nonetheless, this uh but of course, you know, people like it even though it smells terrible. But this particular incense uh smelled horrible, but yet Hashem is telling us, put it in there because this is going to make a beautiful smell together. a beautiful aroma. So the asked naturally, why do we need something that smells terrible, something that no one can bear its smell in something that is supposed to smell good? Why have this bad smell? Why have this just leave the other ingredients? In fact, by the way, this is still done today. When people make certain uh besameim, they put certain ingredients that smell terrible. One of the reasons is because the uh one that smells terrible empowers the ones that smell good to smell even better, which overpowers the terrible smell. So by itself it smells terrible but together with the other ones when it's mixed and it's a uh together it actually everything smells much much better. So that's the basic but furthermore the teach us that this bad smell is also to teach us that in the world of in is we have to make sure we think about the every single day because theoret on one hand you see that it makes us smoke who looks at it first the Jewish people are looking at it the Jewish people are looking at theat they're seeing a miracle where even though there was a bad smell when you made it at the end it turned out to be something beautiful. Just like even though sometimes we have a group of righteous people but there's going to be one wicked person. There's going to be a wicked person or a few wicked people among us. We need those wicked people. Why? Those wicked people if we treat them the right way and we try to do ku with them, we try to help them do chuva, in the end they'll strengthen us. We need the wicked people because not because we need wicked actual people but we need to keep them close because if we are truly righteous we can turn that wicked person to become stronger and that will ultimately make us stronger. So first one that sees the is the Jewish people that are close. Second one that sees the toet are the people that they saw a few bad Jews. They got dismayed. They got upset. They one Jew stole their money. One Jew, you know, caused them problems. So, they gave up. They're leaving the community. Unfortunately, this happens. people you know sometimes do business and uh one guy uh doesn't do right by the other and of course the people say ah see if Jews are treating this way each other that's why the you know there's problems wait you're making it as if Jews are the only ones that steal Jews are the only ones that are bad trust me when I tell you with all the bad that we do we're still much better than everybody else and that's a known fact and that's even stated by going needless to say the Jews that leave. They don't ever leave and never look back. They leave for a little while and then they look back. How far am I? They live a little bit, they look back. How far am I? The Torah was supposed to remind them, look, you may think that you're solving your problem by leaving the community, but look at the pillar of smoke. You think that pillar of smoke is there naturally? No, it's a miracle. You think that the nation is here naturally? No, it's a miracle. You think that the Jewish people exist 3,334 years after the world started hating them more than any other nation naturally. No, it's a miracle. You're not here because of your you love all Jews the same. You are here because decreed for you to be here. So theat is supposed to in itself remind a person that God is the one that runs the world. Even if Jews are not necessarily always the best representation of Judaism, that should never cause you to leave God. That should never cause you to leave Judaism because Judaism is best represented by the Torah and theim that represent it, not by the regular people that sometimes misrepresent it. The third that would see the would be the Gentiles, the Gim. They would see the and they also as much as they sometimes hate the Jews as much as they sometimes say they like the Jews they're always fascinated by the miraculous life of Isel. This is why in the when we read the we say that the goim are supposed to praise Hashem because of all the miracles that he made to the Jews. Why should the goim praise Hashem for the miracles he made the Jews? Because only the goim know how many tribes they tried to destroy us without us even knowing who saved us. And who saved us? They know how many tunnels they dug under the ground. They know how many bombs they wanted to to launch. They know how many evil plans they had against us that God destroyed those plans. And the Jewish people never even knew those plans existed. They know how many miracles Hashem makes for us much more than we do. So when the gim look at the miracles of am is that in itself is supposed to create a kushem create a strengthening for all of us including the gim and yet this with specific ingredients and specific quantities where if one is missed it's a death penalty is in the par and it includes a smelly one. But we realize we need it. We need that smelly one. We need that bad guy that's desecrating Shabbat and has a filthy mouth. We need him to stay in a community. Why? Because it gives us an opportunity to strengthen ourselves. But what is that connected to the census? How is that connected to the next mitzvah that we learn? about Shabbat. We see that there's really smart people that are gifted. The Bitel and Alav two both of them were young kids. was only 13 years old but they were both given and in fact the [clears throat] teaches here also that it's not just and but rather anyone that was inspired to sanctify Hashem's name by building the Mishkan by building the bet mikdash of the desert also was suddenly gifted talents that he didn't know he had this is Like sometimes a person says, "Listen, Rabbi, I want to help. I want to do kiru." Okay, what do you what's your talents? What's your abilities? Well, I don't really have much. I'm not really sure. I I just want to do it, but I don't know what I can do. Do you want to give out books? Uh, maybe. Do you want to give out USBs? Maybe. Do you want to arrange a short? Maybe. Do you want to publicize our stuff online? Maybe. Do you want to translate videos? Maybe. Okay. So, which one do you want to do? I want to do all of them, but I don't know which one. You know what? which one does your heart connect you to? And they'll pick one. And all of a sudden, if the person is really serious and they're passionate about doing kiru, all of a sudden they discover a talent they never knew they had. All of a sudden, they are the best kiru person on planet. They're giving out hundreds of books like it's nothing. All of a sudden, they're able to arrange lectures. All of a sudden, they're able to publicize things. All of a sudden, they're able to use technology they never knew existed. all of a sudden they're much better than they thought. Why? Because that's what tells us here in chapter 31 in verse 14 that not only not only uh verse six, I'm sorry, uh not only gave the gift of wisdom to but also to any wisehearted person who rose for the task. Hashem gave him wisdom. That too is connected. It's connected to the It's connected to the oil that never emptied. It's connected to the senses. How is it all connected? What's the connection? The fact that it's on the same par that's not enough. We need more says, by the way, I know that you're going to build my Mishkan, but don't allow yourself for a second to think that just because you're doing a mitzvah that allows you to make a sin as a result. When Shabbat comes, building the Mishkan is forbidden. And we learned the 39 melot of Shabbat, the 39 restrictions of Shabbat from the building of the bet mikdash. 39 things that were used to build the bet mikdash are specifically forbidden to do on Shabbat, whether it's erasing, writing, building, destroying, and so on and so forth. So tells us the Shabbat is a testament that you believe in God. the Shabbat. A Jew that observes Shabbat is testifying that they believe that God runs the world. God created the world in six days and stopped creating on the seventh. A Jew that desecrates Shabbat is in essence saying that they do not believe that God created the world. They believe that maybe Darwin created it or maybe the amoeba created it but not God. They said, "No, I believe in God. I just don't keep Shabbat." Well, according to God, you don't believe in God. Why? Because if you believed in God, you'd follow his laws. It's hard. No problem. Marriage is hard, but people still want to do it. Having kids is hard. People still want to do it. Working is hard, but people still want to do it. Why? Because they believe in the idea. If you believed in God, you would actually follow his laws. How is that connected? And then we get to the reception of the Torah when goes up to Shamim. goes up to gives him the but it wasn't so simple says that when got up to the angels which are fire looked at him and said what is a son of a woman doing here said I'm here to receive the Torah the angels roared at him scared him you want to receive the Torah Torah is not for you to Torah. What you makes you think that the Torah is for you? Mosheu was so scared he didn't answer. So Hashem said, "Mushe, answer them." Moshe said to Hashem, "Hashem, I'm scared. They're going to burn me." said, "Hold on to my throne of glory. I'll protect you. Go answer them." held on to Hashem's throne of glory and answered the angels. Clearly, the Torah is for us. From the time that wrote it 974 generations before he created the world and before he even created you or I, Hashem made sure that the Torah is for people. It's for the Jewish people because he made laws that are only to be followed by people. He said you have to observe the Shabbat. Do angels observe Shabbat? No. He said you have a mitzvah of reproducing poo poo. Do angels get married and reproduce? No. He said you have to eat kosher food. Kosher animals. Do angels eat? Needless to say, do they eat kosher food? No. He said there's family purity and the woman would have a menstrual cycle where a husband is not allowed to touch her during that time. Not sleep in the same bed, not hold hands, not even give a hug during that whole time until she's clear of the uh tuma of the month. And she goes to the mikvet. Until then, they're not allowed to eat from the same plate, share cups. They're not allowed to sleep in the same bed. They have to have separate beds. Although in the same room, never sleep in separate rooms. They're just separated a little bit. And then when she's pure, the beds are put together again like a queen bed or king bed. But while she's impure, she's forbidden to her husband. Her kids can still hug her. Her sisters can still hug her and kiss her. To everybody else, she's normal. To her husband, she's forbidden. Are angels keeping the menstrual cycle? Are angels keeping family purity? No. When the angels heard how much Moshe loves the Torah, they agreed with him and they each gave him a gift. They each gave him a gift. But yet wasn't exactly too excited when he found out that au gave the Torah to Mosheu. He almost lost his mind. Initially he was looking for the Torah. He couldn't find it. He asked the heavens. They said, "We don't know." He asked the moon and the sun, "Where's the Torah?" Not sure. Nobody wanted to tell him where it is because they didn't want him to hurt Mosheren. He was still on his way down to earth. He asked the mountains. Mountains didn't want to talk. He asked the Kadosh. Kadosh says Moshe. Moshe has it. Moshe the son of Am. He has it. He came to Moshe and he said, "Moshe, you have the Torah?" Moshe said, "Me have the Torah? How could I possibly have the Torah?" Hashem started talking to Moshe Moshe. Moshe, are you fibbing? Why did you become a liar? He says, "No, I'm not lying. It's the truth. You gave me the Torah, but in reality, all I'm doing is just repeating it. repeating the essence of a Torah to your people. There's no way that anyone that needless to say that I am great enough to actually have your Torah. I'm just representing it. I'm just telling them it was so in love with Moshe's humility. He said Moshe is so humble that he didn't even want to take the credit for getting the Torah. Because of that, I'm going to name the Torah after you. That's why it's called about Moshe, the Torah of Moshe or the five books of Moses. But the Satan did not want Mosheu to have this Torah because he knew that that's the only weapon that could defeat him. But this unfortunately did not work during the time that Mosheenu was still up in Shim because the which were the wicked Egyptians that pretended to want to convert to Judaism that came with Am out of Egypt came to Mount Si. These idoltors were always looking for an opportunity to bring back idol worship. We're always looking for an opportunity to take down Moshe Rabbenu. So when Moshe Rabenu did not come in the exact time that people thought he was supposed to come because of their wrong calculation, they started talking bad about it and say he probably died. Look, he's not here. You saw how Hashem punished the Egyptians. Why? I mean, listen, Mosheu is a nice guy. He's great, but listen, he's gone 40 days, 40 nights. How is he eating? Where is he getting food? How's he drinking? How is he surviving in a mountain for 40 days, 40 nights? It can't be. When the Satan saw that people are starting to believe the Satan showed them a visual, an image as if angels are carrying a body. He said, "Look, maybe that's Moshe." And that's when the went to and they told her, "Make us make us a new Elohim." What's a new Elohim? Elohim could be translated as God, but also translates as master. Make us a new leader that will replace Moshe. Obviously, everyone knew that God is real, but they thought that they need a middleman to connect them to God like they do in Christianity and in Islam and other places. You don't need anyone to connect you to God. Certainly, you need to learn Torah. You need to learn from people that know something, know Torah, but if you want to pray to God, you don't need anybody to help you pray. You don't need anyone to help you pray. You can pray to God whenever you want, however you want. No one is needed to connect you to God. You connect to God whenever you want, however you want. But the idol worshiing that are used to idolatry, they convinced everyone that if Mosherenu is not here, then God's not going to talk to us anymore. We need something to replace him. They went to and they said, "Make us something." Said, "No way." They killed him on the spot. They wanted to show everyone they mean business. They got everybody even more excited. Why? Once there's blood spilled, everyone gets crazy. They went to Aon. Aron knew that if he says no or even if he hesitates, they're going to kill him on the spot. And if they kill him on the spot, there's no possibility of them doing cha because killing a prophet and a coin on the same day is in essence a destruction. So I said, "Okay, let me do something that's going to buy me some time. Let me do something that's going to buy me some time." He says, "Okay, you know what? go get me the earrings, the rings from your from your wives, from your kids. He figured that the wives and the kids are not going to want to give him this stuff. And he was right. The wives didn't. But the husbands themselves didn't care. And they started taking off their own earrings, their own bracelets, and they brought everything to Aon. They threw it in the fire. And one of the idol worshippers named Mika that had a mate that he stole from Mosherenu that had the real name of God on it. And on the other side it had a verse called Al rise bull rise. This is one of the things that Mosherenu used in order to take out the tomb of Ysef Sadik from underwater miraculously. So this little kid, Mika, threw this into the fire and in essence, the gold all melted instantly, unified, turned into a golden calf that spoke. So is up in a mountain. He's having an amazing time to say the least, learning And then Hashem says, "It's time for you to go. It's time for you to go." Why? Because your people that you took out of Egypt sinned. He's referring specifically to the andu hears this and he doesn't want to believe it. He doesn't want to believe this happened but he knows the kadoshu means business because the kadosh says to him after he tells him that your people that you brought out of Egypt have corrupted and they've made an idol. Hashem says, "Let my anger and intensity. Let my anger intensify against them and I shall annihilate them and make you into a new nation." Musher Rabenu realizes that all of AmI is at risk of being destroyed, not just the and it says in verse number 11 of chapter 2 uh 32, Moshe prayed before Hashem as God. Why Hashem should your anger intensify against your people whom you have taken out of the land of Egypt with great power and strong hand? Why should the Egyptians say the following that with evil intent did he take them out to kill them among the mountains to annihilate them? In essence is arguing for the sake of Is of course knows all of this but he still threatens to destroy us later on. He still punishes us even though Moshe Rabenu comes down, destroys the ten commandment. After that, he takes the golden calf, crushes it, which obviously required supernatural power is there to do that. crushes it and turns it into dust. Puts it into the water then makes everybody drink it. Whoever worshiped the idol directly dies after drinking this water. After that he tells the levim whoever is for God meaning whoever has fear of God come with me. Whoever has fear of God come with me. The Levy tribe comes because they're the only ones that didn't sin. And Mushabenu says, "Any of you that saw, anybody, even if it's your brother, even if it's your son, whoever it is, you saw him worshiping an idol, go kill him." And that's what they did. 3,000 people were killed. And even after that, akados Bahu still brought a plague that killed some more. But eventually akadoshu forgave us from the complete annihilation and dispersed the punishment over many generations. The question is, how is all of this connected? Why do I need to learn about the census before the golden calf? Why do I need to learn about the before the golden calf? Why is Mosheu giving an example of the Egyptians? Like who cares about the Egyptians? They're gone. What do you care about the Egyptians being right, being wrong? Is Hashem here to prove something to somebody? What's the connection? And why did a kadosh love Moshe Rabenu so much for everything that he did including breaking the ten commandments? Now teach us thatu pray to bub but not in the same way that you and I pray to kadoshu. He talked to Akadosh Bhu but not in the same way that you and I talked to Akadoshu. Akadosh Bhu loved Mosherenu and Mosherenu marriedu spoke to Akadoshu like one fellow speaks to his friend one fellow to another fellow. So when akadosh says to Moshe, let me destroy them and I'll start something new from you. Mushenu immediately goes on a defensive for the sake of Amashem's children. None of his children. It's Hashem's children. Say, Hashem, why are you going to punish them? Why? Why are you going to punish them? Golden Kef who gave them the gold? The says to Hashem, who gave them the gold? You gave them the gold. You gave it to them from the Egyptians. You gave it to them before they got at Yamsuf before they the the ocean was split. They found one of the treasures of Sadi. On top of that, you gave them even more gold. After we got to the other side of Yamsuf, the Egyptians drowned and all of their gold came out. They got the gold from there. You gave them so much gold, they got crazy over gold. They made a golden calf. In so many words, if you didn't give them the gold, they wouldn't make gold cuff. What? What? Now, if you and I say such a thing to Hashem, obviously, we have a very serious problem. But Moshe Rabenu had permission. Mosherenu had permission to blame God for the golden calf. Why? Because listen to this. Abenu says to Hashem, "Hold on a second. You want to destroy Am. Why you want to destroy Am Israel? Because the golden calf. Who did the golden calf? 3,000 people. 3,000 people did the golden calf. Didn't you just ask me to do a census and I counted just people that were between the age of 20 and 60 over 600,000. So what? Are you gonna kill millions of us? Because 3,000 are rashim, 3,000 are idol worshippers. Is that a fair god? 3,000 are bad. You're right. But why is everybody else going to die? It's only 3,000. It's nothing. Look how many we have. Look how many we have. We have so many. Only 3,000 are bad. And if that's not enough, he comes to and he says to he says, "You're the one that told me to make the right. You made the and the has to be specific ingredients. 11 ingredients. And one of the ingredients is the bonai that smells disgusting. And one of the things that you taught me here, Mount Sai, is that it smells disgusting in order to represent in order to represent the the wicked people that we got to keep close by and not let them go. Don't kick them out. Don't kick out the rash of the community. Bring them closer. help him do chuva. Why? Because number one, you'll be saving one of's children. And number two, you'll be saving yourself and strengthening yourself. And that's what the does. It strengthens everybody else. In so many words, these they're wicked. They're terrible. But there's always going to be wicked people. So what are you going to destroy us every time there's wicked people? We need to know how to deal with the wicked people. Not just go against them, help them do chuva and turn them into sadikim. That's why you gave us the ingredients. That's why you told us that we have to have a smelly ingredient. It represents the that we got to keep closer. Why? He's going to make us stronger. And if that's not enough, if that's not enough, he says, "Wait, hold on a second. What's the whole purpose of this? The is for to stay close. The is for that left to come back and see it's all about Hashem. The is also about how the goim look at us. So how is it going to be that you're destroying us and the goim are going to see, oh look, he destroyed them. He destroyed them. Look at that. How's that going to look? How's that going to look? It's not going to look good for you. He destroyed your people. It's not going to look good. What? You destroyed millions of us because 3,000 of it says toenuhenu. I love you. Mosheu, I love you. Why? You understood the whole purpose of why I did what I did. It's not that I didn't know these excuses. Obviously, Hashem is all knowing. He knows that only 3,000 were. He knows that theoret is what it is. He knows all of these things. But I need to have a leader lead my people that also knows why I gave it to them. Do you know why I made sure that you do the census? In order to make sure that you see that I gave you a lot of blessings because sometimes there's going to be wicked people and I need to punish them. But even though I'm going to punish them, even though I'm going to take all of his money, he has to remember where did you get the money from in the first place? I gave you a lot of money not because I want you to buy a Bentley and a $5 million house. I gave you a lot of money because you're wicked and I wanted to save you. How? because now that you have a lot of money and you're still wicked and you need to get punished, but I love you because you're my son. I love you because you're my daughter. So, what am I going to do? I'm going to give you a lot of money so I could take it all away because now it replaces me killing you. Now I don't have to kill you for a little longer. Now it gives you another opportunity to do chuva. In so many words, I gave you the blessing in order to enable me to punish you, but not in the heaviest punishment available. In so many words, when a person gets punished, when a person has suffering, they have to look at things from the perspective of, wait a minute, look at the blessing that I got. What blessing? You just lost all your money. What blessing? You just lost a loved one. Listen and pay attention. Who gave you this punishment? Hashem. Who gave you what you just lost? Hashem. So if you look at things from the right perspective, you would say thank you. Not why did you do this to me? Because you understand that Hashem is trying to save you. one of the great init. He lost his son, one of his sons a few years ago. A horrific accident, drowning, but he understood this literally better than anybody else on the instead of crying and agonizing like any normal parent would, instead of that he celebrated. He celebrated and glorified Hashem, thanking Hashem that he gave him this son for 21 years. He said, "I'm not going to cry that Hashem took back what's his anyway after 21 years, but rather I'm going to thank for giving me such a wonderful son for 21 years. Look at the blessing that he gave me. He gave me this wonderful gift for 21 years. How could I complain?" He took it. It says anyway when a kad gave you a lot of money and he took it. When a kadbah gave you something good and he took it. When a gives you some type of punishment. If you just lost your health, if you just lost money, if you just lost your job, if you just lost something you care about, if you have a true connection with and you truly fear him, love him, know him, and connected to him, you would fulfill the says is an obligation to bless both for the profit and the loss. Both for what you know is good and what looks bad. Why? Because it's all good. Because if takes it, that means he gave it. Akadbu has go do the census. Why? I want you to count how many wonderful how many wonderful nesote I brought into the people. I also want you to remember this number because later on a few of them are going to go off. A few of them are going to do something bad. And I need you to remember how many good there are. Not just a few bad ones. I want you to remember how much good they do. Not just a few bad things. Sure, there's bad. Sure, they need to get punished. But also remember, if I give you 3,000 that are bad, that means that I gave it to you in the first place and they're relevant to how much? Oh, 600,000. So relative to the whole amount, nothing. I also gave you the mitzvah of the and the has to have the rash inside the wicked inside to teach you. Go and help the rash. Go and help the rash dova. Oh, but he's not receptive. Okay, be patient. Oh, but he's a drug addict. Okay, be patient. Oh, but he doesn't want to listen. Send it again. Oh, but he doesn't like it. Send it again. Just like the marketing company for all types of products, sends it again. Even if you say, "I don't like it." Even if you say, "Take it off. Take me off the list." What do they do? They put you on a different list. They put you on a different list. You say, "Take me off the list." They put you on five new list. Why? They don't care if you like or don't like. They just know that you're not buying today. Maybe you'll buy tomorrow. Maybe next month. Maybe next year. You know why? Because they care about the end result. You have to look at helping your fellow Jew the same exact way. the end result, not the process that's painful of getting rejected and getting insulted and the no the end result. Why? Because if he gave it to you, that means it's for you to do. And if you have difficulties that you're dealing with, don't cry and agonize over your difficulties and your miseries. Look at the blessings. If you lost something, appreciate that you had it in the first place. appreciate that you had it in the first place. This is one of the things that connects every one of these parts of the Torah to each other. And the ultimate thing, the ultimate thing that connects them all is Moshe Benu using all of this not only to save Israel but also to glorify whose name by showing that even what looks bad is ultimately good. And that's why the mu kan page five says in the name of whoever appraises whose ways will merit to witness the salvation of the holy one blessed be he meaning if you find ways to praise to praise praise him when it's obvious that what he did is good praise When it's hidden to see what he did is good, praise him regardless because you know what he does is ultimately the best. Praise him and you'll merit to see the ultimate salvation. That is obvious to all that it is good because he is good and he does good because it's good to do good. And that is what Hashem is. With that being said, now we know how gave us the Torah, but also how Bahu decided what to do with everything in our lives. Whether it's our own personal stories, whether it's our own experiences, whether it's somebody else's experiences. You no longer need to ask the question of why does Hashem reward the righteous uh and sometimes punish them. Sometimes he rewards the wicked and sometimes punishes them. That was the question Moshe Abenu asked. But here we see that it's all good. Even though it's punishment, it's good. Even though it's reward, it's good. Everything is good. It's just that we don't see the whole picture. And therefore, we need this information in order to conclude that regardless of whether we see it or we don't see it, understand it or don't understand it, we must still find a way to praise because ultimately everything that he does is good, the best. It doesn't get better than Hashem. You find a way to praise Hashem and you'll live to see Hashem bring the salvation where praise is not even sufficient. Now you could all ask your questions which will help us continue getting closer to Hashem. If [clears throat] a relative dies uh and one is when does one sit sha uh if he's kept on life oh so he didn't die okay so question is if a relative where it is required for one to when is it required for one to sit shiva if the person is pronounced dead but he's still on life support and not buried [gasps] uh when does the period of shiva begin the period of shiva does not start until the person is buried. Um, what if the deceased could be classified as a as he rebelled against Hashem? Uh, so okay. So, as far as the ala is, only Jews sit sha. Gentiles don't sit cha. Meaning that if you're not Jewish, you don't sit cha. If the person that died does not sit cha, uh, you don't sit sha in them. Uh, if they're not Jewish. Uh but also if the Jew acted like a non-Jew, meaning they desecrated Shabbat, they didn't keep anything, then you also do not sit Shiva on them. You can if you want to, but you generally speaking, you don't. Uh in fact, the Rambam and both write uh that if a wicked uh Jew dies, his family should wear white clothes and celebrate. Now, I know uh you know, very few if any people do that in the world today. Uh but that's actually the why [clears throat] because if somebody's an enemy of God, it's actually better for them to die than for them to stay alive and continue being an enemy of God. Uh but uh you know if uh if a person is is righteous then certainly it's avat um what if a mourner is a convert and a deceased was a non-Jew. Uh so I just answered that if the uh deceased is a non-Jew, you don't sit uh Shiva on them. uh if it's a person if the person is a convert to Judaism and his parents or brothers uh or anybody that is his loved one uh dies he does not have to sit sha on them he can say kadesh if he wants uh on on them uh but uh he doesn't have to um what if there is uh no funeral again if if the person is a Jew then there's going to be a funeral. Uh if the person is not Jewish, then sometimes they don't have the funeral. They just, you know, burn the body, put it in a little ken. Uh again, either way, it's not relevant to the Shiva part because the person is not Jewish. So therefore, there's no uh there's no um uh there's no Shiva sitting on on a non-Jew. If it's a Jew that died with no funeral, I mean, what happened to the body? The body was buried. That's considered a funeral. uh if the body wasn't buried and burned then obviously the you know the person was a uh unless it was an accident of some kind or terrorism or something like that uh generally there's going to be some type of funeral. Um now as far as if a person is a Jew sitting Shiva on another Jew that's a family member uh and uh during that time the uh during that week they uh should not uh work uh and they should take off uh during that time but again it's a assuming that the person is uh you know that died is a righteous person is a Jew and and so on. But if none of these things fit, then there's no there's no Shiva. Uh the low stools is uh it's it's for a week. Uh it's for one week. But if if the person is uh sick or in pain uh and it's not possible for them to sit in low stools, then they don't they don't you don't have to, you know, inflict pain on yourself. All right. See, okay. This is Rabbi. Who should I donate to? You or my local rabbi, which I've been donating to until now. Um, okay. So as far as donations, you know, the um Torah actually tells us here and in the par it's always in the par. So we have to find the beautiful things in the parad says the uh is a mitzvah where whether a person is rich or is poor they have to give the same amount. Now this is a specific mitzvah where everybody gives the same amount. Uh we still uh have a custom till this day to p to to give the same amount before purim. Uh our organization has a uh campaign each year to fulfill these mitzvot. One of them is the another one is the multi which is helping the poor. But the the problem that some people have is that they think that this mitzvah is all year round. meaning that everyone should give the same amount, you know, whether they're rich or poor all year round. And the problem with that is that if let's say somebody is a average person, they make an average amount of money and they give, let's say, I don't know, $50, $100, but you uh, you know, live in a million-doll house and you're also giving a $100, you have a very, very serious problem. uh you have a very serious problem that uh you know you're going to get punished for this daka that you gave because it wasn't sufficient. Many times people don't give as much as they think they give. So just a food for thought a person should know that the amount of money that they give usually will answer many of the questions as far as who they should give to because usually it could open up the ability to give to more than one place. The amount that a person should give is at least 10% of their income. And if a person says, "Yeah, but I don't have an income." Fine. You may not have an income, but you know, if you live in a million-doll house or $2 million house, obviously there's you have assets. You still need to give a substantial amount on a regular basis because that's why Hashem gave you money. Uh now, if a person has a addiction to money and uh it's hard for them to part ways with their money, it's like one of these people that, you know, doesn't want to go to the bathroom because they don't want to buy food again, then that's a sickness. And in that particular case, what they should do is they if they want to fix that, the Rambam says they should take a small amount of money they're willing to part ways with, let's say a dollar and give a dollar every single day to somebody. And then perhaps if they could give $10 to 10 different people every day and then a $100 to 100 different people every single day. After a while, they'll start liking to give. Now, that's also solving the stinginess problem. Now, if a person is not stingy, which again, I don't know if this person is stingy or not stingy. I'm just trying to give an all-encompassing answer like we usually do about now if a person is not stingy and they have you know they they they give masel let's say but they want to decide do they give masel to let's say our organization or they give masel to their local rabbi who are they responsible for the answer is who affects your life more not who gives you more recognition who gives you a hug every week who gives you a high Five, who affected your life more until this point? If you are attending synagogue every day and the rabbi is there praying with you, but that's pretty much where it ends. You just pray with him. Uh, but the bulk of your Torah, your questions, the shim that you listen to is coming from myself or from somebody else. Then of course your mas needs to go to the place that you learn most of your Torah. It's foolish to think that you need to give your money to the local synagogue just because they're local to you. But the ones that have transformed your life, caused you to do chuva, caused you, you know, helped you convert, helped you uh get married, helped you with with uh life in general, they uh because they're far away from you, they don't uh they don't get anything, but you get everything from them. You don't stop asking them questions. You don't stop asking them for favors. you don't stop watching their lectures, but you're giving all of the money to somebody else. This unfortunately is a form of spiritual stupidity that I find uh a little bit frustrating. Not because I think that there's any money missing. I know that whatever is ours will send us, but rather because I see people being decent people, but yet they don't have like enough common sense to do the the math. And it's happened multiple times where people ask me, "What do you think about this organization that I'm donating to? Should I continue?" Now, aside from the fact that this is really, you know, inappropriate to ask, uh it's just not it's not the right question, uh but aside from that, if I'm the one you're asking all your questions from, if I'm the one that you're learning all the lectures from, if I'm the one that you I'm so-called rabbi, but yet you're donating somewhere else, then how do you make sense of that? How do you make sense of that? that you know you're getting everything but you're giving nothing and you're giving somewhere else that's not really giving you anything. So how does somebody make sense of that? I don't know. It's a form of spiritual stupidity and it's important for a person to do chuba for that. Why? Because says that if a person wastes their money on staka that's inappropriate, meaning he gives staka to the wrong places, it's a form of wasting seed. Meaning he'll get punished for that staka. So if you're giving your money to bad places, you'll actually get punished for it. Now again, I don't want anyone to give me money or think they're giving me money at all. You're giving to the organization. But it's important for a person to have some a little bit of of of analysis of who they're giving to and why they're giving it. If you're just giving it because every time you give, you get a special recognition. Everyone tells you, "Wow, look at Joey. He gave a lot of money to the synagogue and and that's why you're giving." Then you'll get punished for that stuck. Why? Because you're getting kavote for it. You're not you're not actually doing the stuck. If you're giving because you feel bad because they're the local ones and they keep bothering you, that's also not the not the right reason to give staka. If you're giving staka because uh you know you feel like you're obligated just because they live next to you, then you're simply wrong. You have to give taka to the places that impact you the most. The ones that impact you the most. Needless to say, the places that help you the most. You know, so if you have a a rabbi or an organization or a co- or whatever thing that you have that impacts you the most, that's where the bulk of your staka should go. Now, can you give to other places? Sure. But only a small part of it should go to other places. The bulk should go to the place where you're most affected by. So, if you have, let's say, I don't know, you're one of these people that has uh uh you watch rabbis like like a rolodex. you have five, 10, 20 of them every single day. Most likely you're going to give to uh you know to uh a couple of them uh more than others, but uh you're uh usually you're not going to be connected to one over the others because you're all over the place. You're also not going to advance much uh Torah wise because you're listening to too many different shad too many different uh uh uh ways of teaching, too many different opinions, too many different things. it's more uh appropriate to minimize that to usually just, you know, one or two rabbis. But either way, regardless of where or how many uh places you get impacted from, the bulk of what uh Hashem gives you, you should give to a place that impacts you the most. Uh and uh the smaller amount you give to other places. And if a person finds themsself in a in a situation where they're giving money but they don't really see any blessing, meaning they're giving money, uh, but they see themselves losing more money, they see themselves having more difficulty in their business, they see themselves having more difficulties in life. That means there's something wrong with the place that you're giving it to. And I've said this more than once over the years. If you give to our organization, but you're seeing yourself lose money, you're seeing yourself have more problems, you're seeing pretty much your whole life go upside down, especially when it comes to money. You're not seeing any any uh success in regards to money. And that's over an extended period of time, there's something wrong. You should give somewhere else. But if you're seeing that uh you're giving somewhere else uh and you're not getting a blessing, you should question why are you giving to this place? what are they actually doing with the money? Some people give money to places just because they uh you know they like uh I don't know a few videos or they like a person. But you should also ask yourself what did they actually do with the money? Is it just for them to live off of? Is it something for them to publicize more Torah? What is it really being used for? Again, there's no problem with a uh people living off of the money you donate to them. It's not it's not a sin. Obviously, everybody needs to eat. The question is where can you maximize your dollars? If there's a place to where they could both live off of it and also publicize more Torah, certainly that's better than if somebody's only living off of it and no matter how much he gets, he's just taking everything to his pocket. Secondly, you should also see how it impacts your life. I know that the vast majority of the people that have uh that I've close communications with that have donated to us on a uh extended period of time have seen an enormous amount of blessing. In fact, a few stories where people that uh stop donating and then come back a year later saying that they lost a lot uh after they stop donating but you know there's you can't you know there's nothing you can do. Uh so many times uh a person uh gets messages from Hashem but they're not paying attention. You know they're not paying attention. So it's important for a person to use their the wisdom and the common sense that Hashem gave them to know uh who to give to uh and even more so a person needs to uh a person needs to know that if they are giving to the right place then Hashem will give them blessings over time. It's not right away. It's not something that happens in 5 seconds. It's uh certainly something that uh can take time, but ultimately there should be blessings that come your way. Uh because it's a uh there's a rule in the Torah of which is the reward for one mitzvah is another mitzvah. Meaning that if a person uh does a uh mitzvah, Hashem gives him the ability to do another mitzvah, which is that if you give money to publicize Torah, then Hashem will give you more money to publicize Torah again. Uh so uh if you're not seeing that play out, there's usually something wrong with your uh daka. And if it's not something wrong with your taka, then there's usually something wrong with your uh the way you make money. Usually it's, you know, the latter one is first, meaning there's usually something wrong with the way you make money. But if you know that your business is kosher, then there's certainly something wrong with the place that you're giving taka to. It's uh apparently Hashem does not want it to happen. And we've had this happen also. I've seen it in my own hands. It's not just I see it on people. I've seen it myself where I've had certain uh uh partnerships with uh people in the world of Torah where I saw that, you know, we're investing a lot into it, but we're not really seeing the blessing. We're not really seeing things uh play out. And uh and we after a while, we give everybody a chance. We give everybody some time. And after we just don't see things play out and and work out after a while, we cut uh we cut ties. That's it. You know, we say, "Listen, thank you very much. We appreciate it, but the money that we're investing to publicize Torah is hectish. It's like it's like uh sacrifices brought to the beta mikdash. We can't just splurge it and just throw it wherever. We have to be very careful with things. If we're not seeing a blessing as a result, if we're not seeing results as a result of us uh investing in whether it's the co or it's this book or it's this whatever it is to publicize more, we're not seeing results that uh are going to, you know, make Hashem's name even greater. You know, we have no uh no qualms about uh ending it. Now, we're not expecting results in one day or one month or even two months. Usually, we give things about a year, sometimes longer, couple years. Uh but certainly we expect results. We handle uh everything that we do uh like a business. Everything is like a business. Even though it's all holy, even though it's holy people, even though it's great people, it has to be done like a business. Why? Because again, [snorts] people are giving us uh money to help people. People are giving us money to publicize more Torah. People are giving us money to do all of these things. In essence, on their behalf, we have to make sure that we are responsible uh you know, messengers. we're uh and and we can't just uh throw money around for no reason. So, it's certainly something that I've seen. I've seen certain things turn out to be huge blessings and some things just end up being uh you know just nothing nothing and uh you know it's it's so it's something that happens and that's why you have to evaluate your uh your staka no different than you evaluate your investment portfolio uh of stocks or real estate or whatever it is that people invest in. But uh as far as the uh who to give, what to give, like I said before, it's uh generally speaking, it's the place that impacts you the most. Last but not least, on staka, many people think that uh the most that you're allowed to give is 20% of your income. This is incorrect. This is incorrect. 10% of your income is the that says if you give 10% of your income to publicize, Hashem will protect your money. you won't lose it. If you give which is 20% of your income, then Hashem will guarantee you that you'll become rich whenever he decides you'll become rich. But certainly you'll become rich during your lifetime, not five minutes before you die. So that is but of course it all comes with tests. Giving 20% of your income is not easy for most people. But the 20% is not a cap. It's not the most. It's not the most. Like some people say, "Oh, no, but the sages said don't give more than 20%." No, what they're referring to is don't give more than 20% for the sake of helping the poor, for the sake of helping the uh needy. But if it's for the sake of publicizing Torah, there is no limit. There's no limit of how much you can give for the sake of Torah. You can give 100% if you want. You give 90%. If you're extremely wealthy, you should be giving 90%. Meaning a person that has $100 million and they give $10 million, that's not really uh enough. Why? You don't need $90 million to live. You don't need $90 million to live. Either way, the point is is that the the the cap of 20% is on everything else except Torah. Everything else except Torah. Uh but of course, if only every single person that's part of is or at the very least even the people that are watching us uh you know online would give 10% of their income for us to publicize our Torah. Uh I think not only would we have the yeshiva, the beset, the koh, but I think we'd have even multiple locations. Uh of course, we're grateful for what people do give uh and the ones that give. But I certainly know that there are some people that get a lot more from our organization than what they give. And that's something that they have to evaluate why that's the case. I don't have to evaluate it. I know that whatever Hashem wants to send us, he'll send us one way or the other. But they have to evaluate why they have that nature uh of uh them receiving a lot more than they're giving. Uh because it's certainly not a healthy place to be. Uh okay, next question. Let's see. Hi, I'm Jewish and I'm getting stronger. But what happened on October 7th is insane. How did God allow that to happen? Uh, okay. So, we have many lectures about that particular topic in general. Why does Hashem uh bring disaster? Why did he destroy the beta mikdash, the first one and the second one? Why did he uh have the Spanish Inquisition? Why did he have the uh you know the Holocaust? Why did he have October uh 7th and many other things that the goim have done to us over the years? Well, doesn't need to uh have us explain it for them. He said it himself in paras in parasu and in many other places including this week's parasa says clearly that he rewards the righteous and he punishes the wicked and if we're doing things that are against hashem not only individually but as a nation he will punish us and uh if you look at where am is before October 7th before the Holocaust, before the Spanish Inquisition, before the destruction of the beta mikdash, and you compare that to what Hashem says that he commands us to do, then you'll clearly understand why Hashem punished us. And in fact, you'll thank him for not punishing us even worse because Hashem says that a Jew has to marry another Jew, a Jew has to eat kosher, a Jew has to keep Shabbat. These are not suggestions. These are commandments from God. So when you have so many Jews, literally millions of Jews driving on Shabbat, desecrating Shabbat, doing business on Shabbat, uh, and and simply care less about the Shabbat, obviously, this is a betrayal of their God. So why would they expect God to protect them even more so when you have many Jews claim that they don't even believe in God? So if you don't believe in God, why should he protect you? Uh if you look at the people that suffered on October 7th, the vast majority of the people in the communities that were there were people that were not exactly friends of God. Many of them were enemies of God, lefty liberal, atheist, communist mentality. And again, this is not to uh prosecute against them and justify the evil by the Arabs. This is simply stating the fact these are people that declared war against God. So why would they expect God to help them? Why would they expect God to protect them? Now, we do see many miracles that have happened during October 7th where people that were not Torah observant, but during the moment of truth when the terrorists were banging down on their door threatening to kill them and so on and they said or they committed to doing chuva or keeping Shabbat. Literally, Hashem made endless miracles. There are many miracle stories that are publicized already of different people that literally didn't know anything about Judaism and barely knew about God, but they said Israel or they did a blessing or they did something on and literally a open miracle happened to them and Hashem saved them from it. One of the first people that was hostages that was saved. The family went public. You know, the uncle and the family went public by, you know, doing chuva, doing a a different mitzvot publicly. The uncle that didn't keep anything said, "If my niece comes back, I'm going to keep I'm going to do chuba and keep Shabbat." Literally the next day, a miracle happened and that hostage came home. So, the point is that Hashem is giving us all of these different things that are happening to us that are painful. Not because he benefits from our pain, but rather because we benefit from our pain by realizing that we need God. We need God because if not for God, there wouldn't be amia. it wouldn't be a world. So, but when when when we don't realize that we need God and we betray God and we go against God, then obviously he has to remind us that this can't go on for much longer because it'll only lead to even worse disaster like the ones that have happened in the past which were much much worse than October 7th. So it's important for a person to know that if you want God's protection, if you want God to fulfill his part of the covenant, we have to as well. Not just as individuals, but also as a nation. Because even if a person is individually doing good, but the nation as a whole is not doing good, then their shalom. In the past, there have been national decrees where both the righteous and the wicked were punished. the the the wicked were punished for their wickedness and the righteous were punished because they weren't doing enough kiru to help other people do chuva. So they were righteous but limited righteous because they didn't do enough to help others. Uh so it's important for a person to know that all of Isel are responsible for each other's in a sense that we are responsible to help each other get closer to Hashem to do chv to keep Shabbat to keep uh uh modesty to keep all of the all of the mitzvot. And if you're not doing that, there's something wrong. There's something wrong. Just uh yesterday I spoke to somebody that swears that they are religious. Swears I mean they they are convinced that they are religious but apparently they don't understand the laws of modesty. They don't realize that, you know, yes, you may wear a kipa, you may go to synagogue every single day, but if uh if your wife or children are walking around without covering their arms or legs, uh or they're not covered enough, then they're not modest and they're in essence considered even in a worse category than someone that is secular. Why? Because you're expected to know more because you are supposedly religious. But many times people don't realize that their lack of knowledge or their ignorance of the truth is actually what's bringing a lot of the suffering to their life. Your lack of clarity, your lack of uh appreciation of what your spouse does could very well lead to a divorce. Even though you didn't think anything was wrong until you realize that yes, it's wrong, but it's too late now. Same concept with Hashem. People many times have many problems but they don't realize they brought this upon themsself. And the same thing as a nation. If Hashem is punishing us, that's because we brought this upon oursel. And he's punishing us for the sake of saving us. He's punishing us for the sake of saving us. Because if he wanted to destroy us, he could have destroyed us a million and a half times already just today. He has plenty of reasons to destroy us. He's not destroying us because he's trying to save us. But sometimes he has to give us a bigger wakeup call. And October 7th was a big wakeup call and many Jews have done chuva as a result of it. So if you look on a on a spiritual account of Kalis before October 7th and after October 7th, we certainly should thank Hashem for bringing October 7th. Why? Because on a spiritual level, we definitely improved as a nation after October 7th. Certainly we don't want people to die. But if that's what it's going to take to uh to help all of Amish is get closer to Hashem to to bring the uh kushem to bring the mashiach then certainly it's worth it. Certainly it's worth it. Uh but uh can we do it in a different way? Sure. We could just all do chuva now without waiting for to to bring the wrath on us. But if we don't then uh and and we're left with two choices. One continue getting worse or two something bad happens and then some and we all get better then certainly it's worth it for something bad to happen. Anyone that is spiritually honest, intellectually honest, and actually cares about uh Hashem, his Torah, and eternity will agree with everything that I just said. Anyone that's liberal and uh you know, with the mindset of uh those that think that this world is the end of the world where they're all living to to build a castle here when they barely have a bathroom in the next world, they're obviously going to disagree and uh you know, even uh make a big stink about what I just said. But needless to say, this is the truth. This is the truth. If we look at our spiritual account both as individuals and as a nation from before October 7th and after October 7th certainly we got much better. And if what's required for that to happen was October 7th then it was worth it for it to happen. It was worth it for it to happen. Now if can we do it without October 7th happening? Yes. But historically speaking usually it doesn't work. Usually when things are really uh you know Hashem brings us a lot of blessings uh we don't usually uh remember to thank him. That's why there's a verse in the book of Deuteronomy where Hashem says after I bring you the salvation don't forget me. If this wasn't something we constantly do he wouldn't write this in a Torah. But this is actually in a Torah. So if we somehow give ourselves more reminders to thank Hashem instead of more reminders to go to doctor's appointments to business appointments to all types of uh you know appointments that we have in our life but we actually have at least a couple of appointments a day where we're going to thank Hashem then I can promise you that uh things will improve for us as individuals as well as a nation. Uh because if we don't remind ourselves that Hashem is God and he's the one and we need him then he will and when he reminds us it's usually painful will be smart enough not to wait for the pain. Rabbi is all makeup not allowed on Shabbat or oil based makeup only forbidden. Uh is there a thing as Shabbat makeup permitted? Uh so there's actually a write up uh that one of the wrote up that uh if you send me a message on WhatsApp, I'll send it to you that talks about makeup that's allowed on Shabbat. Uh in so many words, if it's a uh um if you read that write up, you'll understand what makeup is allowed. If you're drawing on your face or or anything like that, then it's not allowed. But uh if someone is putting powder on their face, there's no problem with that. Uh so there's certain makeup that is allowed which is much less than what's allowed us you know during the week but it's there is makeup that is allowed there is what do the teach on schizophrenia how do they how to cure it uh well I mean as far as uh schizophrenia the Arizal said that uh schizophrenia is a uh uh many times not just schizophrenia people that have a you know, these uh types of mental illnesses, it's really not because they're mentally ill, but it's rather because they have some type of um you know, a um problem spiritually, whether it's a debuke that's in them or it's a uh some other type of spiritual problem that's causing it to be expressed that way physically. So, in the time of the Arizal, he would simply fix it. He would just take out a debuke or he would, you know, do whatever is necessary to do that. But there's nobody in the world that can do that anymore. Uh now what do you do in so many words? Someone that has some type of schizophrenia and and it's it depends on the on the level on the condition. If they're still uh you know some are worse than others, some are better than others. Uh if someone is still coherent and they're still functional more or less, but they have uh schizophrenic tendencies and so on, then of course they need to pray more. they need to stay away from things that are triggering them. uh whatever medicine is given to them, they need to uh you know that's uh they need to take it and not try to be a hero thinking that they don't need medicine because that happened a couple of times and uh that led to a disaster like the story in Israel that happened a few years ago where they uh this couple got married and they didn't tell the girl that the husband has uh problems and uh mental problems and uh they got married they had a kid and I think the kid was maybe uh less than a year old And uh the mother uh saw him murder the kid for no reason. And then she found out that uh it's because he decided to stop taking his medicine. And anytime he stops taking his medicine, he loses his mind. And she never even knew he takes medicine. Uh so this was a very very big uh disaster. Uh had she known that he takes medicine for that stuff, uh number one, she probably wouldn't have married him. And even if she would have married him, she would have made sure he continuously takes the medicine and never stops. But because the parents and the shatan and everybody else lied to her, that led to the death. And all of them have the blood of that baby on their hands. And all of the suffering that that mother has for the rest of our life, all of that goes to their account. But the point is is that a person that has uh medicine has to take the medicine and not try to be a hero. Uh third, if you're given the test, that means that you have the tools to pass it. uh regardless of what test you have, no one has too big of a test. Hashem gives each one of us the perfect test that we can handle. If you have a big test, that's a testament that you have a big nama that can handle that test. That's a testament that you can handle that test and you can pass it. Uh so never think for a moment that you can't pass that test. And obviously everybody in their own level, Hashem is not expecting everyone to become Mosher Abenu and Aruna. What he's expecting of us is to be the best version of ourselves that we can be by following the Torah to the best of our abilities and becoming the best version of ourselves. If we have certain limitations, obviously Hashem knows because he's the one that gave us those limitations. But sometimes a person will need those limitations in order for them to do certain things. In order for them to do certain things. Sometimes if a person uh you know a uh has a lot of money that leads them to sin. Sometimes a person is too good-looking, it leads them to sin. Sometimes a person is too healthy, it leads them to sin. So sometimes Hashem gives a person sort of a disability, if you will, because it's better for them. And guess what? You actually asked for it before you came to the world. Hashem gave you choices. Gave you choices of what who you would marry and uh what you would have, whether you would have a disability, whether you won't have. And each one of us chose what we have. If you are in this world and you have a disability, that's because before you came to this world and Hashem gave you the possibilities, you chose this. Why? Because he showed you the overall account and he showed you the benefits of this one and you chose this one. In so many words, you can't blame anybody but yourself. But in reality, you have to know that if you have it, that means you can handle it. You can handle it. And it's uh it's certainly good for you. As far as what's the problem with tattoos? Tattoos in general, there's no problem with the tattoo. It's just a problem for a Jew to get a tattoo because the body that you have is not yours. God gave you the body to use to store your ina. But you're not allowed to do whatever you want with this body. The body is the property of God. You are the property of God. And therefore, you have to follow his law. As a Jew, you're not allowed to put tattoos on your body. uh if a person chooses to ignore that rule, then they're making a sin. Now, if a a Jew has a tattoo, uh they uh don't have to remove it once it's already on there. Meaning the sin is getting the tattoo. But having the tattoo after you have it is uh you know is not a sin in itself unless the tattoo is of something that is connected to idolatry or it's something that is creating immorality of some kind. For example, having you know someone that's uh not sua you know on your face or something or on some place that everyone would see. But if it's hidden uh then uh you know and no one sees it then it's not a problem. Uh but if it's connected to idolatry or immorality of some kind, then yes, you do have to remove it. But as far as the bigger sin, the bigger sin is getting the tattoo. Why? Because God said so. God said so. If you have a problem, you can pretty much uh go and ask God to take you up to Shamim and explain to you why he thinks is bad. Only problem is you once he takes you up there, he doesn't usually bring you back. So I would think twice before I ask for that. Okay. [sighs] Does one beat how does one beat laziness and become accustomed to living being productive rather than seeking free time? Uh well, number one, they should know that uh says that laziness leads to sin. If you're lazy, that means it means you're a wicked person. That means you're a lazy person. That makes a lot of sense. And lazy people don't enter heaven. So if you desire to go to gehenn, you desire to go to kafaka and all the horrible places, continue being lazy. If you want to go to heaven, you have to start getting out of your own way. Stop being lazy and become more productive. Uh now of course there's a certain amount of Torah that a person has to learn and there's a certain amount of work they have to work. For whatever reason or another I've seen a a common denominator among people uh that are ballet chuva where they start learning Torah and they start deciding for themselves that they're no longer a good fit to work in [snorts] their regular jobs like they are just going to learn Torah all day. Now if they were real, they went to co and learned serious level of Torah in a co day and night then sure that's not a problem. If you have the amuna and the ability to do it by all means but for a person to watch all day is not considered someone that should not work. You can do that and work at the same time you know and and and the reason you're not working not because you're listening to you're not working because you're lazy. And if you're lazy, you should know that you'll get punished for it. Why? Because Hashem gave you all types of things to do in this world. Uh, and you're not doing them because you just feel like you can hang out and you're justifying it by listening to the is good, but it does not mean that a person should just simply do that all day and not actually be productive. You know, many times people think that they're much more righteous than what they really are because they listen to strong speakers, but they exclude themselves from the world. So, they never pretty much leave. They never go anywhere. They never do anything. Uh and uh in so many words, they uh they don't think that they're sinners, but they don't realize that their lifestyle in itself because it's not productive is itself a big sin. Is itself a big sin. So a person must be productive. If you're going to study high level of Torah in a col and that becomes your vocation, good go do that. If that's not your vocation, you still need to learn Torah, but you need to also be productive. You need to work. Now person says, well, I work. I just don't get paid for it. Well, what do you do? Oh, I fix my garden. I walk my dog. You know, I give consulting to my friends. You know, whenever they have problems, they talk to me about it. You know, isn't that work? No, it's not work. It's being lazy and justifying your laziness by keeping yourself busy with lazy things. You need to be productive means that you need to do things that produce results, i.e. money, i.e. help to your family, i.e. help to your children, i.e. a million and a half other things that you're not doing. Hanging out all day listening to and uh and and and cleaning your yard and taking out the garbage is not productive. Go do something. Go do something and stop being lazy. Why? If you don't, you'll go to Gom. And I promise you in gum, they're not lazy. In gum, nobody's lazy. Why? They're very, very active. If you read the book by uh the talks about different things that the do in the real world, not a single one of them is lazy. Every one of them is very active, very productive with destruction. Destruction. Laziness unacceptable. You don't have time to be lazy. You don't have the permission to be lazy. You don't have the right to be lazy. Who do you think you are that you have so much time in this world to have the ability to be lazy? What do you think you have 120 years? Who promised you tomorrow? either go learn Torah non-stop but at a high level of Torah or live a normal life which means learn some Torah and be productive by being productive not by being productive in your mind. Get a job, make some money, do something, teach, you know, do something. Do something. Stop being a vegetable and think that walking your dog is a is is uh something that's benefiting society. Oh, no. I volunteer at the local shelter. That's not being productive, my friend. That is not being productive. Why? It's nice that you're volunteering at your local shelter, but if your kids are starving and you're volunteering, guess what? You'll get punished for that. You'll get punished for that. Why? You have to feed your kids. You have to feed your kids. And your volunteering is forbidden. You're not allowed to volunteer. and therefore your family suffers as a result of your volunteering unless they're on board. Unless they they're okay with it. If but if your wife says, "No, no more volunteering. I need you to get a job." Guess what? You have to go get a job or else you're violating the cuba. The kuba says you're going to be the one as the husband, you're going to be the ones that's productive that brings money to the table. If your wife agrees that she's going to be the ones that brings the money, then by all means, but if not, you have to. You must go get a job. Even if she tells you, "You're in co. You're in coal." Listen to what I'm saying to you guys. You're in co. You're learning all day. Your wife says, "Honey, we're not making enough money. The kids are starving. The last time I bought them a pair of shoes was 5 years ago. Their their shoes are like hippopotamus. They could speak pretty much. They're opening their mouth. We need food. We need you to get a regular job." Guess what? You have to go get a regular job. Why? Because that's what the Kuba says. Oh, then I'll get a divorce. Okay, so you'll get punished for being divorced for no reason. A person must utilize their time in this world effectively. You have no permission whatsoever to be a bum. No permission. Being poor, being a bum, being a loser is a choice. It's a choice. It's not something that Hashem decreed for you. But if you are productive but unsuccessful, that's a different story. meaning you work, you make your, you know, you have two jobs, you have one job, you learn Tawa, you do whatever it is, but the bills you have pretty much you're never ahead. You're barely surviving. No problem. You learn Tawa, you're working, Hashem's happy with you. But if you barely have food to eat, but for some reason or another, you feel like it's okay for you to hang out at the garage and fix your motorcycle, maybe you'll ride it in 5 years from now. Guess what? You and your motorcycle will be in the same chamber. Why? You have no permission to do such things. You have no permission to be lazy in this world. You came to this world to work. Where does it say that in the Torah? Book of Job. A person came to this world to toil. There's no permission whatsoever to waste time. None. Zero. You must be productive. Must. Not productive. You're wicked. Wicked. not productive by choice. I mean if a person is sick, person is mentally challenged, a person is disabled or whatever it is, obviously that's doesn't apply to them. But if a person has the choice and chooses to be lazy, they should know they have a stamp on their on their report in shamim. Wicked. Wicked. Why? Because you're not utilizing your time in this world. And you say, "Yeah, but I don't really want to work. I want to learn Torah." Then go learn to go to the and learn to no but I prefer to learn in my house. Okay. What are you learning? Are you learning? You learning? Are you learning? What are you learning? Oh, I listen to listen. Good. I give I like but to make that your vocation all day. Not no chance in the world. You listen to productive productive. You can't just listen to all you listening to 10 hours of thinking that you're doing your you're righteous. Absolutely not. Why? Even if it's a good quality like the one you're listening to, even if you listen to a good again this by itself doesn't give you the permission to do this all day every day, 24 hours a day, you have to be productive. You have to feed your kids. You have to feed your spouse. You have to feed yourself. Oh, but listen, I don't really like it. I can't find a job that I like. Uh, you know, the people at these jobs, they're wicked. Stop pretending like you're so righteous. You have to learn how to conduct yourself in the world. We don't live in Gan Eden. You have to find a way to conduct yourself in the world. If you can't find a way to conduct yourself in the world, and even find a way to live peacefully with the wicked, and even find a way to live peacefully with the righteous, and even find a way to live peacefully by yourself, and even find a way to live peacefully with your enemy, which sometimes is your wife, sometimes is your husband. If you can't find a way to to to live peacefully, a Torah observant life, then guess what? It's not anybody else that's the problem. You are the problem. You, you, you, not them. They have their problems, but you are justifying your laziness, your lack of production, your whatever it is because of other people in Shamim. They're going to point at you. They're not going to point at them. Oh yeah. You know what? What? You didn't have any money. You couldn't bite feline. Why didn't you bite feline? Hashem sent, you know, the the the the the pipe that had money in it from Shamim. He sent it, but then it stopped. You know why? Because you didn't want to work because uh you quit your job, a new job every two weeks because uh you uh instead of taking the money to go buy, you bought a new watch, you bought a fancier car, you bought five pairs of sneakers. So, Hashem sent you the money. You just didn't get there to collect or you misappropriated to somewhere else. So, guess what? inim they're not calculating you with the righteous they're not calculating with the righteous you have to fix that stop blaming the world being wicked world has always been the same nothing has changed nothing new under the sun the world is the same today as it was yesterday as it was the day before the fact that we have new technology so what there was technology of the older days that was uh taking people's attention today it's artificial intelligence 20 years ago it was the internet and phones. Uh, you know, 40 years ago it was home computers, you know, and and and the Atari vision, Atari games that started, you know, 80 years ago. It was other types of things that uh people used. Everybody had something all the time. Nothing is new. And either way, the things that we have today were available in a different version in the past. Whether it be the worst things like pornography or the good things like learning to everything was available in the past. People have always had the and they had the and there's not a single person they can go up to and say I was wicked because of all of them and Hashem accept that. No chance. Why? Hashem gave you an Hashem gave you a body in order for you to fight the battle yourself. and don't justify your laziness, your wickedness, your retardedness in in in in attending to any type of appointment on time and and in getting to a job or anything else because of other people. It's you. If Hashem was going to put the blame on other people, he would just create them. He created you because you have a responsibility. You have a responsibility. When you're not fulfilling that responsibility, Hashem gives you just so much time. After a while, he sees that his business deal with you is not working out. You're not feeling filling your responsibility, he could simply take you out of the world. Why? It's not beneficial for you to live. As long as Hashem sees that there is a possibility that you will do chuva in your lifetime, he gives you more time to live. The second that a person is so far removed from the ability to do chuva, Hashem could easily pluck him out of the world even before his time. Meaning even if he was destined to live 70 years, 100 years, but if he does certain things that show that he is not going to do Chuva anytime soon, even if he's 25 years old, 45 years old, Hashem can pluck him out of the world. You want a source for that, go read has a whole write up about it. So it's important for a person to know laziness is a sin. Laziness is a sin. No different than eating pig. No different than gossip. No different than other sins. It's a sin. You're not allowed to be lazy. Needless to say, if if you have uh somebody complaining about your laziness and you're it's causing your laziness causing others problems. But laziness completely despicable and disgusting behavior. That's the way you should look at laziness. How's that for an answer for lazy people? Stop being lazy. Is it kosher to wrap my grandfather's? Uh, I mean, if your grandfather had kosherin, then sure, there's no problem of you wrapping of your grandfather. But if you don't know, then I would say go get them checked. Get them checked. It usually takes uh a week, two weeks, depends on who the sufare is and how busy he is. uh cost a little bit of money and he uh he checks it for you and he tells you if it's kosher feeling if it's not koshine sometimes you can fix it other times it's not worth it to fix it you just buy new ones but u as far as is it allowed sure it's allowed if they're kosher feline doesn't matter who owned it if it's your grandfather I'm sure it has sentimental value to you but if it's not kosher feline it's could have sentimental value but it's not going to be mitzvah It's not going to be mitzvah value. You need a mitzvah value. Mitzvah value is what we need in this world. Jobs in California do not want to give you time off for early Shabas. Okay? So, you have a job and they do not want to give you time off to go keep Shabbat. What does the Torah say? Torah says, "Quit the job." Quit the job. Now, you can do what I've recommended for people many times in the past. I had a guy uh maybe 10 years ago. It was a student of mine uh and uh he worked for AT&T and his manager was a real, you know, tough cookie and his manager refused to let him keep Shabbat. When he started coming to my shim, he started realizing he has to keep Shabbat. But his problem was that the manager would always give him work on Shabbat and uh on Saturday itself and he would every time he would ask for it off. You tell him, "Listen, I don't have a replacement for you. You have this uh you have this job." Uh so I told him, "Tell him you're not coming." So he told him, "I'm not coming." And the boss said, "If you don't come, I'm going to fire you." So he was afraid. He asked me, "What do I do?" I said, "Don't go. Who are you afraid of? Hashem or the boss. Now, I know that logically speaking, you're afraid he's going to fire you, then you're not going to have food to eat. But if Hashem gave you food yesterday, he gave you food today, then why do you think he's not going to give you food if you're following his laws of keeping Shabbat? So, he actually had the courage to do it, and he didn't show up to work. At the end of Shabbat, he uh saw that his uh phone rang uh a bunch of times. He checked his messages and the boss called him a bunch of times. So the next day, he uh he goes to work and uh the boss says, "Where were you?" He said, "I told you I'm not coming at Shabbat." The boss looked at him. The manager looked at him. He goes, "Listen, I told you none of that. Don't ever pull that on me again." He told, "No, no, I'm doing it every week." He goes, "You do it again. I'm firing you. No problem." The next week he did it again. At the end of Shabbat, he got some missed messages, but less than last week. The next day he came to work. The boss didn't even talk to him. He thought he's going to get fired at all for sure. The next week he took Shabbat off again. End of Shabbat, no calls. So he figured, for now, for sure I'm fired. Goes to work the next day. Everything is as usual. Everything is usual. And he kept doing this for months. Three, four months like this. Three, four months like this. Everything was good. Everything worked out. Eventually, he got some blessings. He ended up opening up his own business. Meaning, not only did he end up keeping Shabbat, he ended up making some money in some other ways and got enough money to start his own business to make a lot more money. No one ever loses by following the Torah. So, if your job says, "I'm not going to let you keep Shabbat," you tell them, "I'm going to keep Shabbat whether you like it or not." If they threaten to fire you, no problem. No problem. If you uh live in uh in America, you could probably sue for it. But I wouldn't even I wouldn't even bet on the fact that you could sue. I would bet on the fact that Hashem is going to help you. Just like I told another person the other day that told me that their uh boss is giving them problems, threatening to fire them. And uh I told her, listen, if Hashem has given you problems in your job that you've been in for five, 10 years, and you're being threatened to be fired, why do you think it's a curse? Maybe it's Hashem wants you to make more money because how can I make more money if I uh you know, if I'm going to get fired? No, you're not going to make more money from what you think. You think you're going to make more money from the same job. No, Hashem wants you to leave this job. But since you've been at this job for so many years, you're not even thinking about leaving this job. So what is he doing? He's causing this boss of yours to kick you out or make you miserable so you leave because and now you have no choice but to look for another job. And that's the job Hashem wants you to work on that's going to make you more money. Oh, thank you for making you feel better. I'm not trying to make you feel better. I'm telling you that's what the truth is. Today, literally a half hour before we started the sh, she sends me a message. Rabbi, everything you said was right. I just got offered a job with a like a remote in a different location with more money. I'm not a prophet. That's how runs the world. He tells us in the Torah, no one ever loses by following Hashem. No one. It doesn't work. Hashem runs the world. Not your boss, not your customers, not your product, not you, not your mind, not your idea. Hashem runs the world. You believe in Hashem, you'll succeed. You don't believe in Hashem. Hem will have mercy on you and hopefully force you to believe in him. Let's see. We'll take one uh question more. It's getting a little late. Is there any type of non-Jewish music that is allowed? Uh yeah, you could listen to instrumentals. instrumentals, uh, music without lyrics in so many words. You could listen to music without lyrics, no problem. Ideally, it would become music, but I know some people like the little jumpy music like techno and stuff like that. If it has no lyrics, it does technically there's nothing wrong with it. Uh, you're allowed to listen to it, but uh, ideally it would be something that's not aggressive and not causing you to, you know, want to harm people or yourself. Uh but uh lyrics are usually the problem in music, not the music itself. What if we don't deserve it or we don't or to get what we want? Now we have to work on our mid But how can I have 100% amuna if I'm certain that I don't deserve to be? Well, as far as deserve or not deserve, you're not the judge of the world. Uh, Hashem will decide what to give you and what not to give you. as we saw from the Torah in this week's par that Hashem has mercy on us to the extent where he will give us different things even though he knows he's going to punish us. Why? If he knows that somebody's uh deserves a death penalty, but Hashem doesn't want to kill him, he can't just change the Torah because the Torah is truth. So what does he do? He'll give him something that he can then take away in order to replace the death penalty. He'll give him money. He'll give him all types of things that he can then take away that will cause him suffering and uh to replace that punishment. Point is that whether you deserve or you don't deserve only Hashem decides. What you have to do is follow [snorts] what the Torah says to the best of your abilities. Every day get better and what Hashem gives you say thank you and you continue getting better and publicizing Hashem's name. Okay, I have to go. I actually have a something that an appointment in uh about a little bit. So I have to go now. Uh but we learned for over two hours. Anyone that wants to support our organization to help us uh do all the wonderful things that the organization is doing, you could donate on our website bzadashem.org or you could donate on bhour.org or you could donate on YouTube becoming one of these uh sub paid subscribers or on Facebook or you could send a check for a million dollars. Whatever you want to do. If you want to help us, you can. If you don't want to help us, but you still want to learn with us, you're still welcome to do so. Learn with us. One day we will all do chuva. Shabbat shalom to everybody. And we will learn again next week. [music] of hokenos asked him what can we do to protect ourselves from he says even if somebody does a nice thing or learns a [music] lot or anything like that it's never compared to bringing one of Hashem's lost kids that's been lost for the last 3,000 years back home one of the beautiful things that we have in our organization is that we [music] have both Torah and because we have our kals we have our and we also have our cube that we do around the world. Our lectures reach every corner of the world in multiple languages. But of course, we always want to do even more. for Florida. All in my eyes. Adonai Elohim. Adonai. While we have cure work that we've done throughout the whole year, we also have the [music] Torah that we're constantly producing more and more of. And last but not least, the uh to feed the poor people in Israel. A very special thank you to all our amazing guests who show real love about Islam by taking the time out of their business gift and sharing their ups and downs with us all for the sake of one of the big things that we have aside from this campaign. you [music] probably see this poster or something similar to it is also we publish some of the recent results that we have or at least up to now of the organization. And one of the reasons why we do this each year is because we want to make sure that our partners, our donors, our Tommy Deen know where their money is going. Unlike everybody else that you know uh says a lot, does a lot. We want to show you what these results are. I can tell you from my experience and a little bit of knowledge about the whole Torah world. I don't know of anybody else uh any other organization on planet earth that produces dollar for dollar what we've produced over these last few years. This is nothing to be arrogant about. It's simply bishmayak those who helped us. We made every sacrifice that we can possibly make in order to h to make it happen. Producing nearly 300 films, publishing 32 books, our own books, giving out 154,000 books for free. Giving out 154,000 books is not a cheap endeavor. Anyone that wants to do such a thing has to be completely committed to his children and most importantly to have inadu. We also have fed over 160,000 people over these last several years. Each year during Pesak, the high holidays throughout the year. We help a lot of people eat, help make sure that they have groceries, food, all types of things. And you guys have seen many of the videos that are uh that we've produced over the years to actually show you the people that are getting this food. You have here 160,000 people have eaten nearly 300 Torah films. And then on top of all of it, we have 1.4 million USB CDs and cards that [music] have been giving out for free. All of the work that we've done over the last 10 years on these USBs given out for free. Last but not least, 12,000 video and audio lectures available online in about 14 different languages for the world to watch for free. Amen. [music] Foreign [music] speech. Foreign foreign foreign speech. the Russia. [music] What's up? foreign. [music] This [music] [music] after somebody dies, their naturally feels like it needs to be clean and like it needs to go to gum to go clean itself so it could feel better after. And one of the reasons why we do this, why we show these numbers [music] is because we want to show everyone what we've done to give you an indication, an indication of [music] what we can do in the future. So, this is a time where we need as much of your help as possible to [music] push yourself more than you typically do. If you typically donate a couple hundred, donate a thousand. If you uh if you can afford uh the uh uh $8,000, 15,000, 50,000, whatever you can afford, this is the time to do it because this is going to be the help that we have to help all of these to feed these people and perhaps one day to get that building that we've been wanting to to build here in the United States to build a community. But the all of these things require millions of dollars. If not now, then when?