Proof of Sinai - Rabbi Yom Tov Glaser

Uh today we're going to be doing uh How do we know God gave the Torah Mount Sinai? How do we know the Torah is from Mount Sinai? How do we know that the uh Torah is divine? How do we know that uh you know, what we're claiming to be this Sinai experience actually happened? You know, how do we know all this? Cuz the certainly observant Jews have lived their lives based on this. This is what governs my daily life. 1% of people you're talking about. 1% of people? The 1% Was it you that said that 100% the religious Jews have the 99% of their actions and intelligence and all that, but they're missing the 1% of the most critical. Mhm. That was not me. And it was 10%. It was 10% not 1%. Someone said 1%? I don't believe it was 1%. Could be at all. Anyway, listen up. Uh So, how do we know this is real? How do we know this isn't just like some belief system that we really want to subscribe to. There's a lot of ways to tackle this and I'd like to tackle it in unique ways. Uh unlike maybe ways you're used to hearing. And um and just kind of take it from there. Make it uh special for you guys. What we're going to do today is we're going to create our own cult. Okay? So, you're all about to become fabulously wealthy. And if you don't mind, I'll be the cult leader. Um I mean, if one of you want to be the cult leader, I suppose we could arrange it, but but at this point, I'll be the leader. And the way we're going to become fabulously wealthy with this cult of ours is just through having lots and lots of followers. We are interested in getting people to be interested in doing this cult of ours. And we're going to be collecting 10% of their income as most religions, besides Judaism, have 10% of their income going towards the towards the establishment, which would be us. So, anyway, you get pretty wealthy pretty quick, you know. And I want a billion followers in like uh 30 years. I'm expecting a billion followers. We'll have already passed the fabulously wealthy point once we've got 100,000 followers cuz imagine 10% of 100,000 hard-working people. We're already going to be doing quite well. Okay, you guys in? So, I did a little research to see exactly how to create this cult. And what I did was I just researched uh various religions. And I noticed that every religion has four things going on. Um I think we'll put them here. So, uh the four things going on are a um a belief in something, rituals, laws, and a promise. Okay? So, some kind of belief system. You have to have rituals, like stuff people do, which of course we we choose. We could say we're the priesthood and we're doing it. Or we can say everyone does it. It depends. Uh and then there's laws, which again we could say we do most of them or you do some. You got to give them something to do. And some kind of rules system. And then a promise is there we can go to town cuz you have to die basically to prove it wrong. So so the promise is we can just promise anything we want because they can never prove us wrong on the promise. I've really been trying to get you to the answer, what is the difference between a religion and a cult? Just numbers. Yeah, excellent. Steve got it. Numbers. Numbers. Take any world religion today and boil it down to like 10 people believing in it. Meaning one guy is saying such and such happened or God said such and such. And then you got nine others saying we believe. Yeah, is that a cult or religion? Cult. That's a cult. Now add in like couple hundred thousand or a million or these days add in a billion. Believing the same exact little you know, tale. The same exact little myth. That some guy heard something in some cave or on top of a mountain or whatever. Or he found a book or something. You know, he just can't find it again. You know, he found it once and now it's lost. Um the that's just a cult on steroids. Meaning religions are cults on steroids. You got that? Now Judaism you'd have to ask is obviously the question is does it really share that status? Is Judaism just a cult on steroids? Is it based on a bunch of people believing or or just however many people a few people believing something happened or someone said something that happened or God spoke to someone in in or is Judaism really on the um when you boil it down, it really boils down to 3 million people saying that something happened. Which is a very different thing to fabricate. Once you're at 3 million people being there, it's a really different than some guy coming out of a cave saying he heard something happen. You can start a cult on one person saying he heard something. But you're going to need a few other details. Well, let's get to those details now. You're going to need a belief, you're going to need rituals, you're going to need laws, and you're going to need a promise. Cuz every cult and every religion has this. Okay? But now it's going to be the question. The question is in our cult, we'll call it the red dot cult. Okay? We'll make everyone wear a red dot somewhere. And maybe on their shirt or we'll tattoo it on their uh You don't want to put it on their forehead, the Hindus are already doing that one in the But we'll call it the red dot cult. Okay? Now, let's go into these uh let's go into these four categories cuz we've got to figure out how to get this cult underway. Um should the belief system be something simple or complex? Okay? Okay, it should be simple. Um I agree. I think that that you'd want it as simple as possible. Um should we have um icons? Make it uh it very tangible. Meaning like they can put a little caricature of something and already feel connected to it. Or should it should it be iconoclastic? I It should be actually. They It'll be more popular if it is. Without without People like to hold on to their little rabbit's foot, you know? We should have something that you can hold on to. What about maybe all people like able to kind of go dance to it? You know what I mean? You know what I We're not saying it's God. We'll just give it lots of little symbols and all kinds of Yeah, oh, we're not going to say Yeah, that would be a problem. We're not going to say that it does anything necessarily, but but lots of figures, picture using every sense you can find, you know, there should be something you can see, something you can touch, something you Anything that would properly uh ground it in, you know? So, that's the other thing is icons would be a big big one. Simple to believe in. Yeah, easy enough to understand. And um and uh icons available to make it, you know, real tangible. Okay? And then the next is rituals. What do you think about rituals? Should we have lots of them? Should we have little of them? Should they be expensive? Should they be a hassle and inconvenient or should they be maybe something we say we do. I mean, it's we're doing them. You you remember your priesthood's always option for us. We could just say we're doing it. We're taking the fall for you guys. Celibacy and everything. They don't have to know. Yeah. We could be as celibate as the church. So, um What do you say? We should add more and more as time goes on. Add rituals. Yeah, we should have we should have more. No, but seriously, guys, lots of rituals or few? First of all, for the practitioners at least. Okay, few and easy. But you got to give them something cuz you got to have an identifying ritual. Okay? Few, more or less easy to do. Shouldn't be really expensive. Um shouldn't Meaning you the buy-in to our religion or our cult at this point should not be like a major price. Shouldn't be a big price to buy in. The fact that we're already already gouging them 10% of their income, like you don't want to say it's going to cost much more than that, you know. By the way, Judaism also requires 10% of one's income. Uh what's the difference though? It's charity, not to Yeah, it actually goes to it really goes to anyone you see fit. You got to give 10% but to whom you choose. Not to any central location, not to any synagogue, not to anything like that. You can choose the synagogue. But you know, certainly the rabbi would love love you if you did. But uh he can't come and claim it. You understand? He can't say, "Oh, your 10% is obviously coming to us, isn't it?" Like, "No, actually, I'm uh I'm helping start a kindergarten. You know, and I want to make sure this kindergarten gets off the ground. Sorry, Charlie. Yeah, he's out. So, um rituals We got that more or less straightened out. Okay, laws. Laws are like the do's and don'ts. Okay, do's and don'ts. I mean, it's almost un-American even to say there would be laws. But you can't have a religion without laws. You got to have some laws. I mean, do do other world's religions have laws? Uh Islam has some laws, right? They're not allowed alcohol. Um I think that uh they're really big against adultery. I think most religions are. Um I mean, you got to have some laws. Christianity has laws. For practitioner for the layman? What is a law What is a What's a law in Christianity? Sunday, church. I don't think you have to do that. Don't they have the Ten Commandments? Can't speak against God. Um yeah, they in a way they have the Ten Commandments, but that's all civil law, too. Most of the Ten Commandments is civil law. Murder, adultery. Don't they have the Noahide laws? They're bound by those. All All Gentiles are bound by the Noahide laws, yeah. But of those are pretty basic. You have to like accept Jesus as Messiah as our second law, right? It's not a law, though. That's part That was number one. That was the belief. All right. There are not a lot of do's and don'ts in Christianity, bottom line. Not a lot. Whatever. We don't have to focus on them. Uh Mormons have more laws. Mormons aren't allowed any mind-altering things, including caffeine. Command your people sleeping through the sermon there, huh? No caffeine. So, anyway, back to us. Uh so, we want a lot of laws or few laws? What do you think? Few. Few. Okay. Keep the laws to a minimum. And then again, we can always pull the priesthood part. Like, we're keeping the laws. Yeah, cuz the monks definitely have more laws than than uh practice, you know, layman. Okay, good. And uh last is a promise. And here we can get creative. I mean, let's go for anything. They They They have to die to prove us wrong. Okay? This is the big promise. Every religion has their big promise. Okay, let's hear something. Come on, guys. What do you get? I mean, I'm a surfer, so I It's definitely going to include surfing. It's just going to be like one long wave you never get tired of riding it. Um yeah. I want a house made out of water. Like, just water. House made of water? And I want to be able to fly. Mm. Nice. Okay, you can fly. I can shoot stuff out of my feet. Very good. Very good. Do you have feet, though? Yeah, well, your part of this gets feet. I can choose to not have my body do whatever I want. Okay, very good. Um I want all knowledge. All knowledge, very nice. Very nice. You get all knowledge. That's good. That's a nice one. That's good. It'll appeal to intellectuals, at least. I'm not an intellectual that. Why? So, you know, I just want free beer. You know. A Kindle Fire that has every novel in the world. How about that you don't have to read it, it just downloads into I'm too busy to read. That's what he wants. So, um And and also let's just give the downside. You got to have a downside, too. Meaning if you don't believe, you got to you got they're hedging their bets here. The whole way anyone would believe in any of these cults, religions, is is they're scared. You got to freak them out. Like there's something really nasty going to happen if you're not going to believe this thing. So, let's go for the downside. You guys got any take Let's uh You can stay forever in the coffin. And you can never get out. Woah, stuck forever in the coffin. That'd be nasty. Anyone else? A never-ending blackboard and fingernails Yeah, fingernails going across. Yeah. Everything you eat tastes like an experiment. Woah. That's radical. That's radical. Chubby Okay. Um anyway, but we'll we'll come up with some downside. Okay, sounds good? Okay, great. Uh you may have been realizing as I've been doing this that we are about to do something else. What do you think I'm about to put right up here instead of a red dot? A green dot. No. What? A photo. Yeah, I was going to put a uh Magen David. Okay? I was going to put a Magen David. And uh let's look into that a little bit now. Um Belief. Simple or complex? Complex. Oh, yeah, what's a belief? One God. Somebody wasn't listening yesterday. What is the What is the one thing it doesn't say throughout the Torah? That there's one God. Doesn't say that ever. Believe in God. Yeah. Simple or complex? Believe in God. What is God? Complex. It's extremely So complex. We had that guy like flipping over backwards over there yesterday just trying to discuss nothing. You know? Unlike other traditions, Judaism's belief in God is like massively complex. It's It's completely inconceivable. Yet, you're supposed to study it your whole life. So, wait. We're going to tell you now you'll never get it, yet we're telling you to go study it. Why don't I just cut to the chase and just never study it cuz I'll never get it? Imagine like, I don't know, Jake over here just decides, "You know what? I'm going to become this like great Kabbalist and forget the world." Sends home an email that he died or something and then and then moves to Safed and starts just pouring over Kabbalistic works like ancient manuscripts and stuff. And we all like move on in our own lives and we decide you know the four of us stay connected and we decide like 30 years later we say, "Why don't we go to Safed and see if we can find that guy Jake?" You know? And uh of course we get there and we're like asking around, "Anyone know a guy named Jake? Jake? Jake?" And they're like, "Jake? Who's Jake?" And we're like, "What's his last name?" Delmonte. And they're like, "Do you mean Rabbi Delmonte?" And we're like, "Yeah. That's who we're looking for." And we're like, "Well, at least he's still here." He's like, "You can have an appointment in 26 weeks because he's not going to be available." Anyway. We get in there somehow meeting the right people. When we get to the place where he studies, uh at the out the exit of the door is his beard. Okay, we just follow the beard all the way across the house, you know, and into this little chamber. And and now we're following it up the floor and now up over the desk and across this another cabalistic work he's studying. And then Jake looks up with his eyes spinning. He's 30 years older. And we ask him, "Jake, who is God?" You know what he's going to say? "I have no idea, but it is so awesome." And we're just going to like whoa. So, it is so complex and and the works that have been done in the the cabalistic works, the writings, could fill this classroom floor to ceiling without being superfluous, without it repeating themselves. And for thousands of years people have been studying these works and writing more works only to realize that we'll never really understand. In fact, one poet wrote a thousand years ago, you know what he wrote about God? He says that if um if the seas were ink and all the trees in the forests of the earth were quills to write with, you'd run out of ink and quills before you finally got through writing about who God is. Or isn't. You'd never finish. You'd finish all the seas and you'd finish all the forests. That's what one of our our great cabalistic rabbis wrote. It's a uh something we talk about. What night do we read that poem? We read this famous poem and it's actually we read it in the morning of one of our holiest days of the year, which is called Shavuot, which is the day we got the Torah at Mount Sinai. And that poem is read right before we read from the actual text of the Torah. Right before we read it on the day of the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. The sixth day of the month of Sivan is this amazing amazing holiday of the giving of the Torah. We learn all night here. In fact, I teach here in this lobby to several hundred people um my slot. I think my slot is 1:00 to 2:00 a.m. That's my slot. Everyone stays up all night. Because the Jews slept on the the night of the giving of the Torah, meaning the night before the giving. We slept. And everyone sleep. Everyone to sleep. And um And I guess we weren't supposed to. We were supposed to be so excited that we couldn't sleep. Everyone's like, "Oh, I'll get some sleep before the Torah comes, you know." And so for thousands of years now, 3,326 years to date, we don't sleep that night. No one sleeps. Like the the whole it's an all-nighter for everybody. My whole family, my kids, everyone stays up all night. The little kids sleep cuz they pass out. But it's not like we put them in bed or anything. Okay. How we doing on the belief system for the masses? How we doing there? Check or an X? Yeah, it's a major X. This is X. Okay? It is a belief that's just like impossible to get. In fact, probably most Jews don't even realize how far away they are from properly believing in God. Um I'm talking about the observant ones. I wasn't talking about the 90% who don't even keep Judaism. Talking about the other 10% of that 10% who knows how much big the percentage is, who when they think God, they're already thinking something that's totally anthropomorphic in a way, like physical almost. Yeah? Okay? And by the way, how we doing in icons in Judaism? I'm not saying for Judaism, but for God. We're in the belief now. What about icons? We don't get any. We don't get any word for they're forbidden. In fact, in the 10 Commandments, the second commandment of not having any other gods, meaning don't give reverence to any other powers in life in earth on earth. Um it also goes into a bunch of details of not creating any images of God, either. No icons whatsoever. No image, cuz he has no image and he doesn't want you having creating an image whatsoever of God. There's zero icons allowed. Now, we do have our icons, but they're more for they're more station identification of Judaism. For example, the Jewish star is called the Magen David, the shield of David. Okay? Has to do with It's a bit of a might thing. It's got its own cabalistic things of the three points and three points and the which is really like six days in the center of shabbos. And you'll see they all fit perfectly in if you actually fold a Jewish star, each of the days of the six days folds perfectly in to that shape. I I didn't draw it legibly enough, but they all actually perfectly fold in and fold out and shabbos is the center dimension. It's the seventh dimension. You'll notice everything's six dimensions. And then there's the inner space. For example, this classroom's seven dimension. Every shelf, seven dimension. Okay? There's there's this wall, that wall, this wall, this wall, yeah? That wall and that wall, that's six and then the seventh is us inside it. Your table's all is made of it. Everything's made of the tubes of the table are made of it. And the everything's made of these six dimensions and then there's the seventh dimension. And that's shabbat. Shabbat's the seventh day. It's like going into this totally other dimension, seventh dimension. Now, um But, let's go to rituals. How are we doing in rituals with Judaism? Fewer a lot. Jake, you just give it a good shove. Perfect. Fewer many for rituals? Many. Many. We have a priesthood who's in charge of the rituals? Not during temple During temple times, we definitely have priesthood doing a Is the ritual more like davening every day or is the carbon the sacrifices? Um let me give you a couple examples of rituals. Um when you wake up in the morning, you say modeh ani lifanecha. You give thanks first for God having brought your soul back to your body. Um the next thing you do is you wash your hands six times. Right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left. Yeah. Then, um um Oh, well, it just keeps going from there. I mean, your entire day is is filled with all kinds of stuff. Uh if you go at the end of your day, if you go to bed before midnight, you sleep on your left side. And if you go to bed after midnight, you sleep on your right side. Oh, did I mention that you tie, when you put on your shoes, you put on your right shoe, then you put on your left shoe, then you tie your left shoe, and then you tie your right shoe. And um the uh also never eat bread before first washing the right hand twice on the right, although uh Chabadniks do three, and on the left twice, or three if you're Chabadnik. Um that's really important, too. And you make special blessing over your the washing of the hands, and then you'll go and there's uh all kinds of blessings you'll be making over your food as well, uh including a uh kind of a nice size thing for after the meal. Uh that'll be really important. As far as prayer times or service in the temple, that would be also lots of ritual there. But in prayer times it's three a day, shabbat is four. All holidays is four. Um then Yom Kippur's five. Uh but yeah, you do have to keep coming back and saying the same words over and over and over and over again. Um Uh then there's some other ones that get a little more expensive. Like for example, the uh sukkas holiday can get pretty pricey pricey. Um Now it it shouldn't be so pricey to move out of your house into a thatch hut. But you do have to have festive meals for 8 days straight. Uh that can get pricey. Um If you guys hang out and hang around, we're going to be building my sukkah. We do a whole big team effort cuz my sukkah seats 70 people. It has um five different lighting effects, a smoke machine, and a sound system with live music every night. And catered. And I cater by my wife. But uh we have a whole team in the kitchen helping her out. Um That's something worth If you haven't changed your ticket yet to include sukkot, go change it and you'll thank me uh for the greatest party on Earth. And that's just my house till around 11:30 when I start having mercy on my neighbors cuz they're all in their thatch huts trying to get some sleep. Um I I don't know how it is, but I happen to live in a community that um prays at sunrise. Okay, so they don't like me so much. Um at least on sukkas. They they have the whole rest of the year to forget about it. And then um but then we bounce out into other parties that go for the rest of the night. Big bands playing all over town and it's really something. And all free, obviously except for me paying for my own meals, but I think this year I'm going to do sponsors for each night. I'm going to have stream it on Facebook till I get a sponsor for each night. We do a different country every night. Uh but during the day, you got to shake your cosmic vegetation. And there are four species that you put together. Um there is the citron fruit. There is a palm shoot that has not yet fanned out. It's got to be perfectly tight. Um then you have the willow branch, and you have the myrtle branch. And you put those all together, and then you hold the fruit in left hand, you put those together. And then you It's like a Jewish light saber, like Luke Skywalker. And you're just like to all the directions. Yeah. And um uh just the citron fruit itself, I usually spend about anywhere between 100 and 200 dollars for that citron fruit. Uh Steve, how much you think that fruit's worth a week later when the holiday's over? A fraction. How about zero? It's worth about One shekel. Not even one shekel. Nobody pay a shekel for it. Nobody pay a penny for it. What are you going to do with a used etrog? They don't have They're not really edible. You can make it into a jam, you know, with enough sugar and cooking time, or you could uh um you can make etrog liqueur. You add, you know, 96% alcohol and cook that. You know. Um it's basically worthless at the end of that holiday. You know, here I'm spending, you know, 100 bucks, 200 bucks on it. Again, there's another ritual. Oh, by the way, um well, let Can we put the X yet, guys? Yeah. Can we X that? I I could just go on and on, but I think I'm going to How about the How about Passover holiday? We have to have a whole other kitchen. Rich people actually have two kitchens in their homes in the observant community, do know that? Two kitchens. One's only used for 1 week a year. Okay, 2 weeks. A week preparing and then a week serving out of it. But, um they have a separate kitchen for rich people and and the rest of us have an entire kitchen that is in our storage room. I have an attic where I keep my entire kitchen. I pull it out once a year. I literally take all of my appliances, pack them up, and put them away. Bring out an entire other kitchen to make Passover cuz you cannot use your yearly materials to prepare food. Now, it's not just preparing a meal. This is a week of festive meals that takes place for an entire, you know, it's a lot of food prep. A lot of food prep. She uses a whole other food processor, a whole other I mean, it's it's thousands and thousands of dollars worth of materials of uh food prep materials that we bring out. And you want to hear something funny? They when it comes to cutlery and silverware and all that, it has to be your finest. You can't use your finer stuff during the year and your less fine stuff for that week because we left Egypt. We were brought from slavery to freedom. You are You are like royalty now because God's taken you out of Egypt. So, you're going to use your lesser stuff that week? No, you have to use your finest stuff. So, I actually have an entire China set, an entire silver set. They were gifts for our wedding that are nicer than my Shabbos silver, which is mostly missing at this point. Uh you know, we're married 20 years, so there's like only so many spoons and forks and knives at this point. And uh you know, the but the nice stuff, that comes out for Passover. Okay? For the rituals of Passover. It gets a major axe. I could go on and on and on, but let's move down to the laws. Does Judaism have a lot of laws for the practitioner. Yeah, how many? 613. 613, you wish. That's 613 hyperlinks. 613 hyperlinks, you click on any of those links, it takes you to another website that goes down the actual laws. For example, there's a hyperlink that says you have to wear these black boxes. No, it doesn't say anything about black boxes. It just says "Put total foot on. One on your hand and one between your eyes." Which of course, if you put it on your hand, it's not good. If you put it between your eyes, it's not good. It's got to be above the hairline. There's laws. Got to know those laws. Otherwise, you're just wasting your time or you're a you're a a Sadducee or something. Or a Karaite or something. You know these are these these sects that like broke off of Judaism and said, "Forget the law, you know, we'll we'll put it on our hands." You know why they're called Sadducees? Cuz it's very sad you see. Now, um anyway, but the the law is you have to put total foot. The Torah says, the hyperlink is that you have to put these total foot on your hand and your eye, between your eyes. But the uh but when you click on it, there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of laws of what's involved with making that those tefillin, how to put them on, and all these details that are involved in making them. There's a lot involved. And but it's funny cuz there's more laws in that one commandment in Judaism than all the world's religions put together. In that one law. The law of tefillin has by the way, it has more times many. Meaning it's not just all the world's religions put together, it's all the world's religions put together times I don't even know how much. Cuz the laws of tefillin are hit can hit uh I don't know how many 6 700 laws there. And uh Um anyway, but we've done the math. We've found out cuz the Rambam, thankfully, has written out all the laws. Like he takes a commandment and then goes through all the laws, all the do's and the don'ts of how to do how to fulfill that commandment. And we've got a number. You ready for the number of the actual laws? 55,000 laws. 55,000. Now, many of those laws we don't have to cuz we don't have a temple. So, all the laws of Yom Kippur uh you know, the service of Yom Kippur wouldn't exist right now cuz we don't have a temple, but normally they would. For for a thousand years, meaning the first and second temple, they did exist. So, really God's saying these are 55,000 laws for the nation of Israel. Uh one of those laws, for example, is keep Shabbat. Sounds convenient? Well, if you're really hungry and you happen to be in a town that does Shabbat, you it's convenient cuz you're going to be well-fed over Shabbat by all these random families. But uh it's not that convenient. Uh let's just talk, for example, the fact that you can't drive. If you're a rich guy, very wealthy guy, tell me, do you want to live in a city center where all the synagogues are or would you like to live out in the in the sticks where you can have your beautiful palace and you know, just have it all, you know. We Or do you want to live in the congestion of a city? Both. Well, maybe a place in both. Now, most rich people do have a place in both. They work in one place and then they go out to the other for Shabbos where they build their own shul. I get invited to speak in synagogues that are built by the actual guy who brought me out. It's his shul. He hired the rabbi and he just needed a country home. And so, he brings the minion, he brings everybody, and they have their synagogue. But, not everyone's so wealthy. The laws include the laws include you having to be nearby. You're going to have to live near the synagogue. Not only do you have to be there for daily prayer, which you're not going to want to have a big commute to do your three prayers a day, but shabbos, you're not allowed to get in the car at all. Which means you must be living in some kind of Jewish ghetto automatically. You know, that's that's one of the things that's going to happen. It also has to do with who you marry. Um once you're following all these laws, so you're also following the laws of uh who you who can marry. And not only does the person you marry have to be Jewish, that's another law, but the but the uh but the person who's Jewish that you're marrying has to be totally committed to all the laws. So, like whoever it is has to be totally committed to the laws because so many of those laws are directly related to marriage. There's a large tract. There's six major tracts of laws, okay? Temple laws, uh laws between men and women, uh personal damages, what are they called? Torts and personal damage law, business all the business laws in there. Um laws of purity and impurity, which kind of that gets a little esoteric, but it's their laws. You know, what you can and can't touch, and if you touched it, what laws of purity and impurity. And then there's all the laws of the holidays, which are much more towards the ritual stuff of the holidays, but then there's all the laws of the various holidays throughout the calendar. Is that clear? So, there's categories of laws, and you can't marry somebody who's not game. If you're game, I mean, you're but I'm taking for granted that you're the Torah was created for you to keep those laws, and keeping those laws means you'd have to marry someone who's committed to those laws as well. Okay? Um these laws also include a uh uh all kinds of other monetary things. And uh and uh one for example is you have to write your own Torah. Which means you're going to have to learn how to write your own Torah. Or you can hire somebody to write a Torah, which is a year of livelihood. Well, the average year of livelihood these days in let's say not a fancy community let's say is about 40 thousand dollars in a rural place where you can get someone to write you a Torah. But you got to get that done. 40 50 thousand dollars, something like that. Yeah. And uh and then there's a whole other things you have to marry your kids off, which is major hassle. Major hassle. You can't be an observant Jew and expect your kids to marry themselves off. Um because people who keep Jewish law don't do sexual um premarital sex. Which means your kids aren't doing premarital sex, which means they're going to want to be getting married way before they can afford to. Okay? You know, our parents dropped us. They just like, "Oh, great, you know, modern day, you know, go out and work. Go out and work for several years till you find yourself a spouse and you know, you can afford her and stuff." And they know we're all they know anyway you're taken care of sexually because you know, you have you take care of yourself until today. Not according to Jewish law. Jewish law, you get married nice and young. Yeah? My daughter was engaged at 17, married at 18. And uh you know, she's probably going to have a baby by the time she's 19. Yeah? And they and she's like she just started university. She's in her first year of university. And it's like boom, you know, what what do you want her to do? As human beings. And her husband's a year older. You know, and he's uh What do you want him to do? We're human beings. Judaism says, you you know, it's just another law. You know, another rule. And uh You hear what's going on? Like I I And again, you think I could keep going? You know, I could keep going on the laws business? Yeah, shall I bring up the separation during menstruation? Should we go there, too? You know. With like holding bearing the like the worst penalty that the Torah brings. And there's The Torah is not shy about bringing penalties for for, you know, doing the wrong things like eating bread during Pesach or eating food during Yom Kippur. Breaking Shabbos. Is Is the Torah shy about bringing up the various punishments involved? Well, one of the heaviest is One of the heaviest is cohabitating with a menstruant. It It matches the very heaviest. Is cohabitating with a woman who's in menstruation. In the laws code, get even worse. It's not enough that she's no longer menstruating. Has she If she has not been in the mikvah yet, she's still a menstruant. She's still a menstruant. Till she gets in that mikvah after the menstruation, she's still a menstruant. And which means basically, if a woman's fighting going in the mikvah Women have these like I don't know what Everyone's Only Ashkenazi women, but you'll find these Ashkenazi women with their issues with mikvah. She should at least go after after menopause. She shouldn't They she shouldn't be bearing the the punishment of being a menstruant who cohabitates for the whole rest of her life when all she needed to do was just jump in one mikvah. Let her go to the beach and do it properly. You know, like just get it done. Cuz You know, you understand? So, they're like These are heavy laws, heavy-duty consequences in these laws. Clear? What do you say? Check or an X on the laws business. Major, I I should put you know adding more X's that could look bad. So, um Anyway, the uh and the last category is the promise. Okay? Uh you guys haven't been in Yeshiva very long. I don't know who's been in Yeshiva longest. Uh you went to Shara Yeshiva, you're probably winning. Uh Ephraim, you've been in Yeshiva a long time? Yes, uh Any issue? Very long. What? Too long. Uh you you grew up in Yeshivas? Very good. You ever heard class on the on what you get in the next world? Where you What? Gan Eden No, I'm saying a class. No. Never in all your years studying guitar? Gan Eden you get to go up like some big uh I'll say A class, you know, like a whole class, you know, all about the next world? Nah. You probably never even been to a class that even that was the subject. Not directly. We certainly don't have a class that is the subject here at Aish. Or Smeg doesn't. Chabad doesn't in their Yeshivas. What? Think about any other religion, what do you think you're going to hear the first day when you show up there? Yeah, it's all they go straight to the, you know, the make them nervous about what might be. Yeah? We don't have a class. You know why we don't have a class? Why don't have a class about what we're promising here? Free will issue I know, but it only adds to the free will. Like now I'm telling you like there's heavy consequences so you got serious free will issues here. Is it because we act like the things that we do off of this life like when we're not we're not purely motivated by Well, I mean I don't know that's I'm kind of conflicted in saying that cuz we are in part doing good things sometimes for what's to come. Right. I guess, but But how about a class on what's to come? How about How about a book on what's to come? Like how about anything on what's to come in Judaism? So the reason why we don't really have a class on what's to come and the and we certainly don't have a lot of details on what's to come is because there is no promise. There's a promise there will be something for sure. The soul will outlast your body. That we know. But we don't know what you came for. We don't know what you're here for. We don't know what I'm here for. We hope we're doing the stuff we came here for. We hope we're doing things right. We have no idea. We have no idea. We don't know what the upside is. We don't know what the downside is. And we know there's got to be consequence cuz the one thing you know about your life is there was free will. You you had a day in day out experience of choices, micro choices, macro choices. You like everything's choices. Your entire life's choices. Yet you don't see the consequence of those choices here. So we know there's got to be some consequence, but what the consequence and what's the reward for the good choice and what's the what's the punishment for bad choice? Is there punishment for bad choice? Is the punishment for bad choice over time? Is the punishment over time maybe in an instant? What is it? And the answer is we don't know. Not only do we not know what it is in general, we don't know what it is for you. We don't know what you're doing here. We don't know these God We believe in God is a very big being that has uh that is playing this video game of us here. Yeah, we're in this like giant video game and it under I mean, how much when you're playing a video game I'm sorry to go to Pac-Man here. I'm dating myself a little bit, but uh that little Pac-Man going around eating the dots and running away from those lunch bags, yeah? The um you know, he's going didn't he make that sound as he eats the dots? And if you could somehow interview that Pac-Man about the brain of the computer does the programmer who programmed Pac-Man, yeah, how good would he do? The answer is he can't do anything. He's just a Pac-Man. He doesn't doesn't have a he doesn't have any ability to understand that. So, when it comes to God, we're the Pac- we're just a Pac-Man. With no idea, we could never ever know what God's up to. And in fact, the Torah tells us very clearly that we have no idea. You'll never have any idea. Stop judging me with your human paradigms of judgment, you know, like don't don't stop saying if I were God, I would have done it this way or I would not have let the Holocaust happen or I would have this or I would have that or I would have the other thing. Forget it. It it's a brain that's so infinitely beyond any it's meaning it's an intelligence that's so infinitely beyond anything we would ever ever think of. That it's it's ridiculous for us to even try and certainly to start explaining what life's like when you get into that brain. Meaning when you go out of this, which is also its intelligence, but obviously this is his intelligence with with like massive amounts of blinding shields to protect us from its light. So, when you die and you get to go to the other side of all these protective veils, somehow I'm going to tell you what's there? Slicha. And the chutz chutzpah. And I could only be using human words even would could only be inaccurate cuz human words are also like what are what are human words we're even using compared to that? So, of course we don't have a class on it. Of course we don't know what it is. And therefore what's what I have to put on the board? I thought I thought that we did theorize about the world to come and everyone's purpose. I thought that that was discussed quite a lot. Maybe I'm just misunderstanding. The you're it is um it is um it's thought of like let's say I'm coming into your Shiva and all of a sudden like some guy's eating pork chops. And he's like want one? Yeah? No, of course that's a ridiculous example for me but but let's just say I'm really hungry or whatever. Doesn't matter how hungry I am actually. Okay, but just let's just say. And um I'm going to I would consider the fact that there my soul continues and there will be consequence for this. So that we are occupied with. That does take a big part of our lives is you know what what might be in store if I did this or what might be in store if I were to refrain. For sure. That's a big part of it. But again there's no detail to that. I don't know exactly why. I I just know there is. I know there is consequence. I just don't know what it is. I don't know you know why it has to do with why this what does God care if I eat this thing or don't eat this thing, you know, like why is this why is God worrying about such little things? Yet I know he is. And not cuz it bothers him. You think I eat pork chops God's somehow like going ow ow oh ow oh you know, like I'm on his on his thigh or something. You know, like God doesn't have a thigh. It doesn't affect God whatsoever. If I eat the kosher burger or if I eat the So that's a whole other subject that has nothing to do with how it affects God. God God's not affected by such things. Um very He's very interested. He's just not very affected. You know, he's very interested. He I am a child of the covenant of Sinai and therefore he's certainly got pom-poms out, you know, for when I pass the guy with the pork chops going and saying, you know, go team, you know, like don't eat the pork chop. You know, and of course when I refuse the pork chops, you know, now he's like you know he's doing the whole cheerleader thing, you know, he's like really excited. You know so to speak, but again, like not really. I mean, God's I don't know what God's up to. Anyway, but what we do in the end is especially if you compare us to all the other religions out there what do we get? We get nix. And so uh yeah, Jacob. Um is there any form of like threat? You know, as you said it's the opposite of a promise. And Jesus is a form of not threat, but Is what a threat? Like hell? Like you know how you said in the other religions it's kind of if you don't do this, then Yeah, it's to make you nervous about saying that it's a bunch of hogwash. And is there The downside. I mean, when they talk hell, it's to make you go whoa, you mean if I don't accept that's what's waiting for me? Now, I don't believe that, but what if I'm wrong? What if I'm wrong? What if he's right? And then they get nervous. And then someone else comes someone says, come on, man, it's just a it's just about believing, you know, it's not like you have to prove this. You can suspend all logic here. There's no need for brains in this one. You know, like okay, it doesn't make any sense? Fine. So believe it without it making sense. Blind faith. You get more reward for that. More reward for blind of And someone brings up logic why it's not true, it's a test of faith. That's your test of faith. Okay, so um anyway, but what you soon realize is that um Judaism is a non-starter. So, this raises several questions. And one of the big questions is how did it start? Because it's unmarketable. You can never market such thing. No one would ever do it. I mean, at what point did someone come along and say, "Hey man, this is like this is it, man. This is it. Judaism. It's going to be great. You're going to love this. You're just going to love it. You know, go with it." And you're like, uh you know, it's talking about all kinds of stuff that I don't know happened here, you know. That's okay, just suspend it logic, you know, just believe it happened. Just go for it, man, you know. I'm sure your life your your family would love to uh you know, do shabbos. Never see a car or a concert or a or a another movie on shabbos night, you know, Friday night or I'm sure I'm sure your wife would love to find out she's now a menstruant for the next period of time and you know, and can't touch you till I had a Rastafarian couple here who uh Rastafarian, she's not allowed to cook for him while menstruating and and when he found out that Judaism allows her to cook, he was like, "I'm in." You know. And they live in the old city now for like 15 years. Amazing couple. Anyway, but back to our subject is the it is you start to realize that Judaism utterly and totally unmarketable. So, at what point did someone come along and get this thing started? And if you did come along and say he's getting it started, where are all the other Jews? Cuz the thing itself, when you open up the actual book, mentions 3 million people. It literally counts them. It's called the Book of Numbers. You know, they counted the Jews. You know, you got 3 million people down there. Uh okay, and who came along to them? Well, no one, I guess, cuz it really they were all there at Sinai. And they were also there when they left left Egypt. So, when did they make it up? At what point? Well, maybe it was made up later. It was made up after Sinai at some point. I mean, it would have to be after Sinai, but yeah, okay. And then where are you going to explain the 3 million missing people? Doesn't say anywhere in Torah that 3 million people died. It did talk about people in the desert dying. I mean, people did die. Those people who listened to the spies died. But all the women stayed alive. All the little kids stayed alive. All the all the men who didn't believe the spies. There was a story in the Torah of believing the spies or whatever. I mean, how would how could you make up such a thing? You'd have to have witnesses. If not witnesses, at least people verifying it. You know, if someone comes along and says that they saw you know, that this is true, that this happened, you're like, "Okay, well, where are all those people?" Now, for him to tell you, "You're one of them." You're like, "Now now you're crazy." Cuz I'll go ask any of my uncles, any of my aunts, any of my family members, did this ever happen? Do they have any stories of such a thing? Which of course they won't, because this guy just came along trying to prove this thing. And I'm not even going into the suicidal commandments. For example, coming up this Rosh Hashanah, you are not to plow, plant, water, do anything to the fields. You can't plant the fields. Any field in the entire land of Israel must lie fallow for a year straight. What are you going to eat? But you open up the Torah and says, "Oh, don't worry. The sixth year you'll get a triple crop." Says who? Says who? And you want us all to not work for a year? Like, we're not going to How are we going to make a living if we don't work for you? We're not going to sell our produce. Forget what we're going to eat. How are we going to pay for our lives if we can't work our fields? Everything was agrarian then. The other suicidal commandment, "Oh, three times a year, every able-bodied man must come to Jerusalem to party." Got to party. Right? So, leave the borders. You're not allowed to keep anyone at the borders. No guarding the country. Doesn't matter. You can be in the middle of a war, sorry. All soldiers, everybody, every able-bodied man must leave his town, all the border towns, everywhere, and come party in Jerusalem. Now, of course, the people are going to say, "Hey, dude, your religion's cracked, man. You're going to Everyone will die." But you But he says, "Oh, no, look over here. It says here, when you come to Jerusalem to party, and by the way, it's 2 weeks here, a week 2 weeks from the border to get to Jerusalem, party here, and then 2 weeks back, so it's 5 weeks of leaving the borders empty. Okay? But you He opens up, "No, no, look here. It says, when you come to Jerusalem to party, the your neighbor's heart will not covet your land." Oh. Thank you. Oh, now I feel a lot better. You understand like it's ridiculous. You start to realize like there's no way Judaism exists except for Sinai. Either something massive happened or no one would ever keep this thing. You get that? There's no way to get this thing started. It's completely unmarketable. You can look today, no one wants it. No, where are all the people in this class? They should be banging down the door over this class. Where is everybody? You realize it's only unique people that God has tapped. I've been watching. I'm 2 and 1/2 decades doing this. I have been watching God tapping people on the shoulder. Most of them Jews, even gentiles. God tapping the shoulder and say, "Come." I call them the chosen of the chosen people. You guys are the chosen of the chosen people. Seriously, the chosen people of God is just like he's doing some kind of Since the Holocaust, the Holocaust he did some kind of like major um uh what's the word for it when you're making a uh selection? The Holocaust was major selection. A third of our people went upstairs. And now we're going through a whole other selection. We're like the most basic questions that should be asked and have such simple answers. You're only sitting here for an hour and think where we got to already. And basic stuff. But God's somehow selecting people out that they're more concerned about their iPhone battery than they're concerned about real stuff here. And in the end, there has been Jews all along. You can't find any historical time where there wasn't some some of the Jews, you know, whether it be hieroglyphics in Egypt, anything in the Canaanite area. This is all covered in Jewish artifacts the whole way through. We found King David's coins, his minted coins and his castle and all his stuff. That's really problematic cuz that's only 400 years after Sinai. And there's no way King David made up Judaism. Yet, he's the ultimate expression of Judaism. What do you think? He didn't fall off a tree, King David, and suddenly create Judaism. He was the king of Israel because the Jews came across when Moses died with Joshua, fought the Canaanite nations, etc. etc. until eventually King David, you know, with his son uh Solomon built the temple. And we already know that By the way, the the atheist archaeologists always want to say David was a myth cuz it's just too close to home. It's too close to Sinai. And with the help of our Mr. Moscowitz, a multimillionaire who's very interested in reclaiming Jewish land, and part of that's down in David's Village. So, he was so busy reclaiming land in David's Village that eventually they got him to commission excavating all of David's uh uh uh um uh castle. His residence. And of course, underneath they found everything. So, all the archaeologists, you can be the biggest atheist you want, you're stuck with David. Once you got David, couple hundred years from Sinai, oh, we're back. We're back to Sinai again. There's no way anyone would do all this stuff if it wasn't because Sinai didn't happen. Now, you could be in our generation where you believe Sinai happened, where it's it defies logic that it wouldn't have happened because there's just no way that it would have ever created. But, you definitely have to have in the in inception of people doing all this stuff. You have to have an inception. Some kind of cataclysmic massive, you know, OmniMax 3D THX surround sound, you know, freak out experience. There had to have been some kind of rendezvous with God, or people would never have done this. And yet, throughout all history, there's always been the Jews. Like that. Other religions have come and gone. Judaism's been here forever. From then. From Sinai. Can you explain why other religions now have also had like this success that they've had, like Christianity and Islam? Or do you think of that? Oh, I could explain it very simply. It's already on the board. We already did. But, in terms of like longevity of those religions, for instance, that that Longevity of anything, uh ideally has to come in land, language, and culture. They've had all three. They've always had common land, so they've been together. They've always had common language, and they've always had common culture. It's only the Jews who didn't have land, language, and culture and stayed together somehow. And but the but yeah, their longevity is mostly on the board plus land land um language and culture. They've always had that. So, they're they're just always building momentum. But again, it doesn't make it any more true. Numbers meaning are meaningless when it comes to truth. I mean, the biggest proof is you got a billion Muslims say this is true. And you got a billion Christians saying completely conflicting things saying this is true. What does that mean about both of them? Someone's wrong. Someone's wrong, and what it certainly says is very likely both are wrong, but what it certainly says is that numbers of people believing something has nothing to do with truth. So, you should never feel bad, by the way, as a Jew as being, you know, of 13 million people which is just like, you know, a fraction of the world's population, 0.01% or something of the world's population. You should never feel bad about that, because again, truth isn't about numbers. And then, we could go on and on and on, cuz then you got all the anti-Semitism. Like, why are what's their problem? What is their problem with us? Like, leave us alone, you know? What do we want to do besides, you know, learn our Torah? You know, and dance Hava Nagila. You know, like, what is your problem? Just leave us alone. Everything's going to be great. Jews don't want anything. We're not We're not at all imperialistic. We don't want anyone else's land. We have no, you know, interest in in great riches. Even the king has laws. We learned the laws last week. King's not allowed to to accumulate money. The king himself's is allowed money. Like we don't we don't want it. We just want to be left alone to be the light into the nations, to be the still small voice of of truth on the planet and be close to God. Yet for some reason we're on the top agenda of every nation in the world to like wipe us off the map. Through all of history, thousands and thousands of years. When in the end we've kept to ourselves. We don't bother anybody. We don't proselytize. We don't We leave everybody alone. But they can't seem to leave us alone. And the point Why am I mentioning all this? Because the Torah says it would happen. Not only that, it says that we're going to have this massive impact on them. Make up your mind. If they're going to hate us, we're not going to impact them. If they're going to hate us and always try to wipe us out and exile us from their country, we're not going to have any impact on them. Yet the Torah says you're going to have an amazing impact on them, but they're going to hate you and try to kill you all the time. How How would you know that? On that Whoever authored this document must know what's hit going to be in history and be controlling it throughout history. And there's a purpose for it. There's a We don't understand it yet. I have a good theory. There's a purpose for it and it's meant to be. Okay. Shalom everyone.